The Blame Game

You can’t really be for real can you? You do realise the terrible suffering imposed on hundreds of thousands of people to mantain a handful of illegal settlements? The hours of delay to just get from one part of Gaza to another because of the existence of these handfuls of settlements? And the way in which the Israeli information Minister stated that the already gutted synagogues would not be demolished so that the ‘world could see what we faced’ when they were demolished (as assuredly they would be both because these synagogues were used as an excuse to have a military occupation of Gaza and because if they remained they would be a focus for calls to renew the occupation)? In any case what possible business is it of anyone else how Palestinians dispose of property left behind on land which now belongs to them?

Your own biases are actually surreal.

You are actually incorrect when you say that Palestinians and Israelis had never been to each others areas in the Gaza strip before the disengagement. Before the first Intifada Israelis used to travel into Palestinian towns and Palestinians used to travel to settlements. There were very close ties between settlers and Palestinians, I know because as a settler I experienced them.
Many friendships were maintained even after the Intifada until many Palestinians were threatened and even killed. A case in point with my settrlement of Efrat, the local Mukhtar was killed by the PLO because he advocated and kept up a very friendly relationship with our local Rabbi and both implored others to do the same.
We Israelis and Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza had very good ties with each other and used to travel freely to each others homes and I remember attending many wedding and other celebrations in an Arab town and look forward to doing so again.

I don’t think an independent news service could suggest that the reason why Palestinians could’nt have the rights they crave is because of a threat to the very existence of Israel. That is a position shared by some (but by no means all) Israeli politicians and its a point of view one often hears. But you surely would not expect to hear this view reported as fact by the BBC? Glad to know you feel better about stuff.

“The Israelis are responsible for the deaths of children who drowned during the celebrations because they never let them learn to swim”

I don’t think this was suggested in the report, but the fact that children were so excited to swim in a sea they could never have seen before, and that some of them died, because of course they could not swim (and think of the years of perhaps catching a glimpse, wondering what it looked like etc, in those long days, weeks and months of lock down, over years and years, in terrible heat etc) is indeed a poignant detail which expresses much of the reality of what the occupation acually meant to very ordinary people who were Palestinians. It also reflects the way that if you long for something too long you might forget what it is your longing for: an aspect which may be of relevence later. I don’t really think if these every day realities are suppressed its very helpful in the cause of dialogue because, of course, Palestinians do not need to be told these things by the BBC. I think it would be very helpful if the Israeli public understood some of these things because they too, only understand one side of things. Of course it might make people feel uncomfortable to be confronted with these things. But I think thats positive.

As for your other comments, I’m just trying to say that Guerin’s report was totally and utterly biased. That’s fair enough on a Fox News broadcast or an Al Jazeera broadcast, but I always thought that the BBC was an impartial news agency. Obviously not. I assume you are already familiar with Biased BBC but just in case you are not here is the link.

Some interesting ideas John. I actually think we are witnessing the beginning of the end of impartial journalism—and I think blogs are playing a minor but significant role in that change. I still can’t figure out whether this is a good or a bad thing. Perhaps, as your BBC chair may have said, “the truth lies somewhere in between.”

The discussion about media bias is an interesting one, but utterly besides the point. I don’t care how impoverished or angry the Palestinians may be, or how justified they are in their resentment of the Israeli occupation. The frenzied destruction of the holy places of another faith demonstrates a level of callous barbarism that should be unequivocally condemned. That it has not been, and that reporters like Guerin paint the destruction such a sympathetic light, is extraordinarily disturbing, but not nearly so much as the act itself. It’s further disturbing that the context Guerlin chooses for her piece is the Israeli occupation and not the pathological history of Palestinians destroying every Jewish holy site they can get access to. Melanie Phillips details some of the most well known (the article is also a useful background for the current Muslim efforts to eliminate Britain’s Holocaust day — any recognition of Jewish suffering is apparently too much for them). She fails to mention the ongoing destruction of Jewish antiquities on the Temple Mount under the watchful eyes of its Muslim custodians.

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001414.html

I really should check spelling and grammer before I post should’nt I?!

