This was written by a blogger at TPM Cafe.


seth edenbaum's Blog

Zionism, Consensus and "Acceptable Behavior"


I understood Zionism from childhood as the argument that my father, Robert I Edenbaum, born in the Bronx and the grandson of immigrants from Eastern Europe, had more rights to land in Israel than someone whose family had lived there for 20 generations. No one I have met has ever countered that definition, and the logic then as now could only be defined as racist.
The same people make demographic arguments for denying the approximately three million Palestinian refugees the right to return to their Israeli land, arguments predicated on the need to maintain the racial integrity of the Jewish State and reminiscent of the rantings of various reactionary movements around the globe, with the difference that this example is defended as moral by those who fight against the implementation of such policies on their own soil.

The simplicity and clarity of the above points and my impatience with those who see them as anything other than clear, place me somewhat to my chagrin in the company of Noam Chomsky. Chomsky has always struck me as a man who does not understand psychology -though he might say that he simply has no interest in it- while consciousness is, of course, defined by neurosis. For that reason alone I suppose I should be more willing to accept the arguments of those to whom zionism was fed with mothers' milk: not to accept them as abstract logic- as truth- but as the result of the logic of their lives. Perhaps I should be more forgiving, but I'm not. Maybe I'm just a Jewish exceptionalist.

Still, I'm not surprised by arguments over the meaning of excessive or comparable force, even though comparable force would mean the destruction of entire sections of Tel Aviv, hundreds of thousands of refugees forced from their homes over a matter of days, billions of dollars in losses and threats to bomb Israel back to the stone age made by those actually able to do it.
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On another more abstract note, it's a peculiarly American desire to turn everything into a question of "community,' as if somehow the opposite of a daily group hug is anarchy. I'm not particularly interested in most of the posters here, though the ramblings of the rank and file are consistently more interesting than those of the Poobahs. I'm not out to offend anyone but I'm not out to make friends either. As long as no one gets kicked in the teeth I prefer to let community take care of itself, and the concern for policing social niceties seems little more than another oddity of Americana.

Joe Lieberman in an act of rhetorical slight-of-hand and self-delusion has turned the American respect for courtesy into one for authority and from that into the defense of his own unctious self-importance. Chomsky and the rest of the liberal intellectual elite may all have no interest in psychology (though Chomsky is the only pundit who gives the defense of intellectual objectivity any weight) but that does nothing to deny what psychology brings to politics and daily life.

The people say Lieberman is a creep, and sometimes the people are right.

http://americaabroad.tpmcafe.com/blog/seth...ptable_behavior

Interesting post Pegatha. I found the above especially significant with regard to our current CGCS discussion on another thread.

Good point!

Here's another viewpoint, along similar lines. I'm trying to understand this stuff.

Yes, this is Zogby the pollster.


The Huffington Post - Jul 21, 2006

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby/...da_b_25573.html



Willful Fantasies in Today's Middle East Conflict


by James Zogby


Reading US, Israeli and Arab commentaries and analyses of the current
conflicts raging in the Middle East is a disturbing exercise.


Israelis are reading off of the same script they wrote decades ago. In
1982, for example, they convinced themselves that by using overwhelming
force they would, as General Eitan put it, once and for all "crush the head
and break the fingers" of the Palestinian resistance and then turn
establish a relationship with a pacified Lebanon.


Their long and brutal assault on Lebanon, however, yielded a very different
outcome.


After 18,000 Lebanese and Palestinian deaths and the massive destruction of
Lebanon, up to and including West Beirut, the PLO was forced to leave the
country. But the story was far from over.


The Lebanese President elected under the cloud of this war did sign a peace
agreement with Israel. But then in rapid succession: this Lebanese
President was assassinated; Lebanese militia, with the support of Israel,
massacred hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra & Shatila refugee camps;
world-wide revulsion forced Israel to redeploy to the area of the south of
Lebanon they had occupied since 1978; and the Lebanese civil war continued
to rage for another 8 years.


There were other unintended consequences resulting from this 1982 "war to
end terror". Palestinian resistance to Israel's occupation moved "inside"
to the West Bank and Gaza where after 5 years it erupted in a full blown
"Intifada." Bitter Lebanese hostility to Israel's invasion and occupation
coalesced into a more lethal resistance, Hezbollah. And the US, which had
given Israel the green light to invade Lebanon in the first place, and then
provided military cover to facilitate Israel's redeployment south, now
became a target of terror. Hundreds of Americans died in Hezbollah attacks
at the US Embassy and marine barracks and several innocent US civilians
were held as hostages for years (until they were freed as part of the
Iran-Contra debacle).


