Harry’s Place

Well, the current London literati bien-pensant view of Israel has been displayed on the pages of the LRB for several decades at least. Some 25 years ago I used to go into my local library in London (hint: the one where one of the today’s ‘liberal Labour leaders’ tried to ban them stocking the Times when he was council leader, all in the name of progressive values, of course), and read through it. I gave up after several months. The pathological anti-Israel bile in the LRB was bad for my blood pressure. It also made it impossible to have a nice lunch afterwards.

“It argued that Israel should be, as the title suggests, a secular Hebrew Republic”

Why? why not just Republic? why does there have to be an islamic republic, or christian republic?

To declare interest, Bernie Avishai is an old mate of mine. Whether because or in spite of it, he is a great guy. His views are overall on what one would term the most progressive, peacenik side of US Jewry. It says something about LRB that they put people like Bernie beyond the pale. Unless he spews out unconditional hatred, he isn’t good enough for them.

If the LRB did behave as disgracefully as you suggest, it would be good to see a link, a reference or some other evidence. I can’t see any mention on Pollard’s blog. I don’t disbelieve you - but serious charges require evidence of some sort.

the Specc has:

“Bernard Avishai wonders why his assessment of a new biography of King Hussein was bumped from the LRB at the very last minute. It ended up in The Nation instead. Note his dig at “certain Western intellectuals… who think Fredrick Engels’s version of Manchester cotton mills was pretty much the last word on capitalism.”

http://www.spectator.co.uk/clivedavis/2067131/israel-jordan-the-london-review-of-books.thtml

Bernard Avishai answer’s that directly:

“And you find many purveyors of this wisdom in Britain especially, which is why when the London Review of Books originally asked me to review Shlaim’s book for them I jumped at the chance. It seemed to me that this magazine’s audience in particular needed to hear a more complex view. So I delivered the piece you now see before you, which “the editors” (yes, an editorial “collective,” with one email address for all) received with apparent gratitude, fussed with a bit, put into galleys and proofs, then scheduled. On the Wednesday before the Friday it was to be published, I got a note asking to finalize my bio.

In any case, that was the last thing I heard from “the editors.” The next communication I received was from Mary Kay Wilmers, the editor-in-chief, a letter of apology with a cheque and the claim that the piece “does not work–or at least not for us.” No explanation, no request for revisions. The article that replaced mine, I soon learned, was a last minute report about how Israelis were shooting up Gaza.”

http://bernardavishai.blogspot.com/2008/09/on-king-hussein-london-review-and-uses.html

I assume that unless he publishes the letter, along with the cheque and signs an affidavit in his own blood, that won’t be good enough for some people?

Thanks for letting us know that. Speaking of books being pulled–anyone know when (if?) Berman’s The Flight of the Intellectuals will be coming out. I have ordered it 3 times now (in about 6 months) and here’s the text of my latest card (this is from Borders):

“The publisher has CANCELLED plans to publish this title at this time. Some distributors report this title as cancelled. Others report it as simply NOT YET PUBLISHED. Please try again in 4-6 weeks.” (caps in original)

I found Berman’s e-mail and wrote him asking but I am guessing he is a bit to busy to respond to every pesky writer. Anyone know what’s going on?

Regards,

Inna

Actually, it’s Clive Davis, rather than Stephen Pollard, of the Spectator bloggers, who’s posted on this latest bit of crude anti-zionism from the London Review of Books:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/clivedavis/2067131/israel-jordan-the-london-review-of-books.thtml

For some trenchant criticism of the LRB’s form on these matters, see:

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=733

I haven’t read Avisihai since whe wrote “The Tragedy of Zionism”. In that book, he showed himself to be unable to comprehend that the Jews of Israel are variegated culturally and racially, that Israelis are divided on the basis of class just like all other nations, and that Zionism requires sacrifice and idealism on the part of those who partake, including those who are more educated and wealthy.

Instead of writing about Zionism, as the title suggested, he actually wrote about himself and his own limitations. He couldn’t understand Israeli humour, he could not understand Israeli popular culture, he could not understand Israeli attitudes. He lacked the humanity to empathise with contemporaries whose lives are shaped by the horrors of war, the rigorous demands of service to the nation, and being of a people who have almost all known suffering and injustice.

Not being able to understand inculcates humility and caution in a morally-normal human being, but not in our Avishai. If he is an alienated and uncomprehending outsider, it must be the Israelis who are at fault. How dare they not have the same attitudes, values and opinions as someone such as himself? Aren’t all Jews imbued with the values and the culture of the American Anglo-Saxon elite?

This self-centredness of Avishai, more damaging because he is so unconcious of it, is fairly off-putting. It also didn’t allow him to settle and adjust in Israel as a newcomer. I read that he is again trying to become an Israeli. I hope he prepared himself better this time, and that he has overcome some of the prejudices and antipathetical attitudes that he had last time round.

But somehow I doubt it.

The article in The Nation is interesting for its descriptions on how Jordan came about by annexing Mandated Palestine and Jordan’s attempts to negotiate with the Zionists in order to secure a route to the Med - something they attempted by War. It also reminds us of how large Palestine was and how it was carved up by the British and French.

Aren’t the Palestinians formed into two new groups. Hamsatinians and Fatahstinians?

“this latest bit of crude anti-zionism”

Yes … that’s one name for it.

Isn’t the LRB at least partly publiclu funded?

Bernard Avishai is obviously living in the United States, or rather cloud cuckoo land and maybe he only knows about Israel from what he has read. Well, I have news for him. Guess what, Israel already IS a secular republic, despite massive pressure from Israel’s fanatical religious right who have succeeded already in curbing the power of the Supreme Court because they do not like its hard to work to maintain Israel as a secular republic. There are countries in Europe who call themselves secular republics and who have far more religious interference in the State than Israel does. Take Germany and Austria, with their state tax contribution to religious institutions.

unless you have any proof about why the piece was canned then this is all hot air. the LRB has a track record in setting pieces on all topics up for publication and then cancelling them at the last minute. If this is an inherently ‘antizionist’ editorial move, then their canning Hari Kunzru’s review of a monica ali novel was presumably racist.

Josephine, you will not find a more committed supporter of Israel than me, but you are talking about very recent developments, which took 60 years to roll back the huge power of the Ministry of the Interior, a Ministry that abused its power by appointing a religious fanatic, one Ms Huebner, as its senior (top?) civil servant who always interpreted the law in one way, e.g. forcing Israelis to declare their religion on their ID cards. It took a great deal of effort and many appeals to the Supreme Court to reverse some of her decisions.

“Isn’t the LRB at least partly publicly funded?”

I think it receives some Arts Council funding.

LRB gets - or got - about £20k from the Arts Council.

Well, the LRB also has a track record of publishing shrieking, obsessive anti-Israel propaganda and demented rants. And T., are you saying they are doing it with my money? I never knew that.

Avi Shlaim’s book sounds very interesting, this project apparently having grown out of his changing views about the motivations of the Jordanian monarchy signalled in the introduction to the revised edition of his ‘collusion across the Jordon’ in which he asserts that his earlier outrage about the betrayel of the Palestinians was balenced against his later assessment that the monarchy at least had a more realistic idea of the balence of forces in Mandate Palestine then other Arab leaders, without therefore negating the negative consequences for Palestinians. In other words realpolitick is its own justification. One thing that should be laid to rest by this book is the endless claims that supporters of the Palestinians are disengenuous because they did not complain about Jordon’s annexation of Palestinian land. Indeed their complaints destabilised the Jordanian state, and Palestinian militancy was always directed against that state almost as much as against Israel, which both explains the concessions the Jordanian state was forced to make to Palestinians and the abortive black september rising. Its rather extraordinary that this can have been obfuscated in so many blogs and arguments. Finally though, I think the theses that this balencing act should be described as a bourgoise revolution is unconvincing, leaning too far towards equating adjustment to Israel with bourgoise progress. The old view that Nasserism and associated trends represented modernisation whilst the Hashemites and other monarchies represented collusion with an unjust regional order just seems more convincing, whatever the ultimate limits of radical Arab Nationalism were.

