John Mearsheimer Eviscerates the 'Times' Review of '1948'

John Mearsheimer read the Times today and sent me the following note:

Make sure you read David Margolick's review of the new Benny Morris book in the NYT Book Review section today. It is another shocking piece, given how much we now know about 1948.

First, he talks about "the dramatically outnumbered Jews," how the Arab armies had "numerical superiority" over the Israelis. This is simply not true. The Zionist/Israeli fighting forces outnumbered the Palestinians between December 1947 and May 1948, and they outnumbered the Arab armies from May 1948 to January 1949, when the fighting stopped. Steve [Walt] and I lay out the numbers on p. 82 of the Lobby book.

Second, and related, he says that "on paper and on the ground, the Palestinians had the edge." This is not a serious argument. The Palestinian fighting forces had been decimated by the British in the 1936-1939 revolt, and they were in no position to put up a fight against the Zionists in 1948. This is why Yigal Yadin, a prominent military commander in 1948, said that if the British had not been present in Palestine until May 1948, "we could have quelled the Arab riot in one month." And it was essentially a riot, because the Palestinians had little fighting power, thanks to what happened a decade before. An excellent source on this matter is Rashid Khalidi's book, The Iron Cage.

Third, Margolick says that "transfer -- or expulsion or ethnic cleansing -- was never an explicit part of the Zionist program." It just started happening in the course of the war, and the "Jewish leaders, struck by their good fortune," pushed it along. This is not true; there is an abundance of evidence that contradicts Margolick’s claim. He ought to read Nur Masalha's Expulsion of the Palestinians and Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians. Plus, the argument fails the common sense test. Given demographics and where the Jews and Arabs lived, there was no way that the Zionists could create a Jewish state without transfer. Not surprisingly, that point was well understood by the Zionist leadership. Consider what Morris told a Ha'aretz interviewer in 2004: "Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist... Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here." Although Benny Morris tries to argue that the transfer was "born of war," he provides too much evidence to the contrary in his books and interviews, which is what allowed Norman Finkelstein to undermine Morris's case in Image and Reality (chapter 3).

Fourth, Margolick effectively repeats the myth that one of the main reasons that the Palestinians fled in 1948 was because Arab leaders broadcast messages to them telling them to leave their homes. He writes: "apocalyptic Arab broadcasts induced further flight and depicted as traitors those who chose to stay behind." One would have thought that this myth had been put to rest by now. The truth is that most Arab leaders urged the Palestinian population to stay at home, but fear of violent death at the hands of the Zionist forces led most of them to flee. This is not to deny that some Arab commanders did instruct Palestinian civilians to evacuate their homes during the fighting, either to make sure that they did not get caught in a firefight or to ensure that they were not killed by the Zionist forces engaged in ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

Fifth, he clearly implies that the expulsion was the Arab's own fault. He writes: "The Arabs, it was said, had only themselves to blame for the upheaval: they’d started it. And, Morris notes, the Jews were only emulating the Arabs, who’d always envisioned a virtually Judenrein Palestine." This is an outrageous argument. The Zionist came to Palestine knowing full well that there were an indigenous people there and that they would have to steal their land. Margolick, to his credit, quotes Ben-Gurion saying that the Zionists stole their land. Of course, the Palestinians resisted the Jews. Who could blame them? Again, Ben-Gurion is worth quoting: “Were I an Arab, I would rebel even more vigorously, bitterly, and desperately against the immigration that will one day turn Palestine and all its Arab residents over to Jewish rule."

The Palestinians certainly did not start this conflict. They were simply reacting to an attempt by the Zionists to take away their homes and land, which they eventually did. Furthermore, to talk about a "Judenrein Palestine" is a subtle way of implying that the Palestinians were Nazis, which they were not. It is also worth noting that there were Jews living peacefully in the area we call Palestine before the Zionists began moving there from Europe. Moreover, there was little resistance to the first Jews who came to Palestine in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The resistance appeared when the Arab population came to understand the Zionists' agenda.

