Crossposted from my blog.
Jostein Gaarder, the author of the global literary phenomenon Sophie’s World (printed in 26m copies in 53 languages), launches a scorching attack on Israel in Aftenposten, Norway’s paper of record. Gaarder, a historian of ideas, describes himself as a friend of the Jewish people but doubts whether Israel truly is the same. Suffice it to say that this will not appear in the New York Times anytime soon.
The form of Gaarder’s condemnation is inspired by Amos, the first Judaic prophet whose message is preserved in scroll (ca. 750 B.C.). Quoting Wikipedia: “The central idea of the book of Amos according to most scholars is that Yahweh puts his people on the same level as the nations that surround it — Yahweh expects the same morality of them all.”
There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel. We could not recognize the South African apartheid regime, nor did we recognize the Afghan Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the Serbs’ ethnic cleansing. We must now get used to the idea: The state of Israel in its current form is history.
We do not believe in the notion of God’s chosen people. We laugh at this people’s fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God’s chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.
Limits to tolerance
There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance. We do not believe in divine promises as justification for occupation and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. We laugh uneasily at those who still believe that the God of flora, fauna, and galaxies has selected one people in particular as his favorite and given it funny stone tablets, burning bushes, and a license to kill.
We call child murderers ‘child murderers’ and will never accept that such have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages. We say but this: Shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on every terrorist strike against civilians, be it carried out by Hamas, Hizballah, or the state of Israel!
Unscrupulous art of war
We acknowledge and pay heed to Europe’s deep responsibility for the plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the pogroms, and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally necessary for Jews to get their own home. However, the state of Israel, with its unscrupulous art of war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically flouted International Law, international conventions, and countless UN resolutions, and it can no longer expect protection from same. It has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The time of trouble shall soon be over. The state of Israel has seen its Soweto.
We are now at the watershed. There is no turning back. The state of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down its arms.
Without defense, without skin
May spirit and word sweep away the apartheid walls of Israel. The state of Israel does not exist. It is now without defense, without skin. May the world therefore have mercy on the civilian population. For it is not civilian individuals at whom our doomsaying is directed.
We wish the people of Israel well, nothing but well, but we reserve the right not to eat Jaffa oranges as long as they taste foul and are poisonous. It was endurable to live some years without the blue grapes of apartheid.
They celebrate their triumphs
We do not believe that Israel mourns forty killed Lebanese children more than it for over three thousand years has lamented forty years in the desert. We note that many Israelis celebrate such triumphs like they once cheered the scourges of the Lord as “fitting punishment” for the people of Egypt. (In that tale, the Lord, God of Israel, appears as an insatiable sadist.) We query whether most Israelis think that one Israeli life is worth more than forty Palestinian or Lebanese lives.
For we have seen pictures of little Israeli girls writing hateful greetings on the bombs to be dropped on the civilian population of Lebanon and Palestine. Little Israeli girls are not cute when they strut with glee at death and torment across the fronts.
The retribution of blood vengeance
We do not recognize the rhetoric of the state of Israel. We do not recognize the spiral of retribution of the blood vengeance with “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” We do not recognize the principle of one or a thousand Arab eyes for one Israeli eye. We do not recognize collective punishment or population-wide diets as political weapons. Two thousand years have passed since a Jewish rabbi criticized the ancient doctrine of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
He said: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” We do not recognize a state founded on antihumanistic principles and on the ruins of an archaic national and war religion. Or as Albert Schweitzer expressed it: “Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.”
Compassion and forgiveness
We do not recognize the old Kingdom of David as a model for the 21st century map of the Middle East. The Jewish rabbi claimed two thousand years ago that the Kingdom of God is not a martial restoration of the Kingdom of David, but that the Kingdom of God is within us and among us. The Kingdom of God is compassion and forgiveness.
Two thousand years have passed since the Jewish rabbi disarmed and humanized the old rhetoric of war. Even in his time, the first Zionist terrorists were operating.
Israel does not listen
For two thousand years, we have rehearsed the syllabus of humanism, but Israel does not listen. It was not the Pharisee that helped the man who lay by the wayside, having fallen prey to robbers. It was a Samaritan; today we would say, a Palestinian. For we are human first of all — then Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. Or as the Jewish rabbi said: “And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?” We do not accept the abduction of soldiers. But nor do we accept the deportation of whole populations or the abduction of legally elected parliamentarians and government ministers.
We recognize the state of Israel of 1948, but not the one of 1967. It is the state of Israel that fails to recognize, respect, or defer to the internationally lawful Israeli state of 1948. Israel wants more; more water and more villages. To obtain this, there are those who want, with God’s assistance, a final solution to the Palestinian problem. The Palestinians have so many other countries, certain Israeli politicians have argued; we have only one.
The USA or the world?
Or as the highest protector of the state of Israel puts it: “May God continue to bless America.” A little child took note of that. She turned to her mother, saying: “Why does the President always end his speeches with ‘God bless America’? Why not, ‘God bless the world’?”
Then there was a Norwegian poet who let out this childlike sigh of the heart: “Why doth Humanity so slowly progress?” It was he that wrote so beautifully of the Jew and the Jewess. But he rejected the notion of God’s chosen people. He personally liked to call himself a Muhammedan.
Calm and mercy
We do not recognize the state of Israel. Not today, not as of this writing, not in the hour of grief and wrath. If the entire Israeli nation should fall to its own devices and parts of the population have to flee the occupied areas into another diaspora, then we say: May the surroundings stay calm and show them mercy. It is forever a crime without mitigation to lay hand on refugees and stateless people.
Peace and free passage for the evacuating civilian population no longer protected by a state. Fire not at the fugitives! Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now like snails without shells, vulnerable like slow caravans of Palestinian and Lebanese refugees, defenseless like women and children and the old in Qana, Gaza, Sabra, and Chatilla. Give the Israeli refugees shelter, give them milk and honey!
Let not one Israeli child be deprived of life. Far too many children and civilians have already been murdered.
From my blog.
Also available there:
A partial analysis of the controversial essay, refuting some bad interpretations.
A comment on the letter to the Norwegian people from Shimon Samuels at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
My translation of Gaarder’s new op-ed, wherein he explains his position with respect to Israel and Jews.
I am ambivalent about how this piece seems to lay the crimes of Israel at the feet of Judaism, implying that the Jewish religion has failed to absorb the humanism and universalism of Christianity. I think a more apt perspective is the following.
The ideology of hardcore Zionism has evolved into a religion unto itself, bearing a striking resemblance to the pre-Talmudic Judaism of old. However, unlike the latter, it courts a tribal war god that really does exist, and which, unlike Yahweh, demands no sacrifice or expiation of its chosen people, the Jewish citizens of Israel. This God of Zionism is the world’s only superpower, the USA.
Yet its blind patronage may not last forever. And without it, Israel will reap the whirlwind.
I just think the settlement policy of Sharon is what has caused this problem. When he says that rerecognized the Israel of 1948 but not the Israel of 1967, that is what he is saying.
And I believe that is what has lost Israel the support of every country in the world, save America.
.
with so much wisdom, compassion and urgency to protect the weakest and poorest.
Just as the Romans trampled on individual rights in the cause of Caesar; flogged and crucified the Jewish rabbi to appease the masses and the elite.
«« click for another image"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
What an incredibly stupid article. A perfect example of the left wing mirror image of neoconservatism. It’s got the same logic – Israel (Arabs/Muslims) are doing bad things. The same bullshit demonizing of a religion and a people. The same we wanted only the best for them, but they wouldn’t stop so let them reap the whirlwind. The same cute little flirtation with racist tropes. The same complete unwillingness to actually try to figure out how to change matters. If he wants to look at a mirror all he needs to do is load up on a pile of neo-con articles and he’ll see his face staring right back at him.
Yuck
I kind of agree with you.
I’m more interested in this article as a testimony to how deeply Israel’s image is suffering than in its merits.
.
I did not read the article as a statement of political whit, but the expression of an emotion to the suffering of innocent civilians in a war of attrition. To call someone’s honest emotion as stupid is just the lack of empathy and understanding of the right of each individual to live his/her life in a peaceful surrounding with their loved ones.
Claiming moral justification in a position of Jewish responsibility by naming the Lebanese savages and demanding the destruction of the Lebanese resistance movement protecting their homeland.
Another artist’s stupid expression ::
«« click to enlargePicasso's Guernica of Civil War in Spain"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Well then, how about another novelist’s freedom of expression On the Road by Cynthia Ozick
money quote:
Would you have a problem with me attacking Ozick’s views?
