Wishing you a Happy New Year and seeking your advice on how this site should develop in 2010
Just a quick note to wish you all a Happy New Year. This website has grown very rapidly since its first, tentative beginnings in May. I would like to thank everyone for their help and support in promoting it.
As soon as is practicable I intend to upgrade the website to give it a more professional look and to improve its features and functionality.
In terms of content, I have been asked by many people to widen the scope of the site to engage more broadly in the battle of ideas of which the fight for reason and decency over the State of Israel is merely a part.
That would seem to make sense, especially given the thrust of my book — A State Beyond the Pale — which sees the neo-anti-Semitic resurgence in Europe in civilisational rather than single-issue terms. This does not mean that I would do less on Israel, it would just mean that I would do more on other issues.
Perhaps readers would be kind enough to make comments and suggestions both on the matter of revamping the technical and presentational side of the website and on the kind of content they would like to see more (or less) of. Please leave comments below or drop me an email.
Once again, Happy New Year!
December 30th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Robin, I agree with your intentions. For me, understanding what is screwed up with British and European political opinion is every bit as intriguing as what’s happening in the Middle East. It seems to be massive ignorance combined with massive arrogance which allows people to hold strong, hateful opinions when they know so little of the region and its history. But as your book shows, there’s more to it than that.
Another facet that we slightly ignore is legitimate criticisms of Israel. I’ve always taken a dim view of much of Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank, because it’s become a natural focus for Palestinian hostility. If the true underlying problem is Palestinian reluctance to recognise Israel, then this is concealed by the more visible settlements issue. As genuine friends of Israel, we have a duty to mention these things, although I guess there’ll be differing views amongst us.
For information, following your article on the excellent Senor and Singer book “Start-Up Nation”, I’ve posted a review on the Amazon UK website …
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Start-Up-Nation-Israels-Economic-Miracle/dp/044654146X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262186435&sr=8-1
Great book for anyone interested in the subjects of Israel, business innovation and corporate culture.
December 30th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Happy New Year to you too!
December 30th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
There’s plenty of criticism of Israel today, both “legitimate” and non-legitimate. We need to keep the focus on Arab and Islamic rejectionism, which has existed since long before the wildcat settlements in Judea and Samaria and remains the core reason for the persistence of this conflict. Let’s stick to supporting Israel. We must break the spell of hysterical anti-Israel bigotry found in European discourse today. That should be the fundamental task of this website.
December 31st, 2009 at 11:58 am
Shlomo - sorry to disappoint, but this website won’t “break the spell of hysterical anti-Israel bigotry in European discourse”. Getting as many people as possible to read Robin’s excellent book is the best we can hope for and that will only have marginal effect, I’m afraid.
As for settlements, it’s true that Israel’s enemies will use any flimsy pretext for violence. Even though there are no Jewish settlements there, Hizballah points to the Shebaa Farms and Ghajar to justify their ‘resistance’. (It’s probably worth handing those areas to Unifil to let Lebanon and Syria sort out between them. Hizballah would then have zero territorial pretext and would be exposed as nothing but an Iranian proxy. Any future action by them would be seen as totally divorced from Lebanese national interests.)
I do have a problem with the West Bank settlements founded under the assumption of the Begin and Shamir governments that Israel would eventually annex the territory. The hope was that the Palestinians would somehow ‘disappear’, which was always complete cobblers. The price that Israel is paying for that idiocy is colossal. I’m no believer in a return to the 1949 Armistice lines, but settlement policy should have been based on the premise that large areas would eventually be returned to Arab sovereignty, either Jordanian or Palestinian. Now the situation is a complete mess. If this were not the case, Israel would be seen in a much more positive light.
January 1st, 2010 at 1:13 pm
A response to Jonathan Karmi:
http://www.hurryupharry.org/
http://engageonline.wordpress.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree
January 1st, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Thanks Joshua. Not quite sure what your message is, but if you’re saying there’s plenty to be getting on with over here without overly worrying about Israel’s policies, then you could be right. The Guardian’s editorials and the frequent anti-semitism on CIF and other media websites are symptomatic of a widespread sick mentality in Britain. Living in this country is not an attractive long-term proposition.
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:09 am
This blog is excellent as it is and I don’t agree with Jonathan Karmi that it will do nothing to change minds. Information from blogs does, very slowly, trickle into the mainstream. However, I think that a fundamental problem in countering anti-Israel bias is the widespread and shocking ignorance that places Israel in the wrong to start with. No less than a retired Oxford don recently told me that Israel had ‘got rid of all the Arabs’. Where he saw the newsreel footage of a mass exodus of Arabs with ringleted Jews in hot pursuit I do not know. Educated liberals are convinced that European Jews stole a country called Palestine, there to take out their grievances on its innocent inhabitants, that the West Bank is entirely occupied by born-again Jewish fanatics from Brooklyn, and that Muslims blow themselves up all over the world because of the settlements. I think Israel’s supporters are often unaware of how little history people know, and how little they want to hear about anti-semitism or Israel’s right to defend itself. Let’s hope for a change of perceptions in 2010. Keep up the good work Robin and a very happy new year.
January 2nd, 2010 at 5:31 pm
“This blog is excellent as it is,” says Nicole. Heartily seconded.
Happy New Year Robin.
January 2nd, 2010 at 8:35 pm
I agree that the website is excellent and haven’t said otherwise. Robin says he supports the idea of widening the discussion as it relates to a civilisational pathology and not just unreasoned hatred of Israel, which is its most conspicuous symptom. I agree with that.
The point in my original posting was that we’re big enough and intelligent enough to freely discuss Israel-related topics in a balanced manner. And I’m not talking about the nauseating false ‘balance’ of the BBC, eg. targeting civilians equals targeting terrorists who operate amongst civilians.
January 5th, 2010 at 12:32 am
Happy New Year, Robin.
I would certainly welcome your insights into the broader battle of ideas, if that’s the way you choose to go with your website.
Anything, in fact, that would help cut through the tangle presently strangling civilization of liberal-left self-deception with Islamist taqiyya.
February 17th, 2010 at 1:31 am
I really enjoy this blog.