Everyone’s shouting, no one’s listening.

a note to my children..

Amid a deluge of daily misery for all concerned since the atrocity of 7th October, I have found three aspects to be particularly upsetting. 1. The fireball at the Al-Ahli hospital; 2. The open letter from Artists for Palestine UK and 3. The Israeli bombing of southern Gaza after it declared this to be a safe zone for civilians.

The morning after the horrible disaster at the Al-Ahli hospital car park, my adult child had no doubt it was the Israelis that had bombed it because that’s what they do. Brought up in a secular Jewish home, toured Israel with school, has loads of Jewish friends etc. but that was the immediate assumption based on all the media reports. Despite the subsequent investigation pointing to a likely accident caused by a Hamas rocket, doubts linger and so I assume, they do most for of the non-Jewish world. That to commit, what if intended, must be a disgusting war crime, is simply what Israel does.  My stomach lurched, and I determined there and then to write down my thoughts, if only for my family to read them.

This was compounded by reading the open letter from Artists for Palestine UK. My goodness what a bunch of self-serving lemmings, from whom I see that at least Steve Coogan has had the good grace and sense to try to distance himself…a bit. To write in such passionate terms about humanity and preventing blood-shedding, without a mention of Jewish blood loss (yes they will refer me to the pathetic shadow of a hint), not only defies belief but undermines the essence of the very valid humanitarian issue, that is lost amid their enraged hyperbole. I mean one presumes that some of these people are not total w**kers. They are blessed with artistic talent, some have achieved great success, others a modicum of it and I dare say there’s considerable intelligence among them. Why then do they behave so w**ky when it comes to Israel/Palestine? I try to answer below.

The third vomit inducing event is strap-lined by the Israeli bombing of southern Gaza having encouraged people to retreat there but might also include the disproportionate and collective punishment of Gazans by the rigorous prevention of sustenance and medical supplies.  Israel declared itself to be at war with Hamas and rightly so, after what happened. But if at war it must play by the rules of war.  I’m no expert on what the lines are, but we feel mighty close to crossing them and at which point Israel risks losing many friends including many Jewish ones and this is not a fight to fight alone.

It is an unalterable law of physics, as applicable to solar systems as it is to atoms, that bodies polarise, then collide, then polarise, then collide ad infinitum. So thought the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) and I agree. There is a pro-Palestine narrative and a pro-Israel narrative both reaching back over 100 years. They contradict and cannot each be entirely right. Yet each side clings to its own, unwaveringly. One chooses to believe what sometimes seems alarmingly fallible evidence, because to admit its fallibility feels like denying one’s own heritage and history; one’s own point of being.  But if that is the case, Israel and Palestine are destined to polarise and collide ad infinitum, the likes of Hamas will continue to fire rockets from beneath hospital beds and Netanyahu will remain trapped by the nutters who think this is our land because God gave it to the Jews.  

Sane people must wrestle control of the asylum. There is a middle way. The mesial groove as James Joyce called it in Ulysses. Palestine deserves to live as a valid entity. Israel too deserves to do the same and if you don’t believe this, if you believe that this can’t happen because Israel stole the land, then you are part of the problem, part of the perpetual violence. Artists for Palestine UK, I’m looking at you as much as at hard-line Zionists with reciprocal intransigent views.

The middle way can only be a two-state solution. The detail will be considered by clever strategists, and of course all sorts of huge obstacles to overcome, but one assumes based on a return of all or at least much of the occupied territories and I’d say an enlarged Gaza strip with both Israel and Egypt bequeathing land so that the New Palestine will be at least equal in square miles to what became known as the occupied territories and even a fair bit more. Viability comes at a cost. It would have to include a safe connecting corridor between Gaza and the West Bank. Naturally Hamas cannot be in control and Fatah have shown over the years enough pragmatism and engagement to be encouraged to step forward. Reparations will probably ensue. I’m not so naïve as to think this is easy, let’s do it, but it is the only conceivable end game short of Armageddon.

As I say, people on both sides cling to their narratives. I set out mine below, which even though I’ve believed it for decades, I am prepared to concede is fallible. I have pre-conceptions and biases which may be wrong, that narratives I have doggedly clung to over the years, might be unfounded; if only there was a debating forum where the oxygen has not been sucked out by the extremists. I’m very happy to discuss it with those that believe it to be entirely wrong, provided they allow for the possibility that their own narrative may also be fallible. The allowance for fallible narratives, a concession that the other bloke might be right in some respects, is an initial trembling step on the road to peace.

