Recently, Professor Grover Furr, a friend of mine for many years and a "radical" leftist asked me why Jews should feel a national identity about Israel and I put him off for another time. This is not a topic that one can easily summarize in 500 words or less. It may take a book to explain the search for national identity. I'll try to answer some of his question in this and subsequent articles about national identity.

There was not before 1948 (the rebirth of Israel) a national Palestinian identity that associated itself with Eretz Yisrael ("Land of Israel"). With regard to a specific Palestinian Identity, Abdul Malik Dahamshe, an Israeli Arab Knesset member, said at a solidarity visit in Damascus, Syria [David Makovsky, Jerusalem Post, January 24, 1995]:


"Palestine and Syria are one homeland. The Arab people will win by the sword; the victory will be won by the Jihad of the Arab world."
And Abdul Darawshe also said [Jerusalem Institute of Western Defence, Bulletin 3, August 15, 1997]:


"There is no difference between one Palestinian and another. We are all Palestinians and we are all Syrian Arabs. ... I swear on Allah that you will return to Palestine...
They, the Arabs who now call themselves "Palestinians" identify with Syria and they always have. A statement by Zuheir Mohsein, Member of the Supreme Council of the PLO:


"There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity, because it is in the interest of the Arabs to encourage a separate Palestinian identity in contrast to Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity is there only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new expedient to continue the fight against Zionism and for Arab unity."
[From Trouw (Dutch newspaper) March 31, 1977]

"PALESTINE IS A TERM THE ZIONISTS INVENTED"

In 1937, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi to the Pell Commission in 1937:


"There is no such country as 'Palestine'; 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented!"
And in a statement by Ahmed Shuqeiri, to the UN Security Council in 1949:

"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."
In the Introduction to "Essential Papers of Zionism" (New York University Press, 1996) Anita Shapira wrote:


"The search for an independent national identity ws the Jewish response to the ambivalence that had arisen in regard to the question of nationalism and the Jews. In a society where national identity was conceived as an integral part of the human personality, it was difficult for the Jews to avoid some mode of self-determination. The advent of the Jewish natinalism was one more expression of the Jewish desire to embarace patterns that were acceptable in the modern world: just as the adoption of universal ideas and comprehensive theories of securlar redemption reflected Jewish yearnings to belong to the enlightened family of nations, Jewish nationalism was the particularistic path through which to link up with those same nations. The aspiration for national uniqueness was the dominant aspiration fothe age. Its embrace by Jews reflected the internalization of values of non-Jewish society."
Jews were not accepted outside of Israel which was no fault of their own. They cannot be blamed for their differences when their confinement was partially the proximate cause of their being isolated and following their own customs. When they tried to break out of their isolation they were always driven back to it by forced separation and anti-Semitism.


"The emergence of Jewish national consciousness was a post-emancipatory phenomenon, although it also appeared in countries where Jews still had not been granted civil liberties (such as czarist Russia). It is customary to date this development to the final decades of the nineteenth century. The critical turning point was 1881, when pogroms swept across the south of Russia, a storm of violence that sparked a new existential anxiety among Jews, and cast doubt on the prevailing contention that progress was advancing inexorably, its orbit expanding from western Europe to the east, and that it would ultimately illuminate the dark corners still remaining int he Russian state. The Jewish response to the pogroms in southern Russia was marked by a spontaneous reaction of the Jewish masses, which began to flow westward to escape the yoke of the czar's evil empire, and the vacillating beginnings fo collective response---the search for a collective way out, not just for the individual and his family, but deliverance for the community as a whole. That redemption would not be achieved by the merciful acts of rulers, intermediaries, or philanthropists, but by a communal movement. The idea of "auto-emancipation," injected by Leo Pinkser into the vacuum of Jewish public life and discourse with the publication of his agitational pamphlet of the same title (1882) [See PNEWS articles page ->  http://pnews.org/art/art.shtml for more on Pinkser], introduced an activist element into the ambit of Jewish thinking. Latent in such activism was the demand for Jews to act for themselves as a collective. The definition of the Jews as a nation came fourteen years later, with the publication of Theodor Herzl's "Der Judensaat (1896), a pamphlet which, unlike its predecessor, did not attempt an in-depth analysis of the origins fo the "Jewish problem," but placed emphasis on outlining a practical solution---namely a Jewish state." [Shapira]
FABRICATIONS ABOUT PALESTINIAN NATIONALITY

Analyst Emanuel A Winston writes:


"Liars must be fast dancers in order not to get caught. They either must have an excellent memory, or know that their trail has been erased or feel certain their audience will accept the lie knowing that its a lie.
"The PLO and the Palestinian people may be one of the greatest fabrications of our time. To construct a fabricated background, you must do it in small increments, piece by piece. Its a shaky house of cards but only if its audience cares to shake the table. So, lets look at the separate pieces."

