From experience and observation throughout my time at many gyms, one cannot help but take note of the popularity of the cardio machines, that is the treadmill, X trainer, bike, stepper and rower found in most gyms. Particularly during the rush hours, on busy days there may even be people cueing to use one of these machines.
Whether this popularity is due to enthusiasm for carrying out these activities for pleasure, or confidence in knowing how to use these machines as opposed to attempting to use the free weights or even the resistance machines or perhaps due to the option of plugging in the headphones and watching Friends or Deal or No Deal at the same time whilst jogging for 30 minutes to make the perceived chore of going to the gym more enjoyable will vary from person to person.
Another possibility is perhaps the feature on these machines that tells you how many calories you have burned in your session. This can be for some quite beneficial from a motivational perspective. It allows one to set themselves goals and see them through. One can say to oneself, “I am going to spend 40 minutes on the treadmill, catch up on the news and aim to burn 450 calories, I can kill two birds with one stone.” Or in the case of the bike, some I have seen reading books whilst cycling.
The counting of calories burned during an exercise on a cardio machine is not as may be perceived by many a reflection of how much fat one has burned. The body burns calories all day long, including in our sleep. The body has a number of different energy systems that utilizes carbohydrate, fat and protein to produce energy differently depending on the kind of activity we are doing and its level of intensity. No energy system acts alone and each will contribute in varying levels of degree when we are doing different exercises.
For example, the Phosphagen or Immediate Energy System comes into play during all-out exercise lasting roughly 5 to 10 seconds such as lifting a heavy weight, a 100-meter sprint, diving, jumping, sprinting up a flight of stairs, or any other activity that involves a maximal, short burst of power. Any high intensity exercise lasting longer than 10 seconds requires assistance from other sources of energy.
Table 1. Nutrient usage at different exercise intensities
Nutrient
At Rest
Light to moderate intensity exercise
High-intensity endurance exercise
High-intensity sprint-type exercise
Protein
2-5%
2-5%
5-8%
2%
Carbohydrate
35%
40%
70%
95%
Fat
60%
55%
15%
3%
Whilst there is a misconception amongst many to believe that aerobic training and particularly cardiovascular-based exercise such as running is best for burning fat and that resistance training or weight training is best for building muscle, this is quite misleading. For example, at about 25 percent of aerobic capacity (i.e., low intensity exercise), fat is the main source of fuel, but one isn’t burning a significant number of calories. If ones goal is to lose weight, the key factor is the net deficit in calories, not where the calories come from. As exercise intensity increases, the number of calories burned also increases. Therefore, while it is true that fat contributes a greater percentage of the total energy during lower intensity exercise, at higher intensity exercise, the total quantity of fat utilized may be greater for exercise performed for an equivalent period of time.
As one can see from Table 1 that the percentage of calories burned from fat will depend on the level of intensity one is working at. Some users of cardio machines are aware of interval training and therefore when running for example will work in high intensity intervals for 2 minute all out spurts where the body will shift from working from a light to moderate intensity to a high intensity sprint. Others will run continuously at a medium intensity.
One must also take into consideration other aspects of metabolism when trying to lose fat. Metabolism is largely a function of how much muscle one has. Aerobics does nothing to maintain muscle and will do nothing to contribute to raising ones metabolism at rest. One will burn calories during aerobic exercise, but will not burn any more at rest as a result of doing aerobics. If you burn a lot of calories from aerobic training, the body will adapt to aerobic exercise by slowing your metabolism and allowing your body to store more fat.
Most people in the gym using treadmills will run for a period of time that they have available to them within their working day, which could be anything from 20 minutes to an hour usually. This variable does not often change. One may set for themselves a running goal of 5km, for example. First they will aim to complete the distance and when they are fit enough to complete 5km at a set speed without stopping (often a common goal) they can then work on increasing the speed at which they complete it in. This means that calorie expenditure within that half hour will decrease as one gets fitter causing one to either have to run for longer (which one does not have the time for) or to run faster, but by running faster one will eventually cease to be working aerobically and start working an-aerobically in order to gain the same benefits that they started with.
For people like myself who wish to lose fat and not lose muscle mass and also wish to gain some muscle, high intensity endurance exercise will burn fat but also protein which will result in loss of muscle mass. If you look at long distance runners, they are very thin with low body fat but also lacking in muscle mass, unlike a short distance 100m sprinter who has a lot of muscle mass and low body fat.
When one rationalizes their activity that they are going to the gym and running or cycling frequently they see that their performance of an exercise has progressed to an extent from when they have started in so far as that they can complete a distance and not feel as tired as they first did and have lost a couple of pounds by virtue of them previously having done no exercise at all and think “I’ve been training really hard, and I am always sweating after my workout, something must be happening.” Of course something is happening, ones heart and lungs are becoming stronger. But unless one wishes to run a marathon or is solely interested increasing their cardiovascular fitness then this is not the most productive use of ones time. Most people using cardio machines also have fat loss goals. This will explain why people often quit going to the gym after a month, when at this point they have progressed as much as they can spending 40 minutes on a treadmill, have got used to it and are no longer seeing anymore fat come off, and in some cases putting some of it back on.
When it comes to non resistance training exercises that will burn more fat than running it is the kind of stuff that we would not be disciplined enough to do on our own and that personal trainers often include in your programs, those sprints up steps, the 20 burpees, skipping and squat thrusts. It’s not possible to do that kind of training whilst watching the News at the same time. Cardio machinery with TV and headphone slots with a calories burned display monitor may be a big selling point for prospective gym membership buyers, but it is he who dares to not use them and focus on the free weights and explosive anaerobic exercises that wins in the end, losing fat and becoming lean.
As this is being written, Britain, France and the US are taking military action against Muammar Gaddafis government in Libya after his non-compliance with demands of the international community to not open fire against anti-government demonstrators, as protests erupt throughout the Middle East in a number of Arab countries.
The basic issue, summarized, is that the people of Libya are not happy with their authoritarian leader, neither are most of the western world, a leader who came to power in Libya in 1969 through a military coup against the countries monarchy and turned Libya into a republic, the coup rallied support from the Libyan people initially, post independence, his party became known as the “Arab Socialist Union” in 1971 and the only legal party in Libya. In 1970, Italians and Jews were expelled from the country and their property confiscated. He has never been a supporter of peace being made between Israel and the Arab world and has directly supported Palestinian terrorist efforts against Israel as a part of his Pan-Arab vision.
Like many neighboring Arab countries in the Middle East, Libya is a one party dictatorship, that does not deal nicely with dissent and now that it is being challenged, Gaddafi has shown his willingness to open fire against his own people.
Under these conditions, the international community regarded such behaviour to warrant international intervention to stop Gaddafi from assaulting his own people through a coalition of foreign nations not deploying any ground troops but by launching air strikes at Libyan government and military installations.
I’d like to look back at an event that occurred a few years ago now. In 2006 the Palestinians had their first election, where the terrorist, Islamist group, Hamas ran for election against Yasser Arafat’s party, Fatah. The result of the election was the formation of a Unity government with Hama’s Ismail Haniya as Prime minister. In 2007 Hamas took control of Gaza through force, eliminating any presence of Fatah in the strip, including throwing Fatah supporters and members off of buildings.
This civil war did not provoke talks of any humanitarian intervention at all. The people of Gaza have since been ruled by Hamas under a brutal dictatorship. Hamas asserted that it would refuse to honour agreements previously made by Fatah and not recognize Israel’s right to exist. This caused Israel and Egypt to implement a blockade of the strip and the European Union and the United States to stop giving aid to Hamas. Whilst continuing to support Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah controlled Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Meanwhile, Hamas’s uncompromising, militant stance resulted in the suffering of ordinary Gazan’s and rockets being launched into southern Israeli cities.
The international community did not consider taking any kind of intervention to stop Hamas either during the Battle for Gaza between Hamas and Fatah nor to remove them from power and protect the people suffering there after the war. When Israel decided to launch Operation Cast Lead, the world universally condemned it as immoral and illegal. Yet the reason for military action is not so dissimilar to the track record of Gaddafi. Gaddafi also pestered his neighbours, when he invaded Chad and Egypt.
According to Fatah spokesman, Ahmad Assaf following the Goldstone report said that Hamas:
“Apologizes to Israel for killing Israeli civilians, but at the same time refuses to apologize to the Palestinian people for crimes it has committed against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, for killing hundreds of Fatah members and for injuring hundreds of other Palestinians… during and after the blood-soaked Gaza coup.”
Following Operation Cast Lead, came pressure on Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza through NGOs sending “Humanitarian” ships to deliver aid to Gaza, which resulted in the Flotilla raid where the Israeli navy stopped the ship from going to Gaza in the sea resulting in soldiers being attacked by crew members and violence.
Israel, once the ship had been searched, where weapons were found following the incident agreed to deliver the goods to Gaza, which Hamas then refused to receive until Israel release the detained members of the ship to return to their home countries.
This operation in Libya has not ended, and only just begun as Gaddafi has urged Libyans to retaliate to the attacks made by the British, French and Americans, it is unlikely that this conflict will be any different to any other military conflict, civilians will suffer and be killed, damage will be caused and some will increase their hatred and prejudices of others.
When one hears words used to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza, they hear it described as an assault, a massacre and a war crime. Not an intervention to liberate the people of Gaza from a hostile, extremist regime and to build a new and free Gaza living peacefully with its neighbours. This is the language used to describe U.S. forces in Iraq.
In Afghanistan it isn’t even described as having anything to do with intervention on humanitarian grounds, the world just unanimously accepted that after 9/11, the one man allegedly responsible happened to be in Afghanistan and that it was fine to invade a country and still be there a decade later bombing the place to pieces looking for him. But Israel knows where the people responsible for the acts of terrorism against Israel are, and is told off each time she goes after them.
David Cameron addressed the nation this evening claiming that the UK, French and American attacks on Libya were “Necessary, Legal and Right”. I agree that action should be taken against Gaddafi, I also think it should be taken against Mahmoud Ahmadinijad in Iran and Hamas in Gaza by international coalition forces.
In fact, I think that if such a policy were more consistent in enforcing international law then Israel would not have had to invade Lebanon to remove Hizbullah from its border upon the failure of UN peacekeeping forces or the Lebanese army to do so, or to have invaded Gaza to prevent rockets from Hamas.
It just seems as though intervention is selective, there are plenty of war crimes and humanitarian crises that occur all the time. No one sent foreign military forces into Rwanda to stop the machetes cutting peoples throats for example.
Meanwhile, Hamas are trying to prevent all western news agencies from reporting on recent demonstrations in Gaza calling for Hamas-Fatah unity.
A CNN article reported that Hamas security forces raided international news agencies head quarters in Gaza in search of footage of the rallies; where Hamas beat up and detained several protesters and journalists covering the rally. Hamas has also once again launched rockets into southern Israel, which Israel has responded to.1
Perhaps whilst the British, French and Americans are in the area they can stop by in Gaza and Lebanon next.
It has been a while since I have written anything to do with matters concerning the Jewish people or Israel, for the most part due to the fact that I no longer work in the field, and have been preoccupied with my work in the Health and Fitness industry. But on this occasion I am choosing not to let this pass and catch up with my commentaries on how the British media has been documenting events in the Middle East.
I returned to London from Israel on 9th February 2010, since this time I have followed the Israeli-Arab conflict like most British citizens from the television, books, links shared over the internet and stories told from friends still there.
In this article I will chronicle a few documentaries that have been aired in the UK in recent years and how they have steadily become worse and worse in misrepresenting the conflict resulting in outsiders looking in gaining a negative view not only of Israelis but also of Jews in general.
Keeping file of resources was always something that I used to do, with both books and with film. On my external hard drive I have a folder of documentaries on the Middle East.
Unseen Gaza. This documentary examined how the foreign media could not access information on what was happening in Gaza during operation Cast Lead in 2009, due to Israel’s refusal to allow foreign journalists into the strip during the war. The foreign media criticized this at the time that felt that it became very difficult to report accurately on the conflict relying on what some believe to be Israeli state propaganda and information given to them by Palestinian journalists who were already in Gaza before the operation began.
Israel found that it would not be in her interest to allow the foreign press into Gaza to report on the war due to its previous experience in Lebanon. In Lebanon, foreign journalists who were allowed into southern Lebanon to report on the conflict were restricted in what they could report on by Hezbullah, and reported lies and half truths fed to them by Pallywood as has been the case on numerous occasions.
The children of Gaza. Following the documentary “Unseen Gaza” the British public now got to see Gaza after the conflict was over, where our soft spots were found in looking at the conflict through the eyes of the children in Gaza who had lost their parents or families as a result of Israeli bombing and who many were suffering from the trauma and sought revenge on the Israelis and wanted to become martyrs when they grew up. The message of the documentary was simple, it hit a real soft spot of the onlooker through showing how the innocent suffered from this conflict and how Israel achieved nothing from their assault on Gaza as a new generation of Palestinians who wouldn’t have done so otherwise are now going to grow up with hate.
Israel is always in a lose/lose situation when it comes to the media. She has struggled with this dilemma going back even further to Operation Defensive Shield, where Israel sent the IDF into the refugee camp in Jenin in search of terrorists following a suicide bombing in a hotel in Netanya during Passover.
Jenin was a hothouse for terrorists; the IDF lost over 25 soldiers who were blown up in booby-trapped buildings whilst conducting house-to-house searches before fierce fighting occurred. Here, Israel too did not allow the media into the camp. Palestinians in Jenin began accusing Israel of war crimes, of raping the women there and of conducting a massacre and burying hundreds of bodies in mass graves.
Books have been written about Jenin, as well as documentaries, including Jenin, Jenin, that still persist in the Palestinian propaganda effort as a symbol, in spite of the fact that an investigation was carried out afterwards that found such claims to be untrue. Yet the tale of Jenin remains.
BBC tough guy Ross Kemp documented Israel and Gaza. Kemp has gone around the world making documentaries about gangs. He came to Gaza following operation cast lead. I can’t say that he came across as having any biased agenda and the documentary seemed to be one of the most balanced reports on the issue that has been made.
Gaza was then left alone by the British media for a while until a new crisis occurred with the Flotilla. Where Israel was extremely isolated in the international community and widely condemned, whilst once again cries by Palestinians and their supporters of a massacre in the sea having occurred where Israel had allegedly come onto an unarmed “civilian aid ship” trying to end the Israeli blockade of Gaza with the full force of the Israeli navy opening fire at civilians. In spite of all the video evidence the Israelis had both their own footage and from cameras found made by those on board the ship and security cameras on the ship showing soldiers getting attacked by so called “unarmed” civilians the entire international media still chose to report that Israel had attacked an unarmed civilian aid ship and conducted a massacre in the sea. Until BBC’s Panorama shocked all of us by deviating from the norm and actually reported what did happen. Israel agreed to an international investigation of the events of what happened following the issues Israel had with the Goldstone report on Operation Cast Lead. Of course Panorama was accused by Palestinian supporters of bias in support of Israel. Panorama refuted such claims and stood by its reporting of the events.
On Israel’s 60th anniversary in 2008 the BBC broadcast a documentary by Jeremy Bowen, on this occasion rather than taking this as an opportunity to celebrate the positive aspects of Israel and its culture. Bowen created a documentary that focused on conflict, portraying Israel as having been created by stealing Palestinian homes, war crimes and violence and how this conflict would not end and Israel would not see peace until justice is given to the people it wronged when it was born.