There’s even a middle way in the middle way. People that remain utterly convinced of the righteousness of their position yet will concede for the sake of pragmatism. That peace is too important for the moral high ground to get in the way. That too works, though I’m not sure for how long.

Who am I? I’m a 64-year-old atheist Jew from Ilford. I’ve spent various youthful summers on Kibbutzim, the first one in 1977, very close to the then ‘non-border’ of the Gaza Strip. I’ve also attended several lectures and events hosted by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. They were generally informative and worthwhile, given by empathetic, passionate, and intelligent people. Without wavering from Zionism, it was obvious to me that Palestinians deserved all that Zionism had given Jews. I joined the Labour Party in my 20’s and resigned during the nightmare of Jeremy Corbyn. I’m not an academic expert but have lived through and paid avid attention to the Israel/Palestine conflict since 1967, which endows authority of a sort.

One cannot debate with those whose actions stem from the belief that God is on their side. They are beyond help and a coalition of the sane must wrestle power from them. It behoves the remaining sane people (religious and secular), to engage with those on whatever side, who might be willing to stress test long held beliefs and even if still convinced they are right, to look beyond it for the sake of peace. That is a debate worth having.

If I manage to offend any combination of my children, my Jewish friends, and my non-Jewish friends, I guess I made my point.

And to the Artists of Palestine UK, I artily-fartily say: Opened are the double doors of the horizon. Unhinged are its bolts. Why not see if you can peek through?

Part Two.

That’s the gist of what I want to say. If you want more detail, I set out my Zionist credentials and beliefs below, fallible though they may be, and I hold my position up to scrutiny by exploration of the following questions. Not in a dry academic way, this is not a thoroughly researched thesis, but just giving my view to my children, and to anyone else that might be interested.

1.      What is Zionism?

2.      What is Palestine?

3.      Is Israel a) unlawful b) apartheid?

4.      Why is this conflict out of all the world’s conflicts a) so enduring and b) so pre-occupying?

5.      Is Zionism racist?

6.      Is anti-Zionism racist?

7.      Is there hope?

1.      What is Zionism.

From people’s reaction to the word, you’d think it was an awful swearword. ‘I’m not ant-semitic I’m anti-Zionist is the common refrain’, so that suggests that people actually know what it means. Put simply, it is the Jewish aspiration for a homeland, for self-determination. That Jews are more than a religion (I’m a Jew and an atheist), they are a people and like other people, deserve self-determination and a land of their own, like the French or Italians. That gets confusing because there are French jews and Italian jews but that’s really the point. Since biblical times, when Jews were expelled from, for want of a better word, Palestine, they have been nomadic, having to make their home in whatever country would accept them and often as second-class citizens, and for centuries prohibited to work the land and confined to occupations such as money lending.

That it be a homeland in Palestine stems from a yearning to return to the spiritual home, the land of the bible, such yearning reflected in prayer and secular sentiment, emanated 5000 years ago and has endured an exile of some 2,000 years. Throughout this time, despite two expulsions, a significant number of Jews remained in Jerusalem and, subject to some fluctuation, became the majority ‘religion’ there somewhere around the 1870s. From the orthodox religionists to the Marxists of the 1890s, the urge to return to Zion, to Israel, was palpable.

That Zionism existed as an ‘ism’ since the 1890s is not contested, nor generally is that all ‘peoples’ have a right of self-determination. What is contested, is firstly whether Jews can be considered a ‘people’ and secondly, whether Palestine was by then, an appropriate place to return. The first point is pretty easy, in that it is not for non-Jews to categorise or deny Jews as a people, a race, a religion or a combination of all these.  If Jews feel they are a people that is sufficient coupled with many anthropologists pointing to the many common bonds between Jews dispersed around the world for centuries. I deal with the second point below and in para 2.

So, if a kind soul is willing to concede that Israel in whatever form has a right to exist as a Jewish entity, then such person is a Zionist, no matter how much they deplore what the Israeli government (or those acting under its auspices) does and has done for decades and no matter how much they support the Palestinian cause. They are Zionists. So, a lot of the heat can be removed from the debate by simply asking what someone means by Zionist/anti-Zionist. All the apartheid and other tags become irrelevant to the ‘ism’, because that relates to whether a practitioner of Zionism (i.e., a particular Israeli government) brings in nasty laws or not.  It is not whether Zionism is good or bad, though of course this is nuanced, and I consider below in 3(b).  

