1) Israel is a settler state.
2) Israeli land was, mostly, taken from other people, by force.
3) Thus the vast majority of Israelis live on land taken by force from the indigs.
4) The “settlers”,are simply the leading edge of taking land and destroying homes, by force, from the indigs.
5) Israel is, also, a religious ethnic state where you only have the full rights of citizenship if you are of the correct religion.
If you are a believer in modern secular democracy, it is hard to see any solution for the Israel/Palestine issue which is not a single state solution. Give everyone in Palestine full citizenship rights, including the right to vote.
It happened in South Africa. It may happen in Palestine. If it doesn’t, the other routes out are uglier: full-on ethnic cleansing, or a loss by Israel of its “Jewish legal identity” in war (no, their nukes won’t protect them.)
America isnt’ going to be able or willing to support Israel’s colonial ambitions forever.
None of this is to say that Israel’s crimes are unique. Conquering indigs and taking their land is old-hat. Those of us who live in North America are lucky—our genocide was long over before most of us were born, and much of it was done by germs. We keep the few remaining indigs largely on reservations, where they live in squalid 3rd world conditions, far from the sight of their conquerers. Israelis live right on top of those they are conquering, and have to become indifferent at best or monsters who regard Palestinians as sub-human at worst, in order to function. After all, the Palestinians are still right there, in their face, daring to look like humans who some mother loved.
“The weak do what they must, the powerful what they will” – Thucydides. And the Palestinians are weak. And the Israelis are still (comparatively) strong.
They won’t be forever, however. When they aren’t, they should worry that they will reap as they have sowed.
Celsius 233
“Those of us who live in North America are lucky—our genocide was long over before most of us were born, and much of it was done by germs.” Ian
~~~~~~~~~~~~
AIM most certainly wouldn’t agree with you. Nor would Leonard Peltier.
Celsius 233
I will not knowingly purchase anything made by or in Israel.
Ian Welsh
The number of natives left to kill in N. Am (outside of Mexico), is a rounding error.
EverythingsJake
Netanyahu is no better than a high level Nazi factotum.
markfromireland
Like Celsisus I won’t knowingly buy any Israeli products for the same reason I wouldn’t knowingly buy Rhodesian or South African products during the Apartheid era. I also support the boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement which is having quite a lot of success in Europe. There’s a marked difference between how Israel is seen — particularly by younger people, in Europe and how it’s seen in America. Although there’s not been much in the way of tangible results yet (I mostly agree with the headline of this Reuters report The threat of Israel boycotts more bark than bite | Reuters) it’s early days yet and the successes have generated a lot of publicity and support for the BDS campaign. I have the feeling that momentum is gathering. The EU the EU is the first trading partner for Israel with total trade amounting to approximately €33 billion in 2012 most recent figures here: tradoc_113402.pdf and their howls of outrage about “delegitimization” show they’re worried.
mfi
markfromireland
Oh sod, I’ve triggered moderation again – sorry Ian.
mfi
PS: Dunno if you’ve seen this: Robert Fisk: How on earth can Israel tolerate this filth from B’nai Brith Canada? – Comment – Voices – The Independent
JustPlainDave
I wouldn’t consider 4.3% of the population (higher in Western provinces, up to 16-17% in some) a rounding error – especially when population growth is out pacing non-aboriginals. Similarly, about half of “status Indians” live off reserve (the fifth without status don’t live on reservation, by definition).
We tell ourselves a lot about how folks are “removed” from our sight such that we *can’t* see them – it’s not that; we just don’t look too closely. The pronounced trend for the last 20-30 years in Israel has been towards less integration with the Palestinian population (it started earlier, but this period has been quite pronounced), to the point that I think you can make a reasonable case that the average Israeli has less direct exposure to the indigenous population than the average Canadian.
