The Israeli-Palestinian issue

[Selene]

Adonis:

Do you ascribe to the statement that "All property is theft."

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The fact that it was the UN and Colonial powers that made the decisions and it wasn't a decision by referendum of the actual people of the lands. There's no justice in taking the land from some people and giving it to others.. It's theft.

Adonis,

This ignores WWII and what happens when you fight on the other side in a major war.

The people in the Middle East have been fighting each other and the victors annexing whole territories ever since the dawn of human history. What's suddenly so different here?

On another note, to be absolutely precise and judging from your words, your beef about the creation of the state of Israel is with the UN and the British Mandate, not the Zionists. Your beef with the Zionists comes later.

Is that fair to say?

btw - If the UN is the standard, they repealed the act claiming Israel was a racist nation long, long ago. So if you wish to continue calling it that, that is your opinion, not anything recognized by anyone outside of those directly engaged in the hostilities. Repeating it will not bring third-party recognition to the affirmation.

As a rhetorical device, I think this turns third parties off and greatly weakens the influence potential of your argument. Some of the branding against the accused gets spread, obviously, but the backlash branding against the accuser is far, far stronger.

In short, it doesn't work to convince people. But it does work to discredit the pro-Palestinian argument.

I know I don't think of Israel as a racist nation. I see it as culture-oriented, but not race-oriented. I believe the majority of humanity sees it that way, too. And when you look, there are just too many Israeli people (the vast majority, in fact, including the vast majority of people who call themselves Zionists) who are not racists and do not do racist things.

I fight against this same attitude of people who claim Muslims are this and that.

Undoubtedly there are some racist Zionists, but in light of what people can see clearly everyday, playing the race card is simply an argument doomed to failure with the outside world. In my opinion, insisting on it is tantamount to insisting on failure.

You have many good arguments that need to be on the table, some of which could bring true benefits to the Palestinian side. Why not concentrate on them instead of insisting on a failure argument?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I hope my comments above did not scare Adonis off.

But if I do not condone bigotry as argument from people against Muslims (and I don't), I must not condone bigotry as argument against Zionists (and I don't).

On the other hand, I admit there are bigoted Muslims as well as bigoted Zionists. But there is no excuse for redefining an entire group of people based on bigotry, and falsely attributing the entire group with bigotry, because some people among them are bigots.

If I don't agree with such characterizations, I am going to say so and say why. I'm going to say it firmly and clearly.

I refused to learn bigotry as a hillbilly child in the South and I refuse to learn it now.

I have a feeling that Adonis and I define Zionism in vastly different ways.

Michael

[Leonid]

Poor Palestine! This tiny piece of land has been divided and redivided so many times. First Great Britannia divided it, tearing its Eastern part and created artificial state called Trans-Jordan. Presently, 70% of its population is Palestinians, but nobody even dream to create Palestinian state in Jordan. Then UN divided Western Palestine to the Arab and Jewish states. Jews accepted this division but Arabs refused and in 1948 attacked newborn Jewish state which constituted only 25% of Palestine. They continued to attack it in 1956, 1967, 1973 and between wars committed horrendous crimes of terrorism against Israeli (and not only Israeli) civilian population. Now it's apparently the time for another division which in addition to Israel and Jordan will create another two cripple Arab states in Palestine- Gaza and West Bank. More than that-they want to divide Jerusalem (Yerushalaim, El-Kuds which its very name in Hebrew means undivided or whole and in Arabic the Holy). All this madness serves only one goal-to satisfy power-hungry Palestinian leaders who need the perpetuation of the conflict in order to justify their own existence. The heart of Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rabid statism of Arab leaders backed by Islamic fundamentalism. What Palestinians really need is not a creation of another two Arab states but a concept of the state based on recognition of inalienable human rights and separation of state from religion. In such a state all inhabitants of Palestine could co-exist peacefully and prosper.

[Leonid]

Israel justifies its existence on the fact that Jews are there. Have been there, always. Living peacefully and without aggression against others except when others, like the Seleucids and the Romans and the Crusaders in former times, refuse to let them. In fact, the same basic justification the Palestinians give.

So then, you support the Palestinians right to have a state right?

or

How about the Native Americans in the US?

How about the Indigenous Australians?

How about the Maori of New Zealand?

If you don't support the rights of even one of the above in having their own state, then you would be quite hypocritical to support the rights of Israel to be created.

[Leonid]

The only proper function of state is protection of natural or inalienable rights. The only justification of national self-determination is protection from oppression and prosecution. Originally Israel has been created for this very purpose-to provide protection to the people who suffered under tremendous oppression for the last two thousand years. Therefore existence of the State of Israel is fully justified. Native Americans, New-Zeeland Maori or Australian aborigines are not oppressed or prosecuted. Palestinian Arabs also not prosecuted as long as they not involved in terrorism. Therefore none of them have right for self-determination. More than that, Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and West Bank proved themselves as brutal oppressive, fanatical and aggressive regimes. There is no such a thing as a right to infringe the rights of others.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Leonid,

Native Americans suffered a great deal of persecution and deception by the USA government. Ask any Cherokee, for instance, about the Trail of Tears and why they do not use 20 dollar bills.

The Indians were not saints either. Some of them were really brutal. They waged war and defended against war waged. Bottom line, they lost. Lots of bad stuff happened on both sides. Note that racism on both sides was at the root.

We can't do anything about that anymore, but we can refuse to repeat it.

This is the attitude I suggest with the current hostilities.

I don't know enough about the New-Zealand Maori or Australian aborigines to comment.

Michael

[Libertarian Muslim]

Adonis,

This ignores WWII and what happens when you fight on the other side in a major war.

Who fought on the other side in a major war? The Palestinians?

The people in the Middle East have been fighting each other and the victors annexing whole territories ever since the dawn of human history. What's suddenly so different here?

It's different, when you annex a land you create a state in that land and grant all people therein citizenship in it with equal rights as others. The Zionists wouldn't let all of the Palestinians become citizens because it'd take away the identity of Israel being a 'Jewish' State. But at the same time they don't allow the Palestinians to have their own autonomous state like they are proposing. So they leave the Palestinians in limbo suffering like refugees in their own lands..

On another note, to be absolutely precise and judging from your words, your beef about the creation of the state of Israel is with the UN and the British Mandate, not the Zionists. Your beef with the Zionists comes later.

Is that fair to say?

No, my beef is primarily with the Zionists. Zionism as the political movement that helped create Israel began in the 20th century. This was long before the British mandate and the UN.

I know I don't think of Israel as a racist nation. I see it as culture-oriented, but not race-oriented. I believe the majority of humanity sees it that way, too. And when you look, there are just too many Israeli people (the vast majority, in fact, including the vast majority of people who call themselves Zionists) who are not racists and do not do racist things.

That's not from what I have seen, it's not only Arabs in Israel that get discriminated against it's also other Jews.. White European Ashkenazi Jews are incredibly racist towards their darker Shephardi, Mizrahi and evne worse the treatment of the Habashe (Ethiopian) Beta Jews brethren and that's from the mouth of Manny Waks, a Shephardic Jew that was the head of the B'nai B'rith Anti Defamation Commission in Australia.

Let's take a look at a few examples..

Israel’s treatment of Ethiopians ‘racist’

Jonathan Cook, Foreign Correspondent

Last Updated: January 05. 2010 11:43PM UAE / January 5. 2010 7:43PM GMT

Ethiopian Jews are reported to face widespread discrimination in jobs, housing and education in Israel.

NAZARETH, Israel // Health officials in Israel are subjecting many female Ethiopian immigrants to a controversial long-term birth control drug in what Israeli women’s groups allege is a racist policy to reduce the number of black babies.

The contraceptive, known as Depo Provera, which is given by injection every three months, is considered by many doctors as a birth control method of last resort because of problems treating its side effects.