Avishai’s theses about Hebrew nationalism looks interesting to, and seems one way of envisaging the actual nation that exists in Israel, providing a less metaphysical view then that provided by Zionism, and presumably making it possible to have a more rational discussion about what the relationship between that nationalism and Palestinian nationalism ought to be in the region, especially important as discussions of a two state solution have become empty rhetoric and therefore unlikely to provide a solution.

Its good to see him acknowledging that a distinct Palestinian consiousness (perhaps he still bridles at the term nationalism) in the early part of the 20th century is now accepted by all serious historians, although of course this will have no impact on those who confuse their own passionate chauvinism with historical knowledge, although he still seems to believe that the fact that this consiousness was merged with the political opposition between Palestinian Arabs and the Zionist colonisers (his terminology not mine) somehow invalidates it, when one could say much the same about Zionism as a political movement, 19th century nationalism having provided one kind of framework for responding to anti-semitism and the continuing struggle with the Arab population of Palestine having come to shape that initial construction. All nationalisms it might be argued are like this, and its unclear therefore why there should continue to be intimations of ‘artificialness’ on this basis. The whole notion that even before nationalism there was no distinctive Palestinian identity (as opposed to national culture) is one which is increasingly under challenge even from Israeli historians. The extreme constructivism of even the above positions on Palestinian ‘culture’ seem to me to be more ideological then methodological.

The most disapointing thing about the article was the attempt to tie problems of land reform with a failure of Palestinians to adjust to modernity, in turn tied to the question of sovereignty. If this was to be universalised there would be no states anywhere in the colonial world which deserved to be independent, and this repeats a deeply rooted meme in Israeli consiousness inherited from the colonial period which see’s the problem of Palestinians as a developmental problem, and implies that they simply ‘were not ready’ for statehood.

However a very interesting article whatever the political spin, and one can see why it would absolutely outrage most commentators here, who seem to be to the right of Genghis Khan.

“One thing that should be laid to rest by this book is the endless claims that supporters of the Palestinians are disengenuous because they did not complain about Jordon’s annexation of Palestinian land. Indeed their complaints destabilised the Jordanian state, and Palestinian militancy was always directed against that state almost as much as against Israel, which both explains the concessions the Jordanian state was forced to make to Palestinians and the abortive black september rising.”

As usual, JG is incapable of understanding context and history. He thinks that you can conflate what happened in 1970 with what didn’t happen in 1950.
Were you complaining in 1950 about Jordan’s annexation, JG? Did the LRB? I don’t think so.
Hint: 1967 happened between 1950 and 1970.

It’s ironic that Avishai’s review ended up in the Nation, as its former books editor, Adam Shatz, now works for the LRB.

(Full disclosure, if anyone is interested: I have worked with Shatz and technically, he is a very good editor. But I don’t think he is going on holiday anytime soon to Tel Aviv)

If you read the review again Nearly Oxfordian you will find that these were live issues in the 1950’s world of Palestinian and Jordanian politics.

the LRB also has a track record of publishing shrieking, obsessive anti-Israel propaganda and demented rants

such as…?

Were you complaining in 1950 about Jordan’s annexation, JG? Did the LRB? I don’t think so.

you do know that the LRB was founded in 1979, don’t you?

>>he LRB also has a track record of publishing shrieking, obsessive
>>anti-Israel propaganda and demented rants
> such as…?

articles by Tony Judt

“you do know that the LRB was founded in 1979, don’t you?”

Irony is wasted on people like you, innit? The sort of people that are and having been writing in the LRB, and JG and other hysterical SWP types like him. Get it now?

What’s the name of that regular LRB writer whose surname started with G? The same name as a prominent Tory minister at the time, possibly related to him? I can’t think of it, but he was a shrieking, obsessive, demented anti-Israel propagandist. A bit like Hastings today.

The 1950s world … when Jordan was a ‘destabilised’ country and JG was ranting against Jordan’s colonising and subjugation of the Palestinians. Right.

Tony Judt … yes, ignorant drivel like this:

“But for the US to imitate Israel wholesale, to import that tiny country’s self-destructive, intemperate response to any hostility or opposition”

What an asshole.

I wasn’t born in the 1950s. But since we’re discussing a review of Avi Shlaim whose work traces a pattern of deep hostility between the claims of the Hashemites and Palestinian claims going back to the 1920s, and whose previous work on the subject culminated in the assasination of the Jordanian king by a Palestinian refugee, and whose latest work, according to the above review, describes how this fateful contest was central to the kind of State Jordon actually became, ‘yeah right’ probably isn’t a decisive response.

However it has to be said that it might be a good response to your claims about other people being shrieking, demented and obsessive. Perhaps chauvinism always involves this kind of projection.

Also Near Oxfordian your comment reveals an almost complete ignorence of dynamics central to the inter-relations between different Arab states. One reason why Shlaim’s latest work will be regarded as revisionist is that he seeks to rehabilitate the Jordanian monarchy as a defender of Arab interests and not simply a State that betrayed the Palestinians and colluded with the West in exchange for support against radical social change. This was actually the dominant narrative of radical Arab nationalism from the 1950s onwards. Jordon was one of the few monarchies without oil in the Arab world that survived overthrow by such radical Arab Nationalists.

Since I am not a ‘chauvinist’, JG - that is merely a kneejerk smear term used by SWP illiterates - this says more about your reading skills than anything about me.

BTW: it’s Jordan, mate, not ‘Jordon’ as you keep misspelling it.

And you seem to be totally ignorant of the fact that in the early 20th century, any concept of ‘Palestine’ included not just both sides of the Jordan but also Syria.

This line of thinking does not, as we well know, fall within the current London literati bien-pensant view of Israel.

Clearly, the Left is no place for a liberal.

I did subscribe to the LRB for a time (I though naively that reading it might be a good way to impress - or at any rate at least rather try to understand - liberal girls from North London, where I was living then, and as an inveterate provincial reactionary temporarily washed ashore in the NW postcodes I thought it might help)

I must say that its entirely predictable, not necessarily well-informed, historically ignorant, constant, repeated, idiotic, facile, whining, “The West and especially America and Israel are evil and misguided and wrong almost in their very existence” approach (which seemed to predominate in every single issue, almost without exception) soon became rather grating, and wasn’t really counterbalanced by the non-political pieces that could be rather more of substantive interest.

I did not renew my subscription.

And frankly I find it difficult to imagine why any political (as opposed to more narrowly literary) writer seeking to maintain any kind of credibility would seek publication there. (The London Review of Anti-Western Whining might be a better name]

Still, I avoid their (really rather nice) bookshop as though it were one run by communists.

You seem to be confusing colonial arrangements between European powers with the history of the people who lived there nearoxfordian.

johng:

“Avi Shlaim’s book sounds very interesting, this project apparently having grown out of his changing views about the motivations of the Jordanian monarchy signalled in the introduction to the revised edition of his ‘collusion across the Jordon’ in which he asserts that his earlier outrage about the betrayel of the Palestinians was balenced against his later assessment that the monarchy at least had a more realistic idea of the balence of forces in Mandate Palestine then other Arab leaders, without therefore negating the negative consequences for Palestinians.”

Jesus wept man, have you heard of full stops? I don’t know about anyone else, but reading that post sent me into a trance-like state. And not in a pleasant way. I came round two hours and ten minutes later and I’ve dribbled all over my shirt.

The whole idea of Palestinian consciousness before 1920 is obviously crucial, as johng identifies, and is something I have been attempting to research. It is a bit complex. T E Lawrence described a very checkered pattern of settlement in the area called ‘Palestine’ - a much larger area than present-day Israel, plus West Bank, plus Gaza - (Seven Pillars of Wisdom) in 1916. There were various Arab groups, of different religious bents; often mutually hostile; some had been re-moved from elsewhere and re-settled by the Ottomans. There were Bedouin as well as city Arabs; and ‘Palestinian farmers’. It struck me as being a bit like the former Yugoslavia. I think the Ottomans struggled to rule the area, so they went for ‘divide and rule’.

