Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Reflections On Benny Morris’s “Why Israel Feels Threatened” (NYT 12/30). Revised 2009-01-18 |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2009-01-02
re: Why Israel Feels Threatened (Benny Morris, NYT, 12/30/2008). A Jewish Home in Palestine built up on bayonets and oppression [is] not worth having, even though it succeed, whereas the very attempt to build it up peacefully, cooperatively, with understanding, education, and good will, [is] worth a great deal, even though the attempt should fail(Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, first president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, quoted here.) In the war of 1967, Israel decided, freely, to capture much Arab land and, again freely, decided to hang on to that land at war’s end. It did not have to hang on to it. No-one twisted Israel’s arm. And, indeed, it not merely held these lands as “occupied territory”, but claimed, once again freely, and contrary to many UNSC resolutions, to annex parts of it (i.e., make it part of Israel’s sovereign territory) and soon found it convenient to deny international law by describing the other lands as “administrated territory” rather than as “occupied territory”. Gratuitous injuries and gratuitous insults to all the world. No-one twisted Israel’s arm in these matters. Since 1967, Israel chose not merely to subject the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza to the ordinary (and by no means slight) rigors of any military occupation, but, indeed, to far worse, to an increasingly severe and oppressive regime in which their lands and water were taken over by settlers, in which more land was taken over (and olive orchards destroyed) to provide safety to those settlers, and still more land was taken over to build Israelis-only highways to allow those same settlers quick and exclusive access to pre-1967 Israel. All of these settlements and settlers are present in occupied territories illegally under international law. (See ICJ advisory opinion of July 9, 2004). Thus, Israel took more than it was entitled to. It took land for settlements, took more lands for safety, and took still more lands for highways. All of this was illegal, and all of this was oppressive. None of it was necessary. All of it was done freely by Israel. No-one twisted Israel’s arm. Moreover, Israel’s military grew in power to become (it is widely said) the 4th most powerful in the world. Perhaps Israelis were legitimately ‘existentially’ fearful before this growth in military strength (before 1982, for example). But the stronger Israel grew, and the less reason its people had to experience ‘existential’ fear, the greater its appetite for cruelty grew. In “La Chute”, Albert Camus argues that many crimes are committed because the criminal can’t stand to be in the wrong. He tells of a man who cheated on his wife, a perfect woman in every respect, until one day he had enough of his own wrongdoing. So he killed her.cited in a comment here. To review, Israel has freely made its choice in favor of cruelty and oppression: Israel made its bed in 1948, re-made its bed in 1967, and made its bed again (12/2008), but is unhappy when it must sleep in it. And, as we know, it blames its victims and then oppresses them ever more fiercely. None of this was necessary. All was freely chosen by Israel. But back to Morris’s op-ed. His rhetoric ignores history. He writes that the Arab world has never accepted Israel’s existence or legitimacy. Not true. In 1988 the PLO accepted Israel’s existence and the Arab League has offered complete recognition of Israel inside its pre-1967 borders. Israel did not desire to return to its 1967 boundaries and refused to make peace. This is not the fault of the Arabs. Mr. Morris ignores this. Had he mentioned the PLO’s or the Arab League’s peace offers, Morris might then have mentioned their claims for a Palestinian “right of return” for refugees from 1948 to their homes in pre-1967 Israel. Israel objects to that claim of right (a claim recognized by many UN resolutions and by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) because Israel feels entitled to remain a predominantly “Jewish” state. This feeling seems unjustified.. However, as Mr. Morris notes, even without any “return” of Palestinians to Israel from outside, Israel’s own Palestinian citizens now number 1.3 million and if present trends persist, Arabs [Palestinians] could constitute the majority of Israel’s citizens by 2040 or 2050. So it seems that Israel must face a majority of non-Jewish citizens in 30 or 40 years (about the time petroleum goes out of use as the dominant fuel of the western world and global warming makes all our lives much more unpleasant) whether or not it allows any of the refugees from 1948 to return to their homeland. So, when Israel uses crushing military force against Hamas today, first in cruel siege and later in devastating single-sided battle, apparently to sharpen its oppressor-oppressee relationship with the people of Gaza, it is doing so without any guarantee that Israel will be preserved as a majority-Jewish state in the long run: in which case all of that oppression will have produced nothing other than the pleasures of unpunished war-criminality and the production of a new generation of enemies. Whether it stops the rockets from falling inside Israel without meeting Hamas’s terms remains to be seen. All that freely-chosen and