What Will Shlomo Ben-Ami Say at Cooper Union Next Week?
The wild card in the debate is Shlomo Ben-Ami, a historian and former Foreign Minister (one of the cool things about Israel is that being a young country, people get to have manifold roles—generals like Moshe Dayan and Yigael Yadin also get to be archaeologists). Ben-Ami will be arguing against the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis. Presumably he will take them on over the alleged role of the Israel lobby in such political events as the Camp David negotiations of 2000, in which he participated.
Because on one of the more controversial assertions of the paper, Ben-Ami is in agreement. Here is Walt and Mearsheimer's discussion of the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948:
[T]he creation of Israel in 1947-48 involved acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and Israel's subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to moral superiority.
This statement angered many supporters of Israel. Some said W-M were anti-Israel. Like historian Benny Morris, per Michael Massing in the New York Review of Books:
Benny Morris, whom Mearsheimer and Walt frequently cite, dismissed their work in The New Republic as "a travesty of the history that I have studied and written for the past two decades." He faulted them, among other things, for...falsely accusing Israel of adopting a policy of expelling Arabs in 1948...
But Ben-Ami sides with Walt and Mearsheimer on this issue. Earlier this year he published a book called Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. I've not finished the book, but it's stunning, layering a restrained manner and careful scholarship over a moral backbeat. Because Israel has "lived by the sword," Ben-Ami asserts, the military has taken "too central a function in defining both Israel's war aims and her peace policies." (cf, Lebanon 2006)
On 1948, Ben-Ami is emphatic. The historical record shows that once the Palestinians violently sought to oppose the '47 U.N. partition plan, the Zionists adopted a policy of pushing them out of their homes, and never letting them return.
The reality on the ground... was that of an Arab community in a state of terror facing a ruthless Israeli army whose path to victory was paved not only by its exploits against the regular Arab armies, but also by the intimidation, and at times atrocities and massacres, it perpetrated against the civilian Arab community. A panic-stricken Arab community was uprooted under the impact of masacres that would be carved into the Arabs' monument of grief and hatred... Benny Morris['s] thesis about the birth of the refugee problem being not by design but by the natural logic and evolution of the war is not always sustained by the very evidence he himself provides...Ben-Gurion...also instructed that abandoned Arab villages needed to be settled by Jews even before the end of hostilities.... Israel's formal rejection of the refugees' claim for return — a position that remains intact to this day — rather than the expulsion and dispossession, is the real defining moment of the conflict..Wow. Strong stuff. And now let's be clear (and not emotional) about something: Walt and Mearsheimer cite ethnic cleansing not to deprive Israel of its right to exist, but because they are political scientists, who wish to see a more evenhanded American policy in a powderkeg region that has experienced a cycle of violence for more than 60 years, a cycle that persists because both sides have sought to valorize their actions on moral grounds, and outside powers have indulged these moral delusions. It will be interesting to see whether the issue comes up next week...Israel as a society also suppressed the memory of its war against the local Palestinians because it could not really come to terms ith the fact that its finest Sabras, the heroes of its war for independence and the role models of the new nation, expelled Arabs, committed atrocities against them, and dispossessed them.
The real creation of Israel is what is the more important thing right now. It began with an Amorite man an a Hitite woman and tht was the beginning of Zion on the earth. They fell away from Jah's teachings/wine/spiritual food. They lost all their beauty because of this and all their prosperity (the real) they chose the unrealities of the "world". However, on the 23rd of September 2006 they will experience a Plummet just before sunset. That's because Jah says He wants to restore Zion. This will happen in the middle of all the conflicts on the earth. He wants to prepare His bride/Zion before He wraps up the nonsence that is going on around the planet. He wants to plant His Just Standard according to His will by way of His holy spirit. In order to do that He always said that He will have to deal with Ohobah and Oholibah ( that is what He calls them because they are not returning to Him/His way. He calls them the two sisters, the two prostitutes who makes Him regret destroying Sodom because they are making Sodom look righteous before Him. It is a good thing for the entire peoples on the earth when this occurs. So, give praise to Him, Holy, Holy, Holy is His name, the most high god creator of all things good.
Peace to Israel!
Marsha
p.s. A Plummet is something that occurs not by man's hands (war),or pestilence, or famine, but by way of Jah's holy spirit!
I find it interesting that Phil always attacks Israel for its behavior but never attacks the United States for Guanatamo Bay or the use of torture. War is a horrible thing and people do things that they would not do in normal times. But I still maintain that the Israelis did not do the things that Phil accuses of. He once again is inaccurate.
Laura (or Laura-pretender), i think Phil is simply focussing on the issue at hand here; he's not defending or attacking current American practices because he doesn't need to: American brutalism and misdeeds are already being debated out in the open, everywhere from village sidewalks all the way up to the senate.
Phil (and others) is simply asking that people can shine an equally bright light on Israel's blunders and misguided policies without it being a taboo, without being shut down with ad hominem hysteria. note how the argument about US tyranny rages on, and yet we're not seeing McCain being labelled "anti-American" or "self-loathing".
As for the accusations of misdeeds, you're not following closely enough; Phil's not accusing anyone of anything, he's merely citing published allegations from an ex-Foreign Minister of the State of Israel. Of course, the myopic visions of a mere cabinet minister can't match you valiant armchair warriors, all comfy out there in leafy diaspora.
(now let's hear how "poor little shlomy is so full of self-loathing". c'mon wiseking, i know you can do it...)
Phil's post is refreshing in rehearsing the controversy between Benny Morris and interpreters of his work. Norman Finkelstein and Shlomo Ben Ami both agree that Benny Morris, for whatever reason, personal or scholarly , chose not to draw self-evident conclusions from his own diligent work with Israeli sources and his discussions of 'plan Dalet' which set out military plans that closely if not exactly resembled what happened.
I find Benny Morris' response to Mearsheimer and Walt disingenuous. He says 'He faulted them, among other things, for...falsely accusing Israel of adopting a policy of expelling Arabs in 1948...'. True, there was no public stated policy that Explicitly adopted transfer of Arab populations. However, it is rather interesting how the pre-independence hostilities achieved the goal that Ben Gurion and a majority of Zionists factions had hoped for: the creation of a Jewish national home with a homogenous Jewish population, the solution to the so called 'demographic problem.
In my opinion, given what I know about the tremendous diplomatic and martial skill Ben Gurion, Sharett and the rest of the Israeli policy apparatus demonstrated at this time I have concluded that in the pursuit of expansion of territory beyond the partition plan, the Yeshuv and the Zionist provisional government set out to create facts that would inevitably result in large migrations of refugees. Given the scope of their command of the situation, and their Machiavellian orientation to state craft they hid their true intentions behind the 'fog of war' dodge. In short, Benny Morris prefers to believe the myth rather than his own lyin' eyes.
Whatever one thinks about the 'exoteric' policy Ben Gurion adopted there is no question that the policy rejecting the return of refugees was consciously and publicly pursued. This was inhuman and indefensible under any standard reading of international law or the standards of human decency. Israelis like Ben Ami, and Simha Flaphan see the refugee problem as the key to the problem of Israeli security. There will be no peace without justice.
Laura would do well to find new perspectives and get closer to the truth of Israel's birth in 1948. Read Simha Flapan's masterpiece deconstructing gross misconceptions about Israel's formation: 'The Birth of Israel, Myth and Reality'.