As to the second part, whether it is legitimate for that Jewish state to be established in Palestine, we need to know what is meant by Palestine and that is addressed in 2 below.

But first, a common accusation is that Zionism as an ‘ism’ is wrong ab initio, because it is born out of a bad or at least terribly discredited colonial thought process. It is a product of the age of imperialism and belongs in the rubbish basket of history alongside the slave traders. It is simply the ‘West’ imposing itself upon indigenous populations, generally for economic benefit. I accept that it is no coincidence that the thousands yearlong yearning to return, finally took hold in the age of nationalism. Of course, other factors were relevant; Russian pogroms, Marxism, the transmission of literature coupled with a widespread ability to read, a non-economic spiritual pull to settle in the homeland and in due course, the holocaust. But certainly, Zionism is born of a colonial percept that one can travel to other parts of the world and create there a new nation. But if this is valid anti-Zionist criticism, then surely, having set fire to the Israeli flag, such criticizers with equal brio, must burn the New Zealand flag, followed by that of Canada, the US and Australia, not to mention about 50 other countries. Because if they do not, they are holding Jews to a standard that they do not apply to other peoples and nations, and that is an integral aspect of the internationally agreed definition of antisemitism.

As Zionism is such a broadly defined concept, simply a desire for Jewish self-determination, it is understandable that it attracts a broad variety of proponents. It’s tempting to consider Zionists to be right wing, land grabbing militarists. But I grew up in the socialist-Zionist tradition. Communist would be more accurate but that was a discredited term by the late ‘70s. Nevertheless, the system of kibbutzim meant that Israel a capitalist country, was heavily influenced by people with far-left tendencies - generally anarcho-syndicalist - well into the 1990s.  I recall Tony Benn and Eric Heffer coming to a West Hampstead basement, to meet with us at Mapam UK in the 1980s and requesting that we convey their comradely greetings to brothers in the Histadrut, the Israeli trade union movement. Whisper it, but Ken Livingstone too.

2.      What is Palestine?

From Roman times onward, the Levantine area now broadly comprising Israel, the occupied territories, the Gaza Strip and Jordan was known as Palestine. During the ‘Zionist’ era, let’s say 1890 onwards (seven years before the first Zionist congress), it was part of the Turkish empire until 1917 when it was conquered by the British in WW1, and incorporated into the British Empire until, give or take, the UN  resolved to partition what was left of Palestine (see Jordan below) into two states, one Jewish, one Arab, in November 1947. Essentially bringing the State of Israel into being under international law.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 is cited by anti-Zionists as one of the root causes of the dispute and this must be right for it gave an impetus to Zionist migration into the area from Europe. But looking back, it wasn’t over helpful to Jews either.

It was a letter on behalf of the British government declaring support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” Note ‘national home’ not ‘state’ though this may be splitting hairs but the key words for today is, ‘in Palestine’.

Looked at via a 2023 parallax, this appears to confirm an existing state of Palestine back in 1917, full of ‘Palestinians’ and so obviously the Zionists must have imposed themselves into an existing legitimate Palestinian state. But this is far too simplistic a view. There was (in my narrative), no sense of state or nationhood then in Palestine it was simply an area run by the British, populated in the majority by Arabs and in minority by Jews. Arabs at the time, from say 1850-1964 did not consider themselves Palestinian, rather as Arabs which populated the world from Morocco in the west to the Persian border in the east. This certainly does not detract from the reality and legitimacy of Palestinian nationality as today exists but does provide context at the time of the Balfour Declaration and highlights the danger of applying labels casually decades later and without proper consideration. I illustrate this in two ways.

1.      In 1922 the Sharifian Solution was drawn up by the British to maintain control of the middle east. It entailed ‘giving’ to three princes of what is now Saudi Arabia, areas of the middle east broadly corresponding to modern Iraq, Syria and for our purposes Jordan. Winston Churchill drew a line through then Palestine and simply gave the two-thirds share of that to become the state of Jordan. It was not proper independence, that did not occur until 1946 but it established Transjordan. Neither this nor the full independence of 1946 invoked Palestinian riots on the streets of Amaan, Jerusalem or Nazareth objecting to this denial of Palestinian sovereignty, because the local population did not consider themselves Palestinian, rather Arabs of various sects and villages. And sources state that in 1922, half the population of Transjordan was nomadic. There is not to this day, a Palestinian claim to Jordan as there is to Israel and as there is not, one should ask, why not? And if it is the case that it didn’t matter to the local Arabs that their nation was overnight given to strangers from Saudi, it rather suggests that there was no sense of nation. Moreover, the violent objection and uprising at the very same time, to Jewish control in a small part (see the maps) of the already far smaller western Palestine, points to such objection being based upon not that it was taken over by strangers, but that the strangers were Jew, not Arab. When the PLO was founded in 1964, it sought to establish an Arab state in ‘Mandatory Palestine’. This excludes Transjordan. Again, I ask, why?

