Comment Trail:

@ Simply Lujayn the blogger rants on a bit unintelligibly. One cannot quite follow the leaps from the purported topic of the post which is that "76 US Senators pressed Obama to “take into account the risks Israel will face in any peace agreement" to Lujayn's amusing recounting of history "(Israel) come out of nowhere, take your land, label it a Jewish state, make you into either a prisoner or a refugee, and strangle you in every which way possible" to a concern for international law and human rights abuses committed by none other than said Israel, to a psychological analysis of the strange hold that Jews have over "anyone[who] managed to put aside their historical guilt towards the Jewish people".

I don't see how it is possible to respond to the lack of rational discipline, the self indulgent absence of knowledge or verifiable facts that is demonstrated in these kinds of posts which are pretty typical of what one can find on the Arab blogosphere when "Israel" "Jews" or "America" are mentioned. The lies and invective are a consequence of decades long nearly Pavlovian conditioning, and the subjects can only react to a situation emotionally and mindlessly, rather than apply some sort of critical thinking.

Anyway, I decided to respond to the rant nonetheless by suggesting to the blogger that people who sit in glasshouses should not throw rocks:

"Is there a hotline somewhere I can contact to hand over the deeds to my home, land and life in exoneration for my sin of having been born on someone else's potential state?"

I often ask the same question myself:

"On first entering Syria, the observant traveler will probably be startled to go through passport control and notice a military map of Syria on the wall, for this map contains several anomalies. It shows the Golan Heights under Syrian control, though they have been occupied by Israel since 1967. Syria's boundaries with Lebanon and Jordan appear not as international borders but as something called "regional" borders. Israel does not even exist; instead, there is a state called Palestine. And Palestine is separated from Syria by a line designated a "temporary" border". Finally, the province of Hatay, a part of Turkey since 1939, appears to be included in Syria; only on close inspection can one see the "temporary" border between it and Syria.[2]

The many inaccuracies on this map reflect the Syrian rulers' profound unwillingness to accept the actual size and shape of the country they administer. They remember that until 1920, "Syria" referred to a region much larger than the Syrian Arab Republic of today, a region that stretched from the borders of Anatolia to those of Egypt, from the edge of Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea. In terms of today's states, the Syria of old comprised Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, plus the Gaza Strip and Alexandretta. This larger land, known since 1920 as Greater Syria, is what they dream of reclaiming."

http://www.danielpipes.org/books/greaterchap.php

And

"Or the risk of acknowledging its appalling human rights record."

I don't suppose there is any such risk of you acknowledging any of the following:


"The Hama massacre (Arabic: مجزرة حماة‎) occurred on February 2, 1982, when the Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood. An estimated 7,000 to 40,000 people were killed, including about 1,000 soldiers, [1][2] and most of the old city was completely destroyed, including its palaces, mosques and ancient ruins."

_________

"According to the U.S. State Department’s 2004 report on human rights, Syria’s human rights record remains poor. A state of emergency has been in effect since 1963. Security forces continue to commit numerous and serious human rights abuses including arbitrary arrest and detention, torture in detention, prolonged detention without trial, fundamentally unfair trials in the security courts, and infringement on privacy rights. Police and security forces are corrupt. Prison conditions are poor and do not meet international standards for health and sanitation. The regime significantly restricts freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association. Kurds suffer systematic discrimination. After a brief period in 2000–2001 known as Damascus Spring, during which time independent debating clubs were established, satellite dishes became much more prominent, Internet cafés opened, new independent print publications were established, and political detainees from across the political spectrum were released, Decree No. 50/2001 was passed, which places severe restrictions on the media, especially the print media. According to Arab Press Freedom Watch, the current regime has one of the worst records on freedom of expression in the Arab world."

From the content, tone and shrillness of your mindless baseless, a-historical accusations, I see the Syrian regime has been wildly successful in its efforts to put a stop to any equitable flow of information or the capacity for independent thinking.

