UPDATE AT THE END. Please read it.
FINAL UPDATE also at the end.
I am writing this diary based on a comment I started to answer. I fully anticipate some of the replies it will engender, but they will help make the point. We'll see.
I wanted to show what imbalance is, and to rebut something I see here concerning "Israel Derangement Syndrome."
Below is the comment and what I have to say. I think the comment does just what it criticizes. I further have some words about those who raise this malady in the first instance. I have lots to do and am not looking to debate, nor am I obligated to. So let’s not go there. One can write a diary just to say what one thinks. You can respect that or not, your choice. I would rather the words be read anyway. Too often here there must be comments about EVERYTHING, no matter how small. Most comments at this site are unnecessary from my point of view.
Israel Derangement Syndrome
As Andrew Sullivan calls it.
Or here is Mark Steel:
That would be as logical as the statement from the Israeli PM's spokesman – "We made every possible effort to avoid this incident." Because the one tiny thing they forgot to do to avoid this incident was not send in armed militia from helicopters in the middle of the night and shoot people. I must be a natural at this sort of technique because I often go all day without climbing off a helicopter and shooting people, and I'm not even making every possible effort. Politicians and commentators worldwide repeat a version of this line. They're aware a nation has sent its militia to confront people carrying provisions for the desperate, in the process shooting several of them dead, and yet they angrily blame the dead ones. One typical headline yesterday read "Activists got what they wanted – confrontation." It's an attitude so deranged it deserves to be registered as a psychosis, something like "Reverse Slaughter Victim Confusion Syndrome".
As I've said elsewhere, it is a sickness. One that is a direct result of a sustained occupation mixed with Zionist ideology. They cannot help themselves. This is one of the reasons the addiction paradigm is so useful in diagnosing Israel; they've literally become so addicted to it that they are approaching rock bottom.
The Zionists here who enable them are not their friends. A true friend would never give a drunk the keys to his destruction. This needs to stop, and soon.
Of course, Mr. Steel, to his credit, does not limit it to one group. And many have rushed to judgment supporting the bona fides of the individuals who, we may discover, precipitated the flotilla confrontation. The rush to pre-judge what occurred was incredible. Hopefully, there will be an inquiry that looks at this matter from all sides, including that of Israel, because i have seen some troubling reports, videos and photos that raise legitimate questions about some of the people on that vessel. Perhaps the swift calls of "massacre" and "murder" and "piracy" shows Palestinian Derangement Syndrome?
When do you really hear more than lip service paid to Israel's rights, as if they are the ONLY state that should have less than the others?
The above comment was made among friends of a feather. It is one sided and so easy to throw out in this context. Easy to throw the word Zionist, too, but it clearly has different meanings to different people. Like Obama! But the comment clearly used it in the pejorative. And in this regard, see below what Martin Luther King had to say.
As if this same kind of syndrome did not exist on the other side. Yet here, among friends, an outsider could read the comments and say the syndrome was in full bloom. You see, the "Zionists" here enable the bad conduct, as if anti-Israel, anti-Jewish rhetoric is just so lovely. No enabling on the other side going on, is there? In fact, there are plenty of Jews who speak out on both sides of the issue, dare I say more diversity that those who show Palestinian Derangement Syndrome while pointing fingers at others for being deranged.
I wish I knew how to upload a pic here. There are some great shots from the Durban 2001 NGO Forum, held a few days before 9-11. Here is a link to get an example. Here is an article and something more in depth. 9-11 pushed this out of the news. Is it Palestinian Derangement to deny this occurred?
Read John Lewis's 2002 op-ed after Durban, where he said:
During an appearance at Harvard University shortly before his death, a student stood up and asked King to address himself to the issue of Zionism. The question was clearly hostile. King responded, "When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews, you are talking anti-Semitism."
This information, which I wonder how many people here really know about, show clearly why Jews have reason do not feel secure, still, in the 21st Century, after 50% of their entire population was slaughtered less than 100 years ago. Now there is admonishment for looking back. But I ask, did they EVER try to push the Germans into the Baltic? Yet comparisons are made to compare even the Israeli neocons (who I do not defend) to Nazis, and the Palestinians (who have warred with Israel) to Jews who were systematically exterminated in the most cruel way ever known to humankind. Yet watch the recs pile up among friends. Check out this link and get back to me on that one. Which side were the Arabs on in that conflict?
