Zionism is bullshit. Three thousand years ago my Celtic ancestors were casting sacred swords into the lakes of Switzerland. Can I go back and claim Switzerland? No. Of course not. It’s nonsense.
I am rather proud of that critique, which still seems to me a short and elegant refutation of the basis of Zionism. I have never seen it answered with anything approaching intellectual success. I am especially proud as it came to me in a moment of inspiration, in the final 12 seconds of an allocated three minute speech to a crowd that stretched further than I could see.
A Ghanaian came up to me in an Accra hotel yesterday and said “Craig Murray. Zionism is bullshit. I miss London.” He then dashed off. It reminded me what a small and interconnected world we live in, as well as leading me to dig out the reference.
I have another motive in posting it. This blog now has a much larger regular readership than it did a few years ago. In particular, following the referendum campaign, it has a much larger readership in Scotland. Since I returned to Scotland to campaign in the referendum and then decided to stay until we achieve independence, which I am determined will be before I kick the bucket, a number of voices have been raised to query who I am and where I come from, in the wider sense of the latter. Sometimes those voices have been hostile or suspicious. I shall therefore give the odd riffle through the back catalogue. You could of course buy my autobiography Murder in Samarkand, thus helping us to eat.
If I were wrong why would the Nationalists be making ad hominem attacks against me?
Because you don’t set a very good example. Practice as you preach.
“At least we agree on something.”
Why do you need to falsify quotes if you are so right?
I don’t have to falsify peoples quotes, I don’t need to launch personal attacks on people, I just need to state the facts.
Here are some videos which explain the economic problems an independent Scotland would be facing.
http://chokkablog.blogspot.co.uk/2015_07_01_archive.html
We can all post links, Fred.
Tolerance.
http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-voice-of-tolerance/
Another link about your Imperial British State.
http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-great-workndole-swindle/comment-page-1/#comment-2035751
Yes thanks Ba’al. Much inclined to agree on closer inspection it is unfortunately a hoax. Pity. But there is enough evidence to have Bibi convicted of war-crimes even without testimony from those close to him. As to the advert who in God’s name would leave a little baby alone with a psychopath like that?
Its an invention to claim that today Jews are descendents of the Israelites. Most are Ashkenazi Jews who are (obviously) white Europeans. Populations tend to stay put – the most likely descendents of the ancient Isrealites are the indigenous people still living in that area. The Palestinians.
Alluded to this once before and included French WWII sovereign debt. (talking to myself)
https://philebersole.wordpress.com
After World War One, the Allies were saddled with war debts to the United States that were beyond their ability to pay.
Herman Josef Abs, center, representing Federal Republic of Germany, signs a 1953 agreement cutting Germany’s debts to foreign creditors in half.
They hoped to get the money out of Germany, which was obligated to make reparations payments beyond that nation’s ability to pay.
Eventually Germany defaulted on its obligations to the Allies, and the Allies defaulted on their obligations to the USA and its bankers—but not in time to prevent the onset of the Great Depression and the rise of Adolf Hitler.
After World War Two, the Allies learned their lesson. They allowed the German government [1] to write off half its debts.
I believe the quote is from 2008.
The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman
It is instructive to remember that almost 20% of the population of Israel is Muslim. So, today, 1 in 5 Israelis is Muslim. Not all of these are Arab – there are Circassians, for example.
Over 20% of Israel’s population is Arab. Not all of these are Muslim – there are many Christian and Druze Arabs too. In Israel’s Northern District, Arabs form a majority of the population.
This is within the borders of 1948 Israel plus East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
In repeated polls, most of these people have stated that they do not wnat to be part of any other state than Israel and specifically that they do not want to be part of a (free, unoccupied) Palestinian state. Obviously that is likely to be partly because Israel is a ‘First World’ country. Nonetheless…
Thsi will anger some people here. But I think we need to face facts.
So, even today, after all that’s happened in the last 80 years, co-existence is possible as it was possible in Muslim majority countries (especially Iraq, Syria, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt…) until the 1930s/40s/50s. Not perfect, not without problems and periodic fights, but possible and proven. Idiots on all sides smashed apart this fertile cultural symbiosis.
