"Our enemies call us terrorists... People who were neither our friends or our enemies... also used this Latin name... And yet, we were not terrorists... The historical and linguistic origins of the political term 'terror' prove that it cannot be applied to a revolutionary war of liberation... Fighters for freedom must arm; otherwise they would be crushed overnight... What has a struggle for the dignity of man, against oppression and subjugation, to do with 'terrorism'?"Those familiar with the eccentric Lacanian knows his favorite mode of argument is to present the reader with the seemingly obvious, only to settle on a completely inversion conclusion. The above quote might immediately be attributed to a present day Islamist militant, but its source is actually Menachim Begin, when he lead the Igrun paramilitary group in its resistance to British mandate control. Begin would later become Israel's sixth prime minister.
Zizek continues with a second example which helps illustrate how far Isreal has come from its early rhetoric. Consider the following passage:
My Brave Friends. You may not believe what I write you, for there is a lot of fertilizer in the air at the moment. But on my word as an old reporter, what I write is true. The Palestinians of America are for you. You are their champions. You are the grin they wear. You are the feather in their hats. You are the first answer that makes sense - to the New World. Every time you blow up an Israeli arsenal, or wreck an Israeli jail, or send an Israeli railroad sky high, or rob an Israeli bank, or let go with your guns and bombs at the Israeli betrayers and invaders of your homeland, the Palestinians of America make a little holiday in their hearts.This passage doesn't come from an underground jihadi website. It was written, in fact, by Ben Hecht, the famous Hollywood screenwriter of the 1930s and 1940s who penned dozens of classics. All Zizek has done is replace the word "Jews" with "Palestinians," and "British" with "Israelis."
David Ben-Gurion, Israel's George Washington so to speak, had this to say during the same period: "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."
It's hard to imagine Israel's well-oiled public relations industry embracing such statements from its own historical luminaries. Israeli's foreign ministry along, with U.S. propaganda outfits like Stand With Us and the mega-lobbying group AIPAC, prefer to present Israel as a small, beleaguered sanctuary of democracy and human rights and Zionism as the most peaceful of nationalist movements.
It's founders held no such illusion, for it was their blood, sacrifice and, yes, terror that birthed a nation. Could you imagine Netanyahu making the following statement, which Ben-Gurion did as Prime Minister?
"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our god is not theirs. There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country."This is an understanding which unsettles the liberal conscience on three counts - rejecting the liberal consensus that peace can be made between the colonized and the colonizer, admitting the legitimacy of the Arab position, and, perhaps the worst offense, nonetheless remaining a strident Zionist.
But there is a certain truth here, perhaps more desirable even than liberal obfuscation. It also renders the seemingly inexorable right-wing move of Israeli politics more understandable. As the barbarity of the Israeli government against Palestinians, Lebanese, Turkish activists, etc., continue to undermine any hope of a liberal/humanist defense of Israel, the only argument which can remain is purely partisan nationalism.
This reminds me of a late night argument I had a few months back with a strong supporter of Israel who otherwise considered himself quite radical. After cycling through the standard litany of liberal Zionist apologetics - each of which I refuted with pretty uncontroversial evidence - he finally admitted that I was indeed correct, that the government of Israel was engaged in massive violence and repression, and even that Zionism itself represents little more than colonialism to the indigenous population. "Still," he concluded, "I'm a partisan for Israel. I'm a partisan for the Jews."
One could engage in an entirely different argument on how Israel's actions may prove destructive to actual Jewish people in the long-run, but that's for a different post. What I find interesting here is that this is the final retort of Zionism. And frankly, it's far more honest than the smokescreen of democratic values and human rights that present day Israeli apologists employ and which early Zionists - who saw first hand the violence it takes to create a nation - would likely have found laughable.
The question is, of course, where do you take the argument from there?
