Bye, Bye Nationhood

Martin Peretz, back from vacation, and ready to tell it like it is:

By the way, I think the conflict between the Arabs of Palestine and the Jewish state is of less import than the one between India and Pakistan, which like Palestine, is also not a country and the Pakistanis, also like the Palestinians, are not a nation. Oh, yes: why is this of such valence? Because Pakistan has the bomb.

The claim that Pakistan is not a country is simply bizarre, since it pretty clearly is. The idea that there is no "Pakistani nation" is perhaps comprehensible (though, I think, mistaken) as an argument about Pakistan's large degree of ethnic diversity, with the plurality Punjabi group compromising only 44 percent of the population, with the remainder deeply fragmented.

The claim that there is not Palestinian nation, however, both puts yesterday's TNR editorial on Hamas (why should Peretz' views be any more reputable than Palestinian rejectionism) in perspective and also recapitulates the most tragic of Zionist self-deceptions. The idea of creating a Jewish state has a certain logic to it. And the idea of creating this Jewish state in Palestine has an obvious appeal. Under the circumstances, it became convenient to believe that Palestine was not only the location of the historical Jewish state but actually "a land without people for a people without a land." The main problem with this theory was that it was, obviously, false -- Palestine wasn't very densely populated at the time, but there were certainly people there.

This deception eventually became untenable and transformed itself into the one Peretz is offering -- sure, there are people on that land, but they aren't a people, a nation. When I was young, I recall a Hebrew School teacher speaking of "15 Arab countries and only one Israel" (I think this is an underestimate of the number of Arab countries) the better to make the fate of the Palestinians a trivial matter. Again, this is a convenient thing for people with certain other commitments to believe, but it's just not true.

Comments

If Pakistan doesn't qualify as a nation, does the United States?

Posted by rea | June 28, 2007 5:31 PM

I'm very glad Mr. Peretz has clarified to me that I do not belong to a nation and I don't deserve a country. And here I was spending all 26 years of my life labouring under the delusion that I was a normal human being and had the right to have a normal country, flag, anthem, army and national football team like everyone else.

Thanks to his enlightening work, I now realize that I need to first get a large group of ethnically, racially and religiously homogenous people together to go to TNR offices to obtain permission from the editors that we call ourselves "a nation" before we can have any human rights.

Posted by saifedean | June 28, 2007 5:43 PM

Also,

It has now occured to me that by the venerable standards of TNR, Michigan also doesn't qualify to be a nation, since it is very ethnically diverse. I think the right thing to do is for Arabs to kick out all the non-Arabs from Michigan and establish an Arab Nation there. Anyways, as Matt's school teachers would undoubtedly tell him, there are 49 American states, but only one Arab state.

Let's get started on the ethnic cleansing of Dearborn next Monday. All the non-Arabs have 49 states to go to anyway so it's not a problem.

Posted by saifedean | June 28, 2007 5:47 PM

Part of the problem with the "15 Arab countries and only one Israel" statement is that while yes, there are fifteen countries (or so) in which Arabic is the primary language, there is great cultural diversity within them. This cultural diversity is obscured when we use the term "Arab"; it is much like the medieval Arab practice of calling Catholic Europe "the land of the Franks". Fifteen Frankish countries and only one al-Andalus. Fifteen Ibero-American countries and only one Belize.

Much of this stems from the age-old conception of Arabic as a single monolithic language, when it is not; the Moroccan and Omani Arabic dialects are about as different from each other as Italian and Portuguese. If the conception of the "Arabic-speaking world" had been properly nuanced from the outset, "15 Arab countries and one Israel" would have been a nonsensical thing to say in the first place.

Posted by CG | June 28, 2007 5:48 PM

Israel doesn't have fixed boundaries or a constitution (I think) so maybe its not really a country either.

Posted by AnswerMan | June 28, 2007 5:48 PM

saifedean just said what I meant in my first paragraph with much more humor and eloquence.

Posted by CG | June 28, 2007 5:50 PM

This is also the motivation behind the "Arabs of Palestine" locution -- the operative fact about the people described is that they're Arabs, with only a contingent connection to Palestine. Charming!

Posted by Spenc/r Ackerm/n | June 28, 2007 5:52 PM

Yeah, Peretz seems to make this argument a lot.

"One definite Peretz theme that clangs in column after column is that there are no Arab nations. The partisan of Zion hasn't staked this position for the convenience it lends in delegitimizing the call for a Palestinian state. Nor has he adopted it to make it easier to repel the arguments of those who would paint the nation of Israel as a counterfeit creation of Western imperialism. Peretz actually believes what is in his clips." -- Jack Shafer, http://www.slate.com/id/2134011/

Raving loon that he is.

Posted by Tracy | June 28, 2007 6:04 PM

If Pakistan isn't a nation because of its ethnic diversity, then neither is India, where there are at least 15 native languages, not to mention the degrees by which different dialects of Hindi differ. Because of this diversity, English is often the language of business in India.

Peretz was in India recently. Why didn't he make note of this given his criteria for nationhood?