But whether it’s one state or two, the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank must end. That is a pre-requiste for any peace deal. And there is no sign of that happening.
What the Israelis call “Israeli Arabs” (i.e., Palestinians living within Israel proper, as opposed to the occupied territories) are not happy with their lot within Israel. Ilan Pappe describes in his recent book The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel the many ways in which Israeli law discriminates against non-Jews and Palestinians in particular.
Suhayl Saadi – a high proportion of Israeli Jews are Arabs. Its something they’re being encouraged to forget.
“In repeated polls, most of these people have stated that they do not wnat to be part of any other state than Israel and specifically that they do not want to be part of a (free, unoccupied) Palestinian state. Obviously that is likely to be partly because Israel is a ‘First World’ country. Nonetheless…
Thsi will anger some people here. But I think we need to face facts.”
____________________
Thank you for that, Suhayl. I’m glad that someone other than me has set it out so clearly.
You don’t seem to have angered anyone – I note an embarrassed silence, except of course from our Transatlantic Sage, who counters by giving us his opinion, thus:
“What the Israelis call “Israeli Arabs”…. are not happy with their lot within Israel” (and then diverting by talking about Ilan Pappe talking about “discrimination”.
Our Transatlantic – who, I have noticed, likes to have the last word – obviously feels that his word trumps the many opinion polls you mentioned. Thr Transatlantic Sage, like Uncle Sam and the saloon bar bore, obviously knows better 🙂
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BTW Suhayl, I wonder if you might agree with me that there is at least the possibility that Ilan Pappe is simply disaffected with the State of Israel, which is a capitalist state; he is (or was), after all, a member of the Kadash party, which is (or was) a Communist-led party……
An Israeli Palestinian writes about his opinion of the situation he finds himself in, in 2012, in the New York Times: Not All Israeli Citizens Are Equal:
Tragically for Palestinians, Zionism requires the state to empower and maintain a Jewish majority even at the expense of its non-Jewish citizens, and the occupation of the West Bank is only one part of it. What exists today between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is therefore essentially one state, under Israeli control, where Palestinians have varying degrees of limited rights: 1.5 million are second-class citizens, and four million more are not citizens at all. If this is not apartheid, then whatever it is, it’s certainly not democracy.
The failure of Israeli and American leaders to grapple with this nondemocratic reality is not helping. Even if a two-state solution were achieved, which seems fanciful at this point, a fundamental contradiction would remain: more than 35 laws in ostensibly democratic Israel discriminate against Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.
For all the talk about shared values between Israel and the United States, democracy is sadly not one of them right now, and it will not be until Israel’s leaders are willing to recognize Palestinians as equals, not just in name, but in law.
Here’s a 2011 report by Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel: Inequality Report: The Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel. It details inequalities between Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel in the following areas:
• The legal framework of inequality
• Citizenship rights
• Income/poverty
• Redistribution of resources and social welfare
• Employment
• Economic assets: land
• Educational access/attainment
• The Arabic language
• Health
• Political participation
The article on Palestinians in Israel of the World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples is at http://www.minorityrights.org/5007/israel/palestinians.html . It was last updated in 2009.
Race and distrust of Israeli Arabs continue to for the basis for many Israeli government policies and actions. In May 2006 the Israeli Supreme Court narrowly rejected a challenge to a 2003 law that instituted race-based discrimination against Palestinian citizens seeking to acquire citizenship for spouses in the occupied territories. The law, adopted out of concern over terrorist attacks, has had the effect of forcing thousands of Palestinian families to separate. In March 2007 the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) called on Israeli lawmakers to scrap the provision, but later in the month the Knesset reauthorized it until August 2008. Constitutional legal challenges to the law are pending.
Discrimination against Palestinians in employment and education is common. Unemployment is higher among the Arab population (around 14 per cent for Arab males but 9 per cent among Jewish males). Jews do significantly better in education than Arabs, spending an average of three years more in school; the government itself has acknowledged that investment per Arab pupil is roughly 60 per cent of that for Jewish students. In August 2004, Human Rights Watch reported that the Israeli Ministry of Education provided one full-time teacher for every 16.0 children in Jewish primary schools in 2003-4, but only one for every 19.7 children in Arab primary schools. Other state services are similarly under-resourced for the Arab population.