It’s an expression of cowardice. Every single one of his complaints about Israel apply in large multiples to the US war in Iraq. But the author is only offended by the relatively powerless and hated Jews. He puts himself in the traditional pose of the civilized white european, looking in horror at the orientals lack of humanism. A citizen of one of the worlds richest nations, wallowing in oil wealth while half the world starves, smugly decries the barbarity of someone else. All the pompous ignorant blather about the bible only makes it worse.
.
A superpower in the ME ignoring International treaties, committing crimes against humanity, bombing innocent civilians with armed drones, Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter jets. People on the ground have no way to retaliate and undergoing illegal occupation since 1967 and total destruction of their communities by the only ‘democracy’ in the Arab world.
Bombing raids of the UN observation post in Khiam and the Qana massacre. Nearly thousand innocent Lebanese citizens murdered by the IAF and IDF forces of the Jewish state. For what reason? The capture of two Israeli soldiers on the border.
Staff General Dan Halutz: “I feel a light bump to the plane as a result of the bomb’s release …”
Israeli Boer War Against Palestinians | Clean-Break Neocon Dream | Kidnapped in Israel or Captured in Lebanon? | ME Report Int’l Crisis Group – Jordan | Etnic Cleansing Denial by IL Leadership | ‘HezbSjitan’ A Blogger from Beirut |
Exclusive interview with opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu
“Israel is subject to restraint, we are a moral country facing immoral savages, having no moral boundaries”.
Click on VIDEO button in article –
The interview will be in English.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
A superpower [in the ME] ignoring International treaties, committing crimes against humanity, bombing innocent civilians with armed drones, Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter jets and with massive artillery, white phosphorous and napalm, plus wide use of torture and collective punishment. People on the ground have no way to retaliate and undergoing illegal occupation since [1967] 2002 preceded by a blockade that killed an estimated 1million children and total destruction of their communities by the [only] leading ‘democracy’ in the [Arab] world so brave intellectuals in its NATO partner and military ally and major petroleum supplier keep their mouths shut, but do have time to bitch about a small country powerless to retaliate and make stupid remarks about the religion of the people in that country.
If you mentioned the “Bombing raids of the UN observation post”
you might be interested in understanding what really happened there…..
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=37278180-a261-421d-84a9-7f94d5fc6d50&k=55
961
.
A senior UN official, asked about the information contained in Maj. Hess-von Kruedener’s e-mail concerning Hezbollah presence in the vicinity of the Khiam base, denied the world body had been caught in a contradiction.
“At the time, there had been no Hezbollah activity reported in the area. So it was quite clear they were not going after other targets; that, for whatever reason, our position was being fired upon.
“Whether or not they thought they were going after something else, we don’t know. The fact was, we told them where we were. They knew where we were. The position was clearly marked, and they pounded the hell out of us.”
But you are right, an independent report must clear up the differences in communications.
See UN Report of 1st Qana Massacre by Maj. General van Kappen
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
I’ll deal with this and your other comment in one place.
In case you haven’t noticed, his essay has nothing to do with Norway, and to go on about Norway would only make it parochial. (It doesn’t help that your specific suggestions are palpably ridiculous.)
Let me rephrase that a little more intelligently: “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, post-colonial Europe, blah.”
So the USA has been illegally occupying and colonizing Iraq for 39 years? News to me. And why does have to condemn the Iraq war in this essay? How do you know he hasn’t done so in spades elsewhere, and does he also have to condemn all other wars of aggression in passing to escape your trite implicit charge of anti-Semitism?
Caring about the welfare of impoverished Arabs attacked and oppressed by the world’s fourth strongest military power is despicable racism for a white European. OK, I get it. Can he resubmit if he alters his pigmentation?
What the fuck has his nationality got to do with it? SO citizens of Norway aren’t entitled to object to oppression because their country has a high GDP? That’s some of the dumbest shit I’ve read in years, even leaving aside that the country in question easily leads the world in foreign aid as a share of national income, both in terms of official assistance and with private donations factored in. The gov’t donated USD 48m to Gaza and Lebanon just in the last two weeks. Not that it in any way affects the validity of Gaarder’s writing.
As it happens I don’t find the essay brilliant, and I even differ with parts of the rhetoric, but it’s genius compared to your ad hominem hogwash.
.
has come a long way to bring people and nations together since the Coal and Steel Community in 1951, the Berlin Wall, a standoff with nuclear weapons versus the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries.
What have successive Israeli administrations done since the 1967 war and the recent Oslo Accords?
This utter senseless bs really pisses me off, fortunately it doesn’t occur too often here @BooMan, reminds me of the bad days @dKos.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
If Norwegians were pacifists and truly offended by Israel’s war in Lebanon, they could station a couple of thousand observers in Beruit. If they were not pacifist, and given Norways role as an arms exporter and NATO member one should doubt, they could station a couple of thousand soldiers with anti-aircraft guns in Beruit. In the absence of such moves and even calls for such moves, it’s all talk. Norway managed to send a big 450 soldiers to Afghanistan where they have watched Taliban come back and the US torture people to death. I’m sorry, but we have an international economic system with a small number of states at the top, and it’s past time for thos at the top to act as if their shit did not smell.
The "international community" is a revolving crowd of bystanders watching one brutal murder after another and tsk-tsking, sometimes shutting up long enought to take their turn as a participant.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1200921.ece
I just wrote a lengthy reply to your drivel below, but this comment indicates that you are probably too far out to reason with. Yeah, what Gaarder writes is waste of ink because Norwegians don’t flock to Beirut as human shields or, alternatively, because Norway’s government doesn’t intervene militarily in the conflict. Moreover, it’s bunk because Norway sells ammunition to NATO allies. Sure, whatever dude.
Calling something “drivel” may count as rebuttal in your book, but you haven’t managed to address any of my points. What could Israel do if Norway stationed soldiers in Beruit? They would be forced to stop bombing – in fact this might rescue them from a predictable chain of events where failure leads to doubling effort by giving the government an excuse for stopping. So when one nation sees a massive human catastrophe and chooses not to even consider intervening, it has responsibility.
No, apart from the fact that your proposal isn’t even physically — let alone politically — feasible, they wouldn’t “be forced to stop” bombing. They would just bomb the Norwegian soldiers.
Pray tell, why aren’t you in Beirut as a human shield?
No physically possible? You mean it is possible to put Norwegian soldiers in Afghanistan, but not in Lebanon – maybe the weather is too inclement?
As for whether Israel would stop, that’s pathetically weak. “We can’t do anything because in some absurd scenario it might not work so we don’t have any blame”
Finally: why am I not there? Because individuals cannot serve as effective military forces. The concept of “effectiveness” seems to be taboo.
God, why am I wasting time on you.
Sigh. The runways of the Beirut airport have been bombed to smithereens and the sealane is blockaded, so they would have to attempt to paradrop over Beirut, but then of course the IAF would cut off or shoot down the Hercules transport aircraft, even if these had been operational at the moment (they are being overhauled).
Yes, physically unfeasible.
Absurd scenario??! You conjure up this bizarre fantasy of using Norwegian troops, which would probably have to be conscripts, as human shields in a bombing war, and when spoonfed the obvious implications, you complain of “absurdity”? What’s the color of the sky in your would?
Who talks about individuals? Why don’t you organize, or call for your government to dispatch, a corps of unarmed “observers” such as the one you are proposing for Norwegians to “station” in South Beirut:
If your rallying cry is “Put your money where your mouth is,” you’d be well advised to at least appear to be doing so yourself.
My government, the US government, is at least complicit in this war and most likely directing it. That’s bad enough. But all the “clean hands” progressive humanitarian and concerned nations in the West are also partners in this barbarism as they sit by and issue ineffective statements, offer notional relief, and give the Lebanese the same crocodile tears that the inhabitants of Sbrenica got and the people are Darfour are getting.
You’re American? I thought you were Australian for some reason. Well, in that case it’s utterly ridiculous that you, instead of taking personal action to protest your monstrous government if nothing else, are sitting on your ass cyncially chiding a Norwegian author for raising awareness about what you yourself describe as barbarism.
Oh, and humanitarian aid, financed in part by Norway’s aforementioned USD 48 million, isn’t ‘notional’ to the otherwise starving Palestinians and Lebanese.