"Today an icon, carefully constructed for credibility, has fallen. Professor Edward W. Said, the eloquent voice of Palestinian causes has turned out to be a self-promoted fabrication. Often and loudly, he has impressed the world of Liberals with his eloquent description of his early life as a professional Palestinian refugee, turned out of his house by invading Israelis. Here, as is popular among the Palestinians, he remembers his alleged roots, his home, the trees around him and his youthful years - only to become a sympathetic refugee - now a voice for the Palestinians. Careful research by Justus Reid Weiner * has disclosed that Said did not live in Jerusalem; his parents did not own a house there; nor did he go to school there.

* ["The False Prophet of Palestine" by Justus Reid Weiner WALL ST. JOURNAL Aug. 26, 1999 - adapted from the September issue of COMMENTARY MAGAZINE & "Israeli Says Palestinian Thinker Has Falsified His Earlier Life" by Janny Scott NEW YORK TIMES August 26, 1999]

"Weiner shows that Said lived a life of luxury in Cairo, Egypt with his well-to-do father who operated a successful stationary business. But, when Said launched his emotional diatribes against the Jews, it was from the soapbox of a terribly deprived and wronged Palestinian, forced from his home by Jews. He was the quintessential refugee, haranguing against the Jewish people against whom he pledged to seek vengeance - violently."

"Saids invented life story infused his advocacy with moral authority. Weiners devastating article -- "My Beautiful Old House and Other Fabrications by Edward Said" -- drives a stake through Saids integrity."

Winston goes on to enumerate other fabrications, too numerous to cover here. (See the archives at  http://pnews.org/ for complete coverate of more fabrications by the Arabs calling themselves Palestinians.]

OTHER DISTORTIONS AND PROPAGANDA

The greatest battle which Israel seems to be losing is the battle of public opinion. There is also a double standard in the way Israel responds to terrorism and the way the U.S. responds to terrorism. When the U.S. bombs the Taliban and kills civilians it is a tragic mistake, but when Israel does it, she is condemned by all the United Nations and the U.S. and Britain urges Israel to negotiate with terrorists.

For instance:


"In response to the killing of Raed Karmi, ubiquitous Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi blasted us for a "policy of willfully targeting innocent Palestinians." Ashrawi's definition of innocence is evidently an unusual one. Karmi, who belonged to Yasser Arafat's Fatah, has been linked to half a dozen specific terrorist attacks and even boasted in an August 23 CNN interview that he "trained teenagers to carry out terrorist attacks inside Israeli territory." [Jerusalem Post Editorial-"Double standards"-December 15, 2002]
When the Israelis captured the Karine A with 50 tons of weapons onboard, the U.S. at first did not believe the Palestinians were involved. When that was proven to them, they then didn't believe that Arafat was involved even though his top people were implicated.


"Now the PA is saying that hundreds have been rendered homeless by the operation in Gaza and is having a field day with pictures of Palestinian children picking through destroyed homes." [JerusalemPost]
MOST were uninhabited. BUT, Israel does a terrible job of explaining their cause. And the anti-Semites will use every excuse to blame Israel and to point out those faults and mistakes.


"But the fact that the PA is blithely spreading mammoth distortions does not mean our spokesmen can afford to make even innocent mistakes in facts. The IDF, which initially claimed that all the destroyed houses were uninhabited, has now revised this to "most" and has offered to help anyone mistakenly harmed." [JerusalemPost]
"Clearly, not a lot of advance thought was put into explaining in a comprehensive and credible way what the IDF did. Previously, the same IDF that carried out the masterful commando raid on the Karine A could not find a plane to bring journalists to Eilat for press conference displaying the arms, nor provide foreign journalists with translation of the remarks made there." [JerusalemPost]

So Israel does a lousy job of explaining itself (WE THINK) - but even if it did. Even if it was perfect in it's public relations efforts and even if it did everything PERFECTLY and no one every got hurt - as if no one could ever NOT get hurt in a war against terrorism - the anti-Zionists would still find something to crow about.