The level of discrimination against Palestinians and blacks in more recent years is discussed in Max Blumenthal’s book Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel.
Habba @10.14pm
Talk about pots and kettles- rather than accuse Lysias of ‘an embarrassed silence’ perhaps you could elucidate on the franchise arrangements for the unitary Israel/Palestine you appeared to endorse at 07.21 this morning.
It is after all now 12 hours since I first questioned you on this- and to date I’ve only elicited silence, whether embarrassed or otherwise, on your part.
“… a high proportion of Israeli Jews are Arabs. Its something they’re being encouraged to forget.” Je
Je – I know, you’re right. And it’s a pity.
Lysias, yes, thanks for the useful quotes/links. I’m aware of the problems. There also have been real problems with dsicrimination against ‘Mizrahim’, i.e the Jewish Arabs Je mentioned and against Ethiopian Jews. Israel has become more politcally polarised in all ways and the some of the discriminatory laws have followed suit.
There also are problems in the UK/France/Germany/Eastern Europe/African-Americans in the USA, etc. with widespread structural discrimination against various groups, though the relevant laws here (in the UK) have tended in the opposite direction.
Nonethless, Israelis of whatever origin or faith are able to campaign – along with people like Ilan Pappe and Amira Haas and so on – for their rights. Their situation, while far from perfect in a state whose founding myth – and this goes back to Craig’s original post about Zionism – is supremacist (and people like Miko Peled have a valid point here), is far better than that of the majority, let alone the minorities, in Arab countries (even before the recent implosions). I am aware of the colonial settler-state dynamic/First World economic disparities, but places like the UAE/Bahrain/Saudi Arabia/Qatar arenot under attack from The West (or anyone else) and have had the wealth for at least 50 years (in the case of Bahrain, 80-90 years) to be able to create social democratic utopias for all their residents if they so wanted. Instead, we see migrant labourers being treated like the slaves in Ancient World and allowed to die in their hundreds, if not thousands, to build football stadia in Qatar. There is widespread de jure and de facto dscrimination in all these countries. There are even different classes of Arabs (Saudis are at the top, Palestinians at the bottom), but all are treated as superior to South Asians and Filipinos, for example). If these same migrant labourers wereon boats in the Meditarranean – maybe some have been – or indeed in detention centres in the UK – maybe some have been – we (rightly) would be clamouring for their rights.
I must emphasise that this must be viewed as quite distinct from the occupation (of the West Bank and, since Israel has not pulled out but simply has militarised the Strip, Gaza). The occupation must be ended and it coudl be ended in three months if the USA wanted it to end.
The daily atrocities continue.
06 July 2015 [Main source of statistics: Palestinian Monitoring Group (PMG).
Night peace disruption and/or home invasions in refugee camp
and 6 towns and villages
12 raids including home invasions
Economic sabotage
8 taken prisoner – 24 detained – *91 restrictions of movement
Home invasions: 02:00, al-Qibliya – 05:40, Silwad – 02:45-03:45, Irtah – 02:30, Nahalin – 03:40, Bethlehem – 04:00, Tawas – dawn, Hebron.
Peace disruption raids: 20:30, Ein Yabroud – 05:15, the al-Jalazoun refugee camp – 09:25, Azun Atma – 11:00, al-Ubeidiya – 11:00, Dar Salah.
Palestinian missile attacks: none.
Economic sabotage: Gaza — the Israeli Navy continues to enforce an arbitrary fishing limit.
Israeli Army mosque violation: Jerusalem – settler militants, escorted by Israeli troops, invaded the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and molested worshippers.
Israeli Army stun and tear gas grenades: Jerusalem – 23:30, al-Ram: stun and tear gas grenades.
Israeli Army – child terrorised: Hebron – 19:00, Israeli soldiers in the Old City seized, and held captive for a time, a 14-year-old boy, Maher Abu Haya.