Posted by Matthew Struhar | June 28, 2007 6:08 PM

If Pakistan doesn't qualify as a nation, does the United States?

Does Israel? Heck, the Israeli parties divide on a 'Jewier-than-thou' basis.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | June 28, 2007 6:09 PM

Saifedean, I'd suggest you guys ethnically cleanse the Christian Zionists from the southern state of your choice. (I recommend Texas.)

Some of my friends are Christian Zionists. They've used the "there are umpteen other Arab countries" argument, so they can't claim to have any principled reason to object to such treatment

Posted by Donald | June 28, 2007 6:09 PM

During the pre-Islamic era and the first couple centuries of Islam, it was possible to speak of Arabs as a widespread, more or less homogeneous group, a functional ethos. During this period Arabs were the ruling elite of a large part of the Middle East and spoke a language distinct from the Syriac, Coptic, and Berber vernaculars of their subjects, living in some respects a separate life. But after these countries became "Arabized", it subsequently became impossible to discuss Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and other regions as simply and wholly "Arab"; the local cultures became inseparable from the Arab culture imposed upon them and, consequently, diverged considerably from the more properly Arab culture of the early Islamic conquerors, becoming a variety of distinct sedentary cultures arrayed from Spain to Iraq. When the term "Arab" was used for most of the last millenium, it could not refer to a distinct unitary ethnos, but to a broader culture with a shared high culture and religion - much like Latin European culture, or Slavic Orthodox culture.

A wrinkle in this story is the 20th century, which, under Nasser and his predecessors and successors, has brought about a rebirth of the idea of "Arab" as a distinct "national" identity -- in part a response to colonialism, Israel, and so on. Funny that Arab nationalism has furnished vocabulary used against the Palestinians whose plight was one of its primary motivations.

Denying rights to a people whose ancestors have long lived in the area, **because they have cultural and linguistic commonalities with the people of neighboring regions** is a weird thing to do.

Posted by CG | June 28, 2007 6:21 PM

One of the problems with the whole issue of former Palestine. is that there is no modern analogy. Here are the old approximate facts. In 1900 2% of Palestine's residents were Jewish. That rose to around half by 48. After the war of 48, 950,000 of the 1.2 million Palestinian residents were displaced from their homes.

In other words they were conquered. First thru demographics, then with force. Sadly they won't just stay conquered. Back in the Old Testament days this wouldn't have happened. The losers would have been killed or driven off. Problem solved.

That wouldn't cut in in the mid 20th century so we ended up with permanent camps, and permanent resentment. For a long long time the Right here and there have known instinctively that the only real solution is of the Old Testament variety. I mean solution if your going to have a Jewish State.

Finally after 50 years the old solution is being spoken about fairly openly. Still a bit opaque perhaps but it's out there. Poor Marty however has to walk a finer line so he needs to come up with these abusurd rhetorical tricks. He lables virtually all Muslims as inferiors and their states non nations.

Posted by rapier | June 28, 2007 6:21 PM

Peretz has gone certifiably insane. In the comments he helpfully provided a list of "nations" - yes, let's see, the French, Brits, Americans, Egyptians, Chinese, Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Finns, Danes, Scots, Mexicans, Vietnamese, Berbers, Bulgarians, Laps, Letts, Japanese, Koreans, Spaniards, Portuguese, Ashanti, and on and on. Also the Kurds. No, not the Iraqis and not the Lebanese or the Syrians and certainly not the Palestinians.

So you see, ethnically and linguistically diverse groups of people with no shared traditions, cultures or languages before being colonized by Westerners (Mexico), multinational empires of different ethnic groups with shared traditions (China, Great Britain),a country of recent immigrants from all over the globe (Americans), Arab nations with a significant traditional Christian population and normalized relations with Israel (Egypt) - these are all "nations." But, oddly enough, Arab countries that don't have good relations with Israel - well, those are not nations. Hunh. Must be a coincidence.

Posted by vanya | June 28, 2007 6:27 PM

Why are you people getting on my case?

I just see a problem, and I want to solve it!

What's wrong with looking for a Final Solution to the arab problem?

Posted by Farty Peretz | June 28, 2007 6:31 PM

I wonder what is with his rather obscure choices for nations. There are under 100,000 Lapps spread out across Northern Europe. I doubt Peretz knows what percentage of Moroccans are Berbers and not Arabs and would probably consider it an Arab nation. China's Uyghurs and Tibetans don't exactly seem to want to be in China and often claim they share no real, innate culture with China. His list of non-nations are all countries that have at one time or another seen Israeli bombs or rockets fall on it. You can justify anything against a people if you claim they don't exist. Would he consider Brazilians, Cubans, Venezuelans, Russians, Afghans, Taiwanese, Thais, Indonesians, Canadians, South Africans and others to be a nation? He is using nation to mean ethnicity, as defined by whatever he says it is and is convenient for him. Heads I win, tails you lose. It's funny how for years he would argue against the Palestinian academic Edward Said's critique of Orientalism by claiming that it robbed the Other of agency (like the Other has agency within the 17th-century French academy), yet when the Other - as defined as Palestinian - try to exercise agency by defining themselves as a nation, Peretz isn't having any of it. Gore should be ashamed of himself for ever associating with him.

