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A dog's breakfast
As a fourth rocket threatens the new truce between Israel and Hamas, Scott Dunmore's delving into the problems is timely. Scott's last piece for Webdiary was "Trying to understand."
A Dog's Breakfast
-by Scott Dunmore
I’ve covered a lot of ground since first starting to redress my lack of knowledge on the circumstances that have lead to the current situation in Israel/Palestine. Wandered many a time to some strange places, as one does and became acquainted with events of which I could have happily remained ignorant. Such is the strangeness of this new reality I thought it might serve some purpose to communicate it.
From the outset UN Resolution 181 was, unless carefully managed and controlled by force of arms, ever going to lead the bloodbath that eventuated.
The British, from bitter experience of their mandate, knew it to be unworkable and abstained from voting for it. Rather like the self destructing record of the old TV series “Mission Impossible”, it was dead the moment it came into force.
Apologists for the Israelis cite the fact that while the Jews accepted the resolution, the Arabs rejected it but this is hardly surprising. The Jews had nothing to lose, the Arabs a considerable amount.
Arab rejection was...based on the fact that, while the population of the Jewish state was to be [only half] Jewish with the Jews owning less than 10% of the Jewish state land area, the Jews were to be established as the ruling body - a settlement which no self-respecting people would accept without protest, to say the least...The action of the United Nations conflicted with the basic principles for which the world organization was established, namely, to uphold the right of all peoples to self-determination. By denying the Palestine Arabs, who formed the two-thirds majority of the country, the right to decide for themselves, the United Nations had violated its own charter. -Samipeople Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Further, that the Jews accepted the resolution in good faith is called into serious question.
"While the Yishuv's leadership formally accepted the 1947 Partition Resolution, large sections of Israel's society - including...Ben-Gurion - were opposed to or extremely unhappy with partition and from early on viewed the war as an ideal opportunity to expand the new state's borders beyond the UN earmarked partition boundaries and at the expense of the Palestinians." -Israeli historian, Benny Morris, in "Tikkun", March/April 1998.
"In internal discussion in 1938 [David Ben-Gurion] stated that 'after we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand into the whole of Palestine'...In 1948, Menachem Begin declared that: 'The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It will never be recognized. The signature of institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel (the land of Israel) will be restored to the people of Israel, All of it. And forever." -Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
Other statements by senior members of the Israeli administration include “Why should we feel obliged to observe the terms of the resolution when the Arabs don’t?" and the pithy “The Palestinians already have a country, it’s called Jordan.” (Trust me on this, at least as far as I trust my memory.)
To this end the Jews were totally ruthless, even going to the extent of assassinating the UN envoy Count Folke Bernadotte. While several were arrested after the crime none were brought to trial.
“Count Bernadotte endeavoured to save Jews to the best of his ability, but in the end he was assassinated by Jews in the land of Israel. When you think about Bernadotte's projects involving finding refuge for the Jews of Denmark, sending 70,000 food packages to Jews in the camps and arranging convoys of white buses that took people out of the camps to Sweden; when you think about his efforts to mediate between the Israelis and the Palestinians and about how he succeeded in achieving a truce for one month in the War of Independence and suggested plans for peace that both sides rejected; and when you think about how he was assassinated, together with his French aide as a result of his aim to bring about peace in the land of Israel - it is impossible not to be disgusted and not to see how little has changed since then. Bernadotte, a man who was among the most worthy of the title "Righteous Gentile," was murdered - just like former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin - by the concept that peace is unthinkable...”
This leads me to the conclusion that for the Israeli body politic, peace will only be agreed when they have extended the border of Israel to the bank of the Jordan and in my estimation, the opposite bank. More disturbingly, John McCain, potentially the next president of the USA has endorsed the idea.
What then of the Palestinians?
This serves the purpose as well as anything else. Stripped of its’ Scottish nationalism and contemptuous dismissal of the Palestinians we are left with a salient point.
If even the most devoted supporters of Palestinian nationalism were asked to identify a famous representative of that nationality who had gained notoriety prior, say, to 1950, who could they name?
If a people who claim that their origins stretch back into “the mists of time” can’t identify a single famous figure as one of their own – no, not one -- what does it say about the authenticity of their historic nationality?
