Last month, an innocent, modestly dressed 8-year-old girl, Naama Margolese, living in Beit Shemesh, described being spat on and vilified by religious extremists — all men — who believed that she did not dress modestly enough while walking past them to the religious school she attends. And more and more, public buses in Israel are enforcing gender segregation imposed by ultra-Orthodox riders in and near their neighborhoods. Woe to the girl or woman who refuses to move to the back of the bus.

This is part of a larger battle being waged in Israel between the ultra-Orthodox and the rest of Israeli society over women’s place in society, over their very right to have a visible presence and to participate in the public sphere.

What is behind these deeply disturbing events? We are told that they arise from a religious concern about modesty, that women must be covered and sequestered so that men do not have improper sexual thoughts. It seems, then, that a religious tenet that begins with men’s sexual thoughts ends with men controlling women’s bodies.

This is not a problem unique to Judaism. But the Talmud, the basis for Jewish law, offers a perhaps surprising answer: It places the responsibility for controlling men’s licentious thoughts about women squarely on the men.

Put more plainly, the Talmud says: It’s your problem, sir; not hers.

The ultra-Orthodox men in Israel who are exerting control over women claim that they are honoring women. In effect they are saying: We do not treat women as sex objects as you in Western society do. Our women are about more than their bodies, and that is why their bodies must be fully covered.

In fact, though, their actions objectify and hyper-sexualize women. Think about it: By saying that all women must hide their bodies, they are saying that every woman is an object who can stir a man’s sexual thoughts. Thus, every woman who passes their field of vision is sized up on the basis of how much of her body is covered. She is not seen as a complete person, only as a potential inducement to sin.

Of course, once you judge a female human being only through a man’s sexualized imagination, you can turn even a modest 8-year-old girl into a seductress and a prostitute.

At heart, we are talking about a blame-the-victim mentality. It shifts the responsibility of managing a man’s sexual urges from himself to every woman he may or may not encounter. It is a cousin to the mentality behind the claim, “She was asking for it.”

So the responsibility is now on the women. To protect men from their sexual thoughts, women must remove their femininity from their public presence, ridding themselves of even the smallest evidence of their own sexuality.

All of this is done in the name of the Torah and Jewish law.

But it’s actually a complete perversion. The Talmud, the foundation of Jewish law, acknowledges that men can be sexually aroused by women and is indeed concerned with sexual thoughts and activity outside of marriage. But it does not tell women that men’s sexual urges are their responsibility. Rather, both the Talmud and the later codes of Jewish law make that demand of men.

It is forbidden for a man to gaze sexually at a woman, whether beautiful or ugly, married or unmarried, says the Talmud. Later Talmudic rabbis extended this ban even to “her smallest finger” and “her brightly colored clothing — even if they are drying on the wall.”

To make these the woman’s responsibility is to demand that Jewish women cover their hands, and that they not dry their clothes in public. No one has ever said this. At least not yet.

The Talmud tells the religious man, in effect: If you have a problem, you deal with it. It is the male gaze — the way men look at women — that needs to be desexualized, not women in public. The power to make sure men don’t see women as objects of sexual gratification lies within men’s — and only men’s — control.

Jewish tradition teaches men and women alike that they should be modest in their dress. But modesty is not defined by, or even primarily about, how much of one’s body is covered. It is about comportment and behavior. It is about recognizing that one need not be the center of attention. It is about embodying the prophet Micah’s call for modesty: learning “to walk humbly with your God.”

Eight-year-old Naama could teach her attackers a thing or two about modesty.

It is hard to believe that anyone who defends Israel’s legitimacy as a state would buy into former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s argument that Palestine is an “invented nation”.

The singular triumph of the Zionist movement is that it invented a state and a people – Israel and the Israelis – from scratch. The first Hebrew-speaking child in 1900 years, Ittamar Ben-Avi, was not born until 1882. His father, the brilliant linguist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, created a modern language for him to speak by improvising from the language of the Bible.

The founder of the Israeli state was Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), an assimilated Viennese writer who was convinced by the Dreyfus trial in France – and the horrendous right-wing anti-Semitism that resulted from it – that Jews had to get out of Europe.

In 1897, he wrote the book that would essentially inaugurate the Zionist movement. It was called Der Judenstaat (meaning “the Jews’ state” or “the Jewish State”), which was his proposal for moving the Jews out of Europe and into their own country.

He didn’t specify where the Jewish homeland should be. He was more concerned about quickly obtaining territory anywhere for Jews to seek refuge.

Later, he decided that Palestine made the most sense because that was where the Jewish people both began and exercised self-determination in ancient times, and where there already was a small minority of Jews. But he also spoke of finding a place in Africa or the Americas if Palestine was unavailable.

The reaction to Herzl’s idea was primarily that he was a bit crazy. Jews committed to assimilation insisted that Jews were not a nation, but a religious faith. Their nationalities were French, German, Polish, Iraqi or American – not some imaginary Jewish nationality that had not existed for 1900 years.

100 years ago: ‘just an idea’

As late as 1943, during the worst days of the Holocaust, the American Jewish Committee – which adhered to the assimilationist view – resigned from the body created by American Jews to respond to the Nazi catastrophe over its “demand for the eventual establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine”.

Seventy-plus years later, it is impossible to argue that the Israeli nation is not as authentic and worthy of recognition as any in the world (more authentic than some, in fact).

The Hebrew language is spoken by millions of Jews and Palestinians. The Israeli culture is unique: Bearing little resemblance to any other in the world. In fact, diaspora Jews have as little in common with Israelis as African-Americans have with Africans.

Israelis are not just Jews who happen to live in Palestine, even though the concept of Israel-ness started just over a hundred years ago as nothing but an idea. They are Israelis, entitled to self-determination, peace and security in their own land.