After the Folitilla incident in 2010, Israel was out of the public image for a while, until the Carmel fires. The peace process had and still has stalled, Israel never agreed to completely freeze settlement building, however it reduced it significantly compared to previous Israeli governments both left and right, which is more than likely to be the best that Bibi could offer and keep his delicate coalition from collapsing and agreed to meet with Abbas directly for Peace talks, which Abbas rejected and would not meet Bibi until he agreed to a full settlement freeze and of course Hamas in Gaza who have not changed their position of rejecting any peace talks with Israel and pledge that they always will.
Israel has made its way back into the media now. Recently Louis Theroux made a documentary “The Ultra Zionists” documenting the lives and views of the most extreme end of the spectrum of both Jews and Zionists. Not much needs to be said about this, as one can imagine. I am not for one minute going to condone the views of these kinds settlers and the likes of Baruch Goldstein. I don’t support their views, or some of their actions. But a few conversations with my non Jewish friends and work colleagues will reveal that for the onlooker who does not understand the conflict, has never been to Israel does not understand that these people do not speak for all Israel, Jews or Zionists. Nor do they realize that there are roughly 13 million Jews in the world, just under half a million of them are Israeli settlers living beyond the green line, the majority of them are not ideologically or religiously motivated as those presented in the documentary but are there for economic reasons are not there out of any conviction, and that the number of settlers like those Theroux presented are only a few thousand out of a total of 13 million.
People already have distorted views of what normal Israelis are like, now those misguided individuals who saw this documentary are lead to believe that we have obscure, racist, bigoted views and are there because God gave it to us, whilst taking it from Palestinians.
Before I go on to discuss the latest Channel 4 documentary I will talk about a few documentaries made on anti-Semtism.
The best documentary to date on anti-Semitism in the UK is the Dispatches documentary “The War on Britain’s Jews” by Richard Littlejohn in July 2007. It was a documentary that was very welcome by the Jewish community in Britain that looked at the subject from a variety of perspectives, looking at security needed to protect the community, swastikas sprayed on grave stones, vandalizing Jewish cemeteries to the All Parliamentary Enquiry into Anti-Semitism, finding an Arabic edition of Mein Kamf in a News agent on the Edgware road, boycotting Israeli academia and products as well as anti-Semitism from the far right.
Like coverage of Israel, this documentary resembled that of the BBCs Panorama documentary. This was followed by “Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby” broadcast by Channel 4’s Dispatches in 2009. This documentary much like the Dutch made documentary made “The Israel Lobby and U.S. foreign policy” made in light of the ideas put forward in the book by Professors John Mearshiemer and Stephen Walt who appeared in the documentary. The British documentary on its Israel lobby came as a bit of a shock to me. I was quite unaware that we had a “Lobby” that went beyond the Zionist Federation, BICOM, the Jewish Leadership council and the Board of Deputies. Yet apparently these organisations are so powerful in influencing British politics in favour of Israel that dispatches made a documentary all about how the Israel lobby is supposedly the most powerful lobby in Westminster, bankrolling through the CFI (conservative friends of Israel) most of the Tory party, and other parties through party funding.
In spite of the obvious Jewish objections to such cases of reeking with ideas found in the protocols of the elders of Zion, of Jews being disloyal, controlling governments, only interested in themselves. It is coupled with other messages supporting such ideas that have been proven to be forgeries years ago. But the damage has already been done, apologies are simply not enough when peoples minds have already been affected, much like the message the media itself was trying to convey about Israel’s bombing of Gaza during operation Cast Lead. The British media has long been setting the groundwork for ordinary people to become anti-Semitic. Not only did “Inside Britains Israel Lobby” give people the idea that there are Jews in Britain so powerful that they dictate their countries policies in favour of a foreign country, and one that is supposed to be an ally but that uses British passports to assassinate terrorists.
Shortly after the U.S. lead invasion of Iraq the BBC broadcast a documentary titled “Israel’s secret weapon” in March 2003. This was amidst the controversy over Iraq did or didn’t have any WMD’s. The documentary turned attention to Israel, who til this day neither confirms nor denies that she has or doesn’t have WMD’s, but Mordechai Vanunu blew the whistle on Israel’s nuclear program in Dimona. It is now pretty well known that Israel has a secret facility there and will not sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The message of the documentary and the timing by which it was aired gave the message that the country that did have weapons that perhaps everyone should be paying attention to was Israel and not Iraq. Iraq wasn’t the real danger because they didn’t find any WMDs there, but Israel does.
In 2009 there was another documentary made by an Israeli journalist called Yoav Shamir that was aired in the UK called “Defamation”, the documentary looked at anti-Semitism in Europe and America. Shamir worked with the anti-Defamation league to make much of his documentary as well as interviewing critics of the Jewish establishment such as Norman Finkelstein and John Mearshiemer and Stephen Walt. As much as some I am sure will not like some of the things that were presented in the documentary, I found it to be a very good documentary.
BBC’s Panorama then broadcast a documentary called “The War Party”, a documentary demonizing the Neo-Conservatives within the Republican Party in the United States. Many Neo Conservatives are Jewish, including the movements ideological thinker Leo Strauss as well as the more well known Neo Conservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle, Meyrav Wormser and David Frum. But then there are also many non Jewish Neo Conservatives such as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheny, Michael Ledeen and George W. Bush to name a few. The accusations made against the Neo Conservatives as being an extremist pro war party made up of mostly Jews using the language of democracy and freedom to advance American imperialism and make the world safe for capitalism and big business is nothing more than an attempt to blame the Jews for damaging Americas image abroad. The demonising of the Neo-Conservatives runs hand in hand with the new ideological form of anti-Semitism. Neo-Con hatred has become a politically correct euphemism for Jew hatred. America has been influencing events abroad to suit her interest through both Republican and Democratic parties for years, whether that was the west’s struggle against Nazism, Soviet Communism or Islamic fundamentalism in the war on terror, it has nothing to do with a Neo-Con pro war agenda waged by mostly Jewish politicians. The Neo Conservatives are a movement heavily influenced by the school of thought known as Political Realism, through the ideas of Plato and Machiavelli and power politics. The United States is the worlds Hegemon and Neo-Conservatism just like any other political movement wishes to spread the ideas of freedom and democracy to liberate other peoples from tyranny. Rightly or wrongly, there is nothing unique or extreme about a country having this sort of agenda. No other world power behaves any differently, whether that is Islamo-fascists, Soviet Communists or the British Empire. In all but the Islamist movement, Jews have been too blamed as being a negative force behind such tyranny. Jews were blamed by the British for Britain’s involvement in the Boer war, much like how they are being blamed for dragging Britain and America to war for the interests of Israel. There is nothing new here, other than perpetuating conspiracy theories of unprecedented Jewish power and causing suspicions of dual loyalties. A double standard that is being placed on Jews to have to somehow prove their loyalty to their host nations, by either being pro-Israel and considered disloyal or anti-Israel and loyal, something that is never applied to any other group. African American loyalty was not questioned when they stood up for South Africans struggling against Apartheid, fundamentalist Muslims who declare war on Britain from within the UK, it is not politically correct to suggest that some may have dual loyalties and be plotting against their host nation, but documentaries are made that raise questions about Jewish loyalties for having certain views that are in fact the opposite, very patriotic and embodying the nations values and interests at its heart. No one questioned Obama’s loyalty to the United States when he delivered his Cairo speech to the Muslim world, his hard line on Israel and his appeasement to Arab demands and not acting to defend America and the free worlds interest by having a harder line on Iran’s nuclear program.
I have tried to mention as many UK aired documentaries on Israel and Jewish issues as I can remember, and as you can see, for those of you who watched them all too, the majority of them do not leave the viewer with any sympathy for the Jews or Israel but with a distorted view of a ruthless people with absolutely no respect for the rule of law, basic moral principles, who steal and build on land that doesn’t belong to them, kill children throwing stones, fire rockets at civilians, have weird ideas and views like G-d said they could do this or that it is ok to do these things because they suffered during the Holocaust. That this unlawful country also has powerful friends in powerful countries who control their economies and through their financial power take their countries to wars that don’t concern them at all for the benefit of Israel, a country that exists because Jews fleeing persecution in Europe came to a land that wasn’t theirs and took a country that belonged to non-Jewish people that were living there before them. This is the narrative that has and is becoming the norm. It is not historically accurate, nor is it an inter-subjective representation of perspectives.
We have reached a point where people think that a balanced perspective is to present the Jewish point of view as being that the Israelis claim a right to a Jewish homeland as a result of suffering. This is how public opinion has swayed so far in favour of the Palestinians, because that simply isn’t and never was the Jewish peoples claim to the land. Tony Blair reiterated recently this point, that the Jews have a claim to a state in the land of Israel because of right and not because of suffering. Holocaust or no Holocaust, the Jewish people through the founding of the Zionist movement demanded the right to return to their ancestral homeland and rebuild their country that was destroyed and taken from them 2000 years ago. To deny this claims legitimacy is also to deny the rights and claims of the Palestinians that one wants to help.
If the Jews can’t lose their homes and return to them then neither can the Palestinians. People question whether you can return to a country you haven’t lived in for nearly 2000 years and take it back. Unfortunately the Jews are the only people to successfully return en masse from exile to reclaim their independence and overthrow foreign rulers. Other nations became independent from foreign rule who were not living in exile from their homelands. There are no other examples because most other nations living in Diasporas for 2000 years don’t exist anymore, they assimilated into their new homes.
The most recent series of films broadcast on Channel 4 called The Promise encapsulates the perception that people have come to have of Israelis as foreigners who built a country on another peoples land.
The story starts with a British (Erin) girl who goes to Israel on her gap year to spend a few months with her Jewish friend (Eliza) whose family are Israeli who has to go to the army.
Erin’s grandfather in Britain is sick; he served in the British army during WW2, liberated Bergan Belson and then served in Palestine after the war ended. Erin finds his diary and takes it with her to read throughout her time in Israel.
Eliza’s family live in a house that looks like a Malibu mansion in Caesarea, please note at this point that throughout every episode in this series, every Israeli house portrayed was a house in Caesarea and every Palestinian or Arab property looked like a dump or a refugee camp. The program made consistent references to asking where the Israeli characters were from “originally”, whilst when Arabs were asked, only local place names were given, giving the impression that the Israelis were originally from somewhere else and that the Arabs were from Palestine. Ignoring the fact that many Arabs living in Palestine too if asked where their great grandparents were from one would find that they too have not been there from time immemorial, but descend from Arabs who came to Palestine from neighbouring countries, or descend from settlers from the former Empires that once ruled there years before. However, the film paints a picture of Eliza’s dad who moved to Israel from England quite recently, and her mother who was born in Israel but whose father was from Hungary.
The films main characters are Erin and her grandfather, Len and therefore viewed from a British perspective. The film tells two stories at once, Erins journey staying in Eliza’s families house spending time with her extremely left wing brother Paul who takes her around the west bank and to meet his Palestinian friend Omar. Meanwhile Erin reads Len’s diary and how he had to deal with fighting the Irgun during the mandate period. The film shows nothing of the Haggana, the Jewish Agency or the official Zionist organisation that worked with the British, nor the official party line policies towards the Arabs. Instead it shows how Eliza’s grandfather was one of the King David hotel bombers, where Erins grandfather Len survived the bombing. This causes some tension between Erin and Eliza’s family. This scene was shown following Paul and Erin surviving a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, creating the comparison of Jewish terrorists against the British with Arab terrorists against the Israelis, and later with the repercussions of the British demolishing the Jewish terrorists family homes with that of the Israelis blowing up and flattening the family home of the suicide bomber.
Erin reads in the diary about how Len had an Arab servant named Muhammad, and how he wanted to return a key to him that was found inside the diary. She then goes on a quest to find the Muhammad’s family with Omar. This leads her to Hebron where the family had fled to after leaving their home inside what are today Israel’s recognized borders and then to Gaza after 1967. Erin finally finds the house of Muhammad’s daughter who is now old and belongs to the family of the suicide bomber and that the Israeli army, with Eliza had come to destroy her home.
The worst scene was of the Dier Yessin massacre, where the Irgun killed men women and children in cold blood. It was this incident that triggered the Arabs to leave en masse from their villages with the encouragement of the leaders of the Arab states, the Palestinian leadership and from the British from fear of what happened at Dier Yessin happening to them. The Dier Yessin massacre was not the rule, but an exception in this conflict. But the viewer would likely assume that that was what the Jews did to or planned to do to every Arab village. It is understandable why Arabs would fear and leave, but at no point did the film present the efforts by the Jewish Agency to convince the Arabs to stay and become citizens in their state, but only of the most extreme Irgun violence, and Arabs fleeing.
Throughout the film the Israelis are portrayed as behaving like Nazis ethnically cleansing the Arabs and committing genocide and land grabbing, and ungrateful barbarians killing the British who had done so much to help them during the war. The British turning away of Jewish refugees from Europe was skimmed over in the first episode. And the Arabs are presented as if they could do no wrong. The Arab massacre of Gush Etzion in 1948 was not presented for example nor any Arab attacks on Jews throughout the mandate period. The Arabs are presented as a reasonable, peaceful people and the Jews as greedy and uncompromising ruthless terrorists who want the whole land and to drive the Arabs out.
The film becomes more and more anti-Israel as the episodes go on. As well as bringing up the Jewish dual loyalty question by suspicions that a British Jewish officer in the army may be helping the Jewish underground in Palestine against the British.
The bar has been raised, as we have much to be concerned about. This film was like the Palestinian version of the movie “Exodus”.
Not only is the narrative of events changing against our favour when it comes to the Middle East conflict and the bringing to the forefront questions of Jewish dual loyalties, but also people are denying the Jewish particularity of the Holocaust. We are quickly being transformed once again from powerless innocent victims to powerful guilty aggressors.
Israel’s PR is awful and never has been great. If Israel is going to win this narrative battle, she needs to fight fire with fire. And must tap into the emotions of the on looking audience as the Promise did. The Promise allowed the viewer to identify with their fellow countrymen in their experiences dealing with Jews and Arabs and presented the case in a way that enabled them to identify with the Arabs through the bonds and connections that they made with the Arab characters in the story.
We must do the same. The Palestinians have made good use of using analogies that the West understand and can identify with, but comparing themselves with the Red Indians and Blacks in America, or with South African Apartheid and even to European Jews suffering during the Holocaust. The last being the most absurd comparison, yet people are still persuaded by it.
Jabotinsky did a very good job of addressing the British when they were accusing the Zionists of asking for two much whilst they imposed the White paper on Jewish immigration to Palestine and started further carving up Palestine to give it to the Arabs leaving the Jews with nothing that would be sustainable:
“Whenever I hear the Zionist, most often my own Party, accused of asking for too much — Gentlemen, I really cannot understand it. Yes, we do want a State; every nation on earth, every normal nation, beginning with the smallest and the humblest who do not claim any merit, any role in humanity’s development, they all have States of their own. That is the normal condition for a people. Yet, when we, the most abnormal of peoples and therefore the most unfortunate, ask only for the same condition as the Albanians enjoy, to say nothing of the French and the English, then it is called too much. I should understand it if the answer were, “It is impossible,” but when the answer is, “It is too much” I cannot understand it. I would remind you (excuse me for quoting an example known to everyone of you) of the commotion which was produced in that famous institution when Oliver Twist came and asked for “more.” He said “more” because he did not know how to express it; what Oliver Twist really meant was this: “Will you just give me that normal portion which is necessary for a boy of my age to be able to live.” I assure you that you face here to-day, in the Jewish people with its demands, an Oliver Twist who has, unfortunately, no concessions to make.”