However, according to a report published last week, use of the contraceptive by Israeli doctors has risen threefold over the past few years. Figures show that 57 per cent of Depo Provera users in Israel are Ethiopian, even though the community accounts for less than two per cent of the total population.

About 90,000 Ethiopians have been brought to Israel under the Law of Return since the 1980s, but their Jewishness has subsequently been questioned by some rabbis and is doubted by many ordinary Israelis.

Ethiopians are reported to face widespread discrimination in jobs, housing and education and it recently emerged that their blood donations were routinely discarded.

“This is about reducing the number of births in a community that is black and mostly poor,” said Hedva Eyal, the author of the report by Woman to Woman, a feminist organisation based in Haifa, in northern Israel. “The unspoken policy is that only children who are white and Ashkenazi are wanted in Israel,” she said, referring to the term for European Jews who founded Israel and continue to dominate its institutions.

Women’s groups were alerted to the widespread use of Depo Provera in the Ethiopian community in 2008 when Rachel Mangoli, who runs a day care centre for 120 Ethiopian children in Bnei Braq, a suburb of Tel Aviv, observed that she had received only one new child in the previous three years.

“I started to think about how strange the situation was after I had to send back donated baby clothes because there was no one in the community to give them to,” she said.

She approached a local health clinic serving the 55 Ethiopian families in Bnei Braq and was told by the clinic manager that they had been instructed to administer Depo Provera injections to the women of child-bearing age, though he refused to say who had issued the order.

Ms Mangoli, who interviewed the women, said: “They had not been told about alternative forms of contraception or about the side effects or given medical follow-ups.” The women complained of a wide range of side effects associated with the drug, including headaches, abdominal pain, fatigue, nausea, loss of libido and general burning sensations.

Depo Provera is also known to decrease bone density, especially among dark-skinned women, which can lead to osteoporosis in later life. Doctors are concerned that it is difficult or impossible to help women who experience severe side effects because the drug is in their system for months after it is injected.

The contraceptive’s reputation has also been tarnished by its association with South Africa, where the apartheid government had used it, often coercively, to limit the fertility of black women.

Traditionally, its main uses have been for women who are regarded as incapable of controlling their own reproduction or monitor other forms of birth control, and for women who suffer severe problems during menstruation.

Ms Eyal said she had been denied co-operation from government ministries, doctors and most of the health insurance companies while conducting her research.

Clalit, the largest health company, however, did provide figures showing that 57 per cent of its Depo Provera users were Ethiopian compared with a handful of women in other ethnic groups.

The health ministry was unavailable for comment.

When first questioned about Depo Provera in June 2008, the health minister of the time, Yaacov Ben Yezri, said the high number of Ethiopians in Israel using the drug reflected a “cultural preference” for injections among Ethiopians. In fact, according to figures of the World Health Organisation, three-quarters of women in Ethiopia using birth control take the oral pill.

“The answers we received from officials demonstrated overt racism,” Ms Eyal said. “They suggested that Ethiopian women should be treated not as individuals but as a collective group whose reproduction needs controlling.”

When Woman to Woman conducted an experiment by sending five non-Ethiopian women to doctors to ask for Depo Provera, all were told that it was prescribed only in highly unusual cases.

Ms Mangoli said it was extremely difficult to get immigrant Ethiopian families to speak out because they were afraid that their Jewishness was under suspicion and that they might be deported if they caused trouble.

However, women interviewed anonymously for the report stated that officials at absorption centres in Ethiopia advised them to take Depo Provera because there would be no funds to support their children if they got pregnant in Israel.

This policy appears to conflict with the stated goals of the country’s Demography Council, a group of experts charged with devising ways to persuade Jewish women to have more babies.

The council was established in response to what is widely seen in Israel as a “demographic war” with Palestinians, or the need to maintain a Jewish majority in the region despite high Palestinian birth rates. In a speech marking the council’s reconvening in 2002, the then social welfare minister, Shlomo Benizri, referred to “the beauty of the Jewish family that is blessed with many children”.

Yali Hashash, a researcher at Haifa University, said attempts to restrict Ethiopian women’s fertility echoed practices used against Jewish women who immigrated to Israel from such Arab countries as Iraq, Yemen and Morocco in the state’s early years, in the 1950s and 1960s.

Many, she said, had been encouraged to fit IUDs when the device was still experimental because Israel’s leading gynecologists regarded Arab Jews as “primitive” and incapable of acting “responsibly”.

Allegations of official racism towards Ethiopians gained prominence in 2006 when it was admitted that for many years all their blood donations had been discarded for fear that they might be contaminated with diseases.

There have also been regular reports of Ethiopian children being denied places in schools or being forced to attend separate classes.

In November a survey of employers in the main professions showed that 53 per cent preferred not to hire an Ethiopian.

Ruth Sinai, an Israeli social affairs reporter for Haaretz newspaper, wrote recently that the discrimination faced by the country’s 120,000 Ethiopians reflected in particular “doubts on the part of the country’s religious establishment about their Jewishness”.

foreign.desk@thenational.ae

Source: http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100106/FOREIGN/701059823/1002/NEWS

Being a Black Jew in Israel: Identity Politics in the Post-hegemonic Era

Uri Ben-Eliezer - University of Haifa

A few years ago, an Israeli film director named Daniel Waksman made a television documentary entitled "Menilek, Black Jewish King." According to an Ethiopian tradition, Menilek was the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba; he stole the Holy Ark from Jerusalem and brought it to Ethiopia. The film shows young Ethiopian Jews who are living in the Central Bus Station of Tel Aviv. These youngsters had left home, or had no home to begin with, and had turned the station's basements and stores into their home. As gradually becomes clear, they steal to get money. The protagonist of the film is a handsome boy named Gadi, and its recurring theme is the yearning expressed by Gadi and his friends for Ethiopia. Gadi's mother is still there and his one desire is to eat the injara she makes. Injara is a traditional Ethiopian food, consisting of a pita with vegetables and meat, eaten with the fingers. In Israel, too, Ethiopian Jews eat injara, but Gadi misses Ethiopia and his mother's injara - a subject he talks about constantly throughout the film. The motif of the return home to Africa, which is widespread among black communities around the world - in the Caribbean, the United States, or Britain - is actualized in the film when the director stuns Gadi by giving him a ticket to Ethiopia. I will not go into the details of their trip and their protracted search for Gadi's mother, the film plays on the emotions, still, I must cite one of the high points of the film, which occurs when, after a lengthy journey by the group from Israel, they find Gadi's mother in a remote village. Gadi falls into her arms and they enter the house, though local villagers prevent the cinematographer and the director from following. In the next scene, they are back in the Tel-Aviv Central Bus Station. "Why didn't you stay in Ethiopia?" the director asks, and Gadi replies, "Forget it, there's nothing for me there." Silence ensues. "Did you at least get to eat your mother's injara?" Waksman asks. The youngster hesitates for a moment and then says, "Are you out of your mind? We can't eat their food - you can get a disease."

In this article I will try to explain the position and destiny of the Ethiopians who arrived in Israel on the basis of the Israeli Law of Return. The majority of the Ethiopians arrived in two large-scale operations. The first, "Operation Moses," which took place in 1984-1985, and the second "Operation Solomon" in 1991. Today, there are about 60,000 Ethiopian Jews living in Israel. They are part of a community of black Africans known as the "Beta Israel," which according to testimonies has followed Jewish customs since the twelfth century. The members of the community explain their singular religious practices, which differ in many respects from those of European Jewry, by saying that they date from biblical times.

Fully 95 percent of the Ethiopian Jews lived in an isolated, insular rural society far from Addis Ababa, the capital. In Ethiopia, which is considered one of the most backward countries in the world, the annual per capita GNP is $120, as compared to $13,000 in Israel. In the wake of the two operations I cited, a unique community, which had for centuries retained its distinctive character in its homeland - where they were known as "Falashas," meaning foreigners - was almost entirely wiped out, and with it the phenomenon of black Jews in Africa completely disappeared from the map of history and culture.