I assume, having just proclaimed Jews to be liars, usurpers and murderers, your invitation to Jews to return to Syria was something like:

"Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly,
'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I've a many curious things to shew when you are there."
Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."

etc etc

"And now dear little children, who may this story read,
To idle, silly flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed:
Unto an evil counsellor, close heart and ear and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the F

_________

Poor Lujayn. She seems a relatively decent sort with some correct instincts but still is incapable of transcending the evil teachings of her immediate environment. As the great Hebrew Russian poet Shaul Tschernichovsky once said in a poem:

A man is nothing but the cast of his native landscape.

________

Other comments:

@ Bob's

@ The Spine

So which is it: Discrimination, or Discrimination against Arabs?

Haaretz has an article today about discrimination against groups in Israel. In the report, it seems that

"Israeli employers prefer not to hire Arabs, Ethiopians and Haredis - even those holding at least an undergraduate degree, according to a study published on Monday. "

The report then goes into some details:

More than 83 percent of employers are repelled by the idea of hiring an Arab without a university degree, found the study conducted by the Kiryat Ono Academy.

Some 58 percent of managers prefer not to hire Haredic academics, and 53 percent of them would rather not hire Ethiopians, the report said.

[...]

Some 86 percent of the research participants said that they would rather not promote Haredic employees, 79 percent said that about Arabs, and 70 percent of them would rather not promote an Ethiopian worker.

So here we have a report of three distinctive groups within Israeli society subjected to some sort of discrimination: Arabs, Haredis, Ethiopian Jews.

The first statement suggests that there seems to be a general reluctance to hire any of these groups even when they do not have a university degree.

However, a little further down, we find that

"More than 83 percent of employers are repelled by the idea of hiring an Arab without a university degree".

There seems to be some dissonance between the two findings which is not clear: are Arabs discriminated against because they are Arabs, or because they do not have university degrees? And what kind of jobs are we talking about? Manual jobs that do not require any specialization or education, or white collar jobs which do stipulate a university degree?

Another point of puzzlement: it appears that Haredis encounter more prejudice than Arabs do, when it comes to promotion.

And even more puzzling is the emphasis given to the Arab sector in this report. The title of the article says: Study: Israeli employers prefer not to hire Arabs.

Yet the information we receive from the article as soon as we start reading is that "Israeli employers prefer not to hire Arabs, Ethiopians and Haredis".

It's as if the writers of this report were mainly concerned with the discrimination of Arabs, and less with the discrimination of Ethiopians and Haredis. So what exactly is the problem that bedevils Israeli society, that there are still levels of discrimination to be found among its ranks against anyone who is distinctly different in some way, or discrimination against Arabs? Which is the more outrageous sin, I'd like to know? Because as I read this article, discrimination as a foul sickness does not seem to worry the authors so much as the specific discrimination against Arabs does. The article's emphasis on the Arab sector is in and of itself a type of discrimination.

Speaking for myself, the kind that outrages me most is discrimination against Ethiopian Jews. The Arab sector is a powerful and assertive presence, with a well-oiled machine on all levels of politics and society for making and correcting perceived wrongs. The same applies for the Haredi sector. It's the Ethiopian Jews that are the most vulnerable minority, the least vocal with the least power to advance their cause. They are the ones about whom we should worry the most.

You don't get that kind of concern from this particular article.

"Jew flu"

An interesting theory advanced by Uzi Silber trying to explain why Jews are more susceptible to hate their kin than other tribes. There are many theories trying to explain this phenomenon, such as the following:

s Jew Flu a bona-fide illness? Michael Welner, a psychiatrist at New York University, suggests that Jewish Anti-Semitism is akin to a personality disorder, enabling a person to "derive some psychological benefit from this pathological thinking."

What causes Jew Flu? Harvard psychiatrist Kenneth Levin argues for twin culprits: so-called 'Stockholm Syndrome', where "population segments under chronic siege commonly embrace the indictments of their besiegers however bigoted and outrageous", as well as "the psychodynamics of abused children who blame themselves for their situation and believe they could mollify their tormenters if they were 'good'."

Julie Ancis, a psychology professor at Georgia State University says that it isn't "uncommon for a minority group with a history of oppression and persecution to possess internalized self-hatred regarding their cultural/religious identity."