Also, has Peretz ever talked to a Pakistani, especially from the central or eastern parts of the country? Has he never met a Pakistani nationalist before? Not all of Pakistan is the Northwest Frontier Province. The bomb wouldn't be a simple of national pride if there was no nation. His argument might have made sense before 1971 when Bangladesh was East Pakistan and culturally, linguistically, and socially separated from West Pakistan, but that was over 30 years ago.

Posted by Reality Man | June 28, 2007 6:57 PM

Peretz denies Palestine's right to exist. It makes a funny symmetry among extremist bigots. Someone needs to take the William F. Buckley role and excommunicate him from the Liberal movement. Such as it is.

Posted by Ikram | June 28, 2007 7:06 PM

Re CG

"Denying rights to a people whose ancestors have long lived in the area, **because they have cultural and linguistic commonalities with the people of neighboring regions** is a weird thing to do."

Mr. CG repeats the big lie that the ancestors of the Palestinian Arabs have long lived in the area. The fact of the matter is that up to the latter part of the 19th century, the area known as Palestine was practically depopulated. Now I know that Mr. otto or his ilk will complain about my invocation of Mark Twain for the umpteenth time but Mr. CG has repeated the big lie for the umpteenth time. For the information of Mr. CG, Mark Twain visited Palestine as a part of an around the world trip in 1867 and found the area to be almost depopulated. The largest town, Jerusalem, had fewer inhabitants then his home town of St. Joseph, Mo., hardly a major metropolis. Thus, the ancestors of the current Arab inhabitants of Palestine had not lived there for a long time but hat migrated there as a result of interest shown in the area by the European powers, mainly Great Britain and Germany. The Kaiser was, apparently for some reason, particularly interested.

Re Saifedean

Apparently Mr. Saifedean insists that he belongs to a nation, even though a nation known as Palestine has never existed in the history of the world. Fair enough; the current Jewish inhabitants of Palestine also belong to a nation , which is known as Israel. Mr. Saifedean could have had a nation as recently as 2000. However, his leaders decided that all of nothing was better then 1/3 of something and turned down President Clintons' offer. The Palestinians have made their bed and now will have to lie in it.

Posted by SLC | June 28, 2007 7:11 PM

Regrettably, because I'm sure the choice of words was completely unintentional, "the big lie" triggers Godwin.

Posted by Steve | June 28, 2007 7:22 PM

You can't possibly claim that Pakistan is not a nation without making the same claim about India. The Punjab reaches into both countries, after all. There's more cultural, religious and ethnic diversity in India than in Pakistan, and the consensus that holds the nation together is far more fragile.

Posted by Ginger Yellow | June 28, 2007 7:36 PM

SLC,

Thanks to google books we no longer have to rely on Mark Twain as our sole source on 19th century Palestine. There were quite a few other people who visited the region. Here's one you can start with, Domestic Life in Palestine By Mary Eliza Rogers, 1865 ed. Apparently the bazaars in Haifa were "crowded" - page 29. As of 1862 (page 47) "buildings of importance and commodious dwelling-houses are rapidly rising on the hills round about Jerusalem." Doesn't sound particularly desolate.

http://books.google.com/books?id=KG09qepFmJAC&pg=PA11&dq=Palestine+date:0-1890#PPA52,M1

Posted by vanya | June 28, 2007 7:43 PM

I shudder to give Martin Peretz the benefit of anything remotely resembling the doubt, but I wonder: I seem to recall from one of my undergraduate classes in International Relations that in IR theory, "nation" refers to ethnic/religious communities as opposed to the way we typically use it, which is synonymous with "state." Could that have been his, still tenuous by that light, point? I mean, even if it was, I'd argue that the shared experience of the Palestinian Diaspora essentially created a new nation by that same definition, so he's not exactly on firm ground.

Posted by James F. Elliott | June 28, 2007 7:55 PM

...I think the conflict between the Arabs of Palestine and the Jewish state is of less import than the one between India and Pakistan ...

Liar. He shows by his actions that he thinks the conflict over Palestine is very important. How much energy, & space in the magazine, has he devoted to Kashmir? As much as to Palestine?

Or maybe he's using the word "import" in some special way, such that he & people who share his views can deem Israel/Palestine important, but everyone else shouldn't.

Posted by K | June 28, 2007 8:07 PM

Matt is mistaken.
The idea of of "a people without a land for a land without a people" was not a Zionist "self-delusion." In the formative period of Zionism (first modern Jewish settlements in the area appx. 1880, first Zionist Congress 1897, Balfour Declaration 1917) there was no Palestinian nationalism to speak of and projecting a Palestinian national identity backward to that period is anachronistic. Why should there have been one, after all? There never had been an Arab Muslim state centered on that territory. Even under Ottoman rule Palestine was not an administrative unit. Ssubjects of the Ottoman Empire west of the Jordan and east of Sinai spoke the Syrian dialect of Arabic that also prevails in what is now Lebanon and Jordan as well as Syria. This is not to say that Arabs in what became the Palestine Mandate welcomed the Zionists -or the British- with open arms. But such opposition was inspired -initially at least- by identities both broader (Islam) and narrower (clan, village, family) than Palestinian nationalism. It is not as though there had been some massive Palestinian nationalist uprising against Turkish rule in the previous years, for example.