Finally, Margolick goes to some lengths to portray Morris as the beacon of reason and light. He writes: "No one is better suited to the task than Benny Morris, the Israeli historian who, in previous works, has cast an original and skeptical eye on his country’s founding myths. Whatever controversy he has stirred in the past, Morris relates the story of his new book soberly and somberly, evenhandedly and exhaustively." He later says: "Deep inside Morris’s book is an authoritative and fair-minded account of an epochal and volatile event. He has reconstructed that event with scrupulous exactitude. But despite its prodigious research and keen analysis, ‘1948’ can be exasperatingly tedious."

Of course, he does not say that there are all sorts of experts on 1948 who disagree with Morris. Nor does he mention Morris's outrageous statements about the Palestinians in his infamous January 9, 2004 interview in Ha'aretz, where he described them as "barbarians" and "serial killers" who are part of a "sick society." He went on to say that: "Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another."

One would think any fair-minded reviewer would at least make mention of the fact that Morris has made such comments. But, of course, The New York Times is rarely fair-minded when it comes to Israel.

A couple comments. (Phil Weiss again). What a pleasure to see a fine mind running round the track! Mearsheimer reminds me of Big Brown coming 'round the turn in Louisville yesterday, demolishing the field. It's too bad that the Times did not assign this book to him--or Finkelstein, or the eminent anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod. When it is a question of Indian history, or Chinese history, the Times often serves its readers by seeking scholars of a different point of view. Mearsheimer was once a regular in  the  pages of the Times, and is no longer. (An impoverishment, yes-- but one that won't last. I have too much faith not to believe that this orthodoxy is about to collapse.)

Comments

[Richard Witty]

"John Mearsheimer read the Times today and sent the following note:"

Did he send you the note? And is the whole text quoted? I couldn't tell.

Assuming that those are Mearsheimer's words, I derive the OPPOSSITE impression than you did.

I don't see the accusation as insightful, but more repitition of polemic. Pappe is not authority. His writing as assertively selective to his argument.

If you want to be partisan and known as being partisan, you quote Pappe. If you want to be known as historian, you take his source documents, others citations of source documents, your own research and read them yourself.

Has Mearsheimer? I doubt it.

What "experts" disagree with Morris?

If I said something like that, I'd be labeled a lying fraud.

It is possible to disagree with Morris' conclusions, having read the same source material.

Repitition though is not it.

[Richard Witty]

The opening of the review REPRESENTS my view of the conflict. Two victim narratives, RESPECTFULLY told, one a success one a tragedy, as Morris reported well in Righteous Victims.

By DAVID MARGOLICK
Published: May 4, 2008

"1948

A History of the First Arab-Israeli War.

By Benny Morris.

In late August 1948, during a United Nations-sanctioned truce, Israeli soldiers conducting what they called Mivtza Nikayon — Operation Cleaning — encountered some Palestinian refugees just north of the Egyptian lines. The Palestinians had returned to their village, now in Israeli hands, because their animals were there, and because there were crops to harvest and because they were hungry. But to the Israelis, they were potential fighters, or fifth columnists in the brand new Jewish state. The Israelis killed them, then burned their homes.

As much as in any other scene in this meticulous, disturbing and frustrating book, the ineffable tragedy of Israelis and Palestinians resides in that brutal, heartbreaking image. On the one hand, the Jews were fighting for a safe haven three years after six million of them had been murdered. Undoubtedly some of those soldiers on patrol that day were survivors themselves, who’d lost their entire families in Europe and been handed rifles after washing ashore in Haifa or Tel Aviv.

And then there were the Palestinians, who had watched in horror over the past 75 years as these aliens first trickled, then poured, into their homeland. Were he an Arab leader, David Ben-Gurion once confessed to the Zionist official Nahum Goldmann, he, too, would wage perpetual war with Israel. “Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?” he asked. “There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country.”

The history of the 1948 war desperately needs to be told, since it’s so barely understood or remembered and since so many of the issues that plague us today had their roots in that struggle. Much of that history is military: how the dramatically outnumbered Jews managed to defeat first the Arabs of Palestine, then the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Syria, along with a smattering of Sudanese, Yemenites, Moroccans, Saudis, Lebanese and others. But arguably even more important than the soldiers are the civilians, specifically the 700,000 Palestinians who fled as the war raged. To understand the Palestinians who now fire rockets from Gaza or become suicide bombers from Nablus, it helps to know how their fathers and grandfathers wound up in Gaza or Nablus in the first place."