Lawrence describes a lack of political unity and a disinterest in Arab nationalism, which is why he thought Faisal’s group further south (Sherif of Mecca) held out more prospects for an Arab national movement, they were more culturally unified, and more beyond the pale of Ottoman control.

But a certain group based on the Al Husseini family in the Jerusalem area had opposed Jewish settlement since 1897. But was this ‘nationalism’ or ‘religion’ or ‘religious nationalism’ and should this matter?

The father of the future Nazi collaborator and ‘Grand Mufti’ of Jerusalem, Amin Al Husseini, got together a group of local notables to form a committee in 1896 and lobbied the Ottomans to stop land sales to European Jews. This was successful, and stopped land sales for a while. This chap was also Mufti of Jerusalem, and he died about 1906. The Al Husseini family are Islamic aristocracy, as, like the Sherifs of Mecca, they could trace their antecdents back to Fatima, the daughter of the prophet. They had been powerful in the Jerusalem area for centuries.

Now it seems clear to me that this 1897 opposition was religious and dynastic at the same time. Jewish settlement was opposed because these Jews were educated, free, and had attitude; ‘chutzpah’. They differed greatly from the brow-beaten subjugated ‘oriental Jews’ that the Al Husseinis were used to lording it over as feudal masters. This was their ‘patch’; though realistically it didn’t extend much beyond the environs of Jerusalem. So there was a bit of ancien regime challenge there; to the tenets of medieval Islam.

This group agitated against Jewish settlement pretty much on religious grounds - it was definitely a ‘jihad’ against the kufr.

There were riots in 1920 in which Amin Al Husseini was implicated. But the first British mandate governor, Sir Herbert Samuel, was a Jew and a Zionist. He was also an Asquithian liberal, and a secular Jew. He was well aware of the seriousness of Arab hostility to Jewish settlement, and sought to appease the Al Husseini family, making Amin Al Husseini Grand Mufti, and also head of the waqf. This gave him a good deal of power, which he used to stir up against the British and the Jews.

Yasser Arafat was a nephew/cousin of Al Husseini, but kept this quiet.

http://www.alhusseini.com/photos1.php

Found this site interesting. It says they were ‘Sayyids’.

“Jewish settlement was opposed because these Jews were educated, free, and had attitude”

Really.

Palestinian society in the early 20th century was diffuse and economically diverse, but I would argue there was still a nascent national consciousness, especially in the cities such as Jerusalem and Jaffa.

The same nationalistic trends that were breaking up the Ottoman territories in the Balkans, ie Serbian, Greek, Bulgarian nationalism etc at this time were also speading through the Arab world. Arab nationalists were divided (roughly speaking) between Pan-Arabists and national nationalists, ie Palestinian or Egyptian nationalism. The rise of Arab nationalism roughly parallels the rise of *political* Zionism which was also born partly out of the collapse of the Ottoman empire. Certainly the rise of Zionism, and Jewish immigration accelerated Palestinian nationalism.

One interesting point is that Arab journalists in Palestine in 1911 founded a newspaper in Jaffa called ‘Falastin’, ie Palestine. It would be a mistake to dismiss these early signs of Palestinian national consciousness. The Palestinan national movement, like all national movements, including Zionism, was fractured and often contradictory. But it existed.

True, Adam. But to reiterate, the term ‘Palestine’ was used in quite a different way from the one promoted in retrospect by some people. In 1911, ‘Palestine’ was not delimited from Syria and what is now Jordan

“You seem to be confusing colonial arrangements between European powers with the history of the people who lived there nearoxfordian”

That is exactly the confusion you are promoting. The people who lived there at the time did not regard Syria, the Holy Land and Jordan (and very arguably, Lebanon) as 3 distinct countries and cultures. This split was the result of colonial arrangements between European powers.

“not necessarily well-informed”

:-)

The writer I had in mind earlier was David (?) Gilmour.

“Really”

Impressive historical analysis.

I thought it was people like you who claim that Jews ‘never had it so good as in Islamic countries, as witness how they were tolerated in the ME up until - say - 1880′. Yes, those Jews were tolerated because they didn’t have an attitude. They were of the ‘yes sir, three bags full sir’ persuasion, as well you know (or perhaps I should rephrase that last bit). In the main, they were pretty backward in a cultural sense and hugely backward in terms of aspirations to self-determination, that is a fact.

Django, academics are above such mundane things as full stops and correct use of apostrophes.

nearoxford this recycling of historical absurdities and stereotypes gets old after a while. Why not simply read the established literature on the subject. I would begin with Porath’s work on Palestinian nationalism and its history during the Mandate period.

Odd isn’t it that the Arabs should take the name Filistia based on the Greek designation from the Sea-people Philistines. Then the Jews got labelled ‘Palestinians’ rather than ‘Judeans’ for 19 centuries just because it was the Roman version and they had later gained control of the Western Church which also happened in the case of Syria.

John G’s views are nearly as odd and fictional as that Radical German nationalist chappie we had that bit of bother with last century. Why is Arab Imperialism, colonialism and ultra-right Nationalism OK but not that of the descendants of the Judeans?

Does he make an execption because these foreign Arab settlers of the land where many other peoples had lived for centuries did their initial murdering earlier, is there a statute of limitations on Arab genocides that apply to no other Imperialist settler-colonisers?

Is it because all Trots are mad fuckwits?

Is it because all Trots are mad fuckwits? Iain

Funniest rhetorical question I’ve seen for ages. Thank you for making me smile. :-)

JG, just because you are ignorant doesn’t mean that they are ‘absurdities’. You have demonstrated, time and again, that you have nil understanding of context (have you even been to the ME?) and of logical argument. Perhaps you are really Irie. The comment made by Iain certainly seems to apply.

Iain, and they don’t even understand what ‘Philistines’ means ;-)

But the serious aspect is the logically back-to-front ‘argument’ that they are named after the country (and maybe even, ergo the country is named after them), ergo it’s their country/they are the (only) indigenous population, ergo the Jews are foreigners, ergo the Jews are Europeans, ergo the Jews are Khazars.

This last nonsense is being seriously peddled by yugoslav on another thread, but I wonder just which parts of it are adopted with glee by SWP and LRB types.

Hey there, JohnG, a bit of an aside, but with reference to recent reportage of the Georgia conflict, are you not a bit embarrassed by the apologias of Russian conduct that you offered here and on other sites (e.g. Shiraz Socialist)? These included your parrotting of Moscow’s claims about massacres and ethnic cleansing in South Ossetia.

If this is how cavalier you are about assessing evidence and the veracity of claims and counter-claims, what makes you think you’re views are worth listenting to on other subjects, such as Israel-Palestine? And what does it say about your prospects of actually getting your PhD completed and viva’d?

I forgot to add:

fuck the jews

Not really Sack Cloth. I think Martin Shaw (certainly no friend of the SWP or what is dubbed the anti-imperialist left) got things about right in this article. It demonstrates the fracturing and incoherence of the ‘democratic left’s position on international affairs. As does the increasingly demented right wing stance of this blog.

http://www.democratiya.com/review.asp?reviews_id=190

The descendents of the Judeans are likely to the be the current Palestinian Arab population. Not that that settles anything in my view, but its worth pointing out. And incidently were do you get your ‘context’ from Oxfordian? Campus Watch?

“The descendents of the Judeans are likely to the be the current Palestinian Arab population”

ROFL. That ignorant canard, put forward endlessly by antisemites. I see that history from the 6th century onward has completely passed you by. Also history from 1000 BC to 500 AD, of course. I have to admit, you do have a certain comedy value.

“And incidently were do you get your ‘context’ from Oxfordian? Campus Watch?”

Oh, FUNNY.
Twenty years in the Middle East.
Reading a huge amount of relevant history in Hebrew, English and German.
Do you get your context from Max Hastings in the Sunday Times?

