Israel

Views From The Past

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I’m feeling kind of blogged out and decided to post something different. I’ve been going through a batch of family photos that no one has looked at in years. It’s like a time capsule. A few of the pictures may be of general interest. I really like the ones below. A relative of mine made them when President Nixon visited Jerusalem in 1974.

parade route
Parade route with Monastery of the Cross in background.

Rehavia street
I don’t know where this was. It may have been across the street from the prime minister’s residence.

outside the PM's residence
Outside the prime minister’s residence.

A Shocking Interview

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The establishment-left Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz published this interview with the Israeli historian Benny Morris, who is widely known for his revisionist critiques of Zionism and Israel’s founders.

The interview is remarkable, especially the second page, where Morris discusses the nature of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Morris’s profound new pessimism regarding the possibility of Israel’s reaching a peaceful accommodation is astonishing. Indeed, not only is he pessimistic, his current position sounds almost like last year’s leftist caricature of the Israeli Right’s position.

I forwarded the interview to a relative of mine who is sympathetic to the Israeli Left. She was shocked. In U.S. terms, it’s as if Anthony Lewis had come out in 1970 in favor of nuking North Vietnam.

I don’t know much about Morris, and this is pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if his new hard attitude foretells changes in the Israeli Left paralleling those that occurred in the American Left after 9/11. In our case there has been a broad split, with many serious liberals (in the current U.S. sense of the term) aligning themselves with the Bush administration on defense issues. It will be interesting to see if Morris’s apparent shift is idiosyncratic or the harbinger of a similar ideological move in the Israeli Left. My sense is that in Israel, as in the U.S., big things are happening, and that much of what’s going on is beneath the surface — or that we are too close to events to see what will be obvious to future historians.

As I wrote, remarkable.

Sweden Confirms Its Neutrality Between Good And Evil

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The Swedes are throwing a hissy fit because the Israeli Ambassador, visiting a museum exhibit associated with a Swedish government-sponsored conference on genocide, took offense at a display of offensive “art” and literally pulled out its plug.

(The Israeli government says that the Swedes promised not to link the conference to the Arab-Israeli conflict — which, BTW, Reuters mislabels “the Middle East conflict.”)

Meanwhile, the “artist” — a lefty Israeli “peace” activist — said, essentially: Hey, what are you so upset about? It’s just an exhibit, we were trying to raise consciousness about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what about freedom of expression, etc., etc. And a representative of the Swedish government expressed outrage that the ambassador had the temerity to damage sacred art, etc., etc.

To the “artist” and the Swedish government, I say: fuck you. Yeah, the Israeli ambassador lost it, but you provoked him. He took the bait and now you get to tut-tut about his emotional reaction and make sanctimonious statements about “art.”

The message I get is that the Swedish government cares more about art exhibits and moral posturing than it does about the lives of Jews. Would the Swedish government tolerate, at an official conference, an “art exhibit” portraying Hitler sailing in a lake of Jewish blood? More to the point, would the Swedes tolerate an exhibit showing the Jewish mass murderer Baruch Goldstein sailing in a lake of Arab blood? Would they tolerate an exhibit that could be interpreted as insulting to Muslims or Arabs? To ask this question is to answer it.

Maybe I, like the Israeli ambassador, am overreacting, but my impression is that the ambassador isn’t the problem here.

UPDATE: I am happy to learn that the Israeli government is supporting the ambassador:

Sharon said he called Mazel Saturday night and thanked him for his stand against rising anti-Semitism. “We are witnessing a rise in anti-Semitism, and will increase our efforts to fight the phenomenon,” he reportedly told the cabinet.

Good. Let the bastards worry about offending Jews, for a change.

(Link: Yehudit)

UPDATE 2: Bjørn Stærk has a contrary view.

Dangerous Hypocrisy

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“Bush condemns Jerusalem bombing ‘in strongest possible terms'” (MSNBC TV). Well of course he does. But he shouldn’t have facilitated the attack by criticizing Israel in a way that made clear he regards cutting a deal as the main goal of his efforts. He shouldn’t have criticized Israel for defending itself — doing on a small scale what the U.S. has done on a large one. He shouldn’t have put the screws on Israel while publicly overlooking continued Arab (except maybe Jordanian) hostility to Israel and sympathy for Palestinian terrorism. He shouldn’t have tolerated the Palestinian leadership’s good-cop/bad-cop game. His inconsistency signals weakness, and it’s no surprise under the circumstances that the Palestinians continue to make terror attacks. For them, it pays.

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“Defining Deviancy Down”

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Bret Stephens tells us why the Palestinians are not yet ready for prime time:

I AM often asked whether I favor an independent Palestinian state. I wish someone would ask me instead whether I favor an independent German one.

I favor an independent Germany, of course, but not if it’s going to be the Third Reich. I favor an independent Japan, but not the Japan of Tojo. I might even favor the independent state of Tamil Eelam, but not under a psychopath like Prabhakaran.

In each of these instances, I’d sooner have a benign colonial occupation than a nasty native dictatorship. And the same goes for the Palestinians.

Today, the international community is having trouble accepting the fact that the problem with Palestinian statehood has nothing to do with its borders, much less with the size of its army or the rights it has to its airspace, its water resources, and so on. It has nothing to do with what Israel does or does not do in its military or diplomatic efforts. The problem, rather, is the nature of the state itself, and principally its moral nature. Is it a respecter of the rights of its citizens? Or of the rights of its neighbors?

In the Declaration of Independence, America’s founders did more than insist on their inalienable right to self-determination. They also showed they knew what self-determination was for, and, in so doing, that they deserved to have it. Israelis, too, have shown that they deserve the state they fought for and were given.

By contrast, Palestinians continue to demonstrate, in word, deed and above all in attitude that they have no similar understanding. Until they do so, until they emerge from the moral swamp in which they have put themselves, they ought to remain – along with countless other peoples – stateless.

Well stated.