We must start translating these analogies into films of our own, displayed in the arts and culture. These are the most powerful tools we can use to counter the success of the other side. Books, be they fiction or based on truth must be entertaining and meaningful to win the minds and support of our natural allies in the free world who are being misled and could someday really turn against us.
A subject that has grown in interest in the west is the study of Psychology and Psychoanalysis; they have been of particular importance in the field of Social Science in attempting to understand Human behaviour to the benefit of many different groups, particularly in the workforce. Psychoanalysis of the Freudian school of thought revolutionized the field of Public relations theory through Freud’s nephew Eddie Bernays and has paved the way for new approaches to succeeding in the professions of Marketing, Advertising and the Media. Psychology has been a critical element to developing good business practice in Management and Organisation theory. It has become one of the subjects that people choose to study even if they do not know what they wish to do and has aroused an interest from the general public, I’m sure we all start trying to psychoanalyze people we know when they are behaving out of the ordinary or in an undesirable way.
I would like to focus on how psychology is used for the benefit of running a business. My experience with this primarily has been that of through having supervision with a line manager. The basic assumption is that whenever something does not succeed it is always because of something you did wrong. Which perhaps is the case in most instances. We all know the rule that “the customer is always right”, this is a very annoying rule for the businessman, because it is not without the consent of the customer that they will pay you for trying to help them with giving them what they want. But often giving the client what they want is not actually what they need. This was at one stage where I was going wrong with my business as a Personal Trainer.
A potential client who I had a consultation with told me that his goal was to get bigger; he mentioned that he had never done any work on his legs. Little did he know that he would eventually not get any bigger elsewhere if he didn’t work on them, as the body essentially works as one unit, the upper body will slow down and wait for the lower body to catch up. One cannot say, even though most clients I have will, that they aren’t interested in one body part, only another, a typical example is men who pay no attention to their back, but too much on their chest. So off I went, giving him a complimentary session, working on his legs. He found it a revelation on how his legs were aching for about a week afterwards until they fully recovered. That was selling him what he needed, and of course it did not sell, he has not become a client and has now gone back to working on his upper body only on his own. What I should have done was what I did with one of my current clients, who at first told me she wanted a smaller bum, so our session focused on what she told me she wanted, working on her lower body. Of course as I mentioned you can’t only work on one body part even if there is an area that bothers you, but since then she has mentioned she wants to work on her triceps so she will look good in a dress she wants to wear and we are beginning to develop a proper workout that will eventually get her to what she wanted and needs and she is a regular paying client now. This is how I overcame one factor in how convert people into paying clients, by ‘selling them what they want and then giving them what they need.’
I could have blamed it on the client, that he wouldn’t listen to me, that he gave me loads of excuses for not wanting to do what I suggested. Or I could have blamed it on circumstances; at the moment he doesn’t have the money, or he doesn’t have the time… The generally accepted approach to failure in a task is that it is you that is responsible and that you take accountability for it, learn from it and improve your practice by taking action points for when it occurs again. You will begin by asking, where did I go wrong?
When running my business, I find that the majority of the time this is the best way to approach issues and many business and management books would agree. Because if one business succeeds and yours didn’t, it is always going to be your fault, whether it was in the quality of your service, a poorly thought out business strategy, bad time management, not putting in enough effort, the wrong attitude or work ethic, not enough investment of capital in the business, failure to adapt to changing trends, or any other reason but it is not the customers fault that he or any other customer did not buy your product and therefore your business closed down, it is almost always to do with something that you did wrong.
However, sometimes when my line manager will tell me when talking about an issue I am having, that that it is me that is doing something wrong, there have been instances where I have felt that it isn’t only me that is doing something wrong, particularly if the issue in the business doesn’t involve a client. For example, I was told that if I did something for my manager that he would give me ten members for me to call and train who could become new clients, what we call leads. But he didn’t give them to me, but rather than recognize that he was at fault, I was again at fault because I didn’t chase him up about it. It is rare that something is always entirely the fault of one side; it often comes as a result of a misunderstanding or a breakdown in communication or another reason.
But we often take our business thinking cap home with us, and apply it to all of our life situations, particularly in our relationships with others. There is the story of the case where a woman goes to her psychiatrist and tells him that her husband has been beating her, and then she tells herself “it must be something I did.” Critical thinking has led many of us in the west to no longer be able to see ourselves as victims in any situation, and what results is a culture of constantly blaming victims. Another example is how one often may hear on the news of a story of a girl who got raped, who was wearing a short dress because she had been out and then how some will say it was her fault for wearing the dress, or that she was asking for it. Somehow it is not the rapist’s fault at all. The other day a ‘charity collector’ came into a café I was in asking for donations and then without permission, stole in front of my eyes £7 that a friend of mine had left on the table for his bill for us to pay when we left, after arguing with her I told the owner, he was of course supportive but his immediate reaction was “why was the money on the table in the first place?”
We apply this thinking to foreign policy a lot, and it is this that will result in the downfall of our nations power and influence in the world as well as our prosperity and standard of living. The most prominent example of this is on the war on terror, when one looks at 9/11 and asks, “why would someone do such a thing? We must be doing something really bad to these people?” Or look at suicide bombings and say, “the conditions in the territories must be so bad if it can drive people to do such a despicable act.” Whilst I understand the logic to ask these questions, one cannot apply the business mode of thinking to politics nor relationships. I don’t think I recall hearing or reading any works written by any Palestinians or Arabs who ever thought to themselves that “we must have treated Jews really badly throughout our history and those suicide bombings and rockets must be devastating to their society to cause them to come in every so often showering us with missiles like in Operation Cast lead.” Or that maybe the invasion of Afghanistan was the Taliban’s fault, had 9/11 not happened then Afghans wouldn’t be suffering. These groups see themselves always as the victims who have done nothing wrong ever and blame the other side for everything.
In the west we have a decreasing sense of self worth and respect as we ask the question of “what are we doing wrong?” Even if one may find incidents or injustices in our nations foreign policies towards other nations or groups, like I said earlier, it is rare that a problem is 100% the fault of one side. In some instances it can be, I am not going to ascertain the blame for the arising of a particular problem onto any side here, but it is possible.
This is how a growing percentage of the western world approaches all aspects of life. But we are not always trying to sell something to someone like a business does. Or in some instances it is for both one party and the other to both have to up-sell themselves to each other such as in a friendship for example, it is not just important that one party likes the other it has to be mutual. In business at the very least, my clients must feel happy enough with me, even if the truth is that some clients if we had the choice we wouldn’t work with them because our personalities clash and they may annoy you. This is not the case when it comes to things like the war on terror, we do not need to seek the approval of Islamists, in fact we should see them as a rival competitor and boost us to reinforce our belief in our own product and promote it.
It’s success in business practice, but being misplaced elsewhere has become a contributing factor to self-hatred. Looking at the issue of anti-Semitism, the Jew asks the question “Why do they hate us?” And then looks at the possible causes of why, such as ignorance, an easy scapegoat, prejudice, fear of difference, jealousy or any other possible reason, depending on the approach and discipline used to address the issue. Anti-Semitism and its cause have not been discovered and is an ongoing study as its form seems to change as the situation of the Jews change over time and place, but then one asks the question “maybe we can’t find an answer to this question by looking at those who hate them but instead by looking at the Jews themselves. Maybe the accusations are true, that the Jews have given people reason to hate them.” The problem is now no longer the anti-Semite, but the Jew. The same is the case taken a step further to anti-Zionism; the issue is not that the Arabs are uncompromising, but that the hatred and conflict in the Middle East would somehow disappear if there were no Jewish state at all, which many Jews have come to believe.
It is not something that is specific to Jewish self-hatred but how we in the west are losing sight of what is in our best interest, our self respect, holding ourselves to a double standard, whilst our rivals and enemies abroad point their finger at us and attack our values and our culture (not that our culture is perfect) more of us are willing to take on board their grievances, blame our leaders and their policies and then look to justify crimes committed by our enemies on us or others because somehow it is justified and that we deserve it, because it was in response to something we did first.
It would be difficult to find a progressive on the planet that would agree with the following proposal to the issues we face in society:
“You know what? We should bring back Apartheid.”
The suggestion from the outset sounds absurd, and one would think immediately of South Africa and the words that have come to be associated with that regime and that period of racial discrimination and oppression. One would more than likely assume this person to be a bigot and not entertain the notion of giving him or her a platform to air their views.
The above is just one example of an idea that people at the time thought would be a great idea and would mean progress or a solution to a problem which either in practice was unachievable or led to the opposite of what it intended to achieve resulting in oppression and tyranny. A progressive minded person would also hardly accept the proposal to abolish democracy and freedom in favour of a totalitarian dictatorship or a theocracy as we have seen from history that this idea has been tried in a number of different cases and most of us in the western world know which of these systems we would prefer to live under, a Liberal, capitalist, democracy.
But there is one movement that has slipped through the net, which had achieved political prominence and resulted in tyranny and oppression but yet its followers and advocates have remained uncompromising in their beliefs, with no shame, that speak in a language of peace and non violence and push to bring down the Liberal world order and replace it with its own. This ideal is communism.
Communism manifested itself in the former Soviet Union; it was an oppressive regime that eventually fell with the symbolic event of the Berlin wall coming down and the reunification of East and West Germany. In accordance with the trend of all other regimes that have been defeated or self defeated because of their faults, communism should have been thrown in the rubbish bin of history and any new proposals for change should be new just as communism too was once new, yet until this day we still find advocates for this proven to be oppressive regime in practice. If one points to the Soviet Union as a challenge to a communist, a common response is for them to claim, “that wasn’t really communism.”
Well what was it? The economist Friedrich Von Hayek in his book The Road to Serfdom pointed out that any planning of the economy will require a central authority with absolute power, we have learned from Lord Acton’s famous quote that “Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Communism gives absolute power to the state and therefore those running the state become corrupt. The Liberal idea is that power should be dispersed; in a Liberal democracy power is distributed between the state and the private sector, the market. The objective is to limit one authority’s ability to attain absolute power, whether that is the market or the government having absolute power but to create the balance whereby there is competition, capitalism does not thrive without competition and therefore monopolies are dangerous for capitalism, democracy and progress.
It is primarily for this reason that communism turned out not to be the Utopian paradise that it sought to be. If we look at the Kibbutz movement for example, such a system was only sustainable provided that everyone was willing to accept that they must think of the collective before themselves, such pioneers of the State of Israel were not born with these ideals, they were taught them by youth movements, and those who wanted to practice such ideals, moved to Palestine and joined a Kibbutz voluntarily and those who didn’t want to, didn’t. It worked well in so far as that it was voluntary. The following generations of Israelis born and raised on a Kibbutz started to look at the world outside of the Kibbutz at opportunities that the city had to offer them that the Kibbutz could not offer them, or who simply did not share the values of the Kibbutz and had further ambitions than milking cows or working in a factory. Fortunately a member of a Kibbutz can leave if they wish to, but the Kibbutz will eventually become unable to sustain itself if all of its members decide to follow in their footsteps.
Most of us have learned the lessons of history but we still find that they persist in our societies advocating what will become tyranny but claiming to be the heirs of peace, anti-war and the voice of freedom and equality. The question is how has this become so?
I will attempt to explore why this is so and why the term right wing has come to be associated with evil and left wing has remained in people’s minds immune from wrongdoing.
Communism and the former Soviet Union was not the only manifestation of left wing Marxist thinking. Such ideas embodied themselves in other movements and regimes as well, including fascism and socialism. The term fascism has been misplaced (on purpose) as a right wing ideology, in spite of the fact that almost all evidence of influence on fascist regimes point to the contrary. Fascism is at best the right end of the left, as opposed to the far right beyond Laissez-faire capitalism. The author Jonah Goldberg in his book Liberal Fascism notes that:
“Certain quarters of the left assert that “Zionism equals racism” and that Israelis are equivalent to Nazis. As invidious and problematic as those comparisons are, why aren’t we hearing similar denunciations of groups ranging from the National Council of La Raza – that is, “The Race” – to the radical Hispanic group MEChA, whose motto – “Por La Raza todo. Fuerro de La Raza Nada” – means “Everything for the race, nothing outside the race”? Why is it that when a white man spouts such sentiments it’s “objectively” fascist, but when a person of color says the same thing it’s merely an expression of fashionable multiculturalism?
The most important priority for the left is not to offer any answer at all to such questions. They would much prefer to maintain Orwell’s definition of fascism as anything not desirable, thus excluding their own fascistic proclivities from inquiring eyes. When they are forced to answer, however, the response is usually more instinctive, visceral, or dismissively mocking than rational or principled. Their logic seems to be that multiculturalism, the Peace Corps, and such are good things – things that liberals approve of – and good things can’t be fascist by simple virtue of the fact that liberals approve of them. Indeed this seems to be the irreducible argument of countless writers who glibly use the word “fascist” to describe “bad guys” based on no other criteria than that liberals think they are bad.
Fidel Castro, one could argue is a textbook fascist. But because the left approves of his resistance to U.S. “imperialism” – and because he uses abracadabra words of Marxism- it’s not just wrong but objectively stupid to call him a fascist. Meanwhile, calling Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, and other conservatives fascists is simply what right-thinking, sophisticated people do.
The major flaw in all of this is that fascism, properly understood is not a phenomenon of the right at all. Instead, it is, and always has been a phenomenon of the left. This fact – an inconvenient truth if there ever was one – is obscured in our time by the equally mistaken belief that fascism and communism are opposites. In reality, they are closely related, historical competitors for the same constituents, seeking to dominate and control the same social space.”
(Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism)
When one refers to Nazism it is generally portrayed as being a phenomenon of the ‘far right,’ the clue is the name for a start. Nazism is National Socialism. National socialism and fascism are hardly ideas influenced by liberal; individualistic, free market economic thinking. They are both populist movements seeking to eradicate the class struggle and create national unity. National unity or any kind of unity unfortunately often is very hard to achieve without a common enemy, it is for this reason that I feel that both Israeli and Arab leaders in spite of their words of looking for peace or looking to defeat the other side, both are nationalist movements that are strengthened by the need for unity against those who are hostile to the people, or external threats to their existence or survival. In some instances that enemy or threat is real, in others it is fabricated or exaggerated. Hitler found that in the Jews, without someone to blame for the troubles Germany suffered as a result of the treaty of Versailles he may not have arose to power.
Both Hitler and Mussolini were always members of left wing parties, Mussolini wrote for L’Avvenire del Lavoratore (The Future of the Worker) the socialist parties newspaper, where they differed from traditional international communism was that they came to believe that the appeal of solidarity based on class was not as strong as ones kinship to the nation and fellow countrymen. Fascism and National Socialism therefore were left wing pragmatists, who gave up on the universal goal of spreading communism to other peoples but only wished to transcend the class struggle and to confine the benefits to that of their own nation.