Actually, it did not so much disappear as assume a new form, in a new land, as the article will explain. However, my subject is not the original immigrants to Israel but their sons and daughters, who were born in Israel or were brought there at a very young age. I will consider their identity and try to explain what it means to be a young black Jew in Israel. My thesis is that in recent years the offspring of the immigrants have been developing a new identity. This new identity is rooted in two historical trends, which are critical for understanding its significance. One is the power of the hegemony in Israel and the cracks that have appeared in it lately; the second is the discrimination against the Ethiopian Jews that was developed in Israel since their arrival. The fusion of these two trends has generated a new identity, the meaning of which I will consider in this article.

The term "identity" has become quite fashionable since the last quarter of the twentieth century, though it also has its critics. Its importance lies in dealing with an immigrant society such as Israel, and in fact with any society that is structurally fragmented and culturally pluralistic. The term directs our attention to the fact that many of the struggles that are today being fomented by various groups are not class-based, and that many of the themes they invoke deal with style of life, way of life, status and honor, and rights and discriminations, which are directly or indirectly related to identity.

Identity is relevant to the so-called "new times","postmodern turn", or the "global era", not in any biological or structuralist version but in its constructivist form. It is neither fixed nor stable, always amenable to social negotiation and constructioon. It is in fact the constant creation of a shared, mutual feeling between people, of "we-ness," and its development is essentially symbolic. This symbolic activity usually takes place in social networks or social movements, which strive not only to obtain material goods and rights, but mainly to construct meaning. In Alberto Melucci's terminology, they seek not only the freedom to have, a phenomenon that was characteristic of the modern era, but also the freedom to be. In any event, in the new era we are witnessing collective action and organization, by individuals who are trying to struggle against social definitions that have located them on the margins because of some trait or occupation or behavior. Often an attempt is made to turn this marginality and sometimes loneliness into a springboard for solidarity and pride.

Thus identity as conceived by the constructivist, anti-essentialist approach can appear to be a positive, groundbreaking phenomenon involving an effort to escape the hegemonic condition and create something new in its place. Some will say, though, that identity politics poses a threat to social solidarity, as it is a politics of fragmentation and of labels. According to the proponents of this view, far from being an effort at inclusion or persuasion, it is based on a desire for separation and exclusion and can lead to insularity, hatred, even civil war, as shown convincingly, for example, by Mary Kaldor in her work on identity politics in Yugoslavia . In this paper, the development of a different identity by the second generation of Ethiopian immigrants in the face of the hegemonic conception, which has been unchallenged in Israel for a generation, is seen as an attempt to escape a situation of otherness and marginalization. This attempt may help transform Israel into a multicultural society where heterogeneity is permissible and legitimate. As part of such possible transformation, I will try to explain what does it mean to be a black Jew in Israel.

The work is based on in-depth interviews that were conducted with students of Ethiopian extraction at the University of Haifa which is located in the north of Israel. In addition, interviews were conducted in a youth club where most of the activists are of Ethiopian origin. The club is located in a southern town in Israel, in a largely Ethiopian neighborhood. The paper is divided into three chapters: the first one describes the attempts to impose on the Beta Israel already in Ethiopia, a new identity conforming to Western normative Judaism. That effort was pursued in Israel, where the attempt was made to transform the newcomers into Israelis in the hegemonic format. The second section describes the feelings of frustration and affront felt by the immigrants, which were only intensified by their realization that the attempt to foist a uniform identity on them was based on power relations that relegated them to an inferior, marginal status. The third and final section considers the new identity that the youngsters are gradually developing.

I: The "problem" begins with Faitlovitch

Or perhaps even with his teacher, Joseph Halevy, who was the first Western Jew to make contact with the Falashas, visiting their villages between 1867 and 1868. Both Halevy and Faitlovitch, who dedicated his life to the issue, brought back to France some Falasha youths with the idea that they would undergo European acculturation and be sent back to their native land. Here was the classic "domesticating the savage" motif. More than anybody else, Faitlovitch was responsible for the process in which the Beta Israel became Ethiopian Jews. Since then they have gradually adopted European normative Judaism - of which they had known nothing - including the Talmudic-rabbinic traditions and the oral law.

Certainly from his period we can talk about cultural colonialism in relation to the Beta Israel, which continued in the early 1950s when Jewish institutions, notably the Jewish Agency and the State of Israel itself, illuminated them dichotomous narratives on the difference between the highly developed West and backward Africa, and between Judaism and Christianity, the relations between which were perceived by the Beta Israel as existing along a continuum, with many influences and groups, such as the Falas Mura, existing between them. The people of Beta Israel were taught about the Jewish festivals, the state of Israel, candle lighting, the Hebrew language, and so forth.

The project of cultural colonialism was brought to light with the arrival of the Ethiopian Jews in Israel in the mid-1980s. The Israelis showered the new arrivals with outburst of affection and gifts ranging from clothing to candies. They were intrigued by their different color and their facial features, and were amazed at their leanness, their special beauty, their inner quiet; and as in any fairy tale, they were delighted at the "happy end": their arrival in Israel.

The tremendous enthusiasm and outpouring of love should have been warning signs. After all, a discriminatory and racist attitude toward newcomers often perceives them as "a problem" or as victims: as objects rather than subjects, lacking in abilities and limited. The result is almost always the creation of dependence, but this was a case that went beyond dependence. It had the effect of plucking the arrivals from Ethiopia out of their history and their culture and hurtling them into a sphere of absolute truths. This, as Paul Gilroy notes, is one of the major characteristics of racism in England. Although the blacks come from many different countries and cultures, they are generalized into one category and thus are deprived of a specific identity. The same fate befell the Jews from Ethiopia, even though there are substantive differences between, for example, those from Gondar and those from Tigrai. This attitude was compounded, in Israel and elsewhere, by the establishment's adoption of the binary approach. To adopt a binary conception is to define and catalogue the other, render him marginality against hegemony. Moreover, that way, reality is distorted by being squeezed into only two possibilities, thus concealing, restricting, or repressing the freedoms of those whose outlook or status is incongruent with the binary definition.

Indeed, public interest in the exotic newcomers soon diminished; only the state institutions continued to deal with them. The transition to a modern society espousing an ethos of rationalism and calling itself Western, was undoubtedly traumatic for people who had never seen a car, could neither read nor write, and did not know how to use a knife and fork or what a flush toilet is. Some of the young people I interviewed noted that the first white people they had ever seen were the Jewish Agency officials in the camps in Sudan. Some said that they had never heard of white Jews. Whatever the case may be, in the land of their fathers they did not meet King Solomon… but they did encounter his namesake from the Jewish Agency, who gave them new Israeli names. Those who during the twentieth century adopted many of the customs of Western Jewry were now about to become "Israelis."

The Ethiopian immigrants arrived in Israel at a time of great transformation in the country. For decades, Israel followed an ideology consisting of practices and a structure of domination known as mamlakhtiyut (statism). It was based on the nation-state model, in which everything is managed, concentrated, and supervised from above. The attitude toward the many immigrants who arrived in the fledgling state was that they had to adapt themselves to the integrating society. If not, the state mechanisms would do it for them. It was a classic melting pot ideology, following the way, Gunnar Myrdal and his associates, for example, already in the 1940s reduced the problem of the blacks in the United States to one of assimilation and amalgamation into white America.

However, an assimilation process is never a simple matter for either side. Gilroy notes that every assimilation into a national structure places the immigrant in a problematic situation in relation to concepts such as nation, patriotism, or historical memory. After all, these ideas effectively leave the newcomer outside the normative boundaries. The Ethiopians immigrants to Israel did not experience the Holocaust, nor did their forefathers suffer pogroms in Russia or their sons fight in Israel's independent wars. They soon reached the conclusion that "those who were there" were establishing their national identity by means of customs and practices that are pure and homogeneous. Not only Arabs and Mizrahim are excluded, so are Ethiopians.

