From StopTheWall.org’s FAQ, answering the question “why does the Israeli public support the building of the Wall?”
The majority of the Israeli public has supported the Wall, following the pretext of “security”. The idea of unilateral separation appeals greatly to those in their society who do not want to admit or take responsibility for their government’s racist actions.
That’s probably true. But, y’know, it’s just barely possible that the idea of unilateral separation also appeals greatly to those in Israeli society who’d rather not be blown to fucking pieces on a bus by some anti-semitic moron with a martyr complex and an explosive belt!!!
The StopTheWall website is actually pretty good, when it comes to showing how the Wall is an inhumane land-grab from the Palestinian point of view. But the total incomprehension as to why it’s perfectly reasonable for ordinary Israelis to want a Wall so they can stop being blown up quite so often is maddening. Morons.
ok, i’m getting kind of tired of people throwing around the term “anti-semitic” to only apply to the hatred of jews. the arabs are a semitic people too. they’d have to hate themselves.
you could say anti-zionist i suppose… but it IS possible to be anti-zionist and to not hate all jews on principle.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of hatred directed towards Jews specifically. As there was before the creation of Israel.
Yes, there are plenty of anti-Zionist folks out there who are not anti-Jewish–including quite a few Jewish people. However, there are enough folks who cloak their racism and anti-Jewish feeling under the veil of “anti-Zionism” that I’m leery of them. All too often, I’ve heard crap about how Jews really control the economy, faked the Holocaust, and are conspiring to take over the world.
You may quibble with the term anti-Semetic, so feel free to replace it with the term anti-Jewish. But let’s not negate the reality of anti-Jewish sentiment out there by quibbling over a term.
Further, as a Jewish anti-Zionist myself, I’d like to draw a distinction between my own feeling that the creation of Israel was a dire (but understandable) mistake that has been bad for Jews and the feeling of other anti-Zionists who want the nation of Israel destroyed, possibly with the citizens as well.
Dang, it’s confusing. Perhaps, though, one of the least of the problems of a decades-long disaster is that its terminology is imprecise.
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-V.
If I could recommend an alternate site that provides a somewhat less slanted (although certainly not pro-Israeli) version of the wall, the BBC has a relatively good page.
The main problem with Stop the Wall is it conflates facts with propoganda, and differentiates the two with color-coded maps. For example, the first statment that the Wall will run for over 400 miles inside the West Bank is true, although slightly misleading in that in most places (outside of Ariel and Jerusalem, which are the most controversial diversion in the West Bank), the Wall runs for miles only slightly inside of the West Bank border.
The next statement, however, that the Wall “de facto annexes nearly 50% of the West Bank” is based upon the PLO’s assertion that the Wall will not simply run for 400 miles, but will then turn back up the Eastern side of the West Bank (this is called the “Projected Jordan Valley barrier” in the BBC map.) Israel denies that there will be a Jordan Valley barrier. Further, it is extremely doubtful whether such a barrier could be built, even if Ariel Sharon wanted to, based upon Israeli Supreme Court rulings requiring adjustments to the walls path that are much closer to Israel-proper. Stop the Wall, however, assumes that it is simply a fact.
I’m not sure how close this comes to the about-95% of the West Bank that Arafat rejected in 2000 at Camp David before launching a violent intifadah to get more than 95%, but it certainly isn’t half of the West Bank.
People use the term anti-Semitic to mean anti-Jewish for historical reasons. Political anti-Semites in the 19th century did not have other “semitic” peoples in mind when they created anti-Semitic political parties, newspapers, etc. This is definitely more confusing for people now, especially if you have read Edward Said’s Orientalism. But that is why anti-Semitism is used this way, I use it this way for this reason, not to deny the existence of racism against Arabs. It’s the same problem that Vardibidian brings up, only more so.
I am not sure that a terrorist who wants to blow up Israelis is necessarily an anti-Semite, but if you are a Jew being blown up, do you care? Policies that dehumanize, impoverish, disenfranchise, injure or kill Palestinians aren’t necessarily racist, but if you are injured or killed, do you care?
I think the security justification for the wall is a way of manipulating the Israeli public into supporting it. Fear of being blown up by terrorists shapes a lot of public support for bad policy in Israel. Also, as you may have noticed, here in the US.
You must be getting very tired of it, since the word has meant hatred of jews specifically for over a century – ever since the word was coined in 1873, in fact. The word has never in its history meant what you say it means, Dana.
