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September 04, 2007
Take That, John Lennon!
"Imagine," writes Jamie Kirchick, "how history might have changed had the Arab powers accepted the mere presence of a Jewish state in their midst." Or, conversely, and much more realistically, imagine if a consortium of Western powers hadn't decided to assuage their guilt over early inaction in World War II by carving up somebody else's land and giving it to the Jews.
The central, heartbreaking fact of the Israeli/Arab conflict is that it was all perfectly predictable. There were riots in Palestine in 1920, protesting the Faisal-Weizmann agreement and the Jewish state it presaged. The creation of Israel was a noble and historic act, but it was also a supreme instance of colonialism, during which foreign powers constructed a new, sovereign nation in a land which was not their own, creating an obvious tinderbox whose occasional detonations wouldn't -- in theory -- harm the West. And both the Jews and the Arabs have been paying for it ever since. Imagine.
Also: Read Tony Karon on the elite response to The Israel Lobby.
September 4, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
Right. Also, "Imagine if the United States had opened its borders to Jewish refugees in the wake of WWII."
Posted by: dr | Sep 4, 2007 8:44:35 AM
"a consortium of Western powers"
Perhaps more accurately "a consortium of Christian powers"
Posted by: Quiddity | Sep 4, 2007 9:08:00 AM
Right. Also, "Imagine if the United States had opened its borders to Jewish refugees in the wake of WWII."
See, but that's the beauty part. Anyone can give someone something of their own; it takes the most extraordinary generosity of all to give someone something that belongs to someone else.
Posted by: Christmas | Sep 4, 2007 9:24:25 AM
Or imagine that someone had invented a steam-powered telegraph internet in the 1850's!
Posted by: El Cid | Sep 4, 2007 9:33:14 AM
"the Jewish tragedy owed its origin to the Christian nations of Europe and America. At last the conscience of Christendom was awake. The age-long Jewish tragedy must cease. But when it came to the payment of compensation in expiation of their past shortcomings, the Christian nations of Europe and America decided that the bill should be paid by a Muslim nation in Asia."
-- John Bagot Glubb, 1939
From Robert Fisk's book, "The Great War For Civilisation - The Conquest of the Middle East"; an unsurprisingly depressing read but an astonishingly comprehensive review of 20th century history of the Middle East.
Posted by: Andrew | Sep 4, 2007 9:33:54 AM
"imagine if a consortium of Western powers hadn't decided to assuage their guilt over early inaction in World War II by carving up somebody else's land and giving it to the Jews."
Really. You think Israelis were given the land of Israel. Any Israeli will tell you that their underground militias kicked the British out by terror and guerrilla war and then they they beat the shit out the Arab League armies - Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq - who swore, as the slogan went, to push them into the sea. They did it alone. Not one Western power came to the aid of Israel in 1948. The US imposed an arms embargo "on all parties" that prevented the Israelis from importing weapons while allowing the British to continue to arm their allies - including their client state, Jordan. The British armed and trained the Jordanian Arab Legion and British RAF pilots flew raids against Israel with the Egyptian Air Force. The view among the "Western powers" was that the Arab armies would prevail and the world could once again heave a heavy sigh of sorrow over the fate of the unfortunate Jews.
In the years after WWII, there was no guilt - no guilt at all - in the West over the Holocaust. You are reading back attitudes from two generations later into the post-war period. To the contrary, anti-Semitism remained the rule in diplomatic and military circles in Britain, in France, and the US.
What there was, was a determination on the part of the British to maintain a grip over the Arab world and a disinclination among the other powers from trying to stop them. The British did what they could to prevent the emergence of Israel. They failed.
Posted by: Bloix | Sep 4, 2007 9:40:27 AM
You think Israelis were given the land of Israel.
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".
Arthur Balfour, British Foreign Secretary, 1917.
Of course, as Bloix correctly points out, the Israelis didn't particularly like the part about not prejudicing the rights of existing residents, and pretty much ignored it.
Posted by: ajay | Sep 4, 2007 9:52:55 AM
Ezra, why exactly was the creation of Israel a "noble" act? I'm perfectly willing to accept it as a fait accompli that cannot and should not be reversed, but it was a land grab, pure and simple. Where's the "noble" part?
