Is Israel Falling Apart?

Mr. Wahrman is Ruth N. Halls Professor of History and Director of the Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at the Indiana University History Department (adjunct in English, Jewish Studies, Cultural Studies).

Foreign observers of Israel tend to focus so intently on the dangers the country faces from its Arab neighbours that they have largely missed an astonishing story that has been accelerating over the past few months: that of the Jewish state’s possible move toward internal collapse. If you consider this an exaggeration, just take note of what the past couple of weeks have brought about. A few days ago the chief of the Israeli police resigned after an investigation that found several of Israel’s highest police officers guilty of corruption and negligence. This came within a week of the forced resignation of Israel’s Chief of Staff from the military because of the fiascos of the second Lebanon war. It was also some ten days after Israel’s minister of justice was convicted of sexual assault while on duty, and a couple of weeks after Israel’s president – who holds a largely symbolic position – resigned temporarily following charges of rape and sexual misconduct. It was also the same day that the head of Israel’s tax authority resigned because of possible corruption charges. In the meantime, several other investigations are still pending, not least two or three directed at the Prime Minister himself, Ehud Olmert, concerning corruption and favoritism. And an appeal to the Supreme Court has already been filed against the minister of police’s choice for a new police chief – again, because of old charges of corruption of which the nominee had been acquitted only through a particularly narrow benefit of the doubt. Do these events really presage the collapse of the Israeli system of governance and democracy? There certainly has never been such a deep crisis of leadership in the country that touts itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. The leader of the ruling parliamentary coalition, Avigdor Yitzhaki, said so publicly a few days ago. And the Minister of Education has suggested that all schools devote special classes to the “government crisis”, so that children can speak out about what might well seem to them like a total collapse of all systems that control their lives. Suddenly the Palestinians and the Hizbullah, and even Iranian nukes, have taken a back seat: Israel does indeed seem in danger of imploding from within, at least as a viable democracy. There are at least two narratives that can help situate why Israel finds itself in such a worrying place on the eve of its sixtieth birthday. For convenience we can tag them by the country’s most decisive formative moments: the story of 1948 and the story of 1967. The story of 1948 is that of a country that underwent an almost miraculous process of birth and growth despite limited resources. From a tiny nation brought into the world by the twin handmaidens of war and seige, and immediately thereafter deluged with waves of immigration several times greater than its 1948 population, Israel managed to become in almost no time a thriving economic, scientific and military power. This unprecedented leap could not be achieved by following the rules. Not that there were too many rules to follow – even those still had to be created. But the main ethos of Israel’s founding fathers was one of in-the-field activism: to a man on the job – and in those days it was always imagined to be a man, not a woman, undertaking a task that was indubitably essential to the building of the nation – everything was permissible. In those early and exciting days, the most powerful compliment you could give an Israeli leader was to describe him as a “bulldozer”: someone who was right there on the ground, moving mountains and paving roads, unstoppable by anything. Intertwined with the myth of the creation of Israel was a culturally sanctioned encouragement to disregard the rules. The story continues, typically, that the founding fathers never abused this permission to transcend norms and regulations for their private gain. The supposed proof of this claim, endlessly and nostalgically reiterated, is Yitzhak Rabin’s resignation from his first term as prime minister in 1976. It had been discovered that Rabin’s wife retained a bank account abroad, which was prohibited by Israel’s foreign currency laws at that time: a minor infraction that nonetheless led Rabin to throw in the towel. And yet the disregard for limitations on action, the lack of effective supervisory mechanisms, the advantage of local initiative, and the fact that activities were all undertaken by a small group of people who knew each other intimately, could easily shade into more serious forms of corruption. When Israel’s most legendary soldier, Moshe Dayan, developed a penchant for archeology, not only did he allow himself to take home nearly any antiquity his heart desired, but when this antiquity happened to be sitting on top of Masada – the archeological dig that itself came to symbolize Israel’s success – he had no compunctions about enlisting an IDF helicopter to help lift it off the cliff. Few of these facts were secret; after Dayan’s death the state paid a million dollars to his widow to move his antiquities collection to the Israel Museum, where it should have been all along. Public outrage was minimal. The story of 1967 is darker. It is the story of occupation. To see the connection, here are two other news items from this past week, though neither has made it into the front pages. The Israeli courts are trying gingerly to evict a group of settlers who used shady real estate manipulation to invade a Palestinian village just south of the Old City of Jerusalem, and who built without a permit a seven story building (inside a traditional village!) for settler families. Meanwhile, inside the Old City, it was revealed that the Israeli government is withholding its formal recognition of the new leader of the Greek-Orthodox Church in the Holy Land, Patriarch Theophilus, because it wants him to sell prime real estate near Jaffa Gate to settlers as a condition for recognizing his official status. Both acts brazenly ignore Israeli law. Based on past experience, however, both are likely to succeed. And such events are common, the tail end of a history of forty years of illegal appropriations under occupation. The infinite variety of devices through which Israel has condoned and often actively encouraged the breaking of the rules in its drive to expropriate Palestinian occupied land against both Israeli and international law has been documented not only by journalists, scholars and observers on the left: it was also the subject of a thick government judicial document, known as the “Sasson Report,” which created something of a furore when it was handed to prime minister Ariel Sharon in March 2005. Within months, however, the Sasson Report joined the mounting pile of legal and normative documents that have been effortlessly side-stepped by the settlers and their supporters in multiple branches of the government. It was only a matter of time, inevitably, before the lawlessness of the occupied territories – and their support networks throughout the Israeli state apparatus – began infecting Israel proper. Both stories of disregard for law and norms, the nation-building drive of 1948 and the land-grabbing drive of 1967, have come together above all in one particular figure, mythological already in his lifetime: Ariel Sharon. Sharon was the ur-bulldozer. His name is virtually synonymous with dogged action combined with disrespect for law and authority. His public career as a soldier and as a civilian was built out of repeated acts of disobedience and of establishing facts on the ground; the first Lebanon War is only the most famous and disastrous example. In the occupied territories, nobody did more for the settlement movement than Sharon, who taught its leaders techniques to railroad the opposition. And then he did the same to them, in turn, when he suddenly shifted his loyalties and embarked on his “disengagement plan” in 2004. It is therefore hardly a coincidence that Sharon’s rise to the highest office in the state marked a decisive moment in this process of collapse: the moment when corruption and normlessness suddenly seemed to take over the system in all its nooks and crannies. Sharon’s tenure in office was more autocratic than any Israel had previously seen. He bypassed even his own government and ministers through a small cabal of friends and family that came to be know as “The Ranch Forum” (named after Sharon’s private ranch in the Negev, itself a manifestation of quasi-corrupt privilege). It also turned out that Sharon’s unstoppable drive easily bled into self-serving corruption, funneling millions into his family’s bank accounts. And yet, despite the multiple corruption scandals that swirled over his head, Sharon himself remained largely unscathed, saved in part by his mythical status, and in part by his conversion to the disengagement plan which suddenly gave his many critics on the left a surprising stake in his survival. He was also saved, in a sense, by falling into a coma in January 2006: only this personal catastrophe prevented him from seeing a few weeks later his son and political amanuensis, Omri Sharon, being carted off to jail for corruption charges. So if Sharon’s reign was the epitome of success for the activism of both 1948 and 1967, the reign of his successors has been the time of collapse and of reckoning. With Sharon’s departure Israel has been left with a weak cadre of second-rate politicians, who seem even more puny in the shadow of Sharon’s towering figure and tragic exit. The corrupt practices are all there, but no higher motives can be claimed for them, and no protection from public outrage can be afforded to their perpetrators. They are simply as petty and ugly as they look. Even when Dan Chaluz, the Army Chief of Staff, resigned for reasons ostensibly linked to the failed war in Lebanon, the one act of his that will be remembered with particular public disgust is that even as he ordered the bombing of Southern Lebanon on the 12th of July 2006, he paused to instruct his stock broker to sell his portfolio; a callous, greedy mistake Sharon would never have committed. So let us ask again: is Israeli democracy in danger? This democracy is young, evolving, and certainly not indestructible. For a while it has been showing clear signs of strain; not least, the inability to maintain reasonable political stability amid the frequent turnovers of ministers and administrations. Now it is showing even clearer signs of deep crisis. According to every survey and poll, levels of popular confidence in the system have never been so low. People are turning their backs on politics as never before. Indeed, the very violence with which the public is pouncing on every falling public figure is a sign of how deep the anger runs. The present void might well encourage those who promise a radical cleansing of the Augean stables in return for a different kind of political rule – and is it such a stretch of the imagination to see them succeeding? Two figures, indeed, have already been making such a pitch, and should therefore be listened to carefully. Both, probably not coincidentally, are Russian immigrants – and thus even less wed to the Israeli democratic tradition, such as it is. One is a minister in the current Israeli government, Avigdor Lieberman, a self-proclaimed “strong man” with an abiding hatred of the legal system (and a few brushes with it in his past) who has already put forth a suggestion to turn Israel into more of a presidential system with few restraints on the chief executive (as Ben Lynfield reported in the Nation, Dec. 26th 2006). Lieberman’s popularity keeps going up even as that of the political system falls. But in terms of being the most authentic symptom of how deep the malaise goes, as well as having the greater potential to change the rules of the game, Lieberman pales in comparison to a man who chose this same past week to announce his own arrival on the political scene: Arkadi Gaydamak. Gaydamak is a Russian born billionaire who owes his wealth in part to shady arms dealings in Angola that led the French to issue arrest warrants for illegal arms dealings and money laundering. Having successfully fended off extradition to France, the oligarch has turned his attention in recent years to philanthropic work in Israel, with a keen interest on using it to create a public image for himself. When it turned out during the 2006 Lebanon war that the government was ineffective in caring for the civilian population under missile attacks in the north of Israel, Gaydamak stepped into the void and set up a ‘tent city’ on the Mediterranean beach for refugees, thus becoming Israel’s most popular public figure at precisely the moment the political class was experiencing its greatest failure. No less dramatically – and Gaydamak has nothing if not a flair for dramatic public relations – when Sderot, a small town near the border with Gaza that is home to Minister of Defense Amir Peretz, was showered with Kassam missiles in the fall of 2006 and Peretz and his colleagues in government were wringing their hands, Gaydamak sent buses to take several thousand inhabitants for a vacation at the Red Sea. Peretz’s angry reaction to this public gesture only underscored how impotent the establishment looked by comparison to this philanthropist with his bottomless pockets. A couple of days ago Gaydamak announced, in a lavishly organized event, the foundation of a new political party called “Social Justice.” At a moment when all other politicians are seen as guilty, at least by association, for sticking their hand in the till (or somewhere else where it does not belong), the founder of “Social Justice” is the gift that keeps on giving, rather than taking. Gaydamak does not want to enter politics himself – or so he says. Indeed, he cannot even speak Hebrew – his speeches are all translated. What Gaydamak wants, and says almost explicitly, is to use his money to become the king maker of Israeli politics: he wants to choose singlehandedly the next Israeli prime minister. And based on current polls, his ambitions cannot be set aside lightly. But if Gaydamak is convinced that the Israeli electorate is for sale, and if the voters are willing to prove him right; and if this transaction is now happening in the public eye, and met with more applause than dismay; then the problem is not one of the political class alone. Israeli democracy is in severe crisis: the friends of the Jewish state should be mobilizing post-haste to help Israeli citizens, jaded, disappointed and angry as they might be, ensure it is not a fatal one.