Israeli Army blockade enforcement: Rafah – 09:00, the Israeli Army took prisoner three unidentified residents for attempting to flee the blockade of Gaza.
http://palestine.org.nz/phrc/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2680&Itemid=44
Old Mark
“..rather than accuse Lysias of ‘an embarrassed silence’”
_________________
Closer reading of my comment required, I’m afraid. I said that Suhayl’s post was met with embarrassed silence except for our Transatlantic Sage (who was obviously upset. judging by the flurry of quotations he provided – none of which, by the way, convincingly refuted the results of the many opinion polls Suhayl referred to. A beta double minus).
Are you part of the tag team?
OldMark
“It is after all now 12 hours since I first questioned you on this- and to date I’ve only elicited silence, whether embarrassed or otherwise, on your part”
________________
Apologies for not replying sooner, but I’m sure you’ll understand that I fit in my participation in this blog t my other activities and not the other way round. Don’t you, by the way? 🙂
*****************
As for your questions.
1/. “.. in the single state solution you envisage would the Palestinian population have the same voting rights as the Jewish population ?”
I am not the (future) Israeli govt, nor do I have a crystal ball. But, as Israel is a democratic state, and will remain so ( believe), I should certainly hope that the citizens of a future greater Israel would enjoy the same democratic rights (including the right to vote)as do Israeli citizens, including Israeli Palestinians, at present.
2/.”Also, if they had the same notional right to vote as Jewish citizens, how likely do you think state gerrymandering, on a scale greater than that which prevailed in NI pre 1972, would be ?”
Again, I don’t have a crystal ball. The honest answer would be that I should hope that there would be none but that the temptation cannot be ruled out.
Your reference to N. Ireland is illustrative of the fact that gerrymandering can be an unfortunate fact of life in parliamentary democracies. I’d add, however, that pressure of events did lead – admittedly after too long a time, to the necessary reforms. I’d also add gerrymandering in the wider sense exists in the rest of the UK through, for instance the unequal size of English parliamentary constituencies: apparently, seen nationally, it takes more Tory voters to return a Tory MP than it takes Labour voters to return a Labour one.
That’s it for now, I’m afraid – I could tease out the above a lot more but the beach beckons!
Closer reading of my comment required…A beta double minus
Well thanks for that Habba- were you a schooteacher in a previous life ?
Now, back to the question, which you continue to ignore- in a unified Israel/Palestine do you think there should be an equal franchise for all citizens ? And should citizenship of this new state be conditional on ethnic origins or open to all, Jews and non Jews alike ?
If you continue to dodge this issue I think certain inferences as to your actual options on Israel/Palestine can be drawn.
If you continue to dodge this issue I think certain inferences as to your actual options on Israel/Palestine can be drawn.
Habba- please disregard this part of my comment above- your comment of 08.57 crossed with mine, and your further elucidation is noted with thanks.
OldMark
Good job I read yours at 09h13 before firing off my trench mortars in reponse to yours of 09h10 🙂
Re schoolmasters – why do you say “in a previous life”? Neither, actually (that is Nevermind’s little conceit: he probably got flogged once too often at the junior reform school he attended and my occasional chastisements might remind him of that 🙂 )
There has now been a conviction for voter fraud in the independence referendum, the first one.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJgUVZTWoAASV1K.jpg
Many nauseating mentions of ‘the beach’. Better not mention the four boys killed on ‘the beach’ in Gaza a year ago. Playing football but mowed down by the Israeli navy.
‘Mohammad Ramiz Bakr, 11, Ahed Atef Bakr and Zakariya Ahed Bakr, both 10, and Ismail Mahmoud Bakr, nine, were killed on 16 July last year when they were hit by explosive rounds. Three of the boys died as they tried to run from the beach after the first child was killed.
The Israeli military announced on Thursday evening that the “extensive” criminal inquiry into the case had been closed because it was deemed to be a “tragic accident”.’
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/12/gaza-beach-killings-no-justice-in-israeli-exoneration-says-victims-father
~~~~~
Life in a Palestinian refugee camp as observed by a Scottish visitor. Aida Camp is in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ. Grandchildren of refugees from al Naqba are imprisoned. Up against Israel’s wall.