But Silber somewhat cheekily but nonetheless with some scientific validation, has a different take on the root causes:

David Brooks recently reported in the New York Times on research by a Haifa University team led by Reem Yahya who studied the brains scans of Arabs and Jews while showing them images of hands and feet in painful situations.

Brooks reports that "the two cultures perceived pain differently. The Arabs perceived higher levels of pain over all while the Jews were more sensitive to pain suffered by members of a group other than their own (italics my own.)"

This phenomenon was epitomized by Rosa Luxemburg, a prominent Bolshevik and Jew Flu victim. "I have no room in my heart for Jewish suffering," declared Rosa the Red. "Why do you pester me with Jewish troubles? I feel closer to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations of Putumayo or the Negroes in Africa... I have no separate corner in my heart for the ghetto."

And he tries to pinpoint the prognosis:

The intriguing research out of Haifa suggests that Jews may very well be inherently altruistic. But while exhibiting more sensitivity to another group's pain is one thing, embracing the goals of people openly committed to one's destruction is a form of madness.

So here's my ultimate theory for the cause of this nefarious virus: Jew Flu is a condition in which being "more sensitive to pain suffered by members of a group other than (one's) own metastasizes into a malignant emotional and moral identification with people committed to (one's) annihilation."

American Import

Considering how most Canadian leftists are so essentially, gleefully and mindlessly anti-American, it was a bit of surprise for me to learn, from Terry Glavin's blog, that the origins of Canadian socialism actually trace back to the US.

Here is the youtube explaining this irony in history.

Comment trail:

@Z word blog: Goldstone vs. Gold

@ The Spine: An Act of Jihad

@ Mick's: Anne Frank in Lebanese schools

@ Pajamas Media: The Humus wars

Update:

@ Simply Lujayn: ("Forgive us our intolerance")



My comment (in case it is deleted; Arab blogs are notoriously intolerant of any opinion that does not flatter them):

"if we, today, announce that all arab jews are welcome back home, where they'll be given absolute guarantees to euqality and freedom of harassment, and where their properties will be given back to them with the accumulating interest and government support to restore them and run them; how many of them you think will opt to come back?"

Somehow I don't see Syria in the role of any promised land any time soon, or ever. Frankly, if you had a choice between living in your country, a dictatorship whose citizens depend on the good graces of its ruler and his sycophants, where you can't even rely on a steady supply of electric power 24/7, and in Israel, a democracy in which the citizens actually get to control their own life, prosperity and the future of their children, where would you prefer to live?

Here is an example of what Israel is like:

http://simplyjews.blogspot.com/2009/11/israel-leader-of-business-innovation.html

And here is what I hear about your country:

"We are living in a garbage dump and the shit is getting higher."

http://dubai-jazz.blogspot.com/2009/10/generalizations-are-wrong.html

UpdateII:

@ Bob's

J-Street: The alternative to an Arab Lobby?

@ MEMRI

In a recent column in the UAE daily Al-Ittihad, columnist Dr. As'ad 'Abd Al-Rahman wrote about the Jewish-American advocacy group J Street, arguing that its importance is in that it provides the U.S. administration with "political and media ammunition" against Israel, especially in the absence of an Arab lobby in the U.S. [-]

"True, the influence of this new lobby has not yet reached the dimensions of AIPAC's [influence], but it has taken AIPAC head-on, and has won some significant points [against it]. During the recent attack on Gaza, J Street collected 30,000 signatures in an online petition that condemned [Israel's] aggression, characterizing it as 'disproportionate' and stressing that 'there can be no military solution to a conflict that is essentially political.' [-]

"[J Street's] second important [action] came during Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to Washington. J Street asked the U.S. administration to intervene and impose a two-state solution, even if this meant exerting pressure on Israel. AIPAC, on the other hand, asked Washington not to intervene but to leave the issue to the decision of the two sides in the conflict.[-]

"I think it unfortunate that there is no Arab lobby in Washington to support the Arabs' official and popular position and to work towards changing U.S. policy on the Middle East conflict..." [-]

"Needless to say, the views of the new Jewish lobby J Street have provided the U.S. and other countries with political and media ammunition.

