On the Gaza Crisis, 2023 (1): Primarily on the Historical Background of Zionism
"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
Map of Israel and the Occupied Territories. It's a small country. Notice how tiny Gaza is.
(Image by larrywkoester) Details DMCA
Before I offer some thoughts of my own on this rapidly developing tragedy, I am presenting a lengthy quotation from a New York Times OpEd. Realizing that it is likely that what the author has to say here will be overtaken by events fairly quickly, on this date, 10-12-23, I would like to share some of what I regard as excellent thinking on the subject of, as the author (R. David Harden, a former USAID mission director) put it, "Israel Could be Walking into a Trap in Gaza:"
"Hamas knew that the attack on Saturday would give Mr. Netanyahu little choice but to retaliate with a ground invasion, and it knows that the Israel Defense Forces' technology and military superiority would offer little advantage on the crowded streets of Gaza City; in Jabalia, Gaza's largest refugee camp; or through Hamas's labyrinth of underground tunnels. Gaza, 140 square miles with a population of more than two million, is one of the most densely populated places on earth.
"It appears [that] Hamas wants to draw Israeli soldiers into a quagmire, as Hezbollah did in Southern Lebanon from 1985 to 2000. After years of fighting, Israel suffered a humiliating and chaotic withdrawal, leaving an empowered and threatening Hezbollah on its northern border. . .
"If Israel invades Gaza, Hamas may have the public support to challenge the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and potentially assume leadership as the sole representative [of all] of the Palestinian people. . . .
"Despite its grotesque atrocities against civilians, Hamas may have already reset the political realignment in the Middle East by disrupting prospective diplomatic talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But if Gaza were now to escalate into a protracted ground war, Hamas could also undermine the Abraham Accords, which established agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and break the trend of increasing Arab-Israeli normalization. The Palestinian Authority was unable to block the Abraham Accords, but Hamas could still unwind them. . . .
"To avoid the Gaza trap, Israel needs Arab allies on the ground and in the region. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan have all regarded Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and the Muslim Brotherhood as a collective strategic threat. To gain the support of the key regional leaders, Israel will have to offer major security concessions and intelligence in the event of a wider war with Iran and set a meaningful and clear political horizon for a post-Abbas, post-Hamas Palestinian state."
That's a tall order for Israel, especially with its far-rightist, post-"Oslo Accords," government (which Accords for all intents and purposes became a literal dead letter with the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin).
How Did The-State-of-Israel come to be? In brief, it was the Product of European Political Anti-Semitism
In the late 19th century, the majority of the world's Jews lived in Europe. "Anti-Semitism" had been a feature of European society since at least the time of St Augustine (5th century C.E.). From that time until the late 19th century anti-Semitism in Europe generally had a religious cast, "The Jews Killed Christ," as it was put into Catholic doctrine by Augustine in the 5th century C.E. But in the late 1870's in Austria and Germany was developed a political version of anti-Semitism, that is a version which could be used in electoral campaigns (and beyond them in non-electoral periods, for political purposes).
This was spread into other countries, e.g., the Dreyfus Affair (1890's France) and the publication in Czarist Russia of the so-called "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in 1906. (As it happened, my father Prof. Harold J. Jonas, did the research for the first book that proved that the "Protocols" were a forgery, produced by the Czarist Secret Policy. The book was published in 1942 under the name of a gentile, for political reasons: "An Appraisal of the PROTOCOLS OF ZION," New York: Columbia University Press.)
Political antisemitism developed fairly quickly in phases in Europe, leading up to the enactment of the "Nuremberg Laws" in Germany in 1935, which among other things, deprived German Jews of their German citizenship. And so, where could German Jews in particular (and Jews from other European countries who might want to escape the expansion of anti-Semitism that seemed to be coming over the horizon) go? Well, not too many other places, as it turned out. In 1938, a major conference, initially organized by Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on "what to do with the German Jews who wanted to get out," was held at Evian, France.
Adolf Hitler helpfully said: "I can only hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for these criminals [Jews], will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid. We, on our part, are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships." (Note that at the beginning of the current crisis the Israeli Minister of Defense, in referring to the Gazan fighters, said: "We are fighting human animals.")
Two of the 40 or so countries which were at the Conference took Jewish emigres, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rico. The United States, riven in the 1930s by open anti-Semitism (see, e.g., Henry Ford, a pen-pal of Hitler, and Father Charles Coughlin), itself took very few (and they had to have special qualifications; e.g., many composers for 1930s Hollywood films were Jews). U.S. policy, despite FDR's sympathy with the plight of the European Jews ,was characterized by the famous turn-around of the "luxury ship" (see Hitler, above) St. Louis in 1939.
Of course, the overwhelming tragedy of the Holocaust vastly reduced the number of European Jews who were looking for a safe homeland after World War II. But the number of them was significant, while the number of places that would accept them, including the United States --- under the Immigration Act of 1924 --- was limited.