Inside Aida Refugee Camp
AIDA REFUGEE CAMP, NEAR BETHLEHEM, PALESTINE
http://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2014/12/01/66009/
‘They are banned from even visiting the country they once called home. It is now a part of Israel. People born here cannot go to the beach at Tel Aviv. They cannot go anywhere behind the wall – even to shop in Jerusalem just four miles away.’
Earlier here Lysias linked to Max Blumenthal’s new book and I linked to an interview by Glenn Greenwald.
This is David Swanson’s review of the book, The 51-Day War : Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. The use of the word ‘war’ is criticised.
July 10, 2015
The 51-Day Genocide
Max Blumenthal’s latest book, The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza, tells a powerful story powerfully well. I can think of a few other terms that accurately characterize the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza in addition to “war,” among them: occupation, murder-spree, and genocide. Each serves a different valuable purpose. Each is correct.
The images people bring to mind with the term “war,” universally outdated, are grotesquely outdated in a case like this one. There is no pair of armies on a battlefield. There is no battlefield. There is no aim to conquer, dispossess, or rob. The people of Gaza are already pre-defeated, conquered, imprisoned, and under siege — permanently overseen by military drones and remote-control machine-guns atop prison-camp walls. In dropping bombs on houses, the Israeli government is not trying to defeat another army on a battlefield, is not trying to gain possession of territory, is not trying to steal resources from a foreign power, and is not trying to hold off a foreign army’s attempt to conquer Israel.
Yes, of course, Israel ultimately wants Gaza’s land incorporated into Israel, but not with non-Jewish people living on it. (Eighty percent of Gaza’s residents are refugees from Israel, families ethnically cleansed in 1947-1948.) Yes, of course, Israel wants the fossil fuels off the Gazan coast. But it already has them. No, the immediate goal of the Israeli war on Gaza last year, like the one two years before, and like the one four years before that, would perfectly fit a name like “The 51 Day Genocide.” The purpose was to kill. The end was nothing other than the means.
In 2014, as in 2012 and 2008, Israel again attacked the people of Gaza, using weapons provided for free by the U.S. government, which could be counted on, even standing completely alone, to defend Israel’s crimes at the United Nations. Practicing what’s been called the Dahiya Doctrine, Israel’s policy was one of collective punishment.
/..
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/10/the-51-day-genocide/
places like the UAE/Bahrain/Saudi Arabia/Qatar arenot under attack from The West (or anyone else) and have had the wealth for at least 50 years (in the case of Bahrain, 80-90 years) to be able to create social democratic utopias for all their residents if they so wanted. Instead, we see migrant labourers being treated like the slaves in Ancient World and allowed to die in their hundreds, if not thousands, to build football stadia in Qatar.
Again in line with the “first world” claptrap ( a total misnomer applied to a barbaric entity that is based on supremacy of a certain “race”) on goes the conflation and almost disingenuous portrayal of the UAE and Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi that have not been, or have not come under any attack by the USUK et al. Fact that why on Earth USUK et al wish to attack their own hand reared poodles? These vassals in charge of these benighted lands are keeping a lid on the restless natives, and ensuring the flow or not; ie stopping the flow of oil as per the orders from Washington, all the while spending or more to the point repatriating the dollar proceeds of the sales of oil back to their printers. Hence to expect these lands to be “liberated” is truly a product of phantasmagoria that borders criminality.
The treatment of the migrant labourers in the said countries are evidently akin to the treatment of the slaves! However missing out of this emotional conflation are; the various check points and crossings that have so far killed many pregnant Palestinian mothers to be; on their way to hospitals elsewhere, because the hospitals in the occupied territories have been reduced to rubble or to state of disrepair and uselessness. Fact that for attending a wedding the participants have to stand for hours on end in queues and get hassled by the supremacist thugs bristling with all manner of freely provided weapons and ordinance. The workers, standing on long lines from day to day uncertain if they will get to their place of work and get paid or not? In addition to the largest open air concentration camps on the planet and it’s history have been in existence for the last seven decades and the conditions of theri inmates are getting worse by the day.