unnecessary oppression will have achieved nothing useful in the long run. And worse than nothing, because when Israel’s voting age population is majority Palestinian, perhaps in 2060 or 2070, Israel’s oppression—freely chosen and always unnecessary—will not be forgotten. By contrast, if Israel made a sea-change, today, and stopped its oppression, and began to behave benevolently toward the Palestinian people living under occupation, living in Israel, and living in diaspora, that benevolence would not be forgotten, either. This would be mitigation. To begin, Israel could end the blockade of Gaza, end the assassinations and military attacks, and release all its 10,000 Palestinian prisoners held for so many years without charge. Israel could withdraw its settlers from the West Bank and tear down its apartheid wall. Israel could allow Palestinians to use their old roads and Israeli-built new ones without the unnecessary and oppressive inconvenience of check-points. Israel could allow Palestinian hospitals and clinics and schools and universities to operate without hindrance. Israel could (if it still felt unsafe, even after ending its oppression) re-build its wall within its own pre-1967 borders. But Israel does not feel benevolent today. It feels oppressive. Very well. Although Morris has explained why Israel feels threatened, possibly explaining its reason for desiring to be oppressive, he does not, because he cannot, explain why Israel felt justified to violate international humanitarian law (which purports to regulate the conduct of military occupations, such as Israel’s occupation of Gaza) by imposing the collective punishment of “periodically suspending shipments of supplies into Gaza” (as Morris antiseptically describes the blockade of food, fuel, electricity, medicine, etc., which preceded the most recent rocket attacks from Gaza). As to international law, see here. As we Americans know, Israel felt safe to ignore the law because the US has provided Israel with immunity and impunity from the law. Israel knows it can “get away” with starving and bombing civilians, because the US will protect it. This may explain but does not justify its program in Gaza. Both Israel and the US have called themselves a ‘light unto the nations,” but in reality each has extinguished the light of humanity, of human rights, and of the rule of law. Each has, perhaps, confused itself with the Almighty, and granted itself permission to remake the law. “Apres moi le deluge” is a seductive philosophy for the very strong. Morris complains that “Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens have been radicalized, with many openly avowing a Palestinian identity.” Well, why not? Do not Jews around the world openly avow a Jewish identity and identify with Israel? And does Israel not encourage this, going so far as to declare itself the “state of the Jewish people” rather than the “state of its own citizens”, 20% of which are not Jews? Israel encourages non-Israeli Jews to feel affinity for Israel and to support Israel, but objects when Israeli-Arabs support their Palestinian friends, neighbors, and relatives. It is often said that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Not in Israel, it seems. By its uncounted cruelties, Israel sowed the seeds of Israeli-Arab fellow-feeling for Palestinians, and then is “shocked, shocked” when the seeds sprout in the expected way. To Summarize. So much trouble! And so much of it unnecessary! Would it be so much trouble for Israel to stop its bombing and lift the blockade, unilaterally, in return for nothing other than the requirements of humanitarian law (and, indeed, of simple humanity)? It could even offer help with rebuilding so long as the rockets were silent. And would it be so much trouble for the US and EU to help Israel to make peace by helping Israel deal with its settler problem? (All the US and EU need do is require Israel to remove its settlers and remove the wall which protects them in the West Bank)? (For more, see here. And, a timely question, does Israel really need to make overwhelming war every (election) time? Is there, at long last, no place in its thinking for peaceful coexistence? And is there no place in the thinking of the US, which talks ceaselessly and apparently wholly deceitfully about a “two state solution,” for the possibility that Israel could live in peaceful coexistence with its neighbors and should start to do so today by, at a minimum, conducting its occupation within the limits established for occupations by international law? Perhaps Israel’s long-range plan is to bring about another major expulsion or genocide (whether of Israeli Jews, of Palestinians, or of both), and this explains its steadfast refusal since 1967 and especially and markedly since 1990 to seek peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians and its headlong rush toward disaster. And, unless the US changes its spots, it will support Israel in any such agenda. But it need not be so. Decent people in the US have spoken up. Barack Obama’s opinion survey, (offline as of 1/17/2009) [1] contained more than 1000 entries under “foreign policy” and a striking majority called for Israel to stop bombing Gaza. It’s time for Israel to freely elect to do a decent thing, now, regarding the Palestinians. And it is time for the USA to help them do it. ----------- [1] But perhaps this replaces the earlier survey. |
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