It would be hard to argue that zionism is a force for good in this world.

>> ^MaxWilder:

Can we agree that the 56% was an absurd way to try to end the civil war? Obviously the Arab Palestinians weren't satisfied, and it seems that much more than that is now in the hands of Israel as the result of continued conflict, so the Zionists do not appear to be satisfied either.
Also, bcglorf, you keep talking about a civil war as if that is the natural thing that happens because the Arab population was becoming more oppressive toward the Jewish population. Are you denying the massive influx of Jews pre-1948? I am honestly curious because I am just starting to learn about this period of Israel's history.


I'll gladly agree that 56% for a group that had less than 50% of the population is hardly what one would call fair. In hindsight, I'd even say it would've been better for the UN to offer much, much less, but only on the condition that it would have been enough of a concession to avoid the war that immediately followed. I think most historians seem sure that even giving 1% to the creation of a Jewish state would have still resulted in the same war and outrage from the neighbouring Arab states.

More importantly than being "fair", the UN borders were arrived at by no special formula planned to take advantage of the Arabs. The UN, as it always has since, was simply picking the existing borders of the day and saying let's all call it quits right now and just get along. The 56% the Jewish Palestinians held was the land they had gained fighting with their Arab Palestinian brothers. The 44% the Arab Palestinians held was the land they'd held fighting their Jewish Palestinian brothers. Or to state it more simply, NO ZIONIST CONSPIRACY!

it seems that much more than that is now in the hands of Israel as the result of continued conflict, so the Zionists do not appear to be satisfied either.

I think it's unfair to blame the land Israel gained after declaring independence on Zionist greed. The reality was a war was being fought that left Palestine divided roughly in half with the Jewish side holding the bigger half. The UN recommended ending the fighting and maintaining separate states roughly along those borders.

The Jewish Palestinians said yes, they wanted peace along those borders. Most likely because from any practical standpoint, they were in no position to try and fight for anything better, they were lucky to get as far as they had outnumbered as they were.

The Arab Palestinians for their part were largely ready to say yes as well, only because they were fearful they to would lose in a longer fight. The changing factor was the neighboring Arab states, each of whom vastly outnumbered and outgunned the tiny fledgling state of Israel. All the neighboring Arab states agreed that the conditions for peace were NOT acceptable to them because they were each convinced they could gain more land for themselves from Palestine.

Not even the most zealous Zionist could have seen that not only would they survive such a war, but that they would even manage to gain more land in the process. The expansion of Israel's borders in 1948 can hardly be blamed on Zionist expansion, but instead much more simply on the Arab nations mystifying ability to lose the war they by all rights should have not only won, but won easily. To this day that loss is the single greatest source of shame in much of Arab identity.

Also, bcglorf, you keep talking about a civil war as if that is the natural thing that happens because the Arab population was becoming more oppressive toward the Jewish population. Are you denying the massive influx of Jews pre-1948?
Of course I'm not denying the huge influx of Jews leading up to 1948. It just can't be mentioned without obviously asking why they were coming. The video would suggest a Zionist plot to invade Palestine. I think you can figure out for yourself though if Jews might have had some other reasons around that time to be looking for a new place to live outside of Europe's borders. I was reluctant to bring it up of course because someone would think I'm trying to justify making Arabs pay the price for the Nazi's crimes, which is in no way my point.

My other point regarding the civil war in Palestine is that there were in fact a great many Jews already living in Palestine before the Zionists figured on it being a good place for their own schemes. In fact, one of the reasons it was high on the list was that there were already a very good number of Jewish Palestinians living there. I don't think even the video denies that the conflict in Palestine prior to 1948 was a civil war. They just suggest that it was Zionists that stirred up a Palestine that had otherwise gotten on well for the last century. I think since the time frame we are talking about is the time where Palestine was a British Colony, and where WW1 and WW2 were being waged, that maybe there were other very big factors in Palestine's newly enflamed ethnic tensions. Factors big enough that Zionism was just another symptom rather than an initial cause.

we are in agreement. Hurray

EXCEPT for your refutation of the my statement on peace.
your refutation is based on my population numbers being wrong.

I'm not sure exactly what your meaning is here. My main beef was with the video. It said your same statement about how everyone had been getting along well for a long time before. Then, at the 6 minute mark it suddenly changed course and declared that "in 1900 there were hardly any Jews in Palestine".

My beef is the video selectively wants to be able to use contradictory sets of facts. It will use the peaceful cooperation between Jews and Arabs as proof that before Zionism, things were fine. Then later, when it wants to paint Zionism as a foreign infiltration of Palestine, suddenly there were very few Jews in Palestine in 1900. Either there were centuries of Jews and Arabs living together peacefully or there were very few Jews, NOT both.