The Number One Paradox of all Middle Eastern politics

Barry Rubin succinctly explains:

Why is it that although the Palestinians complain that they are suffering from a horrible occupation and not having a state of their own they are not in any hurry to make a peace agreement, end the “occupation,” and get a state.

The main answer is that the dominant Palestinian view is still the desire to win a total victory and wipe Israel off the map. The back-up stance is that any peace agreement must not block the continued pursuit of that goal. And the back-up position to that is to reject strong security guarantees, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, an unmilitarized Palestinian state, settlement of Palestinian refugees in Palestine, territorial compromise or exchanges, and indeed any concession whatsoever.

There are two implications of this:

--The Palestinians are at fault for the failure to achieve peace.

--There isn’t going to be any Israel-Palestinian peace in the near- or even medium-term future.

If you understand the preceding ... words then you understand the issue comprehensively.

When Peace is War, and Human - a restricted category

@Solomonia: Sophia, an occasional contributor to Solomonia wrote about Yglesias' momentary epiphany in which he confesses:

" My J Street button said “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace.” It’s not a subtle aspect of the messaging. But when we moved to the Q&A time it became clear that a number of people in the audience really were quite uncomfortable self-defining as “pro-Israel” in any sense and that others are uncomfortable with the basic Zionist concept of a Jewish national state. I was, of course, aware that those views existed but it had seemed to me that it was clear that that wasn’t what J Street is there to advocate for. Apparently, though, it wasn’t clear to everyone."

I left this comment:

The term "pro-peace" has undergone the same kind of bastardization that the term "human rights" has. Peace no longer means cessation of hostilities and violence between the two sides of the I/P conflict. Examples of what it has come to mean we can see when we cast back to all those "peace" demonstrations that took place during the 2006 Lebanon war and "Cast Lead". We all witnessed what sort of placards were being flaunted, openly and insouciently by the conscientious marchers: "We are all Hizzbala" and "Israel must be wiped" (or at least in one recorded instance, "Jews to the gas chambers"), etc. Those rallies were referred to in the media as "peace" rallies.

Just as "human rights", at the hands of the UNHR Council, have come to mean, exclusively, Palestinian rights, and by inference, if Palestinian is human, then Israelis are not, or less, human.

No wonder that people who are bitterly aligned against Israel have come to use these two terms in their highly deformed and exclusivist meaning. It's a genuine example of the Orwellian "doublespeak", language constructed to disguise and distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass.

And the naked hatred to Israel expressed by those people who crowded those rallies (and to a lesser degree glimpsed at that famous panel where Elie Wiesel became the target of mockery by the execrable Max Blumenthal) reminded me constantly of Orwell's "Two Minutes Hate".

Therefore, for these J-street supporters to be "pro-peace" as they understand it is simply incompatible with being "pro-Israel". Peace has to be "no peace" for Israelis or else the term is vitiated of its moral power.

They no doubt feel they were duped into believing the organization to be their kind of "pro-peace" and not what the dictionary tells us "peace" is.

In today's Normblog's Friday blog profile, featuring Point of no return, in answer to the question: What is your favourite proverb? Bataween responds:

'Mal nommer les choses, c'est ajouter au malheur du monde' (Not to call things by their correct names is to add to the troubles of the world) - Albert Camus.

Enfin, La Voila! Someone who gets it :)

__________

Update: Nov 3:

Here is a sight for sore eyes:

"In a recent column in the UAE daily Al-Ittihad, columnist Dr. As'ad 'Abd Al-Rahman wrote about the Jewish-American advocacy group J Street, arguing that its importance is in that it provides the U.S. administration with "political and media ammunition" against Israel, especially in the absence of an Arab lobby in the U.S."

Funny how it emerges that the "pro-Israel, Pro-peace" J-street, de-facto, acts in lieu of an Arab Lobby.

Sometimes clarity arises from the least expected quarters.