The absence of any notable figures in the arts and sciences, religion or politics, who were known to history as “Palestinian” isn’t just a reflection of the fact that the Arab villages like Al Quds (Jerusalem), Hebron and Yaffo represented under-populated, destitute backwaters in the larger (and culturally dynamic) Arab world. It’s also an indication that the people who grew up in those dusty settlements in the ancient Holy Land of the Bible never identified themselves as “Palestinian.” They were content to see themselves as Arabs, part of larger Islamic empires like those of the Caliphate, the Mamluks, and the Ottoman Sultanate. The ethnic identity “Palestinian” didn’t exist – and the term “Southern Syrians” continued to characterize the inhabitants of the Holy Land up through the early twentieth century.
In terms of identifying famous (or notorious) Palestinians through the long march of recorded time, the one name that inevitably emerges is the late Yasser Arafat—despite the fact that he was born and raised in Egypt and educated in Kuwait, and his “Palestinian roots” have always looked questionable. Serious challenges as to his origins also surround the late Edward Said, an Arab-American scholar who spent nearly all his life in New York City but chose to identify as a Palestinian.But both of these famous figures achieved their notoriety, and sought to label themselves as “Palestinian” after the deliberate creation of the synthetic Palestinian identity, confirmed with the official launch of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1965. Prior to that time, the leaders of the populous, local Arab communities in Gaza and the West Bank (which had been annexed by Egypt and Jordan, respectively, in 1949) made few demands of their Arab overlords for a separate state to express their distinctive national aspirations. The insistence on an independent Palestinian Arab state (offered explicitly as part of the UN Partition in 1947, but peremptorily turned down by all Arab leaders) only became a fixation on the world scene after Israel’s victory in 1967 gave the Jewish State control of the Arab communities in the West Bank and Gaza.
During the first Arab-Israeli war, even as hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees fled from their homes to escape the raging conflict, these “Palestinians” hardly viewed an independent state and an expression of local nationalism as a necessary element in solving their problems. In the summer of 1948, after Israel’s declaration of Independence, the UN dispatched the Swedish nobleman Count Folke Bernadotte to the region to try to negotiate a truce. During his visit, he wrote in his diary: “The Palestinian Arabs had at the present no will of their own. Neither have they ever developed any specifically Palestinian nationalism. The demand for a separate Arab state in Palestine is consequently relatively weak. It would seem as though in existing circumstances most of the Palestinian Arabs would be quite content to be incorporated in Transjordan.”
In dismissing the Palestinians claim to a homeland the author fails to recognise that they had been in Palestine a lot longer than the mentioned Robbie Burns’ people, one of the many Viking tribes that settled in the Lowlands a few hundred years after the Palestinians filled the vacuum of the Diaspora.
This doesn’t leave out the question of whether a Palestinian state is either viable or desirable but regardless, the rights of the Palestinians in a land they have occupied for a period longer than the Jews before them, (allowing for the fact that there was a continuous Jewish presence in the area,) should be protected from further erosion.
In conclusion, it seems sensible to me to return to the situation that existed before the ’67 war with Egypt incorporating Gaza and similarly, Jordan the West Bank. At least that way the Israelis could not continue surreptitiously, to expand their border displacing more people and straining the pitifully low refugee resources.
This of course, would meet with stiff opposition, not only from the Israelis but both Hamas and the PLO; nobody relinquishes power easily.
All this will seem small beer in the face of the real “Holocaust” that is already unfolding and the ability of our civilisation to cope with it is dependent on a spirit of cooperation that transcends racialism and nationalism. I know where I’d put my money but wouldn’t be able to spend my winnings.
With any luck I will have offended nobody or everybody; that way I know I’ve done my job.
None of the above is a tenet of faith, merely my musings and if other evidence is tendered that can convince me otherwise, I’ll accept it.
I have quoted from three reference sources for no other reason than they suited my purpose; I have spent no little time putting this together and all the material presented is backed up by other sources.
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Samir Kuntar - Alive and kicking
Just in case you missed it, this one of the men Israel just swapped for the corpses of the murdered IDF servicemen.
Scott, long or short? Or maybe medium sized in the spirit of compromise and reconciliation.