I’m a passenger in, say, a Cadillac, driven by a madman who swerves through the streets running over pedestrians left and right. Also on the street are, Renaults and Saabs and even BMWs, those cars also drive through the streets running over pedestrians, some a lot fewer. I see a message held up by a passenger in the Viking Sedan in the other lane. He writes, “You are bad and not worthy of being on the same streets as us good people”. I say “look at the blood on your own car and while I try to wrestle the keys from my crazed driver, how about picking up some passengers or blocking my car from the entrance the playground or doing FUCKING SOMETHING useful.”
$48million. Very impressive.
About 1/900th of the yearly oil surplus – this is an indication of the moral seriousness.
Save your lame analogies and your facile contempt for the citizens of a society which, whatever its shortcomings, is demonstrably more generous than literally any other, and which actually isn’t involved in slaughtering thousands to enrich its craven elite or gratify its loons.
It’s easy to be “generous” when you are rich and your generosity is pennies, just as it is easy to be “moral” when you make no sacrifice at all. Bwana is so revolted by the behavior of those lower societies. Norway is willing to break international law for the critical national interest of killing whales. Let’s call for its destruction and making its people into helpless refugees. I can’t decide whether it’s more self-righteousness than hypocricy, but it doesn’t matter.
You can’t even get the facts right in your pitiful rhetoric. Norwegian whaling doesn’t not violate int’l law.
As to the ‘Bwana’ stuff, just go fuck yourself, OK?
Edit: it doesn’t violate int’l law. And let me add: that you even thought of comparing minke whaling to this:
…says everything about you.
Exactly wrong. The Chomsky rule that one is first of all responsible for the actions of ones own country applies here. If you are a citizen of a founding NATO member and wealthy oil state and a major humanitarian catastrophe is happening next door, simply bemoaning the disaster as if it were happening on another planet is evasion. Instead, our humble author resorts to the usual powerless, ineffective, worthless “condemnation” divorced from any call to action by his own country. What is especially infuriating about this essay is that he demands the Israelis throw themselves on the tender mercies of the same international community that watches the Palestinians and Lebanese and Iraqis get murdered without offering any actual assistance.
Ah, so there are actual sacrifices of living standard and safety made by Norway to save the worlds poor and helpless? Please point me to some of this data.
He has to explain why he needs to put Israel on the list of nations to be blotted from the family of “civilized” nations while leaving the USA off that list. My explanation is cowardice, not anti-semitism. I’m quite sure that if roles were reversed, he would offer the same worthless suggestions to say a Palestinian Arab state attacking a helpless Israel (unless that Arab state was a real world power).
If you write “Albanian oppression of ethnic Serbs is so terrible, so revolting, so inhumane, that we should do SOMETHING” it is very different from “Albanian oppression of ethnic Serbs is so terrible, so revolting, so inhumane, that we should condemn them”.
Is he on planet earth or not? Either he sees an obligation of all people to step forward against injustice or he is just another follower of the long tradition of complaining about barbarous foreigners. Everyone does that.
Apart from your geographical challengedness — Norway wasn’t next door to the Middle East last I looked — this is total bunk. The essay is not about what Norway should or shouldn’t do with respect to the humanitarian crises in Lebanon and Gaza: maybe he addresses that elsewhere, maybe he leaves it to others, who knows or cares.
The essay is, according to its author, meant as a wake-up call to Israel. As such it clearly goes beyond the acute situation, calling for Israel to rethink its relation to its neighbors and withdraw to the internationally recognized borders of 1967, while cautioning that the long-term consequences of failing to do so may be dire.
It’s reasonable to infer that he also intends to sway opinion more generally, in Norway yes, but also in Europe and elsewhere. You see, he has announced that translations to other languages are forthcoming. Such moral opinion-building is crucial to prepare the ground for action with regard to any contentious issue.
This notwithstanding, your claim that he makes no call to action is false. He clearly calls for a consumer boycott of Israeli wares on a par with the one against apartheid South Africa.
Without offering any actual assistance? And you are accusing others on dwelling on alternative planets? Whose aid convoys do you think are keeping the population of Gaza alive as we speak, despite Israel sadistically limiting same from a necessary 400 a day to 150? Whose aid convoys are feeding the inland Lebanese, or rather, did so until Israel today blasted away the main road from Syria, to which the UN had resorted after Israel blocked the aid shipped in from sea?
But perhaps you are referring to the UN Security Council’s failure to demand in a Chapter 7 resolution that the carnage stop? In that case I have news for you: An overwhelming majority in said Council have favored such a resolution for weeks, but it has been barred by the unabashed intransigence of one particular veto power, which for all practical purposes is a party to the war.
Ah, so in order to slam this individual you find it opportune not only to hold him responsible for his country but to hold said country to standards hardly met by any state, least of all your own? Since Australia is infamous for doing jack for anyone else (unless partaking in the Iraq war be counted), you are surely not in a position to condemn any action, not matter how ignoble, by any other country? Is that your stance?
Your complaint is particularly incongruous inasmuch as I have already linked to data showing that Norway happens to lead the world by a solid margin in foreign aid. If you’re interested, I can add that the country has been engaged in active peace diplomacy in Guatemala, Sri Lanka, the Phillipines, Colombia, Uganda, Israel/Palestine, Haiti, Haiti/Dominican Republic, South Sudan, East Sudan, Aceh, Burundi, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Cyprus, and Ex-Yugoslavia. It also has a long history of involvement in UN peacekeeping, including a total of 33,500 troops over 30 years to Lebanon, of which 21 were lost and many wounded. Of course, I fully expect you to belittle all this and carry on your rhetoric of a selfish nation wallowing in oil wealth, in turn a lame attempt to discredit the author of this piece. But to each his own.
This only shows your ignorance about the debate on these issues in Europe, certainly in Norway. To slam the US for the Iraq war is significantly less divisive and enormously less daring than attacking Israel over anything. There would be nothing brave about doing the former, while the latter opens him to charges of Jew hating and prodigous criticism even from people who have no use for the Iraq war. Condemn the US? Sure, but again, the US hasn’t been brutally oppressing Iraqis since 1967. If it is to be condemned in the present context, which I would personally agree it should, it would be for its shameful enabling of Israeli crimes.
See above. Like I said, he does call for a consumer boycott, but his purpose here is to sway opinion; to shift political discourse in a particular direction.
Hint: I think it’s the former.
Apart from your geographical challengedness — Norway wasn’t next door to the Middle East last I looked — this is total bunk. The essay is not about what Norway should or shouldn’t do with respect to the humanitarian crises in Lebanon and Gaza: maybe he addresses that elsewhere, maybe he leaves it to others, who knows or cares.
Exactly. The essay is not about what Norway should do about the problem on the Mediterranean Sea, connected to Europe, it’s just the usual ineffective, history challenged, PC condemnation as if Norway had nothing to do with the South/North divide, the poverty of most of the world, the arms trade, NATOs pathetic military effort in Afghanistan, and so on. It’s politics as a way of feeling morally superior with no connection to what the Norwegian state should do.
What impact will this essay have on Israelis or Palestinians? None. If you gave the Palestinians an option of changing places, of exchanging the “support” of Europes fine humanists for a powerful Army, would they hesitate for a second? No. They’d be happy to be on the receiving end of such hollow feckless condemnations instead of being on the receiving end of Apaches. Until the “approval” of the worlds humanists means something in terms of security and wealth, it will remain a sad joke.
“Condemnation” is free and, of course, has no effect at all. How about calling for an end of Norwegian exports of arms to the US? That would be a daring move indeed. Some people would LOSE JOBS!! Norway has security and economic dependencies on the US, not on Israel. Norway doesn’t want to endanger a single job making machines for killing people, but its intellectual moral consciences can wax indignant about the actions of the people who buy those weapons. I don’t want to pretend the Norwegians are worse than any of the rest of us – that’s business as usual on this planet.
As for the US in Iraq, I don’t see what the “since 1967” means to people who are being bombarded with WP or how it relates to a region where the first massive US intervention in the 1950s to overthrow Mossadeq is still causing people to die. Here’s the bottom line: Norway exports a huge amount of military equipment to the US. The US is doing exactly what our Norwegian author finds so terribly shocking about Israeli actions but on a much larger scale. So, of course, he condemns Israel as if Israel was beyond the norm. That strikes me obscenely hypocritical.
This ritualized gasp of horror that Israel is a blood stained state like all the others is more of a fashion statement than a moral event.
Nothing new of substance here, so not worthy a reply.