And the Palestinians are every bit as much a nation. If the ultimate definition of authentic nationhood is continuous residence in a land for thousands of years, the Palestinian claim to nationhood is ironclad. They never left Palestine (except for those who either emigrated or became refugees after the establishment of Israel).

Those who deny that Palestinians have a nation base their case on two arguments, both of which are logically incoherent. The first is that Palestinians never exercised self-determination in Palestine; they were always governed by others from ancient times to the present day.

The answer to this is: So what?

What makes a people real?

Most nations in the world lacked self-determination for long periods of their history. The Polish nation existed between 1790 and 1918 even though the state was erased from the map – divided between Russia and Austro-Hungary. It achieved independence in 1918 only to again lose it to the Nazis, and then the Soviets from 1939 until 1989. Would anyone today argue that the Polish nation was invented?

The idea of it is ridiculous, especially when offered by Israelis or Americans (or Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians… ) whose national existence would have been unimaginable a few centuries ago.

The second argument is that Palestinians never thought of themselves as Palestinians until Jews started moving into their territory, that Palestinian nationalism is a response to Zionism.

Again, so what?

When European Jews docked in Jaffa, Palestine in the early immigration waves of the late 19th century, there were Arabs waiting at the port. When the Jews purchased land, it was Arabs who had to move out.

And if those Arabs didn’t call themselves Palestinians until the Zionist movement began, neither did the Jews call themselves Israelis. Until 1948, they were just Jews. But each of the two peoples knew who they were and who the other was.

The bottom line is that today, the Palestinian nation is as authentic as the Israeli nation – and vice versa. Those who think either is going away are blinded by hatred.

To put it simply, the first part of the phrase self-determination is the word self. Both nations have the absolute right to define themselves as two nations which, hopefully, will evolve into two states. The alternative is national catastrophe not for one nation, but for two.
But why would Newt Gingrich care about that?

MJ Rosenberg is a Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network. The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network.

–Al Jazeera English, 24 December, 2011

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/2011122495928144388.html

Glick, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, has flipped out over some remarks (which we’ll get to later) made last week by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta, and Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman. And here is how she explains those remarks.

Her first explanation is that “the Obama administration is an ideological echo chamber in which only certain positions are permitted”.

“Restrained by ideological thought police that outlaw critical thought about the dominant forces in the Islamic world today, US officials have little choice but to place all the blame for everything that goes wrong on the one society they are free to criticise – Israel.”

That, in itself, borders on hilarious.

Blaming Israel

Anyone who pays even a modicum of attention to the Middle East knows that rather than “place all the blame for everything” on Israel, the Obama administration blames Israel for nothing while providing more foreign aid to Israel than to any other country, supporting it on every issue at the United Nations – often against the US’ own interests – and never, ever attaching any conditions to our aid or support (as we do with every other country in the world).

The only thing President Obama has asked of Israel during his entire term is for a three-month settlement freeze, to which Israel said no. (Prime Minister Netanyahu himself says Obama has earned a “badge of honour” for his uncritical support for Israel.)

It is Glick’s second explanation of the Obama administration’s attitude toward Israel that demonstrates the mindset of those whose ardor for maintaining the occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza trumps the security of Israel. Get ready.

“The second possible explanation for the administration’s treatment of Israel is that it is permeated by anti-Semitism. The outsized responsibility and culpability placed on Israel by the likes of Obama, Clinton, Panetta and Gutman is certainly of a piece with classical anti-Semitic behavior.”

They are anti-Semites! Who would have thought?

Not only are Obama, Panetta and Clinton anti-Semites, but they are, she writes, from the “classical” school (by which she means, I guess, that their antipathy toward Jews comes from reading The Merchant of Venice and Oliver Twist).

I’ll leave Gutman out for now because he is Jewish, which means that he cannot be a  ”classical” anti-Semite.

I am not going to address the absurdity of calling any of these people anti-Semites, a term that refers not (take note, Abe Foxman) to disagreeing with policies of the state of Israel, but to disliking Jews, discriminating against them, and, at worst, doing them bodily harm.

Disliking Israel or its policies does not make one anti-Semitic any more than disliking Saudi Arabia or its policies makes one anti-Muslim.

Yes, some people who dislike Israel and/or its policies are anti-Semitic, but, by the same token, so are many (in the Christian right, in particular) who profess love for Israel and defend every one of its policies.

Of course, none of the people Glick calls anti-Semitic are remotely anti-Israel, let alone anti-Semitic.

Under President Obama, strategic military cooperation between Israel and the US has reached an all-time high; even Obama-hater and neocon Elliot Abrams agrees.

‘Unshakeable bond’ with Israel

Secretary of Defence Panetta said last week that the US’ “unshakeable bond” with Israel is the first of the “three pillars” on which US policies in the Middle East stand and will remain so as long as he is Defence Secretary.

As for Secretary of State Hillary, her support for Israel and for progressive and Jewish causes during her years as First Lady, senator from New York, and now Secretary of State has made her one of the most popular political figures in the American Jewish community.

Anti-Semites!

Glick reminds me of the truth of philosopher August Bebel’s statement that “anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools”. If he were alive today and read Glick and other neocons like her, he’d surely say that “invoking anti-Semitism is the Zionism of fools”.

But enough about Glick.

What about those statements by administration figures that got the neocons so bent out of shape?

First, there was Panetta’s.

According to neocon blogger (and Caroline Glick sidekick) Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post, Panetta was being “antagonistic” to Israel when he said that Israel’s security would be enhanced if it would “reach out and mend fences with those who share an interest in regional stability – countries like Turkey and Egypt, as well as Jordan. This is an important time to be able to develop and restore those key relationships in this crucial area”.

As Rubin – an ardent and outspoken Mitt Romney supporter – explains, calling on Israel to “reach out” was typical of Panetta’s view that everything bad in the Middle East is “Israel’s fault” when, as she continuously argues, absolutely nothing is.

