Ideology critique is often missing in accounts of conflict
by Will, 24 November 2007
Right-wingers of all nations (yes - I know what it means - what? You don’t?) –the world over — without exception — scumbags.
“About 150 right-wing activists, including academics and Israel Defense Forces reserves officers, have signed a manifesto to be published Friday [yesterday] calling on security forces to refuse evacuating West Bank settlers on the grounds that it is a “crime against humanity.”
The grave that is present society — we shall all dance upon, come the moment. Tile it — tile it well — for it will be overburdened with the soles of many boots. The rightist political standpoint — a neurotic attachment to metaphysics — kill it — make it ex-metaphysics — it shall be so.
Saturday 24 November 2007 at 23:34
Since when has refusing to ethnically cleanse Jews been right-wing ideology?
Sunday 25 November 2007 at 3:38
Ben:
You might have objected to Will’s proposition that all right-wingers are, without exception, scumbags - only because you would obviously have an easier time summoning objective evidence against the case than Will would have summoning evidence in favour of it.
But in that one sentence, you display one of the silliest and most noxious assertions I have ever read on the subject of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Do you really think these activists aren’t right wing, or shouldn’t be called right wing, or would object to having Haaretz refer to them as rightists?
And more to the point, do you really propose that all those Israelis (the majority?) who want shut of the illegal settlements are guilty of advocating ethnic cleansing?
Dang, Ben. Give your head a shake.
Sunday 25 November 2007 at 4:03
“Ethnic cleansing” is a term much beloved of the Left. I’m not at all surprised that these “right-wing activists” decided to use it in their manifesto. It’s a human rights term. They have as much right to use it as any Left activist has who calls the flight of Arabs in the 1948 war a programme of “ethnic cleansing”.
Two years ago, when I debated the issue of the withdrawal from Gaza with a settler, he also referred to it as “ethnic cleansing”. No, I said, this is not ethnic cleansing. It is relocation. All they are asked to do is to move a few kms away. They are not being chased into a hostile, alien environment, to live among strangers who speak a different language in a diffferent culture.
I’d expect Will to apply to those “Left wing activists” who rally around ROR as though it were a sacred, inalianable right, the same epithet he foisted upon the Israelis who might feel the same about what they consider their birthright.
Sunday 25 November 2007 at 6:22
“They have as much right to use it as any Left activist has who calls the flight of Arabs in the 1948 war a programme of “ethnic cleansing”.”
Insofar as everyone has the right to distort historical truth and abuse language in the most foul way, and to spit on the graves of those who have paid with their suffering and their lives in acts that are properly termed ethnic cleansing, yes.
As for Will foistng epithets on pseudo-left Israel haters, you should see him in action sometime. He curdles milk with his epithet foisting I tell you.
Sunday 25 November 2007 at 10:42
Comment threads can often act as a Petri Dish dontyathink?
Don’t Germans sometimes have a funny-shaped lavvy as well? One of those ones that allow you to examine your jobbie close-up before pulling the chain?
Sunday 25 November 2007 at 11:02
Three simple things:
1. 150 is not a lot and a good job too;
2. People can call things what they like, we can call them what we like;
3. Settlers should get out.
People considering things their birthright have no particular rights on the basis of their considering.
Sunday 25 November 2007 at 12:40
Paulie: they have them in Holland too…
Sunday 25 November 2007 at 15:32
“Insofar as everyone has the right to distort historical truth and abuse language in the most foul way, and to spit on the graves of those who have paid with their suffering and their lives in acts that are properly termed ethnic cleansing, yes.”
Isn’t that what I said? In a perfect world, the right of Distorters of one would cancel out the right of their diametrically opposed Distorters of Truth. And we would be none the worse for it. A mere exercise in futile hyperbole. But we do not live in a perfect world. I would say that the will of Israeli society to correct these distortions is great while the will of Palestinian society to deal with their mythology is nil (except maybe for Sari Nusseiba).
And when I say “correct these distortions” I mean it in a way that will not create the impression that the settlers are Israel’s enemies, deserving of such insults as “scumbags” or whatever. The Gaza experience shows that it can be done. We don’t see former Gazan settlers being stranded in tents, or treated like scum by the rest of Israelis.