2.      Let’s consider the use of the word Palestine prior to 1948, even one may say prior to 1964.

There were many instances. The Palestine Electric Corporation Limited, The Palestine Football Association, The Palestine Broadcasting Service, the Palestine Communist Party, and the Communist Party of Palestine were all Jewish organisations, alongside others more obviously so, such as The Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association. It’s likely that prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948, people self-identifying as Palestinians were both Arabs and Jewish Zionists but more likely, mainly Jewish. Following Israel’s inception, all the Palestinian institutions renamed themselves Israeli equivalents but even then, even after the discarding of the label by Jews, there was relatively low adoption by Arabs of the word ‘Palestine’ until around 1964 with the founding of the PLO and one may ask; why then? And why at all?  

But there was some Arab use of ‘Palestine’. Prior to the Arab revolt (1936-39) the Palestine Arab Party was established in May 1935 and the revolt itself was also referred as Thawrat Filastin al-Kubra but generally the term Palestine does not seem to be something that politically and culturally defined the non-Jewish people of that region and did not carry the meaningful political currency that it now does until some time after it was adopted in 1964.  

To reiterate, none of this is to cast doubt on the real and vibrant Palestinian culture, sense of history, sense of injustice, of suffering, of diaspora, of collectivism etc. etc. as now exists but when one speaks to proponents of the cause (as I have done many times and include myself in that camp alongside the Israeli one), one would think that Arab Palestine existed always and forever and that is the narrative they cling to. Just a little research casts doubt on that.

3.      a) Is Israel unlawful?

Israel self-declared its existence on 14th May 1948. This followed the United Nations adoption of the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish, one Arab on 29th November 1947 and a recommendation that the partition be formalised by October 1948. The Arab part included all of what became the Occupied Territories and more besides. The Jewish area was a smaller version of modern Israel (excluding the Occupied Territories). Jerusalem was wholly within the Arab part but to be designated the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem. Whatever that meant. In any event the besieged Jews of Jerusalem were cut off from their brethren. The UN resolution for this two-state solution, passed 33 to 13 and was accepted by the Jewish side and rejected by the Arabs.  

The day following the declaration, on 15th May 1948, Israel was attacked by the surrounding Arab states, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. Israel wins the war and establishes the borders comprising modern day Israel (excluding the Occupied Territories). What we now know as the West Bank was acceded to Jordan.  

In terms of legality, a Declaration of Independence following a United Nations resolution, provides Israel with a legitimacy few countries can match. Of course, it grew with the spoils of war (including west Jerusalem) and territory won in war, especially a defensive war which 1948 must surely be, is following an international acknowledged armistice, generally considered legitimate. For example, not many would question the legitimacy of Alsace being part of France. Contrast with the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip also acquired as spoils of war in the Six Day War of 1967, yet Israel at the time claimed no sovereignty and most of the world community consider such territories as unlawfully occupied. In 1967 Israel claimed these territories were defensive buffers only, over which it had no claim but has revised its position over the decades and annexed east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The Gaza Strip was returned in 2005.

The 1948 War of Independence, known in the Arab world as the Nakba (the catastrophe) also saw the tragedy of the displacement of around 700,000 Arabs between 1948 and 1956. How and why they became displaced is the crux and source of the current conflict. The Arab view is that they were forced from their homes by Jews. The Jewish version is that the surrounding Arab states called on their brothers to evacuate because their superior armies were approaching and would drive the Jews into the sea, whereupon the Arabs of Palestine could return not only to their homes but also claim all the Jewish homes and possessions. We cannot know what really occurred and so piece together what we can. It is the case that in 1948, the Arab countries were confident they would wipe out the Jews who were militarily far inferior, with many Zionist combatants being recovering holocaust survivors and already ravaged by a civil war that had raged for over a year in Israel since the UN partition vote. By same token there is evidence (widely accepted and verified) of a massacre inflicted by Jews upon Arabs at the village of Deir Yassin and if it occurred there, it’s reasonable to assume it occurred elsewhere.  

