The Daily Mail's Peter Hitchens says that even though Israel has done bad things in the past (like every country), it is NOT the Third Reich reincarnated.
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, how ignorant we are about you
17th December 2008
Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail
The eruption of the Middle East on to this blog last week impels me to write a few words about this subject before I take a Christmas break (yes, Mr "Demetriou", I am shortly taking some time off in my armchair, not going to Burma, Belarus, Moscow, Russia, Moscow, Idaho, Venezuela, Zambia or the Congo. My column will continue to be posted here each Sunday, but I shall not resume the mid-week postings till after the New Year has begun).
I noticed that my antagonists were determined to stick to their view that Israel is irredeemably wicked and the Arabs peace-loving and more or less faultless, despite my efforts to steer them into the more rational position that both sides are guilty of major wrongdoing and that there is nothing to be gained by atrocity propaganda.
One of them frequently represented my opinions as being more hard-line and pro-Israeli than they in fact are, presumably because he was more comfortable with an opponent who fitted his pre-ordained idea of what a Zionist should be. I do not attack him for misrepresentation, as I am sure he genuinely thinks that I hold the views he attributes to me. But it does make it rather laborious, trying to argue with him. I have to keep looking up my own words, wondering where exactly my opponents have ingeniously discovered the various sentiments they attribute to me, which I don't hold and haven't expressed. Often the change in meaning is quite slight, but also crucial. Or they simply miss my points, or slip past them. Well, I must now reluctantly slip past them. A moment comes in any debate when you have to recognise that your opponent doesn't want to find common ground and regards your olive branches as spears. Well, as it happens, I do want to find common ground, so I'll try to seek it elsewhere.
By the way, can I request that, in such arguments, people do not expect me to take seriously the views of the United Nations General Assembly ( a hopelessly biased anti-Israeli parliament of despots and torturers with all the moral authority of Jack the Ripper)? Nor do I need to be persuaded that Israel has done many wrong things, so telling me about them will not alter my position.
Also, can we please rule out any claims that the Israelis behave like the Nazis, that Gaza is a 'concentration camp' etc etc. This is emotionalised agitprop piffle, and only shows that those who use it have become so hot-eyed that they have lost all sense of proportion. The German industrialised massacre of European Jewry was a unique event, and it is a demonstration of ignorance about the past and about the present, plus a severe case of language inflation, to try and equate it with anything now taking place. The moment Israel starts getting its non-Jewish citizens to wear Yellow Crescent badges, rounds them up by force, takes them to extermination camps and gasses them to death by the million, then it will be true to say that Israel is behaving as the Nazis did. As long as it doesn't do that, it won't be.
Israel often behaves very badly, especially when maddened into unreason and emotional folly by terror attacks. So do most countries, including our own. But that doesn't make it a reincarnation of the Third Reich.
I know why this claim is made. The murder of European Jews, at the behest of the government of what had been viewed until then as one of the most civilised and advanced nations on earth, was and will always remain one of the chief reasons for Israel's existence. Personally I think that reason remains unanswerable and uncomfortable for all of us. The record of the free nations, asked to help Jewish refugees from Hitler from 1933 onwards, is a disgrace. I might add that at least one prominent Arab leader from the region, Haj Amin al Husseini, became an active ally of the Nazis and helped recruit Bosnian Muslims for a special Muslim division of the SS. So you can see why an Arab propagandist might want to confuse the issue.
Similarly, baseless accusations of anti-Semitism against legitimate critics of Israel should be left at the door. Those who criticise Israel proportionately and fairly (that is to say, not selectively choosing to attack Israel for crimes and misdeeds that they overlook elsewhere) are entitled to be heard without being defamed in this silly way. In return, anti-Israel voices who are genuinely opposed to Judophobia should be ready to observe and condemn that phobia where it is present ( as it is, with frightening persistence) in much Arab and Muslim anti-Israeli propaganda.
Many people prefer angry passion to cool reason in this debate.
