December 19, 2011
THE DEHUMANIZING NATURE OF FALSE ACCUSATIONS OF ANTI-SEMITISM
Perhaps the most dominating and confusing accusation emanating from one side of the Israel-Palestine debate is that virtually anyone who criticizes Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people hates Israel and is, ipso facto, an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew.
The libel case that Canadian immigration attorney Ed Corrigan has had to launch to defend himself against a slanderous accusation of antisemitism is a case in point.
What is it about criticism of Israel that provokes such an extreme reaction?
After all, anyone with the decency to find out what sparks the criticism would learn that the vast majority of critics, including prominent Israelis and other members of the Jewish community, are motivated not by hatred but by justice; and that their intention is not to harm the state of Israel but to prevent the state of Israel from harming Palestinians.
So where is the hatred? The hatred is in the minds of those who are afraid to ask why someone is critical of Israel. Rather than doing honest research to refute or confirm the criticism, the accuser panders to his feelings of fear, confusion and anger, all of which are animated by unexamined beliefs and images within his own mind. This mind colors his perception so that he sees the world in terms of personal victimhood versus the world’s hostility.
Because he is unconscious of this deeper thought process, the accuser can only project his perception onto the world and then assume that the world he sees proves the reality of his perception. He creates his own suffering and then scapegoats the world (in this case Palestinians and their sympathizers) for his suffering. Triggered through denial, this thought process attributes to Palestinians and their sympathizers the accuser’s own hatred.
In other words, the accuser makes the unknown “other” responsible for, or the repository of, his unresolved pain. He objectifies the other and rejects his humanity. Then he supports inhumane policies, which he justifies under the guise of Israel and the Jewish people’s security. In so doing, he brings the world’s anger down upon Israel which, in turn, reinforces and perpetuates the cycle of perceived victimhood.
The real conflict, then, is an inner one and can only be resolved through self-reflection or inquiry into the beliefs and images the accuser takes for granted that form a large part of his personal and collective identity. Without inquiring into his beliefs and images, or indoctrination, he will not be able to integrate the hard-to-believe but inescapable awareness of Israel’s treatment of non-Jews with unquestioned loyalty to the Jewish state. One consideration acknowledges Israel’s dark side. The other denies the dark side exists.
If the accuser can find the courage to commit to the truth – to the best of his ability – and take advantage of the clarifying tools of research and inquiry, he will inevitably apprehend the astonishing reality that, as regards Israel-Palestine, criticism of Israel has never been his principal concern. In fact, he has never defended Israel, at least the Israel that actually exists.
What he has always defended is an idealistic image of Israel that he unconsciously projects or superimposes upon the Israel that actually exists. This projection enables him to deny painful revelations that he would otherwise discover about Israel and about himself if only he would look at Israel and the world without the errant influence of an unexamined, or indoctrinated, mind.
The fruits of the accuser’s sincere efforts will be the transformation of fear into compassion and confusion into clarity. He will know that no behavior occurs in a vacuum and that each of us is responsible for the suffering in the world. The unnecessary and self-created boundaries of his mind will dissolve, the intelligence of his heart will awaken and he will recognize his connection to all of humankind. Finally, he will understand that peace must first manifest within his inner world before he can see its manifestation in the outer world.
Richard Forer is author of Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion –A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict.
Book Review
Breakthrough-A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict
by Richard Forer
byH Scott ProstermanFollow
Demosthenes, a Greek said, “All Greeks are liars.” Prosterman, a Jew said, “Many Jews are big phonies.” Prosterman cited Jewish Republicans who abandoned the Civil Rights and progressive movements for Reagan, and others who are fervent civil rights advocates EXCEPT when it comes to the Palestinians.
Roger Cohen noted in his New York Times column, ‘We have a new verb, “to Goldstone.” Its meaning: To make a finding, and then partially retract it for uncertain motive.”
Jimmy Carter is the best friend Israel ever had:” Indeed, no other American president has done as much to protect Israel and ensure its security.
“The condemnation of Israel is not a product of anti-Semitism. Rather, the behavior that elicited the condemnation fans the flames of anti-Semitism worldwide.”
“If we automatically bring up the Holocaust to defend the actions of the Jewish state, we will be guilty of exploiting its horrors in order to promote selfish political manipulation.”
Demosthenes, a Greek said, “All Greeks are liars.” Prosterman, a Jew said, “Many Jews are big phonies.” He’s careful not to overly-generalize or self-incriminate, as Demosthenes did. When this was presented to Steve Bhaerman (who assumes the guise of comic alter ego Swami Beyondananda,) he asked why. Prosterman cited Jewish Republicans who abandoned the Civil Rights and progressive movements for Reagan, and others who are fervent civil rights advocates EXCEPT when it comes to the Palestinians. The Great Swami replied, “The issue boils down to three things: fear, tribalism and denial. Jewish exceptionalism. Victimhood makes you an exceptional victimizer.” Then he recommended a book.
Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion - A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict, is an accounting of Richard Forer’s journey from unconditional defender of Israel, to thoughtful advocate of human rights for all. His chapter on Gaza gives exhaustive discussion of the Goldstone Report, which is a hot topic because of Richard Goldstone’s volte face in a recent Washington Post op-ed. Roger Cohen noted in his New York Times column, ‘We have a new verb, “to Goldstone.” Its meaning: To make a finding, and then partially retract it for uncertain motive.” The initial Goldstone Report was equally critical of the IDF and Hamas for their excesses, and spared no candor in calling out Israel for the unnecessary deaths of 1,400 people, mostly civilians, over 22 days in 2008-09. One group of “military” casualties turned out to be traffic cops who had just graduated.
While the book contains flaws, it is impeccably researched and references many unimpeachable sources. Among them are Israeli government and military officials, highly placed academic sources, and the world’s prominent human rights organizations. Then there is the Torah and Talmud, along with Maimonides. Other sources include former Israeli political and military leaders such as Abba Eban, David Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan, who took a more generous view of Palestinian rights in their later years. Also cited are human rights organizations such as the International Red Cross, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, and Israeli human rights groups composed of former Israeli soldiers.
President Jimmy Carter and Professor Norman Finkelstein have both been vilified by the American Zionist community for their candid assessments of the historical and current political dynamics. Forer presents thorough reviews of Carter’s Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, and Finkelstein’s Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. Indeed, Finkelstein’s soul-searching tome was the primary impetus for Forer’s own “transformation.”
Carter’s book elicited great wrath from the Zionist community for its candor, though Forer reminds us, “Jimmy Carter is the best friend Israel ever had:” Indeed, no other American president has done as much to protect Israel and ensure its security. The former President has been vilified by Abraham Foxman for calling out the inconvenient realities of Israeli political and military dynamics. Forer states in the chapter devoted to their dialogue, “Foxman is projecting what is not true because it serves his purpose of diverting attention away from the evidence in Carter‘s book.” Carter’s book is written by a statesman who not only initiated the Camp David Agreements, but also did his homework on all relevant historical accountings and documents. Forer also does his due diligence, with very few deficiencies.
There is an absence of early historical research. It would have been nice to see a preface with an accounting of the break up of the Ottoman Empire and its consequences. The current mess can be attributed to the British making two separate agreements on the same piece of real estate during World War I. Namely, the Balfour Declaration (1917) which stated the British intent to support a “Jewish Homeland” in Palestine, was preceded by two years by the McMahon Correspondence.
This was a series of cables and letters between the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon and Sharif Hussein ibn Ali of Mecca, which laid the framework for an independent Arab country in Palestine. It was the Arabs’ reward for coming to the aid of Great Britain against the Ottoman Empire and Germany in World War I. Ultimately, the Crown determined that the Jews would make better guardians of the Straights of the Suez, to better ensure the free flow of global commerce, and that determined policy. But the Arabs have always had a valid political claim to a Palestinian homeland since the San Remo Conference in 1920, aside from their families’ presence there for centuries.
A few chapters briefly touch on the early organic nature of the Zionist movement, which began in the late 19th Century. Arabs and Jews lived harmoniously in Israel/Palestine through the early 20th Century, until the political Zionist movement began to send more Jews to Palestine than could be absorbed by the primitive infrastructure at the time. The Shaw Commission of 1930, in its report on the 1929 riots, and the Peel Commission of 1937 both came to the same conclusion as Winston Churchill: that Jews and Arabs had lived in relative accord until a Jewish movement that originated in Europe implanted itself in Palestine, intent on turning the land into a Jewish state.
