Re: <nettime> Statement by Miriam Margolyes on Israels conduct of the war in Gaza

[Dan S Wang via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

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Greetings to All,

Thank you for the discussion, and Patrice for forwarding the inspiring (and disheartening) elder Miriam Margolyes's statement. Thank you to Joe--I truly believe that Israel will not change without strong dissenting voices from within. It is the principled courage of the anti-occupation Israelis who will turn the tide, and in the process save their own country from its current headlong rush towards complete failure. All of us from outside are the supporting act.

Just a few tangential points.

One, having recently read Rashid Khalidi's excellent primer The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, I was struck by A) Khalidi's unflinching criticism of Palestinian political leadership over the decades. But not in the register of typical American and Israeli criticism emphasizing corruption (though there is some of that, too). Khalidi's consistent disappointment is mostly rooted in what he sees as the provincialism of Palestinian leadership, their inability to imagine political cultures outside their own. According to Khalidi--as respected and public a Palestinian partisan as there can be nowadays--none, including today's Fatah and Hamas, have ever understood the war of public opinion, particularly in the all-important US context. And, especially, as compared to the sophistication and consistency of the Israeli outreach, lobbying, and education campaigns, the Palestinian leadership has been nothing but out maneuvered and out played, lots of times without having realized it.

In Khalidi's estimation, Palestinian leadership is a tale of one self-inflicted failure after another. So: "equally" responsible?? Not so sure about that, but certainly many key moments could have gone less badly for the Palestinians had the leadership understood the stakes better than their limited view allowed. See the book for specifics, I won't recount it all here.

And B) by about a third of the way through the book, I also noted that for his arguments and sources Khalidi relies on a very good many Israeli authors and scholars, most all of them Jews. Which kinda reinforces my point above--that Israeli society itself is divided, that many intellectuals and researchers working inside Israel are helping the cause of reforming and/or undoing the Zionist tunnel-vision of land grabs and displacement, with both the credibility of full Israeli citizenship, Jewish identification, and, most significantly, the privileged view from inside (which of course is at the same time distorting, but nonetheless essential to a resistance of global distribution).

Finally, on this matter of "Hitler winning." In my earlier years of studying the conflict, I remember well this question being raised by various post-Holocaust Jewish thinkers: could Hitler "win" without having completed the Nazi Final Solution, and moreover having lost WW II? And what would such a victory look like?

In the Cunning of History, Richard L. Rubenstein argued that Hitler "merely" normalized yet another variety, specifically a technocratic one, of mass targeted violence, a sordid portfolio that includes earlier episodes of colonial genocides, slavery, etc. With the continuation of mass death of innocents after WW II, and, further, the persistence of nuclear holocaust--and now we can cheerfully add the various collapse scenarios of climate chaos--in a sense, "Hitler won."

In Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist's Polemic, Hillel Halkin argues that his composite friend, typed as a Jew living as a fully participatory citizen in the mixed culture of the United States, needs to seriously consider his complicity with Hitler's intention to exterminate the Jews. According to Halkin, gassing bodies was one way to do that; voluntary assimilation and distance from an historical homeland is another.

Obviously there are lots of problems with both of the above arguments, particularly Halkin's. But my point is this: the paranoia about the extirpation of a people lives deep in Jewish thinking after the Holocaust, to point where every crisis and conflict is informed by that question: Now that we survived Hitler (just barely?), how are we to guarantee our continued survival in an unfriendly world? Or even in a friendly one, given that Jews were participating positively in every level of German society at the time of Hitler's rise (which may explain Israel's fundamental distrust of even the United States)?

But Rubenstein and Halkin wrote their screeds in the 70s and early 80s. Conditions since Oslo, certainly since the 2nd Intifada, and definitely since Oct 7, have allowed into this well-worn trope of "Hitler winning" Margoyles's assertion (and of course she's far from the only one; the irony of role-reversals is obvious to most of us) that the Israelis have turned themselves into the Nazis, that they have CHOSEN to oppress as their forebears were oppressed.

