'Livni Is De Klerk, But Can Barghouti Be Mandela to a 2-State Solution?' (Jack Ross)

Jack Ross writes in answer to two questions in this earlier post: "Why did Olmert play FW DeKlerk after the fact, a role De Klerk played while in office?" Ross:

Olmert never quite got there in my view, and if he's a bit more radicalized by the circumstances under which he left office, which I think he was, that's irrelevant.  I guess if Livni will be De Klerk, as I've always felt, and Sharon was Botha, that Olmert was a sort of transition figure which there wasn't in the South African case.

As for the larger observations, I absolutely agree with Antony Loewenstein that peace would put Israel out of business.  I do agree with you on the other hand about the consensus emerging in Washington and with the present Israeli leadership - the problem is that, frankly, they don't have a Palestinian partner. 

The Israelis totally discredited Abbas with his own people, the only conceivable alternative they could come up with to dealing directly with Hamas is to release Barghouti from prison and try to make him into Mandela.  But I would presume that Barghouti would make demands that anything like a two-state solution would be on terms the Israelis could not accept.  The most he can really give them is a decent interval, and I imagine that even in the South African case as late as 1990-91 De Klerk was still hoping, perhaps on knowingly long odds, for something like a two-state solution.

I also want to comment on what Loewenstein said about Israeli society being far more invested in the occupation than South Africa in apartheid.  This may very well be the case, but I think the vastly more important thing is that American Jewry is far more invested than the Israelis.  

And from my present research, I believe this was true as far back as the pre-statehood years.  The line which Elmer Berger and his colleagues took after 1948 went roughly like "we lost the battle against Jewish nationalism in Palestine, but the far more important battle is against Jewish nationalism in America".  In my view this was always the far more hopeless cause.

Comments

[anon]

Never underestimate the gilded guilt of American Jews who have not flown away to Israel. It would be funny, or simply entertaining, like a Borscht Belt joke, or
poignant and ethereal, like a Chagall painting, except--it's not American Jews who are paying the price, but the American Goys.

[Antony Loewenstein]

Thanks for your thoughts, Jack.
Observing the reality on the ground in Israel/Palestine is a depressing affair. I fear that the dye has been cast, that removing enough settlements to satisfy the Palstinians is simply not on the cards. Will Hillary/Obama change this? I doubt it.
Tonight, in New York, heard Avrum Burg spoke about Zionism, its future, idealism etc. Simply put, he's pessimistic that Israel can move away from its Holocaust obsession, cheapening its memory, so even if the occupation ends, there are still too many other ideas to make Israel a 'normal' society.

[sword of gideon]

Its a good day for you isn't Lowenstein, you too Phil.

Mumbai attacks: Jews tortured before being executed during hostage crisis
Israeli hostages killed by Islamic terrorists during the attacks on Mumbai (formerly Bombay) were tortured by their captors before they were bound together and killed, according to officials in both countries.

By Damien McElroy in Bombay
Last Updated: 7:52AM GMT 02 Dec 2008

; http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1488655367/bctid3606237001 http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=1139053637
Jewish victims made up a disproportionate number of the foreigners killed after 10 Muslim fanatics stormed a series of sites in the Indian financial capital.

Members of the beleaguered Jewish community in Mumbai gathered at a crumbling synagogue for a memorial for Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who ran the cultural centre targeted by the Deccan Mujahideen.

The couple's son, Moshe survived after his nanny, Sandra Samuel escaped with him in her arms 10 hours after the hostage incident started. The child cried "Ima" and "Dada," or mummy and daddy, as the service began.

Moshe's grandparents have arrived from Israel to take the orphaned boy home and there is intense pressure to grant Miss Samuel a visa by declaring her righteous among the gentiles.

Two countries have posted officials at the JJ Hospital morgue but there are at least twice as many Israeli disaster specialists as British consuls representing the former colonial power.

Israeli officials confirmed six Jews were dead but the figure is likely to rise to eight. The total number of foreigners killed in the attacks stands at 22.