Posted by: Glenn | Sep 4, 2007 10:01:13 AM
a supreme instance of colonialism, during which foreign powers constructed a new, sovereign nation in a land which was not their own, creating an obvious tinderbox
That's a bizarre definition of "colonialism" some of ya got. Was Iraq a colonial enterprise? Was Yugoslavia? There are tons of states -- pretty much every Arab state -- whose boundaries were drawn up by colonial powers. And yes, this has been a huge source of wars. But to view Israel as unique here is a little bit odd ... and we leftists wonder why some people accuse us of having a double standard and question our bona fides?
*
Anyway -- the question to everyone is -- assuming it was a mistake to create Israel ... what would y'all have done?
Posted by: DAS | Sep 4, 2007 10:23:24 AM
"His Majesty's Government ... declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State... The objective of His Majesty's Government is the establishment within 10 years of an independent Palestine State in such treaty relations with the United Kingdom as will provide satisfactorily for the commercial and strategic requirements of both countries in the future.."
The McDonald White Paper, adopted by the House of Commons, May 1939.
If you're going to cite history, ajay, you should learn some first. Ezra should too, of course.
Posted by: Bloix | Sep 4, 2007 10:27:14 AM
The somewhat less fanciful "Imagine", rather than imagining no Jewish state at all, would be to imagine that the Western nations created a Jewish state in Uruguay or one of the other alternative sites.
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | Sep 4, 2007 10:48:30 AM
DAS, I am the first to say that the problem of a lot of liberals is that the view just about every foreign policy intervention abroad through the lens of 19th century colonialism.
However, carving out a new state in a foreign land and filling it up with Europeans is, pretty much, a textbook example of colonialism. The Arab ire towards Israel makes a lot more sense when you view it in that context.
Posted by: Tyro | Sep 4, 2007 11:08:33 AM
And yes, those instances where Western powers redrew the map are examples of colonialism. Is this actually in dispute?
Posted by: Ezra | Sep 4, 2007 11:14:16 AM
And yes, those instances where Western powers redrew the map are examples of colonialism. Is this actually in dispute?
Evidently so, at least to those who view terms such as colonialism as incantory rather than descriptive.
Posted by: WB Reeves | Sep 4, 2007 11:20:35 AM
Yes, the Balfour Declaration and the MacDonald White Paper are contradictory.
While we can argue about the semantics of the situation (did the British "give" or did the Jews "take"), Balfour's *intent* was clearly to give the Jews a National Home. However, the intent was also that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine".
Whether or not you consider those intentions to be noble, they certainly smacked of colonial naivete. The results were predictable and, indeed, they were predicted by some of Balfour's contemporaries, Churchill among them.
The later backpeddling manifested in the MacDonald White Paper is a reflection of the fact that things weren't exactly turning out as the British had hoped.
To return to Ezra's original point, if we imagine that the Balfour Declaration had never been written, we would certainly be living in a different world today. I'm not sure it would be a better world since, even now in 2007, we still appear incapable of learning the lessons of past nation-building failures.
Posted by: Andrew | Sep 4, 2007 11:25:11 AM
Over and over again it's said that the "West" gave Palestine to the Jews. But from the Israeli point of view, "the West" was the enemy. Some countries in "the West" killed Jews, other countries interned them, no one else much cared. Even before the Allied victory, which had the unintended side effect of terminating the Final Solution prematurely, the Jews of Palestine were killing soldiers of "the West" - that is, the British - in order to prevent them from giving what was left of Palestine to yet another Arab client (they'd already given the western half to a reliable Beduin from Arabia named Abdullah).
And now we have a nice Jewish boy reciting the line that "the West" performed a "noble" but flawed act by "giving" Israel to the Jews. Nope, Ezra. Didn't happen that way. No one in London or Paris gave Israel to the Jews. They took it.
So enough hand-wringing about what "the West" should or shouldn't have done. Don't worry about it, Ezra. You are absolved from having created the Israelis.
Posted by: Bloix | Sep 4, 2007 3:17:35 PM
Isn't part of the problem that there are two completely different narratives at play here? And that each side is actually being more than reasonable given it's narrative?
