Sorry about all the annotations

This guy's a douche, still we shouldn't have barred him from the country.

Galloway is one of the few people who dares to call Israel what it is: a regional bully, and an unapologetically racist one at that.

i don't always agree with george galloway, but i fucking love him.

Meir Weinstein is a fucking moron though. mr. galloway would run circles around him in a debate.

When failing to argue? Invoke Holocaust!

Good stuff. This is fair retribution for the Brits refusing Wilders.

Sad thing when you've got a British politician with ties so close to radical and violent Islamists that it impedes his foreign travels. See this video for the direction the UK is taking: http://www.videosift.com/video/Labour-MP-Predicts-Total-Islamification-of-Britain

At least Wilders' "offense" falls under free speech. Galloway is just pandering to the Muslim vote with the most straightforward means possible. I would not be surprised to find his website in Arabic.

something ignorant if not racist about what i just read... but.. what exactly... that's wierd. i think its somewhere in the last two sentences... hmm.

sorry was thinking out loud.

>> ^rougy:
Galloway is one of the few people who dares to call Israel what it is: a regional bully, and an unapologetically racist one at that.


He's better known for being one of the few people who dares to promote and defend the worst dictators and terrorists in world with not only propaganda and out right lies, but also with direct financial aid. It's the direct financial aid to Hamas president that got him barred from Canada and I'm proud my country kept the scumbag out of our country.

Did your pride also swell when Canada let George Bush, unrepentant war criminal, tap dance across the border? Oh right, he's not a war criminal, he's a humanitarian who saved the Iraqi people from blah blah blah insert hypocrisy here.

Ouch, I think Halloway hit a nerve at around 4.10. Just watch as Weinstein tries to look around the room in search of an answer and only manages to fall back upon some ridiculous "proxy agent of hamas" claim. It sounds so familiar to US republican tactics of making up bullshit terms whose only purpose is to be inflamatory and fear-inciting.

Watch out! Galloway is a Hamas (proxy) agent!

>> ^SpeveO:
Did your pride also swell when Canada let George Bush, unrepentant war criminal, tap dance across the border? Oh right, he's not a war criminal, he's a humanitarian who saved the Iraqi people from blah blah blah insert hypocrisy here.


I would in fact be quite happy if Canada would try him for crimes against humanity in allowing torture and refusing to abide by the Geneva Convention. Just note that the list of people I would want to be on the list with Bush is extremely long and extends to far more outside America than in it.

What, is anyone actually surprised that attacking Bush doesn't actually fly as a defense for even worse scum like Mr. Galloway?

>> ^Offsajdh:
Ouch, I think Halloway hit a nerve at around 4.10. Just watch as Weinstein tries to look around the room in search of an answer and only manages to fall back upon some ridiculous "proxy agent of hamas" claim. It sounds so familiar to US republican tactics of making up bullshit terms whose only purpose is to be inflamatory and fear-inciting.
Watch out! Galloway is a Hamas (proxy) agent!


It's not so funny when it is in fact true.

Galloway is a skilled debater and orator, winning this debate does NOT make him right. He exerts enormous effort to rally support and defense of all manner of the worst organizations and criminals in the world.

I think it is accurate to describe a dedicated propagandist who supports Hamas both with his own finances and every word he speaks an agent for Hamas.

It's not about defending Mr Galloway and it's not about attacking George Bush, it's about addressing the Canadian governments blatant hypocrisy and disregard for its own laws. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is quite clear.

^So, because Mr.Galloway happens to have a different point of view about a conflict thousands of miles from Canadas shores, and happens to be quite skilled in making good points about why he has these beliefs through debates, the constructive solution to the problem is to ban him from ever entering the country, try to supress his oppinions in anyway possible, and add to that, threaten to monitor and investigate any Canadian who would have the audacity to want to listen to what the other side has to say about the issue?

I'm not saying that the decision the Canadian Government made was right, but addressing the larger issue that the government is selectively interpreting the law to the whims of the presently elected leadership.

If the Canadian government applied the laws that they cited in banning George Galloway consistently, George Bush should have never made it into the country either.

>> ^Offsajdh:
^So, because Mr.Galloway happens to have a different point of view about a conflict thousands of miles from Canadas shores, and happens to be quite skilled in making good points about why he has these beliefs through debates, the constructive solution to the problem is to ban him from ever entering the country, try to supress his oppinions in anyway possible, and add to that, threaten to monitor and investigate any Canadian who would have the audacity to want to listen to what the other side has to say about the issue?


He was kept out of Canada for providing material support to a terrorist organization. He donated 30 or 40 thousand dollars of his own money directly to the president of Hamas. That is enough under Canadian law to deny a person entry to the country.

As for your description of his 'opinions', you'd do well to better educate yourself on what he has both said and done.

He opposed both Gulf wars, in itself I'm fine with that whether I disagree or not, it's nothing special. Galloway goes much, much further though, and on Saddam's annexation of Kuwait Galloway stated that he himself believed Kuwait rightly was always a part of the Iraqi motherland. I find that far more despicable, but it still pales in comparison to even worse things he has said and done. He has declared that in spite of his opposition to both Gulf wars and statements regarding Kuwait, he still has always been the only one to consistently condemn Saddam, he just doesn't support a war to remove Saddam in spite of his own contempt for Saddam. That still is a consistent position, and aught to be respected as free speech and I do. The turn to it all is that Galloway went to Iraq to visit Saddam in person after the first gulf war and greeted him with the following speech:
"Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. I can honestly say that of all the people I spoke to before coming here, hoping to meet with yourself, that every one of them wished my to express to you heartfelt support and fraternal greetings."
That speech turns all his prior statements on Iraq and Saddam into a giant charade and lie in which Galloway deliberately tried to defend Saddam not out of concern for the Iraqi people, but because of his support for Saddam himself. That is beyond my contempt. And lest you only do a surface search on Galloway's defense of that speech, he to this day defends it declaring that he was addressing the Iraqi people, and not Saddam himself. The video and words he spoke make it absolutely clear though that he was addressing Saddam himself. Unfortunately a great many people are fooled into discovering that everything he's said about Saddam is a lie because they believe the additional lies he's told to hide his first.