Then there was Hillary, who decried the effort in Israel to ban international funding for progressive Israeli NGOs (non-governmental organisations) that work in Israel on democracy building, civil rights, protecting minorities, environmental issues, and gay and women’s issues, to name a few.

Hillary pointed out that she goes around the world promoting acceptance of NGOs and their empowerment, and the Israeli right was trying to shut them down with the support of the Netanyahu government.

The right-wing Commentary website called Hillary’s remarks an “anti-Israel” broadside, although thankfully not classical anti-Semitism. Of course, that would require calling the Anti-Defamation League anti-Semitic, because it shares Hillary’s views on the NGO law.

I’ll devote the least space to Ambassador Gutman’s remark because, although it stirred the most outrage among the usual suspects, the hysteria is transparently ridiculous.

Gutman’s truth-telling

Gutman said that what he calls Muslim anti-Semitism “stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians”. This rather obvious statement caused a brouhaha because, as Jeff Goldberg tells us, anti-Semitism comes from the air and is in no way connected to anything Israel does.

Goldberg writes: “Jews do not cause anti-Semitism; blacks do not cause racism; gays do not cause homophobia. Hatred is a mental and spiritual illness, not a political position.”

Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t, as Israeli writer Yossi Gurvitz points out.

Muslim-baiting in this country stems from the misconception that Muslims, as a people, were responsible for 9/11. Anti-Japanese hysteria in the US reached fever pitch because of Pearl Harbour. And Muslim antipathy toward Jews is, as everyone knows, directly connected to the history of Palestine since the Zionist movement began.

We may not like it. We may wish it wasn’t so. But all it takes is talking to a Muslim (whether from Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia or anywhere else) to discover that yes, the displacement of the Palestinians is at the root of any antipathy that exists. (Much like Israeli antipathy toward Palestinians has something to do with terrorism.)

The good news is that Gutman’s truth-telling is not costing him his job - a sign, I guess, that the classical anti-Semites are really in charge!

It’s insane. But less insane than this crowd’s current big project: war with Iran.

Question: If Israel bombs Iran, how will Jeff Goldberg explain the world’s rage toward Israel? Will fury over the attack stem from the fact that it plunged the region into war and crashed the world economy or will it just be another result of some “mental or spiritual illness”?

You know the answer.

MJ Rosenberg is a Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at the Media Matters Action Network. This article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network.

Follow him on twitter: @MJayRosenberg

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/201112783921185850.html

Without naming the participants, among whom were a death camp survivor, Stephane Hessel, a former member of Mandela’s cabinet – Ronnie Kasrils, a world renowned author – Alice Walker, a distinguished English barrister – Michael Mansfield, QC, and a former American congresswoman – Cynthia McKinney, Goldstone calls them “critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known”. The question, of course, is not whether these outstanding personalities have strong opinions on the matter at issue, but whether they have credibility based on their reputation for bearing witness truthfully and effectively…”

–Ricahrd Falk, Al Jazeera English, 5 December, 2011

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/201112411152278168.html

After the 1967 War

Amidst the dominant melancholia that struck the Arab world following the 1967 defeat by Israel’s simultaneous invasions of three Arab countries and the occupation of their territories and the entirety of Palestine, the Palestinian revolutionary guerrillas’ challenge to Israel’s colonial power at the Battle of Karamah in March 1968 brought renewed hope to tens of millions of Arabs and renewed concern for the Arab neo-colonial dictatorships (Arafat’s much exaggerated role of his exploits during the battle notwithstanding). The Palestinian revolution was inspirational to many but it also coincided with revolutionary efforts not only around the Third World generally but also in Arab countries as well, which in turn, had inspired the Palestinians.

The best revolutionary anti-colonial news in the Arab world after the June 1967 defeat would come from the Arabian Peninsula. It was in November 1967 that the South Yemeni revolutionaries delivered an ignominious defeat to the British and liberated their country from the yoke of colonial Britain, which had ruled Aden since 1838. The South Yemenis would soon found the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, which would last for 22 years before its ultimate dissolution by North Yemen and its Saudi allies.

In neighbouring Oman, the on-going struggle to liberate the country entered a new stage of guerrilla warfare under the leadership of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG), which came together in September 1968 as a result of the unification of a number of Omani guerrilla groups fighting the British-supported Sultan Said bin Taymur. The PFLOAG had liberated territory in Dhofar from which it continued to launch its attacks to liberate the rest of the country. Indeed national liberation movements were active across the Gulf, and not least in Bahrain where an on-going national liberation struggle, a workers’ movement, students and women’s activism, all coalesced against British colonial rule and their local servants.

Repression

But the US-British-Saudi-Israeli alliance was determined to crush all the revolutionary groups that it could defeat and co-opt those that it could not crush. The effort started in the Gulf. Bahrain, which had been the hotbed of workers and anti-colonial unrest for decades, continued its struggle against British domination and the Bahraini ruling family allied with British colonialism. But as the British were forced out of South Yemen and the threat to their Omani client continued afoot, they transferred their military command to Bahrain, a step that was followed  by massive British capital investment in the country (as well as in Dubai). These developments expectedly brought more repression against the Bahraini people and their national liberation movement. Indeed, it was in this context that the Shah of Iran laid territorial claims to Bahrain and threatened to annex it to Iran as its “fourteenth province.” His territorial ambitions would only be tempered by his Western allies and the United Nations in 1970, after which the Shah would give up on his claims in return for massive Iranian capital investment in the emerging small Arab states of the Gulf, including the United Arab Emirates. The West thanked the Shah for his magnanimity and continued to reward him diplomatically and politically.

On the Jordanian front, King Hussein’s army would reverse the Palestinian guerrillas’ triumphs and defeat them in a massive onslaught in September 1970. The PLO guerrillas would finally be expelled from the country completely in July 1971. However, the PLO guerrillas continued to have a strong base in Lebanon from which they continued to operate against Israel and the Arab dictatorships.