It’s true, of course, that the word “semite” can refer to both jews and arabs. But that doesn’t mean that the word “anti-semite” has to refer to both jews and arabs, any more than a “softball” must be soft, a “notebook” must be used to take notes, a “secondhand” shirt must include a literal hand, etc.. In the English language, compound words do not have to take on every connotation of every word in their etymology.
I very much agree. And that’s why we need two distinct words, “anti-zionist” and “antisemite” – they don’t mean the same thing at all.
Whoops, I crossposted with RA and with Richard – sorry for repeating much the same points.
one question I have on the matter: is there any reason why the believe that the completion of such a wall would actually reduce the frequency of bombings? my general understanding of such barriers historically did little to prevent the violence and agression of enemies, while punishing innocents brutally (see also: the great wall of china, the isolationism decrees of Tokugawa Japan, the berlin wall et al)
thank you, karpad…
Well, I’ve been told that bombings inside Israel have gone down in areas where the wall has gone up, but I haven’t examined the truth of that.
It seems “common sensical” that if Palestinian suicide bombers can’t get into Israel, they’ll have a harder time blowing themselves up there. Is there any evidence that the common sense is mistaken?
There is a terrific graphical depiction of the stats regarding the wall and the lessening of bombings in Israel, but I can’t find it right now. Here is a website with info though, and a simple bar graph of the stats. There is a better one out there somewhere though.
There are also Arabs in support of the wall; one man went from hating the wall to wanting it when he was a victim of the bombing. I blogged on this.
is there any reason why the believe that the completion of such a wall would actually reduce the frequency of bombings?
Your examples are odd. I believe the great wall of China kept out invaders for years. Are there any examples of Berliners breaching the Berlin Wall to attack individuals from the other side?
As far as I can tell, there was a 30% decrease in suicide attacks from 2002 to 2003 from the West Bank, after construction of the wall began. It is an open question whether that is due to the wall, or whether it’s part of the regular ebb and flow of the intifadah. More relevant is that there has long been a wall on the Gaza Strip side, and there are practically no suicide bombers infiltrating Israel from that side.
More relevant from my perspective is the following: assume that both sides are at least a little bit right — that Israel is to some degree making a land grab, and that the wall is necessary to some degree to prevent terrorist attacks.
If those are the issues, then my liberal tendencies tell me that life always trumps property. If property rights are lost and rights to live are protected, that strikes me as a net gain.
Richard: Yes, but we could have all the life-saving advantages of the wall, with almost none of the land-grabbing disadvantages, by building the wall where it belongs – along the internatinoally-acknowleged border of Israel, rather than inside the occupied territories.
Certainly, as long as you were not concerned about saving the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Jews currently living on the other side of it.
Irrespective of your views of the “settlers”, the worst they have done is stolen land, and do not deserve to be killed.
If your goal is to protect people, then you have to put the wall around where the people actually ARE, not where you believe, in a perfect world, they should be.
Imagine a tenant who refuses to pay his rent and won’t get out of his apartment. The landlord is never allowed to kill him to get rid of him. If the landlord threatens to kill him, he’s entitled to get police protection. And the police have to protect him where he is. They can’t go guard some other place, and tell him they’d be protecting him if he was where he should be.
Ampersand, why do you call them occupied territory. Didn’t it actually have to have been occupied by the people who want it? The fact is much of the land occupied by the settlers was bought, with their own money, from the owners of the land. The Gush Katif area is an example; the land wasn’t occupied, it was owned, and the Jews bought it.
Does this mean that Arabs aren’t allowed to sell their land?
Certainly, as long as you were not concerned about saving the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Jews currently living on the other side of it.
Because I disagree with you about what should be done doesn’t mean that I’m indifferent to the lives of the settlers, and that you suggest otherwise is, to put it mildly, insulting.
Your logic leads to a morally perverse outcome – that as long as Israel is willing to endanger its own people by enabling them to become illegal settlers, there is no land grab, complete with wall-building, that can not be justified in the name of “saving lives.”
The solution I favor is for the Israilis to build a wall on the Green Line and to remove all the settlers to behind the wall – by force, if necessary. The settlers have a right to their lives – but they have no right to live their lives on stolen land.
(There are also negotiated solutions – for instance, one-for-one land swaps of equally valuable land with equal water resources – which should be considered, to keep current settlements in place. But’s that going beyond the scope of my post.)