One might balance this by the expulsion/displacement of over 900,000 Jews from Arab lands at same time. These became Israeli citizens whereas displaced Arabs were not allowed into any of the surrounding Arab nations but rather held by their own Arab brothers in displaced persons camps to be paraded for ever more as the evidence of Israeli crime.

And if Arabs were displaced then displaced from what? What were the demographics of Palestine, say around 1930 (to take a snapshot), where was it situated and how did that compare to say 1918? There is confusing data, firstly because each side of the conflict has its own statistical narrative and secondly it is unclear whether Arab numbers include or exclude that majority part of Palestine that became Jordan in 1922, which is around a 400,000 variable. One would expect Muslim numbers to plumet at that point, yet several sources indicate that they increase and I’m not sure how to interpret that. It’s also the case that Arabs were attracted towards Palestine by the increased Jewish economic activity. What is obvious is that in 1918 there was a significant Arab (Muslim/Christian) majority, which reduced but still existed until the 1930s.

Most Arabs lived in villages, predominantly in the north, and together with Jewish co-habitants, in cities - Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, Nazareth. In between were expanses of land, near the coast good arable grazing pastures but much of inland was uninhabited in between villages, and in the north, much was swampy, and malaria ridden. The extent of Eucalyptus trees planted between 1910 and 1950, mark out these uninhabitable areas that Zionists say were uninhabitable and which they purchased and turned into good arable land.  

I attended a lecture at Palestine Solidarity Campaign around 15 years ago, in which the presenter was compiling a book recording testimonies of ownership of land and attempting to piece together into an atlas of sorts. It was a work in progress. It recorded how land passed from Arab to Jew. Sometimes this was by force. Other times purchased from absent Arab and Turkish landowners or from the incumbent Arab owners/owner-occupiers. So the claim that the Jews stole the land is utterly spurious. Purchases are documented and the evidence that land was lawfully acquired is overwhelming. The contrary argument would be to claim Jeremy Corbyn’s house on the grounds that it was sold by your great grandfather and you rather wished he hadn’t. That not only must Jeremy give it to you for free but pay reparations for having bought it in the first place. Equally, where plots of land were stolen, reparations should be paid.

So, the Jewish claim of a land without a people for a people without a land is clearly romanticised nonsense. Denying the existence of a Palestinian people (or whatever label one uses) is racist and every bit as repulsive and dangerous as ‘Palestine shall be free, from the river to the sea..’ But this does not make Israel illegal.

My view is that statements that Israel is an illegal state are simply wrong. Where the borders legally begin and end is far more questionable and at some point, if we are ever to see a durable peace, some/most/all of the Occupied Territories will need to be returned plus substantial reparations paid to those displaced, including potentially to those with valid claims for lost property within green line Israel. On this, see part 4 (a).

3 b) Is Israel Apartheid?

The anti-apartheid movement concerned the racist laws in South Africa enacted in the second half of the 20th century. They created a classified hierarchy of racial types, separated them and applied laws to enforce the separation. Geographically, economically, sexually, politically. Countries are racist; this sadly is a universal truth, but South Africa seemed unique in imposing laws not seen in the West since Nazi Germany.

This bears no comparison with Israel. At least not within Israel excluding the Occupied Territories but quite honestly this is to split hairs. To establish a Jewish state or an anything state is to walk an increasingly challenging political tightrope. What is it to be British? Or French or Italian? What laws protect the Italian-ness of Italy? How will Israel uphold its Jewishness and any claims to democracy with a dwindling Jewish population and an increasing Muslim one?  The Nationality Law heads down a dangerous path. What criteria did Israel apply to conveniently recognise as Jewish, a million immigrating Russians in the 1990s? Why should I, a British Jew have a right to Israeli citizenship when a Muslim born in Nablus and living 10 minutes from ‘Israeli’ settlers, does not?  Is Israel a racist society? Yes. Is it undemocratic? Yes, and getting worse all the time. Is it a ticking time bomb that will explode any claim to being a moral society if these factors are not addressed? Yes.

But to call this apartheid diminishes that term to something meaningless, which might be applied to India, pretty much all Muslim countries, and countless others.