These are all acceptable and ought to be accepted, because the “first world” zionistan is a much better proposition, than the “UAE, Ba………..”.
This degree of disconnect from realities, cannot be explained away by a plethora of homilies and whataboutery. Lets face it zionistan is an aberration and a stain on human consciousness and the sooner this mind disease is eradicated the better, regardless of the “realities”. Ebola is a reality too, but does not mean the world should sit back and accept it’s carnage, and destruction.
Re schoolmasters – why do you say “in a previous life”? Neither, actually
Thanks for the clarification Habba- on re-reading your comment of 08.57 I noted the tone was more parsonical than schoolmasterly; there was quite a bit along the lines of ‘it is to be hoped’ and ‘if goodwill prevails’, a tone more suited to the pulpit than the schoolroom.
I’m glad you took my analogy with NI seriously. That conflict at least appears to be dormant at present (unlike Israel/Palestine), but what we have at present is still a partitionist ‘solution’, and not a unitary state solution- and I still think the latter is extremely unlikely in the context of Israel/Palestine. However, there are some pointers from NI which are still pertinent to Israel/Palestine:
1. For 50 years NI was explicitly ‘a Protestant State for a Protestant people’, however since 1972 that concept has been progressively disregarded, and implicit to the 1998 agreement was the concept of ‘parity of esteem’ between the 2 traditions. No progress will be made on Israel/Palestine until Israel recognises that its non Jewish residents should enjoy ‘parity of esteem’ with the Jewish inhabitants- even if the ‘right to return’ continues to apply only to Jews. Similarly, any Palestinian entity must give parity of esteem to Palestinian Christians, and indeed to Jews (if any) who choose to remain in a Palestinian state.
2.In the NI context the US was eventually accepted as an impartial arbiter by both sides, despite the historic suspicions of Unionists such as Enoch Powell (who thought they were overly sympathetic to Irish Nationalists), and some politicians in the South (who thought a quid pro quo for US support for Irish unity would be the termination of Irish neutrality, and membership of NATO for the new state). At the moment, in the Israel/Palestine context, the US is miles away from being an impartial arbiter, as its political elites compete with themselves over who is the most pro Israeli.
“Hence to expect these lands to be “liberated” is truly a product of phantasmagoria that borders criminality.” Fedup.
Yes, they are post-colonial stooges. Yet if the potentates of ‘Saudi’ Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain wanted, they could turn their countries into social democratic entities. The oil would still flow, the money would still pour in – just maybe not all into their own pockets. Yet the fact remains that they do not.
“In addition to the largest open air concentration camps on the planet and it’s history have been in existence for the last seven decades and the conditions of theri inmates are getting worse by the day.” Fed Up.
Yes, and as I stated, the occupation must be ended and the USA could end it in three months if they wished to do so. As I also clearly stated, my posts dealt with Arabs and Muslims living within the 1948 borders of Israel-plus East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, not with Palestinains living under an illegal occupation. As I also stated, Zionism is a supremacist political ideology. I also stated that I do agree with Zionism and that I am in favour of a Palestinian state.
But of course, Fed Up, you are not really interested in reading posts, you simply react in a reflexive manner to any of my posts because you have decided to do so. And basiaclly, as anyone can see, this has nothing to do with Israel/Palestine. You have devided to react in this manner because I refuse to tow your particular line in supremacist ideology.
And so, if the supremacist ideology known as Zionism must be, in your words, “eradicated” like “ebola”, then perhaps one might pause for just a moment and ask what ought to happen with other forms of supremacist ideology which currently are exerting immense devastation on human beings across the region and beyond?
OldMark
Your points are noted.
It was cunning of you to introduce the “parity of esteem” argument but I am not inclined to enter into that discussion – tired after my time on the beach( where by the way my team won a narrow victory in an inpromptu game of beach volley),you see – except to say that I should imagine there will be greater parity of esteem in a future larger Israel than that shown to their ethnic and religious minorities by many Arab states in the Middle East and Gulf region(the Shia/Sunni divide refers).