After the rhapsody, the bitter legacy of Israel and the left

[Englander]

Liberals were once happy to overlook the country's crimes, seeing only a model democratic state

Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Friday March 24, 2006
The Guardian

With the bizarre, not to say unique, events in Jericho last week - surely the first case of a jailbreak intended to keep the prisoners inside - Israel has again shown an impressive indifference to outside opinion. "The whole world is against us," says an endlessly popular Israeli song, and many Israelis would add the chant of Millwall fans: "No one likes us, we don't care."

There has, indeed, been a dramatic turn in opinion. It's very hard to recall the esteem and goodwill in which Israel once basked, not least on the broad liberal left, where there is now a received view that Israel has deserved this change in affections: that Israel and Zionism are vicious now, having been virtuous once. The view may be almost universal - but is it true?

You can hear echoes of the shift in these pages. It might be a columnist recalling the early 1960s, when progressive young friends (mine too) would go from London to spend the summer on a kibbutz in that heroic land. Or it might be Sir Gerald Kaufman bitterly denouncing the present Israeli government by comparison with "the beautiful democratic Israel" that he first knew in the 1950s.

In the age of Jenin, and now Jericho, of "targeted killings" and F-16s blasting refugee camps, that turn in Israel's reputation might seem natural enough. And yet there is a contrary case to be made, that Israel has in some ways been criticised too harshly over the past 20 years, having been judged too leniently in its first 20.

It is really very hard to explain to anyone under the age of 50 just how popular Israel once was, notably among European social democrats and our own Labour party. In the 50s, newspapers such as the Manchester Guardian and the Observer (for all the trauma of Suez) accepted axiomatically that Zionism was a force for good, and David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding prime minister, would be profiled in the New Statesman in what were frankly rhapsodic terms.

More at;
Guardian Unlimited

[ClintonTyree]

1. Quite true......

I'm 56 and I can remember a time when Israel was considered "god's promised land" and they were held in the highest esteem for overcoming all the obstacles in their path. The movie, "Exodus" was a blockbuster, we even owned the movie sound-track LP.

Now it seems as if Israel has squandered all of that "good-will", has become a nation that thumbs their noses at the rest of the world and does whatever they damned well please in the name of "national security". :think: Sound familiar? Can anyone name another country that has taken the same tack? Anyone? Anyone?

[Phx_Dem]

2. Missed some "salient truths"

"And yet those admirers missed some salient truths. That beautiful democratic Israel of 50 years ago was founded on ethnic cleansing"

The Palestinians were offered a nation of their own, but they were "ethnically cleansed"? Interesting logic. And yes, I know it looked like a piece of swiss cheese, hafta start somewhere.


"One ironical outcome will be to further encourage the historically obtuse view of the conflict that liberals have long nurtured."

Is ironical a word? I agree that liberals (especially in europe) are losing perspective on the I/P conflict, but it's due to their embracing postmodernism like the neocons do. Kind of sad really.

[Englander]

5. No, it's ethnic cleansing.

The forcible removal of one ethnic group by another is what the phrase is
referring to, I have no idea what yer referring to, here's some info that
should help;

'The expulsion of the Palestinians re-examined

Between the partition plan for Palestine adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 29 November 1947 and the 1949 ceasefire that ended the Arab-Israeli war, begun by the invasion of 15 May 1948, several hundred thousand Palestinians abandoned their homes in territory that ended up occupied by Israel (1).

Palestinian and Arab historians have always maintained that this was an expulsion. The vast majority of the refugees (estimated at between 700,000 and 900,000) were, they say, forced to leave, first, as a result of clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, and then by the Arab-Israeli war, in which a political-military strategy of expulsion had been marked by several massacres. This position was stated as far back as 1961, by Walid Khalidi, in his essay "Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine" (2) and has recently been restated by Elias Sanbar in "Palestine 1948. L’Expulsion" (3).

>snip

Military operations marked by atrocities

In "1948 and After" Benny Morris examines the first phase of the exodus and produces a detailed analysis of a source that he considers basically reliable: a report prepared by the intelligence services of the Israeli army, dated 30 June 1948 and entitled "The emigration of Palestinian Arabs in the period 1/12/1947-1/6/1948". This document sets at 391,000 the number of Palestinians who had already left the territory that was by then in the hands of Israel, and evaluates the various factors that had prompted their decisions to leave. "At least 55% of the total of the exodus was caused by our (Haganah/IDF) operations." To this figure, the report’s compilers add the operations of the Irgun and Lehi, which "directly (caused) some 15%... of the emigration". A further 2% was attributed to explicit expulsion orders issued by Israeli troops, and 1% to their psychological warfare. This leads to a figure of 73% for departures caused directly by the Israelis. In addition, the report attributes 22% of the departures to "fears" and "a crisis of confidence" affecting the Palestinian population. As for Arab calls for flight, these were reckoned to be significant in only 5% of cases...

http://mondediplo.com/1997/12/palestine

[pelsar]

3. those wonderful liberals....1967

and when israel was threatened with massive destruction by the larger, better equiped surrounding arab armies pre June 1967...what did the wonderful liberals of europe do?

wait for israels destruction....


yes sir, those wonderful days of the israeli experiement.....just didnt work out as planned...with the annihilation of the "wonderful country that we could all euolgise over.

[Englander]

4. That's an alternate version of history, really.

I'm sure you can provide plenty of links, & plenty of books that support the premise
that 'israel was threatened with massive destruction' (sic.)

