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Is Israel A Normal Country?

JOHN CHUCKMAN | 12.07.2010 18:03

An important and often neglected question...

July 12, 2010

IS ISRAEL A NORMAL COUNTRY?

Critique of an article with the same title in Toronto’s Globe and Mail by Ian Buruma

 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/is-israel-a-normal-country/article1635159/

John Chuckman

This article starts with a brave question, and I think for most people the answer is apparent with the asking of the question.

But like the famous line of T.S. Elliot, the piece ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

After asking a question which would never pass the lips of Israel’s establishment, the article makes the very claims and assertions the Israeli government would make.

“Israel has never done anything comparable to the late Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad’s 1982 massacre of more than 20,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama.”

While I’m the last to defend dictators, this is a completely unsubstantiated claim of what happened in Syria. Perhaps worse, the assertion about Israel is just false. Israel’s first invasion of Lebanon was just about that bloody.

And what of the achievements of the Six Day War, a war deliberately calculated by Israel’s establishment to win the land of the self-defined Greater Israel – all the Palestinian territories plus slices of Syria and Lebanon - it had failed to grab at its founding?

Israel went so far as to attack ruthlessly an American intelligence ship to suppress information of General Dayan’s movements of armor, the general’s purpose being the quick seizure of all the lands Israel desired and then presenting the world with a fait accompli.

And how do you reckon the toll of misery of decade after decade of hundreds of thousands of refugees plus the forty-plus years of truly abusive occupation?

I could continue, for unquestionably the invasion of Iraq was about and for Israel’s benefit. That’s million people killed and a couple of million refugees, refugees taken, in large part, by poor Syria.

“So is it true, as many defenders of Israel claim, that the Jewish state is judged by different standards from other countries? I believe it is.”

This completely ignores the fact of Israel’s establishment constantly claiming that is the only democracy and representative of human rights in its part of the world.

If you claim one standard but behave by another – truly indistinguishable from the region’s dictators – I do think the world is entitled to comment. Israel holds ten thousand illegal prisoners, imposes a ghastly blockade for over three years, imposes countless checkpoints on people’s ordinary lives in the West Bank, regularly assassinates those with whom it disagrees, and uses every underhanded technical gimmick it can think of to keep stealing other people’s land.

Indeed, it could be well argued that the kind of Israel we see has effectively retarded the development of democracy in the Arab world. Israel’s cooperative friend Mubarak, a dictator of thirty years, is supported by everything the United States can think of, suppressing all genuine democratic movements. For a long time, it was the same with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Opposing Israel’s excesses has provided a rallying cry for every dictator in the region. At the same time, the United States and Israel would prefer these populations suppressed by dictators who in private mind their own business or are even rather cooperative, a la Mubarak.

“That all Jews, including Israeli Jews, should remain haunted by a horrible past is understandable. But it must never be used to justify aggression against others.”

But that is precisely what Israel’s establishment and its army of apologists abroad do, day and night. It is, if you will, a ghastly form of special pleading.

“There are other reasons, however, for the double standard directed at Israel. One is what the liberal Israeli philosopher and peace activist Avishai Margalit has called “moral racism.” The bloodlust of an African or Asian people is not taken as seriously that of a European – or other white – people.”

But isn’t that exactly what happens inside Israel? Day in and out in countless ways, Sephardic Jews are not treated with the same respect and regard as Ashkenazi Jews. And the poor small lot of dark-skinned African Jews are treated with palpable contempt. The world should have higher standards than Israel itself in these matters?

“…the legacy of colonialism works against Israel in another way, too.”

Oh please, this is tiresome old idea to trot out. Besides, in the eyes of most Arabs, Israel is itself an example of colonialism. Here is a tiny enclave – truly a garrison state - living in the midst of many tens of millions of people for whose cultures and aspirations it has absolutely no understanding or sympathy. You could draw a parallel to Israel’s position today with that of European Crusaders who built massive forts in the Middle East at places like Acre.

In the end, if Israel expects to be treated as a normal country, it must behave like one.

Surely, most people, including likely most Jews, know Israel has yet to behave as anything resembling a normal country.
__________________________

Note: Response to the comment of a reader

"Islam is the problem behind virtually all the problems that Israel faces."

What a preposterous statement.

Does the author realize that there are more than a billion Muslims in the world?

How can any thinking person speak this way, condemning with one glib sentence about a fifth of the world's population?

There is no history, also, of Muslims being especially hostile to Jews. Indeed, Islam adopted many of Judaism's prophets and customs as its own.

Further still, until the creation of modern Israel, most Muslims in the Middle East treated Jews decently.

Israel, since its inception, has practiced a behavior towards its neighbors summed up by the Zionist slogan, “the iron wall.”

“The iron wall” means ignoring neighbors as legitimate residents of the region, treating neighbors with contempt and violence - in effect, a very hostile form of shunning.

Who can defend such treatment instead of living in peace and respect?

Yes, there were always bound to be some hostilities - after all, Israel proper is on land taken from people who lived there for countless generations - but I think a different approach would have achieved different results.

Israel could easily have made it worth the Palestinians’ while with assistance and compensation instead of spending vast sums on armaments in a mini-Cold War.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

Comments

Hide the following 7 comments

Yes it is.