>> ^SpeveO:
I'm not saying that the decision the Canadian Government made was right, but addressing the larger issue that the government is selectively interpreting the law to the whims of the presently elected leadership.
If the Canadian government applied the laws that they cited in banning George Galloway consistently, George Bush should have never made it into the country either.


George Bush, for all his other crimes, didn't provide material support to an organization the Canadian government has registered as terrorists, so the laws cited to keep Galloway out do not apply to Bush. That said, the Canadian government CAN bend the rules and allow someone in that is barred entry based on the letter of the law. For Mr. Galloway, I'm glad no such arrangements where made.

It's not about defending Mr Galloway and it's not about attacking George Bush, it's about addressing the Canadian governments blatant hypocrisy and disregard for its own laws. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is quite clear.


It does clearly state that material support to terrorist organizations is reason to be denied entry. Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by Canada, and Galloway personally provided material support to Hamas.

If it is so clear, please tell me which part of Canada's Immigration and Refugee Protection Act clearly blocks the entry of George W. Bush?

"It's the direct financial aid to Hamas president that got him barred from Canada and I'm proud my country kept the scumbag out of our country."

Liar! Galloway merely delivered a bunch of ambulances, firetrucks and medical supplies.

>> ^qualm:
"It's the direct financial aid to Hamas president that got him barred from Canada and I'm proud my country kept the scumbag out of our country."
Liar! Galloway merely delivered a bunch of ambulances, firetrucks and medical supplies. Scumbag.


George said it himself, go read it here before calling it a lie. And for the record, George Galloway IS a proven liar.

Galloway said he personally would be donating three cars and 25,000 pounds to Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya as he dared the West to try to prosecute him for aiding what it considers a terror group.

Wow, Mr. Weinstein sounds like a proper fascist.

Those threats were surreal.

"If it is so clear, please tell me which part of Canada's Immigration and Refugee Protection Act clearly blocks the entry of George W. Bush?"

Lets look at the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

First and very important is section 33 where it states:

33. The facts that constitute inadmissibility under sections 34 to 37 include facts arising from omissions and, unless otherwise provided, include facts for which there are reasonable grounds to believe that they have occurred, are occurring or may occur.

George Bush doesn't fall under section 34 like Galloway did, he falls under section 35 which states:

35. (1) A permanent resident or a foreign national is inadmissible on grounds of violating human or international rights for

(a) committing an act outside Canada that constitutes an offence referred to in sections 4 to 7 of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act;

Bush is not exempt by the next paragraph (b) and subsequent subsection (2) of this section because he is no longer an elected senior official.

The Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act states in section 6:

OFFENCES OUTSIDE CANADA

Genocide, etc., committed outside Canada

6. (1) Every person who, either before or after the coming into force of this section, commits outside Canada

(a) genocide,
(b) a crime against humanity, or
(c) a war crime,

Definitions follow further in the act:

3) The definitions in this subsection apply in this section.
"crime against humanity"
«crime contre l’humanité »

"crime against humanity" means murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, persecution or any other inhumane act or omission that is committed against any civilian population or any identifiable group and that, at the time and in the place of its commission, constitutes a crime against humanity according to customary international law or conventional international law or by virtue of its being criminal according to the general principles of law recognized by the community of nations, whether or not it constitutes a contravention of the law in force at the time and in the place of its commission.

"war crime"
«crime de guerre »

"war crime" means an act or omission committed during an armed conflict that, at the time and in the place of its commission, constitutes a war crime according to customary international law or conventional international law applicable to armed conflicts, whether or not it constitutes a contravention of the law in force at the time and in the place of its commission.

There is no way to render aid to the Palestinians in Gaza but through their elected government of Hamas.

It's so ironic that the JDL is here condemning Member of British Parliament George Galloway for delivering humanitarian aid to suffering Palestinians in Gaza, when the JDL was founded by Meir Kahane, who also founded a political party, Kach, that was eventually banned from the Knesset for being a racist party.

Remember it was Baruch Goldstein, JDL member, who perpetrated the Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre at Hebron in 1994, where 179 people were gunned down, 29 of them fatally.

"There is no way to render aid to the Palestinians in Gaza but through their elected government of Hamas."

Wrong,the UNRWA is one, unless you count Hamas stealing aid from them as 'proof' only Hamas can render aid.

You go George!

Incidentally I do remember him protesting Saddam and a whole bunch of other heinous pals of the powerful back in the 80s, it was only when the whole planet seemed to be lining up to bomb the shit out of Iraq (as they subsequently did) that he went to Iraq and gave the fingers to his government and the coalition. Hes always been a firestarter and hes usually right imho.

bcglorf, you can quibble all you like. What's more telling is your deafening silence on the precious irony in having the JDL decry an outspoken member of British Parliament, on the specious charge of supporting terrorists.

Here is Meir Weinstein, who also goes by Meir Halevi, [commenting on the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre committed by party member Baruch Goldstein in Hebron,] saying "[o]ur organization does not condemn the attack. It condemns the Israeli government for not providing adequate protection for settlers."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meir_Weinstein

So the very individual in this video who is brazenly condemning Galloway for supporting terrorism, for supplying humanitarian aid to Gazans, is himself unable to condemn the terrorism committed in the name of his own organization.

bcglorf, you can quibble all you like. What's more telling is your deafening silence on the precious irony in having the JDL decry an outspoken member of British Parliament, on the specious charge of supporting terrorists.


specious:"having a false look of truth or genuineness"

Under Canadian law there is nothing specious about charges against Galloway of supporting a terrorist organization. Galloway openly and proudly boasts of donating 25,000 pounds and 3 cars directly to Ismail Haniya, one of the top leaders of Hamas. Hamas is clearly on Canada's list of terrorist organizations. What part of that would you consider specious exactly?