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus

More Comments:

omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 It is NOT a question of what political system will be adopted by the body for governance that will determine the outcome!

It is the intrinsic nature of the intruding body: if indigenous it will merge in its surrounding and integrate there in .

If Alien and unintegrable it will be rejected by the surrounding.

Whether Israel will ever be integrable in its regional surrounding will decide its fate, not its political system.

omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 Questions to Mr Clark

1-Why "dividing the land along some approximate variant of the 1948-67 line";

Why NOT along the UN Partition Plan ?( the only "legal" foundation of Israel's very existence.)

Patently such a division of the land, according to the UN Partition Plan, will unsettle and disrupt Israeli society to a great extent BUT patently NOT more than the virtual destruction inflicted on Palestinian socity by the establishment of Israel in their native land.



2-Why should the "Palestinians will have to agree to bargain away the right to return to properties (in their homeland/my addition) they lost 60 years,"?



Why bargain away a fundamental human "RIGHT" except to preserve the ethnic /confessional majority of the alien intruder in their homeland?



The obvious answer to both questions would be that that reflects the status quo achieved through the use of force which is fair enough as long as the right to reverse that status quo via the same means is maintained.



My point is : as long as the use of force is, or has been, the ultimate arbitrator as to the scope of the "final" settlement ( who gets what) BOTH parties will always be tempted to use it to create new status quo(s) and the settlement will NOT be "final".



The way out?

Either:

-A settlement as envisaged by the international community ie the UN Partition Plan with its own UN legality and semblance of justice BUT preferably a secular deZionized Palestine for both Arabs and Jews.

OR

- more of the same for generations to come.

( the issue is NOT a borders dispute.)



omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 Why NOT LIKE Switzerland and Belgium!

Difficult for BOTH but NOT impossible.

omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 I do NOT know about Marx and how authorative and well researched his article is.

However the indisputably far better researched and documented population figures are those included in the American KING-CRANE commission report which stated that ( Note OETA/South is Palestine ):

"The King-Crane Commission Report, August 28, 1919

I. THE REPORT UPON SYRIA



POPULATION ESTIMATES



An estimate of the population of the different districts is added at this point, for a better understanding of the tables and discussion which follow. The figures in all cases must be regarded as only approximate, but may be taken as giving a fairly accurate view of the proportions of the population.



O. E. T. A. South O. E. T. A. West O. E. T. A. East Totals

Moslems 515,000 600,000 1,250,000 2,365 000

Christians 62,500 400 000 125,000 587 560

Druses 60,000 80,000 140,000

Jews 65,000 15,000 30,000 110,000

Others 5,000 20 000 20 000 45,000

Totals 647,500 1,095,009 1,505,000

Grand Total 3,247,500 "



Noteworthy in this repect is that Jews numbered 65000 versus 725000 Arabs, both Moslem and Christian ie LESS than 1 to 10 of the Arab population up to late 1919s.

This natural demographic composition of Palestine was transformed by the FORCED entry of Jews into Palestine , against the declared and unrelenting opposition of the indigenous Palestinan people,through Zionist/British imperialism collusion to establish a Jewish colony in it; the so called "Jewish homeland".



Next Mr Green will be quoting Mark Twain . Or , possibly, Groucho Marx!



Any thing will do to support the historical BIG LIE "A land with NO people for a people with NO land" (The then battle cry of the colonialist and racist Zionist movement.)

omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 "Having the HISTORY right" in human affairs does not mean, can not mean, as you know Mr. Clarke, expecting identical precedents to guide us towards the future.

Neither Switzerland nor Belgium were born out of the interaction of identical forces!

Nor did the interaction of these forces lead to identical outputs.

The Palestinian question is UNIQUE in that sense; as were the other questions pre their respective resolution.



However I believe that Zionism grave mistake which is rapidly turning into its and Israel’s fatal mistake was to underestimate the reaction to the supplanting of its alien body ( Alien, at least, according to its perception by the indigenous population of the region) in the heartland of the Arab/Moslem world.



Nor did they anticipate the ongoing build up of the reaction against it to include the massive mobilization of the Moslem World against it.



The Arabs have shown enough “sense" to lead some of them to accept Israel, primarily out of defeat in the battlefield and then out of acquiescence to international opinion, to absolutely NO AVAIL. .

I do not expect the Moslems, including "Islamist" Arabs, as distinct from "Nationalist" Arabs, to ever treed the same road of concessions leading to more concessions to NO AVAIL.



What is urgently needed is less Zionist/Israeli arrogance and more farsightedness and a better understanding of history and geography.



Arafat’s historical unforgiveable hyper mistake, that more than any other single act or event gave HAMAS its historical role and raison d'etre and put a well deserved end to FATAH, was to recognize Israel legitimacy without simultaneously getting a parallel and equal (in all life matters) Israeli recognition of Palestinian legitimacy in their homeland.



What Egypt and Jordan achieved through their “peace” was to show and convince everybody here that Israel DID NOT, DOES NOT change with peace ;it only wets its appetite for more

If anything it becomes more insatiable and demanding; witness the settlements construction activity, the Wall, the ascent of Sharon and the starvation of the Palestinians after their respective "peace”.



Zionist/Israeli shortsightedness cum arrogance both aided and abetted by the USA, will lead to its ultimate demise.



omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 Perverted logic, inane conscious willful distortion of history and pathetic wishful thinking...patent self contradiction within several close paragraphs;nothing new nor surprising here... anything will do to advance an other historical mega lie and support a base colonialist cause ....That, Mr Green, who is far from being habibi,is the sum up of your and yours ceaseless fabrication and disinformation campaign.

Lousy try to wiggle out of a LIE.

omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 "Hussein had several sons. Abdullah was not the oldest. " (Green #106781)

Who was the eldest among the sons ??(Note:the term used is sons NOT children).

I see no connection between my questions and your happiness Mr Green !

omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 *"live among intolerant," :intolerance of alien usurpation and colonialist aggression and domination is normally called patriotism and legitimate self defence; universally it is considered a sacred duty.





**" narrow-minded,": "open mindedness" to false racist allegations and claims , submission to aggression and to violations of inalienable human rights is normally

called "defeatism".



*** "and violent people.";in the jungle that we all live in the most effective way to resist aggression and roll it back has been, unfortunately but historically , the recourse to violence.



How else would the USA have been driven out of VietNam??

Or France out of Algeria??

Or Israel out of South Lebanon??





omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 Mr Green



1-The figures as reported in the KING-CRANE commission report @ the link:

http://www.hri.org/docs/king-crane/syria-pop.html;



ARE:



"O. E. T. A. South

Moslems 515,000

Christians 62,500

Druses 60,000

Jews 65,000

Others 5,000"



Which proves the substance of my argument that Jews were a tiny minority in a predomonanly Arab Palestine.

Quibling about the exactness of figures in an "estimate" is NOT the point.

(Figures discrepancies are possibly due to the fact that the table in KING-CRANE about "Population Estimates" would NOT reproduce on HNN as is, spread wise, by Copy and Paste. Try it.)

However the link is there for everbody to consult and draw his own conclusions.



However whether their total was 65000 or 75000 the point is indisputable that Jews were a tiny minority in an overwhelmingly Arab country : Palestine=Filistin and that that small minority turned into a sizable minority as a result of their imperialistiically assisted inavision to, or so called migration into British occupied Palestine AGAINST THE OPPOSITION of the majority of the indigenous Palestinian people.



2-Do you envision reverting to the childish myth that there was NO Palestine with a predominantly Arab population?

Is that NOT an infantile argument?

(Is that the 21st century version of the mega LIE "a land with no people for a people with no land").

Have you NOT noticed that it is much harder to LIE now and for your fabrication to be accepted as truth?



3-Re Mr Crane ; well I guess that President Wilson, who had USA interests solely at heart, appointed the man for reasons Wilson found adequate to the job.

Of course you would have preferred a Zionist Jew instead.



omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007





Another failed attempt by the , wonder of wonders, Professor ??Eckstein.

Having earlier tried to insinuate that I gave HNN a wrong email address only to be rebutted by HNN and in his long record of fabrications he had the following to say:



"Re: Instability and Israeli Expansionism! (#106862)

by art eckstein on March 10, 2007 at 9:31 AM

Then why, Omar, did you make up the one about the israeli "massacre" of 250 captured Egyptian troops in 1967, something you gleefully put out last week in a very prominent place--and which turned out to be FALSE information which you purveyed to everyone here?