I missed it
and I'm not going to look for it now Geoff. The last thing I need is more brutality and mayhem. Maybe you missed my post; every chance looking at the timing of the two.
Eldad Regev and Udi Goldwasser are coming home
Captured alive inside Israel and then murdered in cold blood.
Scott, have you decided on the long or short version yet? Please let me know.
The short version will do
And Geoff, if I am intractable why have I said that I'm in support of the country of Israel, (within the borders defined by the UN,) but not the behaviour of many of its citizens?
I've always said there are two kinds of people in the world, gentle folk and mongrel bastards. No race or nationality, no religion or persuasion.
Outcome comeback
Scott: "You haven't got back to me about your preferred outcome to the Israel/Palestine situation. Last chance."
And previously;
"What troubles me is that while you are critical of others’ stated positions; I can’t recall you ever stating your position as to a preferred outcome of the Middle East conflict. What would you like to see and why? Do you have the courage of your convictions? "
In fact, Scott, I have stated my position on this here many times. And I most certainly have the courage of my convictions. I will say it again. I could give you the long version or the short version. In my experience few here bother much to read either. They prefer the words they put in my mouth to the ones I use.
Just like someone here claimed a while ago that the secular, mostly left wing, Zionists who fought for and founded Israel were motivated or based their claims on the "Books of David" or "Moses", or some such rot. Can you imagine it? They were mostly agnostics and atheists for chrissake.
Sooner or later one gets bored with debating this ignorance.
Anyway, Scott, what's it to be? The long version or the short version?
In the meantime, here's an excellent recent article from the Australian that explains better than I can why the the "Israel/Palestine" dispute is so "intractable". It's simple really. The thugs and murder gangs that control one side don't want peace. They never have. What the people they rule want is not to the point.
Open your mind to this fact, Scott. No glib or smartarse retorts. How intractable are you?
Tom Lehrer Again
I agree this is full-on racism on show. Some of those comments are bloody appalling. It's frightening how many people trawl the Israeli left/liberal media in an ongoing effort to pick out some obscure oddball item which they can then warp into something with which they can bash Israel and Jews. It never ceases to disgust me.
Anyway that's not why I came here. It was to share this Tom Lehrer song about nuclear proliferation that I haven't heard for years,from about 1965, I think. Found it while looking through stuff on another thread but it is more apppropriate here.
Common denominator
In truth Geoff I'd just about given up on you as being intractable. Nevertheless there's something about you I like; after all we've had a laugh together.
"bash Israel and Jews."
Can I gently suggest that "Jewishness" is more of an issue in your mind than that of the collective mind of most Australians at least?
With regard to Israel, do you consider it to be beyond criticism?
You haven't got back to me about your preferred outcome to the Israel/Palestine situation.
Last chance.
BTW, I've long shared your appreciation of Tom Lehrer.
We Will All Go Together When We Go
I first was introduced to Tom Lehrer by Professor Toby Miller of ANU in 1976.
Either the year before last or sometime, I came across a complete compilation of Lehrer's works at J&B Records. It purports to contain everything and comes with a booklet with the usual inaccurate but funny bio, the lyrics etc. It is in a boxed set with 3 CDs.
Great stuff and perfect for staying awake on long trips in the car. Published by Warrner Bros in 2000 it is authorised by the author. Highly recommended.
Speaking of bigotry
video here
God Bless the Racism.
A double entendre? But then, is it racism, Mark?
Mark Ross: "The program enjoys the support of the municipality and local police, and is headed by the Cape York welfare representative, who goes to schools to warn girls of the "exploitative whites."
And you end by saying "God bless the racism."
A most interesting ambiguity. Was it deliberate on your part?
Whatever your intended meaning, and whatever the Almighty's disposition to bless or not, racism is only present when one race or ethnic group is presented by virtue of that fact (of genetics) to be inherently superior to another. This makes it still possible to have two genetically distinct human populations living in close proximity, and for individuals in one of those populations to display, with a high frequency, exploitative and/or manipulative behaviours toward individuals of the other. One population does not have to be white and the other non-white for this to happen. I could give examples.