...

That Mearsheimer could derive from this nearly entirely balanced review his partisan conclusions, bothers me.

Have YOU taken a side Phil? Have you determined to mourn nakba or to celebrate independance? Or both?

(Obviously you've taken Mearsheimer's side in all things. You are FAR worse than I, accused often of taking Israel's side on all things.)

[Phil Weiss]

Richard, thanks for first point; yes note was to me. fixed that. mearsheimer is not against israel, mearsheimer is balanced in my view. he is for a 2-state solution, for instance, and has often praised israeli might. i dont think we will get anywhere here until we integrate the nakba and independence narrative. last year richard cohen siad the birth of israel was a mistake. to understand his point, one has to come to terms with these narratives, as well as the holocaust narrative that cuased zionists to believe, horrifyingly, that arabs were nazis.
what am i for? i am for an end to the cycle of violence in israel/palestine

[NOMOREWAR_FORISRAEL]

Arnaud de Borchgrave had the following article which referenced Ilan Pappe as well:

http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Emerging_Threats/Analysis/2007/08/06/commentary_embarrassing_history/1248/print_view/

Commentary: Embarrassing history

Published: Aug. 6, 2007 at 11:17 AM

By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- The Palestinians call Israel’s 1948 war of independence their nakba, or catastrophic ethnic cleansing, or forced exile. The Israelis, for their part, have steadfastly rejected any suggestion of ethnic cleansing as calumny in all its anti-Semitic horror.

Historic revisionism is now under way. Without fanfare, just below the media radar screen, the Israeli Education Ministry has approved a textbook for Arab third-graders in Israel that concedes the war that gave birth to Israel was a “nakba” for the Palestinians. The textbook refers to the “expulsion” of some of the Palestinians and the “confiscation of many Arab-owned lands.”

Textbooks for Jewish Israelis in the same grade make no such verbal concession. But Israel’s “new wave” historians have been combing through fresh material now available from the British mandate period and Israeli archives that document the history of Israel before and after it became a state. Long-lasting myths are being debunked.

Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian and Haifa University lecturer, whose ninth book is titled “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” documents how Israel was born with lands forcibly seized from its Palestinian inhabitants who had lived there for hundreds of years.

During the British mandate (1920-1948), Zionist leaders concluded Palestinians, who owned 90 percent of the land (with 5.8 percent owned by Jews), would have to be forcibly expelled to make a Jewish state possible. Pappe quotes David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, addressing the Jewish Agency Executive in June 1938, as saying, “I am for compulsory transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it.”

Pappe outlines Plan D (Dalet in Hebrew), which followed earlier plans A, B and C, and included forcible expulsion of some 800,000 Palestinians from both urban and rural areas with the objective of creating by any means necessary an exclusive Jewish state without an Arab presence. The methods ranged from a campaign of disinformation -- “get out immediately because the Jews are on their way to kill you” -- to Jewish militia attacks to terrorize the Palestinians.

The first Jewish militia attacks, says Pappe, began before the May 1948 end of the British mandate. In December 1947 two villages in the central plain -- Deir Ayyub and Beit Affa -- were raided, and their panicked Palestinian inhabitants fled. Jewish leaders gave the order to drive out as many Palestinians as possible on March 10, 1948. The terror campaign ended six months later. Pappe writes 531 Palestinian villages were destroyed, and 11 urban neighborhoods in cities were emptied of their Palestinian inhabitants.

There is no doubt in Pappe’s mind that Plan D “was a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity.”

Plan Dalet began in the rural hills on the western slopes of the Jerusalem mountains halfway on the road to Tel Aviv, according to Pappe. It was called Operation Nachshon, and served as a model for massive expulsions using terror tactics. Pappe also details what he calls the “urbicide of Palestine” that included attacking and cleansing the major urban centers of Tiberias, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Safad and what he calls the “Phantom City of Jerusalem” once Jewish troops shelled, attacked and occupied its western Arab neighborhoods in April 1948. The British did not interfere.