Almost inevitably, attempts to assimilate generate dependence. The anthropologist Esther Herzog described how the absorption centers to which the Ethiopian immigrants were sent created and then heightened their dependence on the existing population. An absorption center creates a bifurcated world, in which the officials who mediate between the world inside and the world outside possess great power.

It did not take long before the new immigrants' problems with the Chief Rabbinate began. The religious establishment questioned the Jewishness of the Ethiopians. The Rabbinate demanded ritual immersion and totally rejected the authority of the kes, the respected religious leaders of the Ethiopian community. The insistence on immersion generated fears among the Ethiopians that the establishment wanted to turn them into second-class citizens by forcing them, and them alone, to undergo a humiliating ceremony.

True, in 1980s Israel the melting pot discourse had been supplanted by a new discourse espousing cultural pluralism, the mixing and fusion of cultures; in practice, however, the newcomers were pressured to adapt to the dominant culture. In the service of this noble ideal, the youngsters were separated from their parents. The authorities effectively cast aside the so-called "generation of the desert" and sought to instill in the children the values of the integrating society, cutting them off from their past and their community's traditions. No fewer than 90 percent of the Ethiopian children and adolescents were raised in closed boarding schools, most of them in religious institutions. In Ethiopia the family, both nuclear and extended, was at the center of life. In Israel the state exposed the children m to the disciplinary aspects of the educational system. In some institutions, 70 percent of the students were of Ethiopian origin. Warnings about ethnic segregation, however, went unheeded.

Although the absorption agents insisted that they would "not repeat the mistakes of the past" - referring mainly to the failures with the Mizrahim (Jews who immigrated to Israeli from North Africa and the Middle East in the 1950s) - they did just that. As in the past, the officials declared that the young people should be helped to adapt to a modern way of life and become Israelis in every respect. The binary approach made it possible to constitute the attitude toward the Ethiopians in terms simultaneously inclusionary and exclusionary. On the one hand, they were to be transformed into Western-style Jews and then into Israelis fitting into the hegemonic structure, while on the other hand, that very effort of transmutation relegated them to a status of inferiority, as it is incompatible with their culture and outlook.

The immigrants were also frustrated and embittered because of the day-to-day discrimination they endured. Veteran Israelis did not want to sit next to them on the bus and they did not receive an equal opportunity in the job market. Classrooms and schools emptied out when young Ethiopians entered them, and private kindergartens refused to accept Ethiopian toddlers because they were "different." Indeed, everyday life, exposed the color barrier and brought to the surface racist tendencies in Israel between Jew and Jew. There was no residential integration, no intermarriage, and no integration in education.

In the meantime, however, various indicators showed that cracks were appearing in the hegemonic structure: In 1991, the Madrid peace conference was held, and within a few years, spurred in part by the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Israel signed new political agreements with some of its neighbors. These developments were accompanied by economic growth and far-reaching reforms. State involvement in the economy declined markedly and a neo-liberal market began to emerge. Israel became part of the globalization process not only economically but also in immigration, as almost a million residents of the former Soviet Union streamed into the country. These immigrants were considered to represent valuable human capital economically and also perhaps culturally, militarily, and politically.

The professional literature elaborates the impact that globalization had on the status and functioning of the nation-state. Its power gradually declined as world markets grew stronger, and its sovereignty was enfeebled too, since globalization reduces the importance of territorial borders and the centrality of the national factor. In Israel, the weakness of the state was compounded by the crisis in its domestic party politics, especially since the beginning of the 1990s, which indirectly brought about the emergence of new groups and not-for-profit associations. These associations, similar to the new social movements in Europe, focused on the individual, on his/her rights and identities, and on his/her local and ecological environment. Israelis, it seemed, were adopting the kind of new lifestyle based on post-material values that Ingelhart identified in the West. Correspondingly, many Israelis began to become involved in causes that interested them, reflected their identity, and set them apart from others. In this form of politics, the meaning of identity is a matter of permanent negotiation, and very often of rivalties and conflicts on the basis of existing or constructing differences.

II. All that missing was a cause

Which appeared on January 24, 1996, when a newspaper report stated that for the past 12 years the Blood Bank had not been using the blood of Ethiopian Israelis for medical purposes because of its possible contamination by the HIV virus. The report generated protests of a sort rarely seen in the country. Some 10,000 Ethiopian immigrants from all over Israel, held a protest demonstration outside the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem. It was a moment of truth with a significant Durkheimean element, of conferring name and meaning on the feelings of frustration and discrimination. The violent clash went on for hours, and dozens of policemen and demonstrators were injured. The crowd carried placards reading "We are black but our blood is red," and "We are Jews like you: stop the racist apartheid." A 17-year-old girl who came to Jerusalem for the demonstration from the Haifa area, where she attended a boarding school, said, "I came to protest against what is being done to the blacks because of the color of their skin. I am ashamed of my nation, of the white Jewish nation." The Chief of the Jerusalem District Police, Aryeh Amit, labeled the demonstrators "young savages." Indeed, to everyone's surprise, the "boy savage" turned out not to be harmless, pleasant, and passive. "They think they know better than we do what's good for us," one of the participants summed up.

The huge demonstration, however, did not help much. The Ministry of Health announced that it would continue with its policy of not making use of blood taken from Ethiopians, as they constituted a "risk group." By invoking this term, the state officials intended to shift the discourse in a direction that would serve their ends. Their bureaucratic medical discourse is based on a division of reality into generalized categories and endeavors, and to justify discriminatory policy by evoking fears, in this case fears of AIDS, following the line that was presented by Ulrich Beck in his "risk society. Thus the Health Ministry frightened the public by revealing that an Ethiopian blood donor was 34 times more likely to be a carrier than anyone else.

Spokesmen for the Health Ministry also noted that there were other risk groups as well - homosexuals, drug addicts, people with illnesses, people with tattoos - but the comparisons only underscored the bureaucrats' insensitivity. Indeed, the rationalist approach and the dry statistics were not perceived as a relevant argument in the discourse that the Ethiopians sought to foment. "Why weren't the Russian immigrants singled out as a risk group?" they wanted to know. "Why wasn't the Russians' blood thrown out?" However, the medical establishment made no attempt to put to the test prejudices in this connection.

More than once, racism appears through the definition of an immigrant group by certain disease and the fear of contamination. As though to illustrate the point, Dr. Ram Yishai, the chairman of the Society of Medical Ethics, explained that the Ethiopians constituted a risk group because single Ethiopian women did not abstain from random sexual contact. Elaborating, the learned physician stated that the Ethiopian women were not afraid of AIDS and that, if infected, they displayed no anger at the man responsible. Again the litany of familiar terms was invoked: ignorance, a different conception of sex and death, sexual permissiveness that differs from the Israeli norm, the good of the public, and so forth. Probably, too, the Ethiopians were angry at not having been given the information or being allowed to share in deciding policy. The integrating society perceived the stranger, the other, the black as a child or a native who lacks sufficient maturity to be told the truth or cope with it.

The Blood Affair became something of a moment of truth for the Ethiopian Jews. The affront sustained by them showed that they could not, and perhaps did not want to discard entirely their traditions and their past. "Blood is the soul," I was told by interviewees who explained the cause of the violent outburst in the Blood Affair. In Ethiopia, blood served as a symbolic means to distinguish Jews from Christians in three areas: ritual slaughter of animals, the dietary laws, and the categorization of women in their menstrual period as unclean. To the Ethiopians in Israel, discarding blood taken from them was an act of exclusion.