Warning adolescent Aboriginal girls about white male sexual opportunism and predatory behaviour that goes back in history to the earliest years of white settlement is not racism.
It's realism, and there should be more of it.
Perhaps you agree?
Very Deliberate
Follow the link.
There are limits ...
Ian : "Though the armies of Joshua did their best to exterminate them, the Philistines survived. "
An over-reaction, I grant you. But there would have been provocation. Probably the bastards left their mobile phones on in the House right at the start of the crescendo. Or applauded between movements.
Scott: Oh my God! Have I been doing it wrong all this time?
Ah yes, of course!
Geoff, come to think of it, that probably explains why there was all that hissing from near and far when I crackled my bag of chips during Che Gelida Manina.
That's what I meant, yes. Thanks for picking that up.
Fiona: "I note that the kindly moderator then on duty made a further amendment, altering "exit" to "exist". Would you like to confirm that that's what you really meant?"
That's what I meant, yes. Thanks for picking that up.
Fiona: On behalf of my fellow moderator, it was a pleasure.
The Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea as Palaestina in 132AD
Fiona Reynolds: "Eliot Ramsey, which Roman emperor renamed Judea? Or did he rename Palestine?"
The Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea as Palaestina in 132AD, and also renamed Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina.
Later, his most beautiful, favored boyfriend died in a swimming accident in the Nile while they were on holiday in Egypt.
Karmic, wasn't it? Nothing much changes there.
One of the few things history knows about Pontius Pilate, for example, was that in an attempt to quell an uprising by a local mountain tribe, he gave the job to a company of Judean auxilliary troops from another tribe rather than to a Roman legion on the grounds, it seems, that the auxiliaries would have better local knowledge.
They did. The two tribes hated each other, and the result was a general massacre of hapless hill tribe civilians.
Pilate was "intervened" for his trouble over that incide, a sort of first century My Lai, but on the way home to Rome the then Emperor, Tiberius, died of natural causes, so Pilate got off the hook.
Imagine his relief on disembarking in Rome. Wooooo-hooo!
They only went there for the oil, anyway. Well, olive oil perhaps.
Fiona: Thank you for your clarification, Eliot, and for your (not for publication) post correcting the erratum in your final sentence thus:
"Certainly, there were not Muslims there because they didn't exit then."
I note that the kindly moderator then on duty made a further amendment, altering "exit" to "exist". Would you like to confirm that that's what you really meant?
negativity, armenian style
Fiona's clarification of Eliot:
No, Fiona; you are wrong: he means "exit" all right- out of the plumb bits the Israelis keep for themselves and into the Negev Desert, a la Baruch Goldstein or Deir Yassin
Conciliation
Geoff, a few posts back I asked you a direct question and you gave me an unequivocal answer which gave me reason to believe we have some common ground.
Sure, I get the hump at times and wish I had the measured tones of Roger Fedyk and Ian but that’s not me. Still, at heart I am a gentle creature and ever regret my, at times, intemperance. I do not regret my blog however, it was researched and considered and I consulted Fiona before putting it up.
“We now have an illustration of why I am reluctant to comment. It is because it is so difficult to talk sense with the average "considered and well-reasoned" poster. It is extraordinary how loudly they sing from the same hymn book. They are nothing if not predictable. As sure as night follows day there will be the preemptive offensive denial. It's a classic. The critic of Israel will complain they are being charged with antisemitism for merely "opposing Israel's policies" or "supporting Palestinians."
I too am a critic of Israel but Israel is no different to any other country in that regard when it comes down to foreign (and loosely described domestic) policy. I am as equally critical of my native and adopted countries.
What troubles me is that while you are critical of others’ stated positions; I can’t recall you ever stating your position as to a preferred outcome of the Middle East conflict.
What would you like to see and why? Do you have the courage of your convictions?
This isn’t a challenge; I’d just like to get to know you better. Trust me on this.
(Aside, bin watchin football ‘an’ I? Bleedin’ Manly supporters, cheeky sods, there ‘e woz, maroon ‘n’ white banner wiv “No one likes us and we don’t care.” Fink I might go darn their way next ‘ome game 'n' stick on a stoush. That’s Millwall's mo*o.)
*, the cockney glotal stop.
Who?