[ Reply ] [ Return to Comments ]



Re: Instability and Israeli Expansionism! (#106997)

by omar ibrahim baker on March 12, 2007 at 1:49 PM

I made up nothing Eckstein.

I simply reposted articles by the Israeli newspapers "Haaretz" and "The Jerusalem Post"; if I recall correctly their names.

What is IT that I made up.

Failure to point out what I made up is indicative of a try at making up something for lack of any thing of substance to say.

NOT unusual!"







[ Reply ] [ Return to Comments ]"



Up to this minute the Professor has failed to "point out" what I ,presumably, "made up" about the subject.

Conclusions to be drawn by others over, inter alia, what has become of academic titles!

No apology is expected or demanded considering!



omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 What is going on in Iraq between Sunni and Shiite is no more nor no less that what went on in the Civil War of the USA or Spain ...an ugly inexcusable quarrel between "brothers".

Except ,of course, when directed at the USA forces which is part of the rightful and just liberation fight against the alien invader !



omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 Mr Reisman

I am happy that I made you understand that:

"How else( without violence) would the USA have been driven out of VietNam??

Or France out of Algeria??

Or Israel out of South Lebanon??"



Or, for that matter, the British out of the USA!



To pretend that either was achieved without violence is...

Unfortunately violence has been, historically, the most effective way to repulse alien aggression and foreign occupation.

Sad but true!



omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 re "insatiability" (#106624)

by Peter K. Clarke on March 6, 2007 at 8:53 PM

Let's see: I think I meant the 20 odd times over the past year or two you have referred to Israel as "expansionist" in the present tense, or some variant of that claim. As though any new territory had been conquered and held permanently AFTER 1967. It is really quite lame, because there are a long list of horrors ACTUALLY perpetrated by Israel over the past 40 years, such that even the most strident of anti-Israeli commentators do not need to, normally and do not, make up non existent horrors.



[ Reply ] [ Return to Comments ]





Re: re "insatiability" and the Wall/Israeli Expansionism (#106635)

by omar ibrahim baker on March 7, 2007 at 1:45 AM

Mr Clarke

I disagree : Israel is EXPANSIONIST in fact/action , in policy and in doctrine driven intent that is by its ideology .

Witness:

1- The annexation of Arab East Jerusalem and surroundings; an actual/factual act of de jure expansionism.



2- The confiscation of Arab held lands in the occupied territories and subsequent construction of settlements there on and the land grab of the Wall ;a patent policy move meant to establish a set of fait(s) accompli(s) leading to de jure annexation in case of a settlement.



The USA of the Bush/Wolfowitz administration has officially supported these "de facto" expansionist moves by declaring its support of the Isaraeli claim that they should be retained, ie annexed, by Israel in case of a settlement.

(Note worthy in this respect is that, to my knowledge, NOT a single settlement was constructed on pre 1967 Israeli held land and the implications of the herd's refusal of the term "occupied territories".)



3-The imposition of Israeli law over the occupied Golan Hights; a preliminary step, the prelude, to future annexation, ie expansion, into Syrian territory .



As a matter of historical fact , law and ideological orientation three major points should be noted:



a- That every single square cm held by Israel beyond its land allocation according to the UN Partition Plan of Palestine is/was an act of expansion into the Palestinian land allocation by same.



b-That all Israeli "peace " plans proposed boundaries way beyond the 1967 "armistice" , "green", line.



c-The various definitions of "the land of Israel" by Zionist dogma and Zionist theoreticians, which range from historical Palestine, as a minimum, to "from the Nile to the Euphrates".

Being the ready made theoretical/ideological/doctrinaire, foundation for future Israeli expansion.



Any way and irrespective YOU DO NOT HAVE to kill MORE than one person to become a killer!One will do.



However I do agree that:"there are a long list of horrors ACTUALLY perpetrated by Israel over the past 40 years" which neither belie nor attenuate its intrinsic aggressively

"expansionist" nature.





omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 "repetition of obvious factual errors"!!

What are you talking about Mr ClsarkeI would like to know?

omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 Mr Clarke

I disagree : Israel is EXPANSIONIST in fact/action , in policy and in doctrine driven intent and by its ideology per se.

Witness:

1- The annexation of Arab East Jerusalem and surroundings; an actual/factual act of de jure expansionism.



2- The confiscation of Arab held lands in the occupied territories and subsequent construction of settlements there on and the land grab of the Wall ;a patent policy move meant to establish a set of fait(s) accompli(s) leading to de jure annexation in case of a settlement.



The USA of the Bush/Wolfowitz administration has officially supported these "de facto" expansionist moves by declaring its support of the Isaraeli claim that they should be retained, ie annexed, by Israel in case of a settlement.

(Note worthy in this respect is that, to my knowledge, NOT a single settlement was constructed on pre 1967 Israeli held land and the implications of the herd's refusal of the term "occupied territories".)



3-The imposition of Israeli law over the occupied Golan Hights; a preliminary step, the prelude, to future annexation, ie expansion, into Syrian territory .



As a matter of historical fact , law and ideological orientation three major points should be noted:



a- That every single square cm held by Israel beyond its land allocation according to the UN Partition Plan of Palestine is/was an act of expansion into the Palestinian land allocation by same.



b-That all Israeli "peace " plans proposed boundaries way beyond the 1967 "armistice" , "green", line.



c-The various definitions of "the land of Israel" by Zionist dogma and Zionist theoreticians, which range from historical Palestine, as a minimum, to "from the Nile to the Euphrates".

Being the ready made theoretical/ideological/doctrinaire, foundation for future Israeli expansion.



Any way and irrespective YOU DO NOT HAVE to kill MORE than one person to become a killer!One will do.

omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 Mr Green

I ,for one,would like to know the answer(s) to your questions re Abdullah and Hassan.

omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 All kinds of play on words and irrational "logic" are used to deny the obvious!

That there is a Palestinian Arab people.

The absurdity of Mr Green's assertion (#106688)is best seen if we consider the following:

- You can NOT be a Texan and an American at the same time.

-There is no such place called Texas; it is simply part of the USA.

-Traditionally Americans living in Texas saw themselves as nationals of the USA; ie they are Americans NOT

Texans.



Therefore there is no such place called Texas and, say, North Koreans or Afghanis , are entitled to colonize it and drive away its indigenous population back to the USA.



That Palestine ,and its inhabitants, the Palestinian people, the culture, the arabized land predates Texas and the USA by many centuries of continuous habitation, cultivation of the land and construction should NOT make any difference to the "logic" used to deny the obvious.



There is no such place called Texas.







omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 The late sage ,but devoted Zionist, Abba Ebban had a persistent nightmare that could eventually lead to the collapse of Israel:



"The Levantization of Israel!",



he called it if I remember correctly his own words.

By that he meant that Israel will eventually acquire /be contaminated with the "environmental/regional" endemic diseases/viruses that plague it and has plagued it historically mainly (According to Ebban):

indolence , corruption and the absence of public participation in governance/despotic non democratic rule !



Being the sage man that he was , Ebban, was also quick to note that the region has a strong concurrent inborn self defense mechanism, particular to its indigenous people, against aliens "viruses" ( in this analogy) that is usually triggered by mega challenges and in time of mega crisis enables the region to meet and overcome its historical "indolence" thus enabling it to sand up successfully to the challenge, meet it and defeat it.



He, I recall from various readings of Ebban, attributed the collapse of the Crusaders' challenge to the fact that by being "Levantinez" they acquired the ills of the region without acquiring its concurrent concomitant "immunity" which is particular to its indigenous population.

And having triggered that immunity in its indigenous population by their mere presence, the Crusaders' incursion was bound to fall under the repeated attacks of the resurgent self defense mechanism of the region against ALIENS.



His , Ebban's, nightmare was that Israel might/will succumb to this "Levantization" and rejection of Aliens syndrome.



The symptoms of the "levantization" + (levantization plus) of Israel are more than those already cited in this article to which I will stress (the new disease?) of the huge size, scope ,wealth, influence and reach of "organized crime".



According to Israeli media it seems that "organized crime" is often in the position to "mediate" differences, act as a go between, some criminals and its security organizations.

That is Organized crime has, sometimes, attained an equal standing with its security organizations!

(Haaretz had recently an extremely interesting interview with a senior Israeli judge that touched mainly on this aspect of Israeli life.)



On the other hand the symptoms of the resurgence of the region's "self

defense "mechanism are there for everybody to note; not least Hizb Allah's ability to stand up to and deter/defeat the hugely powerful war machine of the IDF last summer



This could be Phase One in the realization of Abba Ebban's nightmare



omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 It does NOT matter much how people are killed or who is killing whom; what really matters is that killing is repulsive and inexcusable paricularly if it has nothing to do with repulsing a foreign invader.



Islam, as an excuse for killing, is no more nor no less sick than other religions or doctrines in the name of which huge killing was perpetrated.



What is going on in Iraq is inexcusable by any standard ; however the point to keep in mind is that it would have been impossible before the Iraqi state was dismantled by the USA invasion of the Bush/Wolfowitz administration!

omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 I made up nothing Eckstein.

I simply reposted articles by the Israeli newspapers "Haaretz" and "The Jerusalem Post"; if I recall correctly their names.

What is IT that I made up.

Failure to point out what I made up is indicative of a try at making up something for lack of any thing of substance to say.

NOT unusual!

omar ibrahim baker - 10/19/2007 As correctly pointed out by Ben Gurion Israel had to have "its criminals and prostitutes" to become a "nation".

Now that it has both and much more to boot it will, never the less, always suffer from its deeper illnesses/birth defects which will ultimately determine its fate.



These I deem to be existential in the sense that they will determine the future of its very existence.

**First and foremost is the accelerating and deepening regional rejection of Israel.very existence.

Contrary to Israeli expectations the passage of time did NOT make Israel more "acceptable" to the region. That is despite "official" acceptance via "peace treaties" with Egypt and Jordan and semi official "normalization" with many others .

"Acceptance" of Israel, both "official" and "semi official" has consistently been accompanied by the radicalization of public opposition to Israel.