Why? Because angry passion allows you to be weak on reason, and weaker still on facts. If you abandon total partisanship in this quarrel, you have to stop huffing and puffing about "evil terrorists" or "oppressive occupiers", you have to acknowledge that (for instance) Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount was not a sufficient reason for the Second Intifada (which by the way completely scuppered any hope of a settlement at Taba, on which so much weight is placed by some contributors). And you also have to acknowledge that Ariel Sharon is an undoubted war criminal.
Then you have to think about what we might actually do if we are serious about peace, rather than anxious for the total triumph of one side or the other.
The real question is, since a territorial compromise is obviously the civilised way out, why one has not happened. My view is that the Arab side does not actually want a compromise, and does not see any reason why it should seek one, given its huge success in persuading most of Western opinion that Israel is in the wrong. A substantial body of Israeli opinion, likewise, prefers secure borders without a treaty, to a peace that is not secure. The behaviour of Arab leaders and states strengthens this faction all the time. And as long as that continues, and as gullible people allow it to continue, the existing miserable conditions will continue.
Actually, Israel will lose this contest in the end, since the demographics of the area mean that it will be increasingly difficult to maintain a Jewish majority even within the boundaries of the pre-1967 state. More or less desperate measures, such as the encouragement of Russian immigration in the 1990s, have already backfired quite severely. Many of the Russian Jews turned out not to be Jewish in any identifiable way. Without a permanent and secure peace, Israel is unlikely to get a significant number of other Jewish migrants. And at the same time it is increasingly difficult for Israel to handle its substantial minority of Arab citizens.
these - especially the badly mistreated Bedouin - feel left out, neglected and despised. An article I wrote about this, published in the MoS on 16th June 2007, is still available on the web. Google "Peter Hitchens" and "Israeli Arabs" and it should pop up.
All the more reason for a lasting and equitable solution, you might think.
In my view, most Western opinion about Israel is profoundly ignorant, and those who hold the standard opinions on the subject would invariably fail a 20-question quiz about the origins and nature of the dispute. I am keenly aware of this because I was once deeply ignorant about it myself, in the days when i used to support the 'Palestinian' cause. And I have spent a lot of time and done a lot of travelling and reading and arguing to try to put this right.
Oh, yes, and Happy Christmas.
dailymail.co.uk
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, how ignorant we are about you
17th December 2008
Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail
The eruption of the Middle East on to this blog last week impels me to write a few words about this subject before I take a Christmas break (yes, Mr "Demetriou", I am shortly taking some time off in my armchair, not going to Burma, Belarus, Moscow, Russia, Moscow, Idaho, Venezuela, Zambia or the Congo. My column will continue to be posted here each Sunday, but I shall not resume the mid-week postings till after the New Year has begun).
I noticed that my antagonists were determined to stick to their view that Israel is irredeemably wicked and the Arabs peace-loving and more or less faultless, despite my efforts to steer them into the more rational position that both sides are guilty of major wrongdoing and that there is nothing to be gained by atrocity propaganda.
One of them frequently represented my opinions as being more hard-line and pro-Israeli than they in fact are, presumably because he was more comfortable with an opponent who fitted his pre-ordained idea of what a Zionist should be. I do not attack him for misrepresentation, as I am sure he genuinely thinks that I hold the views he attributes to me. But it does make it rather laborious, trying to argue with him. I have to keep looking up my own words, wondering where exactly my opponents have ingeniously discovered the various sentiments they attribute to me, which I don't hold and haven't expressed. Often the change in meaning is quite slight, but also crucial. Or they simply miss my points, or slip past them. Well, I must now reluctantly slip past them. A moment comes in any debate when you have to recognise that your opponent doesn't want to find common ground and regards your olive branches as spears. Well, as it happens, I do want to find common ground, so I'll try to seek it elsewhere.
By the way, can I request that, in such arguments, people do not expect me to take seriously the views of the United Nations General Assembly ( a hopelessly biased anti-Israeli parliament of despots and torturers with all the moral authority of Jack the Ripper)? Nor do I need to be persuaded that Israel has done many wrong things, so telling me about them will not alter my position.