Eliot Ramsey, which Roman emperor renamed Judea? Or did he rename Palestine? I can't find any mention of either event in your most authoritative link and am somewhat confused.
These are the reasons, Scott
"I have done my best to refrain from commenting on this thread, for a number of reasons. But... well... what can I say?"
"I wouldn't mind knowing those reasons." Scott Dunmore
At the time I left your plea unanswered. We now have an illustration of why I am reluctant to comment . It is because it is so difficult to talk sense with the average "considered and well-reasoned" poster. It is extraordinary how loudly they sing from the same hymn book. They are nothing if not predictable. As sure as night follows day there will be the preemptive offensive denial. It's a classic . The critic of Israel will complain they are being charged with antisemitism for merely "opposing Israel's policies" or "supporting Palestinians." Something like this is sure to be said.:
"As I read it, your response to my ...post ... implies that anyone who does not accept the Zionist argument (in whatever variety) is ipso facto antimsemitic."
If that's not enough, and with incredible unconscience irony, any supporter of Israel, sooner or later, will be snidely or openly accused of racism or supporting genocide. As you can see here with the Untermensch reference.
It always happens. Not sometimes or most times. Always.
Much of what Ian has written is simply factually incorrect, sometimes comically so. That's fine. But why the determination to stay so fixed? The Romans picked up an Arabic word for Palestine from the Palestinians or Philistines or whoever centuries before that language was first spoken? Yeah right.
All that stuff about Khazars and bloodlines and race? As if any of us are purebloods? Do the modern Palestinians have some Philistine ancestry? Very likely. But probably so do the rest of us. It is likely the Palestinians have some Jewish ancestry. And vice versa. It is pretty well certain that all Europeans have some Jewish ancestry.
Regrettably even the Scots.
But what has this to do with nationhood, national or cultural identification?
There is a good deal more that needs saying on these topics. That will have to wait until later in the day.
Yeah, wrong Geoff.
Geoff: "Much of what Ian has written is simply factually incorrect, sometimes comically so. That's fine. But why the determination to stay so fixed? The Romans picked up an Arabic word for Palestine from the Palestinians or Philistines or whoever centuries before that language was first spoken? Yeah right."
No Geoff, it's yeah wrong. There is no need for one to invoke an idea that the Romans, who spoke a language of conquerors, got a word from a language which only came to dominance in the region at a later time. It is after all, possible for one word to be carried through several languages seriatum, particularly when it is a place-name. For example, 'Londinium' has morphed into 'London'. No significant number of people since the Romans; not native-born Anglo-Saxons, nor invading Danes, Normans, American tourists or others has seen any good reason to change it, and many good reasons for not so doing.
Nothing in what you have written refutes my argument, and the generally accepted view, that 'Palestine' derives from 'Philistine'. Though the armies of Joshua did their best to exterminate them, the Philistines survived. They were not the last people in history, note, to survive an extermination campaign.
As for untermensch, I am definitely not the first to point to the tragic similarity between the treatment of the native Palestinians by the Zionists and the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis. (And no, I am not saying that the Zionists ran extermination camps.)
But I would be very much obliged if you could be a bit more specific as to where I am 'factually incorrect', and about my excursion into comedy. What, specifically is so funny? I enjoy a good laugh too, you know. Please don't keep me in suspense, and allow for the possibility that I am so thick between the ears, and so blind to my own howlers, that I can't see one when it is staring me in the face.
A brand-new language?
Geoff Pahoff, I look forward to your "later in the day".
I hope you will elaborate on your centuries before that language [Arabic] was first spoken.
I can understand how languages evolve, and how they can die out and become forgotten, but this is the first time I have heard of a language springing into being in some century or other. Aside, of course, from Esperanto and the like. Care to explain?
Warrant for genocide
Ian MacDougall: "As for the Hamas Charter, it is as far as I see by skimming through it, simply an Islamist call to arms, with little substance but much religious drum beating."
Well, it's more than that. It actually calls for the destruction of Israel and specifically calls on Muslims everywhere to kill Jews wherever they can find them.
Article Seven of the Charter says:
It's a call to genocide in terms more explicit than anything ever contained in Mein Kampf, for example.