If your goal is to protect people, then you have to put the wall around where the people actually ARE, not where you believe, in a perfect world, they should be.
Because moving people is impossible?
My goal is to protect people – but that’s not my only goal. I’m not willing to say “let’s protect people’s lives, so therefore issues of justice for Palestinians should be totally ignored.”
Imagine a tenant who refuses to pay his rent and won’t get out of his apartment. The landlord is never allowed to kill him to get rid of him. If the landlord threatens to kill him, he’s entitled to get police protection. And the police have to protect him where he is.
Actually, the police are, in the end, in charge of physically removing the illegal tenant from the apartment, if he won’t leave any other way.
Rachel Ann, I might choose to sell my house and property to a French citizen. That doesn’t make my house French territory; that doesn’t make it legal for France to declare my land part of France, or to build a wall to protect the “French” territory.
The solution I favor is for the Israilis to build a wall on the Green Line and to remove all the settlers to behind the wall – by force, if necessary. The settlers have a right to their lives – but they have no right to live their lives on stolen land.
On the one hand, I guess that is probably one of the only solutions that might actually work, but it doesn’t really seem “fair” to me. I mean, the surrounding states were planning to invade Israel and destroy it in 1968. There was a war and Israel won. It seems reasonable that there should be some sort of overall punishment for losing a war that you instigated. The Jews living in the lands in the West Bank want to be part of Israel. To the extent that many of them obtained their land legally, through purchase, taking of unoccupied land, or eminent domain, I don’t see why they should get to choose what country they want to live in.
Giving Palestinians their own country seems to me like a reward for attacking Israel for all those decades. And that doesn’t seem fair to me.
you know, Richard, you’re right.
let’s leave the palestinian territories in Israeli hands.
in fact, let’s use military force to assimilate Syria, Jordan and Egypt, just for laughs. after all, over the years, they’ve backed fighters against isreal, and lost, so they should be punished too, right?
and then, all those people we’ve forcibly assimilated, let’s deny them first class citizenship, particularly about things like voting for elected officals and right to freely travel in and around the country.
yeah, that’ll fucking stop those terrorist bastards. when they see that fighting back will just result in land grabs and collective punishment, they’re sure to stop fighting then.
But there was never a Palestinaian homeland; that is my point. The Jews were living there, living in various parts of the land that the Palestinians claim as their own, and were kicked out by Arabs (example, Hebron). All of the lands in the Gusk area
were UNINHABITED at the time of the sale, and most of the lands that Jews bought, before it became a state were swapland oh I forget the word, but uninhabited and not considered suitable for agricultural purposes (You do know that joke about the damn Israeli’s in hell don’t you? There is that kernel of truth in there.)
So this isn’t land they were driven out of, owned, or was part of a country that they were members of.
In terms of “Arab” East Jerusalem, Jews were forced from that area; you can still see the signs of the Mezzuzahs on the doorposts. Jews were also forced out of many Arab lands (and Jews can’t be citizens of Jordan)
And if sale of land doesn’t net you the land, then how come you are living in USA? Um, don’t you want to turn your house over to whatever tribe was living there at the time?
let’s leave the palestinian territories in Israeli hands.
in fact, let’s use military force to assimilate Syria, Jordan and Egypt, just for laughs. after all, over the years, they’ve backed fighters against isreal, and lost, so they should be punished too, right?
Lucia, the point Richard Bellamay is making is that is exactly what the Arab nations were trying to do to Israel and they lost. There was never a Palestinian homeland; the Arabs denied that there were Palestinians when it was first suggested Palestine, a name given to the area by the British, be divided between the Jews (who were to get more land than they finally received)
Arabs started coming into Palestine when the Jews started coming; then they complained that there were too many Jews and Jewish immigration was slowed. Not Arab immigration though. Arabs attacked Jews, and were driven from various landholdings, and the Bristish response was to prevent more Jews from coming in.
Look, come to Israel, see for yourself. My Yishuv looks out onto various mountains, some inhabited by Jews, some by Arabs and some of which are barren of human habitation.
They were not,in the main,being driven out, Their land was not,in the main,being confiscated as Native American land was in the USA.
An interesting place to start would be THE COMPLETE IDIOT”S GUIDE TO THE MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT. Or, go to my site and click on the link to Israel facts, there is also a myths and facts section on the Yesha speaks website.