All of this is history however and doesn't determine what is to be done today. Whether a nation exists is based on the subjective perceptions of the people involved, which can themselves be measured by outside observers. It is evident that for some decades there has been, pace Peretz, a resilient Palestinian national identity, in large part due to the cumulative and formative interaction of Palestinians with A. Zionists, B. British overlords and, crucially, C. other Arabs, who showed much more evidence of hating Israel than loving these "brothers" of theirs. The Palestinians who have been living in Lebanon for generations and still don't have citizenship certainly feel distinctive and are made to do so. Those in Gaza and the West Bank also live a very different reality from Egyptians and Jordanians.

Posted by Peggy Sawyer | June 28, 2007 8:19 PM

Karl Sabbagh (sp?) has a book out on Palestine which deals with those famous Mark Twain quotes. Apparently even Twain can be quoted against Twain on the subject of the population of Palestine.

And I gather there are Ottoman population records for the period, and histories of families going back several centuries.

The amazon LINKL

Posted by Donald | June 28, 2007 8:20 PM

I seem to recall from one of my undergraduate classes in International Relations that in IR theory, "nation" refers to ethnic/religious communities as opposed to the way we typically use it, which is synonymous with "state." Could that have been his, still tenuous by that light, point? I mean, even if it was, I'd argue that the shared experience of the Palestinian Diaspora essentially created a new nation by that same definition, so he's not exactly on firm ground.

That's a rather interesting argument. By a strict reading, the Palestinians probably would not be a unique "nation" since they are ethnically, religiously, and culturally pretty much identical with Jordanians, Syrians, and Lebanese Arabs - but have developed something of a difference due to their use as pawns in the Arab-Israeli conflict. I don't know that the difference is really enough to classify them as a unique nation, though. One might make the same arguments about Californians vs. Alabamans, but pretty much nobody does. How long a unique shared history is required to create peoplehood?

A more interesting question, though, might be: what gives an identified population of any kind the right to form a state? Surely, by any reasonably standard, the Kurds would qualify - they are clearly linguistically, culturally, and historically different from their neighbors, and have been seen as different for many centuries. So why aren't people agitating for a free Kurdistan? What makes the Palestinians alone so dear to people's hearts?

Posted by Russ | June 28, 2007 8:21 PM

When I was young, I recall a Hebrew School teacher speaking of "15 Arab countries and only one Israel" (I think this is an underestimate of the number of Arab countries) the better to make the fate of the Palestinians a trivial matter.

As a certain linguistics professor once said to me, if someone is such a racist that they can't distinguish between a Jordanian, a Syrian, a Yemenite or any other, then there's nothing that can be said of value to the,.

Posted by Freddie | June 28, 2007 8:25 PM

And, let me add, the notion that there was no meaningful Palestinian community in the region in 1947 is an idea that has been abandoned by even conservative Israeli scholars. Benny Morris is an strident Zionist, and he has said that the idea that there was not a Palestinian community is simply historically frivolous.

Posted by Freddie | June 28, 2007 8:29 PM

>>A more interesting question, though, might be: what gives an identified population of any kind the right to form a state? Surely, by any reasonably standard, the Kurds would qualify - they are clearly linguistically, culturally, and historically different from their neighbors, and have been seen as different for many centuries. So why aren't people agitating for a free Kurdistan? What makes the Palestinians alone so dear to people's hearts?

Because, Dear Russ, Israel is an American ally. People who don't like the U.S. (b/c they don't like capitalism or their parents or whatever) have decided that the Palestinians are the flavor of the month as a result. The enemy of my enemy's friend etc. Relatedly, the only Kurds that win sympathy on the left are the ones in Turkey, another American ally. It is not really about Israel, Palestinians or Kurds for these people, it's about their Oedipal issues with Uncle Sam.

Conversely, on the right support for Israel is a fairly recent thing. When Israel was viewed as the instantiation of a traditional out-group in Western society, the right had no time for it, not b/c of sympathy for Palestinians, but just out of distaste for the Jews. Now that Muslims are on the radar screen of the right (after a long absence from roughly the defeat of the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683 to the 1973 Oil Embargo) they increasingly view Israelis as honorary white people.

In all cases it is mostly people working out their own issues and picking a side in a conflict they know little about in order to make themselves feel more righteous from a safe distance.

Posted by Peggy Sawyer | June 28, 2007 8:39 PM

Actally there is a significant difference between Pakistan and Palestine.

The notion of Pakistan (and Pakistanis) did not exist before the British decided to fan the divisions between Hindus and Muslims by encouraging the leaders like Mohammed Jinnah to seek a separate nation for the Muslims in the Raj.

As far as I know, the idea of Palestine has been around longer than a hundred years.

