Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Elder of ZiyonFrom Sophia as a comment on this post:
What's the word for "eastophobia"?
We reflect some of the Orient's fear of the west, and exhibit a distressing ability to ignore the accomplishments of Oriental people along with a clear view of our own past.
The ironic thing about Israel, along with Greece, Lebanon, Turkey, and to some degree Morocco and the other states bordering the Med, is that they suffer from internal stress as well as external attacks precisely because they bridge East and West: they are traditional battlegrounds. Culturally they are extremely rich and complex because of this. Geostrategically they have long straddled trade routes and guarded the waters that link Europe, Africa, Western Asia, with the East.
In spite of our current difficulties, let's look to the ways we can learn from these ancient places. Modern Israel has managed to an extraordinary degree, to encompass people who come from worlds separated not only by distance, language and culture, but by time. There are Bedouin in Israel, Arab fellahin, Jews from Ethiopia, India, Russia, all over the Arab world, Iran, as well as the people of the better-known Western community. Lebanon just suffered another bomb blast today, killing an antiSyrian politician as well as several other people - again, we see a state under stress precisely because she is trying to turn to the modern world, while yet providing a bridge to the East.
I beg people, as a lifetime student of Eastern art, history and culture, not to succumb to the temptation to damn the Orient, as many, fearful of change, have damned the West.
Rather, let's keep working to learn about each other. We Jews, as a cosmopolitan people, live in the most sophisticated Western cities, yet a majority in Israel are people of the East. Are they not modern, accomplished, possessed of brilliance? Let's find people in the Arab world, people in Iran, in Pakistan, in North Africa, with whom we can share ideas, with whom we can mutually grow and find ways to save our planet. Obviously this is a challenge, especially when, as my partner just pointed out, governments are repressive and ordinary people are terrorized by extremists brandishing automatic weapons, and blowing up simple shoppers at the market. It's hard to find ways to communicate with Iraqis when the simplest pleasures, a trip to the bookstore, the weekly animal market, have been blown asunder by a terrorist's bomb.
Yet, we must keep trying.
For, much as Israel is wrongly made a target and a lynchpin, the conflicts surrounding her are similarly distractions from some painful realities: desertization, burgeoning populations, hunger, spiraling energy and food costs, environmental damage. It will take mutual cooperation to solve those problems.
M/W represent a faction of humanity, I think, who've actually made a living from the nexus of realpolitik and the commercial world: people who realize that chaos results in high energy (and other) prices, which in turn benefits elites at the expense of planet, animals and people.
Chaos like this was deliberately fomented during the British Empire, who actually referred to it as "The Great Game," enthusiastically played in the East with their Russian foes. What does it matter, after all, if a little nation or a little people is destroyed, as long as the bottom line benefits and people thousands of miles away feel more "secure"? Do some reading about Zbigniew Brzezinski and Afghanistan, or Baker and Israel and Lebanon, or study Nixon and the Brits and their behavior toward Israel during the Yom Kippur War. It's enough to chill the blood.
So: Left or Right, let's not buy into this ugly scheme. Our well-being and security are important, yes, but there are lives, valuable lives, valuable people, in the East as well. One of the most awful things in the late 20th century must be the destruction of Afghanistan, and it's led to nothing but woe - for the Afghan people, for the Russians, and now, for America too.
Meanwhile, we Jews face a daunting challenge here at home in America because elements from the Left are apparently buying into what is essentially a far right wing construct: international realism, which seeks temporary advantage by playing with nations and their peoples as though they were pawns. Worse, decades of propaganda - some Left, some Right, some Communist, some Islamist, have distorted the Arab/Israeli conflict - as "Jewish power" or "Jewish conspiracies" were distorted in the past - out of all proportion. I believe that a residue of antisemitism in the Western world is part of this, but also, there's probably a great deal of state-sponsored media and academic pressure supporting the burgeoning judenhass now becoming impossible to ignore. I just read an article on Harry's Place, a British left-yet-not-antizionist blog, which details how Iran's official propaganda wing, Press TV, is trying to persuade people in the West to engage with Islamist movements. Many of these movements are explicitly antisemitic (not "just" antizionist"). A piece on HuffPo, written by "a former Republican and FBI agent", is frighteningly antisemitic in tone: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=B1DF75F4-D152-4CC7-ADB6-D40DF0FFB3CB.