John G - do you ever, ever work on your PhD or tutor undergrads, you seem to spend your entire life going round in endless circles on blogland debates?!

I would be more interested to know what JG’s own tutor has to say about his poor reasoning skills. Oh, to be a fly on the wall!

Didn’t Tony Judt propose something very similar and end up castigated as some kind of self-hating Jew?

Actually Oxfordian actual history rather then mythology is the point. The belief that changes in administration or religion was always accompanied by large scale movements of populations in the ancient world is not one which can be sustained. Nobody really knows about the precise identity of the descendents of the actual population of Judea and there is no concensus on the subject.

the devil: I *think* that Judt proposed or supported a one state solution, ie Israel and Palestine to merge, which would mean the end of Israel. No other sovereign state in the world is asked to dissolve itself and stop existing, but there you are. Avishai proposes something very different - a Hebrew Israeli identity, that is not necessarily predicated on being Jewish, ie he supports a two state solution, however unlikely that appears at the moment, with a secular democratic Israel living in peace next to an independent Palestine.

Iain: “that Radical German nationalist chappie we had that bit of bother with last century”.

I assume you mean that vulger upstart Austrian corporal with the Charlie Chaplain mustache, old boy.

The new issue and the one before last issue of LRB are notable because they did NOT have a piece on Israel – which up to now has featured in almost every issue since I’ve been getting it. I haven’t received the 28 August issue

Verso, the left-wing publisher, recently advertised the following books in the LRB:-

Plowshares Into Swords: From Zionism to Israel by Arno Mayer
The World According to Tomdispatch: America in the New Age of Empire ed by Tom Engelhardt
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History by Norman G. Finkelstein
The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel by Gabriel Piterberg
Then under the heading Bestsellers on the Middle East
Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden ed by Bruce Lawrence
Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation by Eyal Weizman
Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah ed Nicholas Noe
The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihad and Modernity by Tariq Ali
Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb by Mike Davis
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering by Norman G. Finkelstein

So that’s their estimate of LRB readers’ interests.

Of course those books on the Voice of Hezbollah and the Messages to the World by Bin Laden might be highly critical. But Verso does have a policy of not being critical of Islam, and of regarding Islamic fundamentalism as being inextricably linked to American imperialism, as can be read here:- http://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2008/05/18/dont-be-so-critical/

Adam L, the significance of such a shift in identity is not only that its more inclusive of the 20 per cent or so of Israeli citizens that are not Jews, but also that it focuses attention on the actual citizens of Israel and their rights. However I suspect the objection is that in fact this would change the nature of the state and would in effect mean that the existing state would cease to exist, in the same way that other states in the world have become something else with a change of official ideologies and hence official identity. The old debate about ’secular state of Palestine’ or ‘Two state solution’ or the kind of ‘there are no such things as Palestinians’ we’ve been treated to above, tended to revolve around different political ideologies. Today the discussion about the limits of the two state solution is just pragmatic. If its not going to happen, and if Israel remains in effective control of large numbers of people who are to be denied citizenship of their own state, what kinds of demands should they make? As Olmert stated, its pretty obvious if this situation continues indefinately that someone is going to hit on the idea of suggesting that everyone denied their own sovereignty should have the right to sign up to the rights associated with the sovereignty that denies it to them. I don’t think there is some sinister design behind this discussion. Whether you are talking about members of the PA or random Palestinian or Israeli intellectuals, this is largely the consequence of a climate where a) Human Rights is the language of choice amongst a new layer of political activists and b) Palestinians don’t have them. If Nationalism is not going to work (ie the campaign for a Palestinian State whether two state or single secular state) well what could be more natural then simply campaigning about human rights, civil society and democratic accountability. And if I’ve got soldiers on my street and checkpoints inside my territory or on my borders those soldiers and checkpoints surely ought to be accountable to me in some way. One way of ensuring this is that I help vote to make up the composition of the government that sends them here, so they protect my security and not just the security of those citizens who happen to live a few miles away.

Compare and contrast:

“The descendents of the Judeans are likely to the be the current Palestinian Arab population”

“Nobody really knows about the precise identity of the descendents of the actual population of Judea”

Hey, but they are ‘likely’ to be etc. No evidence whatsoever, and never mind the Arab conquest (always glossed over by your ilk), but then this never seems to worry you.

What a comedian.

‘The descendents of the Judeans are likely to the be the current Palestinian Arab population.’

Which is the 21st century racialisation of the 1st century and ensuing Christian (and Islamic) cannard, that Christians and Muslims were the true spiritual descendants of the ancient Israelites of old of whose temple, city and land Jews were dispossessed as a punishment for their rejection of Jesus and the prophets.

And, what’s more, I can say that on Harry’s Place without Johng insisting that Richard Seymour delete all my ensuing posts as an alleged troll.

And, and BTW, someone ban this f— called Johng, he contributes nothing to the discussion (just kidding).

yeah Zkharya, you rightly point out SWPer’s hypocrisy, they will ban or call for the banning of posters on their own blogs, but expect full freedom of speech on other blogs.

They are hypocrites, they can’t hack it in open debates.

Well no I can’t prevent you from making baseless slurs with no connection to anything I’ve said on this blog no Zhakarya. I don’t really understand what the Arab conquests would have to do with the question, unless by Arab conquest you mean entirely imaginary historical events where the rise of the Muslim polity was connected to the biological replacement of the inhabitants whereever there was a conquest, a view which seems to come out of an almost comically essentialist fanaticism. Its unlikely that this occured even with the Babylonian exile and almost certain that this did not occur even with the Roman actions after the Jewish revolt. One reason why its rather difficult to establish exactly who are the descendents is that this privilage is likely to be shared by quite a variety of people.

Interestingly its me who’s deracialising Zharkarya. And you find this offensive for some reason. We’re all related you know.

“I don’t really understand what the Arab conquests would have to do with the question”

No shit.

“unless by Arab conquest you mean entirely imaginary historical events where the rise of the Muslim polity was connected to the biological replacement of the inhabitants whereever there was a conquest”

Amazing. The man really needs to have his hand held.
Conquest => influx of outsiders.
Nobody said anything about “biological replacement of the inhabitants”.

“a view which seems to come out of an almost comically essentialist fanaticism”

Comically essentialist fanaticism is what you provide. Pure comedy, based on virtually total ignorance, failure to understand the concept of facts and nil reasoning skills.

“Its unlikely that this occured even with the Babylonian exile”

You keep making these ridiculous sweeping statements, with exactly nil evidence.

“and almost certain that this did not occur even with the Roman actions after the Jewish revolt”

Ditto.

And you have ducked answering my point above (compare and contrast). No surprise there, since facts and evidence and reasoning are unknown to you.
Pity your supervisor.

I wonder who JG thinks wrote the Babylonian Talmud. He probably thinks it was written by the Khazars.
You couldn’t make this man up.

‘Actually Oxfordian actual history rather then mythology is the point.’

For 2000 years, cultural Christians like Johng have been saying that Jews are a nation, dispossessed, for their sins. Now, when that has led to the murder or purging of most Jews from European Christendom or Arab Islam, first to America, then to Palestine or what became Israel, he turns around, as it were, and says, ‘Sorry, we were wrong. It was all mythology. Now you Jews have to listen to what I, or we, say is history, and deconstruct your false, artificially constructed national consciousness’.

Zkharya,

you’re right, SWPers and their mates are chronically intolerant when they hold any form of power

“Lenin, can I suggest you ban Meredith if he plans to simply repeat the same lie ad nauseum, rather than trying to engage in any sort of debate.
Keith Watermelon | Homepage | 29 Aug, 10:52 | ”

“Can someone ban lizard. He brings nothing but stupidity to this discussion.
johng | 30 Aug, 17:29 | # “

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/lenin/3798841014285586882/

Scan any Lenin’s Tomb thread when they discuss anti-Jewish racism and you’ll see similar conduct, they want to close down debate.

I think the same is true for the LRB.