Do you think Israelis should treat the settlers like scum?
Sunday 25 November 2007 at 17:55
They won’t.
As is witnessed by the fact that all the Jewish refugees from 1948 are no longer refugees.
Sunday 25 November 2007 at 22:56
“Isn’t that what I said?”
Not as explicitly as I thought necessary is all.
“The Gaza experience shows that it can be done.”
Aye, Noga. It also shows what I suspect you saw, before the Gaza withdrawal, which is that it would not be sufficient to bring peace to Gaza or to Israeli towns within rocket-firing distance of Gaza, because neither land nor peace will be sufficient to satiate the appetites of certain forces in Palestinian society, which can be reasonably described, in terms from Will’s lexicon, as right-wing scumbags.
Monday 26 November 2007 at 2:47
“..which can be reasonably described, in terms from Will’s lexicon, as right-wing scumbags.”
I’m afraid this harks back to some conversation we had before about the difference between frauds and fanatics. A fraud can be called a scumbag. Scumbags are prosecutable. They can be outed, with relatively simple means of law and order. Fanatics? Not. The scumbagginess simply does not seem to apply.
Some settlers can be fanatic. There was, in the eighties, a Jewish underground which was planning to perpetrate terrorist acts. There was Ygal Amir. So, I’m not ruling out some real scary possibilities. But the vast majority of settlers are law abiding. They will bend to the collective will of Israelis.
Monday 26 November 2007 at 3:22
Those who have resort to the language of human rights - even if they do so in very bad faith, as I think is the case here - are opening themselves up to being argued with and criticised on that basis.
This is not the case with those who base their arguments on instructions received from imaginary beings/special books etc
Monday 26 November 2007 at 13:45
Eamonn: yes, that’s a finer and more useful distinction than the scumbag/fanatic dichotomy. Thanks.
Tuesday 27 November 2007 at 2:08
Scumbags are scumbags.
What’s the confusion and where does it lie?
Tuesday 27 November 2007 at 7:23
Ethnic cleansing of Jews is what is being debated here, and the attempts to justify it on moral or legal grounds won’t wash.
Up to 1948 there was a significant and important Jewish presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, going back to times of antiquity. East Jerusalem itself had a Jewish plurality, from even before the founding of the Zionist movement. This presence was brought to an end by a series of massacres and deportations, starting in 1921, many of which were planned and organized by British officials. At the end, not one Jew remained in any portion of the Palestine mandate territories that came under Arab rule.
This situation persisted, but only for 19 years. After 1967, Jewish rights were restored, and Jews were able to reside again in that part of their historical homeland. Natural justice and law requires that they remain in their homes and be allowed to live in peace.
Tuesday 27 November 2007 at 12:44
nobody has an absolute right to live on a particular piece of real estate.
Tuesday 27 November 2007 at 12:46
“Ethnic cleansing of Jews is what is being debated here, and the attempts to justify it on moral or legal grounds won’t wash.”
How about pragmatic grounds, then? Sometimes, you know, the situation calls for weighing the interests of an entire country against the emotional/historical attachments of that country. The interests are a future, a normalcy of life, of safety, an economic security. There is no doubt that Jews have a right to live at the West Bank, but it is not a feasible right. Just as ROR is not a feasible right. There won’t be a regional solution to the Palestinian problem. It will have to be settled within the narrow Israel/Palestine paradigm. There is no other option available, none that will work out, anyway. It’s reality. Israelis can and do compromise, even when it’s painful.
I don’t think, as far as most Israelis are concerned, that it’s about the legal or moral rightness or wrongness of either the settlement project or its removal. I believe the realization is that the pragmatic solution IS the moral solution. Think of the alternatives, and what they entail.
Wednesday 28 November 2007 at 6:17
Noga: Think of how your pragmatism looks objectively.
If the Arabs won’t agree that any Jews can live safely and in peace in the West Bank, it means they want an apartheid state and that the so-called peace process is a fraud and a sham. It means that a future, a normalcy of life, safety, none of these things are really on offer to Israelis.
The liquidation of the Jewish settlements will become a symbol of triumphalism and encourage future irridentism. Driving the Jews away is what the Arabs have been trying to achieve for generations, and they shouldn’t be allowed to do it, for it will only tempt them to continue.