Isarel Was A Mistake

The March/April 2010 issue of Moment magazine features a final interview with Howard Zinn, the counter-historian whose People’s History of the United States has become a bible of the campus Left.

Then Zinn answers questions about Israel itself, which he calls, in retrospect, a mistake.

How did you react to Israel’s creation in 1948?
I didn’t know a lot about it, but I remember speaking at some gathering to celebrate its founding. I wasn’t a Zionist. I just vaguely knew that a Jewish state was being created and that seemed like a good thing. I had no idea that the Jews were coming into an area occupied by Palestinians.

Were you critical of Israel before 1967?
Before 1967 Israel did not loom large in my consciousness. I was aware that there was a war between Israel and the Arab states in 1956, but it really wasn’t until 1967 and the taking of the occupied territories that I realized this was a serious problem. I remember reading I.F. Stone, who was very concerned with Israel.

How do you discuss Israel and Palestine with Jews who might be resistant to claims that Israel bears some responsibility for the conflict?
As always in very complicated issues where emotions come to the fore quickly, I try to first acknowledge the other party’s feelings. In the case of Israel I try to say, yes, I understand your sympathy for a Jewish state, and I understand that you become angry when rockets fall [in Sderot] or when a suicide bomber takes needless life. But that has to be seen in proportion. I try to appeal to the experience of Jews, the experience of the Holocaust, by saying, if it’s never again, it’s not just never again for Jews, it’s never again for anybody. I also try to present facts that are hard to put aside. Rockets from Gaza killed three Israelis; Israelis retaliated with an enormous bombardment that killed 1,000 people. You can’t simply write that off or say, well, they’re morally equivalent or it was bad on both sides. Or the Lebanese send rockets into Israel, killing a number of people, and the Israelis invade Lebanon in 1982 and there are 14,000 civilian casualties. These are horrors inflicted by a Jewish state. As a Jew I feel ashamed when I read these things…I [also] try to appeal to what I think are the best legacies of the Jewish people—people like Albert Einstein and Martin Buber, who cannot be simply written off, because they’re Jewish heroes. And these are people who were critical of Israel and sympathetic to Palestinians.

Do you think that Zionism was a mistake?
I think the Jewish State was a mistake, yes. Obviously, it’s too late to go back. It was a mistake to drive the Indians off the American continent, but it’s too late to give it back. At the time, I thought creating Israel was a good thing, but in retrospect, it was probably the worst thing that the Jews could have done. What they did was join the nationalistic frenzy, they became privy to all of the evils that nationalism creates and became very much like the United States—very aggressive, violent and bigoted. When Jews were without a state they were internationalists and they contributed to whatever culture they were part of and produced great things. Jews were known as kindly, talented people. Now, I think, Israel is contributing to anti-Semitism. So I think it was a big mistake. more link

Israel Self Destruct Mode

I think Israel is in all sorts of trouble. They can’t seem to get their message working for them, they have become fractured. On the one hand you have the ones who continue to adhere to the “age old standard” of “Deny, Deny, Deny” and the ever popular “Poor Little Israel the Never ending victim. Take for instance the sad fact that Mirit Cohen, Spokesperson, Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN has now sunk to the level of writing whining and whinging letters to news papers that dare to publish anything contrary to the “Offical Israeli Government” line. More after this pathetic mess below:

Israel Seeks Fairness From ‘New York Times’

Dear Mr. Clark Hoyt, Public Editor of The New York Times,

I write in connection to a series of articles published in The New York Times in recent weeks regarding the Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, colloquially referred to as the Goldstone Report. I am deeply concerned by the subjective and often damning language that The New York Times uses towards Israel as it fails to accurately reflect the nature and scope of the report.