I was having this really abtruse argument with an argumentative philosopher who claims he was’nt a philosopher (I was irritatingly claiming he was) and he managed to evade my razor sharp analytical points entirely by pointing to spelling and grammatical errors. But in my view when people do that they’ve lost…thats what I tell myself anyway. But then your the king. Presumably you can edit your own comments.

Curses. I just realised. It happened AGAIN.
On that surreal note I’m signing off for a bit.

johng “that children were so excited to swim in a sea they could never have seen before, and that some of them died, because of course they could not swim (and think of the years of perhaps catching a glimpse, wondering what it looked like etc”

You get carried away on Orla’s flight of fancy. Orla stated that the Palestinians had gained access to Gaza’s BEST beach. They have had access to other beaches. They were not the tantalised urchins that you imagine, gazing thru the wire whilst the evil Jews frolliced in the forbidden sea.

As you can see from the BBC’s own maps, not all the beaches in the Gaza strip were under Israeli control. And as Orla is careful to say, “they can at least enjoy Gaza’s best beach.”

Roy and windowlick: That is actually quite sureal. I certainly did have the image of palestinian children “gazing through wire” at the beach. And I agree with Paul and even johng, in that the article does imply that this is in some way Israel’s fault.

Thanks for writing this pdberger. I’ve actually stopped defending Israel in public (I’ve also been know to criticize their policies) because I can’t stomach another friend of mine, colleague or aquaintance comparing Israel to the Nazis or justifying the Nazi propoganda in the Arab nations and Palestinian territories.

But to re-iterate it IS just true that in many areas of Gaza children had not been able to get to the beach because of the occupation. Not because all the beaches were controlled by settlements (no one said that) but because movement from one part of Gaza to another was extremely difficult. And sometimes this involved people who lived no more then a mile or so from the sea. Thats why it just is the case that there were many children who had never seen the sea.

As is fairly clear I’m not a supporter of Zionism as an ideology but I think it is possible to both be a Zionist and believe that whatever the historical origins, its become clearer and clearer that military occupation is not a solution to problems of security, and that in addition, it caused real suffering. Different sides in the argument can of course disagree about who or what is ultimately responsible for this, but they can at least (or it is possible to) agree about that.

There are many Israeli’s who do so agree, and many Israeli’s for instance who think that not just religous settlements but the massive expansions into the West Bank, premissed by some as a bargaining chip, have been a mistake. My personal hope is that those who believe this will eventually be in the ascendent politically, as in that case, its just about possible (with the emphasis on possible) that there can be a resolution. If not I doubt it very much. And thats bad for just about everyone.

johnng, your argument is so convoluted as to defy refutation. perhaps that’s your strategy — put forth an argument so circuitous it’s virtually impossible to tell where premises begin and conclusions end. regardless, as best i can tell, your revisionist history rests on the contention that Israeli settlers didn’t build synagogues in Gaza because they actually needed a place to worship, but because somehow erecting a synagogue is a political statement that establishes Israeli sovereignty over disputed territory. Now, let’s put aside the fact that despite being a Jew with years of yeshiva training behind me, I have never encountered this idea before. Apparently, conquering territory in war, paving access rounds, building fences around settlements, and settling thousands of Israelis inside them is insufficient to establish Jewish control. On top of all that, a synagogue needs to be built. That’s news to me.

Anyone who knows anything about the Israeli settlement movement knows that only recently has it become overwhelmingly the province of the religious. In the aftermath of the 67 war, plenty of secular Jews settled in the west bank and gaza because they viewed it as the next frontier, just as the deserts of the negev and the swamps of the galilee were in pre-state Israel — they were simply the next stage in the taming of the land, not to mention an effective security buffer. the notion that the construction of a synagogue lent an added layer of legitimacy to this enterprise would have been laughable to them.

But even if all you say is true, it is madness to think that the actions of a frenzied mob of Palestinians were calculated political gestures meant to ensure that the “misery and suffering” caused by the settlements did not recur. Much like the lynching of two Israeli reservists in the fall of 2000, this was mob violence, pure and simple. These were inviduals motivated by a lust for destruction and revenge. Ascribing certain rational political motives to them is the idiocy of the enlightened.