The American left has traditionally supported the underdog, yet in this mirror world, the tiny Jewish state/Jewish people, have become projected as monsters. Therefore the American left is reacting, with tender heart but apparently without benefit of education: Sabra and Shatilla continue to be seen as an Israeli crime - why? Because nobody studies the Lebanese Civil War, really studies it, especially from the standpoint of the Palestinian/Lebanese conflict, which would explain a great deal about Sabra/Shatilla and indeed the very reason why Israel was in Lebanon in the first place. Another aspect of this: the Christian Lebanese were characterized early on in the conflict as "right wing", well-off or even "fascist", and therefore undeserving of support, particularly in view of the fact that they were in conflict with the Palestinians, who have been enshrined as the uber-underdog, and whose tactics and motives therefore cannot be seriously challenged.
I'm at a loss how to combat these rushes to judgement in a world of 10 second sound bytes and bloody, distorting visuals. How can ordinary people combat powers - right or left, government or religious or political, who are deliberately focused on manipulation of fact and opinion?
Media doesn't help; it too is profit-driven and/or state-owned - or even run by religious political parties, like al Manar and al Jazeera; and can no longer be counted on for even basic objectivity, but seems to operate under the banner, "If it bleeds, it leads," and focuses on certain issues at the expense of others far more serious. For example, I saw a poster downtown yesterday, that claims some 33 million people have been displaced by war. Yet, CNN doesn't cover them. It covers OJ Simpson and devotes a hugely disproportionate amount of time to, you guessed it, the Arab-Israeli conflict - which loses proportion and context - much as "G*d's Jewish Warriors", all 5 of them, more or less, rated a full two-hour presentation by Christiane Amanpour - who characterized a New York couple as wearing diamonds yet.
Israel, one would think, is a giant, powerful monster of a state, whose people are similarly omniscient and, heaven forfend, rich!, in addition to being conspiratorial, law-breaking, frightening individuals who terrify poor little WASP power-brokers and corporate and political leaders like Charles Percy, Jimmy Carter, GHW Bush, and James Baker, not to mention Walt/Mearscheimer, who claim they are being "silenced."
I have no answers to these challenges, other than to pray that people read, study, and use their common sense. Periodically, Jews have been attacked in frenzies of bloodletting in times of famine, plague, dislocation and war. It's almost ritualistic. The very absurdity of this situation might well prove to be our salvation: surely, people will see how ridiculous this is?
Just a small point on the initial paragraphs: Far East culture, like Arab culture, also seems to be based on honor/shame but it proves that honor/shame is not inherently immoral, rather that the way Arabs choose to internalize that paradigm often is. - EoZ
What's the word for "eastophobia"?
We reflect some of the Orient's fear of the west, and exhibit a distressing ability to ignore the accomplishments of Oriental people along with a clear view of our own past.
The ironic thing about Israel, along with Greece, Lebanon, Turkey, and to some degree Morocco and the other states bordering the Med, is that they suffer from internal stress as well as external attacks precisely because they bridge East and West: they are traditional battlegrounds. Culturally they are extremely rich and complex because of this. Geostrategically they have long straddled trade routes and guarded the waters that link Europe, Africa, Western Asia, with the East.
In spite of our current difficulties, let's look to the ways we can learn from these ancient places. Modern Israel has managed to an extraordinary degree, to encompass people who come from worlds separated not only by distance, language and culture, but by time. There are Bedouin in Israel, Arab fellahin, Jews from Ethiopia, India, Russia, all over the Arab world, Iran, as well as the people of the better-known Western community. Lebanon just suffered another bomb blast today, killing an antiSyrian politician as well as several other people - again, we see a state under stress precisely because she is trying to turn to the modern world, while yet providing a bridge to the East.
I beg people, as a lifetime student of Eastern art, history and culture, not to succumb to the temptation to damn the Orient, as many, fearful of change, have damned the West.