Exactly. The essay is not about what Norway should do about the problem on the Mediterranean Sea, connected to Europe, it’s just the usual ineffective, history challenged, PC condemnation as if Norway had nothing to do with the South/North divide, the poverty of most of the world
Much of the basis for the South/North divide happened during the colonization. Norway was at that time colonized by Denmark and Sweden. If you’d been to Norway you would realized that Norway never was a part of that “glory” period of European history. The Palace for instance, looks like the servant quarters to the castles in other European cities. Since the liberation from Sweden in 1905 until they found oil in the 70s Norway was one of Europe’s poorest countries.
And by the way, do you know anything about European politics and geography? Do you actually think Norway is near the Mediterranean? Do you think Norwegian language and culture is similar to the Greeks? Italians? Lebanese? By the way: Most of Norway is on the same latitude as Alaska. But Alaska is near Florida, I reckon.
But off course, Norway with a population of a semi-big city in the us (4.5 mill) should solve all the problems, and if they can’t, individual citizens should not comment on current affairs abroad. Why the hell should they, when even ignoramuses in God’s country us don’t care about what’s happening overseas… No, let us complaint over the gasoline prices instead. You know, how Americans really feel how though these wars are..
Norway is a rich, a very rich, European christian nation. The distance between Beruit and Oslo is 30% less than the distance between New York and Los Angeles. It is easy to berate poor people for lack of charity or people under attack for their violence. In fact, one may even be correct. If you sit in your nice house and, over a nice dinner, bitch about how the beggars on the street are fighting, you may be 100% correct. But there is one world economy and one world military order and one world of people. Those who are lucky enough to be born in rich nations that have oil, that belong to the most powerful military organization, can sit in their rich nation and profit from their export of arms and oil and nice words, and feel virtuous about themselves. Enjoy it. Don’t expect universal admiration too, though.
.
Another artist’s voice that needed silencing …
Jon Wiener: The John Lennon FBI FilesThe Lennon FBI files document an era when rock music seemed to have real political force, when youth culture, for perhaps the first time in American history, was mounting a serious challenge to the status quo in Washington, when President Nixon responded by mobilizing the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to silence the man from England who was singing “Give Peace a Chance” at his first live concert in the United States since 1966.
Lennon’s file dates from 1971, a year when the war in Vietnam was killing hundreds of thousands, when Nixon was facing reelection, and when the “clever Beatle” was living in New York and joining up with the antiwar movement. The Nixon administration learned that he and some radical friends were talking about organizing a national concert tour to coincide with the 1972 election campaign, a tour that would combine rock music and radical politics, during which Lennon would urge young people to register to vote, and vote against the war, which meant, of course, against Nixon.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Peace and free passage for the evacuating civilian population no longer protected by a state. Fire not at the fugitives!
Note that the Norwegian humanist does not offer to let those Jewish refugees move to Norway and share the benefits of the oil rich nation?
Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now like snails without shells, vulnerable like slow caravans of Palestinian and Lebanese refugees, defenseless like women and children and the old in Qana, Gaza, Sabra, and Chatilla. Give the Israeli refugees shelter, give them milk and honey!
Of course, this noble sentiment would be as useful to the imagined Israeli refugees as the rest of his utter bullshit is to Lebanese refugees. How about a call for Norway to take in a couple of hundred thousand refugees? Oh no, that would entail some sacrifice for his principles.How about volunteering for a Norwegian armed intervention to protect the people of Lebanon? How about anything more than more self-righteous idiocy, the apparent speciality of post-colonial Europe, exported like subsidized butter.
Gaarder’s article was truly in the prophetic tradition and I find myself questioning the value of the state of israel as well. It is an interesting historical footnote that many self-identified zionists of the pre-state era, like albert einstein and judah magnes (founder of hebrew university) were opposed to the creation of a jewish state and wanted a Jewish cultural homeland instead.
The best outcome to this endless mideast crisis would be some kind of federal arrangement involving israel and palestine and perhaps others. THe various ethnic states would continue to exist, but be subject to a federal government that guarantees equal rights and regulating trade and security. That solution is not on the horizon, sadly. But you never know. Who in 1944 would have predicted the EU? Who in 1757 would have predicted the United States of America?
.
After sixty years and a UN Security Council resolution, I am not putting any doubt on the right of the state of Israel and its right to defend its existence. However the leap from being a young and respected nation to a regional superpower armed with nukes and biochemical grenades, exerting its will by force on the Palestinian people in the occupied territories is a leap too far and must be condemned.
● Israel and the occupation after 1967
● Muslims, Jews and Christians Join Together to Condemn Zionism
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
.
Even before finishing the military operation, Israel needs to hammer home “the Iranian-Hizbullah-Syrian axis of terror” message. By doing so, he said Israel would create legitimacy for future action against Hizbullah, or even against Iran.
“Iranian’s President Ahmadinejad doesn’t only want to erase Israel off the map, he wants to erase the map and build Islamic components. Lebanon is the clearest example, and we need to show that.”
Jerusalem Post
Ra’anan Gissin, prime minister Ariel Sharon’s recently sidelined, gravel-voiced spokesman, may be watching the current crisis from his living room, but he had advice for how Israel should be waging the public relations campaign: “Emphasize Iran, Iran and Iran.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Andrew Sullivan linked your translation Sirocco, in Time Magazine.
Wow, thanks for letting me know.
heh. a little wider readership than you suspected 😉
.
Sunday 06 Aug 2006 11:37 am
The current war is not only bringing out the Jew-haters in America, like Mel Gibson, but also in Europe. Yesterday, one of Norway’s leading writers, Jostein Gaarder, author of best-seller “Sophie’s World,” with 26 million copies in print, wrote an astonishing op-ed in Aftenposten, Norway’s leading paper. It’s called “God’s Chosen People.”
My friend Bruce Bawer has translated parts of it …
Biography of Jostein GaarderThis attention to one of your excellent serie of diaries on the Lebanon conflict, you perhaps could do without. Thank you for being you Sirocco and continue your amazing work @BooMan.
The accusation against Mel Gibson has been adjusted, see acceptance of his apology by the Anti-Defamation League.
«« click on image for reviewsBruce Bawer - While Europe Slept"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Well, it’s Gaarder’s piece, not mine, and I only agree in part. The reason I posted it was partly to draw attention to a sign of the times: Israel’s image is so in tatters everywhere outside the US that prominent opinion-makers can write something like this and have it published in leading newspapers.
As I said elsewhere, I don’t dispute that passages in his essay can be deemed anti-Semitic (and there is now much debate in Norway over this). But that’s a matter of interpretation and judgment rather than of fact. Several types of response can be valid to various degrees.
However, what is downright absurd to attack the essay because the author is Norwegian, European, or whatever.
Thanks for your kind words — I appreciate you too.
A short explanation for the reason why am I so indifferent to the European’s public opinion:
As a Jew and as an Israeli it definitely doesn’t give me any pleasure to read Gaarder’s article. However I think I need to explain how come it doesn’t really matter for me what do the honorable Norwegian author thinks…..
There are two aspects to which I’ll refer to, past and present.
I shell begin with the present.
Regardless to my nation’s poor history, the current situation is that today we have an independent state, a democratic state. Our country is threatened by Iran – a fundamentalist regime that declares its will to destruct us – a will driven by an extreme Islamic ideology . This regime has envoys that he arms and trains – these envoys are Hezbulla.
Hezbulla had violated Israel sovereignty aggressively many times since Israel’s withdraw from south Lebanon on 2000. We didn’t respond to the abduction of 3 Israeli soldiers on 2000, we didn’t respond to several missile attacks on the north of Israel. The reason why we didn’t respond was simple – WE DIDN’T WANT WAR.
However, we feel that if we won’t response anymore our very existence is endanger since the other side , as Nassrallah stated, believe that the reason for our lack of response is because we lost our values and we won’t fight for our country.
Nassralah stated very clearly that his aim is to break the Israeli society and ultimately to destruct us and his mean is simple – TERROR.
We don’t want to kill no one, we don’t want war, we love our children and the thing we want most is to live a peaceful life, just like the Europeans.
However, if the other alternative is to be destructed, than we have no alternative other than to retaliate and to force our enemies to understand – WE ARE HERE TO STAY
As for the other aspect I’d like to refer to – the History.
I don’t want to start sobbing about all the pogroms, persecutions etc. that Jews had suffered from along history.
However, there is only one thing I want to say in this respect. The world’s indifference to the sufferings of the Jews on World War II, the fact that most of the countries didn’t allow immigration of Jews who tried to fly from the Nazi regime.