But nonetheless this does not make these totalitarian regimes, right wing. It is merely an embarrassment to the left, and has been very successful in misleading the public up until this very day that Nazism and fascism is something that the left have had nothing to do with and is somehow a product of the “far right”, it is as I mentioned earlier the far right of the left at best.
It has been cleverly crafted that fascist and Nazi are of the worst things one could be branded as yet the left have successfully managed to convince people that these tendencies come from the right, and that communism as practiced by the Soviet Union was somehow not true communism. That being the case, I suppose that one could argue that apartheid wasn’t really what apartheid was supposed to be about, perhaps it wasn’t supposed to be about segregation and discrimination but it aimed to create a system to preserve identities in a difficult situation, but if implemented properly may have resulted in something similar to what is trying to be achieved in the Middle East of a two state solution, two states for two peoples.
The left have for a long time been infiltrating themselves into calling themselves something that they are not, because it makes them sound innocent, we have in recent years heard people refer to a group known as ‘the Liberal left’. Perhaps 50 years ago these two words together would have been considered an oxymoron. Liberal is not left, socialist is left, communist is left and fascist too is left. We also have long heard of the United States of America referred to as a fundamentally ‘right wing nation’. They are right wing, not because they are ‘fascists’ or ‘Nazi’s’ but because they are ‘Liberals’ and ‘Republicans’, both are right wing parties.
In Britain we have seen how the Labour Party became more Liberal in its policies as it changed its platform under Tony Blair from Labour to New Labour, which essentially sought to emulate the Liberal Democratic party in America. And we have seen the Liberal Democrats in Britain fill the space that Labour vacated on the left. And we now see more and more left wing policies taking over the American Liberal Democratic party under Barak Obama’s leadership.
In Israeli political history the pattern has too not deviated much. The left wing parties in Israel were very uncompromising in their policies. Left wing Zionism too had utopian, peace loving ideals of the highest nature, but that didn’t change the fact that in practice it was under left wing governments and leaders that all the way up until the 1970’s led Israel through all of its wars, had a prejudiced attitude towards Mizrachi Jews, the religiously Orthodox and despised the non socialist opposition let alone issues with the Israeli Arabs and Palestinians. Today the adherents of the left in Israel fall into two camps, those who still identify with the movements goals and history and those who seem to wish to disassociate themselves from the history of the Israeli left. They would typically look at the Israeli left and its faults and too say, “That wasn’t really what labour Zionism was supposed to be about.” And then proceed to demonize the ‘evil’ Jabotinsky, Begin, Shamir and Netanyahu. But it is just the frustration that an idea that inspired so many people to create a better and fairer world, didn’t work in practice.
The Israeli left have long called Jabotinsky a fascist, the same way that conservatives in America are referred to as fascists by the American left, which could not be further from the truth, Jabotinsky was a liberal full and through.
Why is all of this so important, because it has blurred our outlook on where the true dangers we all face really lie and from where they are likely to spring up. We focused too much on watching groups like the BNP, and we now find ourselves surprised to find enemies from the left. We should not be surprised at all to find anti-Semites on the left. Marx in spite of his Jewish origins was an anti-Semite, Hitler was from the left, Stalin and Lenin were of course left and not immune from anti-Semitism, and even Oswald Mosley was a member of the Fabians society in the 1920’s and 30’s. Or up until today we see anti-Semitism in Ken Livingstone and George Galloway who incidentally would probably be referred to more as Labour back benchers or the left of the left.
I am not saying that all forms of left wing political theory are anti-Semitic but it is far from immune from it. I am however saying that liberalism which has been significantly better for the Jews (not only Jews but everyone) than communism is not the source of fascism, or Nazism.
The New Liberal Left has not forgotten about the Jews, nor have they given up on their attempt to bring an end to capitalism. It will typically adhere to the view that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism and hold double standards towards those who it perceives as powerful and oppressive and always rooting for whom it sees as the underdog.
It is the task of the true Liberals to reclaim their political history by exposing to the world that fascism is a left wing problem and that to be right wing means to believe in individual freedom and democracy. The propaganda has reached unbelievable lengths; you will notice how the few Liberals who have spoken up against either Islamism or communism today have been branded as Islamophobic, Neo-cons (which seems to have become a code word for Imperialistic Nazi) or bigots. It is time for the Left to take responsibility for their history and for Liberals to stand up for themselves, and some day, people will look at a pin up of Che Guevara on a wall as if it were a poster of Hitler today.
Every power throughout history has operated in the international system in a state of anarchy. With every state or power acting in the interests of their security and survival and that there is no higher authority to monitor or control interactions between states. This is true, regardless of whether or not that power/state is liberal, socialist, democratic, authoritarian, theocratic, fascist, or any other ideology or value system that characterizes that power.
The United States, in response to 9/11 officially declared it’s leading in a global war on terrorism. The United States is a Liberal Democracy, which claims to be ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave” where individual freedom, equality of opportunity, the pursuit of happiness, and justice for all are the benchmark values for the U.S. Therefore when it comes to foreign policy, it seeks justification for its policies based on its values. But as I mentioned before, a nation does not act in accordance with their values when it comes to international politics, but acts in its interests both in terms of security and economics.
Following the attack on the World Trade centre the United States invaded Afghanistan with the objective of overthrowing the Taliban, an extremist Islamist group who was protecting Osama Bin Laden, and his Al Quaeda terror network, believed to be responsible for the attack on 9/11.
Notice how at the time, the decision to invade Afghanistan was not dwelt over or challenged either in the U.S. or in the international community to the extent of the later decision to invade Iraq. With Afghanistan, the U.S. did not need to do much explaining, nor justifying for its decision to invade – the terrorist group responsible for the attack were there, the government are protecting them, therefore the objective is to invade, overthrow the regime, find Bin Laden and in the words of George W. Bush, heard all too often “we’ll smoke em out, and bring em to justice.”
Iraq was very different, with the lack of success in Afghanistan in finding Bin Laden, skeptics in America and Europe began to question the motives behind the invasion, as well as conspiracy theories suggesting that 9/11 was an inside job, and a pre-text and an excuse for the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq seeking to obtain full control of the countries oil and natural resources or other possible motives that were contrary to the claim of fighting terrorism. Hence why when it came to the decision to invade Iraq, the American people and the international community wanted more of a moral justification for the invasion of Iraq. And so the reason put forward for the occupation of Iraq was that of the threat that Sadaam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, a threat to his neighbours, his own people as well as guilty of crimes against humanity towards the Kurds, and was to bring democracy and freedom to the people of Iraq.
Since the U.S went to war with Iraq, they have not found weapons of mass destruction, as well as skepticism on whether it is possible or even just to impose democracy, or even whether that was really an objective at all.
But around the time of the invasion of Afghanistan, many found it very hypocritical or ironic that in the past the Taliban were trained and allied with the Americans. Or would wonder why the Americans didn’t overthrow Sadaam Hussein properly at the end of the first Gulf war, or the fact that he at one time worked with the CIA.
None of this should come as a surprise, nor should one view these facts as ironic. They are for a start not viewed in their correct context. These events took place during the Cold War, where the United States and the Soviet Union competed for global domination. Like a game of chess they supported whoever was willing to join their bloc and be one of their pawns. This involved the democratic western nations allying with Islamist groups in the Middle East, supporting dictatorships in Latin America or the Communist Soviet Union allying with Arab nationalists. Both sides made allies with groups or regimes that held political views and policies opposed to that of their own, because they shared a mutual interest. That being that they both had a common enemy, and followed the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
There is absolutely nothing unusual about this phenomenon in international politics, one rarely hears anyone say “isn’t it ironic that the Americans fought against the Soviet Union but during the Second World War they were allies against Nazi Germany.” Of course they were allies, because Nazi Germany was more of a threat to the Soviet Union and to the United States than the U.S. and the Soviet Union were to each other, compelling them both to cooperate with each other for their own survival. Once the Second World War was over and Nazism was taken out of the equation, they once again would compete against one another. When the Cold War ended, the west and the Islamist movement it supported no longer had a common enemy, and the greatest threat to their interests left were each other.
Foreign policy of any government is not determined on the nations values, or justice, but on interest. Such policies are only just or moral if they happen to coincide with the nations national interest. One may ask the question in the case of the Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi occupied Europe, why the British turned away ships of Jews who had managed to escape Nazi occupied Europe from entering Palestine? Or why other governments did not stand up for their Jewish subjects against the Nazis, or not take them in when they could have done? Was Ernest Bevin an anti-Zionist because he disliked the Jews and loved Arabs, or was it more because he was concerned about Britain’s oil interests after they left the Middle East?
There are plenty of cases where governments are forced to make compromises on their values and principles for political considerations pertaining to their interests. Politicians through their rhetoric seek to justify their actions carried out in the national interest with that of the nations values in order to persuade the public that they are doing the right thing, particularly leaders of democratic nations. Many people living in these countries however would like to think that the rights, freedoms and values that they hold as reflected in their countries policies would also extend to that of others through their nations foreign policy. Unfortunately it doesn’t, every nation is out for its own survival and security, looking to become more powerful or the powerful nations doing whatever it needs to in order to remain in power.
There are instances where justice has prevailed. Whilst many may have argued that on moral grounds how could a free country like the U.S.A support such tyrants? It did so for the sake of fighting a more powerful and rival tyrant. In Soviet client states the U.S. would support coups to overthrow the pro Soviet rulers and vice versa. If we take the African American case for example, what was essentially a civil rights struggle, what brought about the progress in the achievements of the civil rights movement was when it too attempted to speak not as a threat to the establishment but in its name. Making use of the symbols and values of the United States of “Liberty and Justice for all.” Whereas at one point the struggle was meshed into a fear that the movement was allying itself with the Soviet Union and influenced by Marxist ideas.
“In the 1920s and the 1930s, leaders like Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson endeavored to establish an international Pan-African movement to fight against colonial rule and white imperialism. After World War II, with the advent of the cold war, the campaign for black internationalism sub-sided as “black leaders felt obliged to confirm their loyalty to the United States and to demonstrate that their civil rights campaign was not communist inspired at a time when many conservative Americans were ready to believe that communist instigation lay behind black demands for civil equality.””1
Following the success of the African Americans achieving equal rights, African Americans started to look upon themselves differently, whereas previously they had referred to themselves ‘Black Americans’ the shift from Black to African denoted like many other Americans an attachment to a previous homeland and people like as Irish, Greek or Italian Americans did, for example. African Americans began to identify with the experiences of Black Africans living under apartheid in South Africa, drawing a parallel between the treatment of Blacks in the United States and White Colonialism in Africa. In an essay by Martin Weil titled Can the Blacks do for Africa, what the Jews did for Israel? He wrote:
“To be successful, a black movement for reform of American policy toward Africa must be perceived as a vehicle for exporting American ideals. It must be an affirmation of black faith in the United States and demonstration of black ability to manipulate the fine structure of American politics within the astuteness and finesse of previous practitioners. Blacks as blacks may identify with Africa, but it is only as Americans that they can change United States policy in Africa. … To aid the revolution abroad, blacks must first join the establishment at home.”2
As the title of the above article notes that Jews too have successfully managed to fuse the values of the United States with that of Israel’s with the objective of greater cooperation between the two countries and aid to Israel. Pro Israel lobbyists in the United States will stress other similarities between the two countries, both are democracies (Israel was the only democracy in the Middle East), both are modern, western countries, both are immigrant nations embodying a pioneering spirit. But this is something that was traditionally more unique to the United States than to other countries in the past, the tradition of lobbying. The United States is an immigrant nation made up of many different groups, who unlike most European nations whose populations too may descend from immigrants from other lands, in the United States it was possible from an earlier stage to be both American and still retain ones former cultural/ethnic identity, such as Irish, Italian or Jewish. U.S. foreign policy has at times rather than based on the nations interest been formulated based on the internal influences of organized interest groups relative to whatever power each may have to influence foreign policy depending on whether or not for the U.S. government to do so results in great gains for the United States, if not gains to the United States, gains for the party or the candidate. Interest groups may contribute significantly to financing election campaigns or may compose a large demographic make up of the electorate and could pose a threat if their policies are not favorable to the group.
It is often under these circumstances that one finds foreign policy acting in what may not be seen as the national interest, and can occur as a result of various different lobby and pressure groups, whether they be Human rights activists, ethnic/national lobbyists, oil lobbyists, religious groups or any other interest group that seeks to shape a government policy in its favor.
This is not to say that when a nation forms a policy, as a result of the influence of a lobby that the policy is always contrary to the national interest. In the case of Israel and the United States, many feel that Israel is receiving a disproportionate amount of foreign aid and benefits from the United States compared to other U.S. allies who are much poorer. Of course there is the influence of the pro-Israel lobby in U.S. politics, which perhaps other countries do not have a lobby of supporters who are as organized in Washington, but one must be pretty naïve to think that this lobby is as powerful as some claim. Anti-Semitism is a factor in its influence. In the words of the director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abe Foxman “the Jews are not as powerful as the Jews think they are nor as powerful as the anti-Semites think they are,” but the very fact that there is a perception of unprecedented power amongst the Jews has meant that poorer countries, with a bad image in the United States have sought to change their relationship with the U.S. through courting Israel, in exchange for the pro Israel lobby to make efforts to change American public opinion of their country through their perception of “Jewish control of the media” and their lobby’s ability to affect foreign policy.
Whilst Israel and the United States do share many common interests, Israel realizes that the geo-strategic advantage that Israel offers the United States in the long term is not enough. Israel has since its creation been an outlaw state in the International arena. Her very existence is still questioned and under threat, she therefore has had very little choice in choosing who her friends are. In the Middle East, Israel faced hostility from the entire Arab world. In the 1950’s Israel employed the Strategy of the Periphery, the objective being to form alliances with the neighboring countries to the Arab states, so that they could not channel all of their energies into attacking Israel and face pressure on their other borders.
Israel succeeded in forming alliances with Iran under the Shah, which put pressure on Iraq, with Turkey bordering Syria; these were the strongest of Israel’s strategic allies bordering her enemies. But Israel also managed to achieve cooperation with the Sudan, Morocco and Chad. In countries that have been hostile to Israel, Israel has supported and aligned herself with minority groups seeking either independence or domination over the other groups, including the Maronite Christians in Lebanon or the Kurds in Northern Iraq.
Due to the fact that the Arab States were committed to Israel’s destruction, it was in Israel’s interest to prevent the spread of radicalization and Arab unity was a threat. We must remember that the prevalent and most threatening ideology to Israel at that time was not Islamism, but Pan-Arabism, looking to create one powerful Arab Empire out of the Arab states.
See above, former head of the Mossad, Efraim Halevy on the Alliance of the Periphery.
It is here where Israel and the United States meet and find that they have mutual interests and how Soviet penetration into the region was a threat to both of them. Arab nationalism, however, was not a threat to the United States. Particularly Saudi Arabia, America would have liked them to be a bit friendlier towards Israel, but given the choice between Israel and oil, America does not need to think hard about its decision. American intervention in the Middle East has been primarily a result of actions taken by other states that are not in America’s good books that pose a threat to Saudi oil. Israel and AIPAC weren’t powerful enough to block America’s decision to sell Saudi Arabia AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) surveillance planes in 1986 under president Reagan. The role that Israel plays is a very different role.