Forer makes a number of dramatic arguments: “The condemnation of Israel is not a product of anti-Semitism. Rather, the behavior that elicited the condemnation fans the flames of anti-Semitism worldwide.” He also deconstructs the phrase, “self-hating Jew”: “The use of the label ‘self-hating Jew’ is a cop-out. This near automatic reflex is the resource of someone who is too lazy and/or obstinately unwilling to try to understand a point of view that challenges his own beliefs and assumptions. People who say this are, in fact, victims, but not of anti-Semitism. They are victims of an unexamined mind, which has no tolerance for negative images of Israel.”
Finkelstein’s book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, was a critique of Alan Dershowitz’s A Case for Israel; and elicited a campaign of academic terrorism by Dershowitz. He noted that Dershowitz relied heavily on Joan Peters discredited hoax, From Time Immemorial. Other critiques have stated that Dershowitz actually lifted some passages and sources from that book without verifying the substance or credibility of those sources. Forer argues, “Dershowitz knowingly ignores his main historical source‘s account of the intentions of David Ben-Gurion and the Zionist movement regarding the division of Palestine so that he can promote his own version of history.” In retaliation for calling that out, Dershowitz initiated a defamation campaign against Finkelstein in an effort to deny him tenure at DePaul University in 2007, which was successful. Ironically, the Peters book was a source of arguments and comfort for Forer prior to his “transformation.”
Forer grew up wedded to the gospel of Zionism, as presented in most American synagogues’ religious schools. Though not personally observant, he was an unconditional defender of Israel until recent years. He traces his growth through exposure to books and documents that he began to read with great reluctance and skepticism. Beyond Chutzpah was literally an epiphany for Forer, who had been a member of AIPAC.
One of the most dramatic sources is an Israeli woman named Leah, who is a former member of Meir Kahane’s Kach Party, and other right-wing Zionist organizations. Deir Yassin was a Palestinian village that suffered a massacre in 1948, and became the Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Har Nof. Kach held a Purim Carnival there, and the experience was the beginning of Leah’s transformation. She was disturbed to hear them talking disrespectfully about Yitzhak Rabin, who had just been assassinated, and finally left the group when hearing children sing, “Death to the Arabs” to the tune of the Israeli folk-song Am Yisrael, Chai. She said, “If I hadn‘t known these people were Jews I would have thought they were Nazis. My husband and I just looked at each other and said: ―This isn‘t normal. . . That was the last time I attended one of their events.”
Leah recounts that during the 2nd Intifada, she attended an interfaith service at the Western Wall with Jews, Muslims and Christians, and was inspired that, “One of the things I had learned in the Chabad community, whose goal is to bring the Messiah, was that if you want the Messiah bad enough you should act as if he is already here. Well this was it, wasn‘t it? To see Muslims, Jews and Christians praying together to one God and not fighting was remarkable.” She added, “Now there is a theory going around that Palestinians were originally Jews who always lived on the land and converted to Islam in the Seventh Century. Even Orthodox Jews are talking about this.”
Forer is clear that many of Israel’s policies and actions towards the Palestinians are a tragic anathema to Judaism. He also takes strong issue with the compulsion to reference the Holocaust whenever Israel is criticized for policy abuses: “If we automatically bring up the Holocaust to defend the actions of the Jewish state, we will be guilty of exploiting its horrors in order to promote selfish political manipulation.” He takes Holocaust deniers to task, while also pointing out, “The Holocaust is one of the most documented events in human history. Like him (Iranian President Ahmadinejad), deniers of the Palestinian tragedy refuse to examine the available documentation. How are they any less ignorant?” Manachem Begin compulsively referred to the Holocaust whenever anyone questioned the settlement expansions he began in the late 1970’s, and which remain the most provocative element obstructing any real peace and security for either side.
Myths are exposed and debunked including the one about how Islam preaches a doctrinal hatred of Judaism: “If it is true that Arabs have an inborn hatred of Jews, how were Sephardic Jews able to find refuge in North Africa, Turkey and other Muslim lands during the Spanish Inquisition?” Also the Paris Mosque was responsible for saving at least 1,700 Jewish children during the Holocaust.
The Israeli journalist Amos Oz dramatizes how Arabs and Jews are, “Two victims of the same oppressor. Europe – which colonized the Arab world, exploited it, humiliated it, trampled upon its culture, controlled it and used it as an imperialistic playground – is the same Europe that discriminated against the Jews, persecuted them, harassed them, and finally, mass-murdered them in an unprecedented crime of genocide.”
Breakthrough is an appealing and provocative read for anyone who has a strong feeling about Israel. It is natural for Jews to react with forceful denial or avoidance when they read about Israeli settlers and troops abusing Palestinians. To realize that people are being beaten up, and having their homes and crops bulldozed in the name of Zionism (as an extension of Judaism) is a horrible thought to confront and comprehend. It is a painful and disturbing realization for any Jew who has always believed that Israel is a blameless victim, to learn that the IDF is no more merciful than General Sherman was in Georgia. Victimization has been overplayed - It has become a self-defeating and self-fulfilling prophecy. As the author noted, “What is a friend for if not to speak the truth when he sees someone he cares for acting irresponsibly and self-destructively?” Demosthenes lived in a more simple time. Swami Beyondananda may have summarized it best that exceptional victimhood makes for exceptional victimizers. That hand has been overplayed.
H. Scott Prosterman
H. Scott Prosterman is a writer in Berkeley, and holds an M.A. from the University of Michigan, Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He publishes commentary and analysis on various issues related to the Middle East.
Interview with Richard Forer - Israel-Palestine Conflict
Richard Forer, author of "Breakthrough: Transforming Fear Into Compassion - A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict", being interviewed by Jack Dresser of the al-Nakba Awareness Project, discusses anti-Semitism, the roots and history of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and the differences in opinion between the "pro-Israeli" and pro-Palestinian positions.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmGDVb1EkTA[/youtube]
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The Book
To my knowledge, there has never been a book that takes on the daunting challenge of describing and deconstructing the unbelievably complex emotional and intellectual journey from prejudice to compassion on this issue… until now!
– Anna Baltzer, from the Foreword
Breakthrough is a powerful, disturbing, enlightening must-read for anyone who cares about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and knows the present trajectory is a tragic cul-de-sac. Forer eloquently tells the story of the difficult but ultimately life-affirming process of awakening to the suffering of the Other. Read this book if you have the courage to acquire the wisdom to make the leap of empathy required to realize a new politics of peace and reconciliation.
– Rabbi Irwin Kula, Author of Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life.
Cutting Through The Confusion About Israel/Palestine
By Richard Forer
20 June, 2010
Countercurrents.org
[A letter I wrote to a college student who had written the Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel asking the group to remove a billboard that said "Tell Congress. Stop Killing Children. No More Military Aid to Israel." The billboard was erected in Albuquerque in the Spring of 2009 after the Gaza catastrophe. I was the spokesperson.]
Hi J,
Thank you for your letter. First, I assume you are Jewish. Is that correct? Before I get into the specifics of your letter I want to talk about a few things you might find interesting. I do so because everyone involved in the Israel-Palestine issue has the potential to change the world from an arena of Us against Them into one of peace and respect. But that requires undeviating self-honesty, which leads to compassion, clarity and understanding. Most people do not take up the challenge of looking deeply within for fear of what they might find. They revert to the safety of their presumed identity and the beliefs and images that make up and reinforce their identity. Attachment to a limited or exclusive identity always carries with it the consciousness of Us against Them. The consciousness of Us against Them requires that there be unending conflict.
Perhaps you have it within yourself to look beyond what you currently see as all sides of the issue. I hope so because the lives of those who suffer on either side of the conflict depend upon people like you. Peace is only possible when we care for people on both sides equally. We do not have to like the other but we have to recognize that he is just as entitled to self-determination as us, that he has the same human needs for respect and dignity as do we. We also have to begin to understand and ask why the other acts as he does. Does his motivation arise in a vacuum or does it arise in relationship to our own behavior. Have we played roles in inciting his behavior? Until we take responsibility for the parts we play in the drama of human suffering and as it relates to the Israel-Palestine conflict, peace has no chance; and the people we claim to care about will continue to suffer and die, now and into the bloody future, in Israel, in Palestine and throughout the world. They will die and suffer because our true goal is not their well being; our true goal is to maintain our presumed identity; it is to confirm the beliefs and images that we incorrectly associate with our personal and collective identity.