Posted by gregor | June 28, 2007 9:19 PM

First, Peggy Sawyer and others seem to be confusing the right to a national state with the more basic rights, like a right to property, etc, that have been denied the Palestinians. Sympathy for the Palestinian cause does not mean creating a Palestinian state to encompass all of the territory of present-day Israel. It means lamenting the fact that a large community of people -- Palestinians, let's call them, a people with a local identity, with or without a homegrown national ideology -- were not so long ago ousted from their land and forced to live under either a dehumanizing apartheid or in a stateless diaspora. It is of secondary importance whether their culture is the same as that of Syrians or Jordanians -- which, not too bee too much of a marm, it is is not, it is (was) a more urban culture than that of those who lived east of the Jordan river, it is less Shi'i influenced than those who live to the north, just to begin.

And it's obvious that the Kurds have not been subjected to the same degree of marginalization as have the Palestinians.

The issue of whether or not there was Palestinian nationalism at a certain point in history is irrelevant. Nationhood for Palestine is not at the heart of the Palestinian grievance. Deprivation is. We're not talking about "the idea of Palestine", but about Palestine.

Oh, and to go on a bit of a tangent: if we want to talk about nationhood, why then are the Uyghurs not a nation just as are the Chinese? Are Persians a nation? If they are, how much of Afghanistan and Tajikistan should be politically united with Iran? Do the Turks get Azerbaijan? Do the Basques count as Spanish? What about Nepal, created at the same time as Pakistan for even more dubious reasons? One state with an religiously-motivated raison d'etre, Israel, is a real country while another with a very similar motivation, Pakistan -- a safe haven for the Muslims of the subcontinent -- is not a real country. Ridiculous. It is brilliantly clear that Peretz is completely motivated by a hatred of Arabs and Islam, more even than by support of Israel. The more detached he gets from historical facts, the more transparent his motivations become.

Posted by CG | June 28, 2007 9:33 PM

When Herzl wrote this in 1896, what native population could he have been talking about?
Juan Peron?

"Here two territories come under consideration, Palestine and Argentine. In both countries important experiments in colonization have been made, though on the mistaken principle of a gradual infiltration of Jews. An infiltration is bound to end badly. It continues till the inevitable moment when the native population feels itself threatened, and forces the Government to stop a further influx of Jews. Immigration is consequently futile unless we have the sovereign right to continue such immigration."

What to do with that native population? Any thoughts?

Posted by The Other Alan | June 28, 2007 9:34 PM

Mark Twain was intentionally satirizing 19th century travel writing and views of the Holy Land. Innocents Abroad was, in fact, catergorized as a novel in my high school English course. So his evidence is a little dubious, even without contrary citations.

But there was no separate Palestinian national identity until the 20th century. Until then, the local Arab population was seen almost universally as simply a subset of Syria. So was Lebanon, until the middle of the 19th century when the French intervened on behalf of the local Christian population.

But this argument has definite limits. After all, until approximately 1776 there was no separate American identity. They were simply a subset of the United Kingdom.

Posted by kishnevi | June 28, 2007 9:58 PM

"And it's obvious that the Kurds have not been subjected to the same degree of marginalization as have the Palestinians."

Are you serious? I guess marginalization doesn't include being gased by the tens of thousands?

Posted by Dave | June 28, 2007 10:12 PM

It's sad that we're still hearing the argument that "there are no Palestinians" to this day. MY is right: this argument has little to do with any sincere consideration of history and reality and more to do with the political goals of those invoking it. As the plight of the Palestinians worsens and the prospects of statehood recede, we can sadly expect to hear this deception repeated more often as justification.

Posted by Khaled | June 28, 2007 10:44 PM

In 1931, there were 730,000 Arabs in all of British mandatory Palestine. By 1948, there were approximately 1.35 million Arabs in mandatory Palestine – an increase of over 500,000. The economic growth fostered by Jewish immigration and British rule made Palestine a location for in-migration of Arabs from surrounding countries.

These immigrant Arabs were not in any sense 'Palestinians,' which not a nationality that existed. In fact, prior to the founding of Israel a "Palestinian" was a Jew living in Palestine. Actually, the British called all inhabitants of the mandate area "Palestinians," but the Arab inhabitants rejected the name, seeing it as an attempt by the British to impose a colonial identity on them that they rejected. Most Arab residents of the mandate territory considered themselves Syrians and supported the idea of an independent Greater Syria that would unite much of the Arab territories that had been governed by the Ottomans and would reach from the Mediterranean to Persia.

The Israeli Jewish generation that founded the State of Israel and has now passed away always found the idea of Palestinian nationality somewhat ridiculous. After all, as young adults they themselves had been Palestinians, while the Arabs had rejected the idea of an independent Palestine in favor of union with Syria. They felt that the whole idea of the Palestinian nationalism, as represented by the PLO, was a put-up job, a front for the Arab countries that were bent on conquest of Israel.

Posted by Bloix | June 28, 2007 11:01 PM

The Israeli Jewish generation that founded the State of Israel and has now passed away always found the idea of Palestinian nationality somewhat ridiculous. After all, as young adults they themselves had been Palestinians, while the Arabs had rejected the idea of an independent Palestine in favor of union with Syria.

