what's the difference between 48 and 11?

back then

I under­stand that dur­ing the first half of the 20^th cen­tury not even the major­ity of world Jewry sup­ported a nation­al­ist solu­tion to Jew­ish exis­tence. Jew­ish work­ing class move­ments were gen­er­ally non-Zionist and many of the “lead­ers” of world Jewry were inter­na­tion­al­ists, look­ing for inter­na­tional solu­tions. Why, then, should I be sur­prised that the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple did not rec­og­nize nation­al­ism as potent force in their own approach to moder­nity? As I wrote in a leaflet I pub­lished in 2002:

Who Are the Palestinians?

• We con­sider Pales­tine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been sep­a­rated from it at any time. We are con­nected with it by national, reli­gious, lin­guis­tic, nat­ural, eco­nomic and geo­graph­i­cal bonds.

  Res­o­lu­tion adopted by the First Con­gress of Muslim-Christian Asso­ci­a­tions; Jerusalem, Feb­ru­ary, 1919 at a meet­ing to choose rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the Paris Peace Conference

• There is no such coun­try [as Pales­tine]! “Pales­tine” is a term the Zion­ists invented! There is no Pales­tine in the Bible. Our coun­try was for cen­turies part of Syria.

  The words of Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, local Arab Leader to the Peel Com­mis­sion (which came up with the sug­ges­tion to par­ti­tion the Land of Israel) in 1937

• There is no such thing as “Pales­tine” in his­tory, absolutely not.

  Tes­ti­mony of dis­tin­guished Arab-American his­to­rian, Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Prof. Philip Hitti, before the Anglo-American Com­mit­tee 1946

• Pales­tine was part of the Province of Syria… polit­i­cally, the Arabs of Pales­tine were not inde­pen­dent in the sense of form­ing a sep­a­rate polit­i­cal entity.

  Arab Higher Com­mit­tee rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the United Nations at the Gen­eral Assem­bly, May, 1947

• It is com­mon knowl­edge that Pales­tine is noth­ing but south­ern Syria
  Ahmed Shuqeiri (later chair­man of the PLO) to the Secu­rity Coun­cil (a few years later)

The Pales­tin­ian peo­ple did not care about or build a national move­ment until Israel acquired con­trol of the West Bank and Gaza fol­low­ing the Six-Day War in 1967.

Now that Pales­tin­ian nation­al­ism is a force, the Pales­tini­ans must rec­og­nize the right of the Jew­ish peo­ple to its national move­ment: Zionism.

Together, the two peo­ples can share the land.

“coulda shoulda”

So… (as I pub­lished in another leaflet at that time):

why not this?

Accord­ing to United Nations Par­ti­tion Plan of 1948 a Pales­tin­ian state was cre­ated at the same time as the State of Israel

It offered a lot more ter­ri­tory than the Camp David pro­pos­als of 2000!

which came first…

the nation or the state?

That’s a hard one to answer, as the Wikipedia arti­cle on “nation state” makes clear. I thought I could learn some­thing about the pre­de­ces­sor of the mod­ern nation state by look­ing at the con­cept of “the peo­ple” or “peo­ple­hood”. But even here the ideas are scat­tered. The Wikipedia has arti­cles on “Jew­ish Peo­ple­hood” which has its ori­gins in the Bib­li­cal con­cept of עם ישראל, expressed in early Rab­binic times as “Kol yis­rael are­vim zeh bazeh – All Israel are respon­si­ble for one another.” [Tal­mud She­vuot 39a] and is sim­i­lar (prob­a­bly a cog­nate word) to the Mus­lim con­cept of أمة‎ “Ummah” and that idea is not all that far from the Eng­lish word “folk”.

So, when Pales­tin­ian Author­ity Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Abbas stood before the United Nations Gen­eral Assem­bly on Sep­tem­ber 23, 2011, I won­dered where he and his pre­de­ces­sors had been back in 1948! I imag­ine that oth­ers said “Nyah nyah, lost your chance.” But I am in favor of there being a State of Pales­tine along­side a State of Israel.

Pres­i­dent Abbas’ address to UN; 1,585 view­ings as of mid­night 20110923 [part 1]

Pres­i­dent Abbas’ address to UN; 302 view­ings as of mid­night 20110923 [part 2]

Pres­i­dent Abbas’ address to UN; 304 view­ings as of mid­night 20110923 [part 3]

text of Pres­i­dent Abbas’ address

I do, how­ever, want to com­ment on this small part:

It is a moment of truth and my peo­ple are wait­ing to hear the answer of the world. Will it allow Israel to con­tinue its occu­pa­tion, the only occu­pa­tion in the world?