So the very individual in this video who is brazenly condemning Galloway for supporting terrorism, for supplying humanitarian aid to Gazans, is himself unable to condemn the terrorism committed in the name of his own organization.

I'm not familiar with Meir Weinstein myself, a cursory glance appears like your right about him. That doesn't change a thing about Galloway, I'm glad a guy like him is being kept out of the country. If Meir Weinstein is as you describe I'd be glad to extend my contempt to him as well, I don't see were you somehow think that liberates Mr. Galloway.

What's clear is that George Galloway delivered humanitarian aid via an aid convoy to the Palestinians of Gaza via their elected government of Hamas. The minister Jason Kenney, and the Harper government as a whole, are neo-conservative bootlickers of the former Bush administration. They know all of this, but they are pandering to a certain constituency by taking the most mercenary reading of the events that transpired. In their world Palestinian = terrorist. Of course Galloway will be vindicated.

I love how Hamas fighting an tyrannical occupational force is deemed being a terrorist.

But America invading whole nations, bombing other nations, supporting oppressive regimes, using torture, toppling elected governments all over the world. No those are the good guys.

The indoctrination of your world views is FASCINATING. Try coming to Palestine and honestly telling me that Hamas is a terrorist organization and not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the State of Israel.

Israel reaps the seeds that it has sowed itself.

everybody likes to feel useful.

Try coming to Palestine and honestly telling me that Hamas is a terrorist organization and not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the State of Israel.
Israel reaps the seeds that it has sowed itself.


Your world view must like perpetual war and violence. Do you really wish to defend a group that sends it's own children as suicide bombers against it's enemies, because the enemies sowed the seeds?

Would you honestly accept that Zionism is simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by Europeans? I reject that notion as soundly as your own allegations towards Hamas.

Is Israel not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the States of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon? Do you accept defending Israel's actions as Arabs reaping the seeds they sowed?

Should we go back further, and declare the Arab attacks on Israel simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by Britain. Do we defend the Arab attacks on the basis of Britain and her allies reaping what was sown?

Do you realize that rationalization is the whole reason the hatred and warfare in the region seems to be a never ending circle?

Here's where I stand, and have stated numerous times before. I condemn war crimes committed by any nation or group, Israel included. There's a lot of undeniable evidence the IDF need to be prosecuted for crimes committed in the recent offensive. Hamas kills more Arabs than Israelis and that is their greatest crime. Yes I condemn them for deliberately targeting Israeli civilians, I condemn them for stating in their charter the elimination of the Israeli state as one of their goals. Their worst crimes though are using Palestinian civilians as human shields to launch their attacks, using child soldiers and suicide bombers and generally using the bodies of their own people as their primary weapon. I refuse to accept the defense of 'Israel deserves it', or 'the Arabs deserve it' when defending war crimes and atrocities.

"Is Israel not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the States of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon?"

The short answer is, no. Israel is a classic settler nation with all the existential attributes and brutality of a colonial ruler.

Sometimes an article deserves reprinting in full.

(copyfree)

Date : 2004-01-29
''Diagnosing Benny Morris: the mind of a European settler''

By Gabriel Ash - YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)

Israeli historian Benny Morris crossed a new line of shame when he put his academic credentials and respectability in the service of outlining the "moral" justification for a future genocide against Palestinians.

Benny Morris is the Israeli historian most responsible for the vindication of the Palestinian narrative of 1948. The lives of about 700,000 people were shattered as they were driven from their homes by the Jewish militia (and, later, the Israeli army) between December 1947 and early 1950. Morris went through Israeli archives and wrote the day by day account of this expulsion, documenting every "ethnically cleansed" village and every recorded act of violence, and placing each in the context of the military goals and perceptions of the cleansers.

Israel's apologists tried in vain to attack Morris' professional credibility. From the opposite direction, since he maintained that the expulsion was not "by design," he was also accused of drawing excessively narrow conclusions from the documents and of being too naive a reader of dissimulating statements. Despite these limitations, Morris' "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugees Problem, 1947-1949" is an authoritative record of the expulsion.

In anticipation of the publication of the revised edition, Morris was interviewed in Haaretz - ( http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/380986.html,
Hebrew original at
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/objects/pages/PrintArticle.jhtml?itemNo=380119). The major new findings in the revised book, based on fresh documents, further darken the picture.

The new archival material, Morris reveals, records routine execution of civilians, twenty-four massacres, including one in Jaffa, and at least twelve cases of rape by military units, which Morris acknowledges are probably "the tip of the iceberg." Morris also says he found documents confirming the broader conclusions favored by his critics: the expulsion was pre-meditated; concrete expulsion orders were given in writing, some traceable directly to Ben Gurion.

Morris also found documentations for Arab High Command calls for evacuating women and children from certain villages, evidence he oddly claims strengthen the Zionist propaganda claim that Palestinians left because they were told to leave by the invading Arab states. Morris had already documented two dozen such cases in the first edition. It is hard to see how attempts by Arab commanders to protect civilians from anticipated rape and murder strengthen the Zionist fairy tale. But that failed attempt at evenhandedness is the least of Morris' problems. As the interview progresses, it emerges with growing clarity that, while Morris the historian is a professional and cautious presenter of facts, Morris the intellectual is a very sick person.