Jesus Christ, you people are idiots. Palestinian nationalism was well-established by the 1920s and 30s; this was a movement that favored independence, and petitioned the British mandatory power for such repeatedly throughout the period of the mandate. Read a goddamn book before you jerk off about a subject you clearly know nothing about.

Posted by Christmas | June 29, 2007 12:04 AM

In 1931, there were 730,000 Arabs in all of British mandatory Palestine. By 1948, there were approximately 1.35 million Arabs in mandatory Palestine

You are dealing with some extremely problematic data, if you just pulled this innocently out of some source and don't understand why it's controverial that's great. If not and you want to stick up for the validity of either of those numbers you need to do so more explicity.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 29, 2007 12:42 AM

"So why aren't people agitating for a free Kurdistan?"

Kurds in Iraq and Turkey would probably like a word with you.

People really have to ask themselves what point they are trying to make by denying that their is a Palestinian nation. On the philosophical level, all of these arguments here could be used against Israel to de-legitimize it. The experience of being Jewish in lands as diverse as Russia, Ethiopia, the UK, Germany, China, India, Iran, Egypt, Morocco, etc. have all been different and saw the cultivation of local identities of being Jewish and being Jewish in a local context. Zionism, like Palestinian nationalism today, is as much located in the actual localities we call Israel and the Palestinian Territories today as it is in the diaspora. After all, Zionism started in Europe as a way to escape European persecution, not in Tel Aviv. I could go on, but I think the point is clear. If one tries to use the above reasons to deny the Palestinians a right to be a nation, one must say the same for the Israeli, but this doesn't change the fact that 1) Israel actually exists 2) Israel has existed for generations 3) the people who live in Israel and have Israeli citizenship considers themselves an Israeli nation. Nationhood is subjective and is defined as existing or not existing by those who believe in it. Is Panama not a real nation? Eritrea? East Timor? If Scotland declares independence, will that be illegitimate?

Posted by Reality Man | June 29, 2007 1:21 AM

I think he might mean Kashmir when he talks about "not a country"?

Posted by dsquared | June 29, 2007 3:23 AM

People really have to ask themselves what point they are trying to make by denying that their is a Palestinian nation.

"is" is a strawman.

Palestinianism is a contruct of the Arab failures of 1948 and 1967.

It is particularly telling that the inhabitants of the West Bank weren't agitating against Jordanian occupation after 1949.

Posted by Ron | June 29, 2007 4:02 AM

Posted by CG | June 28, 2007 5:48 PM:"Much of this stems from the age-old conception of Arabic as a single monolithic language, when it is not"

Yes but don't tell that to the Arabs as they will denounce you for Imperialism. Arab nationalism is hegemonic: there are no competing sub-nationalisms of importance except Palestine (and to a lesser extent, Egypt). There is no movement anywhere in the Arab world to dignify the local languages. Arabs insist that colonialism split the one Arab nation and that they will be reunited one day. Saddam even used to call Iraq the Iraq section of the Arab nation officially.

Posted by CG | June 28, 2007 5:48 PM:"If the conception of the "Arabic-speaking world" had been properly nuanced from the outset, "15 Arab countries and one Israel" would have been a nonsensical thing to say in the first place."

I don't see it as nonsensical. If the world gain an independent Palestine, it would be one more Arab dictatorship richer. If the world lost Israel it would be one vibrant, productive, rich democracy less. You can say one is worth a lot more than the other - and that the refusal to create one is less of a cost than the abolition of the other - without saying that one is worthless.

Besides, I'd like to see anyone tell a Syrian from a Jordanian from a Palestinian. Arafat spoke Egyptian by preference all his life.

Posted by Ginger Yellow | June 28, 2007 7:36 PM:"You can't possibly claim that Pakistan is not a nation without making the same claim about India. The Punjab reaches into both countries, after all. There's more cultural, religious and ethnic diversity in India than in Pakistan, and the consensus that holds the nation together is far more fragile."

Every single one of Pakistan's communities except Punjab has tried to break away at some point. Every single one has been repressed with violence. You cannot make that claim about India. The Sikhs did try and so do the Nagas and the Assamese in general, but by and large India does not suffer from separatist violence. It has more diversity but it also has more unity. The consensus is remarkably robust and notice that Pakistan's natural state is military dictatorship while India remains a democracy. It is a nation.

Posted by Freddie | June 28, 2007 8:25 PM:"As a certain linguistics professor once said to me, if someone is such a racist that they can't distinguish between a Jordanian, a Syrian, a Yemenite or any other, then there's nothing that can be said of value to the,."

Sounds like an excellent reason to ignore Linguistics Professors. I'd love to hear about the differences between the Arabic spoken in Jordan and that spoken in Syria. Really I would. How, by the way, is it racist to fail a linguistics test? Notice that all the modern political thought in the Arab world explicitly denies precisely this distinction. The Arab nationalists do so, the Islamists do so. For all of them (or at least all of any importance), the Arab people is one. They all ought to speak Modern Standard Arabic which is uniform more or less. There are no distinctions of importance between Jordanians and Yemenis and what does exist is the poisonous fruit of colonialism. Are they too racists?