I also objected to the video declaring, again in the first 5 minutes, that the Zionists were unwilling to entertain any idea of sharing any land with Arabs. Quite plainly, the strongest counter argument is that in 1948 they went along with the other Jewish Palestinian leaders in declaring independence along the borders the UN had mandated. Clearly there is a time in 1948 where even the Zionists were content to accept a peace on terms that left 43% of Palestine for the Arab Palestinians. Clearly at this point in time, the neighboring Arab states, and not the Zionists, were the ones that instigated further hostilities. This is so clear, that you'd be hard pressed to find any Arab scholar who disagrees. The neighboring Arab nations were absolutely set and intent on rejecting and removing the newly independent Israeli state, no matter how peaceful or friendly it was willing to be.

I'm merely rejecting the video's view of Zionism as the sole instigator and agitator in the entire conflict. I don't deny in any way that Zionist's committed numerous atrocities, and worked actively to incite violence and conflict. I deny only that the Zionists were hardly the only faction in Palestine doing that after the British withdrawal. Ignoring the Arab majority's own active role in prejudice against non-Arab Palestinians is beyond dishonest, it's sinister. To mention how little land the Jewish Palestinians owned, without mentioning the active programs to legally block non-Arabs from purchasing land is sinister.

Sorry, the first 6 minutes of the video leaving me utterly convinced that it is not only one-sided, but deliberately and knowingly one-sided with intent of biasing it's viewers with half-truth.

Enoch said:there is a huge difference between a person of jewish heritage and a zionist.zionism does NOT equal judaism.

I'm glad we are agreed on this point. It's why I made the very important statement:The Jewish Palestinians were fighting a civil war with the Arab Palestinians.

This is of course important because the video, and several posters including yourself seem to want to label the entirety of Jewish Palestinians as Zionists when talking about the civil war. If you'll accept that there were many Jewish Palestinians fighting the civil war for reason and cause outside of Zionism then we are agreed.

Enoch said:to excuse an entire population by what some OTHER over-zealous political party did

Go read what I said again, because you are inventing an argument I never put forward. I stated the fact that the Jewish minority in Palestine was being mistreated and biased against by the Arab Palestinian majority, a fact even Al Jazeera doesn't dispute. I then stated that created tensions leading to a civil war, were both sides had understandable cause for concern. The Jewish Palestinians had seen how well accepting inequality worked for European Jews, and were willing to fight to be treated as equals. The Arabs were duly concerned about extreme elements of the Jewish population like the Zionist movement.

The point is very simply that a civil war exploded between two ethnic groups of Palestinians, for reasons that were domestic. The Zionists latched on to the cause, as did the surrounding Arab nations, with all sides looking to gain land for themselves out of the deal. Painting it like the entire problem boils down to Zionist aggression making victims of the Arabs is ludicrously at odds with the basic facts. So badly so in fact that even Al Jazeera, a very much pro-Arab network has published several articles on the 1948 war that soundly reject such a notion. The idea is in fact even more racist against Arabs than it is against Jews. It portrays better than 50 million Arabs as being so weak that they were helpless victims in the face of a mere few hundred thousand Jewish Zionists.

Your facts are also blatantly wrong.
3million jews/christians/muslims lived in jeurusalem peacefully until the british empire amended the balfour declaration.
Jerusalem's population was nowhere near 3 million then, the entirety of Palestine was likely under 3 million when the Balfour declaration was signed. Population estimates of the time are sketchy at best.

so while the jewish community owned less than 5% of the land the new amended document gave them 56% and hence we see..to this day..strife in that region.
The Balfour declaration amendment wasn't what gave them 56%, it was the UN's recommendation, put forward by both the US and Russia that proposed the borders with 56% attached. It was also proposed not on the premise of a handout for the Zionists, but as a resolution to the civil war within Palestine, which saw the Jewish Palestinians holding most of that 56% as a result of the fighting.

.the supposed "deal of a lifetime" that was offered to the palestinians was absolute garbage.
That's an opinion, not a fact. And I can't help but point out that your opinion assumes that only Arabs are Palestinians, the Jewish Palestinians presumably being stateless?

@bcglorf
there is a huge difference between a person of jewish heritage and a zionist.
zionism does NOT equal judaism.
and to excuse an entire population by what some OTHER over-zealous political party did to the jewish people (NOT zionists) is disingenuous and totally buys into the narrative.
it boils down to that whole two wrongs dont make a right thing.
just because the jewish people suffered under nazism does not give them the right to oppress another people and you would THINK that maybe they would have more empathy.
which ..if you look at some of the blogs regular isreali citizens write..they do.
do you know who DOESN'T?
zionists.

