Combatting Disfigurations, Part One

Part One

Back in Miami, when I was but a young Odalisque (18 years old, really), I used to visit this book discussion group at the swanky Books and Books in Coral Gables. It was frequented by some very amazing businessmen and professionals who really wanted to talk about a lot if important global issues.

I'm still on their e-mail list and today one of the members (who seems to be a little too okay with the fact that we don't know his name and so we call him by his e-mail, which is Snarfquack. That's Snarf-quack ladies and gentlemen. And as far as I can tell, a grown man) sent out this article. It's a right wing look at the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict. I don't think there are many people who would read it and agree with it, but there are many people who don't know what the actual history is and this article doesn't really help.

The article starts off in a very scary way, acknowledging the presence of an unnamed yet powerful and "vast" enemy of the Jews and Israel.

"The confluence of international forces that has gathered against the Jewish people and faith, including the spiritual and intellectual fifth column amongst us, is indeed a formidable adversary. Nevertheless, there are things we can do if we are willing to work together to protect our rights and stand up to the massive defamation campaign waged against us."

That's never a good sign. Whoever is out to get the Jews and Israel is a very small population and certainly not all that powerful. When it comes to organizing a community, it is a very human reaction to do so by saying that someone is "out to get" your community. But that doesn't make it right or true.

"One very important thing that all of us can do is to counter the endless lies and distortions of Israel's history and character that appear in the press, mass media, on the Internet, and even in scholarly journals. These distortions and outright falsehoods are a major reason why Israel is in such deep trouble, and in danger of "going under." Because the entire world has been led to believe an inaccurate, grossly distorted "narrative" of the conflict, the government of Israel feels it has no choice but to make concessions to the demands of its enemies, in order to appease world opinion. But these concessions imperil Israel's existence."

Israel has its own problems outside of Palestine. Israel's existence is ambiguous by its own definition, which is still being decided today. What kind of Jewish state will Israel be? If it is a democratic and liberal society, does it make sense to be so exclusive? If Israel is to be a refuge for Jews across the world, how will it relate to the rest of the world?

"The Israelis are not colonialists or alien "settlers" in the Land of Israel with no past connection or relationship to the country... there have been at least some Jews living there almost continuously for 3,200 years."

The Jews native to the area are not settlers. The Jews who came from Europe to live in Israel are settlers in a secular/legal sense.

"There has never been a distinctive "Palestinian" Arab people or an Arab "Palestine" state or nation. While it is true that some Arabs have lived in the Land of Israel for many centuries, they have never been ethnically or culturally distinct or different from the Arabs who live in other lands, including the original Arab homeland, the Arabian Peninsula. The Jews, however, are a people who originated in the Land of Israel and never had any other national homeland."

True that there has never been a distinctive Palestinian state or nation until the early 20th century. Nationalism in the Middle East is a modern idea, and by this same reasoning there has never been a concept of a Jewish state or nation in the Palestinian region until the late 19th and early 20th century. Jewish identity is based on ethnicity and religion which would become an ethno-nationalism. Palestinian nationalism is not an ethno-nationalism and a Palestinian may be Muslim, Christian or Jew. Palestinian identity existed as a regional identity in the pre-nationalism era, and in the modern era is a reactionary nationalism formed by the mandate system.

Here's a quote from James L. Gelvin's book The Modern Middle East that will shed a little more light on just how these Arab states came about:

"Over the course of the mandate period, both the Arab nationalist and the Syrian nationalist options became less and less viable. The mandates system not only divided the Arab world into a variety of states, but severed Palestine from Syria. Because the Palestinian Arab community could not reasonably expect to unite with Syrians, the lure of Syrian nationalism eventually lost its hold on it. Over time, the history and institutional development of Palestine and Syria also diverged. Syrian elites, for example, would further their education by studying in France and felt at ease in French culture. Since Britain held the mandate for Palestine, educated elites in Palestine would often learn English, complete their studies in Britain, and come to regard British institutions and traditions, not French, as a model to be emulated.

But there was a second reason why a separate Palestinian identity began to emerge during the mandate period. The inhabitants of Palestine faced a problem that no other inhabitants of the region faced: Zionist settlement. Zionist settlement was very different from the imperialism practiced in Syria or Iraq under the mandates system. The British and French ruled their mandated territories indirectly, through local collaborators. They did not appropriate land, establish a rival and competing economy, or establish rival and competing political structures. Because they faced a different type of adversary, the response of Palestinians was different from the response of their neighbors.

The fact that Palestinian nationalism developed later than Zionism and, in fact, developed in response to Zionist immigration does not mean that Palestinian nationalism is any less legitimate than Zionism. All nationalisms arise in oppositions to some internal or external nemesis. All are defined by what they oppose. Zionism itself originally arose in reaction to anti-Semitic and nationalist movements in Europe. It would be perverse to judge Zionism as somehow less valid than European anti-Semitism or those nationalisms. Furthermore, Zionism itself was also defined by its opposition to the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants of the region. Both the 'conquest of land' and the 'conquest of labor' slogans that became central to Zionist thinking originated as a result of the confrontation of Zionism with its Palestinian 'other'."

By the way, the idea of a Jewish home state in the Palestinian region was not a concrete or universal idea until the early 20th century, starting possibly as early 1920. There was even discussion about going to Argentina, as you may see in Theodore Herzl's article "Argentine or Palestine".

"The Arab population of Israel/Palestine only began to grow in the late 19th and 20th centuries, at the same time that Jews began to resettle the land. Jewish immigrants brought with them modernized agriculture, including the growing of oranges, which had been previously unknown; a market for Arab agricultural goods; employment at Jewish farms and factories; modern hospitals and medicine that saved thousands of Arab lives; the draining of swamps that had caused thousands of deaths from malaria and other insect-born diseases; and vastly expanded Arab education funded by Jewish taxes."

Yeah, those brown people. They were asking for the European Jews to come in and settle in their land. Those savages had nothing until those guys came, they didn't even have oranges.

The second part of this reaction is going to focus on Neuwirth’s take on the beginning and continuation of hostilities.

I will leave you with something I found very amusing. Ibn Saud is reported to have said he supported a Jewish home state…in Germany, because those are the guys that did most of the killing and they should have to pay the price for it, not the Arabs.