In Sudan, the communist party continued to get stronger in the late 1960s, until the 1969 coup by Ja’far al-Numeiri, who initially could not fully marginalise the communists and waited until he strengthened his regime in 1971 to do so. An attempted coup against his authoritarian rule failed. In its wake, he rounded up thousands of communists and executed all the party’s major leaders, destroying the largest communist party in the Arab world. The Numeiri dictatorship would continue until 1985 and soon the democratic struggle against him would fail bringing in the Saudi-supported candidate Omar al-Bashir who seized power in 1989 continuing in Numeiri’s footsteps.

Only the PFLOAG kept advancing in the early seventies, which required a massive effort on the part of the US-British-Saudi-Israeli alliance to defeat it. The Shah of Iran and the Jordanian King were subcontracted for the effort. They dispatched military contingents to Oman, and, abetted by British advisors, were finally able to defeat the guerrillas and safeguard the throne for Sultan Qabus, the son of Sultan Said, who overthrew his father in a palace coup in 1970 organised by the British.  With the final defeat of the Omani revolutionaries in 1976, the PLO remained the only revolutionary group that survived the onslaught alongside a poor and weak South Yemen, which would finally be swallowed up by the Saudi-supported North Yemen in 1990.

Co-Optation

Saudi and other Gulf money poured into the coffers of the PLO to make sure that Palestinian revolutionism, which was partially crushed in Jordan, would never turn its guns against another Arab regime again. Indeed, Gulf money would transform the PLO into a liberation group that was funded by the most reactionary regimes in the Third World. Arafat’s road to Oslo began after the 1973 war and the massive funding he would begin to receive from all oil-rich Arab dictatorships, from Gaddafi to Saddam Hussein and all the Gulf monarchies. It was this domestication of the PLO that impelled Arab regimes to recognise it in 1974 as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and the main reason why they supported its recognition by the UN that same year. Indeed, Arafat’s reactionary alliance with Arab dictators was such that some PLO intelligence apparatuses began to share intelligence on Arab dissidents with Arab dictators, including the PLO intelligence apparatus led by Abu Za’im who surrendered Saudi dissident Nasir Sa’id in December 1979 to Saudi intelligence based on the request of the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon. Said was never heard from again and is believed to have been killed by the Saudi authorities. On the diplomatic and solidarity front, while the Polisario front declared the independence of the Western Sahara in 1976, Arafat refused to recognise the state out of respect for his alliance with King Hassan II.

The New Uprisings

As the Palestinian revolutionary groups were the only ones not fully domesticated, as far as the US and other imperial powers were concerned, though they had become sufficiently domesticated from the perspective of the Arab regimes, the new challenge would come from the Palestinian people themselves who revolted in 1987 against their Israeli occupiers. It was this second Palestinian major revolt in half a century, which many now see as inspirational to the present uprisings across the Arab world, which had to be crushed. The Israelis tried their best to crush it but failed. The PLO took it over quickly lest a new Palestinian leadership supplant the PLO’s own authority to represent the Palestinians. As the PLO took over the intifada, efforts were made by the Israelis and the Americans to finally co-opt the PLO and neutralise its potential as a spoiler of US and Israeli policy in the region. It was in this context that Oslo was signed and the PLO was fully transformed from a threat to Arab dictatorships, their US imperial sponsor, and the Israeli occupation, into an agent of all three, under the guise of the Palestinian Authority, which would help enforce the Israeli occupation in an unholy alliance with Gulf dictators and the United States. From then on, PLO/PA guns will only target the Palestinian people.

The US-British-Saudi-Israeli alliance in the region today is following the same strategies they followed in late 1960s and early 1970s and continuing the strategy they followed with the PLO in the early 1990s. They are crushing those uprisings they can crush and are co-opting those they cannot. The efforts to fully co-opt the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings have made great strides over the last few months, though they have not been successful in silencing or demobilising the populations. On the other side, Bahrain’s uprising was the first to be crushed with the efforts to crush the Yemenis continuing afoot without respite. It was in Libya and in Syria where the axis fully hijacked the revolts and took them over completely. While Syrians, like Libyans before them, continue their valiant uprising against their brutal regime demanding democracy and social justice, their quest is already doomed unless they are able to dislodge the US-British-Saudi-Qatari axis that has fully taken over their struggle – which is very unlikely.

The Palestinians

This brings us to the Palestinian scene. The Palestinian uprising or intifada of 1987 was the first unarmed massive civilian revolt to take place in decades. It was in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union and the first US invasion of the Gulf that the United States decided to co-opt the Palestinian uprising by giving political and financial benefits to a PLO class of bureaucrats who would proceed to sell out the Palestinian struggle. Thus Arafat neutralised the uprising at Oslo in 1993 and went on to wine and dine with Israel’s and America’s leaders while his people remained under occupation.

But If the Palestinians were a source of concern to the Arab regimes after 1968 lest they help other Arabs revolt against their dictatorships, today, it is the Palestinian Authority (PA) that is worried that the Arab uprisings may influence West Bank Palestinians to revolt against the PA, which continues its intensive security collaboration with the Israeli occupation and its US sponsor. Indeed, while the Israelis failed in the late 1970s in their effort to create a political body of Palestinian collaborators through their infamous Village Leagues, the PA became, not the new “Urban Leagues” that many Palestinians dubbed it, but a veritable National League of collaborators serving the Israeli occupation. The PA’s recent bid for statehood and recognition at the UN and at UNESCO is an attempt to resolve the current stasis of its non-existent “peace process” and the dogged negotiations with the Israelis before the Palestinians revolt against it, especially given the dwindling dividends to the beneficiaries of the Oslo arrangement.