Posted by HeiGou | June 29, 2007 4:15 AM

don't tell that to the Arabs as they will denounce you for Imperialism

Question-beg much? Someone starts out by making a point that Arabs aren't a single, monolithic, undifferentiated ethnic group, and you respond by saying, "yeah, but look at all those Arabs!"

Arab nationalism is hegemonic: there are no competing sub-nationalisms of importance except Palestine (and to a lesser extent, Egypt)

What you're describing here is Pan-Arabism, which as an active ideology more or less died with Nasser. Distinct nationalist movements have existed in Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Yemen, just to name a few, for decades.

I'd like to see anyone tell a Syrian from a Jordanian from a Palestinian.

I'm guessing that Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians are able to tell the difference, even if all the darkies look the same to you.

Posted by Christmas. | June 29, 2007 7:55 AM

Posted by Christmas. | June 29, 2007 7:55 AM:"Someone starts out by making a point that Arabs aren't a single, monolithic, undifferentiated ethnic group, and you respond by saying, "yeah, but look at all those Arabs!""

Actually I don't. I point out that the dominant forms of political discourse in the Arab world all deny that differentiation - at least in an ideal world. That is not to deny that they are very different indeed. Which suggests to me that perhaps now would be an excellent time to ask you to go back to what I said and find what you think I said that would come close to supporting your claims about what I said.

Posted by Christmas. | June 29, 2007 7:55 AM:"What you're describing here is Pan-Arabism, which as an active ideology more or less died with Nasser."

This will come as news to the Baath Parties and the Islamists. What I am describing is the reality of the situation. I have no idea what you are descrbibing.

Posted by Christmas. | June 29, 2007 7:55 AM:"Distinct nationalist movements have existed in Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Yemen, just to name a few, for decades."

To some extent. There is a mainly Christian nationalist movement in Lebanon. It also has Syrian nationalist parties (which usually claim the entire "greater Syria" including Jordan and Palestine). But these are marginal. Syria has the Ba'ath Party which is pan-Arab in theory. Jordan's biggest opposition party last I checked was the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Which is pan-Islamic. Palestine is the exception as I said. None of which comes close to denying, or even challenging, my main point which is simply true.

Posted by Christmas. | June 29, 2007 7:55 AM :"I'm guessing that Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians are able to tell the difference, even if all the darkies look the same to you."

I think you'd guess wrong. Druze in Israel, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon are close enough that Israel has to be careful or Druze in Israel will protest about the treatment of their cousins over the border. There are a number of Parties that claim that Jordanian and Palestinian nationalities do not exist (the PPS for instance) and claim a common nationality. Half the Jordanian population *is* Palestinian. One of their biggest parties is an offshoot of the DFLP. So like I said, it is very difficult to tell them apart and I'd like to see someone who is able to do so. It is not a matter of looks - although I admire a bile filled post when I see it - it is a matter of culture and language.

Posted by HeiGou | June 29, 2007 8:10 AM

It's hard to know what point Peretz was making in that single paragraph. If he was saying that we should worry about Pakistan breaking up and their nukes falling into the hands of crazies, that seems pretty reasonable. Pakistan has a lot of ethnic strife and a weak central government that doesn't seem to have much control over large parts of the country.

Fun fact: the name Pakistan is an acronym invented in the 1930s by nationalist college students. It's a list of the various ethnic groups that live in the region.

Posted by Ragout | June 29, 2007 9:17 AM

"A more interesting question, though, might be: what gives an identified population of any kind the right to form a state?"

Might.

There are no sovereign powers over states. If your state can't maintain that as a truism, then you are not a state. The French nation has no right to be a state. The French have the ability to be a state.

How one goes about attaining sovereignty can vary. I said, essentially, might makes right, but that is a simplification. The "might" needed can come from many sources. It could be guys with guns successfully establishing their sovereignty, or it could be guys with arguments successfully convincing other states to supply the might needed to establish sovereignty. When the USSR and USA recognized Israel, it was a fait accompli.

Look at Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia anf Bosnia. All were established with varying amounts of force. Slovakia simply stated its aims, and the Czechs saw no benefit to stopping them. Slovenia declared its independence, and though Yugoslavia would have liked to stop them, it couldn't. Croatia had to fight for its independence. Bosnia had to both fight and seek intercession for its independence. None of these nations had a right to be a state. They had the ability.

At no point in becoming a state are any rights involved. Once you attain sovereignty, you can claim all the rights you want. From that point, you can usually rely on the common cause of existing states to respect your rights as a state.

Posted by Njorl | June 29, 2007 11:43 AM

Posted by HeiGou | June 29, 2007 8:10 AM (in response to Christmas)

AM :"I'm guessing that Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians are able to tell the difference, even if all the darkies look the same to you."