As long as we believe in a world of Us against Them we will see a world of Us against Them. Our emotions, our attitudes toward others, the way we interpret events, what we notice and what we don’t notice will mirror our world view, thereby confirming and reinforcing it. In short, individually and collectively, we create the world we live in. Thus, the great struggle all of us must take on, if we truly want peace and respect between peoples, is to transform our consciousness from Us against Them to one of tolerance and understanding.
To be honest your letter can only fully be answered with a comprehensive look at the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The book I have completed would be a good reply but that is beyond the scope of our discussion for now. Obviously you are very passionate and concerned about this situation. With that in mind I have included at the end of this letter a list of some well-researched books on the subject. Most of these writers have come to similar conclusions. Most of them are Jewish. Cypel and Hirst are famous journalists from France and England respectively. Cypel lived in Israel for ten years and his father was a Zionist leader. Ben-Ami, a historian and former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Internal Security, was Barak’s chief negotiator at Camp David. Pappe, Shlaim, Segev and Morris are all famous Israeli historians and among the group known as “new” or “revisionist” historians because of their access to the primary archives and their refutation of common Zionist myths. Reinhart and Kimmerling were two of the most renowned and courageous sociologist/historians in Israeli academia. King is an expert on collective non-violent action who has worked with Martin Luther King (no relation) and Jimmy Carter. Swisher was a VIP security guard at the Camp David talks in 2000. He interviewed many of the participants. Baltzer, an American, is one of the most compassionate people I have ever had the honor to meet. She is brilliant, fair and honest. She cares about Israelis as well as Palestinians.
And even though he is particularly controversial, Norman Finkelstein, despite his blunt critique of Israel’s defenders, is included because of his genius and meticulous research. You can watch him on YouTube. I researched a great deal of the claims he makes by reviewing his sources. In every case he checks out perfectly. I saw no distortion, obfuscation or deceit. Additionally, one cannot ignore the sources he cites. Truthfully, if one wants to criticize Israel, deceit is unnecessary. The words and confessions of Israeli leaders are more than enough.
Again, before I respond to the points you make about Gaza, let me tell you a little about me. I was born a few months before Israel declared its statehood. Both of my parents were first generation Americans. My mother lost 17 relatives in the Holocaust. My father and his family never discussed anything about that horror. My younger brother is president of one of the largest Jewish congregations on the east coast. My identical twin brother is an ultra-Orthodox Jew who lived for a few years in Israel. Both of his daughters are married with children and live in Jerusalem. Some of their friends are militant Jews from Hebron and other messianic communities, who believe that the sixth commandment, which they translate as “Thou shalt not commit murder,” cannot be violated by killing any Arab, since Arabs are inherently predisposed to want to murder Jews; and Arabs are not human anyway. One of my brother’s sons recently served in the IDF. I have a friend who lives in Ma'ale Adumim, in occupied territory outside of Jerusalem. She was a member of Kach (Meir Kahane's group) for 15 years. She now holds Palestinian-Israeli dialogue groups and prefers a one-state solution.
I was extremely "pro-Israel" my entire lifetime. I was utterly supportive of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006. I joined AIPAC and donated to the Jewish Federation. Midway through the war in Lebanon, after arguments with close friends who were critical of Israel, I decided to actually engage myself in a real study of the Israel-Arab conflict. My purpose was to alleviate my suffering and to find more historical arguments to refute the claims my friends were making. Up to that point in time I had only read Joan Peters’ highly influential book From Time Immemorial, a book that I learned has been universally debunked and called a “hoax,” “phony,” “worthless,” “recycled Zionist propaganda,” “previously modified and discredited Zionist propaganda,” etc. by scholars from Israel, Europe, the U.S. and the Jewish World Congress. I had used Peters’ research to justify my claim that there never were a Palestinian people; that Israel had always treated the so-called Palestinians kindly and had always bent over backwards for peace.
During my research that began in the midst of the Second Lebanon War I chose to study Jewish scholars only, knowing that if I studied the subject from the perspective of any Arab or Muslim scholar I would suspect bias. My study became a full-time and daily practice to this very day. As mentioned above, many of the scholars I studied had access to the most primary of sources, among them the Israeli state, IDF, Ben-Gurion, Haganah, Palmach, and Central Zionist archives. I read the arguments of many Israeli officials, including a number of heads of Shin Bet (Israel’s Internal Security Agency) and I read numerous respected international publications (none Arab) including the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz and Yediot Aharonoth. I also studied the websites of the Israeli ministries of Defense, Internal Security, Foreign Affairs and Health as well as respected Human Rights organizations such as B'Tselem, HaMoked (Center for the Defense of the individual), Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, OCHA (The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), UNICEF, the International Red Cross, National Lawyers Guild, Goldstone Report, etc., all of which (including the two Israeli NGO’s) at one time I would have suspected of being anti-Semitic. I read from both sides of the divide including Alan Dershowitz, Aaron David Miller, Dennis Ross, Shlomo Ben-Ami, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and more. If I wasn't sure who a source was I checked it out. I discarded anyone whose claims I could not verify through further research and I discarded anyone who appeared anti-Semitic and/or seemed to be promoting their own prejudices without, at the very least, solid proof from reputable sources. I also randomly checked the sources of virtually all of the articles, books and publications I examined to make sure the author was not taking quotes out of context, was not distorting the real message his source was conveying or was not simply lying. All of the actual historians checked out well; and the human rights organizations, independent of each other are of a very similar mind. I doubt there has ever been a more solidly documented conflict in world history than the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Other than Peters the one author who was clearly distorting history for his own purposes is Alan Dershowitz. Anybody can debunk The Case for Israel. At one time Dershowitz was someone I admired but his spiteful and slanderous participation in the Israel-Palestine issue has only inflamed Zionists and given them apparent justification for their unjustified verbal attacks against not only Palestinians but honest and courageous scholars as well as Jimmy Carter, who is committed to a fair peace between both sides and without whose help in brilliantly brokering the Camp David Accords Israel would not exist in its present form. Remember, Dershowitz is not a historian; he is an attorney and his book is written with the mind of an attorney. He ignores and distorts evidence that could convict his client; and he obfuscates where obfuscation clouds any issue that could also convict his client. Unlike historians who start out with a hypothesis and do research to confirm, modify or deny the hypothesis, and who allow the facts to determine their conclusions, Dershowitz decides on the conclusions and then researches (or not) accordingly. To cite only two examples out of many, on page 184 he quotes Raji Sourani:
Even Raji Sourani, the director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza and a strident critic of Israel, says that he remains “constantly amazed by the high standards of the legal system [sic].” [Dershowitz cites Greg Myre, “Trial of Palestinian Leader Focuses Attention on Israeli Courts,” NY Times, May 5, 2003].
Here is the actual quote from the NY Times:
Despite his many frustrations with the Israeli courts, Mr. Sourani says he remains “constantly amazed by the high standards of the legal system.” “On many issues,” he said, “when the courts are dealing with purely Israeli questions, like gay rights, I admire their rulings. But when it comes to the Palestinians, these same people seem to be totally schizophrenic’” (emphases added).
On page 42 Dershowitz says the following without citing source material:
The developing clash between the Jews of Palestine, led by David Ben Gurion, and the Muslims, led by the uncompromising Jew-hater, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, was not over whether the Jews or Muslims would control all of Palestine . . . . Instead, it was – realistically viewed – whether the remainder of Palestine was to be given exclusively to the Muslims of Palestine or whether it would be fairly divided between the Jews and the Muslims of Palestine, each of whom effectively controlled certain areas.
What is particularly egregious about this quote, which is nothing more than Dershowitz’s own made-up version of history, is that his primary source, Benny Morris, shows that Ben-Gurion’s intention was the opposite of what Dershowitz attempts to deceive his reader into believing. Dershowitz quotes Morris’s Righteous Victims 59 times in the first 83 pages of his book. He quotes Morris a total of 87 times within the 244 pages of the book. Here is what Morris (who is a Zionist and believes that Palestinians are “psychopaths” and “serial killers”) says in Righteous Victims, p. 138:
[Weizmann and Ben-Gurion] saw partition as a stepping stone to further expansion and the eventual takeover of the whole of Palestine . . . . [Ben-Gurion] wrote to his son, Amos: ‘[A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning. . . . Our possession is important not only for itself . . . through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state . . . will serve as a very potent lever in our efforts to redeem the whole country.
The above passage by Ben-Gurion expresses a common intention that he and the majority of Zionists shared for more than a decade before 1948. Confirmation of this can be found in many books on the subject.