Uh, Turkey, the cur­rent great defender of the Pales­tini­ans, occu­pies Cyprus, China occu­pies Tibet; do those not count? The Wikipedia arti­cle on occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries enu­mer­ates many others.

Will it allow Israel to remain a State above the law and account­abil­ity? Will it allow Israel to con­tinue reject­ing the res­o­lu­tions of the Secu­rity Coun­cil and the Gen­eral Assem­bly of the United Nations and the Inter­na­tional Court of Jus­tice and the posi­tions of the over­whelm­ing major­ity of coun­tries in the world?

Why doesn’t any­body repeat­edly com­plain about the Turk­ish or Chi­nese occu­pa­tions, so there could be res­o­lu­tions they would reject? Or why was there no out­cry at the UN when using car­pet bomb­ing, Rus­sia destroyed much of Grozny or when Turkey kills scores of Kurds?]

Excel­len­cies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Pales­tine, the land of divine mes­sages, ascen­sion of the Prophet Muham­mad (peace be upon him) and the birth­place of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him)

Um, at the time, it was known as the King­dom of Israel or the Roman province of Judaea. What about Ahab king of Israel (peace be upon him) does he not count? Or, would men­tion­ing him (and his title, I could men­tion so many more, but Ahab is attested to by the world pow­ers of his day) fal­sify Abbas’ claim to “the Holy Land, the land of Palestine”?

to speak on behalf of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple in the home­land and in the the Dias­pora, to say, after 63 years of suf­fer­ing of the ongo­ing Nakba

Ah hah! So it’s not “the occu­pa­tion of the ‘West Bank’”, but the very cre­ation of Israel that is the issue to Abbas. He’s let the cat out of the bag!:

Enough. It is time for the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple to gain their free­dom and independence.

Well, yes, so why did not the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple accept the offer in 1948 and United Nations Gen­eral Assem­bly (yes, the same group before which he deliv­ers these remarks) Res­o­lu­tion 181?!

kurkh mono­lith of shal­maneser iii men­tion­ing ahab king of israel

i am no fan of bibi either

Prime Min­is­ter Netanyahu’s address to UN; 304 view­ings as of mid­night 20110923

text of Prime Min­is­ter Netanyahu’s address

pan­der­ing

I won­dered to whom Netanyahu was speak­ing when his open­ing remarks to the Gen­eral Assem­bly dealt with the ter­ror­ist attacks of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 and he then went on to use the phrase “mil­i­tant islam” five times in the first eigh­teen para­graphs. Was he direct­ing his con­cerned remarks to the many Islamic states that are mem­bers of the UN, or was his audi­ence the Amer­i­can public?

Yossi Verter writes in his col­umn in Haaretz Nobel no, Oscar yes

In 1978, when it was learned that Prime Minister​ Men­achem Begin had won the Nobel Peace Prize, for­mer prime min­is­ter Golda Meir​ remarked: “He deserves a Nobel?” adding that what he really deserved was an Oscar.

If Golda were still with us, she could have res­ur­rected her com­ment, this time with jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, with regard to Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu over his speech to the United Nations Gen­eral Assem­bly on Friday.

Netanyahu began and ended his speech with calls for nego­ti­a­tions. Towards the end of his talk he seemed to address Mah­moud Abbas directly:

In two and a half years, we met in Jerusalem only once, even though my door has always been open to you. If you wish, I’ll come to Ramal­lah. Actu­ally, I have a bet­ter sug­ges­tion. We’ve both just flown thou­sands of miles to New York. Now we’re in the same city. We’re in the same build­ing. So let’s meet here today in the United Nations. (Applause.) Who’s there to stop us? What is there to stop us? If we gen­uinely want peace, what is there to stop us from meet­ing today and begin­ning peace negotiations?

Did Netanyahu call Abbas on his cell phone after the ses­sion? If not, why? If he did, what was Abbas’ response? Why have we not heard any­thing more about this? Or, was this no more than a form of grand­stand­ing on Netanyahu’s part?

show busi­ness

I’m not the only one who has been crit­i­cal of the pre­ten­sions of these lead­ers. Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder of J Street, “the polit­i­cal home of the pro-Israel pro-Peace move­ment” appeared on the Col­bert Report:

Jon Stew­art sat­i­rized what it might take for Pales­tine to be admit­ted to the UN: