Israel and the nightmare of occupation

[Violet_Crumble]

A new chance has arisen to end the obscene and futile violence between Israelis and Palestinians, writes Robert Manne.

On occasion I am asked by people who read my column why I never write about the problem of Israel and the Palestinians. Sometimes the question is raised simply out of curiosity. Sometimes it has an aggressive edge. If I am willing to write about the impact of British settlement on the Australian Aborigines, why do I remain silent about the impact of Jewish settlement on the Palestinians?

Part of the answer to this question is banal. I am not a specialist in the politics of the Middle East. Part of the answer is, however, complex. For a long time I have found the question of Israel and the Palestinians an unusually troubling one. As a post-Holocaust Jew I feel the tug of loyalty to my people. Yet precisely because of what the Jews have experienced at the hands of other people, the brutish behaviour of the Israeli state towards the Palestinians in recent years has seemed to me particularly shameful. The certainties of Jewish nationalists such as Norman Podhoretz and of anti-Israeli Jews like Noam Chomsky are equally alien to me.

My general attitude to the question of Israel and the Palestinians is most easily explained autobiographically. The explanation must begin with the fact that I am not now, nor have ever been, a Zionist. Zionists believe that because of the inevitability of anti-Semitism, for Jews to become safe they need a national home. This seems to me simply wrong. Since the end of World War II, the place of Jews in all Western societies has been largely unproblematic.

Yet although I am not a Zionist, I have been throughout my life a supporter of the idea of Israel. In the 19th century the Zionist case seemed plausible. As a consequence of the Holocaust it seemed to very many people self-evidently true. In 1947 the international community decided to establish a Jewish state in a part of the British mandatory territory, Palestine. That decision seems to me to have been both just and, as important, irrevocable.

Partly as a consequence of Arab military opposition to the creation of Israel and partly because of the calculated policy of the Jewish leadership, the 700,000 Palestinian Arabs who fled or were driven from their ancestral homes suffered grievously as a result. To the Palestinian question - why should we have been asked to pay the price for the Jewish tragedy in Europe? - I have never heard, or believed there to be, a morally adequate reply.

Robert Manne is professor of politics at La Trobe University

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Robert-Manne/Israel-and-the-nightmare-of-occupation/2004/12/05/1102182152001.html

[bemildred]

1. Nice piece Violet. nt

[newyorican]

2. Dare I say...

Someone who finally gets it...

(apologies for the bite)

[pelsar]

3. morality...1940's style.....

To the Palestinian question - why should we have been asked to pay the price for the Jewish tragedy in Europe? - I have never heard, or believed there to be, a morally adequate reply.

in a just world....there wouldnt be a moral answer and in fact there really isnt one. The world wasnt/isnt very fair to the jews, when the romans came and threw them out and took their land, nor the cossaks, etc etc etc.

The world of the 19th century wasnt fair to many people...the the jews, like the gypsies, the poles etc in fact (if you want to be cynicle you can turn around the question and ask why should the palestenains not suffer as every one else has-just kidding...)

why should the palestenians pay for all that?...in a perfect world they shouldnt, but life isnt fair.

they happen to be sitting on land that many thousands of years ago belonged to someone else....i believe first lesson we learn as kids is that life isnt fair and the smart learn to accept it and do the best they can.....


btw the author was one of the lucky few that austrialia took in, as after WWII they had immigration limits on jews, as did most of the countries in the world....

I wonder what his suggestion would be to the other thousands of jews who couldnt get exit visas and were stuck years after WWII in DP camps?...thats the otherside of the moral question..

[Violet_Crumble]

4. Morality and immigration...

they happen to be sitting on land that many thousands of years ago belonged to someone else....i believe first lesson we learn as kids is that life isnt fair and the smart learn to accept it and do the best they can.....

I haven't much looked into the ancient history of the region, so I may be wrong on this, but didn't Jewish rule of ancient Palestine only last for a very short period of time? So my question is who was there before them? I mean, it's not like we're going back to the dawn of time like we can with indigenous Australians. Surely in that part of the world, people lived there prior to that period 2000 years ago when there was that period of Jewish rule. I'm not much into the 'but we were here before them!' arguments I see about Jews and Arabs, because I don't think one group has any greater claim than the other based on those sort of arguments. What I care about is what happened in the twentieth century, after the United Nations was formed to try to make the world a better place. There has to be a resolution of the refugee issue that doesn't involve any more dispossession of either people and which on the Israeli side of things, involves a recognition that the Palestinians were displaced in the creation of Israel. Once Israel gets over the belief that acknowledgement of wrongdoing in the past doesn't affect the legitimacy of Israel, under the right leadership (and Sharon and his cronies aren't it) that sort of reconciliation won't be too hard to achieve. On accepting it and doing the best they can when it comes to the Palestinians, I no more accept that than I'd accept it for indigenous Australians. The onus shouldn't be on either group to accept and do the best they can. The main onus is on us to make sure that our respective governments do everything they can to redress their very legitimate grievances without causing any further suffering to anyone...

btw the author was one of the lucky few that austrialia took in, as after WWII they had immigration limits on jews, as did most of the countries in the world....

Now we're in an area I do know some stuff about, and if there was an immigration limit on Jews, then I've never come across it. Jews were never specifically singled out in immigration policy, which went through three stages. From 1901 to WWII, only British immigrants were welcome. After WWII the influx of British immigrants dried up a bit, and immigrants from northern Europe became acceptable if they looked 'white' enough. And after the canning of the White Australia policy, the last wave of immigration came from Asia. How this affected Jewish immigrants was that they were quite welcome if they were British (that's why my great-grandfather managed to find his way here), and after WWII, if they were from southern Europe they weren't welcome. So it depended a lot more on where Jews were living than whether they were Jewish. And something many people aren't aware of, but there's been a Jewish community in Australia since European settlement as some of the convicts on the First Fleet were Jewish...

Violet...

[pelsar]

5. Violet... a lot to read.....

the history of the peoples and their land..I understand that you have chosen the time of the UN to define who has what rights to each land. We can just as easy go back to the league of nations. or perhaps to the american civil war, or perhaps the crusades. You have chosen to draw the line in the sand with UN. Ok, I understand that it has to be drawn somewhere, otherwise all the indigenous peoples will then have the right to destroy the modern country they now reside in.

And in principle i agree with you, not because morality suddenly started in with the birth of the UN, but simply because we have make a decision.

that said, I put forth that the jews are a special case....dont ask me why, cause I really dont know why. The persecution of jews of past simply for being born jewish hasnt even gone away today. (Egypt playing the elders of zion on TV, the ex pm of malasiaya speach, the portrayal of jews in the saudi press).

Before WWII zionism was basically a failure so the thesis of indigenous people perhaps could have applied to them as well. The assimilated jews of europe/america put up with the jew quotes, even when they didnt feel jewish. WWII showed them it wasnt just quotas...... that was the driving force of the immigration to israel. And that is really the crucial point when looking at the israeli/arab wars.

Its not out of any moral superiority or "god gave us this land" etc. Its simply that its better to live free of persecution and fight for it than do what our relatives did with the cossacks, germans, jew quotas in harvard, and oxford. After WWII, being forced to accept their jewishness...led the survivors and others to look at their history and accept the identity, thats what led them to palsetine and israel, nothing more than a forced upon identity.

that was the mentality involved. today its engrained, via education, culture, patriotism and militarism.....however with that came a new found idea, that we dont have to accept, with no exceptions, the idea that we are less than human. As long as that continues, I believe we have to fight. For those who say, there are other ways, I ask which ones didnt we try yet? Anti semetism remains, and I have no idea why.

Now reality states that we have to negotiate with those who call us such things, as distasteful and incomprehensible it is for me...such is reality, so we do it. However, we are not trusting, I believe we have every right NOT to be too trusting. It is up to those who demonize us, to show us that they have changed.

(yes the palestenians have many grievances against us, and I believe that once a trusting peace is established those grievances will be addressed...but not before.)

But i have moved from my point.....The jews who immigrated to Australia after WWII. I suspect that you know far more than I do, so feel free to correct what I have found:

In August 1945 Australia’s Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, instituted a Close Relatives Reunion Scheme. This scheme made Holocaust survivors with family already in Australia eligible for immigration, but had a quota of 2000 immigrants for the first year and then 3000. This was still far lower than the pre-war quota of 5000 per year. Some survivors were accepted into Australia on the basis of their work skills. Nevertheless, proportional to population size, only Israel accepted more Holocaust survivors than Australia.

______________________________________
The US also had quotas for the displace persons and Jews but finally in 1950 (5 years after the war ended!) removed the anti-semetic restrictions: So the final numbers are:

80,000 Jewish DPs in the United States, about
136,000 in Israel
20,000 in other nations, including Canada and South Africa,

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?ModuleId=10005462


the point being that even for those jews who even after the Holacust, still werent willing to fight to live in freedom (and consequently kill), still had quotas on where they could live.

For some (the author of the original article) that was acceptable, for others it wasnt and remains not acceptable-that mentality still exists amongst us, not because we are living in the past, just a quick look around and you have to wonder if anything has even changed.

[Darranar]

6. "Life isn't fair" is not a very good justification...

it's more of an analysis, really, and while it is accurate it still doesn't justify injustice.

Your argument lies on the assumption that Zionism is the only way, or the only workable way, to escape anti-semitism. This can be questioned. Anti-semitism is, on the long-term, decreasing, and this seems to have little to do with Israel at all. If anything, Israeli policy is impeding this. Because of propaganda equating Jews with Israel from both anti-semites and defenders of Israel, many people tend to associate one with the other, and as a result anger at Israeli policy can transform into hatred of Jews. The United States is at least as safe, perhaps even safer, for Jews than Israel, and Jewish organizations are powerful enough here to stop anti-semitic government policy.

Right now, there is a state that at least claims to be Jewish - one internationally isolated and condemned, hated by its many victims, in danger from members of the population it oppresses and occupies. Not quite the mark of success.

[pelsar]

7. life isnt fair.....not a justification

i'm not (or didnt intend to) claim that it justifes...but that its reality. making a choice between to bad options.

is israel a success story?...it depends what day of the week it is, on one hand it probably one of the few states that having started from nothing has managed to make a modern society complete with progressive civil right laws, intl level universities with a very hi-tech society and all the problems that go with it...all the while fighting an ongoing war.

or you can see how the religious have a stranglehold on the politics here and subsently force us into impossible situations (thanks god for you help!)....and see how backward we are.

but whether israel is causing anti semetism...or anti semetism has found a legitimate outlet via israel is a question that really cannot be answered.

but you know....that still no excuse for anti-semitism. I do believe when Egyptian TV shows elders of zion...they know its antisemetic and not anti israel, when the ex PM of malaysia goes into a diatrab of who jews control.....he too can differentiate between jews and israel, etc.

so I would say that the line is being intentionally blurred by both israel supporters and as well as the antisemites.....