Even though I am going to disagree with you I appreciate the fact that you are doing your own research. One bit of advice that I think is important for everyone is: Do not believe a thing anyone tells you about this issue. Find out for yourself through the most objective research possible, as I did and be sure to do it out of a sense of integrity. Do not demean yourself by selectively researching the subject in order to prove to yourself that what you believe is accurate. Otherwise you will never discover your role in the suffering of others, nor will you discover how to alleviate that suffering. And you will never resolve your own anxiety and suffering. As a Jew you will always be left with the dilemma of victimization: Why does the world not understand my people and why is the world anti-Semitic juxtaposed against compelling evidence that is impossible for all but the willfully deaf and blind to ignore.
J, all that I am going to say here can be found in the many sources I list above or in sources available in my forthcoming book. I cannot divulge these readily available sources at this time because I want to protect the integrity of my book. I also want you to know that I have provided more than twenty Jewish supporters of Israel with evidence similar to what I provide in this letter. I have asked them to examine my evidence and to read one book to either confirm or deny the beliefs they take for granted. Not one has been willing to read a book. Not one was willing to challenge his beliefs. All claim concern for their Jewish brethren, yet none have compassion for the Palestinians. I try to impress upon them that as long as people continue to distort the history of the Israel-Palestine problem and character assassinate the Palestinian people – as has been going on for over sixty years – peace will not be possible. Their response is to ignore me or accuse me of being anti-Israeli. Denying reality, perpetuating an illegal and brutal occupation, character assassinating the people you need to make peace with is a road to more suffering, not just for the weak but also for the strong. Acknowledging the truth and working to restore integrity is indeed a road to peace. Who really cares about Israel and who really cares more about holding onto false and unexamined beliefs?
You start your letter with the statement that “we must look at both the Palestinian side and the Israeli side.” I agree but you have not really looked at the Palestinian side. Take, for example, the letter you quote from Tom Adam of Sderot. Yes, he has had to deal with fear of rocket attacks but why? Without condoning these rocket attacks we have to ask: Why have Palestinian groups launched these rockets? Has Israel incited them? Is the launching of these primitive rockets the only way they know to let the world know that their parents, grandparents and children are being oppressed from birth to death? What about Palestinian children, whose lives are at the mercy of the Israeli military? Many of these kids have seen their father’s beaten by Israeli soldiers, their mothers humiliated and called “whores,” have seen violence committed by Israeli soldiers or settlers on a regular basis, yearn for a glass of uncontaminated drinking water, are malnourished, maimed, deaf, blind, paraplegic, amputees, have endured Israeli sonic booms that cause all kinds of trauma including bedwetting, nausea, miscarriages, nosebleeds, anxiety, muscle spasms, temporary loss of hearing, heart and breathing problems. These Palestinian children are the lucky ones because they are not dead, the victims of rockets, bullets, white phosphorus and Israel’s common refusal to allow medical supplies into Gaza. Also, you should know that Israel fortified public buildings and constructed shelters to protect its Jewish population in the line of rocket attacks. You should also know that Israel did nothing to protect its Palestinian-Israeli citizens in their villages in the line of these same attacks.
You say the $30 Billion Coalition “depicts Israel as the perpetrator and sole cause of the atrocities committed during Operation Cast Lead.” I do not agree that the Coalition depicts Israel as the “sole cause of the atrocities,” the vast majority of which were in fact perpetrated by Israel. Rather they see Israel as the primary cause. Israel, as military and civil and illegal occupier, whose force is thousands of time more powerful than the Palestinians, is the party that has the power to make peace. What is particularly counter-productive is Israel’s refusal to abide by international conventions and laws, which are designed to bring about a degree of civility between peoples.
Speaking of peace I will mention only one example of Israel’s continual sabotage or ignoring of peace proposals since 1948. That is the 2002 Roadmap for Peace that the Palestinians accepted in full. Israel “accepted” but with fourteen prerequisites. Among them:
[C]essation of incitement against Israel, but the Roadmap cannot state that Israel must cease violence and incitement against the Palestinians.” “The waiver of any right of return of refugees to Israel; No discussion of Israeli settlement in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza or the status of the Palestinian Authority and its institutions in Jerusalem; No reference to the key provisions of U.N. Resolution 242.
Any objective research leads to the inescapable conclusion that Israel has never wanted peace; what Israel has always wanted is more territory. Israel’s greed has necessitated the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in order to grab their territory.
You may not be aware, for example, that Israel conspired with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in 1987 to create Hamas. Israel also armed Hamas. It wanted an alternative to the PLO. The First Intifada began in 1987. It was primarily nonviolent on the part of Palestinians (not Israelis). Israel arrested or deported most of the nonviolent leaders while allowing Sheik Yassin, Hamas’s spiritual leader, to distribute anti-Jewish hate literature calling for the violent overthrow of the Zionist government. It is far easier for Israel to portray the Palestinians as psychotic killers in order to divert the world’s attention from its strategy of land theft and ethnic cleansing and thereby deceive the world into believing the Israeli army is merely defending itself than it is to justify land theft and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians when their resistance is nonviolent.
You need to do a lot more research if you want to discover, as close as possible, the truth. Your research looks like it comes from either public Israeli government sources, which are notoriously unreliable, or Israeli apologists who have a record of justifying virtually anything Israel does. You also need to more carefully review the Goldstone Report. Israel committed terrible atrocities against civilians. Just because Hamas is also guilty of terror (to a significantly less extent than Israel) does not exonerate Israel of anything.
Israel has a National Information Directorate whose purpose is to coordinate the various sectors of the government apparatus into disseminating self-serving messages (propaganda) to the public. I do not trust the Israeli government to publicly admit to their crimes. To do so would hurt their image to Jewish supporters around the world who still believe in Israel’s “purity of arms” and it would implicate its leaders in war crimes for which they could eventually be prosecuted. Israel has always lied about its actions. Its history of lies is astonishing. I prefer to rely on sources that have nothing to gain and everything to lose with their admissions of honesty. Benny Morris:
For decades Ben-Gurion, and successive administrations after his, lied to the Israeli public about the post-1948 peace overtures and about Arab interest in a deal. The Arab leaders (with the possible exception of Abdullah) were presented, one and all, as a recalcitrant collection of warmongers, hell-bent on Israel’s destruction. The recent opening of the Israeli archives offers a far more complex picture. *
Akiva Eldar:
Without lies, it would be impossible to talk about peace with the Palestinians for 36 years while at the same time seizing more and more Palestinian land. Without lies, it would be impossible to claim that there is no partner for the road map, while at the same time injecting more and more money into outposts that the road map calls for dismantling. Without lies, it would be impossible to promise “painful concessions” in exchange for peace, while at the same time terming people who concluded such an agreement “traitors.”
Former Israeli Chief of Military Intelligence, General Yehoshafat Harkabi:
We must define our position and lay down basic principles for a settlement. Our demands should be moderate and balanced, and appear to be reasonable. But in fact they must involve such conditions as to ensure that the enemy rejects them. Then we should manoeuvre and allow him to define his own position, and reject a settlement on the basis of a compromise position. We should then publish his demands as embodying unreasonable extremism.
Moshe Dayan:
[The state of Israel] must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no – it must - invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge. . . . And above all - let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries, so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space.
You say that the “fundamental truth is that this is a two-way conflict.” The Palestinians could end the conflict by lying down and allowing Jewish settlers, with the support of their government, to overrun them, allow them to take the remainder of their agricultural lands, their villages and their homes, and drive them out of the country into generations of poverty and homelessness. Is that a real peace? The fundamental truth is that Zionism, and the lies perpetrated by its founders, leaders and supporters from the days of Theodore Herzl on, has initiated and perpetuated this conflict. If someone attacks you, tries to steal everything you own, abuses and humiliates your children and then tells the world that you are a liar who never owned the land in the first place would you accept that?” I do not know any person or country in the world who would passively accept the theft of their land. In 1948 Jews owned about 6% of the land of Palestine. They now control 78% of the land outright, which both the PLO and Hamas have de facto accepted as irreversible. Additionally Israel has illegally seized or controls about half of the West Bank. And Israel maintains land, sea and air control over the Gaza Strip. In short the Palestinians subsist on about 10% of their indigenous homeland.