The Zionist movement aimed to give the Jews independence, to achieve equality as a nation amongst the nations. To change the condition of the Jew as middleman, to return to working the land, tilling the soil in his homeland. The movement was heavily influenced by Socialist ideals, manifesting themselves in the Kibbutz movement. But in reality the Utopian ideals and goals were not attainable at the time at least. That is not to say that Israelis and Arabs cannot achieve peace in the future but Chaim Weizmann’s and the vision of many British Zionists of the Zionist movement as a means to industrializing the Middle East, did not materialize for a number of reasons, in spite of the efforts of Zionist and Arab leaders.
The Arab world was largely made up of traditional feudal systems, where similar to Europe, religion was very important to their culture as well as a means for social control. The Arab elites did not like the Socialist, Atheist, Zionist Jews trying to liberate the Arab peasant’s, offering them work, improving their standard of living and talking about coexistence. All of this was a threat to the Arab elites, who would then make successful efforts to incite hatred of the Zionists, not to trust them and to fight them.
Israel was left vulnerable and isolated, with very few friends. Ben Gurion realized that Israel would not survive without the help of a Great Power. The Zionist movement had close relations with Britain and France as a means of achieving Israeli independence, but due to the decline of those powers in the wake of WW2, power shifted to the United States, although the Israel-U.S special relationship did not come to fruition until the late 1960’s Israel was supporting the interests of the western world in general before then.
Zionism’s dream became a nightmare, the Jew in exile was vulnerable to a hostile majority who disliked them for being different or because they ‘killed Christ’ and therefore Jewish survival came through making deals with monarchs and rulers in the Middle Ages, in return Jews carried out jobs to serve the ruling classes, such as the practice of Usury, which was seen as sinful by Christian society, but necessary and was a role reserved for the Jews to carry out as moneylenders, tax and rent collectors. These were professions that Jews had to carry out in order to be protected by those in power, they were not allowed to work the land and many other professions were closed to them.
Israel would soon occupy the same role on a global scale in the modern world that Jews occupied on a societal level in the middle ages. The ruling power, providing Israel with protection, through foreign aid, arms and diplomatic support would be the United States, the global superpower, and the role of Usury in the modern world to be carried out by Israel would be that of Arms dealing. Israel was to act as a proxy for the United States to provide weapons, training, advice, assistance and support to regimes and groups that the U.S did not want to be seen to be having anything to do with but would ultimately serve her interests. According to Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi of Tel Aviv University:
“One could legitimately argue that there is a direct correlation between increases in U.S. financial aid to Israel since 1973 and the increase in Israel’s involvement in the Third World on the side of the United States. Can Israel be thought of as a “mercenary state”? Yes, in the sense of being kept by the United States in return for services provided. But because Israel does have its own motives for Third World activities, this is not the only explanation for what Israel has been doing. The relationship is clearly not just a matter of payment for services.”3
Israel has its own interests in Latin and Central American countries irrespective of U.S. involvement in countries such as Nicaragua under Somoza where Israel had been providing military aid since the 1950’s or to the Sandinistas in El Salvador, to Honduras where Israeli Galil rifles, Uzi Sub-machine guns and Israeli advisers to the air and ground forces were to be found as well as a long history of support for the regimes in Guatemala. Israel has invested greatly in supporting and sustaining brutal dictatorships, partly in cooperation with the United States and other countries in order to fight the Cold war as well as for Israel to create much needed allies, including regimes such as Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship in Paraguay where approximately 10% of Paraguay’s citizens have passed through its prisons. General Augusto Pinochet of Chile where Israel stepped in to provide weapons to his regime when President Carter stopped. Relations between Israel and Argentina gained strength following the overthrow of President Isabel Peron with the beginning of General Jorge Rafael Videla’s military rule in 1981. Israel supplied Bolivia under Garcia Meza following a successful coup with diplomatic and military aid amidst widespread international condemnation and sanctions (including from the Carter Administration).
Blue = Countries that have been supported militarily by Israel.
To view full lecture visit: youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIC7-DnLtg (Part 11 Stockwell addresses U.S. involvement in Angola with apartheid South Africa)
In Africa, Israel’s activities have been mostly geared towards preventing the process of de-colonization. The reason being that when more of the African nations gain independence many are likely to join a Third World bloc, diplomatically this would mean alignment with the Arab League. Much of the Third World perspective is hostile and resentful for historical oppression at the hands of the White Europeans. The Arabs had been creating their own narrative to the Arab Israeli conflict, where Israelis are portrayed as foreign invaders, exploiting and taking land from the natives, which was how particularly after 1967 and following Israel’s alliance with France and Britain during the Suez crisis in 1956, Black Africa came to view the Palestinians as the victims of a colonial power that they could identify with and was another front in the Third Worlds struggle against the West. When the first UN general assembly met there were only 51 members of the UN, most of whom were European nations, as more and more Third World nations became independent and joined they strengthened the Third World bloc, and as the record shows Israel has suffered as a result. If the United Nations were voting today on the Partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab State with the current UN members, it would not pass. The decline in power of the former colonial powers has increased the diplomatic leverage of the Arab and Third World resulting in Israel’s further isolation even from a growing number of Western nations taking on board oil interests.
Independence for many of Third World countries unfortunately meant strengthening Israel’s enemies. Israel therefore joined in the efforts with the United States, Britain, and other western countries to support the survival of Portugal’s former colonies in putting down liberation movements fighting the Portuguese forces in Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, Sao Tome, Guinnea-Bissau and Principe. Israel supported Idi Amin’s Uganda; the success of the Raid on Entebbe came as a result of Israel playing a role in the building of the airport where the hostages were being kept. The former Belgian Congo, later known, as Zaire was another country where Israel had close military relations with, supporting Mobutu’s dictatorship along with China, Belgium, France, the U.S., Egypt and Morroco.
Not every regime Israel supported was tyrannical; she had very close relations with Ethiopia for some time as well as Kenya, where many Israeli’s would go for holidays which resulted in Kenya and Israeli interests in that country becoming a target for terrorism as became clear with the Mombasa attacks on the Israeli owned Paradise hotel in 2002.
Blue = Countries that have been supported militarily by Israel.
Blue = Countries that have been supported militarily by Israel (1987).
Israel found a few very close allies who all shared a common experience of isolation and whose survival was threatened, Taiwan, South Korea, Rhodesia before it eventually became Zimbabwe and apartheid South Africa. Apartheid South Africa and Israel had a few things in common, both were western nations, both were fighting mutual enemies and were both facing a growing isolation in the international community. The position of desperation, mutual enemies and common allies not only in Africa but South Africa were supporting some of the same regimes in Latin America that Israel were, brought the two countries together and made each other more credible and reliable allies to each other that could be trusted compared to that of their relations with their other allies.
As mentioned earlier that the success of the civil rights movement in the United States escalated the movement against apartheid in South Africa on a global scale, leading to countries ending diplomatic relations with South Africa and boycotting of South African products, in Israel such activities did not occur, relations were unchanged between Pretoria and Jerusalem, and as was expected as well as cooperation with South Africa supporting Israeli interests, this was another example of Israel providing a service to the United States by proxy.
When one thinks of the U.S referring to Israel as a “Strategic asset” first coined in the late 1960’s by Henry Kissenger, the U.S. does give Israel a lot of support, but it is not in return for nothing. What Israel has given the United States is a bargain considering how much money the U.S. spends on defence in other regions, not to mention preserving the diplomatic standing of the United States for not having any direct involvement in many of these affairs as well as not having to position many if any troops in the region’s that Israel is covering. The U.S. contracts Israel and other countries to provide security and stability for the benefit of the western world led by America. This has been a far more cost affective way of maintaining western power and influence in the world than through traditional colonialism.
Returning to the question of Morality and Politics, most political ideologies emerge through a school of thought made up of philosophies that from the outset generally sought to create positive change. But no ideal that gains a large following amalgamating in a movement or party involved in political activity can escape the practical realities of power politics, and once in power will have to either compromise on their principles in order to survive or will be true to their principles and lose power.
The United States, which holds the values of freedom and democracy has had to ally with Tyrants, the Left wing socialists of today currently ally themselves with Islamists and people cannot understand why, it is just another marriage of convenience, they have a common enemy, and if they someday managed to bring down capitalism and America they too would begin to fight each other.
The pursuit of justice in the international system is not possible; those in power call the shots. And the powerful only have power because others do not. In a world where there is one major power, that power sets the global order according to their preference.
The Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire wrote of his concern that those who were oppressed could too, later come to oppress others. As was the case behind much of Socialist and Utopian Zionist thinkers, such as Martin Buber, believing that the Zionist mission was not about creating a normal nation like any other, but a special one that would not do unto others what the rest of the world had done to the Jews. It is common practice for the bystanders, the ordinary citizens to side with the perceived under-dog, it doesn’t always mean that the under-dog is in the right, nor does it mean that they will or will not act any differently towards their oppressors or others should they be given the opportunity to do so.
Those who side with the Islamists under the assumption that these people are oppressed by the west and that all they want is independence and equality will soon find that they are no different to any other power looking to expand. The breakthrough made for the Islamist movement came in 1979 with the Iranian revolution where since then the country has been run by the Ayatollahs. What has happened is that over a period of time starting in the late 1970’s, Israel has watched the decline of her major regional allies and partners in her peripheral alliance.
Iran is taken over by the Ayatollahs in 1979 and becomes the Islamic Republic of Iran; in 1980 Rhodesia becomes Zimbabwe, and the apartheid system in South Africa ends in 1994. Israel has failed to create a stable and friendly neighbor in Lebanon, her withdrawal from the south of the country in 2000 led only to the implanting of the Iranian backed Hezbullah on its border to continue firing rockets, from where the P.L.O left off. Iran is now exporting her ideology and revolution to all other Muslim and Arab countries, Lebanon has been her biggest success yet. Whilst Syria and Iran remain allies, it is just another marriage of convenience, President Assad and his regime are secular and he does not wish to see himself overthrown by Islamists at some point, the same is the case for Egypt and Jordan but fortunately for them, due to them having made peace with Israel they enjoy support from the United States. The U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan did help Israel’s position to an extent by eliminating Sadaam Hussein from power, the leader of the Arab League, but if the Americans leave these countries in the same way that Israel withdrew from Lebanon and Gaza, it will be perceived as rewarding terrorism and the consequences could be disastrous, where extremists may take power, adding yet another gain to the Iranian led coalition and one with oil. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey then becomes highly critical of Operation Cast Lead at the end of 2009 as well as Turkish involvement with the Flotilla incident in 2010 has caused further tensions between the two countries. With Turkey struggling to enter the EU she has moved closer to allying the country with Iran.
On a more positive note Israel has made peace deals with Jordan and Egypt, in spite of the crumbling of her peripheral allies. It has now by default created the conditions where Israelis, the Arab states and even the rest of the world where we both face a threat that is more dangerous to all of us than each other and that is the threat of Islamism. The Arabs are currently not the biggest threat to Israel, significant progress has been made over the years in the Arab-Israeli relationship in spite of disagreements and unsuccessful attempts to reach agreements, but at least there are discussions, at least in principle we claim to want the same thing. Iran and her proxies Hamas, Hezbullah and Hamas have shown no signs or willingness to talk or to compromise.
If Iran manage to succeed in developing Nuclear weapons, she will no doubt threaten not only Israel, and not only the Arab states, but will seek first regional domination, control of the rich and natural resources wherever they may be, establish herself as a global superpower and compete against other powers, and particularly those who do not share her values, culture and beliefs and most likely turn the U.S. world order upside down.
Of course this does not mean that all Muslims are supporters of Islamism, many of them do not but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t groups living within western societies in Europe or America who would like to see Islamism spread beyond the borders of Muslim countries. This is a renaissance movement looking for a return to a Golden age for Islam. But this movement is no less colonial in nature to that of her opponents that she accuses of being so. Many of the people we refer to as Arabs today, weren’t Arab originally, they were of other ethnic groups who became arabized by invading Arab armies, such as the Copts in Egypt who remain the last of the Egyptian population to still retain their original Egyptian identity, or the Assad family in Syria who are Alawites, Maronite Christians in Lebanon, Druze in various countries, Armenians, Kurds and many other groups who live in the region, as well as a significant part of the Palestinian population who too can trace their origins back to Jewish roots. Many of these peoples speak Arabic as a result of having been arabized and converted to Islam centuries ago and remaining so in spite of the fall of the Arabs as a global power.
To view full lecture visit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxkV0L829v8
These groups are currently not in power, and therefore speak in a language of freedom from foreign domination, national liberation and independence, but they too have imperial ambitions to interfere with the running of countries other than their own. Western societies are more open to freedom of speech and in spite of the declared war on Terror, supporters of terrorism can be found masquerading amongst Human rights activists calling on death to Jews and Americans and how Islam will prevail. The Islamists need not invade the west to make their civilizations and policies more favorable to them, they can come through immigration, or through utilizing their freedom of speech in these countries to convert the people to support their cause or even better to their religion. Melanie Philips wrote of how London had become the main base for launching such activities and named it Londonistan, and Europe would some day become Eurabia if it doesn’t wake up soon.
To view full interview visit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcb2KG9Q5a0
Whilst I can understand perfectly why any peace loving person, no matter where they are from may find it uncomfortable that their governments may be doing things that go against their principles, but our efforts to govern and impose law and order in the international system has failed. The United Nations is a failed organization, which was set up to promote the interests of world peace, stability and protect human rights and serve justice and equality amongst nations. But it hasn’t, every nation in the diplomatic sphere is too voting and proposing motions, calling for inquiries and acting in accordance with their interests. It is made up of blocs, and nations are not voting in accordance with their judgment of right or wrong, but doing whatever they have to do to please those that they are dependent on. There is no higher authority to govern and impose meaningful sanctions for states that break international law. We need only look at Iran; it is not something of concern only to America and Israel, but the international consensus is that Iran should not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons, and in spite of the sanctions imposed on her, the Iranian regime continues in its nuclear ambitions. Or on a smaller scale, the UN peace-keeping forces and UN resolutions passed ensuring Israel’s security on its northern border, did not deter nor prevent Hezbullah from firing rockets indiscriminately into southern Israel. Or to create some balance here, there is no greater authority governing Israel and preventing the continuation of settlement building. The very fact that implementation of any resolutions is not possible and that there is no international law enforcement agency to ensure that conditions to agreements are adhered to by all parties, no state is willing to even if they are signatories of the UN charter, give up its natural right to defend itself and to act in its own self-interest.
The principles of rights and duties within social contract theory, discussed by philosophers such as Hobbes and Rousseau has succeeded on a national level. That human beings form a social contract with one another by giving up their natural rights in exchange for protection and legal rights by the state but have a duty as a citizen to obey the law, and gives authority to the state and the government voted in by the people. The sense of security offered to the citizen by the state is not present in the international system and that is why it operates in a state of anarchy.
In conclusion, there is no morality in politics unless it just so happens to coincide with ones national interest. And it is this reason why western governments did nothing to prevent the genocide in Rwanda and Darfur or why China gets away with its occupation of Tibet for example, because the cost of intervention does not result in more gains. As Jews we ask why the free nations did not make deals with the Nazi’s to trade Jews for goods when the Nazi’s were in a position of weakness during WW2? We hear responses such as – people were unaware of what was actually going on in the camps, or that saving Jews was not a good enough reason to strengthen the Nazi’s and that the first and foremost aim was to win the war.