The PA indeed has two routes before it in the face of the collapse of the so-called “peace process”: dissolve itself and cease to play the role of enforcer of the occupation; or continue to collaborate by entrenching itself further through recognition by international institutions to preserve its power and the benefits to its members. It has chosen the second option under the guise of supporting Palestinian national independence. How successful it is going to be in its entrenchment bid remains to be seen, though its success or failure will be calamitous for the Palestinian people who will not get any independence from Israeli settler colonialism as long as the PA is at the helm.

As I have argued before, the Israeli-PA-US disagreement is about the terms and territorial size of the disconnected Bantustans that the PA will be given and the nature and amount of repressive power and weapons its police force would have to use against the Palestinian people, while ascertaining that such weapons would never have a chance of being used against Israel.  If Israel shows some flexibility on those, then the disconnected Bantustans will be quickly recognised as a “sovereign Palestinian state” and not a single illegal Jewish colonial settler will have to give up the stolen lands of the Palestinians and return to Brooklyn, to name a common place of origin for many Jewish colonial settlers. It is this arrangement that the PA is trying to sell to Israel and the US. Without it, the PA is threatening that West Bankers may very well revolt against it, which would be bad for Israel and the US. So far, neither the US nor Israel is buying it.

The Struggle Continues

As for the larger Arab context, those who call what has unfolded in the last year in the Arab World as an Arab “awakening” are not only ignorant of the history of the last century, but also deploy Orientalist arguments in their depiction of Arabs as a quiescent people who put up with dictatorship for decades and are finally waking up from their torpor. Across the Arab world, Arabs have revolted against colonial and local tyranny every decade since World War I. It has been the European colonial powers and their American heir who have stood in their way every step of the way and allied themselves with local dictators and their families (and in many cases handpicking such dictators and putting them on the throne).

The US-European sponsorship of the on-going counterrevolutions across the Arab world today is a continuation of a time-honoured imperial tradition, but so is continued Arab resistance to imperialism and domestic tyranny. The uprisings that started in Tunisia in December 2010 continue afoot despite major setbacks to all of them. This is not to say that things have not changed and are not changing significantly, it is to say, however, that many of the changes are reversible and that the counterrevolution has already reversed a significant amount and is working hard to reverse more. Vigilance is mandatory on the part of those struggling for democratic change and social justice, especially in these times of upheaval and massive imperial mobilisation. Some of the battles may have been lost but the Arab peoples’ war against imperialism and for democracy and social justice continues across the Arab world.

Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. He is author of several books including: The Persistence of the Palestinian Question (Routledge, 2006) andDesiring Arabs (Chicago University Press, 2007), and Colonial Effects (Colomibia University Press, 2011).

–Al Jazeera English, 18 November, 2011

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111810259215940.html

His arguments are specious on many levels.  He is wrong about important things – none of the proposed scenarios require the dismantling of the major settlement blocks.  He is deceptive and incomplete about others: yes, land swaps have been proposed, but usually these involve giving Palestinians desert in return for their aquifers; yes, a Palestinian East Jerusalem was, briefly, put on the table, but only as the ring of settlements severing it from the West Bank nears completion.

Krauthammer remains silent on the most significant problem of the allegedly generous offers: they are based solely on Israeli desires instead of international law.  For example, he has nothing to say about the likely loss of citizenship by Palestinian citizens of Israel in the event of land swaps.  He continues to mime faux bewilderment – why are Palestinians so recalcitrant in refusing further diminution of their homeland?

On the other side, the Palestinians also have a story about a “generous offer,” although they do not get prime space in the Washington Post for their narrative.  If the Israelis really want to live in peace, why have they rejected the Saudi (later Arab) Peace Initiative out of hand?  Ever since 2002, first Saudi Arabia and then all 22 Arab states have offered Israel full normalization of relations, provided that they comply with the basic two state deal: the 1967 borders, a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, the right of return for refugees – provisions consistent with multiple UN Resolutions.

The credibility of the Arab Peace Initiative is bolstered by the donor-backed training of Palestinian security forces and by the fact that Hamas has announced its willingness to abide by the will of the majority in a peace referendum.

The Palestinian story of the “generous (Arab) offer” thus does far less violence to truth than the Israeli one.  Nevertheless, it fails to recognize the suspicion directed at the Arab Peace Initiative – was it not constructed primarily as a public relations effort in the wake of 9/11?  If it was meant seriously why did no one come to the Knesset as Anwar Sadat did, to talk directly to Israelis about the offer? Was the right of return for refugees meant to be a poison pill?  And how would the electorate for a peace referendum be defined – would refugees have a voice in determining their own fate?

Neither version of the “generous offer” entirely convinces: the Israeli one because it so obviously flies in the face of growing settlements and growing settler violence; the Palestinian one because, given Islamophobia, Arab narratives are simply dismissed rather than tested.

But perhaps there is also another force at work  – a dim and tentative perception that neither side currently acknowledges forthrightly.  Perhaps we all sense that  since the two state solution has been an ever-receding chimera for 44 years, neither side really wants it.

Zionists have never been circumspect about their desire to “judaize” the land. After all, with Palestinians in place, Israel cannot have all it desires: to be a Jewish state, to be a democracy, and to control all the land.  It can have any two of those three objectives together, but all three at once are impossible to reconcile.

Palestinians have never found it just that their historic homeland should be subdivided to rectify the murderous European hatred of Jews. Update the numbers a bit, and Lord Balfour’s revelatory statement is as good today as it was in 1917: “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is … of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. ” Why should Palestinians acquiesce to that?

Serious thinkers have already turned their attention to the challenges implicit in the death of the two state solution – for example, Salman Abu Sitta’s ground-breaking work showing how many Palestinian refugees come from Israel’s least settled areas and could return there with much less disruption than is generally supposed. What kind of legal formulas might safeguard the cultural and ethnic heritage of Christians, Muslims and Jews in a single state? Are there examples of successful bi-national states?  How might a bi-national state in Israel/Palestine become more like Canada or Belgium and less like Lebanon?