As Bloix points out, from the Israeli point of view, the notion that they are a Western colonial entity is ludicrous. OTOH, whether or not the Israeli perception is correct, in the Arab world, Israel is seen as a Western outpost (which perception is continually fueled by the so-called pro-Israel lobby acting as if Israel should be an outpost propped-up by the US).
Of course, it doesn't help left wing arguments that many Jews would be ready to accept, that so many on the left have an incredible failure of empathy in that they cannot bring themselves to even understand the Israeli point of view. It leaves some of us Jews wondering why this failure?
Posted by: DAS | Sep 4, 2007 3:44:08 PM
I seem to remember a reason of some kind for the creation of Israel. Something important that happened between 1939 and 1945. Maybe a Google search will provide the answer.
Posted by: Vidor | Sep 4, 2007 5:23:18 PM
I seem to remember a reason of some kind for the creation of Israel. Something important that happened between 1939 and 1945. Maybe a Google search will provide the answer. - Vidor
Except they came up with the idea of having Israel well before 1939. And even though Israel did finally come into existence in response to the Holocaust, that just feeds Arab resentment about Israel -- "you guys feel guilty about trying to kill the Jews, so you then just decide to rid yourselves of them by taking away our territory to be their shiny new homeland?". Of course, this isn't exactly what happened, but that is how it's widely perceived, so harping on the Holocaust just ain't as politically productive as some people seem to think it is.
Anyway, if Israel was created in response to WWII, shouldn't Germany have been forced to give up territory? I like Michael Moore's idea -- the Jewish state shoulda been carved out of a large chunk of Bavaria. ;)
Posted by: DAS | Sep 4, 2007 5:31:41 PM
Anyway -- the question to everyone is -- assuming it was a mistake to create Israel ... what would y'all have done?
It wasn't a mistake to create Israel. Too many populations have proven, before and after 1948, that they are susceptible to virulent anti-Semitism. Jews need a homeland and a refuge as a safety valve against this.
However, I think it is quite plausible that if we had it to do over again, the Jewish homeland should not have been placed where it was placed. Not only were there lots of people living there already (some of whom were driven out and others of whom felt they had to flee because of the creation of a Jewish state), but the proximity to Jerusalem and to the lands on the West Bank that are so prominent in the tales of the Hebrew Bible created an inexorable temptation to annex and expand at the expense of neighboring populations.
To be clear, what is done is done, and Israeli families have planted 60 or more years of roots in that country. And anti-semitism is alive and well, so we still need a Jewish homeland. At this point, the best one can do is a 2 state solution.
Posted by: Dilan Esper | Sep 4, 2007 6:05:22 PM
However, I think it is quite plausible that if we had it to do over again, the Jewish homeland should not have been placed where it was placed. - Dilan Esper
Nu? Where should it have been placed? As I said above, a case could be made to have placed it in Germany.
But in any case, unless they placed the Jewish homeland in the Antarctic or somewhere like that, anywhere any Jewish homeland would have been placed would have involved the displacement of populations. So doesn't it make sense (ignoring the Bavaria idea) that it should at least be in a place associated with Judaism for thousands of years? Of course, by that argument, the Jewish homeland ought to include the West Bank, but not parts of Israel it does include (e.g. in Israel's Northwest ... also settlers had especially no business in Gaza).
Posted by: DAS | Sep 4, 2007 6:09:55 PM
Oops - the British didn't give the western half of Palestine to Abdullah. They gave him the eastern half - the territory east of the Jordan River. The wastern half is what is today both Israel and the West Bank.
Posted by: Bloix | Sep 4, 2007 6:27:10 PM
Amen, Ezra!
Posted by: ShortWoman | Sep 4, 2007 6:34:07 PM
So doesn't it make sense (ignoring the Bavaria idea) that it should at least be in a place associated with Judaism for thousands of years?
It might have seemed so during the heyday of the Zionist movement, but post-1948 history has proven that in fact, that didn't make so much sense, both because of an indigenous population (which themselves attached religious significance to the same land) and the temptation to occupy Jerusalem and "Judea and Samaraia".
Posted by: Dilan Esper | Sep 4, 2007 8:44:45 PM
Oh yes, that's right. That bit about six million of them being slaughtered, proving beyond all doubt the need to give the Jews a homeland. Now I remember.
Posted by: Vidor | Sep 4, 2007 9:25:50 PM
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