Mostly Ashkenazi Jews fought the British and the Arabs for a Jewish National Home. Their connection to the land called Palestine was far less than the connection Palestinians had and still have to that same land. Yet I know of no Jewish supporter of Israel who does not applaud the acts of the Haganah, Irgun and even Stern Gang for their roles in establishing Israel. I know of no Jewish supporter of Israel who resents the uprising of Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto against their Nazi oppressors. In order to dissociate Palestinian resistance from Jewish resistance Israel supporters have to make up myths to portray the Palestinians as not a real people, as inherently anti-Semitic, as murderous and hateful, as not the real owners of the land, as a psychotic society etc., etc. These myths are designed to deceive all of us. They deprive Jews and others of their natural intelligence and compassion. Palestinian resistance, while mostly nonviolent, is similar to the resistance of any occupied people throughout history.
Israel did kill almost 400 children in Operation Cast Lead. I am not saying that Israel’s leaders said “let’s go kill Palestinian children” but there is no question that Israel’s leaders knew perfectly well that hundreds of Palestinian children and other civilians would die. Gaza is, after all, the third most densely populated place on earth, with 50% of its inhabitants less than sixteen years of age. Gaza has been a closed military area since 1967. Its citizens have nowhere to go to flee Israeli bombs and rockets. I suggest you look up Israel’s Dahiya Doctrine (or Strategy), which is designed to punish a civilian society for the actions of its leaders (a war crime). As General Gadi Eisenkot said after Lebanon:
We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases. This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.
Israel’s most eminent military strategist, Zeev Schiff said: “the Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously... the Army . . . has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets ... [but] purposely attacked civilian targets.” Former chief-of-staff Mordecai Gur, a moderate, admitted that Israel always targeted civilians (see Hirst). Rafael Eitan, chief-of-staff during Israel’s destruction of Lebanese society in the early 1980s was an extreme hawk who served for years as Ariel Sharon’s second-in-command. He was responsible for the murders of hundreds of Egyptian POWs at the end of the Suez War. He proposed that for every incident of stone throwing Israel should build ten settlements. He said “the only good Arab is a dead Arab.” He was founder of the extreme right ultra-nationalist Tzomet party (Movement for Zionist Renewal). Later in life he admitted to ordering his troops to brutalize prisoners and impose collective punishment upon Palestinians (both war crimes). He said: “I don’t believe in peace, because if they had done to us what we did to them we’d never agree to make peace.” Think of the implications of that statement. Yitzhak Rabin admitted that “ruling over another people has corrupted us.”
Operation Cast Lead was not “a reaction due to the Islamic Resistance Movement.” It was collective punishment designed to intimidate a people into rejecting Hamas; and it was a reestablishment of the deterrent force Israel relinquished to a certain extent in Lebanon. Ephraim Halevy, former head of Mossad and former National Security Director said: “If Israel’s goal were to remove the threat of rockets from the residents of southern Israel, opening the border crossings would have ensured such quiet for a generation.”
Yuval Diskin, head of Shin Bet, acknowledged that Hamas is willing to accept a long-term ceasefire on the 1967 borders.
Amira Hass reported in Haaretz: “The Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said on Saturday his government was willing to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.”
Jimmy Carter:
But one of the things that they [Hamas] committed to me that was very significant, and they announced it publicly, by the way, to Al Jazeera and others, was that they would accept any agreement that's negotiated between the Israelis and the Palestinians if it's submitted to a referendum in the West Bank and Gaza, and the Palestinians approve it. That means they would accept Israel’s right to exist if that’s in the agreement and so forth.
Roger Cohen of the New York Times:
Henry Siegman, the president of the U.S./Middle East Project, whose chairman is [Brent] Scowcroft . . . told me that he met recently with Khaled Meshal, the political director of Hamas in Damascus. Meshal told him, and put in writing, that although Hamas would not recognize Israel, it would remain in a Palestinian national unity government that reached a referendum-endorsed peace settlement with Israel.
Regarding Hamas’s use of hospitals the Goldstone report states: “The Mission did not find any evidence to support the allegations that hospital facilities were used by the Gaza authorities or by Palestinian armed groups to shield military activities and that ambulances were used to transport combatants or for other military purposes.”
In 2006 Israel made a similar claim that Hezbollah embedded their forces within civilian areas in order to attract Israeli firepower. That claim was debunked by Human Rights Watch which clarified that most of Hezbollah’s rockets were “stored in bunkers and weapon storage facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys.”
You are correct that “Eighty percent of the weapons used were precision guided, and 99% of all strikes hit their targets.” Yes, these precision guided rockets destroyed or killed civilians, whole neighborhoods, minarets where there was no room for any fighter to hide and launch rockets, and UN buildings. B’Tselem reported: “Whole families were killed; parents saw their children shot before their very eyes; relatives watched their loved ones bleed to death; and entire neighborhoods were obliterated.”
A United Nations General Assembly report quoted the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross): “The Israeli military ‘failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded.’ Israel made no effort to allow civilians to escape the fighting.”
The Goldstone report is particularly damning. Again, please read through it. Goldstone rejected the HRC’s request to investigate possible war crimes by Israel until they altered the wording to include Hamas as a possible perpetrator. The Israeli government acknowledged his “record of impartiality.” His findings are in line with the numerous human rights groups I mentioned earlier in the letter. IDF soldiers have testified to deliberately killing civilians, just as they have testified to similar brutalities in Hebron. The evidence is overwhelming. If Goldstone had not been head of the Mission there is a high likelihood that the Report would have been even more critical of Israel.
Goldstone, as any reasonable person knows, is not an anti-Semite. Eliyahu Yishai was Deputy Prime Minister during Operation Cast Lead. At the beginning of the invasion he urged the IDF to “bomb thousands of houses, to destroy Gaza.” Nine months later, as Minister of the Interior, Yishai slandered Goldstone as an “abominable anti-Semite” for heading a mission that concluded that the IDF did exactly what Yishai wanted them to do. Yishai is not a reasonable person.
Israel’s internal investigations were designed to cover up their atrocities. Chief-of-Staff Gabi Ashkenazi is not going to implicate himself or other Israeli officials in possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. Amnesty International responded to the IDF “internal investigation:”
The information made public only refers to a handful of cases and lacks crucial details. It mostly repeats claims made by the army and the authorities many times since the early days of Operation “Cast Lead . . . . It does not even attempt to explain the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths nor the massive destruction caused to civilian buildings in Gaza. . . . [T]he army’s claims appear to be more an attempt to shirk its responsibilities than a genuine process to establish the truth. Such an approach lacks credibility.
Regarding rocket and mortar fire, from 2000 through 2008 Palestinian groups launched 8,088 unsophisticated rockets and mortars against Israel. From 2001 through 2008 eighteen Israelis were killed as a result of these attacks. Contrast those figures with the 7,700 sophisticated rockets that Israel launched against Gaza in nine months, between September 2005 and June 2006. From 2005–2007, 1,290 Gazans, including 222 children, were killed as a result of these kinds of attacks. Who is the perpetrator and who is the victim?
Your statement that “Israel warned the Palestinian people that election of Hamas to the head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) would only cause more conflict” is a reflection of an authoritarian mentality that places one party in control over the lives of another. It is the same mentality that is at the root of this conflict. Hamas was elected in a fair election that the U.S. pushed for. Who is Israel to decide for the Palestinians who their leaders should be? Hamas is not monolithic, is not particularly corrupt as is Fatah, and is not a collaborator with the Israeli government. That is why they were elected and that is why Israel wants them removed. Hamas makes the continued dispossession of the Palestinian people more difficult. What you call Israel’s warning was actually a threat. Hamas has repeatedly stated its willingness to establish a long term truce. Ephraim Halevy and American strategists said that Israel and the U.S. have the ability to strengthen Hamas’s moderate wing and engage them in a peace process. But, as Moshe Dayan states above, Israel is not interested in a peace process.
If you honestly are looking for the truth your study of Operation Cast Lead is simply not thorough or objective enough. With regard to the ceasefire, if you read the analysis of The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center (IICC) you will learn that “The lull was sporadically violated by rocket and mortar shell fire, carried out by rogue terrorist organizations, in some instance in defiance of Hamas (especially by Fatah and Al-Qaeda supporters). Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire.”
Israel never really adhered to the ceasefire. They only allowed the average number of trucks entering Gaza to increase from seventy per day to ninety, not the five hundred per day that crossed before Israel instituted its blockade. On November 4, 2008 IDF troops entered Gaza and killed six or seven Hamas soldiers because they were allegedly digging a tunnel for the purpose of kidnapping Israeli soldiers. Hamas said its members had been digging the tunnel for defensive purposes. On November 5 Israel sealed all crossing points into Gaza. Yossi Alpher, former Mossad official and former adviser to then Prime Minister Ehud Barak:
[The blockade is] collective punishment, humanitarian suffering. It has not caused Palestinians in Gaza to behave the way we want them to, so why do it. . . . I think people really believed that, if you starved Gazans, they will get Hamas to stop the attacks. It’s repeating a failed policy, mindlessly.