12.07.2010 18:25

Well that was easy. Next?

steve


Yes, it really is

12.07.2010 20:43

What argument are you trying to make here? Israel's not a normal country because it carries out horrific acts of mass violence, unlike all those nice normal countries which don't? Is the UK a normal country? America? France? Australia? Canada? Russia? Face it, mass murder is the norm even for nice, liberal, "normal" nation-states, not the exception.

Internationalist


Israel is a normal country

12.07.2010 20:54

Israel is a normal country – i.e. it is a nation state built on the blood of the colonised as so often with the historical pseudo-justification of past oppression. It is a monstrous social machine of destruction aimed at the vanquishing of human diversity in particular and biological diversity in general. Israel is the enemy of freedom – as are all states (including both Palestinian statelets).

To pretend Israel it is not a ‘normal’ country is to fall foul of anti-Semitic logic that particularises Israel’s horrible actions as somehow outside the pattern of a world system of murder and despoliation. Find me a ‘normal’ country without blood on its hands.

Israel’s actions should be opposed and resisted not under the illusion that they are an aberration but insted with the daunting realisation that they are quintessentially normal.

anon


Is it all so?

13.07.2010 02:23

“Israel has never done anything comparable to the late Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad’s 1982 massacre of more than 20,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama.” Yes that is incorrect, the inhabitatns of Hama were massacred whether MB or not.

"the Six Day War, a war deliberately calculated by Israel’s establishment to win the land of the self-defined Greater Israel – all the Palestinian territories plus slices of Syria and Lebanon - it had failed to grab at its founding?" The lands occupied in that war all then belonged to or were controlled by countries that were at war with Israel since having declared war when it was founded, by far the largest portion being Sinai now all returned to Egypt. Why did those countries move troops toward Israel in concert prior to its outbreak?

"unquestionably the invasion of Iraq was about and for Israel’s benefit. That’s million people killed and a couple of million refugees, refugees taken, in large part, by poor Syria." Well I heard it was about 9/11/ oil/ ceasefire breaches/ WMD. Most probably it was about ceasefire breaches and oil, even if Israel supported the principle.

"Here is a tiny enclave – truly a garrison state - living in the midst of many tens of millions of people for whose cultures and aspirations it has absolutely no understanding or sympathy." Is that why in Israel many public signs are also in Arabic, and why after capturing Old Jerusalem, administration of the Temple Mount complex was assigned to the Waqf which has gone on to crudely excavate and dump tonnes of archaeological remains so as to build a new underground extension to the al-Asqa mosque?

Incidentally those tens of millions originally included many Jews but most have had to flee Arab countries, and who most directly responsible for so many Arab Christians being persecuted in the Palestinian territories and Iraq from which many became refugees?

Onlyme


dictionary

13.07.2010 09:07

Country: a political entity asserting ultimate authority over a geographical area
Normal: .conforming with or constituting an accepted standard, model, or pattern;

...

dictionary


normal than normal

14.07.2010 19:08

israel a country like you and i, especialy for jews!

Stev Bach


Israel is a Normal Euro-Centric Colonial Project in Asia Minor.

16.07.2010 15:19

The state of Israel is a Military state imposed on the indigenous peoples of Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, etc. in Asia minor, and it was backed militarily by the Imperialist powers of Europe and America, and supplied with the worlds most sophisticated modern weapons originating from Imperialist Europe and America. Its ruling class is Zionist Militarist Imperialist Aggressors, and have very little to do with the peoples, be they jewish, Islamic, Christian or other world religions except in the fanatical Zionist phase of Apartheid for their ' 'Greater Israel Project', and racial, and religious discrimination.

It ignores and attacks the anti-fascist covenants such as the United Nations General Assembly and Constitution, the Nuremburg Trials, Geneva Conventions of war (1949), the World Court of the Hague (the Apartheid Wall must come down, it is an illegal, unjust Israeli land grab), the International War Crimes Tribunal (Bertrand Russel Style), and is committing War crimes of fascistic-Nazis origin such as the illegal (SEIGE OF GAZA), and other thefts of Palestinian Lands much as the German Nazis did to the jewish people in Europe.

It is the only state that has committed aggressive Imperialist War against all its neighbours throughout the middle east. It claims it is doing so so there will be a 100% Jewish State in a Greater Israel stolen from the indigenous Arab Peoples abiding in the Holyland.

Core to all great religions in the world is the call for peace and peaceful co-existence with nations, states, and peoples and that has been going on for Thousands of years. The Zionist aggressors are not building this new society by hard work and earning the worlds' respect but by massacres, destruction of houses, orchards, deception and theft while ignoring international laws that govern the worlds anti-fascist side.

They use religion as a cover for their illegal and unjust wars of aggression. They must quit kidnapping thousands of Paletinians which are now languishing in their prisons, and says the general assembly resolutions, get back behind the green line and end their occupation of Palestinian lands taken during the 1967 war of aggression.

All in all they are not upholding the anti-fascist covenants but are re-conquering the lands, water and air for the 'Greater Israel Project' of Zionist Empire. They must be brought to justice so the world can return to the peace and livability of a peoples Holyland, based on milk and honey, not on a land full of war torn holes with blood dripping from all directions.

Papryus