Interestingly, another violent episode hovered in the background of the Ethiopians' outburst. A religiously observant Jew of Yemenite extraction, Uzi Meshulam established a cult of followers from the Yemenite community whose main goal was to protest the still obscure affair in which Yemenite children were placed in foster homes of Ashkenazi families during Israel's early years. The struggle fomented by Meshulam and his followers was an ethnic and religious protest against the Ashkenazi establishment. The peak of the affair came in May 1994, when Meshulam and forty of his followers, all armed, barricaded themselves in a house. The resulting standoff went on for a month and a half. Finally, the police broke into the compound - one of the group's members was killed in the incident - where they found large quantities of weapons, ammunition, and explosives. The affair signaled the nascent development of identity politics in Israel. True, it was a small group, but its messages and symbols were aimed at undermining Israeli sovereignty by utilizing anti-establishment and anti-statist techniques.

In the Blood Affair many of the Ethiopians grasped the clear distinction between race and ethnicity, the fact that the color barrier could decide their fate. However, it was the young generation that drew the sharpest conclusions. In a certain sense, the young Ethiopians constituted a sociological generation. According to the well-known term of Karl Mannheim, it means that their distinctive social location allowed them to interpret reality differently from the others and to act differently on the basis of that interpretation. In the young generation's view, a struggle for recognition had begun, with the Blood Affair being the "critical event" in their history in Israel.

III. How a Jew becomes black in the Promised Land

One example is Mula Blai who was the third Ethiopian since 1997 that committed suicide while doing military service in the IDF. While serving as a cook on an army base, he was ordered by the base doctor to throw out the food in the kitchen. Mula was deeply offended. He "kept it in his gut," as the Ethiopians say, until finally he took a rifle and shot himself. "I am not angry at him," his 17-year-old sister said, "because they were the ones who killed him, the army." Some of those who came to pay their condolences to the family claimed that the doctor was a Russian. They also related that he had apologized and asked the family to forgive him. "But what good will that do now?" they added. Mula had been a good student in high school and wanted to study journalism after his army service. He was constantly called kushi ("nigger") in the army, but laughed and shrugged it off. However, the doctor was an officer, and Mula, was deeply offended by lack of trust expressed by a person of rank. The story of Mula's suicide is a typical case, attesting not only to to racist discrimination and tensions between different migrant groups, but also to signs of objection to reality - channeled even into a subversive act of suicide - among the second generation of immigrants.

Rumors about suicides of Ethiopians in the army were already circulating by the time of the Blood Affair. The chairman of the committee of Ethiopian immigrants claimed that twenty Ethiopians had committed suicide in the past few years. The army claimed that the figure was far lower. The main point, however, is that the rumors showed a change in the immigrants' attitude toward the army. At first, the young people wanted nothing more than to excel in the IDF, to do combat duty, preferably in one of the elite units. Excellence in the army was perceived as a rite of passage leading to acceptance in the Israeli society. Gradually, however, they realized that army service, far from resolving their problems, might aggravate them instead. In the second half of the 1990s we find, along with the suicide phenomenon, a decline in the Ethiopian Jews' motivation to serve and excel in the army. In part, the disappointment was due to the fact that the combat soldiers discovered that they could not translate their service into social mobility. Many of them found it difficult to earn a living.

This behavior in part was a clear manifestation of what James C. Scott calls "everyday forms of resistance," a desire to overcome a discriminatory, alienating reality, in our case, at the price of escaping military service or even by means of suicide. Similarly, the rising crime rate among young Ethiopians in the late 1990s should be seen as a form of subversion and of criticism of the society. The social welfare agencies, appalled by this trend, viewed it as proof that an identity crisis existed and that the young Ethiopians were drifting toward the margins of the society. In fact, it is the other way around, those involved are looking for meaning and a sense of community. In their way, they are also protesting actively against a reality that had made them and the rest of the community passive and dependent. At the same time, there was an element of the new in this development, a show of differentiation and distinctiveness that shattered the stereotypical view of the community as modest and quiet. As though to prove that the youngsters were rebelling against the image that was foisted on them, 16-18 year-olds, asked how they react to being called kushi, a term that connotes a slave in their culture, replied unequivocally that whereas in the past they had been offended and backed off, now they would lash out at anyone who used the term and "let him have it," in the word of one of them.

The Ethiopian immigrants displayed further manifestations of subversion in relation to marriage. Not all of them were willing to undergo the Rabbinate's humiliating rituals and tests - which were earmarked for Ethiopians alone - in order to take out a marriage license. The interviews showed that members of the community had found various ways to solve the problem. Some couples live together without marrying; others are married in the traditional Ethiopian ceremony by a kes, even though this is not recognized by the Rabbinate or the state.

Paradoxically, then, suicide, crime, declining motivation to do military service, and partnership without marriage demonstrated that the second generation of Ethiopian Jews were becoming Israelis. True, everyday resistance is the weapon of the weak, Scott notes, but he points out that precisely because of their hidden, indirect character, these practices become influential. In every disadvantaged group, he writes, there are "hidden transcripts" that represent "criticism which is typically expressed openly - albeit in disguised forms."

However, this was not enough for the young Ethiopians. Their subversive practices were accompanied by an attempt to construct a new identity by challenging the hegemonic structure while exploiting its widening cracks. The identity politics they practiced involved deconstructing the "one" Israeli identity, exposing its problematic nature, and reconstructing it in terms of their conceptual approach. In Gilroy's terms, this is a process of deconstruction and contextualization. Identity is reconstructed such that it is context dependent. Fundamentally, since the Blood Affair, Israeliness for young Ethiopians has gradually become an identity one element of which is blackness. The passage of time will make no difference," I was told by one interviewee, who had a clear grasp of the reality in which she lives. "In Ethiopia we were Jews, here we are blacks," another said.

Africa, observes Stuart Hall, is often depicted as being a mother for all Africans. The effect is to bestow an imagined cohesiveness and shared identity on Africans' experience of dispersion and fragmentation, a feeling that there exists a permanent "essence" of the African, of the quintessential black experience. However, as Hall, too, points out, identity development is a far more active process, in which those involved attempt to locate themselves in the space of the presence and adapt to changing reality. Indeed, blackness is not the only distinguishing characteristic of this group. In discotheques, for example, these youngsters do not mix with foreign workers from Africa, who are not Jewish. In fact, quarrels and fights between the two groups have been known to erupt. The process of constructing a new identity intertwines similarity and differentiation. The young Ethiopians differ from other Israelis and resemble blacks in other countries; yet, as Israelis and Jews the resemblance is not complete. As young student told me: I am first of all a Jew, then an Ethiopian, and finally an Israeli… In fact, I am also an Israeli but different from these franjim.

In fact, the complex, multifaceted identity of the young people of Ethiopian exposes both the reality in which they find themselves, but also the efforts they make to free themselves of it, and to reshape it. Terms such as franji are invoked to differentiate "us" from "them." "Them" in this context are often the non-black Israelis, especially the Ashkenazim (Jews who immigrated to Israel from Europe), or the Russians. Identity politics is largely a politics of labels, of insularity, of creating enemies. This is the route the young Ethiopians have embarked on: not because they want to convince others that their approach is the right one, but in order to enclose themselves within their world, which they are constructing out of what Rutherford calls the politics of difference.

Thus the Israeli experience - "white," discriminatory, exclusionary - is sending the young generation back to their roots in Africa. Many have begun to study spoken and written Amharic, a language that they have almost forgotten. The members of the young generation are also taking African names. As one student explained, "A few of us friends got together and decided to go back to our original names. Why weren't the Russians made to change their names when they came to Israel?" They want to visit Ethiopia and they like Amharic music, both traditional and modern, with its romantic themes. The Africa they envisage is of course not the Africa they knew as children; it is an imagined Africa. It is an Africa of rhythm, of special foods and customs, of suffering and hope. An Africa that is both present and vanished, in any event an Africa of blacks only.

By the end of the 1990s, black Jewish Israel defined itself as part of the African diaspora. That is a definition with a cultural and a political meaning that cannot simply be ignored. The cultural practices of the Ethiopian Israelis draw their inspiration largely from the politics and culture of black America, Jamaica, and black Britain. Technological advances in communications bridge geographic distance: consider MTV and the Internet. Cultural commodities, such as CDs, books, and magazines facilitate identification. The young people invent a history of their own. People who in Ethiopia lived on a motif of exile and longing for Zion, meaning Jerusalem, now live in Israel with a sense of exile and a longing for Zion, which is of course Ethiopia, as in the song by Bob Marley. True, they came to Israel of their own volition, and for religious reasons, and from this point of view their history is different from that of the descendants of the slaves who were exiled forcibly from Africa and transported to America. Nevertheless, the youngsters identify with the history of their "brothers": their suffering, their severance from their past, the discrimination and the poverty they endure, and their yearning for the Black Continent. Africa becomes the lost paradise. The longing to return to lost origins, to beginnings, is of course impractical, though the symbolic, too, is fraught with meaning. This is their narrative and with it they constitute their contemporary identity.

In the color hierarchy that existed in Ethiopia, the Beta Israel saw themselves as red-skinned. However, as the offspring of migrants in search of their identity they now consider themselves black-skinned. Henceforth they will carry with them the physical and the cultural distinction of blackness and will turn it from shame to pride. Music is a central element in this development, as it makes possible to create an imagined reality.

The venue where the "black" music is played, particularly the clubs, are places that are spawn an alternative, even rebellious, culture. One important location, which operated for years, was the Soweto Club, where one saw boys in body-hugging white shirts and oversized trousers; and girls in revealing white pants and midriffs, bedecked with jewelry, smoking, hanging around with the boys. Whatever is prohibited at home or in the boarding school goes here. Some of the boys wear their hair in the intricately curled African style, and some of the girls "attach" artificial hair to their head. Sexuality is externalized in body movements. Speak to them and they will tell you that there is nothing for them in a country of whites, that they want to be back to Ethiopia, that they will not enlist in the army because they don't feel like Israelis, and because all Israelis are racists. On the following day, in a different location, they may well talk differently.

The anthropologist Malka Shabtai has analyzed the content of the music that the young Ethiopians are fond of: above all, black music of political protest with social messages of equality, brotherhood, and peace. Usually, they dance to reggae or rap. The fact that Rastafarianism originated in Jamaica in 1930, after the coronation of Haile Selassie as Emperor of Ethiopia, with the belief in him as the "Lion of Judah," helps explain why young Ethiopian Israelis are attracted also to this music. Shabtai interviewed an Israeli reggae singer named Emanuel, the soloist of the "Roots of Africa" group. "The story of the Jews of Ethiopia is in some ways similar to the story of the blacks in Africa," he said. "There are a lot of things that are, you know, parallel."

We can say, then, that the second generation of Ethiopian immigrants to Israel is engaged in a new construction of Israeliness, of a type previously unknown. The aspiration to be Israeli is fused with an emphasis on being black. Identity politics signifies an attempt to create a moral space and live accordingly. In extreme cases blacks have tried to return to Africa, but rarely has the attempt succeeded Stuart Hall argues that even if there is a specific, concrete political purpose for returning, it is marginalized and downplayed as compared with the desire for identity development. He may be right, but certainly cultural politics can act as a lever for social change, precisely because it projects an appearance of no direct intervention, while minimizing its threat by presenting a stylistic and aesthetic protest.

Conclusion

This article considered the identity of offspring of immigrants in a case where both the parents and the majority of the young generation are undergoing an experience of migration and encounter with a new society. The central thesis of the article is that the young Ethiopian Jews living in Israel developed an identity of blacks, precisely in the course of and as a result of the encounter with the Israeli society and its mechanisms of control. The state declared a policy of assimilation but in practice relegated the new arrivals to a status of inferiority and marginality. The Blood Affair, which erupted at a time when cracks had already appeared in the hegemonic structure, acted as a political opportunity structure that created an opening for the development of a black identity centering around symbolic practices. Thus an imagined community was conceived that offers its members a sense of identity and freedom that makes it possible for them to portray their singularity as a virtue.

The young members of the Ethiopian community are deconstructing the concept of Israeliness, exposing the essence of its underlying power relations, and reconstructing their identity according to their understanding. They are Israelis, but from a different kind. Will the the new sociological generation succeed in foisting its conception on reality? At this time, this is an unanswerable question, as is the question of how far identity politics will succeed in reducing the stratified hierarchy and discrimination that exist in Israel. In any event, this paper reveals the potential of a young generation that belongs to an ethnic group to construct a complex, circumstances-dependent identity for itself. Gadi, whom we met at the beginning of the article, lives in the Central Bus Station. It is a dynamic location where everything is in flux, a place of multiple identities, of ephemerality, of options to sail into other worlds. Gadi's life may symbolize the identity of many of the community's young members. Their parents took them from remote mountain villages in a vast land and thrust them headlong into a saliently postmodern era. Struggling for their future, the youngsters reveal their potential. In face of a system of binary domination, It is a potential, not only to forge solidarity and achieve personal autonomy but also to view themselves not as a problem but on the contrary: as those who have found a solution to it.

Source: http://www1.american.edu/israelstudies/whatsnew/Papers/Uri.htm

[Libertarian Muslim]

I hope my comments above did not scare Adonis off.

But if I do not condone bigotry as argument from people against Muslims (and I don't), I must not condone bigotry as argument against Zionists (and I don't).

On the other hand, I admit there are bigoted Muslims as well as bigoted Zionists. But there is no excuse for redefining an entire group of people based on bigotry, and falsely attributing the entire group with bigotry, because some people among them are bigots.

If I don't agree with such characterizations, I am going to say so and say why. I'm going to say it firmly and clearly.

I refused to learn bigotry as a hillbilly child in the South and I refuse to learn it now.

I have a feeling that Adonis and I define Zionism in vastly different ways.

Michael

No you didn't scare me off.. Not by a long shot, but I hope you can appreciate that I do spend a lot of time on this forum responding to posts by numerous people so sometimes I just like to have some time off.

I don't quite understand why you're saying I'm bigoted Michael. I'm not at all. I'm just intolerant towards racism.

Zionism is the racist believe and it's simple to show it..

If you believe that a group of people who have lived outside of the lands anywhere for hundreds and even thousands of years have more right to that land than the people who have lived there for just as long and farmed those lands for generations based purely on their race or religion then I'm sorry.. That is racial and religious supremacy and is undoubtedly racism which I stand firmly against.

I have no problems with Jews from anywhere returning to Palestine and living there.. I just have a problem with immigrants trying to make their own country and trying to separate what was for a great deal of time a harmonious society.

The only proper function of state is protection of natural or inalienable rights. The only justification of national self-determination is protection from oppression and prosecution. Originally Israel has been created for this very purpose-to provide protection to the people who suffered under tremendous oppression for the last two thousand years. Therefore existence of the State of Israel is fully justified. Native Americans, New-Zeeland Maori or Australian aborigines are not oppressed or prosecuted. Palestinian Arabs also not prosecuted as long as they not involved in terrorism. Therefore none of them have right for self-determination. More than that, Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and West Bank proved themselves as brutal oppressive, fanatical and aggressive regimes. There is no such a thing as a right to infringe the rights of others.

Are you kidding me? Native Americans and Indigenous Australians weren't persecuted? How many millions of Native Americans died as a result of Europeans? How many treaties did the Europeans break with them? What about Black Hills and the Lakotah?

And Indigenous Australians!? They weren't even considered as human beings until 1965 and you could kill them with little repercussion. The government also abducted their children from them and made them live with white families and in white institutions to make them 'more civilized'. Even today the situation with the Indigenous Australians is horrible.

There was no right to create a state for the Zionists, yes they had a right to live there but not to have their own state, why do you want to split groups of people up?

Edited January 24, 2010 by Adonis Vlahos

[studiodekadent]

The only proper function of state is protection of natural or inalienable rights. The only justification of national self-determination is protection from oppression and prosecution. Originally Israel has been created for this very purpose-to provide protection to the people who suffered under tremendous oppression for the last two thousand years. Therefore existence of the State of Israel is fully justified.