On December 14 a high-level Hamas delegation met with Egyptian Minister of Intelligence Omar Suleiman who, as mediator, had helped negotiate the June to December ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. Hamas offered to end all rocket attacks in return for Israel ending its raids into Gaza and re-opening the border crossings. Suleiman conveyed Hamas’s proposal to Israeli authorities. On December 19, Robert Pastor, a senior adviser at the Carter Center, met with Khaled Mashaal, who made the same offer. The next day Pastor passed Mashaal’s offer on to a “senior official” in the IDF, who told Pastor he would get back to him. He never did. As for the Egyptian offer, it is unclear whether Israel ignored the offer or rejected it outright. At an Israeli cabinet meeting on December 21, Yuval Diskin, said: “Make no mistake, Hamas is interested in maintaining the truce.” Diskin said that if Israel ended the blockade, Hamas would restore the ceasefire.
If you’ve gotten this far, I can tell you the billboard you object to was taken down by Lamar Advertising on April 28, 2009. It was designed to provoke reaction from a mostly apathetic public in the wake of a brutal invasion. Calls from AIPAC supporters influenced Lamar’s decision. Rather than seeing themselves and Israel as victims these AIPAC people would be far more effective if they took the time to actually look at the evidence. None whom I have met have any intelligent knowledge of the actual history. For them, the childhood myths they were raised with supersede years of honest and objective research. Their attitude is identical to fundamentalist Christians who believe non-Christians will go to Hell for their failure to accept Jesus Christ into their lives. They claim to care about Israelis but their continued support of a brutal occupation only demeans an entire people and perpetuates conflict for both sides of the issue. It also paints Judaism, once known for its commitment to ethics and justice, as a religion and culture of hypocrisy and bigotry.
Please do not fall into the trap that so many who remain unconscious of their participation in the suffering of others have fallen into. Please do not allow bigotry to influence you as it has influenced them. I urge you to avoid losing your humanity. Commit yourself to the truth. It is the only path that will free you of your own suffering and free others less fortunate than you of the suffering imposed on them by others. Sincerely, Rich Forer
BOOK LIST
Anna Baltzer, Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories
Anna Baltzer, DVD: Life in Occupied Palestine: Eyewitness Stories and Photos
available at http://www.AnnaintheMiddleEast.com. Excerpts on YouTube.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy
Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
Sylvain Cypel, Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse
David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East
Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History
Baruch Kimmerling, Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians
Mary Elizabeth King, A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance
Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999
Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Tanya Reinhart, The Road Map To Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003
Tanya Reinhart, Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948
Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust
Tom Segev, 1949: The First Israelis
Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall
Clayton Swisher, The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process
* Abdullah was king of Jordan.
al-Nakba: The Palestinian "Catastrophe"
Ironic, how quickly innocent victims can become ruthless victimizers
Al-Nakba Awareness Project is a small Domestic Nonprofit Corporation registered in Oregon. Our purposes are:
(1) education regarding the history of Israel in historic Palestine, and
(2) mobilization, advocacy and support for non-violent efforts to bring freedom, justice and equality to the Holy Land.
None of these conditions, which Americans take for granted as bedrocks of democracy, exists there today.
We are an entirely volunteer organization with limited resources which we leverage by working in partnership with other local, regional and national organizations and with individual supporters who share our concern for truth leading to justice.
Al-Nakba Awareness Project
Contributions to defray our expenses and expand our efforts will be deeply appreciated.
Our work relies without political compromise upon:
(1) historical truthfulness;
(2) adherence by all peoples to universally recognized human rights and the international rule of law;
(3) recognition of the Palestinians as the victims, not the aggressors, in this six-decade conflict, and not co-equal with Israel in responsibility for its origination or continuation;
(4) concern for not only the wellbeing but the rights of Palestinians as an abandoned and largely helpless people who have been cruelly victimized, subjected to institutional as well as legal discrimination within both Israel and their territories which Israel illegally occupies, and denied justice, the right of self-determination, protection by the governing power, and an equal voice with other citizens of the world;
(5) condemnation of our own country's abuse-enabling support and protection of their occupier and oppressor, and our failure to comply with both international and U.S. law in so doing.
Our premise: There is a long history to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has been egregiously distorted by Israel, the Israeli lobby and its nationwide network that heavily influences our government and media, and consequently remains largely unknown to most Americans.
We draw upon a principle identified and demonstrated early in the history of psychology by the "Gestalt" school of perceptual psychology: the solution to a problem is inherent in its component parts once a sufficient number of these are visible. A puzzle can't be solved with too many missing pieces. Israel has relentlessly concealed key historical pieces of its own formation and development, without which a clear vision cannot emerge that would yield a solution. We attempt here to identify the essential missing pieces including historical information expunged from the "official story," disregarded international laws, and suppressed voices of reason, realism and justice among Palestinians, non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews, and all too few Americans. Without the unwitting and misguided beliefs of most Americans in support of our corrupted leaders, this website and the other efforts of our Al-Nakba Awareness Project would be unnecessary.
The central piece denied and evaded by Israel is the Nakba ("catastrophe" in Arabic) of 1948, when Palestinians were ruthlessly attacked, massacred and driven from their homes into refugee camps by Zionist terror groups, and never allowed to return in violation of international law. This is the deeply flawed foundation upon which Israel was established and upon which its entire subsequent society remains structurally unsteady, morally corrupt, legally culpable, and psychologically damaged. Israel has inevitably suffered from a "spoiled identity" (a concept of sociologist Erving Goffman) against which it defends by outright lies, hysterical accusations of "anti-Semitism" and other transparent defense mechanisms, and the consequences to its Palestinian victims remain tragic and ruinous.
This pathological system has been aided and abetted by the United States, which stands alone in the world as a supporter and defender of Israel. Without understanding this pathological relationship, leading to an alteration in US policies toward Israel, no just or enduring solution will be possible.
This conflict is typically framed as a contest between "two sides" or "two narratives" that either blames the Palestinians as "terrorists" or implies a non-existent symmetry: equivalence of violence, blame for the conflict, suffering, legitimacy of claims, and responsibility for finding a solution.
In truth, the Palestinians are an invaded, dispossessed, occupied, brutalized, blockaded, and segregated people who have the right to resist under international law and have steadfastly done so for many decades in largely non-violent ways.
1948 refugee in UNRWA camp
1948 UNRWA refugee camp
Separated by barbed wire from their home
A fictitious account omitting Israeli lawlessness and ignoring the lonely and rightful Palestinian struggle for justice has been relentlessly recited and perpetuated by the American press and entertainment media under influence of the pro-Israel lobby and social influence network.
Our position is derived not from any "narrative" but from the empirical evidence: the abundantly documented history, established doctrines of international law including United Nations resolutions and international court judgments, ordinary morality recognized by civilized peoples, and commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Until the Nakba is acknowledged,its crimes addressed and restitution provided, there can be no justice or justice-based peace. Toward the goal of justice, without which enduring peace will remain elusive, this web site is committed.
* The key in our logo, many of which are still held by Palestinian refugees expelled in 1948, represents the Palestinians' right to return under international law, and has remained a cherished symbol of their steadfast resistance against dispossession, occupation, and subjugation by the state of Israel.
The site is a primer, providing a basic chronological overview. We will continue to build it, with links to increasingly detailed materials.
US arming of Israel disturbs Mideast peace: Richard Forer
Tue Apr 23, 2013 11:58AM GMT
So the United States, what it is doing is ensuring that Israel will not have to make peace, because as long as Israel has for means to maintain the occupation, it will not make peace, it will maintain the occupation. Also this was an obstacle to Iran that the United States is not doing around, but Israel is going to have all these advanced weapons to make sure that if they do attack Iran, they will be able to do it more successfully than they would have without these weapons.’[/b]
Interview with Richard Forer
So the United States, what it is doing is ensuring that Israel will not have to make peace, because as long as Israel has for means to maintain the occupation, it will not make peace, it will maintain the occupation. Also this was an obstacle to Iran that the United States is not doing around, but Israel is going to have all these advanced weapons to make sure that if they do attack Iran, they will be able to do it more successfully than they would have without these weapons.’