That's why Hamas apologists in the West are always so keen to stifle any discussion about the Charter, and some even pretend it has been 'disavowed' or 'abandoned' by Hamas when confronted.
But it's still there.
"The Arabic word Felastin has been used by generations of people residing in the area as their name for the place."
Were there any Arabs in Palestina when the Roman Emperor renamed Judea? I don't think so. Certainly, there were Muslims there because they didn't exist then.
Gob smacked
"I was arguing against Michael Medved's proposition that the Palestinians have no great literature, no independent culture worth speaking of, and above all, no independent history. His diatribe is an invitation to regard them as untermensch. The Wikipedia article gives the lie to that, too."
"The descendants of the Philistines did not just disappear from the Earth. They are pretty well all speakers of modern Arabic..."
"The Arabic word Felastin has been used by generations of people residing in the area as their name for the place. The Romans picked up the name the way the British picked up Parramatta. Again, the 'particular connection' is only important if one is bent on using the Books of Moses as some sort of land title."
"Whatever the arguments for and against, if Koestler was right, then many an individual Jewish claim of ancestral and God-given right to live in Palestine, tenuous as it was, fell completely to pieces."
"Because it is such a short step from saying that people have no history, to saying they have no connection to the country, and hence no rights. The Jewish people who migrated from Europe to Palestine after WW2, displacing the native-born Palestinians in the process, rested their claim to the land on the Books of Moses, and have always asserted that their right to it trumps that of the Palestinians."
Ian, surely you don't actually believe any of this stuff? This is some kind of a wind-up, right?
Because if you do, why would you bother reading either Medved or Koestler? Everything you would need can be found in "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Or the "Hamas Charter."
Anti-Zionist = antisemitic?
Geoff: "Ian, surely you don't actually believe any of this stuff? This is some kind of a wind-up, right? Because if you do, why would you bother reading either Medved or Koestler? Everytihng you would need can be found in 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' Or the 'Hamas Charter.'"
An interesting dismissal. If I actually do believe 'this stuff', my reading and documentation need go no further than the two works you mention, (neither of which I had ever read before now) and one of which is generally accepted by historians to have been concocted not by 'the Elders of Zion', but by the Tsarist police. And I still haven't read that.
As for the Hamas Charter, it is as far as I see by skimming through it, simply an Islamist call to arms, with little substance but much religious drum beating. I am more interested here in documentation on the history of Palestine.
As I read it, your response to my considered and well-reasoned post (and on that I call upon Paul Walter for a second opinion) implies that anyone who does not accept the Zionist argument (in whatever variety) is ipso facto antimsemitic.
If that is your case, then there can be no more basis for dialogue on this thread than there is in modern Palestine.
So noted, Geoff. Noted.
What would you have done?
I have done my best to refrain from commenting on this thread, for a number of reasons. But... well... what can I say? Where do you start, for a start? I shall be brief.
Scott, I mean you no disrespect. Indeed it is very much to your credit that you have made such an effort to research this issue. A lot of people around here make no effort at all before pounding the keyboard with self-righteous opinion and passion. Keep on researching if you are sincerely interested in getting somewhere near the truth or even just having a worthwhile debate. No doubt I will be accused of patronising you, but in the meantime it would be best if you did not give up the day job.
Ian: "The man is such a philistine, he has never heard of the Philistines, from which name the modern word 'Palestine' derives. '
In fact "Palestine" is not a modern word. It dates back to the Roman conquest. There is not a shred of evidence that there is any particular connection between the ancient Philistines and the modern Palestinians, or any other Arabs for that matter. Indeed, prior to about 1947 any reference to the "Palestinians" was most likely a reference to the Jews of Palestine (who also of course had no link to the ancient Philistines)
Ain't words wonderful? Sooner or later they stop describing or naming things and people and become things and people themselves.
"With hindsight, we can say that setting up Israel was a great mistake, leaving a legacy of bitterness and hatred amongst the colonised people that will last probably as long as the 'troubles' in Ireland, which began in Cromwell's day.'
Very much a matter of opinion of course, and an astonishingly weak one at that, in my opinion. But, Ian, a question if I may.
What would you have done instead?
Reunify the Palestine Mandate by handing the whole of what remained of Palestine to Jordan (where Jews were, and still are, forbidden by law to live)? Egypt perhaps? Syria? Or perhaps to this charmer who was after all the leader of the Arabs in Palestine at the time?
Continue the British policy of barring Jewish refugees from Palestine? Lock them up to rot in concentration camps in Cyprus? Expel the ancient Jewish communities of Palestine? Throw them into the sea as the Grand Mufti demanded? Attempt to disarm the Yishuv? You and whose army?
Start a war? Or just leave them to it?
Come on, Ian. You've bought into this issue. Think it through.
What would you have done?
What could have been done?
Geoff, my apologies for this late response.
"In fact 'Palestine' is not a modern word. It dates back to the Roman conquest. There is not a shred of evidence that there is any particular connection between the ancient Philistines and the modern Palestinians, or any other Arabs for that matter. Indeed, prior to about 1947 any reference to the 'Palestinians' was most likely a reference to the Jews of Palestine (who also of course had no link to the ancient Philistines)"
Etymologically, the word 'Palestine' derives from 'Philistine'. I offered my Wikipedia link in support of that. If it were a "modern word" my argument would I think, be diminished. But lest the whole thing get out of context, I was arguing against Michael Medved's proposition that the Palestinians have no great literature, no independent culture worth speaking of, and above all, no independent history. His diatribe is an invitation to regard them as untermensch. The Wikipedia article gives the lie to that, too.
The Arabic-speaking world "consists of 24 countries and territories with a combined population of some 325 million people spanning two continents." The same could be said for any of those people. The descendants of the Philistines did not just disappear from the Earth. They are pretty well all speakers of modern Arabic, for much the same reason that modern Irish and Scots are speakers of English.
Why does someone like Medved argue this way? Because it is such a short step from saying that people have no history, to saying they have no connection to the country, and hence no rights. The Jewish people who migrated from Europe to Palestine after WW2, displacing the native-born Palestinians in the process, rested their claim to the land on the Books of Moses, and have always asserted that their right to it trumps that of the Palestinians.
Palestine geographically is most unfortunately located at one of the world's most crucial junctions: where the routes connecting Europe, Africa and Asia converge. The ancestral line of the modern Palestinians thus had the misfortune to be incorporated into one empire after another, with the defeated Ottoman Empire being displaced as overlord by the British, under whose mandate the main postwar migration of Jews occurred.
Let's now have a closer look at your assertion that: "There is not a shred of evidence that there is any particular connection between the ancient Philistines and the modern Palestinians, or any other Arabs for that matter."
Only probability. The Arabic word Felastin has been used by generations of people residing in the area as their name for the place. The Romans picked up the name the way the British picked up Parramatta. Again, the 'particular connection' is only important if one is bent on using the Books of Moses as some sort of land title.
But there has been another challenge to ancestral connection, and this one, however well argued by its author, has been vigorously dismissed per se by Jewish friends and acquaintances of mine. It was advanced by the European Jewish author Arthur Koestler, in his book The Thirteenth Tribe, which book I am sure you will be familiar with.
Koestler advanced the argument in that book that the great majority of people of Eastern European origin who identify themselves as Jews are descendants of Khazar converts to Judaism, and are not of Hebrew origin. Naturally, his book was hotly contested by many Jewish scholars. Whatever the arguments for and against, if Koestler was right, then many an individual Jewish claim of ancestral and God-given right to live in Palestine, tenuous as it was, fell completely to pieces.
My 'weak' claim that the bitterness in Palestine caused by the manner of the Jewish occupation will last for centuries will not be proved right or wrong in my lifetime. But in my perception, it is getting steadily worse, not better. Time alone will tell.
What should have been done?
With 20/20 hindsight, justice was not done by making the Palestinians, a people who had nothing to do with the European Holocaust, pay for it with their homes and land. I think it would have been far more just if a suitably-sized Jewish homeland had been excised from Germany at the end of WW2, (say Bavaria, where the Nazi Party first got going). But of course, something like that would have wrecked the US' chances of setting up a pro-Western Federal Republic of Germany after the war.
Justice took second place to geopolitics.
Hassadim as Khazardim?
Excellent post from Ian MacDougall.