So if a State is formed with the purpose of protecting individual rights, said State is rendered legitimate forever by its purpose?

What if said State ends up acting in ways which violate individual rights?

Additionally, the State of Israel was formed not to protect individual rights, but to protect the individual rights of a specific group. Do you actually need a Jewish State to protect the individual rights of Jewish individuals? In theory, all you need is a State that acknowledges individual rights, full stop.

And anti-semitism is not inevitable. It isn't even a prominent part of Western political discourse any more. Most anti-semites are (thankfully) dismissed as crackpots the minute they begin spouting anti-Jewish sentiment.

[BaalChatzaf]

And anti-semitism is not inevitable. It isn't even a prominent part of Western political discourse any more. Most anti-semites are (thankfully) dismissed as crackpots the minute they begin spouting anti-Jewish sentiment.

Not quite. On the Left and among the Jihadists anti-Israel sentiment is slightly disguised anti-semitism.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Libertarian Muslim]

Not quite. On the Left and among the Jihadists anti-Israel sentiment is slightly disguised anti-semitism.

Ba'al Chatzaf

There are indeed some very ignorant Anti-Semetic people amongst such groups who dislike Jews as a whole, but they are the minority.

The rest are just anti-Zionism.

[BaalChatzaf]

There are indeed some very ignorant Anti-Semetic people amongst such groups who dislike Jews as a whole, but they are the minority.

The rest are just anti-Zionism.

Sure. Right. The next time I read about a synagogue that has been blown up or attacked by Muslim crazies I will remember your words.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Libertarian Muslim]

Sure. Right. The next time I read about a synagogue that has been blown up or attacked by Muslim crazies I will remember your words.

Ba'al Chatzaf

And should I remember yours when some Zionist Jews go and attack a Mosque? Or kill people worshipping?

No.. I'll remember that there are extremists in all groups and that Judaism is a beautiful religion that is not responsible for what those extremists do.

Pity your overwhelming and seething hate prevents you from doing the same with Islam.

[anthony]

That old whinge by the English in WW2 is amusing to recall. When the G.I.'s were filling up the bases and towns there, your local-yokel's complaint about them was-

"Damn Yanks; they're over-paid, over-sexed, and over here!"

Looks that way, too, with these imperialistic, colonising, expansionist, Zionists in Palestine. ( In Adonis's perception.)

Adonis adheres to the myth that Jews loved living within Arab lands all those centuries, and that they were always well treated. At best they were permanently second-class citizens.

The idea that a Jew would want to determine his own life is anathema to most Muslims, and I've often wondered why.

I think the root is psychological, and a lot to do with perceived superiority and arrogant pride.

Adonis, do you object to that earlier definition, that "Zionist ideology holds that the Jews are a people or nation like any other.." ?

It's interesting to speculate about how accepted the 'Zionists' would have been if they had been settled in East Africa, or in Cyprus, by the Brits.

The Kikuyus of Kenya or (then)Tanganyika might well have learned to become superlative businessmen, innovators, and scientists. Or gone the other way, and fought to the bitter end for their land...

Tony

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Who fought on the other side in a major war? The Palestinians?

Adonis,

You might want to take a look into the activities of the leader at the time of WWII, Grand Mufti Amin al-Husayni and what he managed to organize.

So, yes. The Palestinians, through the activities and organization of their leaders. They fought for the Nazis as best they could.

No you didn't scare me off.. Not by a long shot, but I hope you can appreciate that I do spend a lot of time on this forum responding to posts by numerous people so sometimes I just like to have some time off.

No, please. Take time off when you need. I should not have said that because it could come across as pressure for you to post. I did not intend it as pressure. I was merely musing out loud since this topic can get quite heated and I want to make my position very clear.

(It's very easy for one side to think that if I criticize the other, I am adopting it's standards. My position is that this is a false dichotomy: that between this alternative and that alternative, I take neither.)

One of my policies on OL is that people come and go as fits their own choice and values. We have had some pretty ugly forum behavior in O-land where people email each other and organize to attack certain posters, or email intimidation campaigns to get people to post on issues they normally would not comment on and stuff like that. It all boils down to bullying and deceiving the public. I do not condone trying to skew public perception to promote an agenda.

Let me say explicitly that I am delighted you are here and willing to present your views. That does not mean I agree with many of them, but I am so glad readers can read intelligent arguments from the Muslim side and judge matters for themselves. I am a strong proponent of the sanctity of each human mind and the right and responsibility of thinking for oneself.

I don't quite understand why you're saying I'm bigoted Michael. I'm not at all. I'm just intolerant towards racism.

I don't think you are a bigot. If I did, I would not allow you to post. I do think your "Zionism is racist" argument is false, but I do not detect the hatred of the bigot in it. I detect a seeking for the truth, but a too quick to judge attitude and what I like to call "selective omissions."

You mentioned in another post that you do not condone the behavior of many Muslims since you think they do not practice Islam correctly. So your criticisms are of Muslims, not of Islam. The same standard can be applied to Zionism.

Zionism is the racist believe and it's simple to show it..

Actually, it's not so simple when I also observe the sheer number of Zionists in Israel and around the world who are not racists.

People on anti-Islamist forums often make similar claims, that proving Islam is a "conquer the world and kill the infidels" or "hatred of Western values" agenda is very simple to show. I have clashed with this vew because I mention that it is not simple to show when I observe about a billion and a half Muslims in the world who do not preach that or act on it. That's a lot of "not so simple" for the "very simple to show" argument.

One thing is certain. The claim that Zionism is racist has been eliminated from the mainstream perception as a widely accepted position, although anti-Semitism still flares up. (The closest thing you are going to get in the USA is an objection to the Israeli lobby, but that objection is not due to any objection about racism.)

Even Jimmy Carter writing a best-seller could not make that perception budge. Promoting that people adopt this belief is like promoting the abolishment of Israel. It's simply not going to happen.

Maybe we should define Zionism before we continue. I mentioned earlier, I believe we define it differently.

btw - I will get to the story idea you sent me. Initially I like it. I have some things I think you will like, too. Writing-like things. But I mention it here because there is another idea I want to say in public.

What do you think about a Romeo and Juliet story of a young couple in love, one of the young lovers from a radical Zionist family and the other from a radical Palestinian nationalist family? Talk about a story ripe with multi-level conflicts!

Michael

[Libertarian Muslim]

Looks that way, too, with these imperialistic, colonising, expansionist, Zionists in Palestine. ( In Adonis's perception.)

You know everytime you try and tell people what 'my perception' is, you look silly. This is a typical tactic of attempting to provide a narrative so that people believe what you would say about me rather than looking at my own words. Like I said, you'd be good in the media but hopeless to have an actual discussion with.

Adonis adheres to the myth that Jews loved living within Arab lands all those centuries, and that they were always well treated. At best they were permanently second-class citizens.

The idea that a Jew would want to determine his own life is anathema to most Muslims, and I've often wondered why.

I'm not saying that things were rosy and great. I don't support any of those governments that treated them as such. But if you wanted to create a state, why not make it one state where all people have equal rights rather than a state that has a primary purpose of protecting only Jewish rights.

I think the root is psychological, and a lot to do with perceived superiority and arrogant pride.

Adonis, do you object to that earlier definition, that "Zionist ideology holds that the Jews are a people or nation like any other.." ?

Yes of course, and deserving of equal rights.

It's interesting to speculate about how accepted the 'Zionists' would have been if they had been settled in East Africa, or in Cyprus, by the Brits.

The Kikuyus of Kenya or (then)Tanganyika might well have learned to become superlative businessmen, innovators, and scientists. Or gone the other way, and fought to the bitter end for their land...

Interesting, so you see the Zionists coming as somewhat of a civilizing force?

[Leonid]

Looks that way, too, with these imperialistic, colonising, expansionist, Zionists in Palestine. ( In Adonis's perception.)