Related Viewpoints:
US steps up regime change bid on Iran
An analyst has told Press TV that Israel has always been after keeping its occupation over the Palestinians, not making peace in the region, and the newly signed $10 billion arms deal between US and Israel is another smoking gun, also aimed at helping Tel Aviv in war against Iran.
The comments came as US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Israeli Minister of Military Affairs Moshe Yaalon have finalized a new arms deal worth USD 10 billion.
Meanwhile Hagel supported Israel’s warmongering rhetoric against Iran, saying the United States and Israel see “exactly the same” threat from Tehran. He said on Sunday that Israel can make its own decision about whether and when to launch an attack on Iran. “Israel will make the decisions that Israel must make to protect itself.” Also, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier in April that US-engineered sanctions against Iran over its nuclear energy program might not be enough and military measures must be taken.
Press TV in its ‘Top five’ program has conducted an interview with Richard Forer, the author of ‘Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion’ from New York, to shed light on the issue. The following is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV: First of all what do you think about the timing of this announcement and this deal worth USD 10 billion of weapons between the US and Israel?
Forer: Well, I mean it is not at all surprising and it comes soon after Obama’s visit to Israel and also John Kerry and Chuck Hagel are in the Middle East.
It is simply the United States once again is hindering to Israel’s determination to maintain superiority over all of its neighbors. I mean there is no inherent problem what is going to be superior to your neighbors in various ways; it is just that this superiority enables Israel to maintain its illegal occupation over the Palestinian people, which also antagonizes all of its Arab neighbors.
So the United States, what it is doing is ensuring that Israel will not have to make peace, because as long as Israel has for means to maintain the occupation, it will not make peace, it will maintain the occupation.
Also this was an obstacle to Iran that the United States is not doing around, but Israel is going to have all these advanced weapons to make sure that if they do attack Iran, they will be able to do it more successfully than they would have without these weapons.
Press TV: So Mr. Forer quickly if you can, do you think there is relation to the Syria crisis as well, because we have been seeing at the same time the announcement of the easing of the embargo, the oil embargo on the militants and they cause more weapons to the militants there, we have been hearing a lot from Syria, Israel’s involvement there?
Forer: I am sure there is a relation to the Syrian crisis, I mean who knows what is going to happen in entire Middle East could get rolling in that; Iraq, there has been worries in Iraq, that the civil war in Syria can slip over into Iraq for example; and you know once war gets really rolling throughout the region, other thongs could take place.
I mean other resentment could rise up and Israel could become a target for some of the militants, but you know the real way to avoid all the deaths and destructions that has been going on, is really to try to make peace, to do what is necessary to make peace and that does not include giving Israel the means not to make peace, cause that is really what this arms sale is doing.
Without the money, without the aids the United States gives Israel, Israel simply will not have the financial means to prolong its now nearly 46-year occupation of the Palestinian people which enrages the Arab world.
Because, remember in 2002 and again in 2007 the Saudi Arabia peace initiative was offered to Israel which would have been a full peace with full diplomatic relations with full guarantees for all states of the region and the acceptance of Israel by the entire Arab and Muslim world.
Guest Commentary:
As a Jewish Peace Activist, I Admired Helen Thomas
AUGUST 1, 2013 8:56
By Richard Forer
I was listening to National Public Radio on my car radio on July 20, driving to the east coast from Colorado, when I heard the news that my friend, pioneering journalist Helen Thomas, had just died. Over the past three plus years I’d been privileged to have dinner with her a few times and honored that she had attended talks I gave in Washington D.C., even introducing me to the audience at one of them.
The last times I saw Helen were in late 2012 when I visited her in her D.C. apartment. Her health was declining to the point that she described her condition as “decrepit.” Even so, her mind was sharp and she was as interested as she’d always been in learning more about the world and wanting answers to questions that had perplexed her.
More than once, Helen told me that Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League and Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush’s press secretary, had been “after her” for many years. Like others who are incapable of rational thinking when it comes to Israel-Palestine, these men were unrelenting in their eagerness to label Helen’s criticisms of Israel’s violations of international law as expressions of anti-Semitism. Slandering Helen was far easier than asking why she, or anyone, would voice such criticisms. So frightened were these men of what the criticisms revealed about them, they could not see the humanity at the heart of her criticism.
Helen told me that in the wake of her widely publicized comments that Israelis should “get the Hell out of Palestine” and “go back to Poland, Germany and America,” institutions that over the years had conferred honorary degrees upon her were being pressured to rescind them. But then she would say, “Well, I know who I am.” In turn, I would say, “Too bad they don’t know who they are.” I would share with her that despite the fact her comments were untactful, I knew that what she was really saying was that European Jews should never have come to Palestine in the first place if their intentions were to humiliate and steal land from the indigenous people.
Being Jewish, myself, and having acquired a unique insight into the unconscious thought processes that lead ordinarily decent people to support indecency, Helen often asked me what motivated some to react with unbridled hostility whenever she or anyone (even Palestinians) showed concern for the lives of mostly innocent Palestinians. I explained that when one’s identity is challenged, in order to defend that presumed identity, denial sets in along with projection. The slurs directed toward her were, more accurately, descriptive of the intentions of her attackers, who could not conceive that concern for one people did not have to be accompanied by a lack of concern for another. This was the projection. By attributing to Helen and others a callous disregard for Israel, her attackers were unconsciously exposing their own callous disregard for Palestinians.
I first met Helen shortly after her provocative comments and quick departure from Hearst Newspapers. During a conversation, my friend Paul Kinzelman urged me to contact her. He reasoned that without a full-time position, Helen would not only be more available, she would be more willing to review my book.
I searched for her in the white pages and, to my great surprise, found her name along with a phone number. Thinking that this was too easy and figuring that someone other than Helen would answer her phone and tell me that “Ms. Thomas doesn’t take calls from strangers,” I dialed the number in spite of myself. After a few rings, I heard a click. Someone picked up the phone and said “Hello.” The voice was unmistakable – I’d heard that voice for nearly fifty years.
I told Helen who I was, how sorry I was for all the trouble she’d gotten herself into and what my book was about. She was fascinated. We must have talked for thirty minutes. After I hung up I mailed her a signed copy of the book, which she read and positively reviewed. And thus began a lovely friendship!
Two qualities that made Helen a revered journalist were her honesty and open-mindedness. She wasn’t willing to merely repeat what she’d been told, to follow the herd. These qualities also protected her from losing her humanity, from demonizing the “other” simply because the other did not submit to the prevailing consciousness of the times. It is unfortunate that American media, to a large extent, does not exhibit Helen’s values. If it rediscovered the courage to do so, our politicians and society might very well be more compassionate and self-reflective; and so much unnecessary suffering throughout the world could be avoided.
Accusations of Jewish Self-Hatred and Anti-Semitism are a Strategy to Hide from One’s Self-Reflection
Posted by richardforer at 2:03 pm
Anyone who follows the debate over Israel-Palestine knows how automatic and routine it is for one side to label those who disagree with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people as self-hating Jews, Israel haters or anti-Semites. Hoping to calm the hysteria and add much-needed clarity to the issue, and unwilling to be silenced by these accusations, I’ve decided to share a brief adaptation from the “The Self-Hating Jew” chapter of my book, Breakthrough: Transforming Fear Into Compassion – A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict. As an American Jew with Ultra-Orthodox relatives living in Israel, a former member of AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) and a reflexive defender of Israel for more than fifty years I believe I am as qualified as anyone to share my insights.
The Self-Hating Jew
by Richard Forer
In the past the label self-hating Jew, though rarely used, was associated with Jews who were ashamed of or who hid their religious and cultural heritage. But as the debate over Israeli policy toward the Palestinian people has intensified, self-hating Jew, like anti-Semite, has become a routinely brandished and emotionally charged retaliatory weapon. The idea that a three-word label can encapsulate the character of a person is problematic. A human being is far more than what a single phrase can say about him, and self-hating Jew is so divisive that it makes tolerance and cooperation impossible; and it eradicates the possibility for real understanding.
For some Jews, support for Israeli policy is unconditional, even if it conflicts with traditional Jewish values. For other Jews, these values are primary and ought to be associated with Israel’s compliance with international law. If the former would make an effort to discover why the latter campaign for Palestinian equality, they would learn that they are making a conscious choice not to remain silent when witnessing one group’s denial of basic human rights to another group. These Jews see their people, like the rest of mankind, as complex beings, capable of acts of inhumanity as well as acts of kindness. They are able to concede that at times Israel does violate the rights of others, that it has used torture and mistreated and killed innocent people, and that its leaders do not always tell the truth about these acts. They believe that the Israeli government has hijacked their heritage by replacing morality and brotherhood, once so valued in Judaism, with bigotry and exclusion. Nearly every Jewish critic I’ve met believes that by opposing policies that relegate Palestinians to lives of second-class citizenship, that they are rescuing the integrity of their religious tradition. They are, therefore, true friends of Israel.
