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by Peter A. Belmont / 2010-05-06
© 2010 Peter Belmont
Recently falling once again into a familiar error of judgment, tact, and good manners, I was discussing Israel/Palestine a bit more heatedly than quite appropriate with a Jewish friend who was well-informed about Israel/Palestine from close attention to NPR and the NYT,
She was unforgiving of the Arab states for not receiving the Palestinian refugees of 1948 with open arms (there are always human rights tragedies in warfare, she said) and seemed to see no reason to blame Israel for anything. At least, no more than any other state. “Why are you so upset about Israel,” she asked, “have you taken a close look at Africa lately?” “But I don’t care especially about Africa and I do care about Palestine,” sez I. “And the US gives Israel so much money and uses so many UNSC vetoes to protect Israel, it seems important to see just what it is that the US is protecting.” But she persisted in not wanting to hear ill of Israel.
But it turns out she did want to focus on Israel, after all, but in another way.
Although she didn’t care to look at Israel as an exemplary violator of human rights (as I had been doing), she did want to look at Israel as a particularly exemplary creator of a wonderful society, progress, etc., which she has visited but evidently (nevertheless) prefers not to live in. “Have you visited Israel?” “No.” “Why not?” “I would hate it. Would you have wanted to visit Germany in 1935?” “No, but they wouldn’t have let me in.” “Well, I don’t know that Israel would honor their own visa to me even if they gave me one.” “Why not?” “I’m not particularly a friend or promoter of Israel, and I’m sure they know it.” “But you should visit it. You would see such wonderful things.” “Hmm, you might see wonderful things, but I wouldn’t. What one sees depends on where one looks. I would see evil and tragedy and I would hate it.”
Thereafter, the conversation, by mutual agreement, sub silentio, drifted to other, more congenial, topics.
However, in the course of the foregoing pleasantries, she mentioned that the settlements were fine, were OK, because Israel bought the land. “Bought the land? They captured it in war!” “Well, capture in war is OK. And they need more land.” “But the victorious allies made an ex-post-facto crime of aggressive warfare in 1945 at Nuremberg and wrote out the admissibility of the settlements of international conflicts by use or threat of force into the UN Charter, also 1945. The Germans were not punished for the Holocaust, at Nuremberg, but for aggressive warfare aimed (perhaps in part) at acquiring lebensraum. And that’s what Israel was seeking in the 1967 war.” Twenty years after the lessons and progress of 1945, I might have mentioned.
The question of whether or not Israel needed more land in 1967 (or needs it now or will need it in 10, 20 years time) is examined in another essay at this web-site.
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