As I understand it from uni days, the term Felastin derives from the Peleset, a possibly Greek or Mycenaean sea-people who arrived circa 1200 BC, about the Canaan region, during the down fall of the late Bronze Age civilisations of the Mediterranean into a universal dark age, till about 700BC.
Hence Goliath, the Philistine, is depicted as an armed warrior sent forward for knightly one on one combat, after the pattern of the Mycenaean war tradition of the second millennium BC, ( much of the Homeric narrative is also based on spoken recollections by generations of bards, of legendary epics from an era involving Troy, the Iliad and Odyssey, Doric invasions and sea-people movements, which can be linked to the Bronze Age collapse of circa 1200BC..
The sting is in the tail
Allay your concern Geoff dear boy, I am above being patronised by anyone, (a sort of Caesar's wife).
Seriously though Geoff, we both know how we arrived at this point.
"I have done my best to refrain from commenting on this thread, for a number of reasons. But... well... what can I say?"
I wouldn't mind knowing those reasons.
A while back I opted out of WD for a considerable period, I was overcome by weldschmertz and it hasn't dissipated much two years on. I'm not going to argue but will take you to task on one point. Ian is not my whipping boy.
For every tale of horror commited by one side, there is another from the other side and from what I know of you I feel sure you'd agree that two wrongs don't make a right.
The real sting in my blog is in the tail, think about it.
Opus gargantua
Ian, it's going to take me a week to get through the information with which you have supplied.
"Israel is today the most democratic of Middle Eastern countries" , yes but only in the context you provided. That was the point I tried to make. It makes "democracy" meaningless when it only applies to a particular race. I realise that you acknowledge this.
The name given to the region "Palestine" by the Romans was a deliberate insult to the Jews and is indeed synonymous with Philistine. (One of the many things I discovered in my journey.)
Your mention of the "Sea Peoples" took me back. Velikovsky, "The Peoples of the Sea" but I'm wracking my brain now to recall his conclusion. (More research; good old Google.)
Much decried and proven to be away with the Pixies at times (physics wasn't his strong point), he was right on many occasions and taken seriously by Einstein who was in regular correspondence with him. Regardless, his scholarship could never be held in question.
I'm glad you bought in; gives me more to think about. I was quite content with the silence; it speaks volumes as they say.
(Yes, Medved is an idiot but what could you expect from a would be Jock?)
Polls of Arabs in Israel
Scott, aw shucks, 'twen't nothin'. I just got onto a Wikipedia article via Google and all those links pasted over to the comment box with it. I haven't tested any to see if they work.
An interesting article here by Adam LeBor, former Jerusalem correspondent for ''a major western news organisation."
"A recent poll reported in Haaretz showed that 77 per cent of Israeli Arabs would rather live in Israel than any other country. This encouraging news was accompanied by the statistic that 94 per cent of Arab citizens want Israel to be “a country in which Arab and Jewish citizens have mutual respect and equal opportunities”.
Likewise, an interesting series of comments for and against this assessment below the article.
The scholarship of Michael Medved
Scott, having just read the Michael Medved piece you linked to last, I can only marvel at the ignorance the man displays. Take the following:
The man is such a philistine, he has never heard of the Philistines, from which name the modern word 'Palestine' derives.
The Roman destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 ended independent Jewish government, which was only restored in AD1947. Through that 2,000 year period, the Jews had to survive culturally within empires and states where they could never hope to form a majority. Yet they survived, as the Philistines must have also survived.
It is a common theme in history, and not confined to the history of the Jews.
The Palestinians' misfortune
Scott, the Palestinians had the bad luck to be part of the defeated Ottoman Empire. In the manner of the day, their country became a chess piece, to be brought into play at the conclusion of the second phase of the Great Twentieth Century War.
With hindsight, we can say that setting up Israel was a great mistake, leaving a legacy of bitterness and hatred amongst the colonised people that will last probably as long as the 'troubles' in Ireland, which began in Cromwell's day.
Israel is today the most democratic of Middle Eastern countries, but this rests on keeping all the millions of Palestinian exiles out of all voting. The logic of the Zionist position demands continual purging of Arabs from Israel, so that they can never become a majority within that country.