Rather, let's keep working to learn about each other. We Jews, as a cosmopolitan people, live in the most sophisticated Western cities, yet a majority in Israel are people of the East. Are they not modern, accomplished, possessed of brilliance? Let's find people in the Arab world, people in Iran, in Pakistan, in North Africa, with whom we can share ideas, with whom we can mutually grow and find ways to save our planet. Obviously this is a challenge, especially when, as my partner just pointed out, governments are repressive and ordinary people are terrorized by extremists brandishing automatic weapons, and blowing up simple shoppers at the market. It's hard to find ways to communicate with Iraqis when the simplest pleasures, a trip to the bookstore, the weekly animal market, have been blown asunder by a terrorist's bomb.
Yet, we must keep trying.
For, much as Israel is wrongly made a target and a lynchpin, the conflicts surrounding her are similarly distractions from some painful realities: desertization, burgeoning populations, hunger, spiraling energy and food costs, environmental damage. It will take mutual cooperation to solve those problems.
M/W represent a faction of humanity, I think, who've actually made a living from the nexus of realpolitik and the commercial world: people who realize that chaos results in high energy (and other) prices, which in turn benefits elites at the expense of planet, animals and people.
Chaos like this was deliberately fomented during the British Empire, who actually referred to it as "The Great Game," enthusiastically played in the East with their Russian foes. What does it matter, after all, if a little nation or a little people is destroyed, as long as the bottom line benefits and people thousands of miles away feel more "secure"? Do some reading about Zbigniew Brzezinski and Afghanistan, or Baker and Israel and Lebanon, or study Nixon and the Brits and their behavior toward Israel during the Yom Kippur War. It's enough to chill the blood.
So: Left or Right, let's not buy into this ugly scheme. Our well-being and security are important, yes, but there are lives, valuable lives, valuable people, in the East as well. One of the most awful things in the late 20th century must be the destruction of Afghanistan, and it's led to nothing but woe - for the Afghan people, for the Russians, and now, for America too.
Meanwhile, we Jews face a daunting challenge here at home in America because elements from the Left are apparently buying into what is essentially a far right wing construct: international realism, which seeks temporary advantage by playing with nations and their peoples as though they were pawns. Worse, decades of propaganda - some Left, some Right, some Communist, some Islamist, have distorted the Arab/Israeli conflict - as "Jewish power" or "Jewish conspiracies" were distorted in the past - out of all proportion. I believe that a residue of antisemitism in the Western world is part of this, but also, there's probably a great deal of state-sponsored media and academic pressure supporting the burgeoning judenhass now becoming impossible to ignore. I just read an article on Harry's Place, a British left-yet-not-antizionist blog, which details how Iran's official propaganda wing, Press TV, is trying to persuade people in the West to engage with Islamist movements. Many of these movements are explicitly antisemitic (not "just" antizionist"). A piece on HuffPo, written by "a former Republican and FBI agent", is frighteningly antisemitic in tone: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=B1DF75F4-D152-4CC7-ADB6-D40DF0FFB3CB.
The American left has traditionally supported the underdog, yet in this mirror world, the tiny Jewish state/Jewish people, have become projected as monsters. Therefore the American left is reacting, with tender heart but apparently without benefit of education: Sabra and Shatilla continue to be seen as an Israeli crime - why? Because nobody studies the Lebanese Civil War, really studies it, especially from the standpoint of the Palestinian/Lebanese conflict, which would explain a great deal about Sabra/Shatilla and indeed the very reason why Israel was in Lebanon in the first place. Another aspect of this: the Christian Lebanese were characterized early on in the conflict as "right wing", well-off or even "fascist", and therefore undeserving of support, particularly in view of the fact that they were in conflict with the Palestinians, who have been enshrined as the uber-underdog, and whose tactics and motives therefore cannot be seriously challenged.
I'm at a loss how to combat these rushes to judgement in a world of 10 second sound bytes and bloody, distorting visuals. How can ordinary people combat powers - right or left, government or religious or political, who are deliberately focused on manipulation of fact and opinion?
