Comments on: A Response To “A Cool Hour on the Israel-Palestine Conflict 5” http://blog.z-word.com/2008/10/a-response-to-%e2%80%9ca-cool-hour-on-the-israel-palestine-conflict-5%e2%80%9d/ Commentary about Zionism, anti-Zionism, antisemitism and the conflict in the Middle East Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:49:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5-RC1.1 By: Lbnaz http://blog.z-word.com/2008/10/a-response-to-%e2%80%9ca-cool-hour-on-the-israel-palestine-conflict-5%e2%80%9d/#comment-1563 Lbnaz Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:13:41 +0000 http://blog.z-word.com/?p=393#comment-1563 <i>However, this gave both Israel and the rest of the World an exceptional responsibility to ensure that this had as little impact as possible on the aboriginal inhabitants of the area.</i> First Nations/Native Americans in the Americas and Aborigines down under are aboriginal inhabitants. Palestinian Arabs are not aboriginal inhabitants. However, this gave both Israel and the rest of the World an exceptional responsibility to ensure that this had as little impact as possible on the aboriginal inhabitants of the area.

First Nations/Native Americans in the Americas and Aborigines down under are aboriginal inhabitants. Palestinian Arabs are not aboriginal inhabitants.

]]> By: Sam Fleischacker http://blog.z-word.com/2008/10/a-response-to-%e2%80%9ca-cool-hour-on-the-israel-palestine-conflict-5%e2%80%9d/#comment-1558 Sam Fleischacker Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:15:00 +0000 http://blog.z-word.com/?p=393#comment-1558 Let me just stress that I was focused in this piece on a *single* type of argument: the argument that Jews have a right to the land because they used to live there. I did not say anything about whether Jews acquired the land legitimately when they immigrated in the 19th and early 20th centuries (on the whole, I believe they did, and will address this when I come to the case for Zionism - the 9th post) or on the other hand about whether Arabs in the land held their lands legitimately or not (although on the whole I believe they did as well). Eamonn thus misquotes me, slightly but significantly, by starting section 3 with the words "I believe there is a moral asymmetry that favors the Palestinians." What I actually wrote was: "ON THIS ISSUE, I believe there is a moral asymmetry that favors the Palestinians." IF we talk in terms of which group "owned" the land at the beginning of the Zionist movement - IF we assume that one of the two groups did own it - then the fact that Arabs actually made up the majority should count for more than the fact that Jews lived there many centuries earlier. But I don't know that we should talk in these terms: I'll be getting to that in the next post. On the main issue, Eamonn and I seem again to agree: that the "ancestral land" argument (very often used in internal Jewish discussions of the subject!) is not a good one. (We also agree that if one does want to look at group attachments to land, the group needs to be defined by cultural factors rather than genetics.) Let me just stress that I was focused in this piece on a *single* type of argument: the argument that Jews have a right to the land because they used to live there. I did not say anything about whether Jews acquired the land legitimately when they immigrated in the 19th and early 20th centuries (on the whole, I believe they did, and will address this when I come to the case for Zionism - the 9th post) or on the other hand about whether Arabs in the land held their lands legitimately or not (although on the whole I believe they did as well). Eamonn thus misquotes me, slightly but significantly, by starting section 3 with the words “I believe there is a moral asymmetry that favors the Palestinians.” What I actually wrote was: “ON THIS ISSUE, I believe there is a moral asymmetry that favors the Palestinians.” IF we talk in terms of which group “owned” the land at the beginning of the Zionist movement - IF we assume that one of the two groups did own it - then the fact that Arabs actually made up the majority should count for more than the fact that Jews lived there many centuries earlier. But I don’t know that we should talk in these terms: I’ll be getting to that in the next post.

On the main issue, Eamonn and I seem again to agree: that the “ancestral land” argument (very often used in internal Jewish discussions of the subject!) is not a good one. (We also agree that if one does want to look at group attachments to land, the group needs to be defined by cultural factors rather than genetics.)

]]> By: ndm http://blog.z-word.com/2008/10/a-response-to-%e2%80%9ca-cool-hour-on-the-israel-palestine-conflict-5%e2%80%9d/#comment-1557 ndm Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:55:48 +0000 http://blog.z-word.com/?p=393#comment-1557 The end of the last paragraph was missing from my previous post. The paragraph in its entirety should have read: <blockquote> For the record. I believe that the creation of the State of Israel was an appropriate exceptional response to the Holocaust. However, this gave both Israel and the rest of the World an exceptional responsibility to ensure that this had as little impact as possible on the aboriginal inhabitants of the area. The last 60 years have shown we have failed the Palestinian people, but that failure should not be cause for supporting, now or in the future, the Israeli subjugation of the Palestinian people consequent to its colonization of the Occupied Palestinan Territories. </blockquote> The end of the last paragraph was missing from my previous post. The paragraph in its entirety should have read:

For the record. I believe that the creation of the State of Israel was an appropriate exceptional response to the Holocaust. However, this gave both Israel and the rest of the World an exceptional responsibility to ensure that this had as little impact as possible on the aboriginal inhabitants of the area. The last 60 years have shown we have failed the Palestinian people, but that failure should not be cause for supporting, now or in the future, the Israeli subjugation of the Palestinian people consequent to its colonization of the Occupied Palestinan Territories.