His sickness is of the mental-political kind. He lives in a world populated not by fellow human beings, but by racist abstractions and stereotypes. There is an over-abundance of quasi-poetic images in the interview, as if the mind is haunted by the task of grasping what ails it: "The Palestinian citizens of Israel are a time bomb," not fellow citizens. Islam is "a world in which human lives don't have the same value as in the West." Arabs are "barbarians" at the gate of the Roman Empire. Palestinian society is "a serial killer" that ought to be executed, and "a wild animal" that must be caged.

Morris' disease was diagnosed over forty years ago, by Frantz Fanon. Based on his experience in subjugated Africa, Fanon observed that "the colonial world is a Manichean world. It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say, with the help of the army and the police, the place of the native. As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation, the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil … The native is declared insensitive to ethics … the enemy of values. … He is a corrosive element, destroying all that comes near it … the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces" (from "The Wretched of the Earth"). And further down, "the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms" (let's not forget to place Morris' metaphors in the context of so many other Israeli appellations for Palestinians: Begin's "two-legged beasts", Eitan's "drugged cockroaches" and Barak's ultra-delicate "salmon"). Morris is a case history in the psychopathology of colonialism.

Bad Genocide, Good Genocide

When the settler encounters natives who refuse to cast down their eyes, his disease advances to the next stage -- murderous sociopathy.

Morris, who knows the exact scale of the terror unleashed against Palestinians in 1948, considers it justified. First he suggests that the terror was justified because the alternative would have been a genocide of Jews by Palestinians. Raising the idea of genocide in this context is pure, and cheap, hysteria. Indeed, Morris moves immediately to a more plausible explanation: the expulsion was a precondition for creating a Jewish state, i.e. the establishment of a specific political preference, not self-defense.

This political explanation, namely that the expulsion was necessary to create the demographic conditions, a large Jewish majority, favored by the Zionist leadership, is the consensus of historians. But as affirmative defense, it is unsatisfactory. So the idea that Jews were in danger of genocide is repeated later, in a more honest way, as merely another racist, baseless generalization: "if it can, [Islamic society] will commit genocide."

But Morris sees no evil. Accusing Ben Gurion of failing to achieve an "Arabenrein Palestine," he recommends further ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, including those who are Israeli citizens. Not now, but soon, "within five or ten years," under "apocalyptic conditions" such as a regional war with unconventional weapons, a potentially nuclear war, which "is likely to happen within twenty years." For Morris, and it is difficult to overstate his madness at this point, the likelihood of a nuclear war within the foreseeable future is not the sorry end of a road better not taken, but merely a milestone, whose aftermath is still imaginable, and imaginable within the banal continuity of Zionist centennial policies: he foresees the exchange of unconventional missiles between Israel and unidentified regional states as a legitimate excuse for "finishing the job" of 1948.

Morris speaks explicitly of another expulsion, but, in groping for a moral apology for the past and the future expulsion of Palestinians, he presents a more general argument, one that justifies not only expulsion but also genocide. That statement ought to be repeated, for here is a crossing of a terrible and shameful line.

Morris, a respectable, Jewish, Israeli academic, is out in print in the respectable daily, Haaretz, justifying genocide as a legitimate tool of statecraft. It should be shocking. Yet anybody who interacts with American and Israeli Zionists knows that Morris is merely saying for the record what many think and even say unofficially. Morris, like most of Israel, lives in a temporality apart, an intellectual Galapagos Islands, a political Jurassic Park, where bizarre cousins of ideas elsewhere shamed into extinction still roam the mindscape proudly.

Nor should one think the slippage between expulsion, "transfer," and genocide without practical consequences. It is not difficult to imagine a planned expulsion turn into genocide under the stress of circumstances: The genocides of both European Jews and Armenians began as an expulsion. The expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 was the product of decades of thinking and imagining "transfer." We ought to pay attention: with Morris's statement, Zionist thinking crossed another threshold; what is now discussed has the potential to be actualized, if "apocalyptic conditions" materialize.

The march of civilization and the corpses of the uncivilized

It is instructive to look closer at the manner in which Morris uses racist thinking to justify genocide. Morris' interview, precisely because of its shamelessness, is a particularly good introductory text to Zionist thought.

Morris' racism isn't limited to Arabs. Genocide, according to Morris, is justified as long as it is done for "the final good." But what kind of good is worth the "forced extinction" of a whole people? Certainly, not the good of the latter. (Morris uses the word "Haqkhada," a Hebrew word usually associated with the extinction of animal species. Someone ought to inform Morris about the fact that Native Americans aren't extinct.)

According to Morris, the establishment of a more advanced society justifies genocide: "Yes, even the great American democracy couldn't come to be without the forced extinction of Native Americans. There are times the overall, final good justifies terrible, cruel deeds." Such hopeful comparisons between the future awaiting Palestinians and the fate of Native Americans are common to Israeli apologists. One delegation of American students was shocked and disgusted when it heard this analogy made by a spokesperson at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Morris's supremacist view of "Western Civilization," that civilization values human life more than Islam, has its basis in the moral acceptance of genocide for the sake of "progress." Morris establishes the superiority of the West on both the universal respect for human life and the readiness to exterminate inferior races. The illogicalness of the cohabitation of a right to commit genocide together with a higher level of respect for human lives escapes him, and baffles us, at least until we grasp that the full weight of the concept of "human" is restricted, in the classic manner of Eurocentric racism, to dwellers of civilized (i.e. Western) nations.

This is the same logic that allowed early Zionists to describe Palestine as an empty land, despite the presence of a million inhabitants. In the end, it comes down to this: killing Arabs -- one dozen Arabs or one million Arabs, the difference is merely technical -- is acceptable if it is necessary in order to defend the political preferences of Jews because Jews belong to the superior West and Arabs are inferior. We must be thankful to Professor Morris for clarifying the core logic of Zionism so well.

