The current bloodbath has prompted me to dig out my copy of "The Palestine-Israeli Conflict", which I first read a couple of years ago. It seemed quite a good primer, being a history written in two halves by two UK-based academics, the first by Dan Cohn-Sherbok, the second by Dawoud El-Alami. Both are utterly candid about the atrocities perpetuated by their own side. There is also a blog-style exchange of 3 short responses each at the end. My edition is from 2001, and interestingly, Hizbullah don't get a single mention. There's also a few claims in the exchanges in the end which may no longer hold quite so true (if they ever did in the first place)-
El-Alami, p210- "You should look more closely at the image of the uncivilised Arab in Western culture. This image is promoted and accepted in a way which would be totally unacceptable with regard to Jews or any other ethnic group. Israel is portrayed as a civilized Western country surrounded by hostile barbarians."
"The greater part of the Arab world does accept the existence of the Israeli State as a fact and is prepared to do business with it".
Cohn-Sherbok, p202-3- "By rejecting the majority decision to partition Palestine ((in 1948)), the Arab nations had placed themselves above the fundamental democratic process on which the UNis based. Since the creation of Israel.......Arab nations have repeatedly denied Israel's right to exist. While Jews have sought peace with their neighbours, the Arabs have waged war."
"Surrounded by its foes, isolated from external support, the Jewish nation has continually sought to safeguard itself from aggression. But it has not been the aggressor in these conflicts. Rather, as a young and relatively tiny country, it has continually sought to defend itself from attack;nonetheless, in doing so, Israel has constantly struggled to live in harmony with its neighbours".
And here's one I couldn't even comment on without reading shitloads more, from El-Alami- "..the history of Jewish Palestine ended effectively in 137 CE. Until the middle of the twentieth century, there had not been a Jewish majority in Palestine since that time over eighteen hundred years ago."
Presume CE is some equivalent of AD.
2 comments:
CE = Christian Era.
Just going from memory here, so don't take this as gospel, but 173CE must be the date the Romans expelled the Jewish people from Palestine. Again, I can't remember all the details, but the last part of any 'Jewish state' was the final city the Romans held seige to in that year.
That effectivley ended any Jewish presence in that part of the worl until the Zionist movement came along in the 19th century.
But, again, none of these are facts that I've verified or anything - just information sitting there in an increasingly unreliable memory!
According to El-Alami, there were small Jewish communities in the major religious locations like Jerusalem, and a few rural areas, but they were still a minority, one which still co-existed peacefully with the rest under Ottoman rule.
On a different note, though it might seem inappropriate in the face of Israel's onslaught (I think the paper today listed about 1000 Lebanese deaths by comparison with 50 Israeli, not to mention the civilian displacement and damage to the infrastructure). I read an article recently by a US human rights lawyer about the problems of troops hidden within civilian populations (this was even before the current hostilities I think). Would it set an international precedent if Israel were to concentrate their attacks purely on where Hizbollah missiles are coming from ? The whole idea of excusing limited retribution strikes between any two states just seems to be leaving the door open for further accumulation of violence. But who would intervene otherwise ? The UN is fast starting to look like the biggest, most ineffectual talking shop ever conceived.
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