Check out this review of this behind-the-scenes book on the disputed territories in the Middle East --
http://ift.tt/1HBLcgv
-- There is much to find fault with in much of what's said here. But it occasioned further reflections of my own that helped clarify in my own mind some sort of forward path out of this horror.
First off, though, I have to say I found that this article does not entirely follow-up on certain statements at its outset. Early on, Siegel and Stern write:
"The activists are willing to open up to the apparently naïve German and express their true beliefs about Israel and Zionism—hateful views they might be more circumspect about sharing with, say, a New York Times reporter."
But nowhere in the rest of the article do we see any direct quotes along the lines of "Jews this" or "Jews that" from some of the activists covered in the book under review. Of course, it's possible there may be such unguarded remarks of that kind in the book itself after all. But this review utterly fails to quote a one, making hash of the above quote.
Clearly, however, the most effective -- and devastating -- of the revelations that this review does indeed describe is that disgusting episode deliberately staged in Bi'lin. There, finally, we have a case of a behind-the-scenes look at wheels turning, the like of which would probably have never been granted to Tenenbom without his disguise.
The most illuminating reflections in the review, it seems to me, are the kind of unwrapping at the end of the piece that could just as well have been arrived at without any undercover on-the-ground work at all:
"Michelle, who is Jewish, has been hard at work pressing the Nakbah claim for all Palestinians, including Israel’s Arabs. She tells Tenenbom/Tobi that her NGO works with the Israeli leftist organization Zokhrot (meaning “remembrance”), which is dedicated to perpetuating the Nakbah myth and to compensating the dispossessed Palestinians by allowing millions of them to return to their ancestral homes in Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem, thereby ending the Jewish state."
This happens to reflect a "Eureka" moment that I happened to have a little over a month ago myself. I didn't need a Michelle working with Zokhrot to see the entire Palestinian talk of "right of return" as being an obvious and illegal counterpart to the irresponsible ultra-orthodox settlers' activities in the West Bank. Both strike at the heart of Oslo, and if carried out to their inevitable conclusion, each effectively rubs out the other state. This is why -- candidly -- both strike me as inherently unethical and immoral. They merely invite more and increased suffering.
This article, for instance, is excellent in pointing out that (outside Gaza, which is a special case) most Palestinians in the area happen to be among the better off Arabs in the region. Consequently, any moral urgency for proactively pulling up stakes and moving back to "their roots" is murky, to say the least. Instead, the more I look at this "right of return", the more it strikes me as a thinly veiled road to mortal attack against Israel. The same is true, I feel, for the irresponsible ultra-orthodox settlers in the West Bank effectively moving in against Palestinian families. Both sets of would-be "movers" are mirrors of each other. The fact is that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Duh.
I've arrived at a new -- provisional -- standard, and I'm not sure if it can hold up in the long term. But maybe it can. You see, it's true there have been displaced persons at the heart of many a new nation (India included, as pointed out in this article). Some of that displacement is merely consequential as a result of pressures that are built up that are not necessarily deliberate or conscious. Other displacements have been deliberate and consciously planned. Whichever, the result is new families that then spring up in certain areas hitherto foreign to those new families.
Yet here's the nub: Innocent children of new arrivals also grow up in these new areas. Here is where I would suggest a new standard. By the time they are teenagers, these innocent children can only recall and are only comfortable in their new areas. The notion that they are just squatters on land that's not theirs is inherently cruel and unreasonable. They didn't take the land. Their ancestors did.
Yes, there has been great suffering for those families who may previously have been there. But that's no moral or ethical reason to visit the same kind of suffering now on a new generation of the "other". In fact, such a notion is offensive -- or should be. Two wrongs don't make a right. Why visit the same suffering on the "other" previously visited on a previous generation? The new suffering -- and threat of virtual ethnic cleansing -- that would be visited on the Israelis if the "right of return" were to be carried out to its logical conclusion constitutes a new injustice, not justice at all. Any prior de facto ethnic cleansing that may have been the result of earlier policies aimed at the other side in years gone by will never sufficiently justify a new round of the same sort of suffering visited on a later more innocent generation of Israeli families.
Likewise, I frankly feel the very same way about the Byzantine network of checkpoints that have arbitrarily and unjustly sprung up for Palestinians throughout the West Bank under Netanyahu as a result of this irresponsible orthodox settlers' movement for a new Judea and Samaria.
The standard for not allowing removal for families with partly grown children from new areas unless it's voluntary, but of planned removal for new settlers, either Palestinian or Israeli, where partly grown children are not an issue, may make the best sense. Of course, there will always be discontent of some kind no matter how these agonized problems are resolved.
However, I think the second principle, after the one involving partly grown children, should be that we not repeat the same degree of suffering endured by others in the past. Don't arbitrarily move in and disrupt the lives of a largely innocent generation on either side.
Maybe the relatively well-off Palestinians through most of the area do indeed feel a certain pang of longing for places where their ancestors used to live. But that's nothing compared to the sufferings attendant on arbitrary mass migrations all-too-blithely contemplated right now and effectively enabled on both sides by the unreasonable likes of Barghouti (the pioneer of the highly suspect BDS movement that threatens to mainstream the destructive "right of return" idea) and Netanyahu (the most reactionary Prime Minister Israel's ever had whose goading of the settlers and draconian treatment of the Palestinians has marked a new low).
