Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Chief: How can we believe a man who would sell out his friends?
Siegfried: Dumkopf! Who else are you supposed to sell out? You can't betray enemies!

That sounds suspiciously like the type of joke a Jew would write...Bwaaahhhhhhhhh!!

Read these and tell me what we are all doing wrong.

Thanks for that Geoff. I suppose we can expect, in the short term, more of the same; in the long term, let's hope for better things dear friend.

In the meantime it would be better if the Maxwell Smarts of Mossad carried out their "business" with a little bit more finesse, and not scare the shit out of innocent by-standers, don't ya reckon?

Let's hope the Mossad Maxwells learn to be more like James, or even better, Mother Teresa, now who would ever suspect MT?

If violence worked for Israel then why won't violence work for Palestine?

Justin, I think the best way to respond to your point is to set out a few principles. Some of these are opinions - conclusions I have drawn. Others are just facts - there for all to see if they choose.

• Violence does work. So does terrorism. Sometimes. Other times it rebounds spectacularly on the perpetrator. Spain threw out a democratically elected government after Al Queda bombed a subway. Reagan pulled the marines out of Lebanon after Hezbollah launched a suicide attack, thereby ensuring the spread of this depraved crime all over the world . Saudi Arabia and other countries have been paying hundreds of millions to terrorists in bribes and extorted protection.  France, and much of the rest of Europe, have been cowering like cornered cockroaches in the face of Islamist violence. Newspapers all over the world refused to reprint some Danish cartoons out of sheer fear. You had to search the internet to see what the fuss was about. The foreign policy of numerous countries, including European democracies, is informed by the need to appease Islamist militants.
• I guess your question really is if violence, or terrorism, was alright for Israel, or the Zionists, then why not for the Palestinians? Indisputably the Irgun, and the even more radical but tiny Lehi, used terrorist tactics prior to 1939 and between 1945 and 1948.
• The short answer is this was not alright. That is also the long answer.
• These groups were not in the mainstream of Zionism. They were small splinter groups. In fact they had split from splinter groups and then split again.  Their significance has been vastly inflated over the years to suit the analysis of some modern commentators. It has even been claimed that the King David Hotel bombing was " the start of modern terrorism". The model that the PLO, Hamas, IJ et al followed. What total bullshit. Anyone who makes that claim is not worthy of a response. There is only so much bigoted pig ignorance I can tolerate. Sure they were responsible for a lot of violence. But they were hardly on their own. They were violent times. The killings were tiny in number compared to the killings by the Monster Mufti and his gangs. The Monster of Jerusalem killed many more Arabs than Irgun and Lehi combined.
• Irgun and Lehi were condemned by Histadrut, Haganah, the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organisation. To colour Zionism with the acts of Irgun is like colouring Irish democratic republicanism with the acts of the IRA. In fact worse. The IRA and its splinters and political fronts were far more influential within Irish republicanism than Irgun ever was within Zionism. 
• I do not accept that these terror tactics of Irgun "worked" in the sense that they finally forced the withdrawal of the British or had a role in the establishment of Israel. Some speech by some Colonel Blimp to the Royal Empire Society carries no weight for me. He might just as well claimed that the hanging of Irgun activists by the British, which led to the retribution by Irgun, got the Brits out.  Colonel Blimp wouldn't know what got him and his colleagues out of Palestine. He was based in Jerusalem. That action was going on in London, Washington and elsewhere. 
• The evacuation of the Brits from Palestine was a small part of a much wider process of decolonialisation. Of course the British public were thoroughly sick of war and reading about dead soldiers, by 1946. So was everybody else.They were also sick of what Churchill called "this sordid war against the Jews". British public opinion was generally sympathetic to Zionism. So was world opinion. But that is a different thing. Irgun's murders were counteractive. They did more harm to Zionism than help.
• I think it is also worth noting just how powerful Zionism was among Jews especially in the post war period. Still is of course. Leaving aside a few religious whackjobs who claim Israel is abomination in the eyes of God or somethng  (and who I think were thrown out of the club anyway for showing up at one of Ahmadinejad's hatefests) anti-Zionism among Jews was pretty much non-existent by then. It still is very rare. That is why any attack on the concepts of Jewish national identity and homeland is seen by many Jews as an attack on Jews. Often it quite explicitly is of course.

 Justin :And was it not Zionists who engaged in terror tactics of their own against their British administrators?

Sheesh. You blow up one hotel and do you think you're ever allowed to forget it?

Geoff, you wrote "I have never seen this as a Palestinians versus Israelis conflict...Nothing is simple."

Would you be prepared to describe the complexities as you see them Geoff?

Your comment in relation to the British was interesting for was it not the British Mandate that caused a lot of ill will amongst Zionists? And was it not Zionists who engaged in terror tactics of their own against their British administrators?

It would seem many, regardless of race, religion or political preferences are capable of participating in acts of destruction and death for a cause they genuinely believe in (with God on their side) or for that which they have been "unjustly" treated. It would seem that is the MO for most in the ME (and elsewhere) - sad don't you think when there is heaps of land (and wealth) for all to share and for all to prosper?

Justin, I have never seen this as a Palestinians versus Israelis conflict, let alone Jews versus Arabs. It is not. Nor is it a religious conflict. It is not even a fight over land or resources. Regrettably it is not that simple. This is the Middle East. Nothing is simple.

I do not accept that the Palestinians were made to pay the price for the Holocaust. I even dispute that Israel came into existence as a consequence of the Holocaust. Israel would have happened anyway as soon as the British were persuaded to do the first honourable thing they ever did in Palestine and leave. It should have happened twenty five years earlier. 

Of course I have sympathy for the Palestinians. But it is on the question of who and what are responsible for their condition and continuing plight, and therefore what has to be done, that we part company. 

Iran/Hamas see calls for talks and an end to the violence as surrender. Israeli withdrawals from Gaza and southern Lebanon were not courageous peace initiatives to them but military victories. Much of the Western media and left/liberal political culture is complicit in this. Israel owes Europe, for instance, nothing. So do the Palestinians.