Those who made efforts to do the right thing were individuals, who stuck their neck on the line in an unjust world. No matter how much any government or political leader will seek to justify their political actions with the ethical system of their society one must remember that they are first and foremost acting in what one hopes is the nations interest if not their own and not the nations values. Sometimes they do coincide, but often they do not, and their actions are motivated by the need for security through the ‘will to power’ in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche.
America is not seeking to spread democracy through its interventions abroad, what it is interested in is a regime that is favorable and acceptable to the United States, that will not challenge her but will serve her interests and accept her as the worlds superpower, if that state happens to be a democracy then that is just a bonus. But the U.S. does not want free countries if they are going to seek nationalization of the nations resources, not allow free trade and open their economies and close themselves off from the rest of the world or ‘vote for the wrong person’. Israel repeatedly acts out of necessity, how it only can to ensure its own survival, but not often how conventional wisdom would like her to act, in accordance with Jewish values. I don’t blame Israel for acting ruthlessly, nor do I think that any nation faced with comparable threats would do much better, but Israel is not a Mensch state, she has acted out of desperation, Israel’s unethical behavior is not always a result of choice, because if Israel turned the other cheek and didn’t play by the rules of international politics she would probably have ceased to exist a long time ago. It does not matter whether it is the Soviet Union, which too acted in a colonial manner in spite of its utopian values, or Arab countries acting in the name of Islam, they will all behave the same way but will justify their actions with their nations values. This is true even of their advocates and supporters.
Nations behave the same way as businesses do, it is often nothing personal, it is just business. Compassion, conscience and the desire to do the right thing, cannot be achieved through politics; it is up to individuals to work within and not against the system through the private sector. But should the power of the west decline as it has and we see the emergence of new rival, non-western powers the world will once again face a new hegemonic war. Given the choice between Americas brand of Liberal Democracy, Islamism or Chinese Communism, I know which one I prefer and under which Hegemon governing the world I am likely to survive and succeed in. If Europe and America some day were to decline as great world powers and be at the mercy of China, Iran, India or perhaps someday Africa, I wonder what compassion they may have for those less fortunate than them in the west, would there be individuals pressuring their governments to change their foreign policies exploiting Europe and America? Or would they hold a grudge and feel that we deserve everything we get, after how we treated them throughout history?
Alex Carson
Bibliography
1 Shain, Y. Ethnic Diasporas and U.S. Foreign Policy. The Academy of Political Science:1994-1995.
2 Martin Weil, “Can the Blacks Do for Africa What the Jews Did for Israel?” Foreign Policy 15 (Summer 1974): 109.
3 Beit-Hallahmi, B. (1987) The Israeli Connection, Who Israel Arms and Why, Pantheon: Unit
Once again, Bibi has recently met with Obama in Washington, only to find this time around Obama has a slightly changed attitude towards Israel, and is being less demanding, amidst his deteriorating popularity particularly amongst a growing number of Jewish Americans for his remaining silent during a period of widespread criticism of Israel, particularly during the Flotilla crisis which has cost Israel dearly in its already bad image in the international community.
In their meeting Bibi’s position was accepted that he wishes to engage in direct talks without pre-conditions. It is rare that I will agree with Bibi, but he is 100% correct, that if the international community expects Israel to have to talk to the Palestinians without them abandoning some of their demands such as the demand for the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to Israel’s pre 1967 border, then the Palestinians should have to also talk to Israel even if it continues settlement construction. Both sides if they are willing to talk should stop stalling and start negotiating.
When it comes to the negotiations for a two-state settlement it is not so much what the end result will look like being the real obstacle, through various previous attempts at Oslo, Camp David, Taba, the Geneva accords, the Clinton parameters, the Road Map, Annapolis, or even the Saudi Peace initiative, we are not so far from agreement on the solution to resolving the main issues; borders, the refugees and Jerusalem, but more on the affective means of getting there.
We can explain past failures by the fact that neither side had the leaders who were bold and brave enough to sign and keep to an agreement, or on extremists attempting to sabotage the peace process.
But there is another component that is worth paying attention to, and considering when negotiating peace with the Palestinians and Syria.
The greatest obstacle to peace in the Middle East is the Western worlds lack of understanding of the importance of ones Honour in the Arab psyche.
The widespread Arab rejectionist stance comes as a result of an obsession to preserve their honour and dignity. This has been the case even before Israel was established, from the opposition of the acceptance of a Jewish state on territory which at the time Pan Arabists believed belonged to them, that the Jews had no right to sovereignty nor self determination in Palestine. At best King Abdullah of Jordan in some meetings on the Israeli-Jordanian border proposed to Golda Meir the creation of an autonomous Jewish canton within a Hashemite kingdom. This was the most accommodating offer from any Arab leader prior to the 1948 war.
It is not only this fixation with their honour; it is also coupled with a feeling of shame and embarrassment that the Arab states were defeated by Jews on the battlefield. This minority group that dwelled in its midst, who have always been dependent on the goodwill and protection of their Muslim or Christian rulers, regarded as second class citizens, should acquire independence, equal rights, and whilst inferior in number and holding less territory should defeat the Arab states not once but multiple times, and to conquer more Arab territory in the process and rule over Muslims on what they believe to be Muslim land.
The Israeli side has adopted a similar line of thinking to some extent, in more recent years since the Second Lebanon war, but not out of rejection of the idea of a negotiated peace but more in an attempt to regain its deterrent capability. Israel had never lost a war; the nation was infused with romantic stories of the might of the Israeli army that miraculously defeated its hostile Arab neighbours seeking to destroy it, of the small strong nation who only asked to be accepted and nothing more.
Israel’s resolve was coming into question after the defeat in Lebanon, which left Hezbullah still operating on Lebanese soil, the north of Israel shattered by rockets and the kidnapped Israeli soldiers still in captivity. Not to mention the international community’s outrage at the damage caused to the civilian infrastructure of South Lebanon.
To Hezbullah it was seen as a huge victory, and an increased optimism to continue the physical fight against Israel began to revive itself, coupled with the support from Iran. Israel and her supporters started to ask serious questions about the IDF, the “best trained army in the world,” it was suggested that perhaps the IDF was not used to fighting a conventional war anymore. Its victories were mostly against armies of foreign states, but Israel has not fought a war like that since 1973. It has become used to policing a mostly civilian population in the West bank and Gaza, fighting terrorism, through building borders, checkpoints, targeted assassinations and various military operations to root out terrorists in Palestinian cities and refugee camps but the army has not really known war of this kind for quite some time. Even Israel’s involvement in Lebanon in 1982 did not end particularly well.
Many, blamed Israel’s leaders for poor organisation holding the prime minister Ehud Olmert, the defence minister Amir Peretz and chief of staff Dan Halutz responsible. Operation Cast Lead was the attempt by Israel to regain its deterrent credibility, to some extent it did achieve that objective but has suffered gravely diplomatically.
Whilst there are Arab leaders who are willing to compromise and progress has been made in the Arabs making concessions to accepting Israel’s existence, it has not come without taking into account addressing the value that the Arab league has for victory and loathing for the idea of compromise, viewing it as a sign of weakness on the part of those who are proposing it.
The Yom Kippur war in 1973 was an attempt by the Egyptians and the Syrians to regain the territory that they had shamefully lost in 1967. When Sadat came to power in 1970, high on his agenda was regaining the Sinai, he put out feelers for peace to Israel, to the appeal of Britain and France over reopening the Suez canal which Nasser had caused friction during the 1956 Suez crisis when Egypt sought nationalization of the canal. The Americans were not interested in his offers for peace for he was perceived to be a Soviet client state and the promises he was making were not credible and that he would not be able to survive alone without Moscow, the Israelis too as a result of 1967 had realized that they did not need to make concessions to Egypt and that they could not defeat Israel militarily after having defeated Egypt in two wars.
Even if Sadat was willing to go to even greater lengths diplomatically to make peace with Israel, for example had he gone to Jerusalem to address the Knesset before the Yom Kippur war in an attempt to regain the territories, from Israel’s perspective this would have demonstrated that Sadat was serious about peace and not trying to lure Israel into making concessions only to later renege on her obligations. One might ask, why didn’t this occur if Sadat really wanted to make peace, why did Israel and Egypt have to have another war? It is because the Arab world held such a rejectionist position towards Israel, which had been the unified Arab league policy made in Khartoum with the ‘three no’s’ that the Arab world were hungry for a victory, and certainly would not be willing to make any concessions to Israel without at least attempting to win the territories back first through war.
Sadat went to war with Israel in 1973 so that he could make peace with Israel. He was very clever in how he deceived the rest of the Arab world into thinking that this attack along with Syria was more than just regaining control of the Sinai but also about the destruction of Israel, when in fact he led the country to war, to restore Arab honour, to regain the Sinai, to open the Suez canal, to make peace with Israel and to be removed from dependency on the Soviet Union through becoming a US client state instead.
It was only the fact that he waged war in such a way that both sides were able to return to their countries claiming victory. From this point both sides feeling themselves victorious could on an equal footing start to negotiate a peace.
One might argue that this cost Sadat his life, as he was later assassinated for making peace with Israel by extremists, and Egypt was expelled from the Arab League, making Sadaam Hussein’s Iraq the Leagues new leader. But Egypt now the first Arab state to enter what we call the “moderate” camp would prosper from the aid that America would give them as agreed at camp David, and in spite of Sadat’s assassination his successor Mubarak who has remained Egypt’s leader until today, has not reneged on the agreement made between Israel and Egypt.
This paved the way for peace with another Arab nation which Israel had wanted to make peace with for many years, Jordan, where King Abdullah had many secret encounters with Israeli leaders, where private diplomacy was extremely common between these two nations, and Israel always knew that Jordan was the least hostile Arab nation and was more reluctant than the other Arab states when going to war with Israel, but again would join in out of pressure and not to be ostracized by the Arab league. The taboo of recognizing Israel had been broken by Egypt and Jordan too could emerge as the second “moderate” Arab state. Were it not for the rejectionist position of the Arab League it is possible that Israel and Jordan may have reached a peace agreement many years earlier.
Abdullah too was concerned about Arab honour with his proposal he made to the Zionists before 1947 as to where they would fit into his imperial ambition of creating an empire comprising Syria, Lebanon and even Saudi Arabia:
“ Any clash between us will be to our mutual detriment. We are speaking about partition. I would agree to a partition that will not disgrace me before the Arab world when I come out to defend it.”[1]
But years later Jordan would find herself in conflict with the Palestinians, particularly in 1970 when King Hussein launched Black September as a month long attack against the P.L.O who were undermining the Hashemite rule over his country, which resulted in the expulsion of the P.L.O to Lebanon. In response to this Syrian forces invaded Jordan threatening to further destabilize the country, the Israeli Air Force flew over the Syrian positions signalling them to retreat back to Jordan. It is alleged that the Mossad informed Hussein of an attempted assassination attempt against him.
A non-official alliance grew stronger between the two countries, and more so amongst growing divisions between the Arab states. As the Arab states began slowly to moderate their positions publicly on the issue of recognizing Israel’s right to exist, as is the case today and evident in proposals such as the Saudi Peace proposal, offering all Arab states full recognition and normalized relations with Israel provided that it withdraw to the pre ’67 borders and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West bank and Gaza.
Egypt paved the path for other Arab leaders to recognize Israel, through addressing the obstacle of the Arab need to restore their honour in regaining the Sinai but today the obstacle of honour has not disappeared, it has been marginalized to fringe groups who are gaining more and more influence in the region, undermining almost all Arab governments, whether or not they have formal peace agreements with Israel or not. The rejectionist position has now been left in the hands of religious fundamentalist groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa Martyrs brigade, Hezbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban and of course Al Quaeda. All given strength and hope and support by the one true rejectionist state, Iran. Whilst Iran is not an Arab country, and its political goals are not the same as that of the Arab states vision of a Pan Arab empire, it is an expansionist regime and is Islamist, which will undermine the secular rule of the Hashemites in Jordan, in spite of their alliance Assad’s Alawite regime in Syria, Mubarak’s pro western regime in Egypt, the hopefully ‘moderate’ Iraqi government to be, is already causing further strife in Lebanon through Hezbullah, as is the case with Hamas, will threaten the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmud Abbas and will seek regional domination and inevitably threaten western interest in Saudi oil.
The American led invasion of Iraq and the rise of the Ayatollahs in Iran with progress in their nuclear ambitions were major changing points in the attitudes of the leaders of the Arab states towards Israel. They speak more moderately than in the past, they claim to accept Israel’s right to exist but just demand that she return to the pre June 1967 borders.
The New York Times foreign affair correspondent Thomas Freidman had an interesting illustration; of how hypothetically US secretary of state, Warren Christopher, in a conversation may have attempted to explain globalization to Syrian president Hafez Al Assad, where whilst hypothetical he puts forth generally the current Syrian attitude towards Israel:
“No, Chris, I can afford to be patient. I will make peace with the Jews only in a way that establishes m as the one Arab leader who knows how to make peace with dignity – who does not grovel the way those lackeys Arafat and Sadat did. I won’t be another Sadat. I intend to be better than Sadat. I intend to give the Israelis less and get more. That is the only way I can protect myself from my own fundamentalists and domestic opponents and maintain the Arab leadership status that will always bring Syria money from someone. And if this means I have to use my proxies in Lebanon to make the Israelis bleed, no problem. It’s a bad neighbourhood, Chris, and the Israelis have gone soft. Too many of those kosher Big Macs, Chris. All these Israeli boys who come to fight in Lebanon carry their cell phones with them so they can call their Jewish mothers every night. Such good little boys. Do you think we don’t notice?[2]
In spite of the moderation in the language of Arab leaders the issue of preserving or restoring their honour still persists, in spite of the fact that from time to time they have found themselves divided in their stances on Israel or in positions of extreme weakness, particularly since the fall of the Soviet Union, they still would rather suffer than agree to a deal that is more on Israel’s terms considering their lack of anything left to bargain with, it is just too difficult for them to deal psychologically with the fact that they have been defeated, or to swallow their pride and come to terms with it and make peace.
The return of the refugees is possibly the one closed issue in dispute for Israel, she simply will not under any circumstances agree to the Palestinian demand for the refugees to return to Israel’s pre 1967 borders. But at the same time Israel must realize from the lessons learned from making peace with Sadat over the Sinai, that Mahmoud Abbas too will have to face a Palestinian population which may not accept the empty package on this issue that he may bring back to his people. The same formula must apply too to the Palestinians, the illusion or symbolism of the Palestinians achieving a victory or how they would perceive it as justice being served must present itself to them, Israel will have to agree to a symbolic number of refugees to return if only to address this obstacle, and the rest will have to receive compensation and be resettled within the borders of the Palestinian state.
The honour obstacle is less of an issue today amongst Israel’s old enemies, the Arab states and the P.L.O, but I very much doubt that the same rule will apply or be successful with the fundamentalist Islamist groups who Israel does not consider partners for peace. What is even more alarming is the thought that if they are then how many more wars of honour must Israel fight in order to make peace. As Israel’s past two wars have shown that as tank did not fight tank, plane did not fight plane, the enemy today possesses the advantage of surprise and disguise, its arsenal is mediocre and operates from densely populated areas, this severely restricts Israel’s military options in spite of her capabilities.