‘Interestingly its me who’s deracialising Zharkarya. ‘

Well, you mean deconstructing Jewish history and identity with a view to deconstructing the Jewish state of Israel, yeah.

Like your cultural Christian predecessors have tried to do with Jews so many times before.

Also, while I’m on a roll (and I don’t, unlike some, believe in using ten words where one will do), I think its interesting that Avi Shlaim has written such a positive biography of Hussein. I recall, John, you think a great deal of Avi Shlaim, but have in the past been rather less flattering of the house of Abdullah. I recall your expressing great delight (post factum, of course) in his assassination (’couldn’t have happened to a nicer chap’, you have written, several times, last time being only last year, I think).

I think that’s a little ironic. Weird or Bizarre, even.

i get censored on the tomb regularly.
i write perfectly polite, well reasoned comments.
they don’t like my politics apparently.
they should be thankful that on this blog they enjoy rights they are not willing to give their opponents on when the game is on their home turf.

just something for johng to think about.

Its not wierd or bizarre if you read what I actually wrote above about what I think of Avi Shlaim’s theses. Unlike you I don’t just read or appreciate books taylored to fit my own view of the world. Zhakarya now wants to claim that the reason I don’t believe that in the ancient world it was possible or likely that whole populations were transplanted (as opposed to sections of the urban populations) is because I’m a ‘cultural christian’. Its not. Its because its wholly implausible given social structure, existing technologies and the nature of political power in such societies. Similarly with Oxfordians illogical belief that because outsiders arrived in Judea this tells us something about where the descendents of Judeans live. It should be said that a central feature of the Arab conquests was the relative paucity of population movements and the numbers of ‘outsiders’ involved relative to the larger settled populations whose rulers they replaced. So none of this makes any real historical sense at all. As to the accusation of “deconstructing Jewish history” if you could give me an example of any existing people these arguments would not apply to you might have a point. But there would be none so you don’t.

John, given the fact that I was being mean in spirit, I was referring to your apparent change of view, not Shlaim’s.

John, the ancient world believed the Jews of Judaea had been been killed and displaced en masse. The ancient world defined Jews as a people dispossessed, en masse. As did the medieval world, which continued to displace Jews on masse. As did the modern world, Christian and Islamic, first chiefly to America, then to Palestine/Israel.

I read books tailored to my views? How would you know? Do you know my views before I read those books? How, in fact, do you know what books I read or have read, in any detail?

Do you think I don’t know most Jews lived outside the land than in in the common era? If you do you haven’t read what I have read many times. If you wanted, you could have read my last response to Shlomo Sand aka Michael Rosen, had your deletor personalis let it through.

As for Palestinian Christians and Muslims having more Judean Jews than Jews in general, pure speculation. Ashkenazi Y chromosomes are closest to Palestinian are closest to Bedouin Arab. Ancient narratives are rarely all wrong.

Palestinian Christians and Muslims certainly didn’t think they were descended from ancient Jews, by and large, until such as you suggested it to them (chiefly because it suited your/their political goals). Sand forgets to mention that Palestinian Christians and Muslims didn’t take kindly to the notion that they were related to Jews.

Palestinian Christians and Muslims could share Ashkenazi Y chromosomes because the people who moved into the regions dispossessed of Jews were closely related to them anyway i.e. Syrians, who spoke Aramaic or Greek.

The fact is the ancient sources all, without exception, witness to one of the largest mass killings and dispossessions in Graeco-Roman history. And it lies as the heart of the Christian, Islamic, myth-narrative as to where Jews are in the scheme of things.

If you want to deconstruct Jewish national identity, fine. I hope you would do the same about Palestinian Christian and Muslim identity e.g. they could have accepted partition, they, or their leadership, could have chosen not follow on/exhort the Arab League to thwarting a Jewish state (to put it at its nicest), that most Palestinian refugees still live within the borders of Mandate Palestine (like many Judaean Jewish refugees still lived in Galilee qua John Rose’s point), that they could have recognised a modicum of justice in Jewish desire for restoration and return, instead of seeking to exclude them, even when fleeing genocide. Among other things.

Think you can do that? Think you can bring it up at the next UCU meeting?

JohnG wrote:

“As to the accusation of “deconstructing Jewish history” if you could give me an example of any existing people these arguments would not apply to you might have a point.”

how many fucking examples do you want?

you only need to comment on Jewish history to show your own bastardised grasp of it

this thread is littered with them, http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/09/05/the-green-party-and-israel/#comment-225000

and when they were pointed out to you, JohnG, you dismissed criticism, ignored it and moved on

so why, oh why would anyone take the trouble to explain your own mistakes to you, when you won’t pay any attention to it in the first place?

nothing gets through to you, it is like a dialogue with the deaf

That should be: As for Palestinian Christians and Muslims having more Judean Jewish DNA than Jews in general, pure speculation.

‘So none of this makes any real historical sense at all. As to the accusation of “deconstructing Jewish history” if you could give me an example of any existing people these arguments would not apply to you might have a point. ‘

So, get cracking with Palestinian Christians and Muslims, go on.

Oh, and if you want to know, John, why a certain reading of history could be viewed as racist (including antisemitic), look to your own characterising of certain of my descriptions of modern Palestinian Christian and Muslim history as ‘nasty’ and ‘racist’.

If you can do that, I can say that certain of your views of most Palestinian and Israeli Jewish history is ‘nasty’ and ‘racist’ i.e. antisemitic. Thus your ‘mere criticism’ Israel could well, in my view, be, as such, antisemitic, even if you want to exclude the legitimacy of such a view, a priori, by a UCU ruling.

But so much of this is to do with history, and how one views it.

should be: If you do you haven’t read what I have WRITTEN many times.

Lazy proofreading, QED.

Here’s John Game of SOAS in action.
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/05/open-letter-to-soas-director.html

I get the feeling that he’s actually been instructed to go onto HP, Engage, Socialist Unity and anywhere else that will have him to either make the SWPs case (very badly) or to screw up threads and piss off contributors.

johng is a teaching assistant?
with that poor level of spelling and grammar?

that explains a lot.

Modernity you have never ever (not once) made a point about anything I have said. You have only ever made a point about what you imagine I am saying. And rather incredibly this has never (not once) been what I’m actually saying. In this case you have succeded in so entirely misreading the sense of the paragraph you quote that its almost impossible for me to understand what you are saying.

sorry Zak but I don’t remember recently (if ever) calling your views of history racist. I do mention above that you seem offended by the idea that racial genealogies probably don’t map onto religious mythology but this is not really an accusation of racism.

And yes I would deconstruct Palestinian identity identically. When people on HP object wildly to what I have to say about the history of Islam they neglect to notice that what I say would certainly be rejected by many Muslims. And indeed, you yourself point out above, that these ideas would not be accepted by most present day Palestinians. So in fact the people you are accusing of obsessively focusing on deconstructing Jewish history, in fact deconstruct all contemporary essentialisms not just about Jews.

In terms of understandings of displacement these would vary across historical time. To destroy temples and exile urban notables could be the end of a whole world in pre-modern societies. But it may be something utterly removed from the understanding the modern world has given us of extermination and genocide. You cannot therefore tell simply on the basis of the texts that survive. And no, what I’m thinking of above is not Roman Palestine. Its actually a discussion of a famous event in 12th CE India whose significance becomes vastly inflated four hundred years later and then becomes the basis for 19th century retellings that go on to inform 20th century ideologies which have a real impact.

The world is the same.

JohnG wrote:

“Modernity you have never ever (not once) made a point about anything I have said. “

I constantly take you to task over your complacency on anti-Jewish racism, but to no avail, HP archives are evidence enough, as is that previous link.

But JohnG, your poor reading skills, goldfish type memory and your utter lack of introspection mean that you miss any of my corrections, they just fly over your head.

PS: has Socialist Worker published the findings of the CST’s latest report into antisemitic attacks?

http://www.thecst.org.uk/docs/Incidents_Report_07.pdf

Right on, Danny Smircky. JohnG is is the equivalent of a young Mormon (or a Jehovah’s Witness) doing his missionary stint for the SWP. Nothing short of a fuck off, will stop his proselytization.