You know everytime you try and tell people what 'my perception' is, you look silly. This is a typical tactic of attempting to provide a narrative so that people believe what you would say about me rather than looking at my own words. Like I said, you'd be good in the media but hopeless to have an actual discussion with.

Adonis adheres to the myth that Jews loved living within Arab lands all those centuries, and that they were always well treated. At best they were permanently second-class citizens.

The idea that a Jew would want to determine his own life is anathema to most Muslims, and I've often wondered why.

I'm not saying that things were rosy and great. I don't support any of those governments that treated them as such. But if you wanted to create a state, why not make it one state where all people have equal rights rather than a state that has a primary purpose of protecting only Jewish rights.

I think the root is psychological, and a lot to do with perceived superiority and arrogant pride.

Adonis, do you object to that earlier definition, that "Zionist ideology holds that the Jews are a people or nation like any other.." ?

Yes of course, and deserving of equal rights.

It's interesting to speculate about how accepted the 'Zionists' would have been if they had been settled in East Africa, or in Cyprus, by the Brits.

The Kikuyus of Kenya or (then)Tanganyika might well have learned to become superlative businessmen, innovators, and scientists. Or gone the other way, and fought to the bitter end for their land...

Interesting, so you see the Zionists coming as somewhat of a civilizing force?

Edited January 25, 2010 by Leonid

[Leonid]

Jews were homeless, prosecuted minority. Israel has been created primary in order to protect them. Arabs have 25 states and don't need additional state for their protection. However it doesn't mean that non-Jewish population of Israel is not protected. In Israel EVERYBODY IS EQUAL BEFORE LAW and protected by it.

[Leonid]

The Big Lie about a land stolen from Palestinians has been repeated so often, that it became significant part of modern mythology. Here are few facts for Adonis and everybody else who doesn't want to evade reality

"Most of the land that is the present day Israel, West Bank and Gaza were not owned by small farmers and local living peasants buts rather owned by absentee landlords. These landlords were mostly tax collectors or merchants who lived elsewhere. Often these owners were from foreign countries and held “no connection to the land and who often exploited the local workers or fellahin” [ Alan Dershowitz. The Case for Israel. 2003. p. 25}

"The Ottoman Land Code of 1858 “brought about the appropriation by the influential and rich families of Beirut, Damascus, and to a lesser extent Jerusalem and Jaffa and other sub-district capitals, of vast tracts of land in Syria and Palestine and their registration in the name of these families in the land registers” Many of the fellahin did not understand the importance of the registers and therefore the wealthy families took advantage of this. Jewish buyers who were looking for large tracts of land found it favourable to purchase from the wealthy owners. As well many small farmers became indebt to rich families which lead to the transfer of land to the new owners and then eventually to the Jewish buyers. (^ Y. Porath. The Palestinian Arab Movement: From Riots to Rebellion. 1977. p.81 )

"In the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, many land purchases were made through organizations such as the Palestinian Jewish Colonization Association (PICA), Palestine Land Development Co. and the Jewish National Fund. These organizations often offered to purchase the land from the wealthy owners for more than the actual value of the area. The Jewish land purchasers paid extraordinarily high prices for the uncultivated and marsh land. During a visit to Palestine in 1930, John Hope Simpson , a British politician, noticed: “They [Jews] paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay” [9]. It was believed that Jews were paying as much as $1,000 to $1,100 per acre in Palestine for non arable land in 1944. At that same time, one could buy rich arable land in Iowa for a mere $110 per acre.

Huge tracts of land were purchased by Jews in the 1920s but in the next decade large tracts of uncultivated land were simply not available. Therefore in the 1930s most of the land were bought from small landowners. Of the land that the Jews bought, “52.6% of the lands were bought from big non-Palestinian landowners, 24.6% from Palestinian-Arab landowners and only 9.4% from the Fellahin”

Benny Morris , a leading historian on the subject Israel, has stated that only few families were displaced by the land purchases as oppose the critics who state otherwise. Morris claims that “Historians have concluded that only ‘several’ families were displaced following the land sales to Jews between the 1880s and the late 1930s” ^ "The Arabs in Palestine". http://www.jewishvirtuallibrar....

Y. Porath. The Palestinian Arab Movement: From Riots to Rebellion. 1977. p.84

See also

http://www.palestinefacts.org/...

evidence of Haj Amin al-Husseini1 Before the Royal Commission, January 12, 1937

http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~j...

Land Acquisition and Ownership in Palestine

http://smoothstoneblog.com/200...

http://smoothstoneblog.com/who-really-owns-palestine

Edited January 25, 2010 by Leonid

[Leonid]

http://www.memritv.org/clip_email.php/en/1877

Adonis

Please see by yourself how peaceful Hamas is.

Edited January 25, 2010 by Leonid

[anthony]

Arguing facts here is a lot like swatting flies, and this tit-for-tat debate obscures as much reality and truth as it reveals.

It is the underlying principles that count, more than who did what, and when.

This is a basic principle: Israel is not going to BUY peace from Palestine. A sub-principle is, why should it - the Arabs lost their wars, and Palestine lost some land. However, Israel has much to lose, and does badly want peace and stability.

So we have the position of the losers threatening the victors with continuous instability if their demands aren't met.

And the beauty of it is that Israel can't comply, without committing suicide - political, economic, cultural, and eventually, their lives.

To give up strategic territory, will invite Syria to attack - one day. To open its borders to the Palestinians, will eventuate in the Jewish presence becoming a minority, and forever vulnerable to an Arab majority.

Does anyone believe that those lovely people in Hamas don't know this? And are not going to keep this pot on the boil as long as they can, no matter the cost to their own citizens?

Just to get one thing straight; Israel, as Adonis keeps nagging, IS a racist state. It was conceived by Jews on the principle of survival, built by them, fought for. Israel is for Jews, in the same way that Britain is for Britons. Who has the right to order them to open immigration to all? (That it also has Muslim citizens, who have equal rights, is a side issue).

Adonis agrees with the Zionist ideology of the Jews being a "people or nation, like any other." Well and good; so a sovereign State should be no contradiction to him. And if Self- Determination is "apartheid", so be it.

Your Arab Peace Initiative, Adonis, is no more than a strategy, and an evil one, to keep Israel under pressure. To keep promoting it, will only demonstrate that you've been naively duped by those who definitely don't want a peaceful settlement.

Tony

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Tony,

I did not know that British was a race. Is being a citizen of a country or member of a religion how you define race?

By the race standard, who should be in South Africa?

Michael

[anthony]

Michael,

I stretched a point there, as an illustration.

I am attempting to answer all those who attack Israel with "racist" slogans, by arguing that, of course, the formation of that nation WAS on the basis of exclusion - for that race of Jews. A Jewish homeland.

Why should one be scared to admit it?

It is this very exclusivity that appears to alienate a lot of people, Christians and Muslims. They are often people who don't seem to recognise how tenuous the future of world Jewry was 60 years ago, or don't care.

Once it came into existence, my "Britain for Britons" (the British citizenry) comparison becomes valid, I think. With Statehood, the Jews/Israelis finally became self-determining, and are a nationality, as well as a race.

So yeah, to be precise, at birth, Israel was racialistic.

Tony

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Tony,

I have no problem accepting that the Jews are a group of people belonging to the same religion and set of traditions. Nor with the issue that this group was persecuted. Nor with the issue that Israel was set up as a safe haven for this group.

When we get to the issue of genetic makeup like Caucasian, African, Oriental, Indian, etc., I have a real problem. What is the genetic makeup of Jews that make them racially different from, say, Caucasians? What are the physical characteristics? Different skin pigment? Slant of eyes? Bone structure? General height?

Did Sammy Davis Junior, a Jew, belong to the Jewish race?

Judaism is a religious culture. Nothing less and nothing more. Call it an ethnic group if you like, but race is not accurate.

The Nazis tried to operate on that inaccuracy supposedly to cleanse the gene pool. But you can't cleanse something that doesn't exist in the first place.

Michael