Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Ethan Bronner writes in the New York Times about an unfortunate fact of life in the Middle East - unlike diplomacy, which often seems to get people nowhere - force often works - even if only for a time.
Painful Mideast Truth: Force Trumps Diplomacy
He speaks not only of Israel's wars in pursuit of peace but also of the Palestinian violence which he claims, alone appears to have created some movement toward a two-state solution on the part of Israel.
I wonder if he's correct about this.
Would Israel have helped the Palestinians create a state back in the 1940's if it hadn't been for all the violence against the Yishuv and other Middle Eastern Jews?
What about the connections between the Palestinian Arab leader al Husseini and the Nazis? This wasn't a distant link either but a direct one. Wouldn't this have affected the Israeli point of view? What about the refusal of the Palestinian Arabs to help the Jews trying to flee Europe, even to allow them to remain in camps to escape the horror in Europe?
The refugee ships that docked at Haifa and were refused entry must have been a heartbreaking sight. Some were returned to the horrors of the Shoah. The Patria blew up right in front of a shocked and grieving crowd - a protest gone horriby awry. Other ships were sunk on the high seas and refugees drowned, hundreds of innocents trying to flee.
How many lives could have been saved?
After the war, the British government forced ships like the Exodus 1947 back to Europe, tried to force Jews back into the boneyard, held them in camps, anything but allow them sanctuary in Palestine. The Arabs continued to rage against the desperate Jews who needed a home, the violence continued, bloomed into full blown war. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled, hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern Jews - still there is war. War and more war.
So - what has been solved by war?
And does this, does the influence of al Husseini who somehow escaped to Lebanon and helped direct the war against Israel - does all of this perhaps explain Transjordan's reluctance to assist the Palestinians? For the Arabs too didn't try to make a Palestinian state. How much encouragement do they actually receive even today? How much real encouragement to make peace?
Abdullah was eventually murdered by a Palestinian Arab in the presence of the future King Hussein - murdered in Jerusalem. Sadat was murdered, tragically also Rabin was murdered, and there have been so many wars I'm beginning to lose count.
So I'm beginning to wonder actually if Bronner is right.
I agree with him, wars and terror accomplish some goals but don't they also make it nearly impossible to achieve real peace and real understanding?
It's especially difficult when one party isn't allowed to lose and the other isn't allowed to win.
We have peace with the Axis powers today because they surrendered unconditionally. However the horror of that war is something that one hopes will never be repeated and this obviously includes the use of nuclear weapons.
The movement toward more polite warfare and increased concern for human rights even during war appears to be progressive.
But what if the doctrine of "proportional" or "legal" violence and warfare combined with an apparent enshrinement of the rights of certain parties to terrorize others actually results in perpetual war?
I'm vexed.
I also get the sense that the Arab/Israeli conflict is somehow being judged by and conducted by different standards than "normal" wars.
Maybe this is correct, as it should be. We Jews have set high standards for ourselves morally, which we often can't attain. We are then judged with great harshness by ourselves, by others, including by others whose human rights record is appalling.
By the same token it seems the standards for Arab and other Middle Eastern/Central Asian conduct is very low. We are getting all too used to suicide terrorism and other violence that claims innocent lives - ironically most of them Muslim, in Muslim lands. Still we must confront shocks like the attack on Mumbai, beheadings, mutilations, women stoned and lashed for being the victims of rape, dissidents tortured and jailed and raped in state custody.
I don't have answers. I do hope we all continue to work toward the day when peace brings peace and war is a thing of the past, which someday we'll universally view with horror and shun forever.
Would Israel have helped the Palestinians create a state back in the 1940's if it hadn't been for all the violence against the Yishuv and other Middle Eastern Jews?
The Yishuv -- the Jewish community of what was then called Palestine -- supported the UN Partition Plan of 1947. They supported it, knowing that it was a Two-State Solution (as it was termed at the time, dividing Palestine into a Jewish Palestinian State and an Arab Palestinian State). They supported it, even though the borders were all but undefendable. They supported it, with Haj Amin al-Husseini still at large, with his Nazi connections known.
Does that answer your question?