Vindication of the Zionist "Narrative" by a formerly "Post-Zionist" Historian

This is an important milestone in arresting the momentum of the attempt to delegitimize Israel's existence and continued survival by Benny Morris. One of those "Post-Zionist" historians, he used to lounge next to the execrable Ilan Pappe but now has re-invigorated the original history of the birth of Israel by delving into new material and taking note of other parts of the picture which he had initially ignored.

Avi Beker explains:

More than anyone else, Morris provided the historical sources for the argument that the State of Israel was born as a result of a conspiracy to carry out the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

His books and articles provided the basis for an indictment of the State of Israel, something that helped the Palestinian and Arab leadership reject all peace efforts right after the Oslo Accords, at Camp David in 2000 and in discussions of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's peace proposal in 2008.

The narrative built by the New Historians changed the parameters of political negotiations: A peace agreement is not meant to correct the 1967 "occupation" and create a framework for territories in exchange for peace, but to atone for the atrocities of the nakba. It became apparent to all that the main obstacle is the problem of the right of return to all parts of the State of Israel.

Morris did not make any shocking revelation when he argued that during the War of Independence there were also incidents of killing and expulsion of the civilian population. His wrongs as a historian focused on overlooking the uncompromising Arab hatred and the dynamic of war that persisted for 18 months in civilian areas, the siege of Jewish cities and communities and the constantly reiterated threats of annihilation.

Then suddenly, 20 years later, Morris discovered that the Arabs had declared a jihad against Zionism already back in 1948. He explains his new approach as stemming from the opening of archives, including the Israel Defense Forces' archive, which were closed to researchers until now. He also adds that "in the current book, I placed the refugee problem within the overall context of the War of Independence," and with the help of recent studies, "I tried to present a new and comprehensive description of the war, and primarily of the connections between the military processes and the diplomatic processes."

"A new description"? The exact opposite, in fact. Morris returns to what was so detested by the New Historians, or as they put it: to the canonical version of the official Zionist narrative.

He feels no need to apologize for presenting a sharp indictment of all of post-Zionism, claiming that "historians tended to belittle the importance of the religious rhetoric during the war," and the central role of "religious motivation."

The dismissal of the threats of jihad was intentional and critical for the rewriting in order to turn the nakba into a "holocaust", but the jihad was apparent to all: threats of annihilation were heard from all sides and even from the dais of the UN in 1947 and 1948.

The mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al-Husseini repeated it over and over again; and religious scholars in Cairo issued an official manifesto calling for jihad two days after the resolution on the partition plan was passed on November 1947.

The translation of the religious order into military action was the invasion of the Arab armies, which were called the Arab Liberation Army and the Jihad al-Mukades (Holy War) Army.

The new writings also question attempts to debunk "the few against the many myth" that present the IDF in 1948 as the most organized and strongest army in the Middle East, while overlooking the assessments of everyone: the majority in the interim Jewish government prior to the establishment of the state, the Arabs, the British and the Americans, who all thought the Arabs would defeat the Jewish army in Palestine.

Finally, Morris returns to one of the most important arguments in the historical context and clarifies that the 1948 war created two refugee problems: Jews and Arabs.

The Jewish refugees, originally from Arab countries, explains Morris, are a clear product of the war, after pogroms and persecutions (including threats of destruction) on the part of the Arab regimes.

As for the responsibility of the Jewish side, Morris makes a correction: Many of the Arab refugees left of their own accord and the others were not expelled but "moved to flee" amidst the chaos of the war and the threats of jihad, and in effect he defends the right of David Ben-Gurion to expel even more given the threats of jihad.

The new Morris is even less apologetic than the Zionist historians and stresses the difference is, of course, that Israel absorbed the Jewish refugees and the problem disappeared, whereas the Arab countries did not absorb the Palestinian refugees and the problem has not been resolved to this day.

(Via: Kramer's sandbox)

It is an appropriate footnote to a discussion which unfolded here in which the younger Benny Morris's writings, and especially his first book, are made much of by the usual consumers of any theory that holds Israel culpable for the worst atrocities.