All of that made one thing very clear to me…. I don’t trust the world.
The only one I trust is myself and my people.
And hence:
I will fight for my life
I will fight for my family
I will fight for my natural rights.
My conscience is clean – my aims are just.
We didn’t start this war.
We didn’t say that the solution for the middle east crisis is the destruction of Iran
We didn’t target civilians – we targeted canons aimed on our civilians.
I’m sorry the Hezbulla uses innocent civilians as shields, and I’m even more sorry that my soldier has to face a situation in which he points his gun on a hezbulla warier who holds a baby as a live shield – and has to make a decision whether to save his own life by killing this warier and the baby, or to spare the innocent baby life and to sacrifice his own.
And the thing that pains me most is that Gaarder treats me like a bloodthirsty animal who wants nothing but to drink the blood of the Lebanese children just like his ancestors blamed my ancestors for putting a Christian boy’s blood in their Matza dough (a traditional bread eaten by the Jews in the feast of Passover).
.
I have no problem with your political belief and views in defense of the Jewish State of Israel, which I recognize and accept as a historic fact. I’m troubled by the fascist propaganda of people believing they are doing a service to the Israeli nation.
Israel not only uses rhetoric to villify its opponents: Arafat, PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraq (Saddam Hussein), Syria and Iran; but it also executes its aims through excessive military assault on a civilian population. Your propaganda will not fly here @BooMan.
Your last paragraph just shut the door.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Hi, I just didn’t understand one thing.. what was so Facist in my response?
In addition, there is one question i want to ask.
What do you think Ahmidinijad means when he say that the only solution for the situation in the middle east is the destruction of Israel?
is this an Israeli propaganda as well?
.
Raw propaganda, trying to equate the Norwegian writer’s essay on Israel and civilian deaths with horrific anti-Semitism.
You are welcome to take part in the discussion @BooMan. Like so many here in this blog community, we have friends, or family, living in Israel under the scourge of terror attacks by enemy forces. Since Ehud Barak, Arafat and Bill Clinton attempted to force a peace settlement in 2000/2001, no leader has stepped forward in Israel.
A military solution is dead-ended, literally and figuratively speaking. The need for a two-state peace settlement with the Palestinian people is imperative for the Middle East and security of all states.
Filling the air waves with hatred and attempting to do the same with blogwriting is an affront against humanity.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Not fair to associate this person with being a fascist or troll. Like several others apparently she was led here by widespread linking of Sirocco’s translation. This article has engendered international debate and there’s no reason to just shut down the people who come here without trying to engage them in the debate.
.
While reading Tammy’s first comment, I was about to give a ‘4‘ as appreciation for the contribution. There are very personal and contrarion views on the issue.
As I made clear in my reply, I won’t accept this inflammatory remark at the end:
And the thing that pains me most is that Gaarder treats me like a bloodthirsty animal who wants nothing but to drink the blood of the Lebanese children just like his ancestors blamed my ancestors for putting a Christian boy’s blood in their Matza dough (a traditional bread eaten by the Jews in the feast of Passover).
He/she decides self how to participate in the blogcommunity. I am always willing to listen and engage in a discussion, I will not stoop to this level of hatred.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
I really appreciate your very valuable contributions here and respect your general evenhandedness in these discussions, but I think you missed on this. The remark in question expresses not hatred but pain. I think it came out of a very personal, painful place that I know well.
.
but intolerance and hatred by use of an anti-Semitic statement in reference to Jostein Gaarder’s essay.
Just Google: “The victim’s blood is kneaded into the holy matzo dough”.
We don’t go about and label persons with anti-Semitism by association.
BooMan and I have been accused in a similar fashion.
We all feel grief and personal pain, we need to reach out and understand differences in our culture and politics with a goal of peace in mind. America has been torn apart over Iraq and ‘terrorism’, we need to end this divisiveness and return to sanity.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Believe me I know the reference. She isn’t labelling by association, she believes Gaarder is anti-Semitic. As this and numerous other discussions demonstrate, others share her belief. We aren’t all trolls.
.
Opening comment at a blog with an unfounded accusation of anti-Semitism is trollish behavior.
Read Sirocco’s blog, I don’t want to be in the corner of those ‘democrats’ accusing Jostein Gaarder of anti-Semitism.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
It is absolutely not unfounded. Gaardner’s essay uses the traditional European anti-semitic christian arguments that were used by Martin Luther and before. If you choose to pretend that these contrasts between the supposed “eye for eye” vengance based Jewish teaching and the lovely mercies of Christ are anything but a restatment of millenia old racist teachings, you are only fooling yourself.
We do not extend benefit of the doubt to Europe, no matter how strongly the Europeans wish to imagine themselves as enlightened humanists. All that “ancient history” that is now selectively off limits gives the clue. Of course, we cannot make anything of Gaardner’s use of traditional anti-semitic caricatures and we have to stop all these tedious old references to the Holocaust (“can’t they ever stop whining about it?”), but on the other hand there is no reason to object when Gaardner blithely tells us that Israel celebrates the death of Lebanese in the same way that the Jews have celebrated the deaths of Egyptians for 3000 years. Apparently one cannot cite real history, because it was over decades ago, but one can cite made up history.
I am more than sorry to see that I’m accused of trollish behaviour,
However, I’m not taking my words back….
When Gaarder’s refer to the “chosen people” issue – “We do not believe in the notion of God’s chosen people. We laugh at this people’s fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God’s chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.”
What is the connection between this war and the fact the Jews believe or don’t believe that they are the chosen people…. What is the connection? Israel is a secular country, most of the people are not observant and many of them don’t even believe in the idea of “chosen people”, and anyway, this war wasn’t waged because we declared ourselves as the chosen people, we waged this war because we were attacked… a simple fact.
Gaarder’s remark was a pure anti-Semitic remark, if you’ll read some Anti-Semitic literature, you’ll see that it’s a very common argument – these Jews, who they think they are, the chosen people….what an impudance ….
I don’t know Gaarder (although I read Sophy’s world many years ago and loved it) and I don’t know if he hates Jews or does few of his best friends are Jews, but his article is tainted with anti-Semitism intentionally or not.
I believe the reference is to ‘the land that God gave to His Chosen People’ which is used by Jews to justify their expulsion of non-Jews from ‘Palestine’, their denial of the right to buy land to non-Jews in ‘Israel’ & the whole host of other discriminations, slights, repressions & atrocities that have been committed to fulfill ‘next year in Jerusalem’.
For more than 50 years, these ‘Arab terrorists’ have been trying to take back the land that you drove them out of (perhaps not you personally, but the people that you call yourself a part of).
For more than 100 years, before there was a Holocaust, you have been scheming & planning to take that land – I have no doubt that, in the 1920s, the European Jewish immigrants were telling any Arab who would listen that the Jews would buy them out or drive them out – that the land the Arabs had called home for more than 1000 years was really ‘Eretz Ysrael’ & the rightful property of the Jews.
I sympathize with the Palestinian Arabs – in America I’ve lived in a land where I was called “Gentile” by a religious group who believe thay are “God’s Chosen”. I have been discriminated against in employment & property purchases because I did not belong to their sect. I have been told that this is “their land, given to them by God” & to go some place else. I didn’t much like it. And I liked it even less because I am convinced that all appeals to ‘God’ are fantasies that people use to 1) give themselves comfort in the world & 2) to mask their dark ambitions – ie, don’t blame us, “God” said it.
If Israel is a fact on the ground – it is because of guns, money & treachery. It was made within the span of a human lifetime, & it can be unmade.
I do not wish the death of one innocent Jew in the unmaking of Israel – but the truth is that Israel was made unjustly (perhaps every modern nation – the USA included – was so made) & its existence continues based on injustice, subjugation & slaughter. I, for one, am sick of it & want to see it stop.
Your arguments are mixture of prejudice and wrong facts.
The bond between the Jews and Israel is ancient, and during all history after the destruction of the second temple on the year 70 and the exile of Jews from Isrel that followed that occasion, there was always a small settlement of Jews in Israel under all the regimes (from the Roman Empire until the British Mandatory), it’s true that most of the Jews left Israel many years ago but there was always a strong bond.
In addition, during the last few hundred years, Israel or Palestine as you can call it was a deserted land inhabited sparsely by Arabs, Christians and Jews. Read some of Mark Twain’s diary to get the picture of Palestine in the 19th century.