Two pillars of Israeli society, the military and the civil service are not uniquely Jewish. It is compulsory for Bedouins and Circassians to serve but Muslims can and do volunteer and there have been several very high-ranking Arab officers in the IDF. Arab Muslims (and so of course Christians and others) participate in all strata of Israeli society. Most at the poorer end in the construction and services sectors. Many are on the margins of society, likely paid cash in hand but is that so different to minorities in Britain? But the rich Israeli/Palestinian Arabs live alongside rich Jewish Israelis in the best neighbourhoods and on lush kibbutzim; the real estate developers, the hi-tech millionaires/billionaires. Arab Israeli doctors and nurses work in the Israeli health services, there are Arab judges overseeing Israeli trials and Arab members of the Supreme Court. There are currently 17 Arab MKs (Members of Knesset) out of 120 and an Arab political party, the United Arab List, formed part of an Israeli government coalition in 2021. So, there are Arab law makers, law deciders and law enforcers.

Israeli society is extremely fallible but not uniquely so. Nor, for those of us around at the time and members of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, is it apartheid.

4.      Why is this conflict out of all the world’s conflicts a) so enduring and b) so pre-occupying?

If one searches ‘Disputed Territory’, Wiki throws up 29 in Africa, 7 in North America, 8 in South America, 39 in Asia (including 4 relating to Israel), 16 in Europe, 4 in Oceana and 55 disputes involving states outside the UN (mainly relating to China but including the dispute between UK and Turkish Cyprus).  Then there’s 27 disputes confined within an existing state where an internal group claims some sovereignty. Ignoring those relating to Antarctica which are unlikely to involve people, that’s 185 current ongoing territorial disputes of which 4 involve Israel.

a)     so enduring

The gist of all the lectures I attended at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is that the land is Palestinian, stolen by Zionists in various waves from around 1905 to 1967 and continues by creeping footsteps ever since to this very day. Not only de facto but by formal annexation. The conflict will continue until this wrong is righted and no matter how long it takes, every inch will be re-taken so that Palestine will again be free….from the river to the sea.  

Some of the stolen land allegations are undoubtedly true. As is the hundreds of thousands of people displaced. What is equally true is that Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan could have absorbed their displaced Arab brothers just as Israel absorbed an even greater number of displaced Algerian, Libyan, Tunisian, Egyptian, Moroccan Jewish brothers who had their land and possessions appropriated. Instead, the Arab nations chose to showcase them in holding pens where several hundred thousand Palestinians over the decades turned into millions and the current world-wide diaspora. Be in no doubt, this was a calculated political decision based on the one fundamental premise: it was ok for Jews to live within the Arab caliphate with diminished rights but utterly unacceptable to have Jewish sovereignty over any part of it, no matter how tiny.   Approximately 8 thousand square miles out of five million. 

For its part, Israel, while paying lip service to trading land for peace if only it had a partner to talk to, has at same time taken advantage by turning a temporary defensive buffer into permanence by annexation and the permitting of its civilians to settle among  and increasingly often, terrorise Palestinian neighbours. 

Israel’s military strength coupled with the power of its US and European allies means that there is no prospect Hamas and its allies achieving their declared aim of driving all the Jews into the sea (Palestine will be free etc. etc…) in the foreseeable future. But recent events show that it is not empty posturing and Israel can be hurt…badly.

b)     so pre-occupying? 

The world-wide territorial disputes referred above all come at a horrible human cost and invariably civilian. There are countless other conflicts, thankfully now resolved that have involved far more civilian deaths than Israel/Palestine since 1945.  

The wiki page, List of Wars by Death Toll shows that since 1945 (establishment of UN), over 32 million people around the world have died in conflict. It doesn’t distinguish between military and civilian and ignores conflict where the number is less than 25,000 which is dealt separately. The deaths attributable to the Arab/Israeli conflict (1948 to date) is 116,000. This is all sides. That’s 0.36%, a comparative speck of dust. There are many conflicts in places I’d not heard of, in which those deaths alone dwarf the number in Israel/Palestine. The figures are disputed but the disparity is so colossal, how wrong can it be? 

Yet during the same period, the number of UN resolutions condemning Israel in each year, often outnumber those relating to the rest of the world combined in each year. The extent of the horror elsewhere is so overwhelming that this makes no sense. This can only be reflective of an unreasonable bias against Israel which is terribly counter-productive. It not only retards meaningful progress to help Palestinians, it feeds into Israeli hawkish siege mentality and above all, must divert huge resource from the clearly more needed areas of conflict throughout the world.  

It is my no doubt fallible and jaundiced belief that during these 75 years, opportunities have been missed for an establishment of Palestine in return for recognition of Israel but on each occasion, this has been rejected by Arab states and Palestinian leadership in this ‘all or nothing’ strategy.  

5.      Is Zionism racism? 

In 1975, the UN resolved that Zionism was racism. In 1991 it revoked this. The ‘ism’ is simply a right to recognise self-determination for Jews. That should be as uncontroversial as self-determination for Mauris. But self-determination (to borrow from Snr. Guterres) does not operate in a vacuum and one person’s liberation is another person’s lebensraum. In a post-Holocaust environment, the Law of Return seemed an innocent and welcomed practical necessity. It now favours one race over another and for no decent purpose whatever. But that is an application of the ‘ism’ rather than judgement of the ‘ism’ itself. If liberation and self-determination mean anything and after all, Palestinians are not shy at claiming an entitlement to it, then it can’t be right for one and racist for the other.  

I’m not keen generally on ascribing entitlement based on race. But we all do it. The French, the English, the Americans, the Italians, the Irish, all think there’s something special about not just their nation but they, as a people. Israelis certainly do, supercharged, but why do we expect higher morality of them than everyone else? It’s about time we all focussed less on nation and more on humanity.

6.      Is anti-Zionism racist?

I hope by this stage we are all comfortable that it is. To hold Jews to a higher standard not applied to others is antisemitic. Israel is an imperialist rogue state, yet New Zealand, Canada and the others are not. 

There are appeals to boycott Israeli products, there are marches on the streets of cities around the world weekly. Embassies are bombarded and synagogues burned. If you join such marches and do not with equal fervour also weep and gnash teeth regarding at least a dozen or so of the other 181 current conflicts, you need to take a good look at yourself and ask why not? If it’s simply that its cool to be anti-Zionist, that’s not cool and it’s time to grow up. If people can get to Jews and kill them, they do and sadly its likely they will do soon in western cities. To highlight the dreadful loss of innocent Gazan blood is obligatory. But to do so without the same consideration for Israeli victims, worse yet, to regard these victims as somehow complicit and deserving, is racist and disgusting.  

As to those Artists. I shouldn’t single them out, but they are a convenient anacronym standing symbolically for the thousands of smug entitled politicos on the left side of politics but the self-proclaimed right side of history. Why are they generally anti-Zionist? Forgive my flippancy and of course this is generalising and patronising to the many dedicated, well-meaning folk who think deeply and passionately about the issue. But for others it’s laziness. Pro-Palestine is put on a plate for them. It’s easy and has been since Qatari Petro-dollars ensured it’s been front and central since 1973. At Uni all the debates were won by the Palestine side because any dissenting voice was cancel-cultured or screamed into silence. Which is desperately sad because both sides deserve justice but especially the Palestinians and faux debate and scare tactics deter rather than encourage that.  

Understanding how and why China has ethnic-cleansed a million Uyghurs is tough and China is too powerful an enemy. Over 100,000 died in Ethiopia in 2022 in the Tigray conflict, (“sorry, never heard of it..”) nearly 100,000 in Ukraine (“you sure that isn’t anti-Putin propaganda?”), Mali, Myanmar – and others, have awful statistics to dwarf anything in Palestine, ten times over. But some of these types need to amble down Stokey High Street having done their bit, by joining the Palestine march, so they don’t need to worry about that other stuff.  They sit in the café and there’s Jeremy over there, a study of self-righteous but pained contemplation as he absently stirs his latte. If any of them had any balls, if any of them paid more than lip service to what might actually help suffering people, they’d march with a Palestine flag over one shoulder and an Israeli flag over the other. I’ll join them in that.

7.      Is there Hope?

For what? And for whom?  

Let’s start with kickstarting some sort of peace initiative because we must hope something positive can come out of this. What has occurred is epoch changing, not just for Israelis and Palestinians but for the world. But even before this, Israel was a society on a terrifying brink. Over 5% of the entire population (so in Britain that would be 3 million people), took to the streets to protest the anti-democratic direction the government was pointing. Soldiers, sailors, and airmen, including those in special forces and vital positions refused to perform their service. Whether this contributed to the awful security failure, is for another day, but the point is, there is a huge consensus in Israel for anti-government protest. It may not be the majority; it may not deter Netanyahu but for now his hand is stayed by a cross party coalition. Naturally for now, the disgusting atrocities have united the nation, but the rifts remain.  

In the context of bringing home the abducted (and there is no other context), enormous international pressure should be brought upon Israel to a) play be the rules of war and b) use the opportunity of a weakened Hamas to promote moderate Palestinian leadership and when sensitive and sensible to do so, reach out to the Palestinians. To those that say this is impossible because of the victims, well from what I read, I say that many of the victims were trying to do just this in their own personal ways.  

