I am surprised and disappointed to see that Bob from Brockley - a normally sensible left-wing blogger - appears to have embraced the one state solution. The reasons he offers are the following:
Many of my friends on the anti-anti-Zionist left think that the one state solution is essentially equivalent to the genocidal destruction of the Jewish nation. They argue that the Arabs (who have demography on their side, and formidable military allies in the form of the Saudis, Iran and so on) have proven themselves unable to share space with Jews. I reject this fatalistic view, and having recently been in Northern Ireland am more confident than ever that we can forge our own futures if we unshackle our imaginations. It feels to me that the idea of the two state solution [I think this must be a typo and that he means “one state solution”. Otherwise the rest of the text makes no sense] is steadily gaining ground, not just among the hardcore advocates of a “free Palestine”, but among younger Jews in both Israel and the diaspora. This slow awakening comes with a growing sense that another Zionism is possible, and a recovery of the memory of pre-1948 Zionism, the Zionism of Ahad Ha’am, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Joseph Trumpledor, AD Gordon and Judah Magnes, which called for a “national home” for the Jews and not necessarily a nation-state. By the way, I have at various other times in my life called for a one state solution also for South Africa, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Ireland and Cyprus.
The South American Mercosur trade bloc has announced its intention to negotiate a free trade agreement with the Palestinian territories. There follows my translation of Fernando Gimenez’s analysis of the move.
Fernando Gimenez has some interesting technical analysis here of the recent statements from Brazil and Argentina recognizing an independent Palestinian state. There follows my translation of part of it.
Writing a few days ago for the indispensable Jewish Ideas Daily about UNESCO’s decision to approve Muslim denial of any Jewish connection to biblical sites in Israel by classifying Rachel’s Tomb, near Bethlehem, as a mosque, Alex Joffe mentioned the critically important work of the Israeli scholar, Yitzhak Reiter, in documenting “…the modern Islamic tradition according to which Jerusalem was never associated with the Jews.”
Author and journalist Stefan Frank has conducted an extensive interview with Professor Reiter, who teaches at Ashkelon Academic College and is a senior fellow of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, which we are pleased to publish here.
I’m asking because, in his report to the scrupulously neutral and balanced UN Human Rights Council in September 2009, Judge Richard Goldstone and his fellow commissioners said: “Statements by Israeli political and military leaders prior to and during the military operations in Gaza indicate that the Israeli military conception of what was necessary in a war with Hamas viewed disproportionate destruction and creating the maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve not only military but also political goals.”
As readers of this blog know, in the last couple of weeks I’ve written two pieces about the remarks of Andrew Whitley, an UNRWA official who was more candid than he should have been (here and here.) I want to point out this superb piece by Asaf Romirowsky, which provides some much needed historical perspective. Says Asaf:
Sometimes UNRWA will simply deny its internal critics even existed. In 1952 Lt.-Gen. Sir Alexander Galloway, a noted British soldier-diplomat who was then UNRWA director in Jordan, made what was to become a famous statement to a group of visiting American church leaders: “It is perfectly clear than the Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront against the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.”
Galloway’s solution was straightforward: “Give each of the Arab nations where the refugees are to be found an agreed-upon sum of money for their care and resettlement and then let them handle it. If… the United Nations had done this immediately after the conflict – explaining to the Arab states, ‘We are sorry it happened, but here is a sum of money for you to take care of the refugees’ – the problem might have been solved long ago.”
Do be sure to read all of Asaf’s piece, co-authored with Alexander H. Joffe, here.
Recently, I wrote about the case of Andrew Whitley, who is the New York Director of UNWRA, the UN agency tasked with aiding Palestinian refugees. Whitley told a conference in Washington that the so-called “right of return” is unlikely to ever be exercised, and that efforts would be better expended on integrating Palestinian refugees into the countries where they have been living for decades. Continue reading ‘UNRWA Shames Andrew Whitley’
Those of us who have written about Islamism and its connection to the terrorist attacks of the past decade have always gone to great effort to define this tradition as an extremist interpretation of the traditions of Islam. We have distinguished between Islam and Islamism, but we have also insisted that it is naïve to assume that when terrorists say they act in the name of Islam that their actions have nothing at all to do with their interpretation of the religion. To criticize Islamism is not a sublimation of hostility to Islam. It is the result of an interpretation of widely known facts about one extremist interpretation of that religion.
Achcar is a man at war with what he has written in his own book. It is Achcar, not us supposed Islamophobes and anti-Arab racists, who documents the tradition of Pan-Islamism and the fusion of Nazism and Islamic fundamentalism that was a key chapter in its history. The same author who traced this tradition from Rida to Husseini now writes as if the terms “Islamism” and “Islamofascism” are the product of anti-Islamic bigotry. Isn’t it possible, and even likely, that those he denounces for criticizing Islamism in recent years have arrived at conclusions similar to his own regarding the Islamists of the 1930s and 1940s because they, like him, concluded that there was good evidence in both cases to do so?
From a fine review by Professor Jeffrey Herf of Gilbert Achcar’s new book, The Arabs and The Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives. Read the whole article at The New Republic.
Andrew Whitley is an UNRWA official who, at a conference last week, dared to suggest that the notion of Palestinians exercising the “right of return” is a “cruel illusion.” More on this in my latest article for The Huffington Post.
Turkish-Israeli relations have fallen to their lowest point in the months following the flotilla dispatched to Gaza by the pro-Hamas Islamist charity IHH. Joint military exercises have been canceled, Israeli tourism to Turkey has dropped by 90 per cent and Turkish officials have threatened “irreparable consequences” to relations between the two countries. Into this breach has stepped Greece.
The purpose of this post is to introduce readers to Dwight Geist, Esteemed O’Donnell Professor of the Creative Arts at the University of Eastern Colorado. Norman Geras reports on a recent conversation with him here. The following extract from their discussion will help readers grasp something of the subtlety and intelligence that are basic characteristics of this increasingly influential thinker’s work:
Watching the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians fizzle out over the last week, I was reminded of Conor Cruise O’Brien’s observation that “conflicts don’t have solutions - they have outcomes.” For nearly two decades, the contours of a final compromise on territory that would enable the State of Israel to live alongside a new State of Palestine have been known, yet an actual agreement has remained elusive.
In a paean to Tony Judt and Edward Said, Jerónimo Páez has the following to say about the former in today’s El País:
He was born in Great Britain and proud of being Jewish. Nevertheless, he considered himself to be a citizen of the world. He didn’t like nationalism. “Identity”, he said, is a dangerous word.