In trying to develop useful mental models of a one state solution, it is crucial to remember this:  National identity is socially constructed. It develops at the confluence of starting assumptions and present circumstances.  It changes over time. And, paradoxically, each new iteration of evolving national identity claims for itself the mantle of being ancient, immutable, and non-negotiable.  We do not need to accept this sleight of hand. 

Israelis and Palestinians each have romantic myths about their ancient identities.  Both also are faced with changing circumstances:  for Palestinians, the critical erosion of their territory and the abandonment of their refugees; for Israelis, their growing isolation, the decline of the Holocaust generation, the western hunger for oil, the Arab spring. From this confluence, the unthinkable needs to be thought about.

Let me be clear. I am not suggesting that building new, heavily contested national projects is simply a matter of mental gymnastics, without material determinants. At the same time, however, we must begin from what is true: that national identities are socially constructed and therefore mutable. The identities of the past need not constrain the future.  Now that is a generous offer.

Eve Spangler is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston College and a founding member of American Jews for a Just Peace.

–CounterPunch, 11 October, 2011

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/11/the-story-of-the-generous-offer/

In this case, the separate announcements made by Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, asserted that Hamas would release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured by Hamas in 2006, whileIsraelwould release 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom have been in jail for decades.

As Tony Karon wrote in Time magazine’s blog: “Win-win outcomes are all too rare in theMiddle East, but the agreement that will see Hamas free captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for a reported 1,000 Palestinian prisoners will allow each of its stakeholders to claim victory.”

That arrangement has been bandied about for years. The fact that it now appears imminent (though its success cannot be claimed until all the prisoners walk out of jail) reflects two seemingly contradictory realities:Israel, the occupying power, continues to control the lives of the occupied Palestinian population, and new regional and international conditions are challengingIsraelin dramatic ways.

Asymmetry of power

The controlIsraelwields over the occupied Palestinian population is evident in the disparity of the prisoner exchange: Palestinians, in this case Hamas, control the life of exactly one Israeli, a captured soldier (and, in fact, Hamas violated international law by denying Shalit access to the Red Cross).

On the other side, even if we put aside Israeli control of land, borders, economy, food, education, and virtually every facet of life in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, Israel directly maintains power over the lives of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, some convicted in military courts (illegal under the Geneva Conventions), and others, including elected members of the Palestinian parliament, imprisoned under administrative detention orders (similarly illegal).

Almost from the moment Shalit was captured, Palestinians attempted to arrange a prisoner swap - his freedom in exchange for the freedom of a thousand or more Palestinian prisoners. In this high-stakes poker game, with so many human lives at stake, Shalit was and remains the Palestinians’ only chip. In fact, holding Shalit for a future prisoner exchange was the only reason for Hamas to detain him at all.

Israelgained far more in holding thousands of prisoners (about 6,000 at the moment, up to 11,000 at a time in recent years). As the occupying power it gains complete control over individuals it believes - or claims to believe - represent a security threat. It demoralises the prisoners’ families, friends, neighbours and political allies.

It undermines the family unity that provides the crucial basis for Palestinians’ sumud, or steadfastness, in resisting occupation. And it weakens the already minimal power of Palestinian leaders in the occupied territories, as their inability to win the freedom of the prisoners dilutes their tenuous claim to authority.

Again and again,Israelconsidered – and ultimately rejected – similar deals to release large numbers of Palestinian prisoners in return for the freeing of Shalit.

What changed?

As the Arab Spring, new governments in the region, changing regional power relations, the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN, and political shifts insideIsraelall came together, both sides of the prisoner deal faced new pressures.

Hamas, which governs in the Gaza Strip, suddenly had to answer a rare surge of support (whether long-term or not remains unclear) for its political rival, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) in theWest Bank. When the PA’s leader Mahmoud Abbas, speaking in the name of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, brought the demand for Palestinian statehood and UN membership to the General Assembly last month, he won a sudden increase of popular acclaim.

Although Hamas had long sought exactly this kind of prisoner swap, part of the recent effort was likely influenced by its longstanding political rivalry with the PA. Particularly because Hamas’ selection of prisoners to be released was carefully drawn to include not only Hamas members but activists from all political factions, and from all parts of the occupied territory, the West Bank,Gaza, andEast Jerusalem, broad popular excitement was certain.

Rumours swirled that Marwan Barghouti, perhaps the best-known Palestinian prisoner and a noted leader of Fatah’s younger generation, would be included, as well as perhaps Ahmed Sadat, a respected leader of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who has been imprisoned for almost a decade. But then superseding rumours denied that either Sadat or Barghouti would be included. So, questions about the list remain - including whether elected Palestinian legislators would finally be freed.

Regional shifts

Other changes had to do with the region. Despite the recently escalating tensions between the population and the military council which holds overall power inEgypt, the post-Tahrir Square Egyptian government is playing a significantly new role in the region.

Particularly, it has placed a high priority on helping to negotiate a Palestinian unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah, and, reportedly, was involved in negotiating the current prisoner deal.Turkey, similarly, has been playing a far more intensive regional role in support of Palestinian rights. And withIsraelfacing a region without being able to count on its longstanding (however uneasy) allies inCairoandAnkara, Netanyahu was getting worried.

The Israeli leader’s political fears were undoubtedly also heightened by his dwindling popularity at home.Israel’s growing isolation in the region is now matched by a rising opposition to Netanyahu’s leadership, demonstrated most vividly in the Tel Aviv protests throughout the summer.

Although they began with protests over rising housing costs (and never did make the critical link with Israeli occupation), the demonstrations rapidly morphed into a broad political attack on Netanyahu, punctuated with the previously unimaginable equation of Israel’s elected prime minister with despised Arab dictators. “Mubarak … Assad … Bibi Netanyahu” emerged as the iconic chant of the protesters.