A true friend will admonish his friend when he sees him acting irrationally toward his neighbor. These critics have no desire to harm the state of Israel. Their desire is to prevent the state of Israel from harming Palestinians. They advocate equal rights for all because they know that equal rights lead to peace.
This begs the question: What exactly is self-hating (or anti-Semitic) in such a position? Is honoring the humanistic values many Jews were taught at synagogue a betrayal of their Jewish roots? Is caring about another people synonymous with hatred? Is learning about a painful subject likewise symptomatic of hatred? Isn’t thirst for knowledge a hallmark of Judaism and isn’t it fundamental to solving problems? If criticism of deliberate violations of international law expresses hatred, what does turning one’s back on the suffering of millions express? If calling on Israel to end its human rights abuses expresses hatred, are we to forsake a people who cry out against the destruction of their own homes or the traumatizing of their own children?
So where is the hatred? The hatred is conceived in the minds of those who are afraid to ask why someone is critical of Israel. Rather than conducting honest research to refute or confirm the criticism, the accuser victimizes himself with self-generated feelings of fear, confusion and anger, all of which are animated by unexamined beliefs and images within his own mind. This mind colors his perception so that he sees the world in terms of personal victimhood versus the world’s hostility.
Because he is unconscious of the effect his feelings have on his perception, the accuser can only project his perception onto the world and then presume that the world he sees proves the reality of his perception. Creating his own suffering, he narcissistically scapegoats and blames the world (in this case Palestinians and their sympathizers) for his suffering. Triggered through denial, this inner thought process attributes to Palestinians and their sympathizers the accuser’s own hatred. In other words, the accuser makes the other responsible for, and the repository of, his unresolved pain. He objectifies the other and rejects his humanity. Then he supports inhumane policies, which he justifies under the guise of an existential danger to Israel. In so doing, he brings the world’s anger down upon Israel which reinforces and perpetuates the cycle of perceived victimhood. This entire process is a defense mechanism that stems from the fear of inquiring into one’s presumed identity through the questioning of one’s beliefs and images.
Labeling as hateful or anti-Semitic honest criticism of Israeli oppression is no different than labeling as anti-American honest criticism of America’s history of oppression toward people of color. And holding Israel to normative standards of conduct does not delegitimize anyone. What delegitimizes Israel are the behavior and attitudes that humiliate an indigenous people.
I have not met one defender of Israeli policy who has impartially studied the actual history. If they had the decency to do so, most would discover that they have character assassinated the Palestinians and facilitated their misfortune. The real conflict for these defenders is not Israel versus a hostile world or Israel versus the Palestinians. The real conflict – and the basis for claims of self-hatred and anti-Semitism – is the failure to integrate the hard-to-believe but inescapable awareness of Israel’s treatment of non-Jews with unquestioned loyalty to the Jewish state. One consideration acknowledges Israel’s dark side. The other denies the dark side exists. If these defenders want to distinguish the source of conflict and find peace they need to inquire within. But there are no excuses! Under certain conditions, willful blindness is a crime against humanity.
Only by committing myself to the truth was I able to apprehend that, in reality, criticism of Israel was never a serious concern. Incredibly, I had never defended Israel, at least the Israel that actually exists. I had always defended an idealistic image of Israel that was projected or superimposed upon the Israel that actually exists. This projection enabled me to repress or deny painful revelations that I would have learned about Israel and about myself if only I had looked without the errant influence of an unexamined mind. Denial and projection go hand in hand. What I denied about Israel and about myself, I projected onto the other who automatically and necessarily became my enemy.
The perspective formed from my projections revealed more about how I wished to see my people than how they really are when looked at in an honest light. My attachment to certain beliefs and images was a defense designed to preserve a childlike faith in Israel as guardian of freedom and humanity. Somehow, I had to reconcile my treasured images with the reality that conflicted with them. However, rather than making use of the tension between these forces as a gateway to transformation, I spurned reality and adhered to the safety of indoctrination. When friends I normally trusted pointed to Israeli deeds that seemed out of character, I reacted by ignoring or rationalizing the suffering of Palestinians.
Equating Palestinian freedom with Palestinian terrorism, I worried that if Israel relinquished strict control over its subjects, the lives of its citizens would be imperiled. Fearing annihilation, I unconsciously superimposed Nazi images onto the Palestinian people, and then refused to believe that the Jewish state could act indefensibly toward them. Fear prevented me from empathizing with the pain of Palestinians and it blinded me to the likelihood that a country I had invested so much faith in could administer such brutal policies.
I indoctrinated myself into the idea that some Jews were willfully ignorant of the evil intentions of the Palestinians, and that their willfulness demonstrated support for that which my unexamined mind feared most: the annihilation of the Jewish state.
Truthfully, my reaction to criticism was motivated more by the fear of taking on the challenge that the criticism posed to my identity than by genuine disagreement or fear for Israel’s existence. For a split second, though, before denial and repression set in, this challenge reflected the prejudice that induced me to deny the humanity of the other. And in order to avoid encountering my own lack of humanity, I ignored documented evidence, thereby consenting to the subjugation of millions. I judged Palestinian violence as a pathological expression of hatred, not the response of an oppressed people, a small minority of whom resort to violence as the only way they know to retain a measure of self-respect in the face of generations of violence inflicted upon them. By turning my back on the suffering of others, I had sacrificed the very values Israel once personified.
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How is it that a person can be devoted to the well being of one group and hostile to the well being of another? Is it true that there is an inherent difference between two peoples that justifies devotion to one and hostility towards the other? Are such feelings real or has something been added that distorts feeling? In my view, the determining factor is the labels that are applied to a people and the beliefs and images associated with the labels. These labels are the mind’s attempt to resolve fear and gain security, but they occlude the very mechanism that can achieve these aims.
The ability to look and to feel is what achieves security. This ability is inherent and it functions perfectly when there is no recoil from the circumstances of existence. In simple practical situations it makes itself known. Everyone has experienced it. There is a moment when you just know there is danger, when you know that a person is not to be trusted. Then you act accordingly. You do not need one iota of belief about the situation. You have no preconceptions and you are not recoiled from the situation. You are simply being present. Then there is the real feeling that something is amiss.
What I am talking about is natural intelligence as the means for practical security. If we look and feel, then certain things become clear. But we have to renounce labels, we have to renounce the philosophy of us against them, and we have to end our recoil from the human reality of the conflict. There is nothing to fear; we needn’t wait. Do we wait until we discover the nationality, race or origin of a person before we feel concern or neglect for him or her? If so, then there is no real feeling at all. Our concern and our neglect are false. Both are manifestations of fear and confusion. Our automatic identification with one side of a conflict is selfish, founded upon an attachment that keeps us so inextricably bound that we have lost our connection to humanity. We may tell ourselves we support an end to conflict, but as bearers of inner conflict we constantly subvert our goals.
Beyond the mind lies a vast expanse of freedom, unqualified by our presumed mortality as a separate person. In this space of freedom true feeling arises; it flows from the heart. In the field of human relations its expression is compassion. Compassion is the expression of peace and the means of peace. When we know it then we also know that peace for the world is achievable.
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I never used the term self-hating Jew. I am thankful I didn’t. I believe the label is a powerful barrier to understanding. The key to understanding is dispassionate intelligence. Fear and anger permeated every argument I made in defense of Israel. Invariably I moved from the quandary of fear to the apparent certainty of anger. But I never crossed over into hate. There is a special feeling that accompanies the words self-hating Jew. The key is in “hate.” Characterizing someone in any way with this word introduces viciousness to the mind. This viciousness makes the mind utterly dualistic – and utterly obtuse. The subtle awareness that my ingrained perspective was perhaps incorrect would have been extinguished if I had described Israel’s Jewish critics as self-hating. As it was, because I did not become involved in hate, I remained open to a dispassionate investigation of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
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The notion that any Jew who dedicates him or herself to justice for all people and who protests the unfair treatment of the downtrodden harbors self-hatred defies common sense. Given the self-esteem it takes to stand for justice amidst fierce denunciation, a more accurate assessment is that they are self-loving Jews.
Thank youuuu)