Forgetting that for the moment, the fact is that Jews have as much or more entitlement to Israel than anyone else. They bought the land legally, most from large Arab landowners. Check out some pictures of Tel Aviv sometime and see what was there. It's just an illustration of the inhospitable land that was there when Jews started to emigrate there in the late 1880s, escaping persecution. Read the reports from the time, mostly British (no friends to Jews) that say the claims of Arabs that their land was taken were basically groundless. For example:
Winston Churchill was British Colonial Secretary when he visited the Middle East in the winter of 1920-1921. Anti-Semitic elements in the British government tried to assert that the Jews were not needed to develop Palestine. Churchill replied:
"Left to themselves, the Arabs of Palestine would not in a thousand years have taken effective steps towards the irrigation and electrification of Palestine. They would have been quite content to dwell—a handful of philosophic people—in wasted sun-drenched plains, letting the waters of the Jordan flow unbridled and unharnessed into the Dead Sea."
In 1924, a few months after becoming Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Elwood Mead (namesake of Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam) published a highly favorable review of Jewish settlements in Palestine based on his visits there in 1923. His article, "New Palestine," praised the Zionists accomplishments and plans, a publicity coup. Mead blamed Islam, Ottoman governance, and Arab culture for the demise of Roman irrigation systems that, according to Mead, once supported "lands flowing with milk and honey." Mead was a consultant to Chiam Weizman offering his expertise to maximize the return on investment of the extensive investments in irrigation, land reclamation, and water supplies in the Zionist areas based on Mead's extensive experience in the American West.
After the Arab riots in 1929, Mead wrote to the British High Commissioner that Jewish colonists had produced "a marvelous transformation" in the Palestinian landscape. Mead noted that in his visits to Palestine he had seen nothing "to indicate that the Arab was injured." Moreover, the Jewish example of "what modern finance and equipment can do, coupled with the sympathetic interest of the government is bringing him out of the hopeless inertia that misgovernment and oppression of centuries past have created .... " Jewish settlers in Palestine were not only reclaiming the land, they were elevating living standards for the Arab population and assisting the British government.
In his report to the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Transjordan for the year 1925, the British High Commissioner wrote:
Fuel-power stations for the generation of electrical light and energy have been established at Haifa and Tiberias by the [Jewish] Palestine Electric Corporation, Limited. This increase in commercial activity, in building enterprise and new industrial developments is due almost entirely to Jewish capital and the entry during the year of an immigrant class with money to invest.
Here's more, complete with sources to what is provided:
When John Hope Simpson arrived in Palestine in May 1930, he observed: "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."
In 1931, Lewis French conducted a survey of landlessness and eventually offered new plots to any Arabs who had been "dispossessed." British officials received more than 3,000 applications, of which 80 percent were ruled invalid by the Government's legal adviser because the applicants were not landless Arabs. This left only about 600 landless Arabs, 100 of whom accepted the Government land offer.
In April 1936, a new outbreak of Arab attacks on Jews was instigated by a Syrian guerrilla named Fawzi alQawukji, the commander of the Arab Liberation Army. By November, when the British finally sent a new commission headed by Lord Peel to investigate, 89 Jews had been killed and more than 300 wounded.
The Peel Commission's report found that Arab complaints about Jewish land acquisition were baseless. It pointed out that "much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased....there was at the time of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land." Moreover, the Commission found the shortage was "due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population." The report concluded that the presence of Jews in Palestine, along with the work of the British Administration, had resulted in higher wages, an improved standard of living and ample employment opportunities.
In his memoirs, Transjordan's King Abdullah wrote:
It is made quite clear to all, both by the map drawn up by the Simpson Commission and by another compiled by the Peel Commission, that the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping (emphasis in the original).
Anyway, since the 1920s the Arab policy has been to push Jews into the sea, to eradicate them from their lands that the abode shows they built with their own labors. Now it is Muslim doctrine to do so. We see it acted out every day. If you are blind to that, perhaps YOU have Palestinian Derangement Syndrome. (Once more, it goes both ways.)
I am a strong liberal. I try to see things in historical context. This means to examine many sides. Much of why I post in these stupid I/P conversations is because I SEE there is a derangement here, but that meets with the Good Housekeeping Seal of approval. It faults israel no matter what. Let's be real.
Anyway, when do mostly Christians like Andrew Sullivan get off starting to tell Jews about the meaning of Jewish persecution? How many relatives did they lose? Totally innocent people. A wild guess: NONE!