The color of Jews

Morris assures us that his values are those of the civilized West, the values of universal morality, progress, etc. But then he also claims to hold the primacy of particular loyalties, a position for which he draws on Albert Camus. But to reconcile Morris' double loyalty to both Western universalism and to Jewish particularism, one must forget that these two identities were not always on the best of terms.

How can one explain Morris' knowledge that the ethnic Darwinism that was used to justify the murder of millions of non-whites, including Black African slaves, Native Americans, Arabs, and others, was also used to justify the attempt to exterminate Jews? How can Morris endorse the "civilizational" justification of genocide, which includes the genocide of Jews, even as he claims the holocaust as another justification for Zionism? Perhaps Morris' disjointed mind doesn't see the connection. Perhaps he thinks that there are "right" assertions of racist supremacy and "wrong" assertions of racist supremacy. Or perhaps Morris displays another facet of the psychopathologies of oppression, the victim's identification with the oppressor.

Perhaps in Morris' mind, one half tribalist and one half universalist, the Jews were murdered to make way for a superior, more purely Aryan, European civilization, and the Jews who are today serving in the Israeli army, both belong and do not belong to the same group. They belong when Morris invokes the totems of the tribe to justify loyalty. But when his attention turns to the universal principle of "superior civilization," these Jews are effaced, like poor relations one is ashamed to be associated with, sent back to the limbo they share with the great non-white mass of the dehumanized. In contrast, the Jews of Israel, self-identified as European, have turned white, dry-cleaned and bleached by Zionism, and with their whiteness they claim the privilege that Whites always had, the privilege to massacre members of "less advanced" races.

False testimony

It would be marvelous if Morris the historian could preserve his objective detachment while Morris the Zionist dances with the demons of Eurocentric racism. But the wall of professionalism -- and it is a very thick and impressive wall in Morris' case -- cannot hold against the torrent of hate.

For example, Morris lies about his understanding of the 2000 Camp David summit. In Haaretz, Morris says that, "when the Palestinians rejected Barak's proposal of July 2000 and Clinton's proposal of December 2000, I understood that they were not ready to accept a two state solution. They wanted everything. Lydda, and Akka and Jaffa."

But in his book "Righteous Victims," Morris explains the failure of the negotiations thus: "the PLO leadership had gradually accepted, or seemed to…Israel...keeping 78 percent of historical Palestine. But the PLO wanted the remaining 22 percent. … At Camp David, Barak had endorsed the establishment of a Palestinian state…[on only] 84-90 percent of that 22 percent. … Israel was also to control the territory between a greatly enlarged Jerusalem and Jericho, effectively cutting the core of the future Palestinian state into two…" Morris' chapter of "Righteous Victims" that deals with the '90s leaves a lot to be desired, but it still strives for some detached analysis. In contrast, in Haaretz Morris offers baseless claims he knows to be false.

If Morris lies about recent history, and even grossly misrepresents the danger Jews faced in Palestine in 1948, a period he is an expert on, his treatment of more general historical matters is all but ridiculous, an astounding mix of insinuations and cliches. For example, Morris reminds us that "the Arab nation won a big chunk of the Earth, not because of its intrinsic virtues and skills, but by conquering and murdering and forcing the conquered to convert." (What is Morris' point? Is the cleansing of Palestine attributable to Jewish virtues and skills, rather than to conquering and murdering?)

This is racist slander, not history. As an example, take Spain, which was conquered in essentially one battle in 711 A.D. by a band of North African Berbers who had just converted to Islam. Spain was completely Islamized and Arabized within two centuries with very little religious coercion, and certainly no ethnic cleansing. But after the last Islamic rulers were kicked out of Spain by the Christian army of Ferdinand and Isabel in 1492, a large section of the very same Spanish population that willingly adopted Islam centuries earlier refused to accept Christianity despite a century of persecution by the Spanish Inquisition. 600,000 Spanish Muslims were eventually expelled in 1608.

Obviously, Islamic civilization had its share of war and violence. But, as the above example hints, compared to the West, compared to the religious killing frenzy of sixteenth century Europe, compared to the serial genocides in Africa and America, and finally to the flesh-churning wars of the twentieth century, Islamic civilization looks positively benign. So why all this hatred? Where is all this fire and brimstone Islamophobia coming from?

Being elsewhere

From Europe, of course, but with a twist. Europe has always looked upon the East with condescension. In periods of tension, that condescension would escalate to fear and hate. But it was also mixed and tempered with a large dose of fascination and curiosity. The settler, however, does not have the luxury to be curious. The settler leaves the metropolis hoping to overcome his own marginal, often oppressed, status in metropolitan society. He goes to the colony motivated by the desire to recreate the metropolis with himself at the top.

For the settler, going to the colony is not a rejection of the metropolis, but a way to claim his due as a member. Therefore, the settler is always trying to be more metropolitan than the metropolis. When the people of the metropolis baulk at the bloodbath the settler wants to usher in the name of their values, the settler accuses them of "growing soft," and declares himself "the true metropolis." That is also why there is one crime of which the settler can never forgive the land he colonized -- its alien climate and geography, its recalcitrant otherness, the oddness of its inhabitants, in sum, the harsh truth of its being elsewhere. In the consciousness of the settler, condescension thus turns into loathing.

Israeli settler society, especially its European, Ashkenazi part, especially that Israel which calls itself "the peace camp," "the Zionist Left," etc., is predicated on the loathing of all things Eastern and Arab. (Now, of course, there is the religious, post-1967 settlers who relate to the Zionist Left the way the Zionist Left stands in relation to Europe, i.e. as settlers.) "Arab" is a term of abuse, one that can be applied to everything and everyone, including Jews. This loathing is a unifying theme. It connects Morris' latest interview in Haaretz with Ben Gurion's first impression of Jaffa in 1905; he found it filthy and depressing.