I'm somewhat lost as to what we who wish for [Palestinian freedom / decoupling of US-Israeli policy / peace in general] can do with this updated take on the old trope. The facts on the ground are inarguable. On that score, thousands of slaughtered children, hundreds and hundreds orphaned, are only the beginning. As a match for any of history's earlier cruelty, it may be only a matter of scale, and even there the comparisons are narrowing with each passing day.

Motivated by Khalidi's sourcing from Israeli writers, I'm doing some reading about Israeli society. I picked up A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz, a memoir of growing up in Jerusalem, beginning with the years just prior to statehood. In it Oz recounts his family's journey from Central Europe to Jerusalem in the early 20s. One of the towns, I forget the name of it, no place I'd ever heard of--it's in the first quarter of the book, too lazy to go look it up--a waystation for his immediate family, but a place of permanent residence for some 30k Jews and a regional center for Jewish life, was targeted in a Czech or Polish or Hungarian pogrom (can't remember, his family passed through a number of countries), and about 25k of the towns inhabitants were murdered in a few days' time. This was BEFORE the rise of the German Nazis--Germany was considered the safe haven. Then Oz casually relates that the surviving 5k Jews, no doubt unbelievably traumatized, were slaughtered in a second assault a year or so later. These are the ghosts we're up against.

I'm happy for little in this unsettled world, but as we Americans were reminded by daytime darkness on Monday, we're nonetheless stuck together on this warming sphere hurtling through outer space. Happy to be here with all of you.

Best regards,

Dan W.



On Thursday, April 11th, 2024 at 12:58 PM, Joseph Rabie via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

> Dear Allen,
>
> A long, long time ago, when I was younger and less foolish than I am now, I stood outside Menahem Begin's Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem, and as loudly as I could, I voiced my opinion on him and his politics. It was late at night and I was probably stoned. The police guarding the place just glared at me. Those were different times.
>
> So surprise, Allen, I actually do know who Menahem Begin was, and what he represented (Trick question: Who signed a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel?), and I certainly do not need you Leftsplaining me that “Perhaps some historical research might be worth your time and improve your understanding of the current conflict.”
>
> If you look through the Nettime archives at my previous posts, you will see that I have always taken an uncompromising position insofar as the acts of the Israeli government are concerned. Simply, unlike you, I consider that the Palestinians are equally responsible for the current situation. And that it is patronising to treat them as helpless victims. But then, (stupid me), how do I not see that the malevolent, colonialist, fascist (almost forgot that one) Zionist entity is at the root of all the shit that's gone down? I have even heard claims that Jesus was Palestinian, that it was the Zionists who nailed him to the cross.
>
> What I find so tiresome with Keith's, and your, and other peoples’ positions, is that you see things in such simplistic, Manichean terms. One has the impression that your branch of the left lacks the intellectual acuity required to engage with complex issues.
>
> Indeed, it reminds of the sheep in Orwell’s Animal Farm: “Four legs good, two legs bad.”
>
> Joe.
>
>
> > Le 11 avr. 2024 à 18:43, allan siegel via nettime-l nettime-l@lists.nettime.org a écrit :
> >
> > Hello Joseph,
> > Perhaps you should recall that Begin was a leader in the Irgun - a lifelong dedicated Zionist - and later a Prime Minister of Israel. To suggest that because there is no specifically Zionist party is disingenuous especially when the most fascistic aspects of Zionist ideology are guiding the objectives of the war in Gaza.
> > Furthermore, what precisely does co-existence mean when the leaders of Israel deny the existence of Palestinians as a viable political entity? Amply reinforced by Israel’s enablers in Washington & the UK.
> >
> > Did the allies look for co-existence with Hitler or Mussolini?
> >
> > Perhaps some historical research might be worth your time and improve your understanding of the current conflict.
> >
> > Allan

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