In Arab countries it is seen by the rise of Islamist rejectionists in both categories; witness the rise of the rejectionist Islamist movement in Egypt and Jordan for the former and in Morocco for the latter and, most remarkably, in Kuwait who owes its "official" continued existence to the USA the guardian of Israel.

Non Arab countries in the region has also turned their erstwhile friendly relations with Israel , often verging on strategic alliances, into cold negative "neutrality" as with Turkey and out right enmity as with Iran.



**Of possibly equal importance is the dawning realization, by the Israeli public in particular, of the limitations of hyper military prowess (last seen in Lebanon last summer) as the means for attaining the "Jewish Safe Haven and “the good life” that goes with it.( The cause d’etre of the Zionist cause and its offspring Israel).

With Israeli present nuclear capability, the imminent nuclearization of Iran and the inevitable overall concurrent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the region “safety”, both personal and communal, has and will become so much harder to attain and the “good life “ , with the threats to Israeli Democracy, farther than ever before



As such both "regional rejection" and " limitations of hyper power" pose "existential" threats to Israel; and none of these is diminishing with the passage of time.!



Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Nor I am the only one whose skills need improving, Mr. S. Your History skills, for example, probably could stand some polishing. I say "probably," because I do not recall any of the hundreds of your prior comments I have seen on HISTORY News Network ever discussing History.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Whatever the answer to Mr. Reisman's question above, the likely real reason is "better to go to hell our own way than to go to heaven under someone else's orders." This is the ultimate existentialist rationalizing for nationalism, most of the time, and certainly in the case of Israel-Palestine.



The "prognosis" for this discussion, seen in a million similar discussions prior, is for opposing partisans of opposing nationalisms -both wanting SOLE existence in the same physical territory- to bash each other back and forth, convincing no one, and leading nowhere.



I have a query, therefore. Which of these two will step aside to advocate instead the only viable solution: the "two-state compromise," dividing the land along some approximate variant of the 1948-67 line, accompanied by credible guarantees of peaceful co-existence?



Such a solution will require adherence to something less than total nationalism on both sides. Most Israeli "settlers" will have to abandon their hideously ugly bunkers, Palestinians will have to agree to bargain away the right to return to properties they lost 60 years, and many states of the world ago. And Siamese twin folly of Sharafat during 2000-05 will have to be at least tacitly acknowledged for the collosal waste that it is, as the deal which could have been had in 2000 is finally returned to along with a turn to that great rarity in the Middle East: common sense.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 "Some people" have been around here much long than others, and the normal, civilized "benefit of the doubt" thus had a much earlier expiration date.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Thanks, Mr. Crocker, for setting things straight. I do not, however, share the following particular "expectation,"



"The next time Israel is being criticized for some real or perceived transgression and people start hyperventilating about, admittedly far worse, events in Somalia, Sudan, or elsewhere to defend Israel's actions expect to see this phrase on the other side of the argument."



because we fundamentally do not have a balanced "equal attention to both sides" situation here on the HNN comment boards.





What we have here are almost totally unmoderated discussions, open to all comers, effectively giving completely free rein to some subsets within groups of true believers in certain causes, who follow the principle of using quantity of output as a substitute for quality and consistency.



As a purely emperical observation, based on years of experience reading and posting here, "hyperventilating," is not equally distributed amongst the several "camps" of opinion on Mideastern politics and history.



I think the fundamental way discussions are structured here helps produce that sort of outcome on this and several other "hot-button" subjects.



Even if all the present comment-posters were to disappear or undergo magical reformation, others would replace them. There is no sanction here against being historically uninformed, illogical, inconsistent, deliberately obfuscatory or deliberately misleading, excessively repetitive, or irrelevant. There are no inhibitions to interupting, making childish rebuttals, hijacking threads, going onto private soap boxes, or systematically misattributing and falsely labelling other commenters. There is a limited sanction against being rude, which is sufficient to keep the whole thing functioning at a high level of heat and considerably lower level of light.



These problems are then compounded by an editorial penchant for selecting articles inconsistent with HNN's stated missions, and designed -deliberately or otherwise- to provoke a maximum of the worst sorts of abuses listed above. The lack of comment-moderating reinforces this editorial penchant, because balanced and objective articles get vastly lower numbers of comment "hits."



I suppose, in theory, the inherently- encouraged high-heat and low-light attributes might develop in roughly equal measures on opposite sides of controversial issues. It has not worked that way in the actual instance of discussions on the Mideast. If you survey the archives of articles and blogs featured on HNN over past months and years, you will see a diversity but not a balanced diversity. Among several other reasons, I believe that this observable pattern of editorial bias contributes to the fundamental imbalance on the comment boards. The whole playing field is basically skewed before the teams even line up. Sometimes it tilts one way, and sometimes another, but the % breakdown is more like 90-10 than 50-50.



There is no improvement in sight re these problems, and that is why the particular expectation of yours expressed in this thread, and any more general expections of that type, are not realistic, in my view.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 I have stated the reasons, the logic, and the history behind my conclusions about what people in the Mideast "want" or "don't want." You come to different conclusions based mainly on polling results, which I consider of secondary reliability. You have lifted numbers out of logistical, social and historical contexts and leapt to conclusions about popular opinion which may prove ultimately valid but have not yet been proven to my satisfaction.



We also disagree on the importance of popular sentiment to policy questions.

There are legitimate reasons for disagreement in this area too. I have made the point, which you have ignored, that the answers to polling questions depends on history as well as on fundamental personal beliefs. I think that one could have used polls amongst Jews in Palestine in 1947 to conclude that they "did not want peace." Not a reason, in my view, to therefore deny forever the possibility of creating a Jewish state in Palestine.





There are no grounds for calling my conclusions, and ONLY my conclusions, "wishful thinking," simply because I do not share your views of the importance of mass psychology to policy decision-making or re the reliability of polls as a gauge of popular opinions and emotions.



Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 "Please support your leading indicator topic."



Why are you asking for this?







My Isreal as leading indicator of increased "falling apart-ness" is a tentative conclusion (I expressed this from the outset as a belief not an established fact).





Would you agree that Israel is on the forefront in many areas, such as hight tech research and applications ?



Would you agree that Israel has faced the issue of Islamic anti-modern pressure earlier, more powerfully and longer than elsewhere?



Would you agree that Israel is not the only country facing increased cheating, disrepect for societal tradtions, general rule-breaking and scandal over recent years?



Would agree that Israel, generally, shares many features with other countries, despite being unique in some key ways too?



If you agree with me on these points, I think my leading indicator conclusion should be at least plausible. If you don't agree on these points, then you might reach a different conclusion.



If you want to have a discussion on the topic of the page, you need to contribute something to the discussion of that topic yourself, and not just ask me to elaborate on my points, or express suprise that an elaboration by me on ONE of my points, does not support another DIFFERENT point of mine.







Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 When you are ready to "engage an argument" relevant to the topic of the page and can manage to do so by starting your own thread, Mr. Simon, we can perhaps have a meaningful discussion. I have seen such miracles occur on very rare occasions in the past.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 With due respect to Mr. Baker, his own family's presumably unwarranted mishaps due to the uprootings resulting from the formation of Israel, and his right to express his views, he is not any kind of official spokesman. His views on Israel are not those of the Arab League, the PLO, the UN, or the "Quartet." Despite his hardline position, it could still be a basis for discussion, however, if he could manage to de-Zionize his rhetoric and if he could realize that no right is absolute. The right to free speech not applying to calling fire in a crowded theater, for

example.



I would certainly agree that right of Arabs to return to properties in Israel lost 60 years ago far exceeds the right of Jews to return to Judea and Samaria 2000 years after leaving. Israel can hardly be expected to surrender the choices parts of itsel, but it needs to compensate Arabs it ethnically cleansed or drove out in fear, and not hide behind a false parallel to Jews who were kicked out of Egypt and other Arab countries. That was not the fault of Palestinian refugees. The outlines of a deal were reached in Geneva in 2003. They are not substantially different than that envisioned by Oslo in the early 1990s, and by Ythzahk Rabin and moderate Palestinians, and by Clinton in 2000. A lot of patient negotiating will be required to get back to 1995, but isn't it time to stop shouting past each other and start talking more constructively?

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Einstein was right. There did NOT go the neighborhood.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 I would not take Omar Baker's word for it, if he claimed to be "representative of Palestinian Arab opinion" (which I don't think he has ever been so vain as to do.) Still less would I accept ethnic-cleansing-rationalizer Benny Morris "wonderings" about what Arafat might have thought before he died two years ago as representing Palestinian views. Less yet can I accept your bald assertions based on extrapolating Morris's speculations, Mr. Friedman.



Nothing I've ever seen in any of your many long-winded regurgitations on HNN would alter the basic perception from the last election where Hamas and Fatah basically tied. Fatah accepts Israel in its 1948-67 borders (but may hope for a rollback some day). Hamas does not accept Israel at all (but might well do so if there were a face-saving quid pro quo). Some Hamas supporters probably are willing to accept Israel (Hamas's unexpectedly strong showing was clearly in part a protest vote not related to Israel). On the other hand, there are probably also some Fatah supporters who would renege on accepting Israel, depending on future cirumstances. Then is the minority who is neither pro-Hamas nor pro-Fatah, and that group undoubtedly contains both accepters and non-accepters of Israel's existence. The reality is that we will probably never know the true composite "representative" opinion of the Palestinians, concerning willingness or non-willingness to truly accept Israel as a permanent neighbor, UNTIL the Palestinians are finally granted a viable functioning sovereign state as the Jews were in the 1940s. Palestinian and Arab devotion to violence and terror has been a prime obstacle to statehood over those intervening six decades. But, since 2000, no objective observer could fail to assign at least equal blame to the senselessly brutal occupation policies of the Israeli authorities, their continued kowtowing to the lunatic fringe West Bank "settlers," and the treasonous rubber-stamping of almost every detail of these recklessly inhumane policies by a brain-dead U.S. administration and a spineless U.