So, a sudden shift toward acceptance of the prisoner deal, despite his previous claims that such an arrangement would somehow putIsraelat risk, became a political necessity for Netanyahu. The broad public demand for the government to “do something” to win the release of Shalit had resonated across the political spectrum inIsrael, and achieving that will certainly raise Netanyahu’s beleaguered electoral fortunes.

The question now remains whether the deal will go through, whether 1,027 Palestinian families and one Israeli family, plus all the millions on both sides waiting, will finally see their loved ones walk free.

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her books include Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.    

–Phyllis Bennis, Al Jazeera English, 18 October, 2011

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/10/2011101710357404529.html

JUAN GONZALEZ: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to officially submit a statehood request to the United Nations Security Council later today. The United States has vowed to veto the move.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I am convinced that there is no shortcut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations. If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians, not us, who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them, on borders and on security, on refugees and Jerusalem.

JUAN GONZALEZ: A new poll shows the Obama administration’s stance on Palestinian recognition at the United Nations is more extreme than that of a strong majority of Israeli citizens. A joint Israeli-Palestinian poll shows 69 percent of Israelis think their government should accept U.N. recognition of an independent Palestinian state. The survey also found 83 percent of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories supported the bid. Many Palestinians have expressed concern about the U.S. decision but remain committed to their goal.

KIMUR, Ramallah Resident: [translated] We have brought a lot to the table, and we have conceded a lot. We have given up on 78 percent of the land of historical Palestine for the state of Israel. What else do they want? They want us to leave. We will not leave. We will stay. And we will not be afraid of America, Israel or any other threats, whether they are to cut off donations or American aid. We will persist to remain on this land.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Israeli Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Danny Danon praised President Obama’s speech at the United Nations and warned Israel will have a strong reaction to the Palestinian bid for U.N. membership.

DANNY DANON: There is no hope in the near future. This is the reality for the near future. Until we will not see a viable partner among the Palestinians, there will be no real, genuine peace. It is not popular to say it. We all want change, peace, tomorrow morning. It’s not going to happen tomorrow morning. We will have to wait until we will see a real partner among the Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has said President Mahmoud Abbas will not be deterred and hopes the U.S. will not continue to be opposed to his country’s bid for statehood.

SAEB EREKAT: I would hope that the U.S. would revisit its position, because if we want to seek a Middle East that’s democratic, free, void of extremists and so on, we cannot maintain the status quo. The U.S. cannot continue treating Israel as a country above the laws of man. And that’s the truth.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more on the proposal for Palestinian statehood set to go before the U.N. Security Council, we’re joined by two guests. Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of news and analysis website, The Electronic Intifada, and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. He’s in Cleveland. We’re also joined by Mouin Rabbani in Washington, D.C., visiting scholar at the Institute for Palestine Studies. He is also co-editor of Jadaliyya Ezine. Previously he worked as Palestine director of the Palestinian American Research Center.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s go first to Washington, D.C., to Mouin Rabbani. What is your take on what is happening today at the United Nations, Mahmoud Abbas presenting his statehood bid?

MOUIN RABBANI: Yeah, well, the Palestinian leadership today is going to deposit an application for full membership in the United Nations at the Security Council. And it seems that the Security Council, at the behest of Washington, will sit on it, while Washington seeks to garner enough votes in opposition to this proposal, so it doesn’t have to exercise a veto. And it seems that the Palestinian leadership is not going to increase the pressure by also going to the General Assembly.

I have to say I think the main issue here is not the bid for recognition or statehood. I think the key issue here is the extent to which this initiative creates space and possibility for the internationalization of the question of Palestine in all its dimensions. In other words, a beginning of an irrevocable turn away from the Oslo process, which time and again has proven that it serves as nothing more than a political cover for the consolidation of Israeli control and the deepening colonization of the Occupied Territories.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Ali Abunimah, you have been a vocal opponent or critic of this move by the Palestinians. Why?

ALI ABUNIMAH: Good morning, Juan. Good morning, Amy and Mouin.

Well, if we take what the PA, the Palestinian Authority, leadership say at face value, they say that their goal here was to try to break the status quo and to sort of return to negotiations, but on much better and more reasonable terms. That’s what they said. And if we evaluate it by those criteria, it’s been a complete disaster, because, in fact, what we saw from President Obama was a speech that was more pro-Israel than anything we have ever seen from him, which is saying something. And that was not a speech by a president of the United States addressing a world body with any sincerity about bringing an end to the conflict. That was a candidate running in an election where he is being very falsely and unfairly accused of not being pro-Israel enough. And that showed in the speech. So, the Palestinian Authority, rather than having ended the Oslo status quo, will go back home having achieved nothing and having simply demonstrated that it remains a captive of a situation where Palestinians are expected to carry out security, so-called security, for the Israeli occupation, are totally dependent on European Union and United States financing, and therefore financial blackmail, and have closed off all avenues for political action. And so, I see, really, this as a total failure.

The source of the opposition really came from a lot of Palestinians across the political spectrum who expressed fears that going to the United Nations to call for a state on a fraction of historic Palestine, without recognition of any other Palestinian rights, such as the rights of Palestinian refugees or the rights of Palestinian citizens in Israel, rather than advancing the cause of Palestine, could actually limit it and circumscribe it in the future because of unintended consequences. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to be a factor, after all, because this bid has gone absolutely nowhere.

AMY GOODMAN: Mouin Rabbani, your response?

MOUIN RABBANI: Well, you know, Ali is making the point that, for the Palestinian leadership, they’ve approached this entire issue as a tactical maneuver rather than a strategic initiative. And in that, he’s completely correct.