Over and over, The New York Times’ articles on this matter employ language that easily leads the reader to believe that the Goldstone Report found conclusive evidence that Israel committed war crimes. In Neil MacFarquhar’s “U.N. Council Endorses Gaza Report” (Oct. 16), the article states that the Goldstone Report “details evidence of war crimes committed by the Israeli Army…” In Sharon Otterman’s “Gaza Report Author Asks U.S. to Clarify Concerns” (Oct. 22), the Goldstone Report is described as having “found evidence of war crimes committed by Israel…” In yet another example –– MacFarquhar and Otterman’s “Palestinians, in Reversal, Press U.N. Gaza Report” (Oct. 14) –– the Goldstone Report is once again described as having “found evidence of Israeli war crimes…” These articles reflect only a sample of the many that discuss Israel vis-à-vis the Goldstone Report in conclusive and condemnatory terms.

I wish to reiterate Israel’s position that the Goldstone Report is deeply flawed and one-sided as it offers legitimacy to Hamas terrorism and its deliberate strategy to launch attacks, store weapons and use as shields the civilian population and infrastructure of Gaza. At the same time, the report’s mandate predetermined its findings that wrongly condemned Israel’s legitimate exercise of its right to self-defense. The tendency of The New York Times to gloss over such realities must be rectified and I sincerely hope that paper will use accurate and appropriate language to ensure that its coverage of the Goldstone Report and the wide Middle East is fair and honest. I remain at your disposal if you would like to further discuss this matter.

Yours truly,

Mirit Cohen, Spokesperson, Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN

And then you have some Israeli’s who are beginning to see the penny drop. They have been to the mountain top and seen the wind is now blowing against Israel. Israel’s “old ways” of getting what it wants are no longer working. Even the endless cries of Anti-Semitism levelled at anyone who dares criticize Israel’s actions don’t work because they have been ill used, wrongly used, and over used. (example in above letter from the Israeli UN official) However, whilst people like Mirit Cohen and the other thousands of “Zionist Apologists” are still focusing all their attention at using hasbara against newspaper articles, others Israeli’s are seeing the bigger picture, the more dangerous picture, the more sinister picture of Israel’s future:

Criticism is one thing, wanting Israel abolished is another

First there was the Goldstone report, with its accusations that Israel committed war crimes during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

That was followed by the J Street conference, celebrated by many as an opportunity to demonstrate their devotion to Israel by encouraging the U.S. to get tough with it, to force it out of the militant and pro-occupation mindset it has allegedly forged for itself.

Then there was the appearance in English of Tel Aviv University professor Shlomo Sand’s new book, “The Invention of the Jewish People,” with its claim that the concept of a Jewish people was a late invention, which the Zionists cynically manipulated to justify their taking land from the indigenous Arabs.

Finally, verging on the surreal, Donald Bostrom, the Swedish journalist who authored the article accusing Israel of harvesting organs from Palestinian victims of Cast Lead, was invited to a conference in the Negev.

The utterly predictable responses are not terribly interesting. On one side of the divide, there are those who assail Goldstone for unfairness, J Street for allowing its campus activists to drop the “pro-Israel” portion of its “pro-Israel, pro-peace” moniker, Sand for shoddy and self-hating scholarship and the Dimona Media Conference, which invited Bostrom, for utter naïveté.

What’s so dangerous is clear on the Amazon.com page for Sand’s book.

In the “Customers who bought this item also bought” section, one will find: “Israel and Palestine: Reflections, Revisions, Refutations” by Avi Shlaim, the well known post-Zionist; “Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides,” as if there’s actually something to debate; and “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide.”

But there is also suicidal folly in denying what we know: Were the U.N. to vote today on the creation of Israel, the motion would fail, for the world has decided that Israel was a mistake. No other country anywhere is subjected to debate as to whether it should exist.

And that is the fact that matters more than any other.

The ultimate question is the one that the biblical Joshua posed to the angel (Joshua 5:13): “Are you with us, or do you seek our destruction?” It is frustrating, and tragic — but right now, in the world in which we live, those are our only choices.
Read it in its entirety here

Yes, I think for some the penny has dropped. Because soon the struggle will no longer be about newspaper articles, but instead will be on the validity of allowing the continuation of a rogue apartheid state to exist at all.