A forensic team arrived on a specially chartered flight on Sunday night. "There are still a few yet to be identified – not a lot, under five – and this is why we need the forensic team," an Israeli diplomat said. "And there are two or three Israelis unaccounted for and we have a couple of bodies that could be them."

Doctors expressed horror at the condition of the bodies recovered from the Nariman Building, which housed the Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch retreat.

"I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was traumatised," a mortician said. "It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood."

The group that stormed Bombay's most famous institutions displayed unrestrained brutality throughout the mission. The captain of a fishing trawler hijacked by the group in Arabian Sea was found with his throat cut.

Police said 17 victims were pushed against a wall in the corridor of the Oberoi hotel and executed in a line.

One man who served a glass of water to a terrorist at Bombay's main railway station was shot in the forehead.

[Rowan Berkeley]

On Monday night, even as they were preparing for a funeral, relatives of Mumbai victims Rivka and Gavriel Holtzberg took time to protest the possible eviction. As he spoke with the JPost, Rivka Holtzberg's brother Yossi Rosenberg received a message that the IDF might move against the settlers late Monday night or early Tuesday morning. He asked the JPost to mention his family's ideological opposition to the eviction. Nachman Holtzberg, Gavriel's father, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in which he asked that the state refrain from taking such action during a time of national mourning for the Mumbai victims. It should be a moment of unity for the Jewish people, which should not be disrupted by divisions or fighting, he told the JPost. "My son was an emissary for the united Jewish people," he added.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1227702390742&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Seth Freedman in the Guardian's so-called "Comment Is Free" spot is very unhappy about this, saying:

"Into the latest fray, tragically, has stepped the family of the Lubavitch emissaries brutally murdered in Mumbai last week. Before Rebbetzin Holtzberg's funeral has even taken place, her brother asked the Jerusalem Post to publicly broadcast his family's ideological opposition to the eviction from the House of Peace. At the same time, Rabbi Holtzberg's father decided to wade into the arena, writing to Ehud Olmert to demand the army cease their actions against the illegally-squatting settlers during the period of mourning for the Mumbai victims. He declared that the present time should be a moment of unity for the Jewish people, which should not be disrupted by divisions or infighting... "
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/02/israelandthepalestinians-mumbai-terror-attacks

[stevieb]

Please sign this petition supporting UN sanctions divestment and boycott of Israel over the genocidal policies in Gaza.

The world cannot stay silent while in the face of this atrocity...

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/IJAN_Brockmann_BDS/index.html

[stevieb]

Please sign this petition supporting UN sanctions divestment and boycott of Israel over the genocidal policies in Gaza.

The world cannot stay silent while in the face of this atrocity...

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/IJAN_Brockmann_BDS/index.html

[stevieb]

Please sign this petition supporting UN sanctions divestment and boycott of Israel over the genocidal policies in Gaza.

The world cannot stay silent while in the face of this atrocity...

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/IJAN_Brockmann_BDS/index.html

[stevieb]

sorry for the poor sentence structure....

[anon]

The slain mixed dual citizenship dad and Israeli mom were
targeted due to their connection with the rabid settlers in the occupied land--you'd never have an inkling from the American press which shows the lovely couple as simple jewish charity victims.

Although the attack in India was part of a resistance against
racial imperialism, you can be sure no details showing this will
occur in the American MSM. The settler movement includes the USA congress.

[5 dancing shlomos]

one state now.

no "right" of "return" for jews.

no "right" to remain for jews.

go. leave. and take your hell for yourself. no one else needs it or you.

[Sword of Gideonthe point.]

go fuck yourself scumbag

[Eurosabra]

Barghouti can't, really, because he's a terrorist murderer, responsible (among others) for the death of a Greek Orthodox monk who was attacked on the road to or through Wadi Kelt. While the man may have been mistaken for a Jew, it is more likely that the target was chosen to demonstrate the place reserved for Christian dhimmis in a future Islamic Palestine. As Mandela was dedicated to equality for all peoples, formally and practically secular government (as opposed to the in-theory secular but practically Arabo-Muslim supremacist PLO), and the development of civil society, there is NO Palestinian party that can play his role. Also not discounting the fact that Palestinians overwhelmingly support Hamas and its Islamist supremacism.