Rachel Ann, you’re quoting a book there. I really wish I could remember the title.
but as I recall, that particular body of work as been pretty much entirely discredited, and was written from the get go as an apologist work. “sure, the jews are being mean to palestinians, but there isn’t really such a thing as palestinians, they’re just moochers, so it’s ok”
nevermind that this flies in the face of common sense for anyone with a high school history education.
remember the crusades? and how there were civilians there, for both the Muslims AND Christians to massacre?
both sides left people there after the crusades were over.
it may not have been able to support a HUGE population prior to the zionist construction efforts, but it’s fruadulent to claim no one lived there.
it is, in fact, alot like claiming “the indian tribes founded settlements in area A, but they weren’t living in all the area AROUND area A, so we didn’t steal that land.”
Actually, the none of the books I quoted or used for reference were apolgistic in nature; they include negative comments about Jewish activities.and facts and back everything up with documents. The book I think you are referring to is Jan Peters book; it is discredited by the Arabs because they don’t like the facts. However, I didn’t reference that book because it wasn’t before me, and I don’t have access to it. The book is also well documented.
I never claimed that NO ONE was living there, but no one was living in the areas were the Jews were living; ie, the land was pretty much divided between the Jews and the Arabs, with Arabs allowed to immigrate and Jewish immigration restricted.
There was never a Palestinian land; even the Arabs denied it at the begining. There were people living in Palestine; who were Christian, Jewish and Muslim. So why are they Palestinian lands when Jews were living there also?
The Arabs did get land; it’s called Jordan (originally trans-Jordan, and they occupied East Jerusalem, Jews were forced from their homes there.)
The final point is that at the most you can say is the area which is outside the green land are lands in dispute. They are not Palestinian lands.
Again, there was never a people called Palestinians
prior to so time in 1960 or so; I forget the date and don’t want to go searching.
But I have a feeling we will argue till the cows come home.
The original post was for the fence. I’m for it; some of my friends are against it because they also fear it will end up determining the borders of Israel and they aren’t in agreement with that. Some Arabs are against it; they want more land. Some Arabs are for it; they are ISRAELI Arabs, as one proudly told me (thought I didn’t talk long, he also asked if I liked talking on the cell phone and I got this squishy feeling about the AIM conversation). Some don’t want to be killed and feel a heck of a lot safer on the Jewish side then they ever have or ever would feel on the Arab side.
Arafat is not a G-dsend to the Palestinians; and if the Arabs in that area are ever actually permitted to speak freely, perhaps they will tell you the same. But they have to be able to get away to talk.
Lots of opinions, no final answer yet.
I think that Rachel Ann’s point about the Palestinians is that there was no such thing as “the Palestinian people,” the ethnic group, until Yassir Arafat created it in the 1960s. Yes, people living in Palestine were called Palestinians, but that included the Jews there, and it was purely a geographical, not an ethnic or cultural, term. If you left Palestine you weren’t one any more.
This is significant because when Palestine was partitioned in 1947-8, the Arabs (who refused to accept the partition) had no interest in worrying about a homeland for “the Palestinian people.” In fact, when the dust cleared after the war and the Green Line was drawn as a partition, the Arabs were in control of the Gaza Strip and the whole West Bank INCLUDING THE OLD CITY of Jerusalem. They could at any time have declared a Palestinian state that would have been LARGER than anything the PLO was negotiating for at Oslo or Camp David.
But they didn’t. Instead, Egypt and Jordan, respectively, ILLEGALLY occupied these territories for 19 years. And kept the refugees there in refugee camps, instead of resettling them, to keep them riled up against Israel.
Then, having attacked Israel and threatened AGAIN to wipe it off the map in 1967, they lost the whole thing. Then, and only then, did they start to whine about the need for a homeland for “the Palestinian people” who had not previously existed. Their creation was purely a debating tactic.
Thank you Simon,
Who has said it much better than I could. I should never argue politics, I get all befuddled and forget to state important facts.
Thank you Simon.
I should probably calm down before posting. What irritated me were the last few posts by Simon and Rachel Ann, who both seem cheerfully oblivious to the idea that maybe there’s some blame to be cast on both sides for the conflict. There are occasionally conflicts where one side is entirely to blame, but this one doesn’t even come close to being in that category.