The point, rather, is, does this—does this initiative—or to the extent that it’s initiative, rather—create possibilities for a new dynamic for Palestinians to deal with the issues of occupation and self-determination and so on? And what I think you’ve seen in Palestinian society is a very broad desire to begin to move decisively away from the Oslo framework, which has been really, you know, bilateral negotiations, forever, about nothing, under unilateral American custodianship, with the U.S.—you know, Obama’s speech yesterday left even the Israelis in stunned disbelief about the extent of its pro-Israeli partisanship. So, no disagreement there. Rather, the issue is, you now have this initiative. This initiative creates possibilities, if the leadership is put under sufficient pressure by Palestinian society, to take it well beyond what the leadership intended. I think what Ali has been saying about the leadership is, more or less, essentially correct. But there—you know, the dynamic that’s created is by no means limited to what the leadership intends to do with it. And I think the key issue here is that this provides an opportunity to move away from Oslo and back towards the internationalization of the question of Palestine, where Palestinian—the issues of Palestinian self-determination are addressed on the basis of Palestinian rights as codified in a very large corpus of U.N. resolutions, rather than, you know, being codified in the pro-Israeli positions of the American administration and a Congress that has decisively gone off the deep end.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Ali Abunimah, what about this issue of bringing back the question of the—through the international community, of dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian question? I was struck a couple of days ago by an interview with Brzezinski, a former key official in the Carter administration, who said that he saw this as a possible turning point in terms of the loss of influence of the United States in the Middle East and the rise, basically, of the European powers to be—to take a lead in attempting to resolve the question.

ALI ABUNIMAH: I don’t think that’s right. On the contrary, the role the European Union has been playing has been absolutely abject in terms of trying to be sort of a deal maker to get Israel’s demands written into Quartet statements, the Quartet being the self-appointed ad hoc group of international officials that has unilaterally placed the—replaced the United Nations on the question of Palestine. And the European Union provides the largest subsidies to Israeli occupation under the guise of aid to the Palestinian Authorities. So I don’t see the Europeans playing that role.

But on the question of internationalization and changing the dynamic, I agree with Mouin that that’s what needs to happen. But, you know, listen to your—to the introduction to this debate, and we had someone called Saeb Erekat being quoted as the chief negotiator. I and the rest of the Palestinians thought that Saeb Erekat had resigned after the scandals of the Palestine Papers were revealed. And yet, there he still is, calling himself chief negotiator. I think that that demonstrates the lack of accountability of this Palestinian leadership, the lack of connection to the Palestinian people, the lack of responsiveness to the Palestinian people, particularly the Palestinian diaspora and Palestinian citizens of Israel, who have essentially been written out of the question of Palestine. And part of the disaster of the Oslo process has been to reduce and circumscribe the Palestinian cause to residents of the West Bank and Gaza—and now perhaps only residents of the West Bank, as even Gaza is consigned to the garbage can.

And what we really need to do, I think, is rebuild a Palestinian consensus and body politic based on the rights and demands of every segment of the Palestinian people, inside and outside the country, based on fundamental rights, not a demand for limited statehood, which ignores the rights of the majority of Palestinians. Can this bid jump-start that process? I don’t know. But I think there are other movements going on that have been much more dynamic and much more inclusive, such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which was dismissed as very marginal just a couple of years ago but is now sufficiently frightening and threatening to Israel, that they’re enlisting the United States government to fight it, which, of course, the Obama administration has enthusiastically volunteered to do by pledging to help Israel fight so-called delegitimization. What they call delegitimization, we call a struggle for universal rights and self-determination of Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Mouin Rabbani—

ALI ABUNIMAH: So I think there are other avenues that need to be explored. And this U.N. bid, I think, has, if anything, demonstrated the dead end of a diplomatic process within a U.N. system that is so hopelessly broken and rigged on behalf of the powerful.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Mouin Rabbani, your response, but also what you would have liked to have seen President Obama say?

MOUIN RABBANI: Well, you know, Ali makes some very relevant criticisms of the Palestinian leadership, and I think one could add many more to what he’s said. And, of course, what is an essential requirement here is a reconstruction of the Palestinian national movement on the basis of an inclusive and purposeful strategy, and all the rest of it. At the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that there is this initiative at the United Nations and that Palestinians now have an opportunity to take this initiative well beyond the objectives for which it was launched by the leadership and to seek to intelligently use this initiative to promote the re-internationalization of the question of Palestine by addressing the issues of self-determination and the end of occupation on the basis of Palestinian rights as codified in international law and U.N. resolutions. I don’t think that that issue should have to wait until we get the leadership that we want or that we deserve, and I don’t think that these two elements are necessarily contradictory.

Now, in terms of Obama’s speech, I mean, you know, it’s—again, Israelis themselves reacted with stunned disbelief that an American president would give a speech at the U.N. that left even Avigdor Lieberman delighted and saying, you know, Bibi Netanyahu is now going to have to rewrite his own speech, lest he come across as less Israeli than the American president.

So, again, you know, getting back to the larger question, one of the key values of going to the United Nations and promoting the internationalization of the question of Palestine is precisely to get away from this hopelessly compromised American role in—not in resolving this conflict, but which has in fact come down to a policy of transforming Israeli impunity and promoting Israeli impunity as a central plank of American Middle East policy and basically acting in support of perpetual Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. So there can be no solution within the current framework. There can be no solution, unless the American role is replaced by a genuinely international one. And I think that going to the United Nations represents an essential first step in that direction, complemented, of course, by many other strategies and tactics, some of which Ali has mentioned. But at the end of the day, one either has Oslo or one has internationalization, and I don’t think that there’s a third option between the two.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there, Mouin Rabbani, with the Institute for Palestine Studies, and Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

–Democracy Now!, 23 September, 2011

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/23/debate_does_un_statehood_bid_advance

–Nicole Santa Cruz and Mike Anton, The LA Times, 23 September, 2011

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/09/irvine-11-verdict-1.html

First, from Democracy Now!:

Palestinians Rally for Statehood as U.S., Israel Press Opposition