Dean
The current Palestinians are not indigenous to Israel either. They are Arabs who moved in after the Moslem conquest and during the Seljuk and Ottoman eras. The indigenous Canaanites, Edomites and other pre-Mosaic peoples have long since disappeared or been absorbed. The European Zionists were descendants of people who originated in Palestine, so they are not quite the same as the Whites who conquered and colonized the Americas.
Celsius 233
JustPlainDave PERMALINK
June 30, 2014
I wouldn’t consider 4.3% of the population (higher in Western provinces, up to 16-17% in some) a rounding error…
~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks JPD; I didn’t quite know how to deal with that. I knew it was a blow off.
Canada is now in the throws of its own indiginie fuck over regarding rights.
A bit surprised at Ian’s kiss off…
Troy
Re: JustPlainDave
Hmm, I guess 4% of the total population isn’t invisible, but in the face of the Canadian government, we First Nations are rather powerless. It is exceedingly easy for the Canadian government to isolate and discredit legitimate First Nations opposition to its policies.
As for population growth, it’ll probably be forty to sixty years before First Nations as a whole can even modestly influence Canadian politics. I don’t know a thing about USA policies regarding its First Nations, so I’ll refrain from commenting on the USA.
For now, First Nations can really only successfully oppose Canadian policies through a combination of legitimate and illegitimate means. And even then, we’re not fighting to win or lose. We’re fighting for time. We’ll take whatever little victories we might win, but we understand those are probably short-lived. Our battles with Canada, these are the exact same battles our forefathers had. Our battles, these will be passed down to our children.
All we can do is continually get stronger.
That’s what the Palestinian people need to do, too. Keep getting stronger.
Some day, Canada will no longer be able to easily push around First Nations. Some day, Israel won’t be able to push around Palestine. Hopefully, by then, cooler heads will prevail, and there weren’t be a messy confrontation in either case, but there is nothing to guarantee that.
JustPlainDave
Dean – I’m not so sure how true this is. One of the things that I have noted over the last decade or so is that the genetic studies show much more continuity (and mixing) than the material culture / textual studies that form the bedrock of our understanding of these periods. I’m sure the genetic studies for this specific set of populations (Arabs, Palestinians and Jews) are a political hot potato (as well as moving quite quickly methodologically), but what I’m seeing in the online references to studies suggests something more complex than wholesale replacement.
JustPlainDave
Troy – I think we’re broadly in agreement. My overarching point was that the implicit dichotomy – the Palestinian “issue” is “live” while the Canadian one isn’t – probably isn’t 100% appropriate. Having seen the Palestinian situation on the ground and coming from Western Canada, I see more parallels than differences. I don’t find what that says about Canadian politics and culture at all attractive, but I’d rather look at it than avert eyes.
troutcor
The US attitude toward Israel is definitely undergoing major shifts, even if Big Media is not fully waking yet to this fact.
The Presbyterian Church’s decision to divest in corporations profiting from the occupation would have been unthinkable 10 years ago.
In the depths of the “war” on terror, the fate of the missing Israeli teens (one of them American!) would have been a big story, but it is hardly being reported on at all.
In short, Israel is not figuring very prominently in the US media these days, and those Americans who ARE paying attention to the country are increasingly skeptical.
One can only hope that one day Americans will recognize we have no business bankrolling any country – be it Israel or Saudi Arabia – that combines oppression and religious discrimination.
Joanna Bujes
No. You can be an atheist Israeli. It’s based on religion to the extent that “God promised us this land.” In reality however, it’s based on blood. Your mom was Jewish? You’re Jewish and have the right of eternal return. Atheist or not.
markfromireland
Now that the three missing settler teenagers have been found dead I wonder how much more of the West Bank will be razed to the ground.
mfi
Ché Pasa
This is simply false, whether you’re talking about the US or Canada:
Some reservations may fit that description, but many don’t or soon won’t thanks to casino income — which has been both a boon and a curse.
More importantly, in both the US and Canada, most of “the few remaining indigs” (preferred term in my neck of the woods is “indigine”) live off the reservation — in the US over 70% are officially classified as “urban Indians,” and I think the figure is at least 50% in Canada.