Thoughts?
Stone
http://ift.tt/1HBLcgv
-- There is much to find fault with in much of what's said here. But it occasioned further reflections of my own that helped clarify in my own mind some sort of forward path out of this horror.
First off, though, I have to say I found that this article does not entirely follow-up on certain statements at its outset. Early on, Siegel and Stern write:
"The activists are willing to open up to the apparently naïve German and express their true beliefs about Israel and Zionism—hateful views they might be more circumspect about sharing with, say, a New York Times reporter."
But nowhere in the rest of the article do we see any direct quotes along the lines of "Jews this" or "Jews that" from some of the activists covered in the book under review. Of course, it's possible there may be such unguarded remarks of that kind in the book itself after all. But this review utterly fails to quote a one, making hash of the above quote.
Clearly, however, the most effective -- and devastating -- of the revelations that this review does indeed describe is that disgusting episode deliberately staged in Bi'lin. There, finally, we have a case of a behind-the-scenes look at wheels turning, the like of which would probably have never been granted to Tenenbom without his disguise.
The most illuminating reflections in the review, it seems to me, are the kind of unwrapping at the end of the piece that could just as well have been arrived at without any undercover on-the-ground work at all:
"Michelle, who is Jewish, has been hard at work pressing the Nakbah claim for all Palestinians, including Israel’s Arabs. She tells Tenenbom/Tobi that her NGO works with the Israeli leftist organization Zokhrot (meaning “remembrance”), which is dedicated to perpetuating the Nakbah myth and to compensating the dispossessed Palestinians by allowing millions of them to return to their ancestral homes in Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem, thereby ending the Jewish state."
This happens to reflect a "Eureka" moment that I happened to have a little over a month ago myself. I didn't need a Michelle working with Zokhrot to see the entire Palestinian talk of "right of return" as being an obvious and illegal counterpart to the irresponsible ultra-orthodox settlers' activities in the West Bank. Both strike at the heart of Oslo, and if carried out to their inevitable conclusion, each effectively rubs out the other state. This is why -- candidly -- both strike me as inherently unethical and immoral. They merely invite more and increased suffering.
This article, for instance, is excellent in pointing out that (outside Gaza, which is a special case) most Palestinians in the area happen to be among the better off Arabs in the region. Consequently, any moral urgency for proactively pulling up stakes and moving back to "their roots" is murky, to say the least. Instead, the more I look at this "right of return", the more it strikes me as a thinly veiled road to mortal attack against Israel. The same is true, I feel, for the irresponsible ultra-orthodox settlers in the West Bank effectively moving in against Palestinian families. Both sets of would-be "movers" are mirrors of each other. The fact is that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Duh.
I've arrived at a new -- provisional -- standard, and I'm not sure if it can hold up in the long term. But maybe it can. You see, it's true there have been displaced persons at the heart of many a new nation (India included, as pointed out in this article). Some of that displacement is merely consequential as a result of pressures that are built up that are not necessarily deliberate or conscious. Other displacements have been deliberate and consciously planned. Whichever, the result is new families that then spring up in certain areas hitherto foreign to those new families.
Yet here's the nub: Innocent children of new arrivals also grow up in these new areas. Here is where I would suggest a new standard. By the time they are teenagers, these innocent children can only recall and are only comfortable in their new areas. The notion that they are just squatters on land that's not theirs is inherently cruel and unreasonable. They didn't take the land. Their ancestors did.
Yes, there has been great suffering for those families who may previously have been there. But that's no moral or ethical reason to visit the same kind of suffering now on a new generation of the "other". In fact, such a notion is offensive -- or should be. Two wrongs don't make a right. Why visit the same suffering on the "other" previously visited on a previous generation? The new suffering -- and threat of virtual ethnic cleansing -- that would be visited on the Israelis if the "right of return" were to be carried out to its logical conclusion constitutes a new injustice, not justice at all. Any prior de facto ethnic cleansing that may have been the result of earlier policies aimed at the other side in years gone by will never sufficiently justify a new round of the same sort of suffering visited on a later more innocent generation of Israeli families.
Likewise, I frankly feel the very same way about the Byzantine network of checkpoints that have arbitrarily and unjustly sprung up for Palestinians throughout the West Bank under Netanyahu as a result of this irresponsible orthodox settlers' movement for a new Judea and Samaria.
The standard for not allowing removal for families with partly grown children from new areas unless it's voluntary, but of planned removal for new settlers, either Palestinian or Israeli, where partly grown children are not an issue, may make the best sense. Of course, there will always be discontent of some kind no matter how these agonized problems are resolved.
However, I think the second principle, after the one involving partly grown children, should be that we not repeat the same degree of suffering endured by others in the past. Don't arbitrarily move in and disrupt the lives of a largely innocent generation on either side.
Maybe the relatively well-off Palestinians through most of the area do indeed feel a certain pang of longing for places where their ancestors used to live. But that's nothing compared to the sufferings attendant on arbitrary mass migrations all-too-blithely contemplated right now and effectively enabled on both sides by the unreasonable likes of Barghouti (the pioneer of the highly suspect BDS movement that threatens to mainstream the destructive "right of return" idea) and Netanyahu (the most reactionary Prime Minister Israel's ever had whose goading of the settlers and draconian treatment of the Palestinians has marked a new low).
Thoughts?
Stone
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1Ibhi65
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