The proper context here is not the misery caused by the occupation (misery which, it must be said, is partly the fault of the Palestianian rejectionist terrorists that brought the occupation upon themselves), but the consistent Palestinian denial of Jewish history and victimhood, a denial that reached a new low with recent attempts to eliminate Britain’s Holocaust day.

Just as the destruction of synagogues is not about preventing suffering, eliminating Holocause day is not about inclusiveness and fairness, as its proponents contend. It is simply the latest attempt to erase and minimize the tragedy of the Jews. And it is precisely that minimization that opens the door to gratuitous violence perpetrated, if not against Jews, than against their holy places.

I actually agree that the majority of Israeli’s do not want the occupied territories. That unfortunately has not been translated into government policy however. The massive expansion of settlements in the West Bank since Oslo (which proceeded independently of the up’s and downs of the peace process) seem to suggest that as a State as opposed to as a people Israel has a somewhat different agenda.

I don’t really agree that the violence is entirely one sided in the way you seem to suggest or that a ‘peace movement’ (in other words a cessation of violence on the Palestinian side alone) would achieve a Palestinian state. This does not mean I’m in favour of violence. I do think however that Israel (as a state) holds the cards in the situation.

But anyway, as I said, it was not my intention to get involved in the usual historical discussions with which we are all entirely familiar and which never yield anything positive anyway.

I should say that my bad spelling is by now very much part of my on-line persona. Too late to change…

I won’t comment on the political preferences of journalists as they seem to be very much in the eye of the beholder. I don’t know about the Hamas story but I am very cautious as journalists have a tendency to get killed in that part of the world (by both sides, and who is ultimately responsible is’nt greatly helpful to them. I would not chose to be there). I should say that I don’t think being moved by the Palestinian reaction to Arafat’s death is an expression of bias. But we probably differ there.

Its true that it would be a good idea to explain how Israel came to be in Gaza. But there are also lots of other things which it would be a good idea to explain. Which are not typically.

Your highly selective narrative of history is an example of this, even down to the strange terminology (“Arabs chose to attack Israel” ie “THEY started it”). The Egyptians of course were offering peace for land (I assume thats what you meant) in the whole period before 1973. Only after 1973 was it recognised that they had to be taken seriously.

Sadat was seen as a failure though. Its interesting to discover why. And obviously I accept what Clinton’s negotiaters said rather then his spin afterwards.

Now between you and me there could be endless debates about this. We could send each other links (all of which we will have seen before recycled endlessly). We could hysterically denounce each other for having double standards. We could just hurl abuse. All the usual things.

Watching this how is a journalist supposed to respond? I’ve already stated that being ‘neutral’ is a strange virtue. It might even be a bit odd when it comes to getting at the truth. But its actually more interesting, (and not of course because I don’t have hundreds of cunning little arguments, links, all the rest of the usual nonsense up my sleeve) to work out what CAN be agreed on.

Its often very little. My own framework is basically this. This is a vicious ethnic conflict over land (what is sometimes called the ‘two tribes approach’). This not in itself unusual situation is complicated by the fact that the local origins of the conflict lie in the fact that it was the colonial powers who decided who was going to get sovereignty (right across the region and on what terms) something which is deeply resented by most people in that region. Its further complicated by the fact that Jewish history in Europe and the West is an awful story of persecution and suffering.

And those are really the three things I think its neccessary to bear in mind when discussing the whole history of the conflict and prognosis for it. Thats were I’m coming from.

I suppose Orla will blame this on Israel too…

[...] None of these problems are imagined. As the Englishman in New York pointed out the BBC’s reporting can be very biased, in an offensive way. What news outlet isn’t? Funnily enough the Biased BBC website refers to the reporter of this story as ‘Ms. Goering’, highlighting their own bias and demonstrating, in a hilariously extreme way, that is impossible to be unbiased (and I use the word ‘impossible’ advisedly). The BBC is not independent of the British Government, true, but the Dr David Kelly whistleblowing incident, and the Alastair Campbell’s subsequent resignation as Downing Street’s media chief, proves that the BBC is not a willing puppet of the Labour Party or the Government. [...]