Things have changed in Indian/First Nations country, and the parallels with Israel or other conquering/colonial regimes don’t quite fit any more.
Israel/Palestine would more closely follow the American model if:
a) the conquest of Palestine was complete — it is not
b) the Palestinians were more integrated into Israeli society — they are not
c) Palestinians under occupation were citizens of Israel — they are not
d) Palestinians were free to travel without restrictions throughout Israel — they are not
e) Palestinians largely felt loyalty to Israel — they do not
f) Palestinians had a relatively reliable and autonomous source of income — they do not
g) Palestinian society and culture were relatively well regarded and respected by Israelis — it is not.
h) Palestinians were a tiny minority within a far larger Israeli population — they are not
Israeli attitudes toward Palestinians more closely resemble those of Anglo-Americans toward indigines a hundred years ago, or the way many Afrikaners still see the kaffir rabble.
The question is whether Israeli society and government is capable of reforming even to the limited extent that South Africa, Canada and the United States have.
There are few signs that Israel can or will, but 30 years ago, it appeared that South Africa couldn’t or wouldn’t do so, either.
A hundred years ago there was no certainty that any part of Ireland or India would be liberated from British colonialism.
Things change.
Ian Welsh
Most reservations DO NOT have enough casino income to make a difference.
Urban native Americans are disproportionately poor and homeless.
Carl Olsen
Disagree with point 5. The only requirement is that you must belong to the correct tribe. Many Jews are atheist. They nevertheless enjoy full rights. This even extends to the automatic granting of immigrant status. No religious test required.
Jack Parsons
There are theories based on the very earliest records of Spanish exploration ships going up the Mississippi River, and other coastal areas. They described a culture of densely settled agriculture and town/cities, one after the other. 50 years later Euros came back and these people were g-o-n-e gone.
The theory is that our diseases like smallpox & other wonders wiped out these civilizations, leaving shattered groups of hunter-gatherers (gatherers are really wandering farmers) that people encountered the second time around.
Ian Welsh
You are Jewish in Israel if you conform to religious breeding rules. This is not a matter of whether you believe in God, or not, that is irrelevant to your Jewish status. But that status is based on religious law.
Ché Pasa
This statement is false:
Indians by and large do NOT live on reservations “far from the sight of their conquerors”.
Casino revenue has made a huge difference for some tribes, not so much for others. Casino revenue has also caused many foreseen and unforeseen problems for tribes.
Conditions for urban Indians vary widely. Some are business owners/entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, high ranking academics, government employees or well known writers or — like Virgil Ortiz, who does live and work on Cochiti Pueblo (reservation) — artists. Many others are struggling with all the problems shared by poor people throughout North America together with the problems of cultural and social dislocation, including disproportionate homelessness, alcoholism, exploitation and worse. Still others are members of the struggling and shrinking middle class.
In other words, there is no one description that fits all contemporary Indians and nor what “we” do to them.
Ian Welsh
No, it’s not false. You have said this twice, and are incorrect both times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_social_statistics_of_Native_Americans
Native Americans have the highest poverty rates of any ethnicity in America. Reservation Indians have tiny average incomes, which while better than in the past, still suck. Non reservation Indians are not well off either.
The most generous definition of Indian population is 1.6% of American society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_poverty
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/cb13-29.html
“Two race groups had poverty rates more than 10 percentage points higher than the national rate of 14.3 percent: American Indian and Alaska Native (27.0 percent) and black or African- American (25.8 percent). Rates were above the overall national average for Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders (17.6 percent), while poverty rates for people identified as white (11.6 percent) or Asian (11.7 percent) were lower than the overall poverty rate. Poverty rates for whites and Asians were not statistically different from each other. The Hispanic population had a poverty rate of 23.2 percent, about nine percentage points higher than the overall U.S. rate.”
The argument, in general, that we can’t say anything about a social group because some of them are doing well “a black man is president, therefore Blacks are doing fine” is absurd.
There is no description that fits all contemporary everyone’s. That doesn’t mean we can’t talk about groups.
Ché Pasa
Ian, your statement that I quoted is false.
Most Indians in North America DO NOT live on reservations “far from the sight of their conquerors.” Most of their conquerors have long been dead. Most Indians live in urban areas today, some among the descendants of their conquerors, and that’s been true for a generation or more.
You haven’t refuted that simple fact.
I don’t dispute that poverty among North American Indians is still horrendous by Anglo standards, but it’s not universal. Social and cultural dislocation among Indians is still severe, but it’s not universal. But that’s not the argument you were making. You stated that “we” keep Indians in 3rd world poverty on reservations, out of sight. No, most Indians today live in urban areas, not on the reservations at all, and they are by no means invisible.
Talk about groups by all means. But I’m not making the argument you seem to think I am.
Your argument would be stronger if your statement were true.
Propertius
what I’m seeing in the online references to studies suggests something more complex than wholesale replacement.
Indeed. Most genetic studies in the region show that Jews (even Azhkenazim), Palestinians, Kurds, and Druze are quite closely related genetically. See:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC18733/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1274378/
The genetics suggest that Palestinians and Jews represent different branches of the same indigenous population.
Lee
Thanks Ian. I don’t see how how the parsing of out-groups by many commentators here gets us anywhere. Surely we need one set of rules for one set of peoples living in one land, whatever their ethnicities. The profound injustice of the current situation as it has developed since 1946 was brought home to me by a graphic showing Jewish owned land in the Palestine Mandate at 6% in 1946 until the present when “Israel +Occupied land” totals 88% of the same land area.
Cheers from here,
L.
sanctimonious purist
The three cardinal sins in Judaism are murder, illicit sexual relations and idolatry. That means that if someone holds a gun to your head and says “bow down to that idol” or “commit adultery” or kill that person over there” you are supposed to take the bullet yourself.
The Zionists, when faced with the dilemma of being in danger in Europe, living peacefully in another land, or killing others in order to have a place of their own, made the wrong choice. To me, it’s clear, Israel is not a Jewish state.
Chamomile
I am surprised at the comments above that state that they do not knowingly purchase goods made or supplied from within Israel. You do realize that a large portion of the computer chips running your computer are either partly designed or manufactured in Israel. Intel has both design and manufacturing there and has for many years, they also have manufacturing in Arizona, Washinton, etc.
So when you look for the “Intel Inside” logo there is a large chance that some revenue from that chip is supporting some of the work within Israel.
amspirnational
In Germany in the mid-late 1800s for example, there were German parties which advocated assimilation of Jews into the greater spiritual-national community. The intermarriage rate was about 33% and the rabbis were losing power
There were also, growing German parties which said Jews were a permanent racial outsider and threat. The Zionists, as opposed to the Jewish assimilationists, openly worked with the racialists to thwart Jewish intermarriage and assimilation. In favor of theiving the land of Palestine, and making German racialists happy to boot in their departure.
I say theiving advisedly because the early Zionists were perfectly aware the land was occupied, that the area in question was NOT “a land without a people for a people without a land.”
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Celsius 233
Chamomile PERMALINK
July 1, 2014
I am surprised at the comments above that state that they do not knowingly purchase goods made or supplied from within Israel. You do realize that a large portion of the computer chips running your computer are either partly designed or manufactured in Israel. Intel has both design and manufacturing there and has for many years, they also have manufacturing in Arizona, Washinton, etc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, did you also see the qualifier, knowingly? Apparently you did, but still deemed it relevant to ignore intent.
I didn’t know that and having not lived in the USA for more than a decade, have few resources for that information.
You would serve far better than adopting the superior demeanor of your post. Fuck you, you pompous AH!
Information is always welcome without the snark…
REDPILLED
Re: Dean’s comment: “The European Zionists were descendants of people who originated in Palestine… ”
Read The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand and see what you think.