John,

‘racial genealogies’

you mean your politically motivated (and, arguably, racist) construct? Sure.

racist, because, what you are saying (or implying, John), is that Palestinian Christians and Muslims are more ‘racially’ Judean (in the sense of Judean Jewish) than Jews.

The DNA suggests both groups are closely related. It isn’t necessary for you to use it to displace one group with another. That is a politically motivate choice.

You have mutated an imperial, colonial Christian and Islamic myth of religious or spiritual continuity with ancient Israel into a genetic, racist one.

That, arguably, is racism.

“Similarly with Oxfordians illogical belief that because outsiders arrived in Judea this tells us something about where the descendents of Judeans live”

Can you not fucking read, you sad illiterate? Can you not fucking understand a simple sentence? I never said anything of the sort. I never used the word or the idea of ‘because’ in this particular way.

What I said was that your claim that today’s Arabs are the descendants of the original Judeans is stupid. You have still not provided the slightest evidence for your absurd claim, btw (not that you could, of course).
You said that because the Jews were never expelled (offering nil evidence, natch, in the face of a huge amount of evidence that they were), it follows that the Arabs are probably their descendants.
I said that the fact that there are Arabs in Israel is not evidence that they are the ‘real Jews’: they are there because there was an influx of Arabs with the Arab conquest (you have heard of it, right?).

How someone with such abysmal grasp of simple logic (and history) can be a PhD candidate is beyond me. I’d love to know at which Mickey Mouse university he is studying.

From Danny’s link to Lenin’s Tomb:

“it is important to note that the Director cited Noam Chomsky’s Voltairean position on freedom of speech to defend the visit of a representative from the Israeli embassy”

Wow, never mind the quality, just note the smugness! They actually allowed someone from the Israeli embassy onto the hallowed grounds of Soas (oh, that’s where JG has been permitted to call himself an academic? Much is now explained)! They are probably going around with little halos around their heads, congratulating each other for their magnanimity and open-mindedness. Imagine! Allowing someone from the most Nazi Apartheid state that ever existed to speak at Soas! They’ll have an orgasm next.

One interesting point is that Arab journalists in Palestine in 1911 founded a newspaper in Jaffa called ‘Falastin’, ie Palestine. It would be a mistake to dismiss these early signs of Palestinian national consciousness.

It would be a huge mistake to take Adam Le Bor’s ahistorical word (above) that there was any sign of national consciousness among the minority of elites in the bigger cities (Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa), let alone the majority of fellahin in the villages of the Ottoman sanjaks that eventually were to become British Mandate Palestine.

And certainly it was no sign of “Palestinian national consciousness” that a Jaffa based newspaper run by two Orthodox Christian cousins was called ‘Filastin’.

‘Filastin’ certainly was a paper that railed incessantly against the local Jewish community and was highly critical of the Ottoman Empire (the latter critiques which brought them to court on 2 occasions) but neither of these factors at all suggests that either of the Al-Isa cousins ever suggested anything at the beginning of the 20th century like a local nationalism for the sanjaks that later were to become Mandate Palestine. Moreover, the majority of the Arabic speaking residents of those sanjaks did not even see the ‘Filastin newspaper because aside from a couple of mukhtars the paper wasn’t distributed outside the cities of Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa and their immediate environs.

This information comes from the historian Mustafa Cabha’s book ‘Newspapers in the Eye of the Storm (in Hebrew).

Never mind a national Palestinian conciousness in the early years of the 20th century, Cabha also points out that even the idea of a pan-Arab or South Syrian nationalism wasn’t consolidated among the Arab speaking population of Mandate Palestine until the aftermath of the Hebron massacre in 1929. This is also buttressed by the writings of the so-called ‘father of Arab nationalism’, and fascist Michel Aflaq and by Arab nationalism’s first true ideologue and fascist, Sati al Husri who bemoaned the fact that Arab nationalism wasn’t even widespread in the early 1930’s:

Here is Al Husri writing in 1930:

Every person who speaks Arabic is an Arab. Everyone who is affiliated with these people is an Arab. If he does not know this or if he does not cherish his Arabism, then we must study the reasons for his position. It may be the result of ignorance — then we must teach him the truth. It may be because he is unaware or deceived — then we must awaken him and reassure him. It may be a result of selfishness — then we must work to limit his selfishness.

Here is al-Husri again:

“As long as [an Arab] does not wish to be an Arab, and as long as he is disdainful of his Arabism, then he is not an Arab.” He is an Arab whether he wishes to be one or not. Whether ignorant, indifferent, undutiful, or disloyal, he is an Arab, but an Arab without feelings or consciousness, and perhaps even without conscience.

Adeed Dawisha’s article “Requiem for Arab Nationalism” comments further:

Husri did not offer remedies—specific methods by which “Arabs without conscience” would be, in Trietschke’s words, “restored to themselves.” Michel Aflaq was not so coy. Aflaq, whose writings bear the unmistakable influence of Husri’s ideas, candidly identified “cruelty” as the most reliable instrument to effect the desired transformation: “When we are cruel to others, we know that our cruelty is in order to bring them back to their true selves, of which they are ignorant.” Indeed, Aflaq defined cruelty as a facet of the nationalist’s love for his people.

In fact, rather than identifying either with an Arab national conciousness, or a Palestinian national consciousness in the early 20th century and up to the 1930’s, the overwhelming majority of Arab speakers in the Ottoman snajaks that were to become Mandate Palestine identified themselves by religion, family, clan and village.

“…what I say would certainly be rejected by many Muslims. And indeed, you yourself point out above, that these ideas would not be accepted by most present day Palestinians.”

hahahahahhahahahahaha

Excellent, lbnaz.
I certainly take anything that Lebor says with a huge grain of salt.

‘In fact, rather than identifying either with an Arab national conciousness, or a Palestinian national consciousness in the early 20th century and up to the 1930’s, the overwhelming majority of Arab speakers in the Ottoman snajaks that were to become Mandate Palestine identified themselves by religion, family, clan and village.’

Thanks for these sources, Ibnaz.

How do we define nationalism? Does only secular nationalism count?
Would you reject the agitation of the Mufti of Jerusalem against land sales to Jews in 1897, that I mention in my first post yesterday?

It is clear to me that this opposition was religious and ideological. It was a jihad against modern educated progressive European Jews who refused to be dhimmis and accept their place in the medieval pecking order of medieval Islam that the Mufti presided over.

Does this count?

Certainly I don’t find myself remotely sympathetic to the Mufti’s position, any more than I endorse the racism of sharia that distinguishes between first class citizens (Muslim males) second class citizens (Muslim females) third class citizens (non-Muslim males) and last of all, non-Muslim females, whose position was most insecure of all.

I merely note, as a historian, that this was a valid cultural view, from the Mufti’s position, though a modern court of human rights would not accept it.

He and his followers used this medieval tenet of sharia to foment racist aggression towards Jewish settlers between 1897 and 1920.

I also note that the land sales to Jews in the Jerusalem area before 1914 were fully sanctioned by the Ottoman authorities, the beloved ‘caliphate’ of Islamists. These settlers had not stolen land. They bought the land, and the Ottomans approved it.

Now anyone who knows anything about Islamic history knows that sharia was a restricted code limited to matters such as the waqf and inheritance. The caliphal courts had supreme authority and the caliphs ruled pretty much as secular rulers. This is historical fact. It may sit uneasily with modern Islamist claims for the ‘imperium’ of sharia, but the caliphs were not guided by sharia, they were mostly guided by realpolitikk. From an Islamist point of view this is maybe to be condemned as jahiliyya, but it is historical fact.

These Jewish settlers to whom the Mufti and his followers objected on religious grounds were there by permission of the Ottoman caliph, and they were there fair and square.

History does not conform to religious ideology; that is an uncomfortable fact that Islamists will not acknowledge.