When my great grandfathers came to Israel on the end of the 19th century they didn’t drive away any Arab, they reside in Sefad and in Jerusalem and lived with much respect to their Arab neighbors.
Even during the 2nd immigration wave of the 1920’s the Jews didn’t drive away Arabs, they settled on deserted land, on swamps and in the desert.
After the Arabs rejected the Division resolution of the UN that divided Palestine between the Jews and the Arabs on 1948, and waged war upon Israel, only than because of the battles there were many Arabs who escaped from their homes because of the war and became refugees – just like many Jews have escaped from their homes (for instance my family who was driven away from it’s home in the Old City of Jerusalem).
The Jews didn’t caused the Palestine tragedy, It was the short sighted radical Palestinian leadership that caused this tragedy, people like Shiech Amin El Hussainy who made alliance with Hitler, and other leaders who thought that they could solve the Palestinian problem by the destruction of Israel, and conducted the stupid 1948 war that created the Palestinian problem.
I can’t debate you about religion, it’s a personal thing and you don’t have to believe God, however from historical point of view, Israel has it’s historical right just like – USA, Australia, Canada, etc.
And last but not least, I’m surely glad you don’t want me to die and I thank you for that, it’s very thoughtful of you, however your response only demonstrated for me how important it is for the Jews to have their own independent land so I don’t need to count on your generosity for my well-being…
“…there was always a small settlement of Jews in Israel under all the regimes…”
What is this? The “We’re saving your place in line…” excuse? The “I just stepped away for a (1500 year long) smoke…” excuse? This is the fancied-up reasoning of a small child. I have a strong bond to my childhood home, but someone else owns it now – it would be wrong of me to take it back by terrorism or force (Irgun, Stern Gang).
I’m sure your parents were models of patience, kindness & tolerance – just as mine were. However, they (and you) benefitted from the thuggery of the Begins, Sharons, et al, of the world.
Why should the Arabs accept the “Division Resolution” anymore than the new owners of my childhood home should accept a “law” that gives me half the kitchen, the living room & the master bedroom of what is now their house, just because I miss the old place, and want to move back in?
So this Sheik allied himself with Hitler in an attempt to drive out the invaders of his country – I’d be shocked except that I remember that America allied itself with Stalin to defeat Hitler – “enemy of my enemy”, etc.
You have never, in this modern era, needed to count on my generosity for your survival. Too bad about all those dead Arabs who cannot count on yours.
I completely disagree with your logic, however only for the matter of entertainment I would like to continue your logic. (you ignored the fact that the Jews didn’t drive anybody from his home prior to 1948, they immigrated mainly to unpopulated areas, or purchased property lawfully).
The Arab were driven away by Jews, hence the Jews should give the Arabs their homes back. Only, since the Europeans driven away the Jews, the European will give the Jews their homes back.
So here is the great solution:
American gives the Native Americans theirs home back.
Australia gives the Aborigins theirs home back
New Zealand gives the Maoris their homes back
European gives the Jews their homes back…
And the Jews gives the Arabs their home back….
Ok, that’s fair enough……
I’ll address your first point first & ask you to notice that I did not say that Jews drove Arabs from their homes prior to 1948. Whether that occurred, on some small scale, or didn’t, I don’t know.
What I did say was that Jewish immigrants began telling Arabs that the land they (the Arabs) lived on was part of “Eretz Ysrael” and that the Jews were coming to take it – by commerce, or by force. I claim that it was this type of incitement that stirred up Arab resentments in the period leading up to WWII. You may research it at your leisure.
To your second point – Israel was the last of the European colonial expansions, created as a place to dump an unwanted religious minority. Unfortunately Israel was created 200 years too late, when such colonialism could no longer be justified.
You say Israel will rectify her injustices after all the other nations of the Earth rectify theirs. Very well then – Israel must also accept the other edge of the sword, that those who fight against Israel are equally justified in trying to overthrow it.
Did Rome cry out to the world that it had a “right to exist”? When the monarchies of Europe were stripped of power, were their calls for obedience to the “natural order” heeded?
You will have to accept that not all people will support you & quit crying out “the Holocaust” & “pity us, the poor wandering Jews” whilst you massacre the people whose land you took.
Ok, I see your arguments so please, let me sum it up in few sentences:
1. The Jews incited the Arabs with words.
2. The Jewish settlement in Israel could have been justified had they began it 50 years earlier (just for the example, Australia was united and became a federation on 1901, that is justified so we’ll take this date as an example).
3. The Jews should stop sobbing and weeping about the holocaust, it happened ages ago, it was ended 61 years ago…. However the Palestinians demand for the right to return and their weeping over what Israel has done (or didn’t do) to them is completely relevant, it happened only 58 years ago….
4. As for the solution you propose: the Jews should give the Palestinians all the land of Palestine (or Israel), and the Jews…. Well…. What would the Jews do? Oh… I know… wow, I have an idea… the Iranian president Ahmadinijad had proposed it before, why won’t we transfer all the Jews to Alaska… no… it’s not a good idea, they would go there and incite the local bear population by saying that it is their promised land….. we don’t want to see suicide bears who explode in buses, don’t we???
.
persevered and tipped your toes in the pond @BooMan. There is a high level of ignorance in the U.S. on the ME struggle for sovereignty, security and democracy. Would appreciate your gesture to introduce yourself in the froggybottom cafe.
I’ll be looking forward to your first diary with views on the Knesset today and the political course of PM Olmert in the coming weeks. A debate in parliament needs emotion and views from all parts of society. A coalition government offers more debate on issues than a two party system based on corporate power, ‘christian’ morals and illusion of empire building.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
I’m just learning some more about this community and will be glad to post a diary about my feelings and the current atmosphere in Israel.
and I’ll do the best not to be a troll (although i do have a green hair….)
(didn’t quite understand the “froggybottom cafe” idea, although liked the caricature…)
.
BooMan is a young and closely knit blog community, where we have many readers (lurkers), few bloggers participating in comments and even less members to take the step of a regular diary. BooMan always has considered the international view on U.S. policy an important part of this community. The special World Diaries space on the site illustrates this policy.
The chance for lurkers and newbies to leave a first comment in a Welcome Wagon Diary or in the Froggybottom cafe, has become a familiar and attractive part of casual conversation of daily chores and sores.
In this manner, this community reaches out to support individual bloggers.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
.
Froggy Bottom Cafe — Blooming Tuesday
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
1. The Jews incited the Arabs with words.
You have this one correct – and it is fairly well documented that the immigrating Jews were inciting Arabs to violence long before 1948.
2. The Jewish settlement in Israel could have been justified had they began it 50 years earlier (just for the example, Australia was united and became a federation on 1901, that is justified so we’ll take this date as an example).
If not fifty, certainly 100 years earlier Israel would have been just another European colony of Africa, India or the Western Hemisphere, etc. Israel might not have survived the transistion into the 21st Century (as many of those other colonies did not), but it still remains to be seen whether it will survive 100 years.
3. The Jews should stop sobbing and weeping about the holocaust, it happened ages ago, it was ended 61 years ago…. However the Palestinians demand for the right to return and their weeping over what Israel has done (or didn’t do) to them is completely relevant, it happened only 58 years ago….
You miss my point completely here. One cannot complain about their own mistreatment while callously & cold-bloodedly blowing the faces off of babies. Israel tries to say it Hizbollahs’ fault for “hiding behind civilians”, but Israel is under no obligation to kill those civilians.
Your claim to suffering during the Holocaust is not just diminished by the way you treat the Arabs – it justifies the Holocaust. People can point to your actions & say “Hitler was right, these people are monsters”.
4. As for the solution you propose: the Jews should give the Palestinians all the land of Palestine (or Israel), and the Jews…. Well…. What would the Jews do? Oh… I know… wow, I have an idea… the Iranian president Ahmadinijad had proposed it before, why won’t we transfer all the Jews to Alaska… no… it’s not a good idea, they would go there and incite the local bear population by saying that it is their promised land….. we don’t want to see suicide bears who explode in buses, don’t we???
Ah, yes, Alaska. Well, according to the propaganda, the Jews made the desert bloom (where there had only been lazy, unproductive, dirty Arabs before), what wonders could you perform in the tundra (where there are only lazy, unproductive Inuit)?
Actually, you do hit on a point, which is the claim that a land is “your promised land”. That will obviously incite the natives.
Further, if you come in to a place & pass apartheid-style laws that discriminate against the local population (for example, only allowing Jews to purchase 95% of the land) you will also have problems.