S. Congress.



The time has come for Israelis to find the courage to try to get back to mode, as in the early 1990s when both sides were able to curb their fanatical extremes and actually negotiate. A policy of endless disproportionate reprisal and revenge is failing utterly, as Rabin realized back then that it would. The Palestinians have never yet failed to blow an opportunity to join the civilized world, but that is not a good reason for apriori deciding to never give them another chance.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 These are good points. Underlying them is the indisputable truth that while Israel is, in some ways, "falling apart" so is most of the rest of the world. The spate of exposed corruption in Israel should not be taken as an occasion for gloating by holier-than-thou parties outside Israel.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Good proposal, Mr. Baker. Just make sure you have the history right.



The core of the European Alps was split between the Austrian monarchy and the Swiss confederation. The "low countries" were divided between Belgium and the Netherlands. In each case, two effectively independent entities mutually accepting each other's permanent existence were recognized and made viable within established territorial divisions.



This approach also is at the core of the two-state "road map," Arab League, UN "Quartet," Mitchell Plan, Oslo Accords, Geneva Plan, "land-for-peace" and Camp David solution for Israel and Palestine. It is time for Israel to dump its religious loony-bin settler-fanatics and get with it. And time for Hamas to shed its own-foot-shooting martyr complex and accept the existence of Israel within negotiated borders approximating the pre 1967 line, so that they can become part of the solution too, instead just part of the problem. These transitions will take some time, which is needed anyway, because there will not be viable American leadership available until the current blockhead clown of a Likud-rubber-stap president retires in disgrace in January, 2009. The blunder of the Arabs in rejecting the 1948 UN partition proposal cannot be undone - Jews are not going to be forcibly removed from internationally-recognized Israeli pre-'67 territory en masse- and Palestinians will have to learn to live with them on their doorstep, but it will be an improvement over endless oppression and terrorist reprisal. Try stepping on board, Mr. Baker. Stop arguing with the "herd". You will never convince them that Zionism is the root of all evil, which I think, anyway, even you realize it is not. Try to find a middle way with sensible and far-sighted Israelis, into which grouping it is hoped that Mr. Reisman falls.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Yes and no, Mr. B.



YES on the idiotic settlements which Likudni propaganda and US dupes thereof would pretend do not exist.



NO on the Wall ("security fence").



The Wall is, of course, BOTH a security measure AND a land grab (the latter aspect being a disgraceful sop to the lunatic settlers) BUT, it certainly does NOT represent a "whetting of the appetite" for more and more. IF the wall is in fact ever completed, it will represent -at least symbolically- a RELINQUISHING of territory. I am not aware of anyone - not even the settler-fanatics towards whom Mr. F's childish calls for "evidence" (of obvious facts, like Arafat recognizing Israel and receiving the Nobel Peace prize as a result) never apply- saying that the wall should be built so as to enclose land BEYOND that seized forty years ago, e.g during the LAST land seizure in Israel's sixty year history.



I can understand, though I disagree with, your steadfast views on matters such as the "right of return," Mr. B., but is hard to understand stubborn and incessant repetition of obvious factual errors. They only make you look foolish.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 This attempt to rationalize the fanatical Israeli settler movement will not hold water. They are the Israeli equivalent of Arab suicide bombers. They are rife with religious lunatics and killers as it is now. I have little doubt that they would be just about as ruthless and bloodthirsty as any band of Palestinian terrorists were the tables reversed, and a Palestinian state occupying, oppressing, and brutalizing Israelis over many decades. Even Sharon (for decades a chief egger-on of those settler crazies) saw the necessity of reining them in in Gaza.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 And I am "waiting but not holding my breath" for people to devote .0001% of the discussion of Israeli-Palestinian history on HNN to the Jews who could not "live in peace" with the Jew Ytzhak Rabin and foully murdered him instead.



I have said many times before and will say it again as directly as possible so there is no mistake. Being Jewish, Buddhist or Zoroastrian or being a partisan for Israel, Upper Volta or an outer moon of Jupiter does not excuse hypocrisy.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Friedman, you are flailing, and it's time to call it a day.



1. I made some comments opening this thread. I made a short observation about the irrelevance of most of this page to the article, acknowledged that I that had been an active contributor to that prior irrelevance, and then made a few relevant-to-the-article remarks about Israel's scandals in international perspective.



2. Nowhere in this thread did I "trash" anybody. I invite you to retract that erroneous statement.



3. You have made no arguments in this thread "against my positions" regarding Israel's scandals vs other countries. So how could I possibly "change the subject" away from somewhere it had never been?



4. I am not "required" to adhere to you or anybody else's ideas of what constitutes "proof" or does not. You certainly make many remarks based on belief or logic rather than pure facts. So do I. It is part of having a normal conversation. It is a matter of empirical fact over many months of prior comment threads, that when I do provide proof or citations, you almost always deny them -no matter what- unless they adhere to your preconceived conclusions. This sort of behavior (there are scores of examples over past years on HNN) does not encourage me to leap to attention each time you scream like a spoiled child for "evidence,"e.g. 20+ times or so, as on this page.



5. You have made three comments already in this thread. None of them are relevant either to the article or to my thread-opening remarks, except insofar as a parrot might be relevant to "wanna cracker". It is extremely probable that you will make a fourth comment in this thread because you are too immature to ever let anyone else have the last word. Look at all the threads and subthreads across this page above if you want "proof" of this. Find me one here, or on any other HNN page ever, where you made a comment, someone else answered, and then you shut up. It will be a needle in the haystack hunt. It might have happened one time in a hundred.



6. I am tired of these childish games.

Goodbye.





Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 This proves nothing beyond your ability to cut and paste.



What politican anywhere does NOT talk out of several sides of his mouth depending on the audience?



Deeds, not words, are what counts.



Until Sharon went to the Temple in 2000, Arafat kept his terror squads on a rather tight leash despite the resumption of settlements after Rabin's assassination. There was a period in the early 1990s when a lasting peace deal was a real possibility, regardless of reservations, trickery, and inconsistent suppport from both sides.



The trajectory of every leader opposing Jews is not involve a repeat of the "the Holocaust was predicable because of Hitler's virulent anti-Semitism in 'Mein Kampf'").

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 We discussed the Rabin history back on the long-winded session where the German guy thought Ahmindejad was Hitler II.



As for "the topic at hand" what does Arabs living in peace or not peace witheach have to do with scandals in Israel?



Why does Mr. Green's one-sided irrelevancy get a free pass while I, who merely point that blatant one-sidedness, get taken to task?

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165951,00.html



Israeli Troops Forcibly Remove Gaza Settlers



Wednesday, August 17, 2005



MORAG, Gaza Strip — Violence marred the first full day of the forced evacuation of Israeli settlers from their homes in the Gaza Strip (search) on Wednesday.



An Israeli grabbed a gun from a security guard and sprayed a group of Palestinian laborers with gunfire in the West Bank settlement of Shilo, killing three and wounding two, one of whom died later. The shooter was quickly arrested.



Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (search) denounced the attack as an act of "Jewish terror ... aimed against innocent Palestinians, out of twisted thinking, aimed at stopping the disengagement."



The gunman, identified as Asher Weisgan, 40, from the West Bank settlement of Shvut Rahel, was a driver who transported Palestinian laborers to the industrial zone of the nearby settlement of Shilo every day. At the end of the work day, he picked up the workers and briefly stopped at a security post.



He got out of his car, seized the weapon from the guard at knifepoint and fired from close range on two workers in his vehicle. He kept shooting, killing a third worker and wounding two others outside the car. One of them died later.



In Kfar Darom, several hundred settlers went on a rampage, pushing large cinderblocks off a bridge and trying to torch a nearby Arab house, witnesses said. Israel troops brought the fire under control and tried to push the settlers back into Kfar Darom as Palestinians threw stones.



A West Bank settler in southern Israel set herself on fire and suffered life-threatening burns on 70 percent of her body, police and hospital officials said. The 54-year-old woman was taken to a hospital in serious condition.



Police spokeswoman Liat Nidam said the woman who burned herself carried a sign reading, "Impose a closure on the media, destroy the disengagement, put Sharon before a military court…."



Sharon proposed his "disengagement plan" two years ago to ease Israel's security burden and help preserve the country's Jewish character by placing Gaza's 1.3 million Palestinians outside Israeli boundaries….



Israelis and Palestinians have been cooperating to prevent militant violence during the pullout, though lately Jewish extremists have caused the most concern. Wednesday's attack was the second on Palestinians by Israelis in two weeks. On Aug. 4, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier opened fire on a bus, killing four Israeli Arabs.



Hours after a midnight deadline to evacuate willingly, Israeli soldiers were still forcibly removing defiant settlers from homes and houses of worship throughout communities in the Gaza Strip…



The army said it arrested 52 Israelis headed Wednesday to Homesh, one of the settlements slated for evacuation...



There were few reports of settler violence against Israeli troops, though a brigade commander told FOX News that a female settler had stabbed one of his soldiers with a needle. Overall, he said the operation was a success…



In the settlement of Morag, troops smashed through a cinderblock barricade, forming a human chain to push back a line of settlers. Young protesters set two garbage containers on fire as security forces dragged settlers who had holed up in the settlement's main synagogue to police buses to be driven out of Gaza.





Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Do you think that when Jews in Palestine were living under dangerous and oppressive foreign rule, without a state of their own, that the Stern Gang and Irgun were only "building homes" and acting in a way "very, very far removed from people who blow other people up" ?



Perhaps the problem here is that you

"merely think you know but you have not done the applicable research" ?



Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Here is a touch of the Israeli public you, Mr. Eckstein, Daniel Pipes, etc. never want to talk about, and that is only heard from once in a blue moon on HNN:





Good riddance to Gaza, many Israelis say

By Matt Spetalnick Sept 9, 2005



TEL AVIV (Reuters) - One Israeli prime minister called Gaza "a bone stuck in our throats." Another wished it would just sink into the sea. In Hebrew, "Go to hell" sounds almost like "Go to Gaza," an irony some Israelis savour.