"Zionism," that is the ideology that encouraged European Jews to move to the Jews' "Biblical homeland," "Zion," had been created by Theodor Herzl and colleagues, beginning the 1890s, precisely in order to provide Jews with a place to escape from European anti-Semitism. Jewish immigration to what after World War I became the "Palestine Mandate" (under the United Kingdom) was begun in earnest after that War. (Last spring, I published a column on the consequences of that early movement, which in one word can be entitled "Expulsionism." It echoes down to his very day, and plays a role in the current Crisis.)
But then, after World War II, the number of other countries in the world, especially ones where European Jews would feel comfortable living and that would accept them, was limited. Eventually, after overcoming British resistance, emigration to what had been Palestine (and with the intervention of the United Nation became the State of Israel), began in earnest.
This is not the place or the space to describe what the Jewish immigrants did with and to the Arab-Muslim-Palestinians. Among certain others, that has been described in detail by the now-exiled Israeli author, Ilan Pappe: "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oxford (Eng.): One World, 2006." (As a contributor to the issue of what would happen to Palestinians after the creation of The State of Israel, it should be noted that both before and after World War II agricultural lands that were worked by Palestinian Arabs were bought from their Arab owners by Jews, with no provisions made by either side for the agricultural workers who were left behind.)
But the bottom line is that, in the beginning (if I may use that term), every Arab-Israeli crisis that has occurred since that time, and in historical terms there have been many of them, can be traced back to the creation of Political Anti-Semitism in 18th century Europe, which resulted in the expulsion-from-Europe/immigration-to-Israel by many European Jews. (Other Jewish groups who came later include the Sephardim, the non-European Jews, mainly in the 1950s and 60s; the Russian Jews, mainly in the 1970s; and in this century, U.S. Jews, often Orthodox and politically right-wing.) It is these immigrations, and what Israeli, Palestinian-Arab, and Arab governments did and did not do over time to deal with the realities, that has led right down to the current Crisis-of-Gaza.
Now for a Change of Subject: Some Commentaries
Here, for you to consider, is a correspondence I had with a (very) long-time friend:
My friend: "Horror beyond belief! I'm going to have nightmares tonight after watching the film from Israel. Equally horrific is that there are Nazis marching proudly in NYC, Chicago and Florida."
Myself (much wordier than he is, although in other contexts over the years he has been very wordy too[!]):
"What Hamas has done is horrific, its terrorism on civilians was done in a particularly brutal fashion (killing babies ?!?), and of course I totally condemn it. There is no justification for it, even though, as I have said on a number of occasions, in Gaza, Israel is surrounding the world's largest concentration camp. Nevertheless, that is no excuse for any demonstrations/statements in this country supporting the Hamas terrorists (those statements symbolized by images of hang-gliders). It is one thing to advocate for a long-range settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian problem, another to support terrorism.
"Further, as for your statement: 'Dear Arie: Our hearts are quaking and breaking over your encounter with the devil in the clothes of Hamas. Peace--for which we all yearn --is so far from fruition. Those Hamas bastards must be obliterated before a just peace can be achieved. We are appalled by the pro-Hamas protests in the streets of New York and Chicago, once Jewish enclaves. Please stay safe and allow a little of your vaunted humor to shine through this period of darkness. Yours in solidarity.' [I responded] I am fully in agreement with your statement."
"But [this is I writing further] among the larger questions on the table at this time are: what did Hamas expect to accomplish by this terrorist rampage? What does Israel expect to accomplish by its wholesale destruction of the civilian infrastructure of one of the most crowded places in the Earth, and by the 'blockade?' [Israel is completely closing off and suffocating the Gaza Strip. No fuel. No water. No food. No Internet. Nowhere to escape. The healthcare system is on the verge of total collapse and the power on the verge of total blackout under constant bombings. (USPCR.org, 10/12/23)] What is a reasonable long-term solution to the 'Gaza Problem' even though neither Hamas nor the current Israeli-Right government would agree to it? Who knows?
"As for the U.S. Nazis, in my 1996 futuristic novel (which happens to tell a fictional history from then up to just about now --- hint, the Republicans of the 90's and their successors, "The American Christian Nation Party" are the villains) --- 'The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S. 1981-2022,' that is what the Republicans of the day became (and today's Republicans seem to be following the script that I laid out in the book)."
And for now, a final comment of mine on the current situation:
The major problem with the two-state solution, which all reasonable people concerned with the situation in Israel/Palestine support, and which was supposed to be produced by "Oslo," is that two major actors do not want anything to do with it. They are, of course, the Israeli Right (which effectively ended it long ago with the Rabin assassination) and the revanchist-only Palestinians/Arabs, represented at the present time most notably by Hamas. That is quite a nut to crack.
[Obviously, to be continued.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Post script: To be noted, the PLO/Hamas conflict that runs in parallel with the Israel/Palestinian conflict, represents the much wider, and longer-lasting, conflict between the Sunni (Saudi Arabia/Egypt) Muslim states and the Shitte ones, led by Iran.