Thirdly, if you allow the Begins & Jabotinskys of this era to set your policy, you will further incite hate amongst those you live with – but I don’t really need to explain this to an intelligent person, do I?
“justifies the holocaust”?
You could word your arguments in a less obnoxious way, and refrain from attributing claims the poster to whom you’re responding did not make (“promised land”).
the “your promised land” remark addressed the Jewish (collective “you”, not personal) claim that Palestine is promised to them (the Chosen people) by God.
This goes back to the poster’s remark”
“What is the connection between this war and the fact the Jews believe or don’t believe that they are the chosen people…. What is the connection? “
The connection is that Jews believe that they are “the chosen people” who were given, by God (and what higher authority is there?), a “promised land” – the land they left 1500 years ago, the land that the recently dispossessed Arabs are fighting to regain.
To your other point, that it is obnoxious to use a phrase like “justifies the Holocaust” – well, let that be the worst of my sins.
I find it both obnoxious & hypocritical to claim exceptionalism based the Holocaust on one hand, while committing the countless atrocities that the Jews have committed in the name of ‘Israel’ on the other. As I have said before, it seems the only lesson the Jews learned from the Holocaust is that it is better to be the oppressor than the oppressed.
Israel daily demonstrates that Jews are every bit as brutal & cruel in their treatment of others (in this case, the Arabs they have dispossessed) as the countries that abused, persecuted, & ghetto-ized them.
If Jews would ghetto-ize Arabs in Gaza, would pass laws dispossessing Arabs of their lands, prohibiting Arabs from military service or holding jobs in certain professions, if they would assassinate Arab leaders at home & abroad, if they would kill Arab children from a distance with sniper rifles, etc, etc, etc, – then these same Jews cannot turn around and say “Remember the pogroms, the ghettos, the assaults, the repression.”
Clearly such suffering is not so repugnant to the Jews that they refrain from inflicting it when they are the ones who hold the power. It is this hypocrisy that I decry – this lack of forbearance on their part “justifies” those who have oppressed them.
I don’t know if you are ignorant or if you lie, but here are some corrections for the fact you present:
1. Arabs serve in the Israeli army – there are many Druz and Bedouins soldiers and commanders who serve in the IDF, and other forces (border guard, police etc.).
Most of the Israeli- Arabs don’t want to join the Army because they don’t want to fight the Palestinians.
2. Arabs hold jobs in every field they are interested, and lately the Israeli government even decided on a “corrective discrimination” in certain positions in civil service, aimed in preferring minorities such as: Arabs, Immigrants, people from the periphery etc.
3. Israel never Gethoized the Palestinians in Gaza. What are you talking about? Did we gethoized the people who live in Cairo as well?
4. When was the last time an Israeli sniper shot a kid? it’s a false accusation, Israel did cause undeliberate death of Palestinians kids, it was never targeted. You can blame Israel for preferring the injure of Palestinian civilians on the injure of Israeli civilians, but to say that the Israelis are deliberately targeting civilians is an unfounded accusation and a pure propaganda from the worst kind.
Truth is I’m a bit tired by this debate that goes nowhere….
But I have to a certain section of your comment:
You miss my point completely here. One cannot complain about their own mistreatment while callously & cold-bloodedly blowing the faces off of babies. Israel tries to say it Hizbollahs’ fault for “hiding behind civilians”, but Israel is under no obligation to kill those civilians.
Your claim to suffering during the Holocaust is not just diminished by the way you treat the Arabs – it justifies the Holocaust. People can point to your actions & say “Hitler was right, these people are monsters”.
First of all, right, Hitler was right, the Jews are monsters, they have been well known as a violent people during history… they most of slaughtered thousands of innocent Christian and Muslim children all along the history …. only… phew…. only … man…. only wow….. there is no evidence in history to such a claim. Actually, ironically, history says that the Jews were victims of assaults, pogroms and repression…. How annoying… well, I know….. let’s reverse history…. Hitler was right because 60 years after he plotted to exterminate the Jewish people, some Israeli bombs had caused the death of Lebanese babies during a justified war.
Man, I have to admit I LOVE your reasoning….
To continue with your logic I should say the following:
During world war II, the American and the Brits, launched thousands of bombs on Germany and caused the death of hundred of thousands of civilians including babies.
So based on your logic, the American and the English are “monsters” who deserve to be exterminated ….. interesting…
Only… the list shouldn’t stop here, let’s see which nations deserve extermination and gas chambers because they are “babies murderers”:
USA (WW I and II), Russia (WW I and II, the Afghanistan war etc.), France (WW I and II), England WW I and II), Germany (no, not Germany, sorry made a mistake, the Germans never killed babies) etc….. ah..yes….. and another nation, who killed many babies…. True, Israeli babies, but still… babies…. The Palestinians…..
You’re right this debate goes nowhere – I won’t be convinced that Israel is the lone innocent in a sea of monsters & you won’t be convinced that Israel is even slightly the tarnished angel.
As you note, many other countries, America included, are guilty of slaughter – but, whatever else these other countries may be guilty of, and it is plenty, none of them plead for a right to that slaughter based on their ‘eternal suffering’ – as you do, even in your post.
When the US & Britain bombed Dresden in WWII, for example, the enemy civilians were first & foremost ‘enemy’. When Arab suicide bombers kill ‘innocent’ Israelis, they are killing ‘invaders’. When you bomb Lebanon, your country freely admits that you are killing civilians that your enemy hides behind.
Israel claims exceptional circumstances on the one hand – long suffering at the hands of others; but then says “Why do you demand exceptional conduct from us?” on the other.
And I say (and many other feel the same way) that Jewish exceptionalism has to cut both ways, or I won’t accept the claim either way.
Or do you claim an exceptional right to revenge – on Arabs – for what you suffered at the hands of Germans? Perhaps that is why you try so hard to link the Arabs to Hitler – it’s much easier to justify killing them if they are simply unpunished Nazis themselves.
And, when you proclaim that the Arabs declare that they will “push you into the sea”, you neglect to mention that the quote was originally, in 1919:
“We will push the Zionists into the sea or they will push us into the desert”
You have pushed them into the desert, and “turnabout is fair play”.
It’s true, I won’t convince you and you don’t convince me,
But I must say that your arguments puzzles me…
If I understand you correctly what you actually say is:
The Israelis acts are just like other nations in war situation, only they proclaim that they have the moral right to do it because they suffered in the past.
It’s not our acts that irritates you, it’s our pretentiousness.
I don’t use the holocaust as an excuse for anything.
The international community decided to acknowledge the state of Israel on 1948, I don’t care what their motives were. Personally, I think that we have every right to be here, but this is really beside the point.
The moral basis of my acts is simple: survival- I want to live.
I’ll do whatever i can to defend myself, my family, my nation.
The relevance of the holocaust and the pogroms is mainly emotional, I guess that the Jewish history made me (as other Jews I guess) a little bit paranoid, and I don’t think you can blame me for that….
“It’s not our acts that irritates you, it’s our pretentiousness.”
Don’t trivialize this – it is not mere pretentiousness that i abhor.
“The relevance of the holocaust and the pogroms is mainly emotional…”
I am well aware of that – your government uses that emotional appeal all the time to justify acts that are abhorent – that is, I believe, how this entire discussion started.
“The moral basis of my acts is simple: survival-“
Survival is not the basis for moral actions – every creature, from dog to spider to alligator, wants to survive. We expect more form people. Further, if survival were your (as a people) only motive, you would not have engaged in this foolish act of conquest in the first place. No, your motives are power, conquest, and the desire to subjugate.
Your post makes no sense at all – have you read the newspapers over the last five years?
“The US and other countries don’t claim they can slaughter people due to ‘eternal suffering'” – probably because they can’t.
But have you noticed how due to one terror attack against the US on the 11th September 2001, the United States went to war with two countries, that represented no direct threat, resulting in the deaths of many men, women and children.
I’m not defending this country’s actions over the last five years – they have been vile & criminally cowardly.
But the conduct of America is not the subject here. Please feel free to start a diary on that topic & I’ll jump in over there.
If someone wrote a piece/rant complaining about genuine horrors committed by Africans, and talked about them as primitive, as gorillas, as having animal mentalities – and as a result saying that they deserve to go back into slavery – there would be plenty of people freaking out. The article is problematic on many levels and one of them is that in criticizing Jews he instinctively reaches for old anti-semitic themes, rather than invective which doesn’t have racist overtones.
Concerning only one half.