Media doesn't help; it too is profit-driven and/or state-owned - or even run by religious political parties, like al Manar and al Jazeera; and can no longer be counted on for even basic objectivity, but seems to operate under the banner, "If it bleeds, it leads," and focuses on certain issues at the expense of others far more serious. For example, I saw a poster downtown yesterday, that claims some 33 million people have been displaced by war. Yet, CNN doesn't cover them. It covers OJ Simpson and devotes a hugely disproportionate amount of time to, you guessed it, the Arab-Israeli conflict - which loses proportion and context - much as "G*d's Jewish Warriors", all 5 of them, more or less, rated a full two-hour presentation by Christiane Amanpour - who characterized a New York couple as wearing diamonds yet.
Israel, one would think, is a giant, powerful monster of a state, whose people are similarly omniscient and, heaven forfend, rich!, in addition to being conspiratorial, law-breaking, frightening individuals who terrify poor little WASP power-brokers and corporate and political leaders like Charles Percy, Jimmy Carter, GHW Bush, and James Baker, not to mention Walt/Mearscheimer, who claim they are being "silenced."
I have no answers to these challenges, other than to pray that people read, study, and use their common sense. Periodically, Jews have been attacked in frenzies of bloodletting in times of famine, plague, dislocation and war. It's almost ritualistic. The very absurdity of this situation might well prove to be our salvation: surely, people will see how ridiculous this is?
Just a small point on the initial paragraphs: Far East culture, like Arab culture, also seems to be based on honor/shame but it proves that honor/shame is not inherently immoral, rather that the way Arabs choose to internalize that paradigm often is. - EoZ
September 16th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I can’t help but notice that, for all of the supposed “vitriol” my posts here contained, not one of those who are defending Abourezk has been able to find anything that I have written about him or his sources that is incorrect.
It is also a bit humorous to see that somehow the all-powerful Israel Lobby, of which I seem to be a part, manages to not only let books like Walt/Mearsheimer’s and Jimmy Carter’s to be published, but also allows them to be best sellers. We are so sloppy that we even allow a forum such as this to exist, where people openly defend a person - who is on video supporting terrorists - as a purveyor of truth and a great person to review a book that blames all of America’s problems on a small cabal of Zionists.
We Lobbyists must be slipping badly!
September 16th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Elder, you say that Abourezk is on video supporting terrorists. How typical. Your arguments lack merit so you resort to smear tactics. Moreover, who is really guilty of supporting terrorists? The supporters of Israeli ethnic cleansing or those who oppose it? Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
September 16th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Why did seven well equipped Arab armies attempt to destroy the poorly armed and newly founded ‘Jewish State’?
The baseless myth, of how the Arab armies wanted to destroy the ‘Jewish State’, has been propagated in all sectors of the Israeli society, especially in its school system, military boot camps, and media. As it will be proven below, this myth was deemed necessary by most Zionists to legitimize their continued USURPATION of the Palestinian people’s political, civil, and economic rights.....
September 17th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Gordon, not only did I say that Mr. Abourezk supports terrorists, I quoted the transcript and gave the URL of the video where he calls Hamas “resistance fighters” rather than the far more accurate “terrorists.”
If quoting Mr. Abourezk and inviting people to watch the video that he made for Hezbollah TV is considered a “smear tactic,” then I must be guilty.
Atheo, you are correct in that the Arab armies in 1948 were poorly organized with the exception of the Transjordanian Arab Legion. That has no bearing whatsoever on the Arab desire to utterly destroy Israel, which is incontrovertible.
But if you doubt it, here’s a quote from May 15, 1948, when the Arab League Secretary General Abdul Razek Azzam Pasha announced the intention to wage “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”
If you need a few dozen other quotes from Arab leaders determined to not only destroy Israel but also to wipe out any vestiges of Jews from the area, just ask. I’ll be happy to educate you, as well as Mr. Abourezk, if he is still lurking about.
September 17th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
For anyone who is interested in following up on how Israel created itself as a state, please allow me to recommend some books that will inform you.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe (an Israeli historian,who also enumertes the relative size of the opposing military).
Taking Sides, by Steven Green. (An American writer)
Any of Israeli historian Tom Segev’s books.
I believe these books, plus the Donald Neff Trilogy, can be ordered from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, www.middleeastbooks.com. That organization has an extensive book list, all of such books are at a discounted price. Donald Neff used to be Time Magazine’s Jerusalem correspondent until he quit time and began writing Middle East history.
One other point–The UN General Assembly passed a partition plan in 1947, but General Assembly votes are non-binding, unlike Security Council votes which are binding. Thus, the myth that the UN created Israel is just that–a myth. If such votes were binding, then Israel would be forced to obey the dozens of General Assembly votes passed since then that have favored Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders, all of them ignored by Israel. There have also been dozens of Security Council votes criticizing Israel for committing war crimes, etc., all of which have been vetoed by the United States.
Ilan Pappe’s book on ethnic cleansing is particularly shocking to read. Pappe recounts the horrendous slaughter, accompanied by a campaign of fear by the Zionist armies and terror groups designed to drive the Palestinians out of Palestine in order to create a majority Jewish state.
Another book that may now be out of print is: Terror Out of Zion, by J. Bowyer Bell (St. Martin’s Press), which carefully details the terrorism wrought by Zionist terror groups, such as the Irgun and the Stern Gang. Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun, was elected Israel’s Prime Minister in the 1970s, and Yitzak Shamir, one of the troika who led the Stern Gang, also was elected as Prime Minister of Israel.
I became friends with Nathan Yalin Mor, who was also one of the Troika running the Stern Gang, however, since he later had become a “peacenik,” opting for peace between
Jews and Arabs, he was sort of persona non grata in Washington, D.C. It was up to me to make appointments for him when he wanted to see someone in our government, as none of the Jewish groups would even speak to him. The tribulations of someone who wants peace are somewhat remarkable. I once asked him if the Stern Gang had sent letter bombs to British politicians in the 1940s, as Sir Christopher Mayhew told me that his secretary opened one and was injured by doing so. Nathan said, “yes, we sent lots of letter bombs.”
September 17th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
I already addressed Ilan Pappe’s lack of interest in historical truth.
Yes, the Stern Gang engaged in terror. This is not news. What is manifestly a lie is the idea that the Zionists engaged in “ethnic cleansing,” a reprehensible slander that is shown to be false by the simple fact that there are 1.2 million Arabs living in Israel today. If anyone should be accused of “ethnic cleansing” it would be the Arab world that expelled nearly every Jew in the years following 1948. The Old City of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria became literally Judenrein under “moderate” Jordanian rule - not a single Jew was left in those areas, and every single synagogue in the Old City was demolished within days of Jordanian control in 1948.
Other Arab atrocities that Mr. Abourezk wants to sweep under the rug started in 1886 with the first Arab attacks on a Jewish settlement, and they escalated in 1921, 1929 with the horrendous massacres in Hebron and elsewhere (ancient Jewish communities that had lived in Palestine for centuries), the 1936-39 reign of terror where thousands were killed including from Arab infighting, and no shortage of Arab massacres of Jewish civilians in 1947-48 including Hadassah Hospital.
I have spent much time reading contemporaneous accounts of the events in newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s and the Zionists (at least the ones that wrote for the Palestine Post) consistently wanted to live in peace with their Arab neighbors. The archives are online so if you want to find counterexamples, feel free. Yes, not every single Jew acted in an exemplary manner - real life doesn’t allow such neat categorizations - but the vast majority of Zionists considered the terror attacks from Irgun and Stern to be outrageous and did not celebrate them, as too many Arabs have been wont to do whenever Jews or Westerners are murdered.
In other words, Abourezk is cherry-picking the facts that fit his agenda and is not only ignoring the rich history of Arab terror that continues on to this day, he appears to embrace it when the perpetrators are Hamas and Hezbollah (we unfortunately do not have a record of his opinion of Islamic Jihad, PFLP, Al Aqsa Brigades, or any of dozens of other groups.) Israel has time and time again offered real concessions for real peace and it has been rejected by the Arabs, and very often the people who suffer most are the very Palestinians that the Arabs pretend to care so much about.
For more details about the history of the entire Palestinian Arab people - and I am far more sympathetic to them than you might think, although their leaders have been atrocious for decades - I have been writing a series of postings about them. Check out http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2007/05/psychological-history-of-palestinian.html
And if you find any mistakes, please let me know. Unlike some people, I really do care about the truth.