Lobbied by the World Zionist Organization and its guiding spirit Chaim Weizmann, who became the first president of Israel (1949-52), the British decided in favor of a Jewish state in Palestine in the 1917 Balfour Declaration. This was a letter from the British Foreign Secretary to Lord Rothschild (Walter, 2nd Baron Rothschild), the leader of the British Jewish community, for relay to the Zionist Federation. The British also pledged indigenous Arab rights would be protected as they divvied up the Ottoman Empire.

The myth was then created of “a land without people for a people without a land” even though the “empty land” had a flourishing Palestinian Arab population. The U.N. partition plan of Nov. 29, 1947, gave the Jews 56 percent of Palestine, with one-third of the population, while making Jerusalem an international city. The Jewish part included the most fertile land and almost all urban areas.

When the British handed power to the Jews on May 15, 1948, including the influx of survivors from Hitler’s concentration camps, two-thirds of the population was still Palestinian.

The first Arab-Israeli war quickly followed as the armies of Egypt, Transjordan (now Jordan), Syria, Lebanon and Iraq joined Palestinian and other Arab guerrillas who had been attacking Jewish forces since November 1947. The Arabs failed to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state and were defeated. The war ended with four U.N.-arranged armistice agreements between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

Commenting on Pappe’s historical research, Rami Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut and editor at large of the Beirut Daily Star, writes, “Many Israelis will challenge Pappe’s account. Such a process should ideally spark an honest, comprehensive analysis that could lead us to an accurate narrative of what happened in 1947-48 -- accurate for both sides, if it is to have meaning for either side.”

An Israeli official textbook for Palestinian third-graders, says Fares, “that fleetingly acknowledges the Palestinian trauma of exile and occupation in 1948 is an intriguing sign of something that remains largely unclear.” The “something” is worth exploring and reciprocating, “if it indicates a capacity to move toward the elusive shared, accurate, truthful account of Israeli and Palestinian history that must anchor any progress toward a negotiated peace.”

The consensus in Israel today, says Pappe, is for a state comprising 90 percent of Palestine “surrounded by electric fences and visible and invisible walls” with Palestinians given only worthless cantonized scrub lands of little value to the Jewish state. In 2006, Pappe sees that 1.4 million Palestinians live in Israel on 2 percent of the land allotted to them plus another 1 percent for agricultural use with 6 million Jews on most of the rest. “Another 3.9 million live concentrated in Israel’s unwanted portions of the West Bank and concentrated in Gaza that has three times the population density of Manhattan,” notes Pappe. Back from the Middle East last week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said prospects are good for a two-state solution. A “viable and contiguous” Palestinian state, pledged by the Bush administration, remains a pipe dream.

.

[Richard Witty]

Mearsheimer is wrong about the intent and reality of Arab military power in 1948, as is Pappe.

They are right only from the question of how many served under organized military in Palestine. The reviewer is right about the intent of the Arab organizers, that they SOUGHT to remove Jews from Palestine. It was "Arab land" to them. NOT democratic land.

The Palestinian forces are described as disarrayed, highly highly factional, lacking unity or even fellow feeling for their neighbor Palestinians.

The Arab armies are described as land-grabbing, fought by draftees (only the poor ones, and very coerced) or prisoners compelled to fight.

That they had very very low morale is NOT due to oppression or ethnic cleansing or numerical inferiority.

TELL THE STORY is the point.

"You cannot steal my anger".

You wouldn't believe how many times I've heard that in polemic "movement" meetings. You know what. Acting out the anger did NOT result in good relationships, justice for anyone, survival for projects or institutions, accountability to anyone.

[NOMOREWAR_FORISRAEL]

Ilan Pappe had the following article which is a must read as well:

http://www.ilanpappe.org/Articles/What%20Does%20Israel%20Want.html

What Does Israel Want?

Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 14 July 2006

Imagine a group of high ranking generals who simulated for years Third World War scenarios in which they can move huge armies around, employ the most sophisticated weapons in their disposal and enjoy the immunity of a computerized headquarters from which they can direct their war games. Now imagine that they are informed that in fact there is no Third World War and their expertise is needed to calm down some of the nearby slums or deal with soaring crime in deprived townships and impoverished neighborhoods. And then imagine - in the final episode in my chimerical crisis - what happens when they find out how irrelevant have their plans been and how useless are their weapons in the struggle against the street violence produced by social inequality, poverty and years of discrimination in their society. They can either admit failure or decide none the less to use the massive and destructive arsenal at their disposal. We are witnessing today the havoc wreaked by Israeli generals who opted for latter course of action.

I have been teaching in the Israeli universities for 25 years. Several of my students were high ranking officers in the army. I could see their growing frustration since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987. They detested this kind of confrontation, called euphemistically by the gurus of the American discipline of International Relations: 'low intensity conflict'. It was too low to their taste. They were faced with stones, molotov bottles and primitive arms which required a very limited use of the huge arsenal the army has amassed throughout the years and did not test at all their ability to perform in a battlefield or a war zone. Even when the army used tanks and F-16s, it was a far cry from the war games the officers played in the Israeli Matkal - headquarters - and for which they bought, with American tax payer money - the most sophisticated and updated weaponry existing in the market.

The first Intifada was crushed, but the Palestinians continued to seek ways of ending the occupation. They rose again in 2000, inspired this time by a more religious group of national leaders and activists. But it was still a 'low intensity conflict'; no more than that. But this is not what the army expected, it was yearning for a 'real' war. As Raviv Druker and Offer Shelah, two Israeli journalists with close ties to the IDF, show in a recent book, Boomerang (p. 50), major military exercises before the second Intifada were based on a scenario that envisaged a full-scale war. It was predicted that in the case of another Palestinian uprising, there would be three days of 'riots' in the occupied territories that would turn into a head-on confrontation with neighboring Arab states, especially Syria. Such a confrontation, it was argued, was needed to maintain Israel's power of deterrence and reinforce the generals confidence in their army's ability to conduct a conventional war.

The frustration was unbearable as the three days in the exercise turned into six years. And yet, the Israeli army's main vision for the battlefield is today still that of 'shock and awe' rather than chasing snipers, suicide bombers and political activists. The 'low intensity' war questions the invincibility of the army and erodes its capability to engage in a 'real' war. More important than anything else, it does not allow Israel to impose unilaterally its vision over the land of Palestine - a de-Arabized land mostly in Jewish hands. Most of the Arab regimes have been complacent and weak enough to allow the Israelis to pursue their policies, apart from Syria and Hizballah in Lebanon. They have to be neutralized if Israeli unileteralism is to succeed.

After the outbreak of the second Intifada in October 2000, some of the frustration was allowed to evaporate with the use of 1,000 kilo bombs on a Gaza house or during operation Defense Shield in 2002 when the army bulldozered the refugee camp in Jenin. But this too was a far cry from what the strongest army in the Middle East could do. And despite the demonization of the mode of resistance chosen by the Palestinians in the second Intifada - the suicide bomb - you needed only two or three F-16 and a small number of tanks to punish collectively the Palestinians by totally destroying their human, economic and social infrastructure.

I know these generals as well as one could know them. In the last week, they have had a field day. No more random use of one-kilo bombs, battleships, choppers and heavy artillery. The weak and insignificant new minister of defense, Amir Perez, accepted without hesitation the army demand for crushing the Gaza strip and grinding Lebanon to dust. But it may not be enough. It can still deteriorate into a full scale war with the hapless army of Syria and my ex-students may even push by provocative actions towards such an eventuality. And, if you believe what you read in the local press here, it may even escalate into a long distance war with Iran, backed by a supreme American umbrella.

Even the most partial reports in the Israeli press of what was proposed by the army to Ehud Olmert's government as possible operations in the coming days, indicate clearly what enthuses the Israeli generals these days. Nothing less that a total destruction of Lebanon, Syria and Tehran.