In another article, published in Tikkun Magazine, Morris blames the "ultra-nationalism, provincialism, fundamentalism and obscurantism" of Arab Jews in Israel for the sorry state of the country (although Begin, Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, and most of Israel's generals, leaders, and opinion makers of the last two decades are European Jews). For Morris, everything Eastern is corrupt and every corruption has an Eastern origin.

One shouldn't, therefore, doubt Morris when he proclaims himself a traditional Left Zionist. Most of what he says hasn't been said already by David Ben Gurion or Moshe Dayan. Loathing of the East and the decision to subdue it by unlimited force is the essence of Zionism.

Understanding the psycho-political sources of this loathing leads to some interesting observations about truisms that recur in Morris' (and much of Israel's) discourse. Morris blames Arafat for thinking that Israel is a "crusader state," a foreign element that will eventually be sent back to its port of departure. This is a common refrain of Israeli propaganda. It is also probably true. But it isn't Arafat's fault that Morris is a foreigner in the Middle East. Why shouldn't Arafat believe Israel is a crusader state when Morris himself says so? "We are the vulnerable extension of Europe in this place, exactly as the crusaders."

It is Morris -- like the greater part of Israel's elite -- who insists on being a foreigner, on loathing the Middle East and dreaming about mist-covered Europe, purified and deified by distance. If Israel is a crusader state, and therefore a state with shallow roots, likely to pack up and disappear, it is not the fault of those who make that observation. It is the fault of those Israelis, like Morris, who want to rule the Middle East from behind tall walls and barbed wire.

Morris is deeply pessimistic about Israel's future; this feeling is very attractive in Israel. The end of Israel is always felt to be one step away, hiding beneath every development, from the birthrate of Bedouins to the establishment of the International Court of Justice.

Naturally, every Palestinian demand is such a doomsday threat. This sense of existential precariousness can be traced back to 1948; it was encouraged by Israel's successive governments because it justified the continuous violence of the state and the hegemony of the military complex. It may eventually become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

But this existential fear goes deeper. It is rooted in the repressed understanding (which Morris both articulates and tries to displace) of the inherent illegitimacy of the Israeli political system and identity. "Israel" is brute force. In Morris' words: "The bottom line is that force is the only thing that will make them accept us." But brute force is precarious. Time gnaws at it. Fatigue corrodes it. And the more it is used, the more it destroys the very acceptance and legitimacy it seeks.

For Israel, the fundamental question of the future is, therefore, whether Israelis can transcend colonialism. The prognosis is far from positive. In a related article in The Guardian, Morris explains that accepting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees would mean forcing Israeli Jews into exile. But why would Jews have to leave Israel if Israel becomes a bi-national, democratic state? One cannot understand this without attention to the colonial loathing of the Middle East which Morris so eloquently expresses.

But taking that into account, I'm afraid Morris is right. Many Israeli Jews, especially European Jews who tend to possess alternative passports, would rather emigrate than live on equal terms with Palestine's natives in a bi-national state. It is to Frantz Fanon again that we turn for observing this first. "The settler, from the moment the colonial context disappears, has no longer an interest in remaining or in co-existing."

Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel.

^If you read Gabriel Ash article there closely you should notice something. He takes EVERYTHING negative Morris' historical account says about Israel and declares it fact beyond contention. He then also declares EVERYTHING positive Morris' historical account says about Israel and declares it the working of a depraved and racist/colonial mind. That doesn't give you any pause?

Here's the bigger picture of 1948, since the context is important and cliff's notes versions are generally the tool of propagandists from either side. Palestine, under British rule, had both Jewish and Arab Palestinian's living there in 1900 already. By the 1940's, the Jewish population was growing, but still a minority that was being mistreated. By the mid 1940's the Nazi genocide was in full swing, and more European Jews came to Palestine as refugees. Many of them entering the country illegally, but under the circumstances I find that difficult to condemn. Among the European Jews, Zionist's had risen up as a result of European oppression and their ranks were filled by those who believed only a Jewish state would ever recognize the rights of Jews.

Low and behold as the majority of them settle in Palestine, the majority Arab Palestinians are mistreating them terribly. Is it really much of a wonder that this boiled into a civil war between Jewish and Arab Palestinians? Is it really a nefarious act of conquest by the Jews, or is just a tragic series of events with hate begetting more hate, over and over again? Let's not pretend that for all the atrocities committed by the Jews and Zionists in 1940's Palestine there weren't just as many atrocities perpetrated against them by Arab Palestinians. It was a mess both then and now. I find it hard though to go back to that time and place all the blame on Jewish Zionist aggression. It's even harder when in '48 those Jewish Zionists declared their acceptance of a UN proposed 2 state solution, only to have all the neighboring Arab countries declare a united war to eliminate them. Given just how many of those Jewish people had just come from a Nazi dominated Europe and there might be some legitimate concerns for their own survival playing a role from that point forward, no? Was that really merely Zionist fear mongering?

Look at the whole history and there are no easy answers like some might like to think. How do you blame the Jewish people for fleeing Europe and defending themselves aggressively in Palestine after? How do you blame the Arab Palestinians for feeling threatened, especially after the British had been ruling over them as a colony until then? It's a mess, and blaming one side or the other is ignorance or personal bias.

^ What are you talking about? Exactly what is it that you see as positive in this deconstruction of Benny Morris and the logic of genocide?

Your "historical" blurb barely warrants a reply- especially in light of the fact that you reject Gabriel Ash, and historian Benny Morris, as having diminished value, ie. "cliff notes."

Please continue with your rationalization and support for genocide. I'm sure at least the openly white supremacist Pprt will support you.

Btw, both Gabriel Ash and myself are Jewish, and former Israeli citizens.

Your "historical" blurb barely warrants a reply- especially in light of the fact that you reject Gabriel Ash, and Benny Morris, as having diminished value, ie. "cliff notes."