With settlers already gone and the army following on their heels early next week, many Israelis are as glad to say good riddance to the tiny coastal territory as the Palestinians are to see them leave after 38 years of occupation.



It's a sentiment that resonates especially among Israeli army veterans with bitter memories of dangerous duty in the Gaza Strip guarding a few thousand Jews isolated from a hostile population of 1.4 million Palestinians.



"Thank God another generation of soldiers won't have to risk their lives for so little reason," said Avi, 46, a former army reservist who served in Gaza in the late 1980s when it was a hotbed of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising.



He recalls long stints when his unit, sweating in heavy flak jackets, patrolled crowded refugee camps or chased stone throwing youths through rutted streets flowing with sewage.



Israel's presence in Gaza is now ending only after a second, bloodier cycle of violence, this one erupting in 2000. Palestinian fighters traded their rocks for bombs and bullets and the army responded with tanks and helicopter-fired missiles.



To many Israelis, Gaza -- one of the most densely populated places on earth -- had long been a costly liability, with polls consistently showing a majority willing to part with it despite religious Jews' claims of a biblical birthright.



As military casualties mounted, public pressure grew, helping to give Prime Minister Ariel Sharon momentum to uproot Gaza's 21 settlements in a plan he billed as a disengagement from conflict with the Palestinians.



...Some historians say Prime Minister Menachem Begin tried in vain to get Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat to take Gaza back in peace talks that led to Israel's return of Sinai in 1982.



"I would like Gaza to sink into the sea, but that won't happen, and a solution must be found," Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said in 1992.



The next year he signed the Oslo accords with Yasser Arafat, turning over much of Gaza to Palestinian rule but keeping control of settlements covering up to one-fifth of the strip...



Commentators said Israel's silent majority had finally spoken, saying it wanted to give Sharon's plan a chance. Just to be sure, though, Israel is building a high-tech barrier on its border with the strip, expanding a single fence line to three.



Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 I did not mean to suggest that only religious extremists populate the Israeli West Bank settlements. But since Jordan signed a peace deal back in the early '90s and abandoned its claims to the West Bank peace deal, there is no other viable reason for the settlements, except as bargaining chips. When Jews were not able to very effectively use settlements as leverage, in 1946-46 (as Palestinians have not been able to) their extremists resorted to terrorism (as Palestinians often have).



As a decades-long practice, however, clinging tooth and nail to such "bargaining chips" effectively become a means of repeatedly and deliberately torpedoing peace negotiations, which is what I believe settlements and terrorism in fact have been used for.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 These SEVERAL incidents were isolated, I agree, but they prove the sloppy kneejerk one-sideness of your statement about "nothing other than legal," and -more importantly- reveal the ugly face of Jewish fanaticism (erupting not due to 40 years of occupation, but by having to move from one heavily subsidized housing arrangement in Gaza to another in the West Bank) which you (plural) are so deeply and repeatedly committed to denying.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 By your latest "logic," the Holocaust was okay because it happened 60 and 70 years ago.



The issue is whether the Israeli West Bank settlers (or more properly put, the religious extremists on whose behalf they have been settled) have similarities to Palestinian terrorists. To make the comparison a more complete one, one needs to include an apples to apples measure. Since the Palestinians have never had their own state, the proper parallel is when the Israelis did not have a state either. That happens to have been 60 years ago. The Jewish terrorists were much more effective at getting quick positive results. Their state came after only a couple of years. Time for Palestinians to try another tack, I hope you would agree. Or do you prefer another 60 years of periodic war and terrorism?



Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 I did not say that the story about Israelis damning Gaza and calling evacuating it "good riddance" "UNDERMINED" anything you or Eckstein or anybody else said. I said that you folks had avoided the subject of Israeli mainstream public opinion going against Israeli lunatic fringe opinion.





This is called misattribution. I have noticed, to your credit, that -unlike some other posters- you resort to this only rarely, generally when you are desperate. Better to just give up, I would suggest.



Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 The fact is that Arafat got the Nobel and the Norwegians knew more about what was going on then, during the "Oslo process" than you do now.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 You can repeatedly selectively misapply any Latin phrase you want, but if a poster makes a set of one-sided slams against another poster, in a post which does not address the topic of the page, it is not "invalid" to expose such transparent hypocrisy.





Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Maybe I missed a needle or two in the haystack here, but, in the seventy five posts above by Mssrs Friedman, Eckstein, and Simon above (constituting nearly half of all those made thus far on the page) I don’t recall a single one discussing the topic of the page (“Is Israel Falling Apart?”). This is not the first time such a mass neglect has manifested itself here on this website’s comment pages.



This strange reluctance to post remarks that are relevant is part of a long term consistent pattern of steadfast devotion to three cardinal principles (regardless of relevance or non-relevance to the topic of the article):



1. Every significant problem faced by the country of Israel is wholly the fault of its Palestinian and Arab neighbors or those who in any way support or are sympathetic to those neighbors.



2. Anyone who, in any way, or for any reason, suggests otherwise must be evil, crazy, or a fool.



3. The only way to persuade skeptics of (1) and (2) is by an unrelenting outpouring of challenges and rebuttals to any deviation or perceived deviation from these two principles. This end, moreover, justifies a grab bag of dubious means.



Certainly, this sort of rigidly uncompromising approach to expounding a point of view can be effective in certain circumstances, for instance, on an IDF raid in the West Bank following targeted “assassinations” by missile or bulldozing of houses and olive groves. It has not been effective on comment pages here. It is more often, in fact, a dialogue-killer.



Against this, it should also be acknowledged, we also have a kind of one man opposition which is at least as steadfast in believing and proclaiming nearly the precise opposite of (1) above. But this opposition is otherwise not symmetrical. Its exponent is somewhat less prone to quickly assume the worst about anyone who disagrees with him, is rather less disdainful of staying on topic, and does not routinely employ a deluge of misattributions, repetitions, obfuscation and trickery as a technique of argument. Like his opponents, he persistently argues, consciously or unconsciously, on behalf of a particular political point of view, as a matter of unalterable conviction and with small regard for effectiveness. Unlike them, his single-minded energies are intended for the ultimate benefit of political entities in his own native land.



Adios,



PKC

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 "Thank God another generation of soldiers won't have to risk their lives for so little reason" is the most apt quote from the article I posted. This in NO WAY proves that most Israelis "want peace."



I personally think most Israelis AND most Palestinians DO want peace, but not on the same terms. I also suppose it quite likely that that gap in terms went a quite different way in 1947. But I cannot "prove" this, and neither can a bunch of dubious and uncited "polls." Even if they are unbiased and scientifically representative the ability to get unfiltered views is highly suspect. You might as well try to find out going door to door whether South Central LA thinks justice was done in the OJ case.



What the people "want" is anyway only part of the equation. The real key in Israel-Palestine, at least since the Yom Kippur War, and even more so since the end of the Cold War, has been whether the two sides have compelling leaders willing to face down the fanatics on their respective sides of the line, and whether there is a competent US president to help them do so. In 2000 the weak link of that trio was quite clearly -in my view at least- Arafat. Today it has to be -to ANY open mind- Bush.



Sometime a "weak link" can be pulled along by the momentum of circumstances and the power of the other two. As with Begin in 1979 and Arafat in 1993.



But all of this is off topic, and almost always is on HNN, and most "panel debates" in mainstream media. Instead what we are served up, more often than not, is a pro-Israel jerk (here on HNN, dozens of them) and a pro-Arab jerk yelling past each other about how it is, always has been, and always will be everlasting 100% the other side's fault.



This is predictable, childish, and utterly useless except perhaps as a study in psychological disorders.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 "Now you admit that they are not religious zealots."



Where did I say that?



Can't you stop making things up?

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 There are no "data" to confront anywhere in sight here. And don't bother not fetching them, they won't prove anything, and were most probably rigged for propaganda purposes in the first place. Or did Gallup, Harris, and Yankelvitch do the polls you can't cite?



According to "polls," 2/3 of Americans thought in 2004 that the 9-11 hijackers were working for Saddam or some such idiocy - but that doesn't prove they will carry such beliefs unaltered to their graves. Only if one wants to argue 'til blue in the face that 2/3 of Americans are themselves incurable idiots would one try to make dubious uncited poll data into some kind of tablet from Mt Sinai.



I don't give a flying leap at the moon about Omar's Israeli documentary. I can read the true story in the New York Times unless they screw it up in which case I'll find it somewhere else if should ever want to. Does it in fact have anything to do with Wahrman's thesis?

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Let's see: I think I meant the 20 odd times over the past year or two you have referred to Israel as "expansionist" in the present tense, or some variant of that claim. As though any new territory had been conquered and held permanently AFTER 1967. It is really quite lame, because there are a long list of horrors ACTUALLY perpetrated by Israel over the past 40 years, such that even the most strident of anti-Israeli commentators do not need to, normally and do not, make up non existent horrors.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 I see: you misunderstood what I said.

Quelle surprise.



I said: "Jewish fanaticism (erupting not due to 40 years of occupation, but by having to move from one heavily subsidized housing arrangement in Gaza to another in the West Bank)"



I meant: Jewish fanaticism about the Biblical Right to land outside 1966 Israel, erupting ON THE OCCASION of the forced move



You thought I meant: Jews who were fanatically against ever having to move from one settlement to another.



You are dodging to avoid admitting a mistake as you so often do. If you wouldn't exaggerate so often (e.g. "NOTHING other than legal protest") and always -when discussing Israel- in a pro-Likud way (surprise #2) you could dodge less, and these pages could have a few dozen or hundred fewer silly back and forth posts.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 You reveal your age, Mr. F. The defensible borders argument as a justification for holding the whole West Bank, dates from the 1960s when Israel was bordering Jordan on the Western end of Samaria and could hit the Israeli coast with long-range artillery. Jordan withdrew its claim eastward to the River of its name in 1994. End of justification. Long past time to order a new propaganda handbook for rationalizing endless Bantulandization of West Bank. How about terrorism? Remember it? Or else explain please how the New York Times has never reported the long range howitzers and F-xteen fighter bombers of the Palestinian Army and Air Force.