here are some facts:
1.3million jews/christians/muslims lived in jeurusalem peacefully until the british empire amended the balfour declaration.
2.this was a political gift from all the support the zionists gave during WWII.so while the jewish community owned less than 5% of the land the new amended document gave them 56% and hence we see..to this day..strife in that region.
3.the supposed "deal of a lifetime" that was offered to the palestinians was absolute garbage.the ONLY thing offered was a bare sovereignty.they could have a flag..but no military.they could own a home...but not the accessways.
and it goes on and on and on.

but you go right ahead and keep telling yourself that isreal is the victim.
they did nothing wrong,its those arab people..its all their fault.they are the agressors.

now i am not ignoring the arab side i am just pointing out that your "isreal is the victim" is utter bullshit and only someone entrenched in american media would ever view this conflict so myopically.

saying that a zionist is the same as jewish is like saying a neo-conservative is an actual conservative.
totally different animals.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:
>> ^Drachen_Jager:
Don't forget the Jews, what they're doing to the Palestinians is imo worse than the child molestation of the Catholic Church.

"The Jews" ≠ the state of Israel.

"The Vatican" ≠ Child molesting priests
Almost all major religions are evil, their members are either actively participating in atrocities or passively looking the other way and enabling.
I know of very few observant Jews who do not support Israel's position (but I know many who are Jewish by birth but not religion who are against the way Israel treats the Palestinians).


The vatican has, as this video shows, and any fair investigation would show, and any rational person should see at this point, been systematically protecting child rapists, so no, "the vatican" is not a child molesting priest (impossible, since its not an actual person) but its an institution who willingly and knowingly, and systematically protects and aid them. And "the Vatican" or "The Catholic Church" is different from the word "Catholics", as I would never say Catholics in general help priests abuse children or accuse them of any other collective crime..

In exactly the same sense, "Jews" are not a state or an organization, its a word to describe people with a religious/cultural background, so to speak of "the jews" as if it was one entity with common blame is something I thought belonged to another, darker era tbh. When you say "the Jews" you include people like Jerry Seinfeld and Noam Chomsky, and what the fuck did they do against palestinians? Besides, there are just as many, if not far more, Christian supporters of Israel, and what about them? So if you want, you could say "Israel and its supporters" and maybe even stretch it to Judaism or zionism, but not to Jews in general.

>> ^Yogi:
>Dude...seriously?! You say shit like that and it's Not about racism. You just called one of the largest most established religions on the planet a cult.

Yes I did.

>> ^Yogi:
>You hate these people...


"These people"? hm... No.
"This religion"? Well.. No, Not really. I dont "hate" Islam either, but I don't see why Islam should be exempt from criticism, just because its a religion, and I don't accept your definition of it as a race. If its a race, and i'm a racist, just who am I supposed to hate? 20% of India? Most of the middle east? Chechens? Somalies? Indonesians? Cat Stevens?

If anyones a racist here, it would have to be those who confuse ideologies with groups of people, like calling all nazis "germans" or believing that zionism is the same as Israel, or that Israel is the same as "jewish". Its you that do not have your definitions in order, not me.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^acidSpine:
long. Wow it's like the only difference between Hezbollah and America is they take care of their veterans

They are even in large part foreigners to Lebanon like the Americans, being founded pre-dominantly by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and still receiving most of their support through Iran and Syria.
Also, let's not forget the racism. From Hezbollah's own description of itself:
Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is
aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the
expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when
this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace
agreements, whether separate or consolidated.
We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as
enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the
legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Therefore we oppose and reject the
Camp David Agreements, the proposals of King Fahd, the Fez and Reagan plan,
Brezhnev's and the French-Egyptian proposals, and all other programs that include the
recognition (even the implied recognition) of the Zionist entity.
Now re-read and remember that the 'Zionist entity' is Hezbollah's name for the entire state of Israel, and all that have any desire to see it continue to exist.


First of all, I don't think seperating the Muslim states into countries is a useful exercise when dealing with this sort of issue, since the existing states were divided up by western conquerers in times past, countries are essentialy an artificial, arbitrary construct. Muslim solidarity reigns supreme. The Jews wouldn't even have had the opportuntity to steal palestinian land had not the English occupied it beforehand.

Secondly, I can't see any racism in the quote you provided (didn't click the link cause you never know these days, could land me in guantanamo, ironic since we're talking about recently stolen land ) All it says is that Israel (zionism solidified) has been "aggressive since it's inception", built on stolen land, they want it back and all treaties drawn up by the US are bullshit and Hezbollah won't accept them. Nothing racist there.

Just an honest question here to anyone really. Why were Jews relocated to Palestine folowing WWII? Surely some existing friendly country could have taken them in. Space is clearly not an issue consideing the dimuntitive scale of the region in question. The only answer I can think of off the top of my head is that there was an express desire to reclaim the "holy land" (what God probably calls the COLOSSEUM!!!!) after 2000 odd years away.