Israel’s current enemies have adopted the Salami tactic, to slice away at her slowly, with rockets coming from Gaza and South Lebanon, which eventually Israel puts her foot down and attempts to confiscate the knife, she succeeds and then in time they obtain a new knife, and perhaps a better knife. Israel cannot claim that she faces an existential threat from these attacks, nor can she use proportionate force to remove the threat. She realizes all along that she will eventually need to deal with this threat by chopping off the arm of the Butcher; the Butcher being Iran, Iran is the biggest existential threat Israel has ever faced. It is unlikely that Iran will become pragmatic to accepting Israel on any conditions and make peace. Iran under Ahmedinijad has set itself the goal of restoring honour to the whole Muslim world, by achieving the goal of destroying Israel which the Arabs abandoned, and to then claim the role of the regional superpower.
Iran has made significant progress in perusing this objective in defiance of widespread international condemnation, with her tentacles exporting this revolution to Lebanon, Gaza and more recently Turkey. This movement is the movement of honour that would rather rot and die heroically than entertain the notion of compromise or pragmatism.
Alex Carson
Bibliography
[1] Ezra Danin, “Conversation with Abdullah, 17.11.47,” S25/4004 Sasson to Shertok, Nov. 20, 1947, S25/1969; Golda Meyerson’s verbal report to the Provisional State Council on May 12, 1948 Israel State Archives, Provisional State Council: Protocols, 18 April – 13 May 1948 (Jerusalem: Israel publishing house, 1978), pp.40 – 41.
[2] Friedman, T (2000) The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Harper Collins: London pp. 274
Elijah Levita was born in 1469 in Neustadt, near Nuremberg, he came from an observant Jewish family during the Renaissance period, where Europe was beginning to emerge out from the Middle ages through the period of the Enlightenment into the modern era. From Levita’s early childhood he excelled in the study of biblical texts and Hebrew Grammar. He settled in Venice but in 1504 he was earning a living teaching Hebrew to children in Padua, northern Italy. He enjoyed a prosperous life there, as a Grammarian translating Hebrew texts into other languages until he was forced to flee to Rome, losing all his possessions when the army of the League of Cambrai took the city in 1509.
The liberal minded Ægidius of Viterbo, general of the Augustine Order was a student of Hebrew and offered Levita and his family refuge in the palace of the Cardinal where he lived for 13 years, in exchange for teaching Hebrew lessons. At the same time he took up studying Greek. So far this guy has done pretty well as a Hebrew teacher, a lot better than many of our Cheder or Ulpan teachers today.
Imperialists invaded Rome and once again Elijah lost all of his property and fled to Venice, where he met a printer of Hebrew language books named Daniel Bomberg who he worked with continuing his publications and teaching. At the age of seventy, Bomberg stopped publishing; Levita left his family in 1537 and moved to the town of Isney in Germany.
It was here where he met Paul Fagius (1504- 1549) a renaissance scholar of Biblical Hebrew born in Rheinzabern, South-east Germany, he learned Hebrew from Levita as a Priest and established a Hebrew press. He translated into Latin from Hebrew works including Pirḳe Avot (1541), Levita’s “Tishbi” (1541) and Shemot Devarim, an Old Yiddish-Hebrew-Latin-German dictionary, in 1542.
Levita furthered the study of Hebrew in the Christian world, during a period of hostility towards Jews. Elijah is the author of what is believed to be the first ever-Yiddish novel, ‘the Bove-bukh’ (The Book of Bove) written in 1507 and printed in 1541.
His works were popular with both Jews and Christians and demonstrated the possibility of peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial interaction between Jews and Christians.
There were objections by Jews to his teaching Christians Hebrew and Jewish texts, as they alleged that they were only studying Hebrew and Jewish sources in the attempt to try to disprove them, to which Levita responded that the Christian Hebraist’s he was teaching were moderates who defended Jews from attacks from a fanatical clergy.
He was described by the nineteenth century writer, Christian David Ginsberg as “… the great teacher of cardinals and bishops of the Romish Church, and of the originators and leaders of the reformation, and who may justly be regarded as the reviver of Hebrew learning among Christians at the commencement of the sixteenth century, and as one of the most distinguished promoters of Biblical literature.”
Due to a rise in the Counter-reformation movement, many rejected Fagius’s work and he was put under pressure so he moved to England where he was given the position of Hebrew lecturer at the University of Cambridge in 1549. In 1959 he died from plague and was buried in St Margaret’s Church, Cambridge. After Queen Mary’s Catholic restoration, his bones were exhumed and burnt; Levita’s book Tishbi, was no longer permitted to be distributed in Britain at the time, due to the books preface written by Fagius. So it was reprinted in Basle without the preface to conceal his connection to the book. A memorial was set up in his memory in 1560.
Elijah Levita died on 28 January 1549 at the age of 80 and was buried in the Lido Jewish cemetery, Venice.
Mr. Cameron’s great-great-grandfather was a descendent of Elijah Levita. Emile Levita, was a German-born merchant and banker of Polish Jewish parentage who immigrated to Manchester from Germany in the 1850s, entered the world of commerce, as a Banker for the Rothschild family, gained citizenship in 1871 and became director of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, based in London.
He married out to British born, Catherine Plumridge Rée, who was the daughter of Hermann Philipp Rée (who was a Dutch, Jewish Business man from a German background). And assimilated into British society looking to be accepted as an English gentleman, owning a grouse moor in Wales, hunting and sending his four sons to Eton. Cameron descends from Emile’s eldest son Arthur Levita (great-grandfather) who married Steffie Cooper, a cousin of the Royal Family. Their daughter, Enid would later marry Ewen Donald Cameron in 1930. It is here that the Levita’s merged with Cameron’s in 1930.
Dr Wise’s study of archival material also suggests that through Mr. Cameron’s name as Levitas could suggest that he may also be of Levite ancestry. It is unknown whether the descendents of any of Emile Levita’s other three son’s remain Jewish today.
A meeting was arranged for the former Rosh Beth Din, Daayan Ehrentrau to meet David Cameron at their meeting he presented Cameron with an original Basle edition of Elijah Levita’s book Tishbi. The edition without Fagius’s preface, which has an historical British connection to it as it was banned in Britain for a time, under Queen Mary.
David Cameron stated in his address to the Jewish community prior to the 2010 general election that “Indeed, one of the highlights of my year, was meeting Daayan Ehrentrau and learning about my ancestors, the Levita’s.”
He has on numerous occasions when addressing Jewish audiences, prior to discovering the story of his Jewish ancestry expressed his admiration for the Jewish community and how he shares its values. Cameron said that,“To me, one of the biggest contributions of Judaism, is it’s understanding of what makes a responsible society.”
The original purpose for the creation of a Jewish state were in the Zionist movements founding years very different to what Jews both in Israel and the Diaspora see its existence serving the Jewish people today.
For the most part modern Zionism emerged from two main schools of thought. In Western and central Europe where the Jews were more assimilated and integrated into their host societies, emerged first the founding branch of the Zionist movement, Herzlian Zionism. The Herzlian school of thought saw Zionism as the answer to the problem of anti-Semitism and Herzl’s followers, such as Nordau were mostly assimilated Jews, who turned to Zionism as a result of failed emancipation.
They were mostly well educated Jews, who were not so familiar with Jewish tradition or the Jewish people. As Max Nordau remarked that “we are a religious community composed of Atheists.” Herzl before witnessing the Dreyfus affair, believed that all Jews should convert to Christianity, the desire of Herzl and his followers was for a state that would truly embody the values of the European enlightenment, a liberal and democratic state for the Jews. Stemming from this stream of Zionism is the idea that the state will grant the Jews freedom, not only to be a Jew, but also from being a Jew. It is a collective attempt at assimilation, if the Jew could not assimilate as an individual, perhaps they can be assimilated as a collective.
In the East, Zionist sentiment was found amongst those who resided in the Shtetls, in the Pale of Settlement, in the region of Eastern Europe, Russia and Poland. These Zionists were different from those from Western Europe; they had not experienced European emancipation, had lived in Ghettos and had turned to Zionism and Socialism in rebellion and response to their religious upbringings.
The Playwright, David Memet in his book The Wicked Son, Anti-Semitism, Self Hatred and the Jews discusses the four sons from the Haggada on Passover and addresses the role that the Wicked son plays in perpetuating anti-Semitism.
“The wicked Jewish child removes himself from his tradition, and sets up as a rationalist and judge of those who would study, learn, and belong.”1
(Memet, D. 2006)
The Zionist movement was one of the few enlightenment responses to the Jewish question that internalized the prevalent anti-Semitic image and stereotypes of the Jews. In its early years, Zionists was perhaps the naïve Jew who thought that the anti-Semites were not fanatics, the wicked sons who asked the question “what have we done to make them hate us?” Or “perhaps they are right.”
Particularly Socialist Zionists, who believed that it was caused by the fact that the Jew was landless, and held positions in the middle classes, acting as the hated middle man, reaping the capital from the labourers, acceptance of such ideas were found amongst the prominent left wing Zionist ideologists, including Nahman Syrkin and Ber Borechov. Borechov explains in Our Platform that:
“Anti-Semitism flourishes because of the national competition between the Jewish and non-Jewish petty bourgeoisie and between the Jewish and non-Jewish proletarized and unemployed masses.”2
(Borechov, B 1906:361)
Herzl too believed that the Diaspora itself was the cause of Anti-Semitism and that it would disappear if the Jews had their own state.
The Revisionist Zionists too were not immune to internalizing the anti-Semitic view of the Jew. The Zionists took on board the anti-Semites views of the Jews leading to the Zionist vision of creating the ‘New Jew.’
The ‘Old Jew’ ‘New Jew’ mission looked to deny all of Jewish history in the Diaspora, as being an embarrassment and worthless. It would end the relationship between this new people (the Israelis) and the Jewish people.
Some may look at the history of the state of Israel as part of the continuation of Jewish history whereas for others it was intended to be a break away from the Jews and the birth of a new people. The new Jew was to be everything that the Jews of the Diaspora were allegedly not. It is summed up best by Jabotinsky’s description:
“Our starting point is to take the typical Yid of today and to imagine his diametrical opposite… because the Yid is ugly, sickly, and lacks decorum, we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew with masculine beauty. The Yid is trodden upon and easily frightened and, therefore, the Hebrew ought to be proud and independent. The Yid is despised by all and, therefore, the Hebrew ought to charm all. The Yid has accepted submission and therefore, the Hebrew ought to learn how to command. The Yid wants to conceal his identity from strangers and, therefore, the Hebrew should look the world straight in the eye and declare: “I am a Hebrew!””3
(Jabotinsky, Z 1949:97-100)
Of course most of us today have long since learned that fulfilling the Zionist dream of the rebirth of a nation, and Israeli independence has not eliminated anti-Semitism. Most Zionists learned their lesson that they could not escape anti-Semitism by any kind of rebranding or changing the position or condition of the Jews, whether powerful or powerless.
But the mentality of accepting the anti-Semites reasons for being against the Jews, persisted. Rather than accepting that the existence of Israel has not changed the anti-Semites view of the Jews, or the anti-Zionists view of the Israelis, they have either therefore rendered the entire Zionist project and the establishment of Israel as void of all legitimacy or a mistake that needs to be corrected.
Many Zionists accepted the reasons that the anti-Semites gave for their Jew hatred in the 1900’s and, branching off from this logic we see the same approach drawn today, asking why do they hate us? Today we are hated because we have a state, but rather than realizing that the problem is the anti-Semite, they see the root of the problem as the Jew or the Jewish state.
Here in lies the root of the problem behind Israeli anti-Zionism, which in some cases resonates in Post Zionist thought. And is the continuation of the desire to assimilate and be accepted by the non-Jewish world. The desire to be ‘normal,’ to the Post-Zionist is by and large the adoption of the calling for a one state solution, so that Israel will follow suit with many of its western allies in the democratic world, and become a ‘state for all its citizens.’
Where this becomes confusing is the new internalizing of the new anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist branding of Israel, as a racist, colonialist state, whose existence was founded on the ruins and displacement of the Palestinian people and owes its legitimacy to the catastrophe of the Holocaust.
Whilst I have always recognized that the conflict with the Palestinians needs to be addressed and that Israel has implemented polices which have made conditions for resolving the conflict even harder, it does not and has not reached the extent of advocating eliminating Israel’s identity as a Jewish state altogether.
The feeling of guilt on the part of many Israelis for Israel’s role in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem has contributed to the perpetuation of anti-Israel feeling. The conflict with the Arabs and particularly the Palestinians I do not believe the root cause of the problem to be that of irrational anti-Semitism of the modern European variety. It does exist and has been spread by various Arab leaders. The adoption of the pro Palestinian narrative at the expense of Israel’s narrative has also been geared towards promoting a political agenda. Whilst it claims to be rewriting Israeli history without the ‘Zionist narrative’ it is no more objective than the ‘Zionist narrative’, it is as politically loaded and is told in a way, which too has a political and ideological agenda.
Professor of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Elhanan Yakira discusses this phenomenon in his book Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust: Three Essays on Denial, Forgetting, and the Delegitimation of Israel4. Singling out a few Post-Zionist historians in Israel, including professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, Adi Ophir. He forges a link to mostly what is a group of Revisionist historians in France, who are considered to be Holocaust deniers, associated with the ultra-left wing bookstore in Paris, La Vieille Taupe, founded by the political activist, Pierre Guillaume and scholars such as Robert Faurisson, Serge Thion, Paul Rassiner and others. Much of the thinking behind this school of thought is left wing, pacifists, who have no inklings towards Nazism.
Yakira discusses the link between the Revisionist historians in Europe and various Post Zionist historians in Israel and abroad, such as Noam Chomsky, who wrote what would become used as the Introduction to one of Robert Faurisson’s works defending everyone’s right to free speech amidst the illegality of Holocaust denial in many European countries.
This is not at all surprising if we look at the origins of Socialist Zionism, which saw Zionism as a stage in bringing the Jews back to the rank of the Proletariat and then integrating itself with the global Communist movement. Zionism was a mask, a cover leading the Jews through a false sense of security thinking that it aimed for their national revival and self determination in their homeland as an end in itself, only to find that it was just a means to something bigger and greater than nationalism, the Jewish state was just seen as a temporary stage.
It is not so different to the attitudes that many held towards the Reform movement in its early years, offering to the Jews of the Ghetto the chance to be accepted by the non-Jewish world and to remain a Jew and be consistent with modernity. For some, as with many left wing Zionists that was genuinely what was sought through joining these movements, whereas for others, they saw both Reform and Zionism as being paths to assimilation. Both of these movements aroused scepticism amongst the Jews of the Ghettos and the Orthodox world.
Today both these movements, Reform Judaism and Zionism have changed, and have reverted back towards more traditional Jewish identity and have as a result brought most of the mainstream of the Jewish people closer to them. Yes it has been in part to do with the Holocaust, but also the changes in practice and belief that these two movements made, the Zionist left became less inclined to exchanging Judaism for Socialism, with such rebellious practices which shocked many Jews, such as the serving of Pork in the Chadrei Ochel (Dining rooms) of some Kibbutzim, and the Reform movement no longer keep Shabbat on a Sunday for example.