Here's a version of the actual history;

The Iron Wall, Israel and the Arab World
by Avi Shlaim

Chapter 6, Poor Little Samson, 1963-1969
Page 241;

The Six-Day War

The Six-Day War was the most spectacular military victory in
Israel's history. It was launched on 5 June 1967 with a surprise air
strike on enemy airfields and ended on 10 June with Israel in
occupation of the entire Sinai peninsula, the West Bank, and the
Golan Heights. The Egyptian air force was wiped out on the ground in
a few hours on the morning of 5 June, but false information was given to
Egypt's allies to encourage them to join in the fighting. At noon the
air forces of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq, started to attack targets inside
Israel. Within two hours the Syrian and Jordanian air forces were also
wiped out, as was the Iraqi airbase at H-3, near the Jordanian border.
In all, four hundred enemy planes were destroyed on the first day of
fighting, and that in essence sealed the fate of the Arab armies.
The speed and scale of Israel's military victory led some observers
to suspect that Israel launched the war not in self-defense but in
order to expand its territory. Arab observers, in particular, were
inclined to believe that Israel deliberately provoked the Six-Day War
in order to fulfill its long-standing territorial ambitions. This view
is without foundation. The Six-Day War was a defensive war. It was
launched by Israel to safeguard its security, not to expand its territory. The
main enemy was Egypt. The chief aims were to open the Straits of Tiran,
to destroy the Egyptian army of Sinai, and to restore the deterrent
power of the Idf. Political and territorial objectives were not defined
by the government when it gave the IDF the order to strike. War aims
emerged only in the course of the fighting in a confused and contradictory
fashion.

[pelsar]

6. a little revisionist history?

lets see now...5 arab armies better equiped, more men with arms, able to field a larger standing army for long periods

some basic info:

50,000 troops (264,000 including mobilized reservists); 197 combat aircraft

vs: Egypt 150,000 troops; Syria 75,000; Jordan 55,000; 812 combat aircraft...not to mention iraq and lebanon....

______________________

hardly a "sure thing" when in battle.
________________________

And i doubt the Jordanian, Egyptain Generals went to war assuming they were going to lose.....and since there was no "territories"....not much else to do but invade and annilhilate israel...or perhaps you might enlighten me as to what the alternatives might have been?...i cant think of any



As far as israeli strategy....which was a major risk....95% of the IAF left israel to attack the arab fields...and what if the Egyptians knew about it? spotted them...and they were all shot down? ambushes arent much good, when discovered....

do you really think/believe israel was "sure to win"?....easy to say looking back, a lot more difficult for those in israel scared of what was about to happen. According to that viewpoint: that gambles if they succeed arent really gambles is absurd. By that way of thinking the Entebbe rescue also wasnt a gamble...but a "sure thing"

________

but if you really want some quotes

Our forces are now entirely ready . . . to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland . . . the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation." On the brink of the 1967 war, Egyptian President Gamal Nassar declared, "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel."

pretty clear the intentions....along with massed armies on the borders....or perhaps they were just kidding around....funny jokes especially with israel having a large population of holocaust survivors...i 'm sure they were really amused

just google them...they're all over the internet

http://www.otr.com/elkins.shtml

[Englander]

8. No, I don't want a little revisionist history.

So, thanks, but no thanks.

[bemildred]

7. Interview With Middle East Scholar Avi Shlaim: America, Israel and the ..

Avi Shlaim is a fellow of St. Antony's College and a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford. He was born in Baghdad on October 31, 1945, and grew up in Israel, where he did national service in 1964-66. He read history at Cambridge University in Britain, and has remained in that country ever since, holding dual Israeli and British citizenship. Professor Shlaim is the author of numerous books, most notably The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, and is a regular contributor to The Guardian, the leading liberal British broadsheet. He is widely regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on the Israeli-Arab conflict.

---

Iran and Syria are also on the Bush Administration neocons' list for intervention. Do you think the ongoing debacle in Iraq has effectively ruled out military action against these two nations?

The neocons had an ambitious agenda for the Middle East, and they were going to bring about regime change in Iraq as the first step in implementing a broader agenda. They wanted to turn Iraq into a model for the rest of the Arab world and the Middle East in general. The next targets were Syria and Iran, and after the initial successes during the war in Iraq, there were moves toward the regime in Damascus. American officials said that Syria was helping the remnants of the Saddam regime by smuggling weapons into Iraq and helping Iraqis to escape and find refuge in Syria. No evidence was produced to implicate Syria, so the rhetoric has died down. America is embroiled in a quagmire in Iraq, and it is in no position to invade or attack Syria, even if it wanted to. Iran is a bit more complicated. Iran is of course, one of the original members of the "axis of evil," alongside Iraq and North Korea; and Iran also poses a long-term threat to Israel--particularly if it acquires nuclear weapons.

So the neoconservatives, who care deeply about Israel's security, wanted to eliminate the Iranian threat to Israel. There was again talk of attacking Iran, and there was some loose talk about wiping out Iran's nuclear program and nuclear installations; but now this talk is not heard anymore, because America is embroiled in Iraq without an easy way out. What has emerged recently is that Iran manipulated the neocons into attacking Iraq in order to get rid of this very awkward neighbor, Saddam Hussein. There were some revelations a few weeks ago where Ahmad Chalabi's intelligence chief was in fact an Iranian agent to pass on misinformation and disinformation to the neocons that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. So Iran manipulated America through Chalabi and his aides; and now it is the Iranians who have had the last laugh because America toppled Saddam and inadvertently prepared the ground for a Shia rise to power. America destroyed a secular Sunni regime, which is going to be replaced by a Shia regime that is going to be much more friendly and acceptable to Iran. If true, this is one of the greatest intelligence coups of modern times.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040628/attapatu

[Englander]

9. Thanks for that, b, I'll bookmark it & read it all later. n/t