The politicians at the top are more tamed, to a point. They have only partially satisfied the army's hunger for a 'high intensity conflict'. But their politics of the day are already donned by military propaganda and rational. This why Zipi Livni, Israeli foreign minister, an otherwise intelligent person, could say genuinely on Israeli TV tonight (13 July 2006) that the best way to retrieve the two captured soldiers 'is to destroy totally the international airport of Beirut'. Abductors or armies that have two POWs of course immediately go and buy commercial tickets on the next flight from an international airport for the captors and the two soldiers. 'But they can sneak them with a car', insisted the interviewers. 'Oh indeed' said the Israeli Foreign Minister, 'This is why we will also destroy all the roads in Lebanon leading outside the country'. This is good news for the army, to destroy airports, set fire to petrol tanks, blow up bridges, damage roads and inflict collateral damage on a civilian population. At least the airforce can show its 'real' might and compensate for the frustrating years of the 'low intensity conflict' that had sent Israel's best and fiercest to run after boys and girls in the alleys of Nablus or Hebron. In Gaza the airforce has already dropped five such bombs, where in the last six years it dropped only one.

This may be not enough, though, for the army generals. They already say clearly on TV that 'we here in Israel should not forget Damascus and Teheran'. Past experiences tell us what they mean by this appeal against our collective amnesia.

The captive soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon have already been deleted from the public agenda here. This is about destroying the Hizballah and Hamas once and for all, not about bringing home the soldiers. In a similar way in the summer of 1982, the Israeli public have totally forgotten the victim that provided the government of Menachem Begin with the excuse of invading Lebanon. He was Shlomo Aragov, Israel's ambassador to London on whose life an attempt was made by a splinter Palestinian group. The attack on him served Ariel Sharon with the pretext of invading Lebanon and staying there for 18 years.

Alternative routes for the conflict are not even raised in Israel, not even by the Zionist left. No one mentions commonsensical ideas such as an exchange of prisoners or a commencement of a dialogue with the Hamas and other Palestinian groups at least over a long ceasefire to prepare the ground for more meaningful political negotiations in the future. This alternative way forward is already backed by all the Arab countries, but alas only by them. In Washington, Donald Ramsfeld may have lost some of his deputies in the Defense Department, but he is still the Secretary. For him, the total destruction of the Hamas and Hizballah - whatever the price and if it is without loss of American life - will 'vindicate' the raison d'être for the Third World Theory he propagated early on in 2001. The current crisis for him is a righteous battle against a small axis of evil - away from the quagmire of Iraq and a precursor for the so far unattained goals in the 'war against terror' - Syria and Iran. If indeed to a certain extent the Empire was serving the proxy in Iraq, the full fledged support President Bush gave to the recent Israeli aggression in Gaza and Lebanon, shows that may be pay off time has come: now the proxy should salvage the entangled Empire.

Hizballah wants back the piece of southern Lebanon Israel still retains. It also wishes to play a major role in Lebanese politics and shows ideological solidarity with both Iran and the Palestinian struggle in general, and the Islamist one, in particular. The three goals do not always complement each other and resulted in a very limited war effort against Israel in the last six years. The total resurrection of tourism on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon testifies that, unlike the Israeli generals, for its own reasons the Hizballah is very happy with a very low intensity conflict. If and when a comprehensive solution for the Palestine question will be achieved even that impulse would die out. Crossing 100 yards into Israel proper is such an action. Retaliating to such a low key operation with a total war and destruction indicates clearly that what matters is the grand design not the pretext.

There is nothing new in this. In 1948, the Palestinians opted for a very low intensity conflict when the UN imposed on them a deal which wrested from their hand half of their homeland and gave it to a community of newcomers and settlers, most of whom arrived after 1945. The Zionist leaders waited for long time for that opportunity and launched an ethnic cleansing operation that expelled half of the land's native population, destroyed half of its villages and dragged the Arab world into unnecessary conflict with the West, whose powers were already on the way out with the demise of colonialism. The two designs are interconnected: the wider Israel's military might expands, the easier it is to complete the unfinished business of the 1948: the total de-Arabization of Palestine.

It is not too late to stop the Israeli designs from creating a new and terrible reality on the ground. But the window of opportunity is very narrow and the world needs to take action before it is too late.

[syvanen]

Richard you really do not have to deny the nakba; Israel will remain if that fact is acknowledged. The expulsions of Germans from Prussia, Pomerania and Sudetenland, the cleansings of Serbs from Krajin and Kosovo more recently are accepted facts and that acceptance will not reverse those events.