Anyway, if it isn't clear, I'm on the Palesininan side of this debate but I feel free from any accusations of bias since I am neither a Muslim, Jew or Zionist Christian. I'm just male, middle class and white like the song but I think I have a solution if you would just hear me out.

Ok, here goes. control of the middle eastern oil fields is removed from corporate ownership and handed over part and parcel of universal arab soveringnty from western backed dictatorships including the Saudi royal family. Part of the profits from the oil will go to compensate Israeli folk for their relocation to Europe, North America, Australia, anywhere really that could accomodate for Isarelies culturaly. The govenment of Israel will liquidise all assets not essential to the re-establishment of Palestine (ie. everything but their tanks and their bombs and their guns and their bombs, whats in your head, in your head, in your head, zombie, zombie, zombie) leaving the infrastructure entact and using the profits as reparations to Palestine for 40+ years of repression. I think it would be fair that America pays Palestine a salary equal to that of the miltary aid given to Israel during their enduring occupation. Think that sounds unfair, check out the debt 3rd world countries are compelled to pay as a price for their autonomy over their former opressors.

Wow, thats about five times bigger than any other post Iv'e made on the internet ever. I hope someone reads it. Pipe dreams naturally but reality blows, suck it down.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'israel, palestine, zionism, racism, american, jews, muslim, arabs, barack obama' to 'israel, palestine, zionism, racism, american, jew, muslim, arab, barack obama, blumenthal' - edited by dystopianfuturetoday

Diagnosing Benny Morris
The Mind of a European Settler
by Gabriel Ash


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 Ha'aretz. 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 Arabian 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 Ha'aretz, 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 Ha'aretz 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 clich�s. 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 small 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, we have in addition 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 Ha'aretz 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. There is hardly anything he says that 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 have nothing to do with the Middle East.

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."

Related Articles:

* The Education of Benny the Barbarian by Ahmed Amr
* Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion by Adi Ophir

Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel. He is a regular contributor to Yellow Times.org, where this article first appeared (www.yellowtimes.org). Gabriel encourages your comments: gash@YellowTimes.org

ZIONISM = RACISM

Tags for this video have been changed from 'palestine, john rees, middle east' to 'palestine, john rees, middle east, israel, zionism, illegal occupation' - edited by EndAll

"If my sons did not want wars, there would be none." - Gutle Schnaper, Mayer Amschel Rothschilds wife.

-

"I am one of those who do not believe the national debt is a national blessing... it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country."

Andrew Jackson, Letter to L. H. Coleman of Warrenton, N.C., 29 April 1824

-

"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had mens views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."

Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913), Doubleday

-

"From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire."

Winston Churchill, "Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald (London), February 8, 1920, pg. 5

-

"The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few."

Henry Ford, My Life and Work, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922

-

"I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can, and do, create and destroy money. The amount of money in existence varies only with the action of the banks in increasing or decreasing deposits and bank purchases. Every loan, overdraft or bank purchase creates a deposit, and every repayment or bank sale destroys a deposit. And they who control the credit of a nation, direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people."

Reginald McKenna, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, addressing the shareholders as Chairman of the Midland Bank, at the Annual General Meeting in January 1924.

-

"The present Federal Reserve System is a flagrant case of the Governments conferring a special privilege upon bankers. The Government hands to the banks its credit, at virtually no cost to the banks, to be loaned out by the bankers for their own private profit. Still worse, however, is the fact that it gives the bankers practically complete control of the amount of money that shall be in circulation. Not one dollar of these Federal Reserve notes gets into circulation without being borrowed into circulation and without someone paying interest to some bank to keep it circulating. Our present money system is a debt money system. Before a dollar can circulate, a debt must be created. Such a system assumes that you can borrow yourself out of debt."

Willis A. Overholser, A short review and analysis of the history of money in the United States, with an introduction to the current money problem (1936), p. 56

Tags for this video have been changed from 'history, conspiracy, 911' to 'history, conspiracy, 911, zionism, jews, protocols of zion' - edited by EndAll

The extreme security measures at the border crossings, including those of ambulances and clearly sick patients are the result of incidents such as this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akuv_TFIoOY

This other incident involves a woman who has received treatment several times in Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva, and on her last visit, however, she was recruited by one of the terrorist organizations, and was set up with explosive pants, to try and kill the very people who helped her in the hospital. Not soldiers, mind you. She was headed to kill her doctors, and any patient in the hospital unlucky enough to be caught in the blast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ONpV3kQDMw

Asking people to make that impossible choice is wrong, but as I see it, that's the only reason travel to Israeli hospitals is still an option for people in Gaza, given the fact that Hamas, the Jihad and other organizations have no qualms about using even pregnant women to conceal weapons and explosives.

This story is far from being the one-sided brutal oppression tale this article makes it out to be.

Also, I won't edit your tags, but tagging this "Zionism" is as meaningless as adding it to the Islam channel.