Another friend thought this was a good piece, mistakenly. So heres a brief run-down: The seven Arab states declared war and urged the Palestinians to flee. After defeating the Arab armies, Israel made it very hard for them return. Hence we ended up with a large Palestinian refugee population. No, they did not urge the Palestinians to flee - this is simply a myth thats long-since been disproven. Thats not controversial. Moreover, note the conflation of Palestinian refugees and Arab armies: the two are not the same, and in fact the Jewish forces created hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees before a single Arab army set foot in Israel in 1948. Over the subsequent decades following the 1948 war, there was a persistent Arab bombing campaign and two more large-scale Arab attacks on Israel, 1967 and 1973. Note: 1967 was an Israeli-instigated war (not controversial). 1973 was an avoidable war (Egypt made a peace offer in 1971 that Israel rebuffed; again, not controversial.) And this account simply disappears the vast amounts of Israeli aggression in the interim, including against Palestinian refugees peacefully entering Israel to return to the land and homes they relied on, many of whom suffered crimes against humanity, and under the occupation. Settlements did not begin in the 1980s - they began in the 1960s, though they became increasingly tied to the religious-right project of the Gush Emunim. The Arab states chose [perpetual conflict] because it is in their interest to maintain unity against their common enemy, Israel. Except the Arab world has made peace offers based on the international consensus and international law for decades, in the face of Israeli rejection. (They werent even united in 1948, but were pursuing their own individual expansionist goals.) Jordan wasnt the exception - why no mention of Egypt? - and neither was that because it realised Israel wasnt going away. This complaint about selective outrage is (as ever) ridiculous: there is a reason for such selectiveness: that the conflict is very easy to solve, and that we in the west prolong it and support the aggressor. Boycotts moreover, are a +tactic+ not a principle. +Thats+ why you dont have to apply them universally to justify them. Was the South African boycott unjustified because other countries had poor human rights records? Now listen to these sentences: The Arab Spring, which has become a dark winter for most Arabs and the large-scale slaughter now under way along the borders of Iraq and Syria, are good examples of what they do to themselves. ... [Israel] are now just a nation, like any other, trying to survive in a hostile sea of hate. What they do to themselves. He means Arabs in general, of course. Not exactly difficult to recognise the racism in that sentiment. We should be clear that, given the opportunity, the Arabs would drive the Jews into the sea and that was true from day one. There was no way back from war once a religious state was declared. So Israel, once committed to a nation state in that location and granted that right by other nations, has had no choice but to fight. Given the opportunity is a completely disingenuous phrase. +Who knows+ what +anyone+ would do given the opportunity, i.e. infinite power? The fact is that they +do not have the opportunity+, and have persistently offered peace according to (and indeed even making concessions over) the terms of the international consensus. Israel and the US have not, but have persistently +rejected+ those terms. That is not a case of Israel ... has had no choice but to fight. It is Israel has rejected any alternative +but+ to fight. This stuff about antisemitism declined, so the US supported Israel, moreover, does not even begin to explain why Israel, a rich, developed country, is +the largest recipient of US aid+, receiving $3bn in military aid a year. There is almost no discussion about how US economic-strategic-energy interests in the Middle East shaped their perception of the Arab world for the worse. All this is just glossed over as if it was almost +natural+ that things turned out as they did. Israel has lost its way and commits horrors in the interest of its own survival. Note how this purports to condemn but actually ends up +justifying+ these horrors. And yet to suggest that +survival+ has been at stake in any of Israels wars since 1948 is simply ludicrous. Now - when around 500 Palestinian civilians have been killed for every 1 Israeli civilian killed - it is obscene. And the Arabs and Persians perpetuate a conflict-ridden neighbourhood with almost no exceptions, fighting against each other and with hate of Israel the only thing that they share. Again, this is a depiction of the Middle East beyond Israels borders as a kind of sea of irrational barbarism, devoid of explanation or historical context besides theyre Arabs and Persians. Again, not difficult to recognise as very obvious racism. Thats echoed in the next paragraph where the entire history of the Arab world is written off as centuries of tribal conflicts punctuated by the rule of strongmen. If you tried to offer that as a history of Europe or the West, people would laugh. But so breathtaking is the level of ignorance of the Middle East that we accept it, and The Independent prints it without compunction.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 21:28:02 +0000
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