As the Jerusalem Post article points out:


"Even if the government handled its public relations perfectly, however, the greatest handicap is the glaring double standard routinely applied to Israel. The French Foreign Ministry, for example, condemned the demolition operation and stated that "a violation of the Geneva Convention is unacceptable." By citing the Geneva Convention, the French are essentially accusing Israel of a terrible crime, the abuse of civilians in war time. It is necessary to state here that, unlike the "targeted killings" of terrorists also routinely condemned by the international community, this operation may not have surgically omitted harm to Palestinian civilians. But who is ultimately responsible for this harm: Israel or the Palestinian forces that have used these homes as cover to shoot at Israelis and to hide smuggling tunnels? [JerusalemPost]
As also stated in the article, Israel goes out of its way to avoid civilian casualities - but Palestinians intentionally goes out of its way also to use civilians as human shields and when they get hurt or someone is made homeless regardless of the fact that they aided and abetted terrorists or their homes concealed tunnels used to smuggle arms, but that isn't mentioned and that isn't important to public opinion.


"Israel should hold itself to high standards of limiting harm to civilians in its fight against terrorism, but if the world really cares about protecting civilians, it should be calling the Palestinian leadership to account not only for terrorism, but for using its own civilians as both shields and weapons." [JerusalemPost]

Continue
The following quote is an addendum to yesterday's post about Jewish nationalism which finished up with fabrications by Arabs, calling themselves Palestinians and with the media war. It is from "Radical Son" by David Horowitz. Some of you are saying, "Oh no, he is that former leftist apostate." David did change his views but he was a "red diaper" baby, and grew up steeped in left influences and very much involved in Europe and in the U.S. with the movement before altering his views. He mentions the Jewish problem on the left in Radical Son which I believe is very instructive of how Jews were being treated and how many came to support Israel - which makes it worth while repeating here, even if some feel his involvement on the left was "somewhat tangential", and mostly as a journalist (and a principal at Ramparts Mag) - though I believe it was somewhat more than that. At this juncture in his biography he is talking about his relationship to the Black Panthers and specifically to Huey Newton:


"A strain of anti-Semitism had developed in the Party during the years he was in prison. Of course, the Panters were not alone among black radicals in their attacks on Jews. In 1966, Stokeley Carmichael and the leaders of SNCC had expelled whites from the civil-rights organization, accusing them of being a fifth column inside the movement. Since Jews were a near majority of the whites in these organizations, and had played a strategic role in organizaing and funding the struggle, it was clear to everyone that they were the primary target of the assault. This was underscored by the support that Carmichael and the black left gave to the Arab states during their 1967 attack on Israel."
I had not paid much attention to these developments, in part because I was in England when they occurred, but also because Israel was so strong militarily---its forces had crushed the Arab armies in just six days--that I did not beleive there was much danger ot Jewish life, let alone survival, at the time. The subsequent Arab aggression during Yom Kippur, in October 1973, convinced me otherwise. In that war, Israel's survival was indeed threatened--and it became clear to me that the Arabs'hatred toward the Jews was implacable. Consequently, when the Black Panther ran an article during the conflict, attacking the `Zionist, racist state of Israel,' I fet the need to say something."

My views were shaped by my old teacher, Isaac Deutscher, who had collected his articles on the subject ina volume called "The Non-Jewish Jew"--a reference to Jewish `heritics' like Spinoza and Marx, who were `of Judaism but not in it,' and whose outsider status had led to their revolutionary views. Deutcher's perspective on the Jewish state had its origins in his experience in Europe between the two world wars. Like other Marxists, he believed the nation-state was an anachronism, and that socialism would abolish all borders (it did not and that was not to happen..TheGolem). During the Thirties, Zionists had urged Jews to flee to Palestine, while Deutscher and his fellow socialists agitated for a revolution that would end the nation-state, and thus solve the problem of anti-Semtism once and for all. But the Holocaust caused Deutscher to have second thoughts about his anti-Zionism. `If instead of arguing against Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s,` he wrote, `I had urged European Jews to go to Palestine, I might have helped to save some of the lives that were later extinguished in Hitler's gas chambers.' The Zionists had crated Israel as a `RAFT STATE,' (Emphasis mine-TheGolem) and it had to be defended as such, until the time came when the international revolution, in which he (and I..Horowitz) still believed, would eliminate the need for such a refuge."