Also, can we please rule out any claims that the Israelis behave like the Nazis, that Gaza is a 'concentration camp' etc etc. This is emotionalised agitprop piffle, and only shows that those who use it have become so hot-eyed that they have lost all sense of proportion. The German industrialised massacre of European Jewry was a unique event, and it is a demonstration of ignorance about the past and about the present, plus a severe case of language inflation, to try and equate it with anything now taking place. The moment Israel starts getting its non-Jewish citizens to wear Yellow Crescent badges, rounds them up by force, takes them to extermination camps and gasses them to death by the million, then it will be true to say that Israel is behaving as the Nazis did. As long as it doesn't do that, it won't be.
Israel often behaves very badly, especially when maddened into unreason and emotional folly by terror attacks. So do most countries, including our own. But that doesn't make it a reincarnation of the Third Reich.
I know why this claim is made. The murder of European Jews, at the behest of the government of what had been viewed until then as one of the most civilised and advanced nations on earth, was and will always remain one of the chief reasons for Israel's existence. Personally I think that reason remains unanswerable and uncomfortable for all of us. The record of the free nations, asked to help Jewish refugees from Hitler from 1933 onwards, is a disgrace. I might add that at least one prominent Arab leader from the region, Haj Amin al Husseini, became an active ally of the Nazis and helped recruit Bosnian Muslims for a special Muslim division of the SS. So you can see why an Arab propagandist might want to confuse the issue.
Similarly, baseless accusations of anti-Semitism against legitimate critics of Israel should be left at the door. Those who criticise Israel proportionately and fairly (that is to say, not selectively choosing to attack Israel for crimes and misdeeds that they overlook elsewhere) are entitled to be heard without being defamed in this silly way. In return, anti-Israel voices who are genuinely opposed to Judophobia should be ready to observe and condemn that phobia where it is present ( as it is, with frightening persistence) in much Arab and Muslim anti-Israeli propaganda.
Many people prefer angry passion to cool reason in this debate.
Why? Because angry passion allows you to be weak on reason, and weaker still on facts. If you abandon total partisanship in this quarrel, you have to stop huffing and puffing about "evil terrorists" or "oppressive occupiers", you have to acknowledge that (for instance) Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount was not a sufficient reason for the Second Intifada (which by the way completely scuppered any hope of a settlement at Taba, on which so much weight is placed by some contributors). And you also have to acknowledge that Ariel Sharon is an undoubted war criminal.
Then you have to think about what we might actually do if we are serious about peace, rather than anxious for the total triumph of one side or the other.
The real question is, since a territorial compromise is obviously the civilised way out, why one has not happened. My view is that the Arab side does not actually want a compromise, and does not see any reason why it should seek one, given its huge success in persuading most of Western opinion that Israel is in the wrong. A substantial body of Israeli opinion, likewise, prefers secure borders without a treaty, to a peace that is not secure. The behaviour of Arab leaders and states strengthens this faction all the time. And as long as that continues, and as gullible people allow it to continue, the existing miserable conditions will continue.
Actually, Israel will lose this contest in the end, since the demographics of the area mean that it will be increasingly difficult to maintain a Jewish majority even within the boundaries of the pre-1967 state. More or less desperate measures, such as the encouragement of Russian immigration in the 1990s, have already backfired quite severely. Many of the Russian Jews turned out not to be Jewish in any identifiable way. Without a permanent and secure peace, Israel is unlikely to get a significant number of other Jewish migrants. And at the same time it is increasingly difficult for Israel to handle its substantial minority of Arab citizens.
these - especially the badly mistreated Bedouin - feel left out, neglected and despised. An article I wrote about this, published in the MoS on 16th June 2007, is still available on the web. Google "Peter Hitchens" and "Israeli Arabs" and it should pop up.
All the more reason for a lasting and equitable solution, you might think.
In my view, most Western opinion about Israel is profoundly ignorant, and those who hold the standard opinions on the subject would invariably fail a 20-question quiz about the origins and nature of the dispute. I am keenly aware of this because I was once deeply ignorant about it myself, in the days when i used to support the 'Palestinian' cause. And I have spent a lot of time and done a lot of travelling and reading and arguing to try to put this right.
Oh, yes, and Happy Christmas.
dailymail.co.uk