It would be hard not to criticise Israel for its politic, past and present. BUT, as always, the is probably no action without reaction – and that goes for both sides! Those that act and those that react. To claim that it was always Israel that acted and the countries surrounding it could only react is a one-sided view. I am no jew and although I am from Germany I am not hesitating to criticise Israel. But to discharge the states and organisations that threaten Israel by not even mentioning them in his essay is something I can not take for granted. Why should we deprive Israel of its right of existing on the one hand and on the other hand grant Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas or Syria – whose politics include the eradication of the jewish state – their retreat from assuming liability?? We cannot keep our eyes fixed only on one party in this inhuman altercation. If we condemn Israel we also have to condemn their opponents.
Tez
Thank you, Tez. Your view stands in opposition to the one-sided pronouncements I have seen here.
Regarding Gaarder’s article, moving through history over 4000 years as he does, it is clear that he is not a historian. He may even lack the sensitivity to nuance that writers ought to have.
Regarding the Exodus from Egypt, I believe it is the first anti-war message expressed in the world. The Egyptians failed in their attempts to destroy the nascent Jewish nation due to their own hubris. The Jews simply stood back and were saved by whatever forces you believe in. That they sang praises for being saved is human. However, there was no war, just victory in the face of oppression.
Regarding an “eye for an eye” Gaarder’s Christian interpretation is self-serving. The Talmud interprets this matter at length and in detail as referring to monetary payment only. The need to interpret it as reflecting Jewish propensity is anti-Semitic, since it is an incorrect understanding whose correct interpretation could easily have been known.
Regarding the current crisis that has caused civilian casualties on both sides, Israel’s strength is her only deterrent to destruction. Gaarder requires greater sensitivity to the needs of the Jews to survive. One point he needs to understand is universal. If you challenge anyone’s right to survive, you are asking for trouble. Gaarder’s threat is intellectual and literary, so he should be answered in that vein. However, Hamas, Hizb’Allah, Syria and Iran challenge Israel’s right to exist in very physical terms. They need to be answered in those terms. Gaarder’s great feeling for the children and women of Lebanon in humanitarian terms is justified, (though not tempered by Hizb’Allah’s reprehensible use of human shields), but not in strategic terms. Israel’s failure to dislodge Hizb’Allah at this time ensures that Gaarder or his European neighbors or the children of Europe will have to face the same challenge in the future as Israel now. We shall see how he faces the challenge when he stands in Israel’s shoes. Welcome to Eurabia.
.
Israel’s image is in tatters everywhere but the USA. In an essay published today, Jostein Gaarder, author of the global bestseller Sophie’s World, excoriates Israel in the style of the Book of Amos. It will probably appear in several European newspapers soon, but an unofficial translation to English is here.
Though I have reservations about some of his rhetoric, Gaarder’s condemnation is indicative of the mood throughout much of Europe.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
.
At first glance I didn’t notice the intro pointing out Gaarder was writing in the style of Amos, an eight-century B.C. prophet and the eponymous author of a book in the Hebrew scriptures
(I had to fight the impulse to write “Old Testament” there – the automatic, mostly unnoticed Christian bias built into my patterns of speech and thought).
Understanding the form alters my perception of the piece. My initial reaction was positive in terms of several specific points and certain poetic imagery – but at the same time I was put off by the imperious “we” and the overall tone
… so though my immediate reaction to the opening paragraphs was positive (the concept of “God’s Chosen People” provides no moral justification for a war or an occupation in the contemporary world), I noticed myself getting restless towards the end, uncomfortable with some of the rhetoric which I feared would shut down consideration of the very valid main points of the piece among American readers.
On a second read I approached Gaarder’s essay more as literature than as commentary, and found myself warming to his thoughts.
Gaarder ably expresses a powerful sentiment – but his appeal to morality still misses … which I suspect might be a fault of translation.
Political columns, full of facts and figures and opinions, are perhaps easier to quickly translate – but literature – and that’s what this essay is, replete with poetic imagery and literary devices – takes time to translate. It’s far easier to translate words literally than to convey the rhythm and nuances of a metaphorical image. One must wallow in the author’s thought, recognize his patterns, understand the references and find suitable imagery for conveying the same metaphorical possibilities in a foreign tongue
… and it just doesn’t seem the translator had the time or luxury to “wallow” …
I don’t find often find myself hankering to read Danish, yet I sense there is something missing in the English version, a hint of greater depth – but only a hint.
There is still some restlessness on my part, some unease as I work my way through it – which might not be the author’s fault, but simply me wrestling with my own projections, my own cultural biases … rational as I try to be, I note a tickle in the back of my brain, a pinprick of guilt at breaking a deeply embedded taboo
… facts be damned, it just doesn’t feel right to criticize Israel …
If that’s my reaction – and I’m very open to the sentiments Gaarder expresses and the facts behind them – I imagine the typical reaction among Americans would be even more negative.
● PBS – Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
I get uncomfortable when every time a discussion of Israel comes up and any criticism of the STATE OF ISRAEL leads to a charge of anti-semitism. Its like if you criticize Israel, you are somehow joining in the long tradition that has oppressed Jews. I can be very sympathetic to the oppression, but we still need to maintain the ability to criticize a government.
And my question is, everyone always talks about Hezbollah using civilians/children as human sheilds. Does anyone have proof of that. This might just be my ignorance, so I’d like to know. What I have heard of Hezbollah reminds me of the work of the Black Panthers in the US. I might not agree with all of their tatics, but I can understand them. Please help educate me if I am wrong.
My feeling is that Hizbollah’s use of children as human shields is simply a sick urban legend-or more rightly propaganda of the most sickening kind…and no I have no proof of that one way or the other.
It is amazing isn’t it that any criticism of Israel-no matter how tiny that criticism may be always, always leads to charges of anti-semitism…
.
We dropped leaflets, giving you a few hours to leave the town or village. From x hours, you will be considered a lawful target as a Hizbollah ‘terrorist’.
Similar to the Katrina disaster, the poor, elderly and persons with no means of transportation were left behind.
Israeli surveillance by Apache attack helicopters or drones would observe the firing of rockets heading into northern Israel. The house or appartment building person(s) seek to hide would become a target for a precision bombardment, so-called surgical strike. No one would know for sure whether innocent civilians had sought refuge in the same appartment building.
The UN have observed Hezbollah fighters and officials preventing civilians from leaving Southern Lebanon.
Aid convoys with relief supplies from Beirut and UN convoys moving civilians out of the war zone, need authorization from both sides, Hezbollah and the IDF, before a safe journey could be expected.
Israel air strike hits Lebanon convoy, 7 dead
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Wow, I wake up today to all sorts of goings on to do with this diary and the more widespread knowledge of it…which is great.
I recommended this diary when you first posted it Sirocco but hadn’t left a comment. Mostly because my reading of it seemed very much in agreement with what was written.
That said due to the apparent big to-do over this essay I had to reread it because apparently I could be the stupidest person alive after reading many peoples comments and what they believe the author actually said. Really is amazing how two people can read an article and come away with diametrically opposed viewpoints on what they believe was written.
My overall impression was that the author was actually writing with an almost underlying sadness that the humanity of all people in this continuing conflict/war were losing their humanity…and also that he never said he wanted to get rid of Israel..to the contrary he specifically stated he believes Israel has the right to exist at the 1948 borders period…that’s right there in black and white.
I went to your blog and read the authors newest essay and followed some of the links also…all interesting reading.
I am uncomfortable with this piece.
Why not just say that while one is entitled to appropriate self-defense, both sides have acted inappropriately and that the killing should stop?
Simple, and without offense.
Spot on, boran2.
.
Must be interesting … BBC World Radio
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
A question to Gaarder:
Is a Palestinian or a Lebanese child more worth than a child of Darfur?
It is YOU who gives a human life more or less worth in singling out “only” Libanese children.
If killed by a Jew (who didn’t want to kill a child, whereas the Hizbollah uses the civilian population as human shields) a human life’s worth is automatically multiplicated by ten or hundred; and the children in Darfur never existed.
.
Your question has been covered by Sirocco above, in discussion with citizen k, you can find all info under Google: Norway Relief Aid to Darfur
● Questions Recruitment of Norwegians to Israeli Defence Forces
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Yes, but does Gaarder still recognize the State of Sudan?
.
West agrees Sudan is a rogue state.
Seriously, your point is well taken. When Secretary of State Colin Powell left, the word genocide and Darfur has not been pronounced.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY