Today, May 15, 2023, is the 75th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel by the survivors of a great crime against humanity - the Holocaust - by the commission of another great crime against humanity - the Nakba. Cross-posted from Peter Beinart’s Substack:
This is a tragedy for both societies..... as the Jewish officer said at the Wailing Wall when his unit liberated it in 1967, "Help us, God. We won."
The late and great Burr Tilstrom once performed a brilliant hand puppet vignette on NBC, when they had an experimental TV show on Saturdays. It was not the well-known "Berlin Wall" piece, but a similar one. In it, a hand in a black leather glove is a dictator abusing his subjects. Finally, an individual stands up to him and attacks him. They fight, and the oppressed hand beats and slays the dictator. He then looks at the dead gloved hand and touches the glove. Then he removes the glove and puts it on. In just a few moments, he becomes the next dictator, no different from the one he killed.....
Subjection and oppression all depend on power - who has it and who does not. This sad state of affairs has been played out many times - that it is Israel this time is astoundingly sad, but not really out of the bounds of possibility. Democracy is fragile, and there are those who would co-opt it for their own purposes. If we are not careful, we may be next - something wicked this way comes.....
The inhumanity of it all! About the terror of Nazi Germany, the expression resounded ‘first they came for the Jews….!’ And so the rallying cry must become ‘
First they came for the Palestinians!’ Here in America where all too many red states legislatures are slashing the concept of ‘separation of church and state ‘ from their state funding budgets!
'1. the Arabic term for the events of 1948, when many Palestinians were displaced from their homeland by the creation of the new state of Israel.'
‘The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]’
‘The foundational events of the Nakba took place during and shortly after the 1948 Palestine war, including 78% of Mandatory Palestine being declared as Israel, the expulsion and flight of 700,000 Palestinians, the related depopulation and destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages by Zionist militias and subsequent geographical erasure, the denial of the Palestinian right of return, the creation of permanent Palestinian refugees and the "shattering of Palestinian society".[9][10][11][12] The expulsion of the Palestinians has since been described by some historians as ethnic cleansing.[13][14][15]’
‘In 1998, Yasser Arafat proposed that Palestinians should mark the 50th anniversary of the Nakba declaring 15 May, the day after Israeli independence in 1948, as Nakba Day, formalizing a date that had been unofficially used as early as 1949.[16][17]’’
‘The Nakba greatly influenced the Palestinian culture and is a foundational symbol of Palestinian identity, together with "Handala", the keffiyeh and the symbolic key. Countless books, songs and poems have been written about the Nakba.[18] Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish described the Nakba as "an extended present that promises to continue in the future."[19][20]( (Wikipedia) see link below.
***
"For the first time in history, the United Nations is officially commemorating the Nakba, the annual Palestinian commemoration of their mass displacement during the establishment of Israeli."
"The international body is marking the 75th anniversary of the displacement on Monday to "serve as a reminder of the historic injustice suffered by the Palestinian people" and to spotlight the ongoing refugee crisis, organizers said.'
'For decades, the Nakba had not garnered universal international recognition, as countering narratives have downplayed the plight of Palestinians. Resistance remains: The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom were among 30 countries that voted against the U.N. resolution to adopt this year's commemoration.'
'Israeli officials, meanwhile, are urging U.N. member states to boycott the event. "Attending this despicable event means destroying any chance of peace by adopting the Palestinian narrative calling the establishment of the state of Israel a disaster," Israeli's U.N. ambassador Gilad Erdan said.'
'Israel says tens of countries have agreed not to attend, including the U.S., U.K., Czech Republic and Ukraine. A State Department spokesman told NPR the U.S. would not be represented at the event, and Ukraine's ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk, told NPR that Ukraine is declining in order "not to harm (the) Israeli interest."
'Monday's commemoration includes a morning key note address from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, followed by an evening event that features an "immersive experience of the Nakba through live music, photos, videos, and personal testimonies." The events, held at U.N. headquarters in New York, will also be livestreamed.' (NPR) See link below.
What is so consistently sad to me in all of this, is that every single Jewish friend I have or have ever had has been in my eyes a model of moral rectitude on a social/political level. And watching the country founded out of the Holocaust behave as has become ever more obvious since the Six Day War makes me sad beyond description. I remember every day the story told me in graduate school by my Israeli Sabra friend who was a platoon commander in the company that liberated the Wailing Wall in 1967; how he heard his commander praying "Help us, God. We won." Which help sadly didn't show up, or wasn't listened to when it did.
Remember the book & movie Exodus? Well that was the "story" I remember. I'm not Jewish - knew very few Jews, so took that to be the truth for years. Yes, the Holocaust was beyond horrible - the loss of lives - the torture - camps - all of it was almost beyond belief that any human could do anything like that. But the thing is, all anyone has to do is sit back & think about this - these same people who suffered so much then moved into another country & pushed out the people who had lived there for hundreds(?) of years. Ring a bell? Does the memory of good old Columbus or the Puritans maybe make this whole story feel familiar? AND like the excuse used here - you know, the Indians werent "using" the land so why should they have the right to keep it? The Palestinian people were in the same boat - because they didnt "use" the resources & didnt live the same way - so they didnt "need" the land.
For years now - I looked at the news about more settlements - destroying villages - jailing (or worse) the people who objected to that treatment & thought - Does anyone think back to WHY they came to Israel? What was done to them they now do to others?
The impulse toward peace that previous Israeli leaders had has been replaced by the rightwing impulse toward power and control. The Likud is the current problem. Past Palestinian leadership was the problem. My hope for both sides lies in their youth, both the youth of Israel as a nation and the youth of the nation as a nation.
By the way, it should not be lost on Tommy Tubberville who's choking off the military budget because the military will assist military spouses and troops in obtaining abortions that the US provides 30K for every man, woman and child in Israel, a nation that permits abortion. (Sorry for the aside, but the issue rankles.)
This is a subject that hurts me and has hurt me more and more! Not only the obvious facts of the terror and damage the state of Israel has inflicted on the Palistinians, but the fact that it is so difficult to discuss!! The Nakba should be as offensive ad the Holocaust! The Armenian genoside deserves the same 'place' as the Holocaust, etc. Yet, we financially support Israel without question, and question the rights of the others.
Which tragedies matter? Which expulsions are tragic, and for how long? Until we can hold more than one tragedy, especially seemingly contradictory ones, in mind at the same time, we will have plenty of blame and no solutions. The Palestinians' situation is tragic. It was not due precisely to the creation of the state of Israel: it was a result of 5 Arab countries declaring war on Israel at its founding rather than allow the creation of both Israel and a Palestinian state, in which states anyone could have kept living wherever they were. After the war, the Arabs controlled the West Bank, Gaza, and part of Jerusalem for twenty years. No one even tried to create a Palestinian state.
At the same period of time of the Palestinian displacement, 850,000 Jews were abruptly expelled from Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa where their families had lived for many hundreds of years. This was terrible for them, and gets very little attention from the world. Is their pain and suffering less important? Many of those people were taken in by Israel, which explains some of the current political situation.
Some people will tell you that the Jews' desire to return to their land was invalid, too much time had passed, they had no right to move back. How much time makes a longing to go home invalid? fifty years? a hundred? a thousand? two thousand?
An Israeli once said: we could solve this with a two-state solution: one state for everyone who wants to live in peace, and one for the extremists on both sides to fight each other.
writing about any of this is very fraught for me. I keep talking about a robust Left opposition in Israel, and it's there. but I also fear that the whole country (much like this country) has shifted right (for a very long time, if not forever) because the Right wing there has become so fucking EXTREME.
in 1969, the Israelis couldn't get me out of the country fast enough, but I LIKED the country. obviously, these policies are insupportable, but a lot of this eliminationist rhetoric (regarding Israel) makes me nervous.
the guys who founded Israel (I'm talking the ORIGINAL guys, prior to WWI) are definitely turning in their graves.
Same ol’ story. Many people that are abused, especially intense physical deprivation tactics and psychological abuse…having survived it become abusers themselves. When they note that abuse is many times a generational cycle, note the truth of it. Many “conquering countries” can credit their victory to it.
As a species we seem incapable of maintaining competing narratives in our minds simultaneously. We perpetually have to deny one to accept the other, or rank order them in importance or truthfulness. So it has been in our conception of the history of the United States whether that’s the competing themes of liberty and slavery, or the founding of our democratic society versus its expansion through conquest and suppression of native inhabitants. So yesterday we had to try to process the founding of the State of Israel sanctified by the Holocaust versus the Nakba. I don’t think we in the US will ever get comfortable, intellectually, with this dichotomy. It parallels uncomfortably for us in what our ancestors did to Native Americans, and how our own government even today maintains refugee camps in the form of reservations and tribal governments.
The other thought that occurs to me is the danger in the eliminationist policy of the current Israeli government to Jews in the US. Antisemitism never died out in the US but it had been suppressed for many decades after WWII. In part there was a certain collective guilt for not acting sooner to oppose the Nazi aggression which enabled the Holocaust. But also there came to be a common appreciation of, how to put it? The good Jew? Jewish people as beacons of decency and liberal spirit, open minded, non judgmental, good citizens, contributing to society. How long will that good feeling toward Jews last when Israel succumbs to evil right wing ideology? Can we gentiles separate in our minds the narrative of the decency of our Jewish neighbors from the narrative of a Jewish racist state? I fear a sizable number will not be able to do so.
(Also, Tom’s writing is so much better than Peter’s! The article had lots of good ideas but it was a bit painful to get through it!)
Good on Eva Borgwardt and Rabbi Kalmanofsky for taking their actions that bring attention and may change attitudes.
Why is it that many descendants of victims seem destined or determined to become exemplars of the perpetrators of their ancestors horrors and anguish? Can many become so determined not to be prey that it turned them completely around into callous predators?
The whole notion and realization of Israel as a nation seemed bound to be a clusterfuck from the beginning - along with the upgrading/establishment of the entirely powerless paper tiger that is the United Nations. Two well-intentioned paved roads to the same middle-east hell that millions of Arabs have lived and died in for three generations. But hey, think of the technical and medical advances all that war and misery has wrought for humanity. [sarcasm]
To this day, Israel still contravention UNSC Resolution 242 (Withdrawal from occupied territories)
The history of this time, written by the winners, has meant that the story of Palestine and the Palestinians who lived there - they were not all Muslim by the way - has not been told except in fits and starts. All of us need to know more about what happened then, most of it set in motion by WW2 and the bad consciences (rightly so) of the US and many other nations. I do not know enough to comment but I'd recommend books and articles by the late Edward Said. And I'd call to mind that the founding of the East/West Divan Orchestra was accomplished by Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim. A great injustice was allowed to happen to the people already living in Palestine. The roots go back a long way. The history needs to be told.
I did not know him. I read his books back in the day. I heard him in interviews. I guess, David, everyone is a prick occasionally, maybe even daily. Not to excuse his past interactions. I don't know the Israeli government right now but they seem to be high on the list of prickdom. There are too many in too many high places who take their anger out on others. IMHO that's what saps the strength and hope of people everywhere.
oh I plead guilty to being a prick on a daily basis, just not every minute of every day. it isn't really what you said, and the Barenboim collaboration is a lovely thing. but lots of people tend to speak of Said in these glowing, warm, and fuzzy terms and he wasn't like that at all. I like his first book (back in a previous life, when I was a graduate student in English in the '70s and very scrupulously kept track of "cool new shit in the meaningless world of literary theory"), but "Orientalism" and subsequent stuff felt like mostly bullshit. and his thinking, it seemed to me, devolved into what smelled a lot like old-fashioned antisemitism (for which I obviously have no sympathy) and knee-jerk anti-Americanism (which I understand a little better). I won't get started on his wife (Rochelle co-wrote Mrs. Said's doctoral dissertation, for money), who was a walking affront to everything that's acceptable about human beings, and a very expensive one at that.
I realize this is just sorta "gossip," and has nothing to do with the substantive stuff we're actually supposed to be talking about. but when you know certain shit, you can't un-know it...
Thanks David for taking time to respond. Obviously my connection to Mr. Said was from a distance. I believe I heard him speak once at a conference I attended WAY back in the day - and it must have been about his first book - what was the name of it, I forget -- at any rate, frustration and anger can devolve very quickly into all kinds of "anti" . Everything is much more complex than a glance can tell you. I suppose my own feelings begin with attempting to feel how another person feels when they are forced to flee their homes and the life they once knew. There has always been so much of that in the world where the focus is often about power over rather than engagement with and mutual human understanding, looking at the situation from below. I feel almost simple-minded writing that, but I've been reading Bonhoeffer lately. Force is often the choice in everything. I guess all of us have a tendency to hit first and then try to figure out where to go from there. Maybe that's where prickliness and prick come from? At any rate, the situation for those who self identify as Palestinians has been one of grief, anger and even hatred. The world is so shrouded in sadness it is amazing that we can manage smiles and even laughter in these times. I am glad we can though. Hope is the last thing to die.
This is a tragedy for both societies..... as the Jewish officer said at the Wailing Wall when his unit liberated it in 1967, "Help us, God. We won."
The late and great Burr Tilstrom once performed a brilliant hand puppet vignette on NBC, when they had an experimental TV show on Saturdays. It was not the well-known "Berlin Wall" piece, but a similar one. In it, a hand in a black leather glove is a dictator abusing his subjects. Finally, an individual stands up to him and attacks him. They fight, and the oppressed hand beats and slays the dictator. He then looks at the dead gloved hand and touches the glove. Then he removes the glove and puts it on. In just a few moments, he becomes the next dictator, no different from the one he killed.....
Subjection and oppression all depend on power - who has it and who does not. This sad state of affairs has been played out many times - that it is Israel this time is astoundingly sad, but not really out of the bounds of possibility. Democracy is fragile, and there are those who would co-opt it for their own purposes. If we are not careful, we may be next - something wicked this way comes.....
anybody who remembers Burr Tilstrom's experimental hand dramas is jake with me, Bruce.
All you have to be is living in NY in the 1950s and thus be ancient (82 here)..... :-)
The inhumanity of it all! About the terror of Nazi Germany, the expression resounded ‘first they came for the Jews….!’ And so the rallying cry must become ‘
First they came for the Palestinians!’ Here in America where all too many red states legislatures are slashing the concept of ‘separation of church and state ‘ from their state funding budgets!
It goes on everywhere...
al-Nak·ba
singular proper noun: Nakba
'1. the Arabic term for the events of 1948, when many Palestinians were displaced from their homeland by the creation of the new state of Israel.'
‘The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]’
‘The foundational events of the Nakba took place during and shortly after the 1948 Palestine war, including 78% of Mandatory Palestine being declared as Israel, the expulsion and flight of 700,000 Palestinians, the related depopulation and destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages by Zionist militias and subsequent geographical erasure, the denial of the Palestinian right of return, the creation of permanent Palestinian refugees and the "shattering of Palestinian society".[9][10][11][12] The expulsion of the Palestinians has since been described by some historians as ethnic cleansing.[13][14][15]’
‘In 1998, Yasser Arafat proposed that Palestinians should mark the 50th anniversary of the Nakba declaring 15 May, the day after Israeli independence in 1948, as Nakba Day, formalizing a date that had been unofficially used as early as 1949.[16][17]’’
‘The Nakba greatly influenced the Palestinian culture and is a foundational symbol of Palestinian identity, together with "Handala", the keffiyeh and the symbolic key. Countless books, songs and poems have been written about the Nakba.[18] Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish described the Nakba as "an extended present that promises to continue in the future."[19][20]( (Wikipedia) see link below.
***
"For the first time in history, the United Nations is officially commemorating the Nakba, the annual Palestinian commemoration of their mass displacement during the establishment of Israeli."
"The international body is marking the 75th anniversary of the displacement on Monday to "serve as a reminder of the historic injustice suffered by the Palestinian people" and to spotlight the ongoing refugee crisis, organizers said.'
'For decades, the Nakba had not garnered universal international recognition, as countering narratives have downplayed the plight of Palestinians. Resistance remains: The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom were among 30 countries that voted against the U.N. resolution to adopt this year's commemoration.'
'Israeli officials, meanwhile, are urging U.N. member states to boycott the event. "Attending this despicable event means destroying any chance of peace by adopting the Palestinian narrative calling the establishment of the state of Israel a disaster," Israeli's U.N. ambassador Gilad Erdan said.'
'Israel says tens of countries have agreed not to attend, including the U.S., U.K., Czech Republic and Ukraine. A State Department spokesman told NPR the U.S. would not be represented at the event, and Ukraine's ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk, told NPR that Ukraine is declining in order "not to harm (the) Israeli interest."
'Monday's commemoration includes a morning key note address from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, followed by an evening event that features an "immersive experience of the Nakba through live music, photos, videos, and personal testimonies." The events, held at U.N. headquarters in New York, will also be livestreamed.' (NPR) See link below.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/15/1176097958/un-nakba-day-explained-anniversary-palestine-israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
What is so consistently sad to me in all of this, is that every single Jewish friend I have or have ever had has been in my eyes a model of moral rectitude on a social/political level. And watching the country founded out of the Holocaust behave as has become ever more obvious since the Six Day War makes me sad beyond description. I remember every day the story told me in graduate school by my Israeli Sabra friend who was a platoon commander in the company that liberated the Wailing Wall in 1967; how he heard his commander praying "Help us, God. We won." Which help sadly didn't show up, or wasn't listened to when it did.
Remember the book & movie Exodus? Well that was the "story" I remember. I'm not Jewish - knew very few Jews, so took that to be the truth for years. Yes, the Holocaust was beyond horrible - the loss of lives - the torture - camps - all of it was almost beyond belief that any human could do anything like that. But the thing is, all anyone has to do is sit back & think about this - these same people who suffered so much then moved into another country & pushed out the people who had lived there for hundreds(?) of years. Ring a bell? Does the memory of good old Columbus or the Puritans maybe make this whole story feel familiar? AND like the excuse used here - you know, the Indians werent "using" the land so why should they have the right to keep it? The Palestinian people were in the same boat - because they didnt "use" the resources & didnt live the same way - so they didnt "need" the land.
For years now - I looked at the news about more settlements - destroying villages - jailing (or worse) the people who objected to that treatment & thought - Does anyone think back to WHY they came to Israel? What was done to them they now do to others?
Sorry - I dont get it. But then I'm not a Jew.
if anything, being a Jew makes it all HARDER to understand, Maggie. THIS Jew in any case.
you've told the story about your Sabra friend before, but in my opinion, you can't tell it often enough.
and ( lest it hasn't been obvious) share your precise feelings. especially the "sadness beyond description."
The impulse toward peace that previous Israeli leaders had has been replaced by the rightwing impulse toward power and control. The Likud is the current problem. Past Palestinian leadership was the problem. My hope for both sides lies in their youth, both the youth of Israel as a nation and the youth of the nation as a nation.
By the way, it should not be lost on Tommy Tubberville who's choking off the military budget because the military will assist military spouses and troops in obtaining abortions that the US provides 30K for every man, woman and child in Israel, a nation that permits abortion. (Sorry for the aside, but the issue rankles.)
This is a subject that hurts me and has hurt me more and more! Not only the obvious facts of the terror and damage the state of Israel has inflicted on the Palistinians, but the fact that it is so difficult to discuss!! The Nakba should be as offensive ad the Holocaust! The Armenian genoside deserves the same 'place' as the Holocaust, etc. Yet, we financially support Israel without question, and question the rights of the others.
Whew. Good work. I didn’t know that. If I’d thought about it I might have suspected it, but I didn’t.
As always, thank you, TC.
Which tragedies matter? Which expulsions are tragic, and for how long? Until we can hold more than one tragedy, especially seemingly contradictory ones, in mind at the same time, we will have plenty of blame and no solutions. The Palestinians' situation is tragic. It was not due precisely to the creation of the state of Israel: it was a result of 5 Arab countries declaring war on Israel at its founding rather than allow the creation of both Israel and a Palestinian state, in which states anyone could have kept living wherever they were. After the war, the Arabs controlled the West Bank, Gaza, and part of Jerusalem for twenty years. No one even tried to create a Palestinian state.
At the same period of time of the Palestinian displacement, 850,000 Jews were abruptly expelled from Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa where their families had lived for many hundreds of years. This was terrible for them, and gets very little attention from the world. Is their pain and suffering less important? Many of those people were taken in by Israel, which explains some of the current political situation.
Some people will tell you that the Jews' desire to return to their land was invalid, too much time had passed, they had no right to move back. How much time makes a longing to go home invalid? fifty years? a hundred? a thousand? two thousand?
An Israeli once said: we could solve this with a two-state solution: one state for everyone who wants to live in peace, and one for the extremists on both sides to fight each other.
Thank you. Again.
writing about any of this is very fraught for me. I keep talking about a robust Left opposition in Israel, and it's there. but I also fear that the whole country (much like this country) has shifted right (for a very long time, if not forever) because the Right wing there has become so fucking EXTREME.
in 1969, the Israelis couldn't get me out of the country fast enough, but I LIKED the country. obviously, these policies are insupportable, but a lot of this eliminationist rhetoric (regarding Israel) makes me nervous.
the guys who founded Israel (I'm talking the ORIGINAL guys, prior to WWI) are definitely turning in their graves.
True all.
very well said, Joan.
thank you.
Same ol’ story. Many people that are abused, especially intense physical deprivation tactics and psychological abuse…having survived it become abusers themselves. When they note that abuse is many times a generational cycle, note the truth of it. Many “conquering countries” can credit their victory to it.
And as a postscript….
Kevin McCarthy… go f*ck yourself.
Salud, TC.
🗽
Christine...we don't need no stinkin' asterisks.
As a species we seem incapable of maintaining competing narratives in our minds simultaneously. We perpetually have to deny one to accept the other, or rank order them in importance or truthfulness. So it has been in our conception of the history of the United States whether that’s the competing themes of liberty and slavery, or the founding of our democratic society versus its expansion through conquest and suppression of native inhabitants. So yesterday we had to try to process the founding of the State of Israel sanctified by the Holocaust versus the Nakba. I don’t think we in the US will ever get comfortable, intellectually, with this dichotomy. It parallels uncomfortably for us in what our ancestors did to Native Americans, and how our own government even today maintains refugee camps in the form of reservations and tribal governments.
The other thought that occurs to me is the danger in the eliminationist policy of the current Israeli government to Jews in the US. Antisemitism never died out in the US but it had been suppressed for many decades after WWII. In part there was a certain collective guilt for not acting sooner to oppose the Nazi aggression which enabled the Holocaust. But also there came to be a common appreciation of, how to put it? The good Jew? Jewish people as beacons of decency and liberal spirit, open minded, non judgmental, good citizens, contributing to society. How long will that good feeling toward Jews last when Israel succumbs to evil right wing ideology? Can we gentiles separate in our minds the narrative of the decency of our Jewish neighbors from the narrative of a Jewish racist state? I fear a sizable number will not be able to do so.
(Also, Tom’s writing is so much better than Peter’s! The article had lots of good ideas but it was a bit painful to get through it!)
Good on Eva Borgwardt and Rabbi Kalmanofsky for taking their actions that bring attention and may change attitudes.
Why is it that many descendants of victims seem destined or determined to become exemplars of the perpetrators of their ancestors horrors and anguish? Can many become so determined not to be prey that it turned them completely around into callous predators?
The whole notion and realization of Israel as a nation seemed bound to be a clusterfuck from the beginning - along with the upgrading/establishment of the entirely powerless paper tiger that is the United Nations. Two well-intentioned paved roads to the same middle-east hell that millions of Arabs have lived and died in for three generations. But hey, think of the technical and medical advances all that war and misery has wrought for humanity. [sarcasm]
To this day, Israel still contravention UNSC Resolution 242 (Withdrawal from occupied territories)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolutions_concerning_Israel
The history of this time, written by the winners, has meant that the story of Palestine and the Palestinians who lived there - they were not all Muslim by the way - has not been told except in fits and starts. All of us need to know more about what happened then, most of it set in motion by WW2 and the bad consciences (rightly so) of the US and many other nations. I do not know enough to comment but I'd recommend books and articles by the late Edward Said. And I'd call to mind that the founding of the East/West Divan Orchestra was accomplished by Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim. A great injustice was allowed to happen to the people already living in Palestine. The roots go back a long way. The history needs to be told.
I knew Ed Said a little (Rochelle ran an informal salon on 110th Street in the '70s and it was full of Columbia faculty), and he was a prick.
I did not know him. I read his books back in the day. I heard him in interviews. I guess, David, everyone is a prick occasionally, maybe even daily. Not to excuse his past interactions. I don't know the Israeli government right now but they seem to be high on the list of prickdom. There are too many in too many high places who take their anger out on others. IMHO that's what saps the strength and hope of people everywhere.
oh I plead guilty to being a prick on a daily basis, just not every minute of every day. it isn't really what you said, and the Barenboim collaboration is a lovely thing. but lots of people tend to speak of Said in these glowing, warm, and fuzzy terms and he wasn't like that at all. I like his first book (back in a previous life, when I was a graduate student in English in the '70s and very scrupulously kept track of "cool new shit in the meaningless world of literary theory"), but "Orientalism" and subsequent stuff felt like mostly bullshit. and his thinking, it seemed to me, devolved into what smelled a lot like old-fashioned antisemitism (for which I obviously have no sympathy) and knee-jerk anti-Americanism (which I understand a little better). I won't get started on his wife (Rochelle co-wrote Mrs. Said's doctoral dissertation, for money), who was a walking affront to everything that's acceptable about human beings, and a very expensive one at that.
I realize this is just sorta "gossip," and has nothing to do with the substantive stuff we're actually supposed to be talking about. but when you know certain shit, you can't un-know it...
Thanks David for taking time to respond. Obviously my connection to Mr. Said was from a distance. I believe I heard him speak once at a conference I attended WAY back in the day - and it must have been about his first book - what was the name of it, I forget -- at any rate, frustration and anger can devolve very quickly into all kinds of "anti" . Everything is much more complex than a glance can tell you. I suppose my own feelings begin with attempting to feel how another person feels when they are forced to flee their homes and the life they once knew. There has always been so much of that in the world where the focus is often about power over rather than engagement with and mutual human understanding, looking at the situation from below. I feel almost simple-minded writing that, but I've been reading Bonhoeffer lately. Force is often the choice in everything. I guess all of us have a tendency to hit first and then try to figure out where to go from there. Maybe that's where prickliness and prick come from? At any rate, the situation for those who self identify as Palestinians has been one of grief, anger and even hatred. The world is so shrouded in sadness it is amazing that we can manage smiles and even laughter in these times. I am glad we can though. Hope is the last thing to die.
Hey Tom. Just want you to know my brother and I sang the Ding Dong Song also. Apologize for being off topic.