That's a trite way of dodging the matter. I hardly see how an intelligent person can see an account of the years between 45 to 50 is diminished by stating a need to look at a larger time frame and context. Care to actually speak to the historical context? Do you prefer to just state that Israel need be condemned for war crimes, and at the same time Hamas crimes be ignored since they are just a result of Israel's crimes?


Please continue with your rationalization and support for genocide

That's just pathetic. Here for yet another time on the sift, and copied from further up the thread is where I stand:

Here's where I stand, and have stated numerous times before. I condemn war crimes committed by any nation or group, Israel included. There's a lot of undeniable evidence the IDF need to be prosecuted for crimes committed in the recent offensive. Hamas kills more Arabs than Israelis and that is their greatest crime. Yes I condemn them for deliberately targeting Israeli civilians, I condemn them for stating in their charter the elimination of the Israeli state as one of their goals. Their worst crimes though are using Palestinian civilians as human shields to launch their attacks, using child soldiers and suicide bombers and generally using the bodies of their own people as their primary weapon. I refuse to accept the defense of 'Israel deserves it', or 'the Arabs deserve it' when defending war crimes and atrocities.


If you interpret that as supporting genocide me thinks you are perhaps the one who's biased.

First you diminish and misread Gabriel Ash's deconstruction and contextualization of Benny Morris's Israel, (within a framework of traditional European colonial racism), and Morris's appalling rationalization in favour of genocide, and then you press forward with claims of Jewish mistreatment within Palestine pre-1948, as if those alleged incidents supplied the necessary historical context to go ahead and justify, to your mind, actually ignoring the serious and supported claims about actual atrocities.

In other words, you are rationalizing crimes against humanity. In light of this, your copy/pasted paragraph which is meant to establish your bona fides rings pretty hollow.

And what was it again that you see as positive for Israel in this deconstruction of Benny Morris and the logic of genocide?

you press forward with claims of Jewish mistreatment within Palestine pre-1948, as if those alleged incidents


Really? Alleged incidents? So you deny mistreatment of the Jewish people by the Arab majority in Palestine from well before 1948?


as if those alleged incidents supplied the necessary historical context to then go ahead and justify, to your mind, actually ignoring the serious and supported claims about actual atrocities.


I suggest we ignore them? Are you really gonna try to misread what I said that deliberately? I'll repeat myself again Let's not pretend that for all the atrocities committed by the Jews and Zionists in 1940's Palestine there weren't just as many atrocities perpetrated against them by Arab Palestinians. It was a mess both then and now.

Or how about my last paragraph:

Look at the whole history and there are no easy answers like some might like to think. How do you blame the Jewish people for fleeing Europe and defending themselves aggressively in Palestine after? How do you blame the Arab Palestinians for feeling threatened, especially after the British had been ruling over them as a colony until then? It's a mess, and blaming one side or the other is ignorance or personal bias.


Is that really anything like a defense of genocide? Really?

bcglorf: "Really? Alleged incidents? So you deny mistreatment of the Jewish people by the Arab majority in Palestine from well before 1948?"

I can't deny anything I haven't seen. What are you refering to? Was there even a single massacre perpetrated against Jewish settlers by the Palestinian majority? Because if you've read Morris you already know he meticulously documents a shockingly high number of massacres perpetrated against Palestinians.

bcglorf: "Let's not pretend that for all the atrocities committed by the Jews and Zionists in 1940's Palestine there weren't just as many atrocities perpetrated against them by Arab Palestinians. It was a mess both then and now."

Even hard-core Israeli apologists like Benny Morris don't believe that. It is no mild understatement to say this is not historically accurate. But this is just the sort of genocidal logic I have exposed.

bcglorf: "Let's not pretend that for all the atrocities committed by the Jews and Zionists in 1940's Palestine there weren't just as many atrocities perpetrated against them by Arab Palestinians. It was a mess both then and now."

Even hard-core Israeli apologists like Benny Morris don't believe that. It is no mild understatement to say this is not historically accurate. But this is just the sort of genocidal logic I have exposed.


So you've exposed genocidal logic in your 'insight' of what? That Arab Palestinians weren't responsible for any atrocities in the 1940's? You can believe that as fervently as you wish, it still won't make it real. It was a boiling civil war, and people from both sides started murdering each other as it escalated. Your insistence that it was just a series of murderous rampages initiated by Zionists against friendly Arab Palestinians is what's been exposed here.

bcglorf: "Your insistence that it was just a series of murderous rampages initiated by Zionists against friendly Arab Palestinians is what's been exposed here."

I never make that claim. Did you even read the article on Benny Morris?

Morris' disease was diagnosed over forty years ago, by Frantz Fanon. Based on his experience in subjugated Africa, Fanon observed that "the colonial world is a Manichean world. It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say, with the help of the army and the police, the place of the native. As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation, the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil … The native is declared insensitive to ethics … the enemy of values. … He is a corrosive element, destroying all that comes near it … the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces" (from "The Wretched of the Earth"). And further down, "the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms" (let's not forget to place Morris' metaphors in the context of so many other Israeli appellations for Palestinians: Begin's "two-legged beasts", Eitan's "drugged cockroaches" and Barak's ultra-delicate "salmon"). Morris is a case history in the psychopathology of colonialism.

...

This political explanation, namely that the expulsion was necessary to create the demographic conditions, a large Jewish majority, favored by the Zionist leadership, is the consensus of historians. But as affirmative defense, it is unsatisfactory. So the idea that Jews were in danger of genocide is repeated later, in a more honest way, as merely another racist, baseless generalization..."


...