Thanks for that, devorgilla. Excellent analysis.

Not sure whether JG is an Islamist, but your historical facts do not conform to his lunatic distortions, so no doubt he’ll object (something about ‘The Joos stole all that land from the indigenous population’, I guess).

Zharkarya perhaps you need to go back to this post:

“Does he make an execption because these foreign Arab settlers of the land where many other peoples had lived for centuries did their initial murdering earlier, is there a statute of limitations on Arab genocides that apply to no other Imperialist settler-colonisers”

In which the current Palestinian population are referred to as the descendents (or perhaps they just are) ‘foreign Arab settlers of the land’ who did ‘their murdering earlier’, apparently having taken part in an ‘Arab genocide’. This is racism (as well as being comically ridiculous as I argued). Not the statement that Palestinians might be descended from Judeans but who cares anyway (what I actually said). This extraordinary and desperate desire to prove that I am guilty of bigotry on the basis of nothing at all continues I see.

The ignorant JG is still denying that there was a murderous conquest of Israel by the Arabs in the 6th and 7th centuries, I see. The man is a total lunatic. And he has started resorting to the dumb accusation of ‘racism’ when he has run out of anything to say in support of his silly theories, not just facts but now even his earlier verbal-diarrhoea bluster.

Yeah I am denying it. Please supply evidence of this “murderous conquest” (although its a bit puzzling to work out who was supposed to be there to murder if your other beliefs are true). You are aware presumably of the fate of the Jews of Jerusalem at the hands of the crusades some centuries later? Where did they come from? Its worth reminding yourself why empires whether Roman or Islamic existed at the time. To raise taxes, taxes taken largely from agriculture (one feature of the Islamic period was the rapid development of agricultural technique and crops). To have agriculture you need peasents. Most of humanity were peasents. If you were a peasent it made little difference who collected the taxes. In most cases though the arrival of Islam probably improved rather then degraded their situation. Its why Islam spread so fast. And not just because oranges are nice.

How do we define nationalism? Does only secular nationalism count?
Would you reject the agitation of the Mufti of Jerusalem against land sales to Jews in 1897, that I mention in my first post yesterday?

Good point devorgilla. Nationalism is a concept which resists simplistic and reductive definitions and I doubt there is any academic consensus on a definition for it.

What I was getting at in my comment responding to and critical of Adam LeBor’s assertion that the presence of the newspaper ‘Filastin’ between 1911 and the start of WW1 (during which it was shut down), reflected a consciousness and aspiration among the majority of, or even a significant number of Arabic speaking inhabitants of the Sanjaks that later were to become the British Mandate of Palestine for self-determination and self-government under either a jurisdiction governed exclusively by Muslim and Christian Arab language speakers in the region (pan Arabism), or under a jurisdiction geographically limited to what was to become the British Mandate of Palestine (what LeBor refers to as: “national nationalists, ie Palestinian or Egyptian nationalism”) Even here LeBor is mistaken to favourably compare an older and more rooted sense of an Egyptian identity with a marginal affinity for a Palestinian nationalistic identity among the Muslim and Christian Arabic-speaking inhabitants of what was to become British Mandate Palestine.

I would challenge Le Bor further on his ahistorical assertion that “The rise of Arab nationalism roughly parallels the rise of *political* Zionism which was also born partly out of the collapse of the Ottoman empire.”. The rise of Zionism as an organized political movement certainly preceded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and outside of a limited number of students sent to Europe by the Sublime Porte for administrative educations who became infatuated with the buzz of nascent European nationalisms while abroad, some Arab speaking students at the American established and administered university in Beirut and some anti-Ottoman subversives in what was to become Turkey, Arab nationalism in the sense of a distinct identity comprising Muslim and Christian Arab language speakers aspiring to have political jurisdiction over a state or empire of their own did not have much traction among the majority of inhabitants of what was to become British Mandate Palestine, let alone with the majority of Arab speakers in the region until after the 1929 massacres.

Getting back to your comment devorgilla, certainly a sense of belonging to a nation predates the enlightenment conception of a separation of religion and state. The biblical phrase ‘Am Yisrael’, the English term ‘Christendom’ and the Koranic or Islamic term ‘Umma’ all speak to this sense of affinity to nation, or to a national community.

And when speaking of the Mufti of the Al Husseini clan (Haj Amin’s father) and his agitation against land sales to Jews (notwithstanding that some members of this clan did in fact sell land to Jews while denouncing anyone else who did the same), the point I would make is that the agitation you speak of could not have had anything to do with any of the nationalistic ideologies that LeBor mentions (pan Arab or local Palestinian), both because the senior Mufti’s opposition to Jews buying land was predicated on a religious inspired conception that eschewed any notion of a jurisdiction or political rule jointly shared by both Muslim and Christian Arab language speakers alike and instead demanded political rule by an Islamic Caliphate based on Sharia and because the ideologies of Pan Arab nationalism or local Palestinian nationalism did not have any significant traction with the population in his day .

I certainly take anything that Lebor says with a huge grain of salt.

I don’t Nearly Oxfordian. I think it’s important to explain my reasoning where I do challenge LeBor as opposed to positing prima facie dismissals of all of his writing. Have you ever read any of Adam’s writing on genocide or on Darfur? I also enjoyed -even if I didn’t always agree with- Adam’s book on Jaffa where I too lived (for a longer period than he did).

You don’t think the difference between the policy of the Mufti and that of the Ottoman Empire might have something to do with tensions between that Empire and local potentes, and that the hostility to land sales might have had something do with the possibility that European colonists might have undermined his position within the existing political structure? Or that the emergence of national consiousness is not a linear process but a complex thing involving elements of both the old and new?

Oh and Oxfordian here is a page from what looks like an interesting book. The author argues that the Arab conquests were probably not very significant in terms of the Jewish population in Palestine which according to him probably accounted for a quarter of the population at the time, harrassment and difficulties being worse in the shape of the Byzantine Empire that proceeded it.Apparently there was a debate about how significant the Arab conquests were in terms of shaping the diaspora.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uaU4NEWSvlQC&pg=PA221&lpg=PA221&dq=%22arab+conquest+of+palestine%22&source=web&ots=p83En0XRwX&sig=ylhtiAFOL-DjbihoU9Ujk8NoMQ4&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result

Right. ‘Probably’. And your ‘probably’ trumps my ‘probably’, n’est ce pas? So when I state my ‘probably’, I am a ‘racist’; when you propound yours, you are a progressive socialist academic.

Oh, dear …

A grain of salt is hardly the same thing as prima facie dismissal. It means being careful, having come across some very seriously ’strange’ comments about things I know about.

I think a ‘probably’ based on a scholarly account is a bit more significant then a ‘probably’ based on nothing but your own prejudices, especially when what you are saying is logically never mind historically, completely hatstand.

You don’t think the difference between the policy of the Mufti and that of the Ottoman Empire might have something to do with tensions between that Empire and local potentes, and that the hostility to land sales might have had something do with the possibility that European colonists might have undermined his position within the existing political structure?

JohnG please explain why you think the Jews who bought land in the late 1890’s would have undermined the Mufti’s position within the existing political structure and how that undermining would have operated.

Or that the emergence of national consiousness is not a linear process but a complex thing involving elements of both the old and new?

In my comment @12:10 am I cited the historian Mustafa Cabha’s work which argued that national consciousness

Sorry about that I’ll try again.

Or that the emergence of national consiousness is not a linear process but a complex thing involving elements of both the old and new?

In my comment @12:10 am I cited the historian Mustafa Cabha’s work which argued that a pan Arab nationalist consciousness wasn’t “consolidated” among the majority of the Arabic speaking population until the 1929 massacres in Mandate Palestine and that the 1929 massacre was the primary catalyst for that consolidation. As for factors which would lead to an “emergence” of pan Arab nationalist consciousness, I suggest you look to the quotations I cited from Sati Al Husri and Michel Aflaq in my 12:10 am comment for an answer to your question.