]]> By: ndm http://blog.z-word.com/2008/10/a-response-to-%e2%80%9ca-cool-hour-on-the-israel-palestine-conflict-5%e2%80%9d/#comment-1556 ndm Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:25:23 +0000 http://blog.z-word.com/?p=393#comment-1556 Eamonn McDonagh writes: <blockquote>It seems that what [Samuel Fleischacker] is defending here is an attenuated version of a view that he rejects elsewhere in the post; that peoples have particular rights over particular territories based on their ancestral relations with it. If that’s false for the Jews going back to the 6th century then I’d be interested in hearing an argument that would make it valid for Palestinians in the 19th and 20th centuries. If it’s because it’s nearer in time, then where are we going to draw the line? If the line is to be drawn at living memory, then are all the other tens of millions people throughout the world who have suffered a similar fate to that of the Palestinians since 1948 to be afforded the same rights and restitutions that the Palestinians are seeking now?</blockquote> In writing this, McDonagh ignores that dark lines have been drawn in the sand already. Since the time of the European conquest of America and Africa, laws have been created forbidding precisely such conquest. There is no need to resort to arbitrary ideas such as drawing a line at "living memory" because we have the Nuremberg Tribunals, the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court providing firm legal guidance on what behavior is lawful and what is unlawful. To Norman Geras's credit I found the Fleischacker/McDonagh discussion interesting - partly because Fleischacker's thoughts were so unexpected on his blog. However, I found this response disappointing in that McDonagh essentially pretended there was not a significant body of law covering precisely how the Israelis need to handle the Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We do not need to invent lines in the sand or anywhere else to understand the legal and moral implications of that occupation. For the record. I believe that the creation of the State of Israel was an appropriate exceptional response to the Holocaust. However, this gave both Israel and the rest of the World an exceptional responsibility to ensure that this had as little impact as possible on the aboriginal inhabitants of the area. The last 60 years have shown we have failed the Palestinian people, but that failure should not be cause for supporting, now or in the future, the Israeli su Eamonn McDonagh writes:

It seems that what [Samuel Fleischacker] is defending here is an attenuated version of a view that he rejects elsewhere in the post; that peoples have particular rights over particular territories based on their ancestral relations with it. If that’s false for the Jews going back to the 6th century then I’d be interested in hearing an argument that would make it valid for Palestinians in the 19th and 20th centuries. If it’s because it’s nearer in time, then where are we going to draw the line? If the line is to be drawn at living memory, then are all the other tens of millions people throughout the world who have suffered a similar fate to that of the Palestinians since 1948 to be afforded the same rights and restitutions that the Palestinians are seeking now?

In writing this, McDonagh ignores that dark lines have been drawn in the sand already. Since the time of the European conquest of America and Africa, laws have been created forbidding precisely such conquest. There is no need to resort to arbitrary ideas such as drawing a line at “living memory” because we have the Nuremberg Tribunals, the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court providing firm legal guidance on what behavior is lawful and what is unlawful.

To Norman Geras’s credit I found the Fleischacker/McDonagh discussion interesting - partly because Fleischacker’s thoughts were so unexpected on his blog. However, I found this response disappointing in that McDonagh essentially pretended there was not a significant body of law covering precisely how the Israelis need to handle the Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We do not need to invent lines in the sand or anywhere else to understand the legal and moral implications of that occupation.

For the record. I believe that the creation of the State of Israel was an appropriate exceptional response to the Holocaust. However, this gave both Israel and the rest of the World an exceptional responsibility to ensure that this had as little impact as possible on the aboriginal inhabitants of the area. The last 60 years have shown we have failed the Palestinian people, but that failure should not be cause for supporting, now or in the future, the Israeli su

]]> By: Barry Meislin http://blog.z-word.com/2008/10/a-response-to-%e2%80%9ca-cool-hour-on-the-israel-palestine-conflict-5%e2%80%9d/#comment-1554 Barry Meislin Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:57:29 +0000 http://blog.z-word.com/?p=393#comment-1554 Is there any acknowledgement here that the major reason some Palestinians lost their land because they and the Arab states that supposedly fought on their behalf failed, despite their best efforts rhetorically and militarily, to utterly destroy the nascent State of Israel? To nip it in the bud? To eradicate it? To erase it from existence? (Or should we ignore this? Or should we acknowledge it but declare it unimportant, irrelevant, a very minor detail, etc.?) And while we're at it (or not), should we acknowledge that following the war of 1948/49, no Jew living in areas conquered by Jordan or Egypt was allowed to stay and live in those areas; although there was and continues to be a sizeable Arab population living within pre-1967 Israel? (That's right: there were Jewish Palestinian refugees in 1948/49. Wondered what happened to them....) Maybe, too, we should overlook the significant Arab influx into British-mandate Palestine, lured there by the increasing economic prosperity and opportunities offered by Jewish (and British) renewal and rebuilding of the region, and swelling the ranks of the indigenous Arabs living in Palestine? (And who, when they were forced to leave, were also considered Palestinian refugees?) (And should such non-indigenous Arabs be considered "colonists" as well? Or is that an irony that simply can't be countenanced?) Is there any acknowledgement here that the major reason some Palestinians lost their land because they and the Arab states that supposedly fought on their behalf failed, despite their best efforts rhetorically and militarily, to utterly destroy the nascent State of Israel? To nip it in the bud? To eradicate it? To erase it from existence?