On the “antisemitism” issue, unfortunately I don’t think there’s a word for anti-Arab racism, something which pervades many if not most American discussions about the Palestinian issue. So some lefties try to compensate by claiming the word “antisemitism” applies as much to Arabs as to Jews. Since that doesn’t seem to be the case, perhaps someone should invent a new word for the specific form of racism which holds Arabs solely responsible for their own victimization.
I for one fail to see the relevance of the “ethnic palestinian” issue.
they are a group of people, a rather sizable group of people, who are being denied a series of civil and human rights.
akin would be saying that American Revolutionaries had no right to rebel against england, as they were citizens of the English empire and there hadn’t been such a thing as an “American” until we made up the term to differentiate ourself from the English.
now, many tories DID take that position, but there aren’t too many people anywhere in the world who would hold that opinion anymore.
fun little slogans like “no taxation without representation” still work, and, as my understanding is, that’s what Palestinians are faced with.
except they also get other problems, like denial of property rights. and that one is inequivocal. even if you DON’T think the palestinians are entitled to the various lands in gaza and the west bank, the israeli military practice of bulldozing houses is a blatant disregard of property rights.
and then there’s right to free travel and a slew of others needed for a person to function in a capitalist system. and the only defense I’ve ever seen ANYONE offer for them is based on the idea that the acts of a minority within a population can impose punishments on the majority: collective punishment and control.
it’s sleazy and wrong. and it’s dishonest to pretend that because the ethnic definition is “new and invented” that that somehow invalidates the human rights claims made by that group.
One of my posts is missing–I must have messed up. No great loss, given that I was kinda angry when I posted it, but I’d like to summarize the substantive content without the ranting tone, or at least with only a toned-down ranting tone Here goes–
Most of Israel’s land, both that acquired in 1948 and 1967, was acquired by force and a large fraction of the Palestinians in 1948 were the victims of a deliberate ethnic cleansing campaign. It’s true the Arabs rejected the partition plan in 1948, but that’s partly because 55 percent of the land was given to the group which at that time constituted one third of the population. The Jews didn’t own that 55 percent either–in fact, there were almost as many Arabs in the Jewish state as Jews.
Joan Peters was cited. Nobody except people interested in the crudest form of pro-Zionist propaganda use her as a reference. In the early 20th Century there were about 600,000 Arabs present and around one tenth that many Jews.
Both sides in this long conflict have been guilty of inexcusable human rights violations. Palestinians use terror–Israelis use terror as well, and over the years have killed many more Palestinian civilians than the other way around. Both are wrong.
Rachel Ann, you express concern over facts that you forget. It looks to me as though there are huge categories of fact that you know nothing about. Try reading Tom Segev, Meron Benvenisti, Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said, and (as an antidote to the sort of stuff you evidently read) Norman Finkelstein. Also Benny Morris, who is that rare thing, a man who openly admits his country’s crimes against humanity and says they were justified.
On a note that’s not completely on-topic…
Karpad, your reference to the War of American independence seems to me to be a prime example of history being written by the winners. In that period, had the Americans lost, I’m sure they would have been labelled as traitors who were rightfully defeated. It’s only relatively recently (as far as I’m aware; I’m not an historian) that we’ve started to think about whether people are right to rebel even if they haven’t won.
actually, it’s not about the “winners” I was citing it for.
it was a counterpoint to the position that if a group of people ARE oppressed, if they did not have any historical grouping, that their oppression somehow doesn’t count.
a similar metaphor would be saying that even though jews AND gypsies, AND gays, AND communists, AND jehova’s witnesses and so on were all oppressed by the nazis, we cannot refer to them collectively as the “victims of nazis” because they had no unity or group identity beforehand.
but I wanted to avoid that particular metaphor, as even when apt, I don’t really like drawing analogies using the Nazis. it makes people’s brains shut down, ignore the point and say “nuh uh, (person or persons I am defending) aren’t as bad as hitler.”
so I went with the American Revolution.
if you want, I could cite Leonard Peltier, but that’s also not so good an example, as the US government doesn’t seem to think he HAS a right to rebel against oppression…
I think it is an excellent idea to raise the wall against the fantical, maniacal, murderous band of terrorists, masquerading as a peaceful people. I think it is a stroke of genious. Who in their right mind could blame them? I think that those psych-jobs should blow themselves up and do the world a favor, and stop blowing up innocent Ireali women and children. What Cowards, What scum…