For Gazans? Not much. They will continue to pay the price. But Palestinians have for decades shown themselves to be resourceful perceptive and discerning and must know that Hamas cannot be the way. If they find moderate leadership willing to accept a future alongside Israel, then the future can be brighter and full of hope. International funds will pour in.

One can only hope.

PS. This blog is obviously a departure from the others concerning James Joyce.

Russell Raphael © 2021-2023

Maladroit Deshil; the Right Write

Post Nineteen

From Nestor:

“On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud, uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on. Their eyes knew their years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh.”

This passage has troubled me. It comes hot on the heels of Deasy’s tirade against the Jews and whilst Stephen puts up some resistance, in his mind he pictures this scene from his recent experience in Paris. The goldskinned men are strange to him. Exotica. Context pins them as Jews as Stephen so assumes. The Paris stock exchange, a grand building was also known as the temple, based as it was architecturally on the Temple of Vespasian and Titus in Rome and one naturally has in mind the money-lenders expelled by Jesus from the temple in Jerusalem. So this is not a flattering image and tends to dilute Stephen’s resistance to Deasy’s antisemitism. Yet if that’s his recollection then so be it.

These men spoke not in French or Stephen would have understood. The gabble of a strange tongue. They schemed, living on their wits to make money. Thickplotting. We shall be reminded of them shortly and throughout Ulysses as our ‘Jew’ Leopold Bloom shall plot various money-making schemes. These are strangers in a strange French land, like Kevin Egan, though not on the run after blowing up buildings, these fled for their lives after pogroms, grateful to leave with the gems on their fingers but little else to build a new life in whatever sanctuary they landed. Their brethren would have been Virags from Szombathely and my own maternal grandparents from Odessa to the docks of London’s east end.

Sanctuary? In the Paris of February 1904, the Dreyfus storm still raged and France was no sanctuary for Jews. They knew the rancours massed about them and sensed and Stephen sensed, that ‘time surely would scatter all.’ Too right. A mere 18 years after publication of Ulysses, nearly a quarter of all French Jewry would be rounded up and murdered by the Nazis along with the Roma and others. No great sanctuary in Ireland either as the Jews of Limerick found to their cost at ‘this very moment, this very instant’ as Bloom would remark later that day. All of which is fitting to remember in this week of Holocaust Memorial Day.

Maladroit. It’s a very particular choice of word and Joyce was nothing if not particular. Maladroit, not straight, not right. No ‘per vias rectus’ for the likes of these. No straight road to heaven, for as Mr. Deasy tells us, they (we) sinned against the light or to put it less charitably, they (we) killed Jesus and for this they (we) must take the left-hand path which goes way below.

It puts me in mind of a phrase we’ll see at 10.30 that evening and the opening words of Oxen of the Sun episode, set in the Holles Street maternity hospital.

               ‘Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus’

A mix of three words starting according to Gifford, with a corruption of ‘deashil’, an Irish word meaning to go to the right. Turn right for the maternity hospital, right is good, left is bad, bad luck. Left is no start for a new baby. Deasil; is it just me or is that worryingly close to ‘Deasy’? Skip forward those eighteen years or so from ‘22 and standing in the line to the right or the left had wholly different and sinister connotations.

It must be a comfort in life to have certainty. To know that this way is right and that way is wrong. The Jews it seemed are destined to wander; not just Jews, this is the perennial lot of the immigrant and refugee and it is only idiots such as Garrett Deasy that consider this as a negative. Immigrants add to the soul of society. Exotica is the spice of life. As an exhausted but still practical Bloom puts it much later that night:

               “Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen's ear, are accused of ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History—would you be surprised to learn?—proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an uncommonly able ruffian who, in other respects, has much to answer for, imported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper spirit. They are practical and are proved to be so.”

And even later, a belter of a line by Bloom especially for 1 o’clock in the morning as a barb to Little Irishers:

               “The most vulnerable point too of tender Achilles, your God was a jew, because mostly they appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhere about in the county Sligo.”

Who’s to say what god is or from where god hails but the county Sligo which I’m sure is otherwise lovely in every respect, seems for this purpose a little.. well, maladroit.

For more Ulysses idle thinking or to buy Russell’s guide to Ulysses: www.russellraphael.com

© RUSSELL RAPHAEL 2021-2023