Given this history, I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear
Israelis describe their current campaign in Lebanon using the same language
they used 24 years ago. It failed then, with tragic consequences. And,
because it ignores stubborn realities, it will fail again.


Similarly, it is disturbing to read some Arab commentaries on the current
crisis, coughing up old fanciful themes. Some make bizarre boasts of
Hezbollah's strength and valor which, they claim, has exposed Israel's
weaknesses. Hezbollah, we are told, has restored Arab honor and
demonstrated that Israelis can be defeated.


But we've heard all this before, and to what end? It is, at best, bizarre,
and at worst pathetic, to compare reckless adventurism with heroics. The
overwhelming numbers of Lebanese and Palestinians killed and the massive
destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure -- not to speak of the ruins left
in Gaza and the West Bank -- should point to a different reality. There is
no honor and there should be no pride or satisfaction in these outcomes.


Given Israel's asymmetrical power edge and its unrestrained use of that
power, provocations only result in terrible losses of life and property.


The US political discourse is no better. Once again, pressure to
uncritically support Israel has trumped right reason.


While some conservatives and Democrats have learned lessons from past
Israeli-Arab conflicts and from the recent US experiences in Iraq, the
Administration and most members of Congress have fallen in line, uttering
banalities like, "Israel has a right to defend itself" (even, if that means
killing hundreds of civilians and destroying Lebanon in the process), or
"let Israel finish the job it started" (as if the deaths and devastation
resulting from this war will have no consequences in Lebanon and the
broader Middle East).


A symptom of this warped mind-set is the now widely-shared and dangerous
notion that has equated calls for ceasefire with weakness. In a rare
display of agreement, both the White House and the Washington Post promoted
this view last week. In response to a question from Helen Thomas as to why
the President opposed calls for a ceasefire, White House spokesperson Tony
Snow rudely thanked Ms. Thomas for what he characterized as her "Hezbollah
view." Likewise, the Post editorialized that call for a ceasefire would
only "reward the aggressors."


In this environment, it has been difficult to promote reasoned discourse
and promote political solutions. Calls from the Maronite Catholic Patriarch
to end the hostilities, or Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora who challenged
the West to express outrage over the damage being done to Lebanon and the
Lebanese, have fallen on deaf ears in Washington.


Even more tragic has been the total blackout of any news coming out of Gaza
regarding the suffering of Palestinians now enduring their fifth week of
Israeli assault.


As I have said before, no good will come of this. Absent international
pressure to pursue a political solution within Lebanon and Palestine and
between Lebanese, Palestinians, and Israelis, the devastation of the past
month will, as in the aftermath of 1982, morph into a new and potentially
more lethal extremism.


The prerequisite to beginning such a political process is, of course, a
ceasefire. But with the US blocking such an effort, and still believing
that good will come from Israel's "cleansing war," the tragic dance of
death continues.

A very interesting read, Pegatha. Someone with brains.

How very sad, but so very true. This is important background. Thanks for sharing, Pegatha.

As the child of Eastern European immigrants, I understood Zionism in a very different way. It is not an issue of rights at all, but of survival. Most of the people in my family who survived WWII were the ones who went to Israel. All who stayed in Europe died. Many of those who went from Germany to Palestine in the 1930's entered illegally. It was a real Hobson's choice. Live as a criminal or die at the hands of your neighbors. What would you choose?

None of the people in my family went to Palestine to take anyone's land. Most were children sent by their parents. Parents they never saw again. They went to Palestine to live. Was this immoral? Theft? So be it. Morality is only for the living anyway. As one concentration camp survivor said, "Saints? heros? We were just trying to survive. The saints and heros all died."

IMHO, Zionism today is really about one thing and one thing only. There are 4 million people in Israel today who are not citizens of any other land, have no other home, and nowhere else to go. This does not of course justify what they do to their own neighbors. But they do have a right to be there. They have a right to live. So do the Palestinians. They have no other home either.

PP, your post and the first one, are two really great points of view.

One thing no one mentions is how western countries actively excluded Jewish immigration post WW2, largely supported by a combination of pressure from Zionists whose beliefs well proceeded Hitler and racism.

Thanks PP for this perspective, one I agree with and understand.

Yes this is correct, and it remains a sore point among those few Jews that are aware of this. Some American Jews lobbied FDR to take in more Jewish refugees, while others lobbied against it to encourage emigration to Israel. Without a united Jewish community in America, it was politically impossible for him to do the right thing and take in more refugees.

My relatives of course knew nothing about that. They just did what they had to do, like ordinary people everywhere.

Good to see you back PP. You and your perspective have been missed here.

Very nicely put, PP.
We could use a Special Envoy with this type of common sense approach.