I don't think there's any doubt that Israelis would have helped the Palestinian Arabs, or, for that matter, just about anyone who was willing to work in good faith. When the Ba'hais needed a home, Israel took them in; ditto for the Vietnamese boat people, refugees from many varied world conflicts, and so on. Israel continues to send humanitarian aid, in person, to victims of natural disasters all over the world. It's amazing what Israelis will do for you, if they don't have to worry about you killing their children.
Here's a rhetorical question: have the Palestinians ever done any of this? (No, they have not. They have overrun religious shrines of others, as they did with Joseph's Tomb and the synagogues of Gaza. They have never helped someone not of their religion set up a religious shrine, as Israel did for the Ba'hai in Haifa. They have never accepted an influx of refugees in need of asylum... although they have tried to foist off their own so-called refugees on others.)
I agree that the world, including Israel, holds Israel to impossibly-high and ever-increasing standards... while Israel's enemies are held to ridiculously low and ever-decreasing standards. During the invasion of Gaza in 2008, the Israeli military telephoned military targets before attacking them, something unprecedented in the history of warfare... and was accused of war crimes nonetheless. On the Palestinian side, a terrorist and Holocaust-denier, a man with the blood of uncounted innocents on his hands, is called a 'moderate'... because he's willing to sit at the same table as Israelis. Unbelievable.
What would the world say, I wonder, if the tables were turned? What if the terrorists of Gaza made phone calls and dropped leaflets to warn their prospective victims, and then treated those victims in their own hospitals at their own expense? What if Israel contemptuously referred in every breath to "the illegally occupied Gaza Strip" and its "murderous Palestinian usurpers and land-grabbers", conducted its military missions while hiding behind cowering Israeli civilians (whom the Palestinians would presumably be too noble to target), and arranged for a majority of UN Security Council resolutions to condemn the Palestinians?
It's difficult even to imagine such a situation, isn't it?
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Well said, Daniel. Thanks for doing that. An informative documentary to watch is The Case For Israel. Once you see it, it's difficult to continue rely on the misinformation that is out there.
Thanks Daniel, of course what you say is true about the Yishuv's support for the Partition. That's a critical point and it's gotten lost in the propaganda and revisionist histories and "narratives".
I was thinking though of later, even after the 1948 war - the Israeli ideal was never to strip the local people of their homes or their rights.
This was a key aspect of Zionism although after the violent outbreaks in the 1920's some "revisionist" Zionists began thinking along separatist lines due to severe cultural differences and rejection of the Jews as well as violence.
However the war(s) and fears of being exterminated, fears of a Middle Eastern Nazi presence on the part of Israel had an effect.
How could it not? How could the rhetoric of death and the experience of war not affect even the most peaceful and open people?
But mostly the annexation of the West Bank by Jordan and the creation of the fenced area of Gaza by Egypt, where the people were locked in although many have relatives in Egypt made the creation of a Palestinian Arab state all but impossible and it still looks very difficult.
Not least this is due to internecine Palestinian conflict, even civil war. This isn't new by the way but was a feature of the violence in the 1930's.
Regardless, war and exterminationist rhetoric made the Israelis fearful of resettling the Arabs who'd fled during the war. The violence had been so brutal, the fears of internal violence and further civil war and terrorism were unsupportable, and Arab leadership hadn't been shy about their intended goals for Israel.
This resulted in a calamity for the people who'd fled, also for the Jewish citizens of the Arab world, for all the victims since.
Hence my contention that violence doesn't really accomplish much.
However sometimes it's hard to see what if any alternatives are available. Israel stands accused of war crimes for the Gaza offensive - what else stopped the rockets?
That's the saddest part of Bronner's article, which haunts me.
Meanwhile it's popular to claim Israelis and other Jews suffer from "extermination psychosis" and that the rants and threats to destroy Israel are merely "Arabic figures of speech" or even mistranslations in the case of Ahmadijenad (!)
But in fact the extermination by the Nazis was real and in 1948 was fresh - the wounds were fresh - survivors still live and remember today - survivors and refugees from pogroms in the East as well - and how are people to separate "figures of speech" from actual intent?
Now, regardless of all these bitter lessons, all the heartache and devastating loss, people are talking of Intifada III and the King of Jordan warns that failure to make peace threatens war and instability throughout the entire region.
What to do?
Can peace be made from all this war, or another war averted?