If you guys could accept the nakba it would go a long way towards accepting the Palestinians history and humanity. On that basis negotiations toward some kind of solution that acknowledges Palestinian greivances and possible restitution would become possible. Insisting on denying the facts of nakba will leave that road closed.

Just think how angry you get in the face of halocaust denial and you do the same to the Palestinians.

[The Fanonite]

I suspect this Richard fella belongs to the Israel lobby's cyber army (the GIYUS crowd). His methods at least conform to the standard hasbara model. He never addresses facts, merely impressions, or reputations. What he writes about Pappe is bullcrap. I know Pappe, and I've seen him take on a hall full of Zionist detractors and bat away every criticism thrown at him.

So here's an advice Richard (pardon me for dropping 'witty', since your comments have all the edge of damp cloth): next time you feel the need to impugn the reputation of someone of Pappe's stature, you better have facts handy.

[NOMOREWAR_FORISRAEL]

As good as Finkelstein has been he still won't address the pro-Israel lobby's push for the war in Iraq (and it push for the coming one with Iran):

Finkelstein, a Victim of the Israel Lobby, Denies That It Has Power:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=85350

US Support of Israel's brutal oppression of the Palestinians PRIMARY MOTIVATION for tragic attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and on 9/11 as well:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=39590

[NOMOREWAR_FORISRAEL]

Read the UPI article (about Mearsheimer/Walt) at the beginning of the following URL for mention of the 'JINSA crowd' which is pushing US to war with Iran just like it did to get US into the Iraq quagmire:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=49800

Iran War, Real Fear Petraeus Beating War Drums for Attack

http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2008/04/why-arent-we-talking-about-this.html

AIPAC Pushing US to war with Iran for Israel:

http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2007/10/re-aipac-is-pushing-us-to-war-with-iran.html

[Richard Witty]

"Pappe's stature"?

I've read some of Pappe, more than most of the people that likely you accuse.

I liked his descriptions of pre-WW2 changes in Palestinian society. A bit incomplete, compared to Kimmerling or Morris for that matter, and a bit polemic.

Those changes are discounted by the left and the left/right.

But, in fact they are the conditions that led to the weakness and lack of morale of the Palestinian and Arab wars of 47/48.

The world changed. Land ownership standards. Globalization. New capital into the region from both Great Britain's war efforts and Zionism, and newly discovered oil.

ALL very significant movers of unintended social change.

Then WW2. A GIANT rock dropped into a potentially settling ocean, of which the need to settle formerly assimilated (mostly) Jewish European refugees was a necessity.

And, it did occur in an environment of commitment on the part of Jews to other Jews, NOT indifference as the Arab world responded to the needs of Palestinians. And, the Jewish armies were committed, disciplined, loyal, motivated internally and NOT by anger.

[MRW.]

Mr. John Mearsheimer,

Thank you for your note to Mr. Weiss; you write what I have determined from my own reading.

I would have preferred someone like Professor Zand of Israel to write that review, not Margolick, but then the Times is far beyond being balanced these days, or intellectually provocative in a thoughtful way. It may be The Grey Lady of print, but it's glasses have long since frosted over; it operates from selective long-term memory.

Another dip in circulation would do it good.

[Richard Witty]

Aren't you guys curious yourselves?

Don't you really want to know what Ben Gurion said, did, thought? or whomever?

Why do you so passively just believe Pappe, rather than read for yourselves?

I also have limited time, but I wouldn't feel comfortable with myself making public statements if I didn't read sufficiently to distinguish what I knew from what I didn't.

Mearsheimer?

[Richard Witty]

Which of these statements is more true?

1. The Palestinian people are currently suffering, and require a change in condition to become healthy.

2. The Palestinian people are currently angry at how they have been treated in the past (grossly), and require "justice".

[MRW.]

"The world changed. Land ownership standards. Globalization. New capital into the region from both Great Britain's war efforts and Zionism, and newly discovered oil. ALL very significant movers of unintended social change. Then WW2."