We are also drifting back to Likud-propaganda versus-the-Atlas-makers-of-the-civilized world issue of two weeks ago. Did you really want to go there again?

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 What about Sinai ?



Needed in order to secure a "defensible border" in the 1960-70s?



NOT needed to secure a "defensible border" AFTER that?



What changed?



The "lay of the land"?



Moses unparting the waters and re-releasing Noah's flood?



Could it a be... that awful thing, a "treaty"?



Much more pernicious treaties are, than UN resolutions. Those latter devils are always anti-Semitic if America vetoes them but if they offer a convoluted legal BS argument for why every Atlas Maker has been an idiot for 40 years, then of course, they are wonderfully hieroglyphically cryptic tablets of stone from God.











Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 I did not say you were an adherent to point 1, Mr. Green. After you have a few thousand posts on HNN like Mr. F, or a several hundred each like Mssrs E and S, you might qualify for such status. A few one-sided comments are not enough to qualify one as a full-fledged and incurably biased propagandist.



I stand by my prior remarks, and they are evidenced by masses of prior comments from these folks over many years on HNN, but do not see what Saudi Arabia has to do with them. It is interesting creative accounting to make foreign tax credits into foreign aid, but why stop there?

Why not count X% of what you fork over every time you fill up the tank at a gas station? Interesting point, but, again, nothing to with Mr. OB who is not Saudi to my knowledge, OR with the issue of people hijacking discussions and policy-making based on the absurd notion that 99% of the blame in a major decades-long conflict must be assigned to one side of the other with the remaining 1% danced around on rare occasions like a man who can't find the bathroom door. OR with the even more absurd, never acknowledged but worshippingly-adhered to myth that the rightwing Likud-like hardline persuasion in Israel is the only tenable political position for an AMERICAN to take.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 I take the liberty of assuming, from your very understandable but sometimes grammatically and semantically interesting English that you are an Israeli, Mr. Matik



Apparently, you think Americans have no business lecturing to Israelis. Fair point, in isolation.



But, what about most of the U.S. Congress grovelling for decades in front of AIPAC or its politically functional equivalents?





How about this deal: We will try to curb our lecturing to you (e.g. the 5% of HNN articles on Israel that fall into that category), and you try to get your Likud's (or whatever it calls itself now) dupes and lackeys over here to release their chokehold on our legislators.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Make that Mutik, not "Matik." Sorry, my language skills also have room for improvement. Hope I didn't utter some kind of "four letter" word by mistake.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 I said nothing about there being any conspiracies by "lobbys" on Congress. I don't there any of any significance. There is a lot of pressure and a skyrocketing need to raise money. The shameful kowtowing of Congress on many issues, to many nefarious interest groups, does not mean that the grovelling before the Likudnik interests (certainly NOT representing Jews in general, or even anything anywhere close to most Jews) is not among them.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Barak was willing to retreat to almost that pre-June'67 line. And Barak was elected by a sizable margin. You HAVE BEEN fooled, for life it seems, into thinking that rightwing Israeli views -such as land for peace can never work- are the ONLY Israeli views.



For you, such ultra-fear-based dogma is such a gospel truth that you will argue endlessly that Atlas makers across Western civilization for forty years are raving morons for showing the West Bank as occupied territory and not part of Israel. No doubt if Benny Morris or Bernard Lewis were to say so, you would claim they don't know what they're talking about. Or that I am arguing ad-hominen. Or that I can't read. Or that what is plainly on the atlas pages is only in my head. You are absolutely as impervious to reality as Omar Baker. You guys deserve each other.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Well, Mr. E. since you HAVE now bothered, with a lot of cutting and pasting, how about defining the series of three one decimal point numbers for "people" who might not want to try to decipher? Were there three periods of polling, three regions surveyed or what?



Data presentation 101 says that if the detail has meaning then it should be defined.





I stand, in any case, by my views about the basic unreliability of this method of peering to the collective soul of millions of people. For instance, how do we know the collection was done and PERCEIVED to have been done anonymously? (It is otherwise fundamentally suspect). For another instance, the types of questions asked are very prone to all sorts of misinterpretations. This is NOTHING like asking, "if the election were held today would you voter for Mr. X or Mr. Y.?"





If I really thought it mattered decisively, I would look at a dozen other factors before trying to read the tea leaves on these polls. People who wish for or expect permanent war and violence make traceably different daily and long term decisions, for example, than those preferring or expecting reconcilation or benign neglect. I would track choices on education, jobs, membership in organizations, emigration etc., over time.



Your silly ad-hominens about my "beliefs" are a waste of type characters. I stand by my claim that the election results of last year (which came out rather differently than these poll numbers might indicate) suggest a more valid guesstimate of public opinion on peace vs non-peace - and it is lame to pretend than anybody can make more than an informed guess or "belief."





But, DOES this all really matter anyway?



Suppose, for sake of temporary final discussion only, it IS true, as you ASSUME, that most Palestinians really want to continue living in misery in order to be macho against Israel.



What then?



Is the best approach to



1. support policies to confirm those desires by confining them to South Africa Apartheid Era style "homelands" for eternity?



2. put the US ambassador to the UN on autopilot, ready to veto any resolution whenever the Israeli government issues the order?



3. have the US Congress ritually regurgitate whatever AIPAC tells it to?





Or, if you do not endorse these actual practices of the past 6 years in America, what then?



Suppose the numbers in these polls were to invert -flip to two thirds FOR peace instead of 2/3/ against- would you then favor flipping polices 1-3 above so as to effectively provide a rubberstamp for whatever shifting practices the Palestinian authorities are following?



Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 You talk quite prolificly about "evidence" which you "love" to see, Mr. F.



Is there any evidence for the following "presumptions" of yours about the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre (JMCC)?



"..Palestinian sources who, presumably, intended to show something accurate but which would give the best face to Palestinian Arab thinking"



If the overwhelmingly majority of Palestinians DON'T want to "end the dispute" until Israel magically vanishes, then wouldn't the "best face" show a maximum possible degree of unanimity?



On the other hand, if the polling is slanted in that way, how firm can any conclusions based on it be?

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 also describes your use of Latin here

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Not okay. "Best face" for a presumed majoritarian Peace-Hating Palestinian would have to be as anti-Peace, anti-"Zionist" and pro-"resistance" as possible. You goofed. Ask Omar for details. The polls are a croc anyway. Even if the results are valie, it is not an argument for war forever. When a criminal has done his time he gets out. Even if "the polls" say he is likely to strike again. You alert neighberhood watch, and you look both ways before crossing a dark alley. Life in the real world, Mr. F.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Maybe John knows the Latin phrase but



"acceptance of living with Israel by the Arab side" or its reverse

which N. Friedman has just called a

"factual assertion" is no such thing.



Maybe "tuesestupido" ?



The annual number of Israeli civilians killed by Palestinian terror bombers went up or down by X % versus the prior year would be a factual claim (true or false).





By the way, I am not a supporter of David Irving (who has even less to do with the topic of this page than Benny Morris). There are many past posts of mine on HNN which show the contrary.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 You don't see, but I give up.

It was a minor detail having nothing to do with my position or yours.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Fact #1: Irving is a historian

Fact #2: Yeor is not a historian

Fact #3: You will never convince me that either of these is relevant to "Is Israel falling apart?"

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 According to the ever damned but still used Wikipedia, Yeor has written some books ABOUT history. So this makes her about as much of a historian as Irving, although I guess he has a doctorate in the field and she does not.



So revise Fact #2 above to Yeor IS a historian.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Thanks for this link, Mr. Mutik.

My "patriot" in me, as you put, is on alert at this disgusting list. Not sure how AIPAC ducked it, but I never said the Israel-rightwing chokehold was based on money. Money, for example, did not heap slander and insult upon Howard Dean for advocating fairness and common sense. Nor did I ever say you were a Likudnik. My first comment to you assumed the opposite.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 I don't what what the hell you are talking about, Mr. M. Do you?

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 John, I think your points are valid and well taken. You are arguing here against a brick wall, but the brick wall probably correctly leads to a conclusion that Israelis are, and for many years have been, more willing move from violence to negotiations and more willing to compromise than Palestinians have been. Not uniformly so year to year, but as a long term average pattern.



But, if one wants to obssess on the shifting sands of popular moods (e.g. and ignore larger and more vital geopolitical forces) then the valid historial counter-factual question would be: How would the Israeli vs Palestinian popular opinion comparison look if Arabs been ruling over and oppressing Jews in Palestine for 40 years (e.g. the reverse of the recent actual history) ?



I think the days of the Irgun and Stern gang suggest that the Israeli-Palestinian %-for-peace comparison would then look quite different.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Just thought I'd point that out for the record. I am included in that neglect except here:



Re: Global War on Law? (#106535)

by Peter K. Clarke on March 6, 2007



Expanding on my remarks there, I think it may be true that Israel is somewhat more prone to both

(1) corruption

and

(2) exposing and correcting for it

than other places, but not drastically so.



It is the global trend over time, not place-to-place comparisons at contemporary points in time, which deserves the greater attention and concern. Israel needs to be seen, I believe, as a leading indicator, not an exception.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Right, I have taken a position on the topic of the page. You, in sharp contrast, have done no such thing and are wasting type characters ignoring the topic of the page. Note: the topic of the page is NOT "How many times can Friedman ask for evidence like a broken record?"



The evidence of "culturally sanctioned encouragement" of rule-breaking in Israel is in the article. I suggest you read it for a change and try to rein in your ingrained habit of marking your territory on threads where you have nothing to say.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 The subject line had to change. It was too close to: please live forever in Hell, snowball.

Peter K. Clarke - 10/9/2007 Anything to avoid the topic.