According to Morris, the establishment of a more advanced society justifies genocide: "Yes, even the great American democracy couldn't come to be without the forced extinction of Native Americans. There are times the overall, final good justifies terrible, cruel deeds." Such hopeful comparisons between the future awaiting Palestinians and the fate of Native Americans are common to Israeli apologists. One delegation of American students was shocked and disgusted when it heard this analogy made by a spokesperson at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Morris's supremacist view of "Western Civilization," that civilization values human life more than Islam, has its basis in the moral acceptance of genocide for the sake of "progress." Morris establishes the superiority of the West on both the universal respect for human life and the readiness to exterminate inferior races. The illogicalness of the cohabitation of a right to commit genocide together with a higher level of respect for human lives escapes him, and baffles us, at least until we grasp that the full weight of the concept of "human" is restricted, in the classic manner of Eurocentric racism, to dwellers of civilized (i.e. Western) nations.

This is the same logic that allowed early Zionists to describe Palestine as an empty land, despite the presence of a million inhabitants. In the end, it comes down to this: killing Arabs -- one dozen Arabs or one million Arabs, the difference is merely technical -- is acceptable if it is necessary in order to defend the political preferences of Jews because Jews belong to the superior West and Arabs are inferior. We must be thankful to Professor Morris for clarifying the core logic of Zionism so well.

>> ^bcglorf:
Your insistence that it was just a series of murderous rampages initiated by Zionists against friendly Arab Palestinians is what's been exposed here.


Your obdurate unwillingness to admit that Israel is at fault for anything is what is really being exposed here.

You are pro Israel, right or wrong, and that is clear as day.

bcglorf: "Let's not pretend that for all the atrocities committed by the Jews and Zionists in 1940's Palestine there weren't just as many atrocities perpetrated against them by Arab Palestinians. It was a mess both then and now."

Qualm:Even hard-core Israeli apologists like Benny Morris don't believe that. It is no mild understatement to say this is not historically accurate.
...
bcglorf: "Your insistence that it was just a series of murderous rampages initiated by Zionists against friendly Arab Palestinians is what's been exposed here."

Qualm:I never make that claim.


Okay, I don't see a whole lot of room in between the above statements for ambiguity. I've openly stated, more than once, that Zionists and Israelis have committed numerous atrocities, through the 1940's(and before and since for that matter). Yet when I point out that similarly atrocities where committed against them by Arab Palestinians, you suddenly balk at the notion. Do you or do you not recognize that the violence and atrocities committed in Palestine from 1900-1948(and again onwards for that matter), included a very large proportion of tit for tat and revenge/self defense motivations from BOTH sides.

That's my reading of history, and it seems pretty consistent(and unbiased) with all of human history. The Jews and Zionists were more aggressive/violent/defensive given their treatment in Europe and status as a minority in Palestine. Similarly the Arab Palestinians had been under the yoke of either the Ottomans or the British and were also more aggressive/violent/defensive as a result. Neither of those are any excuse for the atrocities committed, it's just a much stronger motivation for their societies than a simple Zionist campaign to expunge the Arabs and Arabs defending themselves. It's much simpler than the Zionist position of Arabs bent on annihilating all Jews. The truth is in the middle of those, do you reject the whole of this?


Rougy:Your obdurate unwillingness to admit that Israel is at fault for anything is what is really being exposed here.


Really? I repeatedly condemn the atrocities they've committed. Up thread I've repeatedly referenced atrocities committed by them from before 1948 through to the present day as a given. I referenced the most recent invasion up thread saying There's a lot of undeniable evidence the IDF need to be prosecuted for crimes committed in the recent offensive.


You are pro Israel, right or wrong, and that is clear as day.


No, I'm anti-Hamas, there's a very big difference. If you'd like me to condemn all of Israel just out of 'fairness' I won't. That'd be the equivalent of condemning all Palestinians, which is the workings of a racist. I condemn Hamas specifically as a horrific organization that manages to kill more of it's own people than anyone else. An equivalent condemnation would be of Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party as racists and a horrific evil, I'll happily condemn them as strongly as Hamas as they chant 'Death to Arabs' with as much vigor as Hamas chants 'Death to Israel'.

bcglorf, I want you to read the article on Benny Morris and think for a while about colonialism and the racism inherent in such a nation building exercise as Israel's. "A land without people for a people without land." Heard that one before? Does that concern you?

Perhaps read Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth" as well.

One of the major objections I have with your 'tit-for-tat' theory is that it decontextualizes and silences the Palestinian narrative, which, I point out again, is actually being completely vindicated by Benny Morris - a meticulous and highly regarded historian, who also happens to be a major apologist for Israel.

bcglorf, I want you to read the article on Benny Morris and think for a while about colonialism and the racism inherent in such a nation building exercise as Israel's. "A land without people for a people without land." Heard that one before? Does that concern you?


Seeing as that kind of racist attitude is exactly what is being promoted still today by groups like Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party I think I've made my concern pretty clear. I even said I condemn them as racists and in as strong of terms as I condemn Hamas. I fail to see how any of that relates back to my condemnation of Hamas, what in here is supposed to vindicate them or somehow lessen the condemnation they deserve? All I can see is the implication that the Israeli's deserve it, or that Hamas is justified in it's evils because it is 'self defense'. If there is another angle I'm missing let me know, but I don't accept either of the rationalizations I can see.


One of the major objections I have with your 'tit-for-tat' theory is that it decontextualizes and silences the Palestinian narrative, which, I point out again, is actually being completely vindicated by Benny Morris - a meticulous and highly regarded historian, who also happens to be a major apologist for Israel.


What Palestinian narrative is it that you feeling is being silenced or decontextualized? I don't see how the back and forth of atrocities that occurred from even before '48 somehow marginalizes anybody or view. It certainly doesn't lessen the guilt of any parties involved, so is there something I'm altogether missing?

I wonder if you would feel the same way about "tit-for-tat" if we were talking about historical North American indigenous resistance to occupation by genocidal European settlers.

Just read Fanon already. Or don't.