Nothing could be further from the truth. Read "The Transfer Agreement" by Edwin Black, 1984 MacMillan edition only. It was all intended and the Zionists did it in cahoots with the Riech, even while hiding what they were doing from the majority of Jewry.

[Richard Witty]

Syvannen,
Which nakba?

[Richard Witty]

So, you disagree with Pappe then, Mr W?

""The world changed. Land ownership standards. Globalization. New capital into the region from both Great Britain's war efforts and Zionism, and newly discovered oil. ALL very significant movers of unintended social change. Then WW2."

Nothing could be further from the truth."

[MRW.]

I don't have to believe what Pappe says about Ben Gurion, although he's accurate. I was educated by one of Ben Gurion's friends in Israel, who told me what Ben Gurion thought and said.

Pappe is right. And so was Benny Morris is his 2004 interview with Shavit. (BTW, Ben Gurion despised, loathed, Begin. He feared in the 60s that if Begin ever became PM, it would mean the 'death of Israel', and he called Sharon a 'gangster' and never thought he would ever be elected to office, ever.)

[Todd]

#1 applies to both Israelis and Palestinians. #2 applies to the Palestinians only, and it is still going on. Why choose between the two?

I don't mean any disrespect, but why do we need Walt and Mearsheimer to tell us that Isreal was founded by conquest, and that the defeated were vanquished and savaged, and are still suffering and angry?

The problem with Israelis, zionists, Jews, or any groups or individuals that define Israeli injustice favorably, is that they are just not honest. Just admit the obvious. The world accepts conquest on a regular basis. I think it is outrageous to expect others to pay for, lie about or cheer the situation.

[Richard Witty]

Pappe is right about many things. He's wrong about others.

He is only one interpretation, of which there are various.

The discussion is about intent, and intent of a collectivity, not of an individual, and not even of a changing individual.

The facts of Palestinians' conditions are facts, known.

Lets deal with what is known, rather than what is contended.

Among MANY Palestinian solidarity there is utter indifference to the current experience and prospects for Palestinians and Palestine as a nation, but MUCH contempt for what they guess at (relying on the word of a few individuals that they haven't even read thoroughly or critically - so that their assertions stand some test of their own scrutiny).

Mearsheimer for example, if he doesn't change how he expresses himself and what he expresses, will be Phil's Reverend Wright.

[syvanen]

Richard writes:
"Syvannen,
Which nakba?"

I knew you would dissemble. How, I wasn't sure, but this one is really clever. You pretend to not know what I am talking about.

Why are you in nakba denial?

[syvanen]

Richard writes:
"Syvannen,
Which nakba?"

I knew you would dissemble. How, I wasn't sure, but this one is really clever. You pretend to not know what I am talking about.

Why are you in nakba denial?

[Richard Witty]

Syvannen,
There are multiple interpretations of the nakba.

The literal meaning is of catastrophe, of great and intimate tragedy. I don't deny that. I don't presume that Zionism's success did not result in the suffering of others, nor do I deny responsibility to right prior wrongs.

For example, I do consistently speak of the rule of law in a color-blind manner as THE means to assert title claims to land taken by either force or eminent domain after the 52 law (and that the 50's laws don't magically dismiss contested title as many Zionist apologists contend).

I do contest the inferences of conspiratorial intent as THE story of Zionism from inception to current.

I do believe that some Zionists, opportunists, did engage in some conspiratorial intent (at specific times, and probably some over extended times).

Most fit in the category of conditionally accepting Arabs as peers in Israel.

But, the review's and commentary's assertion that the sequence of history is what caused the nakba and NOT intent, is more accurate a description of the reality.

They will likely NEVER be able to be accurately determined, as the questions are skew to the reality. (What does a collectivity of non-conspiring civilians "conspire" to?)

They certainly accepted the safety that the Jewish state offered, compared to the violence of the Arab League, and the violence of post-war Europe.

[Richard Witty]

I similarly ask Saif indirectly, if he is reading, if he conditionally would accept Zionism, or if his comments are of unconditional rejection?

[Todd]

I'm not sure about the source, but I read this article about a year ago, and wondered if there is any significance to it. It ties oil, Israel and PNAC together quite nicely. Any opinions?

http://www.sandersresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1118&Itemid=5