Elliott Aron Green - 3/18/2007 NF and John,

the massacres in Sudan of the southern tribal Africans, non-Muslims, started in 1956, the first year of independence. These massacres continued sporadically but often until a truce in 1972, after which fighting continued at lower intensity, since the truce was only partly honored by the Govt side. This truce lasted until 1983, as NF points out.



NF is making a very important point. Real genocide was going on in the Sudan, yet the "international community," so quick to condemn Israel, had little or nothing to say about it.

N. Friedman - 3/17/2007 John,



My position is that the EU states have a vested interest in retarding efforts to resolve the dispute between Israel and the various Arabs. I think that is clearly the case. Europeans see such as a means to secure oil and valuable construction and technology contracts, as a means to keep terrorism out of Europe (e.g. the decision to let go those involved in the Munich massacre in which Germany staged a highjacking) and as the means to a potential political counterweight to American power.



The evidence for all of this can be found in the documentation related to the Euro-Arab Dialogue and the more recent Mediterranean Partnership. Clearly, European nations are not supporting Palestinian Arabs out of kindness as there are numerous examples where people are oppressed for real, not as a result of a decision to make war, as is the case with Palestinian Arabs.



Think about the lack of support that existed from 1983 to 2000 for Sudanese Christians and animists while 1 to 2 million of them were killed or intentionally starved, when slavery was re-instituted as official government policy - asserted to be a requirement of Islam, no less, by the president of the country, if I recall correctly - , when Christian and animist children were forcibly taken from their parents and forcibly converted to Islam and when food was used as a war weapon in order to force Christians and animists to convert to Islam.



Frankly, Sudanese genocide - the real thing, not Israel's response to Palestinian Arab kamikazi attacks and the suppression of Palestinian Arab society in order to prevent such attacks, would be what a moral foreign policy would have addressed. The reason, in a word, why the Palestinian Arab cause is front and center is oil, a force which has corrupted politics and has corrupted liberal and conservative parties and has corrupted the university - and, in the case of universities, quite literally, with 90+% of funding for Middle East studies coming from Saudi Arabia. People do not bad mouth the source of their funding.



In the case of European countries, a decision was clearly made to support ongoing dispute between Israel and Palestinian Arabs. That is clearly in Europe's perceived self-interest. And, again, the issue derives from Oil and flows into all the other issues I mentioned above with reference to Europe.





Elliott Aron Green - 3/17/2007 John, just by the way, Javier Solana, the EU's answer to Pierre Laval, stopped by in Syria the other day. He promised EU help for Syria recovering the Golan Heights, lost in Israel's just war of defense in 1967. Carolyn Glick in the Jerusalem Post, and I agree, sees Solana's demarche as encouraging Syria to make war on Israel for that purpose, believing that he has EU support. Solana said what he did despite the recent installation by Syria of an estimated 1,000 to 3,000 missiles on their sector of the Golan aimed at Israel. Further, the EU disregards the Syrian murder of leading Lebanese politicians and journalists in order to keep Lebanon in Syrian hands and, recently, in order to prevent an international investigation of Rafiq Hariri's murder by Syrian agents.

In short, Solana is encouraging Syrian war on Israel. This should answer your question above.

E. Simon - 3/15/2007 That is only because correcting your misunderstanding of history only does not count in your book.

John Charles Crocker - 3/15/2007 You said or at least strongly implied that it was a Western plot to prevent peace with Israel. Most of what followed was talk of how you and Mr Friedman think that EU countries are working to prevent peace for Israel.



My question remains.



Do you think it is the policy of the EU and the US to harm Israel and prevent Israel from negotiating peace?



Do you have any real evidence for your conspiracy theory re the Jordanian succession or will it remain entirely unfounded?

Elliott Aron Green - 3/15/2007 John, I looked at the page that you linked to on opensecrets.org.

It overlooks other channels of Arab and pro-Arab influence. It does not mention the contributions of pro-Arab oil interests, nor the big money paid to American politicians such as Jimmy carter, Jim Baker, perhaps to Ramsey Clark, and many others. Consider the speaking engagements of such as Bill Clinton in Persian Gulf emirates [the UAE], etc. Baker's law firm, Baker Botts, gets magnanimous fees from Saudi Arabia which it serves as an official representative in the USA.

As it stands, the opensecret page is rather naive.

Elliott Aron Green - 3/15/2007 John, please read carefully what I said when I first brought the issue of the Jordanian succession. I never said it was a European conspiracy. Perhaps you inferred that, but I did not say it.

John Charles Crocker - 3/15/2007 First you assert, "John, Hussein had several sons. Abdullah was not the oldest."

Now you admit, "I have not checked back on the Hashemite family tree, so you may be right as to the eldest son of Hussein."



I did check the family tree. It is not so difficult to do. You should check your facts before making assertions.



You should also have better evidence before you forward conspiracy theories.



Your initial position was that the change in succession was a European conspiracy to harm Israel, now you imply that it is more likely a US conspiracy. If it is a US conspiracy, is it still for the purpose of preventing peace and harming Israel?

Elliott Aron Green - 3/15/2007 I have not checked back on the Hashemite family tree, so you may be right as to the eldest son of Hussein. However, it is very peculiar that a situation that had stood for decades [that Hassan was crown prince] was changed. Further, Abdullah's mother was British, which might give him less legitimacy in traditional Arab society which is much concerned with ancestry and blood-lines, etc.

Abdullah was American educated. If any outside power or powers influenced the change in heir to the throne, then it was either the USA or UK or both. As you know, Jordan was created by the British empire and was long subsidized by the UK until the USA took over that role, after the 1958 coup in Iraq, I believe. Shortly before Hussein changed his successor, he had been in one of the famous, prestigious American medical clinics for treatment for cancer.

John Charles Crocker - 3/15/2007 http://www.opensecrets.org/news/pro-israel.pro-arab/index.asp



John Charles Crocker - 3/15/2007 Some of the polling data can be used to support multiple arguments as to underlying opinions as is true in most large and complex polls.



The education system is a problem, but it is a second tier problem and not all problems can be addressed simultaneously if progress is to be made.



I note that even with the continuation of that same education system the approval for suicide bombing of civilians has dropped and the opposition for that policy has steadily increased.

John Charles Crocker - 3/15/2007 Why is it you give Mr. Green's speculation and factual errors a pass?



Mr. Green's speculation requires a large and still concealed conspiracy involving European powers secretly controlling the succession of Jordan and that the aim of these European powers is the persecution of Israel. Further in that same post he stated that Abdullah was not Hussein's eldest son (factually incorrect). This speculation and false statement you allowed to pass uncommented upon, however as soon as it was challenged you felt the need to respond. Please explain.

John Charles Crocker - 3/15/2007 I haven't read Littman's book, but I have read a summary it and her position. When I dig myself out from under the reading I have to do for my research I will give it a look, but at first blush it appears to be quite a conspiracy theory and she clearly has an ax to grind.



Her theory sounds quite similar to the "reconquista" theory of Mexico retaking the American SW and then America.

Elliott Aron Green - 3/14/2007 Omar, the Jews made up about 13-14% of the population in 1914 of the areas that the San Remo Conference juridically erected as the Jewish National Home, with the Western geographic name of "palestine." I do not think that 13% or 14% is "a tiny minority" of the population, although a minority to be sure. Next, "Palestine" or Filastin was not the name traditionally used by Arab-Muslims for the country made into "Palestine" by the San Remo Conference. The Arabs-Muslims inhabiting the Land of Israel traditionally saw the country they inhabited as an indistinct part of bilad ash-Sham [Syria or Greater Syria]. Yes, there was a Muslim majority in the country, but they did not see themselves as a separate nationality or people. Further, the country was very sparsely populated for centuries until the late 19th century when the population increased rapidly, including the Jewish population. Jews had always lived in the country. Jews were a substantial part of the population until the Crusades when the Crusaders massacred many or most of the Jews in the country [Prof Moshe Gil]. So the overwhelming Muslim majority [before 1850] was due in part to the Crusader massacres, as well as to Muslim/Arab immigration, to the legal oppression, economic exploitation, humiliation, and persecution of Jews in the country over the centuries by the Muslims/Arabs, etc.

Elliott Aron Green - 3/13/2007 Thank you, Omar, for reminding me of the term OETA-South, which the British used for the Land of Israel before the San Remo Conference [April 1920] set up the Jewish National Home with the territorial name "Palestine." As you know, there was no territory or district called palestine or Filastin by the Mamluk or Ottoman empires, which ruled the Land consecutively from the end of the Mongol invasion in 1260 to the British conquest in 1917. This shows that the geographic name "Palestine" [or Filastin] is not traditional in Arab/Muslim usage, as it is not traditional in Jewish usage. OETA means Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, which the British divided into three parts, OETA-South covering --roughly speaking-- the Land of Israel or what was called after 1920, "Palestine."



Next, let's reexamine the figures you represent as compiled by the King-Crane Commission. There is a big discrepancy between the numbers on the table and your total for the OETA-South.

Your table gives for OETA-South:

Muslims 515,000

Christians 62,500

Druses 60,000

Others [not counting Jews] 5,000

I reach a total of 642,500 for those four numbers. Yet you reach a total of

"725,000 Arabs both Moslem and Christian," a difference of 82,500 more than my total for the non-Jewish population. Could you go back and check your arithmetic? I reach a total of 642,500 for all non-Jews in the OETA-S. Now, if there were 65,000 Jews in OETA-S, as you assert according to King-Crane, then the Jews were MORE THAN 10% of the population of OETA-South according to the figures that you accept.

But let us go further, in 1914, before WW 1, the estimated Jewish population of what later became OETA-S and then "Palestine" was about 75,000. That is, Jews were about 13%-14% in 1914. How and why did the Jewish numbers go down so much during WW One. The Ottoman state deported about 30,000 Jews from the country. Most of them were probably Russian subjects and thus enemy aliens, so the deportation from the country was legal under international law, although I don't think that that was the real reason. The Young Turks seem to have considered the Jews a political threat, although not as serious a threat as the Armeni