Answers to the Jewish question whether it be Reform, Communism or Zionism all have strands within them aimed at attracting the Jews to their movement through making use of appealing to the masses that they are not only the answer to their problem both in terms of the correct path for the continuation of Jewish identity and the answer to anti-Semitism, but also there are those who see them all as potential paths to assimilation.
What has become known as the ‘New anti-Semitism’, which accuses anti-Semites as hiding behind anti-Zionism and that opposition to Israel is just a new form of singling out the Jews, that there are good Jews and bad Jews. The bad ones are those who associate with Israel, which is the vast majority of today’s Jews, and good Jews who denounce Israel.
It wouldn’t matter if the outcome of history had turned out differently. If hypothetically, there was no Second world War and there was no Holocaust, and Zionism failed to win the support of the masses of Jews, and they did not move to Palestine in great numbers, and that the Territorialists, the Jewish Bund movement succeeded in winning over the masses of European and Russian Jews, I believe that rather than seeing the distinction made of Jews being good or bad based on their views on Israel, it would be as has been the case during the Cold war an inflation of the suspicion of Jews in countries like the United States as being evil Communist spies, or in what became the Soviet Union as being the opposite.
No matter which corner the Jews turn a conspiracy is constructed for them. The Jews try to rule the world through their influence within the Communist movement, or that the Rothschilds and the Jewish bourgeoisie is controlling the worlds money, and if none of this is enough even the Zionists are involved in this too somehow, that Israel is somehow controlling the decisions of foreign powers, through Jewish influence in the Diaspora.
This division of the good Jews from the bad Jews is nothing new. Before Israel was established the Bolshevik Jews were viewed not that differently to how the Zionists are regarded today. The former British Prime minister and proud supporter of the Zionist movement, Winston Churchill, wrote an article titled Zionism and Bolshevism. A struggle for the soul of the Jewish people, on who were the good Jews and who were the bad Jews, in his opinion the good Jews were the Liberal, Diaspora Jews in western countries and the Zionists, and the Communists and Bolsheviks were the bad Jews, he wrote that:
“It would almost seem as if the gospel of Christ and the gospel of the Antichrist were destined to originate among the same people; and that this mystic and mysterious race had been chosen for the supreme manifestations, both divine and the diabolical…
Duty of Loyal Jews
It is particularly important in these circumstances that the National Jews in every country who are loyal to the land of their adoption should come foreword on every occasion, as many of them in England have already done, and take a prominent part in every measure for combating the Bolshevik conspiracy. In this way they will be able to vindicate the honour of the Jewish name and make it clear to the world that the Bolshevik movement is not a Jewish movement, but is repudiated vehemently by the great mass of the Jewish race.”5
It appears to be that the good Jew is the fringe movement of the Jewish people, Zionism at this time had not enlisted the amount of support of the Jewish people that it has today, and the left wing, radical Bolshevik Jews were considered to be the evil offshoot of the Jewish people. Today we see the opposite, Zionism is no longer a small fringe movement, it is one of the main movements influencing Jewish attitudes and concerns today, and it is Zionism which has become the movement that Jews are being asked to distance themselves from, to prove that Zionism is not a Jewish movement.
I am not sure I would call myself a staunch ideological Zionist anymore, but not because it is evil, or an unjust cause at all, but more because my definition of Zionism is probably much more than just supporting Israel’s right to exist, as I grew up in Zionist youth movements and have a more in-depth concept of what Zionism is. But I am a supporter of Israel’s right to exist nonetheless because it has become the first point of call when fighting anti-Semitism.
In the past the Zionists believed the anti-Semites reasons for anti-Semitism, took them seriously and gave them what they thought they wanted with the hope that it would disappear. Today Jews are told the complete opposite, that the cause is Israel. The split within the Zionist movement is an internal struggle between those who from the outset had no desire for Israel to remain a Jewish state forever and hoped and planned for the withering away of its Jewish character. Those who fail to see anti-Semitism as irrational and who genuinely believe that it will disappear provided that we do what the non-Jews say, in the case of demonizing Israel it is not that different from that of a Jew who converted to Christianity to be accepted, but it wasn’t enough until he became an anti-Semite.
The answer is not that we are today predisposed of having to be Zionists, but more that Jews shouldn’t have to feel like they are less of a person because of their political or religious views, who are the rest of the world to define what is good Jew and what is bad Jew?
Let the Jews be what they want to be, if they want to be Zionists they can, if they want to be communists or capitalists, reform or orthodox Jews they can be. Often such occurrences result in the call to unite behind Israel. I think it is more than uniting behind Israel, or showing that the Jews speak with one voice but that we as Jews need to be able to speak with multiple voices but to stop attempting to validate our voice by de-legitimizing another. Of course there are things that one group may do which another may disagree with. I may not agree with the ultra-Orthodox community on many things, and I am happy to mention what they are even amongst non-Jews, but what I will not tolerate is the attempt to make me into a good Jew, for being ‘normal’ and them into weird, backward, stubborn to change, bad Jews who they can mock as much as they like.
The same must be the case between Zionist Jews and non-Zionist Jews, I don’t like some of the things Israel does, but it has a right to exist. My support for the Palestinian cause stops when the de-legitimization of Israel begins.
We need to become united by the defence of many voices that the Jews have. This task is all the more complicated than calling on Jewish unity in the face of anti-Semitism, but we need to face the facts, we are not all the same, we are a people spread all over the world, we have various different religious streams of Judaism, different Jewish cultures, we reside in countries with very different political cultures to one another which can influence our views. But we must find a way to overcome the attempt to play us against one another. The strategy of unity through those who object to the communities’ position, remaining silent has not been successful, more and more Jewish groups are popping up speaking against Israel, as a result of the fact that there has been no real forum for them to voice their criticisms. The Jewish people, supporters of Israel and critics of Israel, reform and orthodox need a new approach to dealing with anti-Semitism in that the line of de-legitimizing Israel’s right to exist is at the border of anti-Semitism, and that demonizing comments and remarks or actions towards one group of Jews over another must be confronted too.
The words of Voltaire, “I despise what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Need to be applied to this approach. A touch of Libertarianism is needed, so long as we do not start undermining each other’s freedom or right to speak as Jews and do things in ones own way.
I have no doubt that anti-Semitism will continue to exist even when Israel makes peace with the Palestinians, its guise will just change. This strategy seems complicated to implement in practice, but today it is Zionism that is considered the bad Jew, we cannot resolve this problem by finding other Jews to demonize or allowing another group to be demonized by non-Jews, nor can we seek salvation from the world by condemning Zionism, we must be smarter than that, and unite in our diversity. Jews are Capitalists, Jews are Communists, Zionists, Religious and Secular, Orthodox and Non-Orthodox, Black, White, Western, Eastern and come in many other varieties, and no anti-Semites are going to make a distinction as to which are the good ones and which are the bad ones and if they do, we will not turn against each other but expose them for what they are. No other people has to deal with appeasing a hatred one may have of them, or even seek approval from anyone else because of what some of their people may be doing or not doing. I can’t recall Iranians living outside of Iran being under attack because of the regime that rules their country, I rarely hear of Turkish people in Britain suffering abuse for the policies of their government, or even for their diabolical behaviour regarding the Armenians, the Kurds or even the dispute over Cyprus, or the Chinese over their occupation of Tibet.
But when it comes to Israel and peoples opposition to her policies, I am more than happy to listen to why they don’t think Israel should have built the security barrier, or why they think Operation Cast Lead was wrong, why the blockade should be lifted or why checkpoints should be removed. These are difficult security matters, but what I have yet to hear from anyone I speak to who opposes these measures is an alternative that will both ease the hardships and inconveniences to the lives of the Palestinians and equally ensure that Israelis will not get blown up on buses or have rockets showered down on their villages and cities. Not one suggestion has been presented to me when discussing these matters that has ever addressed the human rights of Israelis too. We need not do much to test ones motives on these issues, I advise Israel supporters not to waste their breath justifying Israel’s actions all the time when confronted with criticism, just ask them what they suggest Israel do instead, you will soon find that they either have a good suggestion that may be worth taking on board, or that they have not really thought it through, and one will discover whether or not the critic considers the safety and right to life as a right that Israelis have at all.
To summarize, the anti-Zionist sentiment in Israel amongst some Israeli Jews, is the continuation of the strand of Zionism that sought to assimilate, the same as has been the case with members of adherents to other movements, both religious or political aimed answering the Jewish question during the 19th century. The movement has followed in the trend that the general Left wing of the global political spectrum has taken, throughout and into the post Cold war era, which views the world in terms of ‘haves’ and ‘have not’s,’ winners and losers, it has in turn viewed the Palestinians as one of the oppressed peoples in the world and just another front of the war between the deserving, poor Third World being exploited, attempting to overcome, Neo-liberalism and Imperialism, and that all that is worth confronting is an international class struggle, Yakira highlights this in his essay, Holocaust denial and the Left:
“This tendency also makes it possible to remain indifferent to injustice that is apparently not accounted for by class conflict or any other all-encompassing explanatory principle, such as the struggle against colonialism. The proletariat has only one enemy, and that is the class to which Dreyfus belongs, the exploiting class. There is only one just struggle, the struggle against exploitation. Internal rivalries within this class do not interest the working masses, and their revolutionary energies should not be squandered or marginal, unimportant questions about injustices that may or may not have been committed against a member of the exploiting class. Both in Rassinier and his faithful followers on the radical French left one can find this syndrome: one must not allow the crime that was committed at Auschwitz, as it were, to blind us to the main thing, which is the suffering of the those who are truly exploited – the workers, people of the Third World, the Palestinians. What happened at Auschwitz was, in the last analysis, just another instance, among many, of the true source of all crimes: colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and Zionism. Since the ceaseless concern with Auschwitz distracts us from all these things, we have to get rid of it. Thus, one cannot avoid the conclusion that nothing unique happened at Auschwitz. Its uniqueness can be negated by the claim that there was no systematic, planned extermination, real or symbolic, is what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians.”6
(Yakira, E 2010: 21)
It is this school of thought that has caused what is often perceived to be a double standard on Israel or a disregard for the injustices caused by Palestinian terrorists targeting Israeli civilians and the subsequent attempt to constantly justify such atrocities. The very fact that there are Jews both inside and outside of Israel who endorse this worldview has allowed anti-Semites to claim immunity from anti-Semitism by demonizing Zionism, Israel and her supporters and associating them with all their other perceived evils, i.e. colonialism, imperialism and capitalism.
The American historian, Walter Laqueur has too made this point in his book; The changing face of Anti-Semitism, from ancient times to the present day:
“Over the last few decades, there has been an ideological reorientation of what used to be the left. With the progressive disillusionment with Communism and the later breakdown of the Soviet empire, the sympathies of the left were transferred to the third world, the under-developed countries of Asia and Africa. If earlier on the (unofficial) slogan had been “no enemies on the left,” the new guiding line became “no enemies in the third world.” But Israel was not a third world country. The left, with only a few exceptions had never been in favour of a Jewish homeland, which they considered a step in the wrong direction. And as the problems generated by the creation of the Jewish state multiplied, the erstwhile antagonism reappeared with additional vigour.”7
(Laqueur, W 2006:15)
Once again as Churchill did in the 1920’s called on Liberal Jews in the Diaspora and Zionist Jews to condemn and distance themselves from the Bolsheviks, today the smaller number of Communist Jews and the small pockets of anti-Zionist religiously observant Jews are branded as the ‘good Jews’ and the Jews are being asked to distance themselves from Zionism and Israel.
Jews should not have to apologize for what Israel does or doesn’t do, or for what Jews like Bernie Madof did, just because he is a Jew. Nor should Jews get concerned about whether they will be accused of dual loyalties if a Jew becomes president or prime minister. It has not stopped Obama from adopting more pro-Muslim policies than his predecessor for example. The hostility towards Israel, is the world simply having problems accepting that the Jews are standing up for their rights, and is not at the mercy of the good will of any host nation. The criticism of that people have of Israel’s actions are legitimate and cannot always be regarded as anti-Semitism so long as they can suggest a viable alternative that is not one sided, and particularly when it is criticism of military tactics and security issues. I am constantly critical of settlement building and other Israeli policies, as I am also of the far right on the Palestinian side.
The difference between the contemporary anti-Semitism in the Arab world is that it fails to differentiate between, Israelis, Zionists or Jews no matter where they are, Jews are all one entity, in the West, in Europe and America, what is referred to as “New anti-Semitism” masquerading behind “anti-Zionism” is that it attempts to divide Jews into good ones and bad ones, to colonize them. During the mandate period, the British divided the labour Zionists under the leadership of Ben Gurion from the right wing under the leadership of Menachem Begin, where Jews betrayed other Jews, including the handing over of Irgun members to the British to be executed, until they eventually saw eye to eye and united to drive the British out of Palestine. Today, we are being divided into Zionists and non-Zionists. We must unite by refusing to be divided into good and bad Jews.
Alex Carson
Bibliography
1 Memet, D (2006) The Wicked Son, Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews, Shocken books: United States
2 Borechov, B (1906) Our Platform, taken from the Zionist idea by Hertzberg, A (1997) The Jewish Publication Society: Philadelphia
3 Jabotinsky, Z (1949) Ktavim Tzionim Rishonim, Early Zionist Writings, Jerusalem
4 Yakira, E (2010) Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust: Three Essays on Denial, Forgetting, and the Delegitimation of Israel, Cambridge University Press: New York
5 Churchill, W (08.02.1920) Zionism and Bolshevism. A struggle for the soul of the Jewish people, Illustrated Sunday Herald.
6 Yakira, E (2010) Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust: Three Essays on Denial, Forgetting, and the Delegitimation of Israel, Cambridge University Press: New York
7 Laqueur, W (2006) The changing face of Anti-Semitism, from ancient times to the present day, Oxford University Press: New York
In December 2008, 25-year-old Adam Hantman from Kenton, decided to board a Nefesh BeNefesh plane and start a new life in Israel. Only one and a half years later he and his partner Meshi (Mexican Jewish immigrant) have founded their own business and have been crowned the winners of the Israel Business Connections and the Council of Immigrant association of Israel, funded by Jewish Agency as the Young Oleh Entrepreneur 2009 on 26th May.
The award is a new launch of the Jewish Agency to take place on an annual basis. Hantman was given the award for the progress and success of his website www.cheap4olim.com, which aims to help Jewish immigrants by linking them to Israeli businesses that will provide them with special discounts on their services or products.
The idea to create the website was prompted from Hantmans personal experience of struggle in the early days of his Aliyah and the practical difficulties he and his partner Meiselman faced when they left their Ulpan on Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan in the North when looking to make a new home for themselves, and believed that this was a gap in the market that he was eager to fill.
President of the Israel Council of Immigrant Association, Mario Lev upon giving the award said “I’d like to congratulate you on your service and help to the Olim community.” Hantman stated that “Without Meshy’s help, and the guidance from Mario and Ran Afek of the IBC we would not be in the position we are in today to provide the necessary assistance that the olim community need. Since I moved here from London, my standard of living has actually improved, I feel safer from the fear of crime and anti-Semitism and I would not have met the woman who has changed my life.”