Ibnaz, your quotations from Husri and Aflaq* makes clear why a good many Arab Nationalists have been attracted to Fascism and Nazism. Thanks you for telling us of this chilling reality.

*Aflaq, I believe, was the founder of Bathism.

I’d like to revise my last reply to John Game as follows:

In my comment @12:10 am I cited the historian Mustafa Cabha’s work which argued that a pan Arab nationalist consciousness wasn’t “consolidated” among the majority of the Arabic speaking population until the 1929 massacres in Mandate Palestine and that the 1929 massacre was the primary catalyst for that consolidation. As for factors which would lead to the “consolidation” of pan Arab nationalist consciousness, I suggest you look to the quotations I cited from Sati Al Husri and Michel Aflaq in my 12:10 am comment.

As for factors leading to an “emergence” of a Pan Arab nationalist consciousness, I would suggest one look at the European universities (especially Paris), in the 19th century where promising students from the Ottoman Empire were sent by the Sublime Porte for an administrative education, some of whom got caught up in the milieu of radical European nationalistic movements to answer to your question. I would also suggest that the European fervor for nationalistic self-determination was inculcated by some American lecturers (and missionaries) into their students at the American University in Beirut.

“I think a ‘probably’ based on a scholarly account is a bit more significant then a ‘probably’ based on nothing but your own prejudices”

What an ignoramus you are. These are not my prejudices, but the account given by the majority of scholars. The one offered by you is a maverick one.

I take Johng’s comments as an admission that he’s not in any way embarrassed about echoing Russian propaganda accusations against the Georgians (which proved to be baseless), or about failing to condemn genuine atrocities (ethnic cleansing, killings of civilians, village burning) committed by Russia’s proxies.

‘You don’t think the difference between the policy of the Mufti and that of the Ottoman Empire might have something to do with tensions between that Empire and local potentes, and that the hostility to land sales might have had something do with the possibility that European colonists might have undermined his position within the existing political structure? Or that the emergence of national consiousness is not a linear process but a complex thing involving elements of both the old and new?

You’ve caught my drift, johng.

These are indeed my questions. I don’t yet have the answers.
Why should the Mufti’s position be ‘more correct’ than the Ottoman Empire’s? Or vice versa? Life is at it is. The Ottomans were the political authority. Their authority was not uncontested. Was their authority ‘legitimate’ as Rousseau would have it? I doubt it. But their power was a fact, and it was internationally recognised.

And as for the European colonists to the Jerusalem area in the 1890s, why on earth SHOULDN’T they come? They had as much right to come as legal immigrants and asylum seekers have to come to Britain today. Some people might not like that, I agree, but most of us would accept their right. Those who oppose it are a bit right wing, don’t you think? and see their right as ‘threatening’ their position in the local power structure, but most of us would view that as a tad tetchy.

But when immigrants start arriving in droves, as they did in the 1920s and 30s (it was only a trickle before 1900) that rather changes things. Just as today in Britain, the prospect of millions of immigrants is felt to be de-stabilising.

I don’t have the answers (as you seem to have) I am still working on the critical questions.

I will agree with johng that the trajectories of nationalist sentiment and consciousness can be complex. It is the complexities I am trying to unravel, because complexities, if they are not resolved, can lead a movement to become twisted and to ultimately lose its true course.

What Ibnaz highlights is that secular pan-Arab nationalism was probably democratic, including both Muslim and Christian Arabs, and was therefore ‘of the left’, but the early agitation of the Mufti and his followers was undemocratic, racist, and ‘right-wing’. It was founded on the narrow codes of medieval sharia that placed people not as equal citizens but ranked according to the status of their religion; Muslim males being at the top; and Muslim males related to the prophet, at the very top. Hardly Rousseau. What I am seeing, therefore, is that these two strands of ‘Palestinian’ national consciousness are in tension with one another and correspond to radically different and mutually incompatible views of a ‘national’ future.

What Ibnaz highlights is that secular pan-Arab nationalism was probably democratic, including both Muslim and Christian Arabs, and was therefore ‘of the left’

Hardly. Pan Arab nationalism was never secular or democratic. In the late twenties and thirties it was fascist and nazi and following WW2 and into the cold war when the USSR became the superpower sponsor of Arab states, the pan Arab nationalist movement, without ever rejecting its fascist and nazi beginnings instead fused them with Soviet ‘zionology’ agitprop. FFS, The nazi Haj Amin al Husseini was and is still revered by the “secular” PLO to this day - a PLO which not unlike the Ikhwan or Khomeinist movements has a charter calling for an Islamic state with sharia to be the source of all law.

To the extent that Arab national or pan-national socialism as expressed by say the Baath party, or amongst Nasserists, or among the PLO was of the left, it would be sheer fantasy to imagine that we are speaking of a truly secular, social and democratically accountable left.

As far as the relationship between Arab nationalism and Islamism, there certainly are unresolved and perhaps impassable tensions and rivalries between their ideological outlooks, however, as opposed to a secular versus a religious contest they instead compete to present themselves as the more authentic guarantors of an Islamic jurisdiction than the other.

Who wants a democracy when in an Islamic state women and minorities get the golden opportunity (so denied to them in the West) to be violently oppressed and persecuted? Why waste money going to Sado-Masochistic orgies when you have the real thing right smack in my sponsor country Iran? (Yes, I know they’re Shiis, so “fuck them”, but they do pay my bills)

OK Ibnaz, I knew about Haj Amin and his fascism, you’ve convinced me. (I didn’t need convincing). I was trying to figure out if there was ever a Pan-Arab movement that united Christian and Muslim Arabs, that’s all. LeBor mentioned the Haifa newspaper cousins, both Christians, who founded the newspaper Filastin before 1WW.

Because I can’t see why on earth Christian Arabs would want to join a religiously inspired national movement based on sharia conceptions of national justice, that’s all.

Unless of course they are really stupid. Or unless they are having the wool pulled over their eyes by persons trying to kid on that Pan-Arabism is secular and democratic.

Actually it was me who mentioned that the Filastin newspaper was run by the Jaffa (not Haifa) Orthodox al-Isa brothers, not Le Bor. If you read Michel Aflaq, the ‘father of pan-Arab nationalism’ and founder of the Baath party, you will see that despite his being a Christian, he makes it absolutely clear that the position of Islam is to remain preeminent and would not undermined in any way by Arab nationalism. And far from this being “really stupid”, it was the only way his Arab nationalist vision would gain any traction whatsoever, let alone be allowed to exist as a political movement within majority Muslim populations. Even so, the Arab nationalist movement (invented by Christians), did offer a new identity formulation, i.e. ‘Arab’, which by itself does not make an explicit distinction between Muslim and Christian and in that sense did offer Christians a sense of greater parity with their Muslim neighbours than what they had before.

Btw, devorgilla, if I’m not mistaken you suggested earlier that you were a historian. What is your specialty?

Scottish history - a million miles away from this! But impinging on us from everwhere, is this Palestinian story, the way Alex Salmond is going. And I lived in east Jerusalem for a period in 1973, just after the Yom Kippur war, so it’s always interested me. My Palestinian landlord, Ibrahim, used to tell me he was a ‘Filistin’ and that he had been there for 10 grandfathers. He held up his fingers, and there were the 10 grandfathers. And he could name them all… this impressed me, as I couldn’t get very far back on my own line… but then I realised my 10th grandfather would have been born before Scotland and England had ever had their shotgun marriage; when we had a parliament, and it was Ibrahim who actually got me going on Scottish history, funnily enough. He was a good man, very different from the angry Palestinians of today. He was patient, kind, philosophical, sanguine.

Sorry I don’t find reading from a screen very easy, otherwise I’d have noted it was you, not Le Bor for the Filastin reference, and Jaffa, not Haifa.

There’s a term, ‘Islamo-Christian’, that kicks around… and I can’t quite get my head around Michel Aflaq inventing Pan-Arab nationalism, only to have second class status… unless Christian Arabs were really pretty well integrated. Dhimmis don’t seem to have had it equally bad everywhere.