Deutscher also wrote an excellent book about the Stalinist purges, which I'm sure helped to further his assessment of the importance of the state of Israel - and the need to be a Zionist and why even today any thought of socialism, so far a failed philosophy, is secondary and the only ism of importance because as Horowitz aptly describes it, Israel is a "Raft State" and the only refuge for Jews in a world which has never forgiven the Jew for being Jewish.

Losing the Public Relations War

David Horowitz started out as a leftist radical from the 60s, but changed his views and he wrote a book about that transformation, called "The Radical Son". (I have a signed copy which David sent to me and it took me a year to get around to reading it, but I'm glad I did.) David was a "red diaper" baby, and grew up steeped in left influences and very much involved in Europe and in the U.S. with the movement before altering his views. He mentions the Jewish problem on the left in Radical Son which I believe is very instructive of how Jews were being treated and how many came to support Israel - which makes it worth while repeating here, even if some feel his involvement on the left was "somewhat tangential", and mostly as a journalist (and a principal at Ramparts Mag) - though I believe it was somewhat more than that. At this juncture in his biography he is talking about his relationship to the Black Panthers and specifically to Huey Newton:


"A strain of anti-Semitism had developed in the Party during the years he was in prison. Of course, the Panthers were not alone among black radicals in their attacks on Jews. In 1966, Stokeley Carmichael and the leaders of SNCC had expelled whites from the civil-rights organization, accusing them of being a fifth column inside the movement. Since Jews were a near majority of the whites in these organizations, and had played a strategic role in organizing and funding the struggle, it was clear to everyone that they were the primary target of the assault. This was underscored by the support that Carmichael and the black left gave to the Arab states during their 1967 attack on Israel."
"I had not paid much attention to these developments, in part because I was in England when they occurred, but also because Israel was so strong militarily---its forces had crushed the Arab armies in just six days--that I did not believe there was much danger of Jewish life, let alone survival, at the time. The subsequent Arab aggression during Yom Kippur, in October 1973, convinced me otherwise. In that war, Israel's survival was indeed threatened--and it became clear to me that the Arabs'hatred toward the Jews was implacable. Consequently, when the Black Panther ran an article during the conflict, attacking the `Zionist, racist state of Israel,' I felt the need to say something." My views were shaped by my old teacher, Isaac Deutscher, who had collected his articles on the subject ina volume called "The Non-Jewish Jew"--a reference to Jewish `heritics' like Spinoza and Marx, who were `of Judaism but not in it,' and whose outsider status had led to their revolutionary views. Deutcher's perspective on the Jewish state had its origins in his experience in Europe between the two world wars. Like other Marxists, he believed the nation-state was an anachronism, and that socialism would abolish all borders (it did not and that was not to happen..TheGolem). During the Thirties, Zionists had urged Jews to flee to Palestine, while Deutscher and his fellow socialists agitated for a revolution that would end the nation-state, and thus solve the problem of anti-Semtism once and for all. But the Holocaust caused Deutscher to have second thoughts about his anti-Zionism. `If instead of arguing against Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s,` he wrote, `I had urged European Jews to go to Palestine, I might have helped to save some of the lives that were later extinguished in Hitler's gas chambers.' The Zionists had crated Israel as a `RAFT STATE,' (Emphasis mine-TheGolem) and it had to be defended as such, until the time came when the international revolution, in which he (and I..Horowitz) still believed, would eliminate the need for such a refuge."


Deutscher also wrote an excellent book about the Stalinist purges, which I'm sure helped to further his assessment of the importance of the state of Israel - and the need to be a Zionist and why even today any thought of socialism, so far a failed philosophy, is secondary and the only ism of importance because as Horowitz aptly describes it, Israel is a "Raft State" and the only refuge for Jews in a world which has never forgiven the Jew for being Jewish.