Andrew, have you failed to consider that both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism share the same roots in oppression, ethnocentrism, and violence? For example, early Zionist settlers, who often settled on land either uninhabited or legally and financially obtained from Turkish authorities/ Palestinians themselves often sparked anti-Semitic violence throughout Palestine which was disproportionate to the efforts of settlers themselves. At the same time, Zionists often evoked an ideology which seemed indifferent to the reality of the situation in Palestine, and was single-mindedly devoted to the establishment of a state in a land with people already yearning for a state of their own.
ReplyDeleteGranted, Zionism in its beginnings was mostly unaware of the Palestinian population in Israel, instead focusing on an idyllic vision of a land which, per diasporic Judaism's vision, was a place of exile and desolation which was in need of settlement. That said, the 1929 Hebron Massacre and other instances of violence against Jews( not necessarily settlers, for example, the Jewish population of Hebron at the time was composed mostly of Mizrahi Jews who had been there for at least 8 centuries), were based in the opposition between Palestinian nationalists and both the British occupation and the Jewish population of Israel, who were seen as being equally privileged and favored.
Of course, this opposition was common of colonial rule, where different groups were often placed in opposition to each other by the colonial power through inconsistent and purposefully ambivalent treatment. The Balfour Declaration and the McMahon-Sharif Papers set the stage for a confrontation between Palestinian and European Jews and Palestinian Arabs which was necessarily violent and would necessarily require the intervention of British authorities to control, thereby assuring their colonial power in the region.
And for many years, this atrocious balance was kept. Through the efforts of Palestinian nationalists in the 36-37 revolts, the White Papers were passed, severely limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine throughout the Holocaust. I don't need to mention the consequences of this action, as a Jew you should know them.
When the State of Israel's independence was declared, following the Arab League's utter rejection of the UN Plan, and the declaration of war by Palestinians on Israel the next day, was it unreasonable for Israel to treat Palestinians, many of whom took up arms and joined the 5 Armies efforts, as an enemy?
I'm ambivalent, but certainly a reconsideration of Palestinian stances toward Israel from before its inception is necessary in order to evaluate the situation further.
This doesn't mean that the expulsions were justified either, nor that the treatment of Palestinians by Israel has been justified, just that Palestinian hostility towards Israel comes from a history which has often found Palestinians being equally as violent and unreasonable as Israel has been. The difference comes in terms of power, not the abstract notion of power often discussed by radicals, but rather the material reality that Israel won the '48 war and '67 war handily, and therefore have had the ability to expel hundreds of thousands and oppress millions. If Palestinians and the 5 Armies had won the war, they would have done similar if not worse things. This is not a moral judgment, it is a statement of fact.
So where does that leave us? Menachem Begin was a terrorist, Hamas are terrorists, terrorism can accomplish things to the denigration of all, or a better path can be taken which benefits many if not all. In a case where there increasingly seems to be a mutually-exclusive claim, compromise is necessary, and it is this path alone which will prevent further misery and death. Israel has not taken this path, nor have the Palestinians, I sympathize with both's citizenry because in many ways they have been the victims of a history which often contradicts itself.
ReplyDeleteAs for Ben-Gurion, his pragmatism would have served Israel well post-67: he is noted for having warned officials about settling on any of the land they annexed during that war, as he realized that any settlement there would ultimately become embattled and create further conflict. The government and people, caught up in the euphoria of a victory they interpreted as heaven-sent and an affirmation of Israel's righteousness, left these warnings unheeded.
As to the Zizek quote, terror and revolution go hand and hand, always have. The problem is that nationalism, be it Israeli or Palestinian, is hardly a revolutionary stance, its something akin to the status quo; violence is committed and people cheer because they must, or remain indifferent because they can. Palestinian violence and Israeli violence go hand in hand, they're caught in a cycle which is mutually beneficial to both's most deep-seated fears, and which encourage extremism as a result.