Palestinians are in a terrible state. They have contributed to it, just like Israelis. When the occupation began in 1967, no one knew it would take this long to find peace. Who could imagine what has occurred. There are no winners here. However, Israel, from the outset, was ready and willing to make peace. But things like the Munich Olympics, the 73 War, create no atmosphere for peace. And from the start, the Arab neighbors lifted not one finger to help their Palestinian brothers and sisters, or assimilating even one. easier to feign concern and whip up hate against Israel to mollify the masses and deflect scrutiny of their own domestic policies.
And after the years dragged on, in the hostile climate, Israel started to become just one of the guys in the rough neighborhood. It is now a full fledged member, with an extremist government. But let's remember, this was also the state that produced Rabin and reached peace with Egypt and Jordan. So does all this occur in a vacuum? What should anyone expect after 90 years of war? Yet the problem persists.
I don't know how to solve it at this point. Perhaps if more actually cared about Israel's security, not just in lip service, more would be done. That would help Palestinians. Check out the UN sometime, and you will see how little the world cares. It's bad theater and the loudest are the ones with the poorest records.
Palestinians hopefully will discover that no one will help them but themselves. That is what history should teach them. Arabs have 85% of the land that Britain got in 1923. They have wasted so much effort to get the other 15%. Until 1947, the people who became Palestinians could have become part of TransJordan and set about to improve their lot. That was their country. In fact, there were no "Palestinians" as a people before 1947. They were mostly Jordanians.
After 1947, when the partition gave another 10% of lands originally designated for the Jews to the new Palestinian people, that was still not enough for the Arabs, who then sealed the Palestinian fate by fomenting war. It's not Israel's fault that this occurred. If Palestinians had started to develop their state, then alongside Israeli-Arabs they could have been formed a natural alliance and the two states could have flourished. Yet, even after so many miscalulations and lack of help from their fellow Arabs, too many seem fixated on destroying Israel, not helping themselves.
Israel has made one bad decision after another, and now there is a humanitarian aspect that must be addressed. However, the underlying basis for most of what it has done is defensive, though there are questions about application. When suicide bombers become a threat and rockets are fired into one's territory, and a state of armed conflict exists, sovereign states have the right to act. Should they be expected not to? It's easy to get a lecture from others until the first rocket lands.
Remember 1991? Iraq sent Scuds. Israel was not a belligerant. It had every right to act. What did it do? Showed restraint. I don't know about you, but I never had to run to a bomb shelter before. How many times have you?
That's all. The main point is that there is plenty of derangement syndrome to go around, but perhaps you have to be Jewish to understand what Jewish persecution is about. This is not to defend those that use it cynically, but there are plenty who do such things in all walks of life, Jews, Palestinians, Americans, Liberals, Conservatives, name it!
Justice Souter recently said the to Harvard law graduating class:
And who has not felt that same hunger? Is there any one of us who has not lived through moments, or years, of longing for a world without ambiguity, and for the stability of something unchangeable in human institutions? I don’t forget my own longings for certainty, which heartily resisted the pronouncement of Justice Holmes, that certainty generally is illusion and repose is not our destiny.
It's too bad, to me, that people are so certain and quick to jump on Israel, seemingly ignorant to history and facts, and the hatred directed at it and Jews every day. But of course, it's just derangement to feel threatened when people attend an anti-racist UN conference and suggest it's too bad that Hitler did not finish the job.
UPDATE: I apologize for being less than clear about this statement: "Now it is Muslim doctrine to do so." I was referring to many of the Muslim states, particularly in the context of the Arab and non-Arab contest to claim Muslim leadership from a political standpoint. The fastest way to win popular support is to do this, and it IS seen almost every day in Geneva, express and impled. However, I should have been more articulate, as I know there are many Muslims who only want peace. I know this won't satisfy many here, but wanted to convey this anyway.
FINAL UPDATE: I appreciate all the comments, but would have liked to see more links to substantiate the criticism, rather than conclusions that I am deluded and even worse. That serves no purpose. In any event, I acknowledge that there was a Palestinian identity in 1920, not 1947. That is my error. However, I'll stick with most of the rest. I learned a lot in making my responses and I think that the UN documents confirm the basic premise of the historical conditions that make Jews insecure. It's not just Palestinians. It's far more widespread. I'll leave it at that. However, I find it very telling that no one at all that I recall said anything about Durban, 2001, which is recent evidence of the hatred that Jews saw from many who call themselves human rights activists. Oh well.