(Or should we ignore this? Or should we acknowledge it but declare it unimportant, irrelevant, a very minor detail, etc.?)

And while we’re at it (or not), should we acknowledge that following the war of 1948/49, no Jew living in areas conquered by Jordan or Egypt was allowed to stay and live in those areas; although there was and continues to be a sizeable Arab population living within pre-1967 Israel?

(That’s right: there were Jewish Palestinian refugees in 1948/49. Wondered what happened to them….)

Maybe, too, we should overlook the significant Arab influx into British-mandate Palestine, lured there by the increasing economic prosperity and opportunities offered by Jewish (and British) renewal and rebuilding of the region, and swelling the ranks of the indigenous Arabs living in Palestine? (And who, when they were forced to leave, were also considered Palestinian refugees?)

(And should such non-indigenous Arabs be considered “colonists” as well? Or is that an irony that simply can’t be countenanced?)

]]> By: lyn http://blog.z-word.com/2008/10/a-response-to-%e2%80%9ca-cool-hour-on-the-israel-palestine-conflict-5%e2%80%9d/#comment-1550 lyn Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:59:06 +0000 http://blog.z-word.com/?p=393#comment-1550 What intrigues me is how SF can talk about a majority Arab population when there were only 300,000 people living in Palestine in 1800, and there are 15 million now. What is missing in his analysis is any sense that this is an Israel-Arab conflict (and increasingly an Israel/Islamist conflict), not an Israel-Palestinian one. There were displaced people on both sides, and in fact a greater number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. The displacement was no less unjust of Jews from Baghdad or Tripoli (one third Jewish), and these were indigenous communities predating the Arab conquest by 1,000 years. What intrigues me is how SF can talk about a majority Arab population when there were only 300,000 people living in Palestine in 1800, and there are 15 million now. What is missing in his analysis is any sense that this is an Israel-Arab conflict (and increasingly an Israel/Islamist conflict), not an Israel-Palestinian one. There were displaced people on both sides, and in fact a greater number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. The displacement was no less unjust of Jews from Baghdad or Tripoli (one third Jewish), and these were indigenous communities predating the Arab conquest by 1,000 years.

]]> By: Eamonn McDonagh http://blog.z-word.com/2008/10/a-response-to-%e2%80%9ca-cool-hour-on-the-israel-palestine-conflict-5%e2%80%9d/#comment-1548 Eamonn McDonagh Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:12:11 +0000 http://blog.z-word.com/?p=393#comment-1548 "What I wonder is how SF can ascertain that the Arabs living in the 19th century in Eretz Israel did not acquire their land by violent or dishonest means." Very good point. There's always the danger of portraying Ottoman Palestine as a land of perfect justice and harmony until the first new Jews arrived in the 1880s “What I wonder is how SF can ascertain that the Arabs living in the 19th century in Eretz Israel did not acquire their land by violent or dishonest means.”

Very good point. There’s always the danger of portraying Ottoman Palestine as a land of perfect justice and harmony until the first new Jews arrived in the 1880s

]]> By: Fabian from Israel http://blog.z-word.com/2008/10/a-response-to-%e2%80%9ca-cool-hour-on-the-israel-palestine-conflict-5%e2%80%9d/#comment-1547 Fabian from Israel Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:43:03 +0000 http://blog.z-word.com/?p=393#comment-1547 Point 1 is my argument exactly, but better said. Your point 3 is right too, but it is very common for some people to draw a line arbitrarily in time and act as if whatever came before is not subject to discussion and whatever came afterwards is an unjustice that is for some others to compensate. What I wonder is how SF can ascertain that the Arabs living in the 19th century in Eretz Israel did not acquire their land by violent or dishonest means. I think those were the only means available to acquire land before the rule of law in democratic states. Point 1 is my argument exactly, but better said.
Your point 3 is right too, but it is very common for some people to draw a line arbitrarily in time and act as if whatever came before is not subject to discussion and whatever came afterwards is an unjustice that is for some others to compensate.

What I wonder is how SF can ascertain that the Arabs living in the 19th century in Eretz Israel did not acquire their land by violent or dishonest means. I think those were the only means available to acquire land before the rule of law in democratic states.

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