That said, supporting Israel or Palestine, with this history in mind, rarely comes down to a "liberal/humanist" defense. It comes down to partisanship, and irrationality. As much as Israel is a violator of human rights, your overdetermined protest of their actions ultimately comes down to your own status as a Jew and the long shadow of the Holocaust. If Jews were the ones perpetrating the total blockade of South Yemen, by North Yemen, this blog would be in an uproar. If Jews were the government of Saudi Arabia, and rendering their citizenry powerless and penniless, you would pick up the billboard. As it stands, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as unjust as Israel has been, has a much more complicated and ambivalent history with blame to go around on both sides.
As it stands, Israel is the only one who can end this conflict, and for their actions, as well as this power, they have assumed a responsibility to end it, to end the suffering of the Palestinians which they have caused and continue to, and to substantially improve the quality of Palestinian life by giving them their own state. But it is up to Palestinians themselves to move away from extremism, to abandon a history of violence, and to embrace their own responsibility to determine their own politics, economy, and society. And with Hamas at the helm, I fear that in the name of their self-stated goals, such an assumption of responsibility will still be neglected in favor of hatred and violence.
ReplyDeleteOf course, none of this is knowable without a Palestinian state, and I genuinely do hope that with its establishment and the aid of the international community, that violence can be put aside in favor of the development of a Palestine based in democracy and self-determination, rather than extremism and terror.
As to Israel, I hope that they can put aside their self-victimization and defensive aggression and be able to focus on themselves for once, rather than how they are perceived worldwide, and then acting flagrantly and uselessly in response, as we saw with the flotilla. Such actions only act to their detriment as does the idiotic approval of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem.
Still and all, any solution which doesn't take into account the well-being of both the Palestinian people and the Israeli is unjust. By this I mean long-term well-being, the suffering of settlers living on land which is better off not lived on for the sake of peace, is suffering which is justified in my opinion. That said, uprooting 500,000 settlers
( including East Jerusalem), comes close to something impossible and inhumane. So always, I think, it's important to speak in terms of possibility. The settlements which can go, must, those that can't will have to be worked around, with US-Israel relations increasingly on the cool, I think we may see some drastic changes soon. Of course, I could just grasping at straws, given the approved the demolition of 22 Palestinian houses to build a tourist center. Sigh.
Also, the quote you attributed to Ben-Gurion about "terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services" is actually (falsely) attributed to Israel Koenig, the interior ministry's official who was in charge of the Galillee, in his 1975 report about the region. The report it is supposedly from did have recommendations for reducing Arab influence in the region which are admittedly manipulative and unjust, such as increasing the number of settlements in areas which were predominantly Israeli-Arab, in an attempt to lower their demographic influence, as well as putting in place "dupe" Arab officials who would represent more pro-Israel views. Still that's far from the extreme recommendations you attributed to Ben Gurion, and Koenig is hardly the "George Washington" of Israel. If you guys want credibility, I suggest checking your sources.
ReplyDeleteCongradulations on your new blog, you already have your dedicated Hasbara lunatic troll assigned I see. You could have told your friend that he could have saved a lot of time by telling you that in the first place.
ReplyDeleteWow, Demize, if you knew anything at all about Hasbara, you would know that my views run very much against the common defenses used. For example, I don't support the occupation, I call the occupation an "occupation", not some euphemism, I oppose settlement construction, decry Israel's continuing policies against Palestinians, and in general, am strongly critical of the current Israeli government. An unwillingness to use frequent pejoratives to describe the situation out of their general uselessness and overapplication on both sides doesn't make me a rabidly anti-Palestinian Gushnik, it just makes me someone who is pragmatically oriented to ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state, but also towards assessing the actual situation in Palestine, which means applying blame there where blame is due. That's all.
ReplyDeleteBut since you're obviously someone who prefers to use ad hominem attacks rather than responding to my points, you're not doing much to advance the conversation, as the comments I have seen seem to unquestioningly agree with Andrew and Adam's view, so if anything, my posts have been an attempt to generate a dialog, but apparently my views are "apologist" and other such endlessly regurgitated adjectives, because I don't support Hamas and want to actually see a viable and happy Palestinian state.