I think you'd guess wrong. Druze in Israel, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon are close enough that Israel has to be careful or Druze in Israel will protest about the treatment of their cousins over the border. There are a number of Parties that claim that Jordanian and Palestinian nationalities do not exist (the PPS for instance) and claim a common nationality. Half the Jordanian population *is* Palestinian. One of their biggest parties is an offshoot of the DFLP. So like I said, it is very difficult to tell them apart and I'd like to see someone who is able to do so. It is not a matter of looks - although I admire a bile filled post when I see it - it is a matter of culture and language.

Oh boy-I don't even know where to begin, but I'm going to try anyway (What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment.) Your opinions lean very heavily towards a Zionist and/or Isreali viewpoint:

**If you are even remotely familiar with the Palestinian/Isreali issue, you would've been smart enough NOT to lead off with the Druze because of the controversy that surrounds them amongst the Arab population in the region.

**The number of political parties and/or groups that argue Jordanians & Palestinians are one and the same are limited, and so this is a strawman (that appeals to you because of your viewpoint). Exceptions, my dear, are not the rule. Rinse and Repeat. Rinse and Repeat.

**Did you ever ask yourself just why exactly *is* half the population of Jordan Palestinian? Under what circumstances? Hint: 1948 & 1967.

**As for "telling them apart", I'm astounded that you could even bring this up as a point of contention. In terms of language, your reasoning is asinine. Any 2nd or 3rd generation resident of any country (regardless of their parents ethinicity/ethnic identity) will take on the dialect/mannerisms of the prevailing group. So in other words, 2nd/3rd generation Hispanic-Americans today are not going to roll their R's like their parents did and will sound "American" (whatever that means). The same thing happened to the diaspora Palestinians living today in Jordan. Furthermore, you forget how important "Asl" (heritage/ethnicity) is in the Arabic culture. For better or for worse, you could be 7th generation Syrian in Jordan, and you will still state "We were originally from Syria 7 generations ago, but we've been in Jordan ever since."

In so far as language and culture, I dare say you have never sat with people from present day Jordan, Syria and Palestine together. Even when speaking proper Arabic (fus7a), if you are of arabic heritage and/or study the culture/language/etc, you would be able to discern between the three as easily as you would be able to admire a "bile bile filled post" when you see it.

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM

Posted by HeiGou | June 29, 2007 8:10 AM (in response to Christmas)

AM :"I'm guessing that Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians are able to tell the difference, even if all the darkies look the same to you."

I think you'd guess wrong. Druze in Israel, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon are close enough that Israel has to be careful or Druze in Israel will protest about the treatment of their cousins over the border. There are a number of Parties that claim that Jordanian and Palestinian nationalities do not exist (the PPS for instance) and claim a common nationality. Half the Jordanian population *is* Palestinian. One of their biggest parties is an offshoot of the DFLP. So like I said, it is very difficult to tell them apart and I'd like to see someone who is able to do so. It is not a matter of looks - although I admire a bile filled post when I see it - it is a matter of culture and language.

Oh boy-I don't even know where to begin, but I'm going to try anyway (What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment.) Your opinions lean very heavily towards a Zionist and/or Isreali viewpoint:

**If you are even remotely familiar with the Palestinian/Isreali issue, you would've been smart enough NOT to lead off with the Druze example because of the controversy of that surrounds them amongst the Arab population in the region.

**The number of political parties and/or groups that argue Jordanian's & Palestinians are one and the same are limited, and so this is a strawman (that appeals to you because of your viewpoint). Exceptions, my dear, are not the rule. Rinse and Repeat. Rinse and Repeat.

**Did you ever ask yourself just why exactly *is* half the population of Jordan Palestinian? Under what circumstances? Hint: 1948 & 1967.

**As for "telling them apart", I'm astounded that you could even bring this up as a point of contention. In terms of language, your reasoning is asinine. Any 2nd or 3rd generation resident of any country (regardless of their parents ethinicity/ethnic identity) will take on the dialect/mannerisms of the prevailing group. So in other words, 2nd/3rd generation Hispanic-Americans today are not going to roll their R's like their parents did and will sound "American" (whatever that means). The same thing happened to the diaspora Palestinians living today in Jordan. Furthermore, you forget how important "Asl" (heritage/ethnicity) is in the Arabic culture. For better or for worse, you could be 7th generation Syrian in Jordan, and you will still state "We were originally from Syria 7 generations ago, but we've been in Jordan ever since."

In so far as language and culture, I dare say you have never sat with people from present day Jordan, Syria and Palestine together. Even when speaking proper Arabic (fus7a), if you are worth your salt as a person of arabic heritage and/or study the culture/language/etc, you would be able to discern between the three as easily as you would be able to "admire a bile filled post" when you see it.

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:06 PM

Hot damn- I hit escape as I posted and now there's a double-post... *Uff*

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:08 PM

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM:"Your opinions lean very heavily towards a Zionist and/or Isreali viewpoint:"

The racism implicit in that sentence is pathetic. Of course Je^H^HZionists are all liars aren't they?

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM:"If you are even remotely familiar with the Palestinian/Isreali issue, you would've been smart enough NOT to lead off with the Druze because of the controversy that surrounds them amongst the Arab population in the region."

Israeli. And the controversy is? You mean the Islamists hate them as well? I fail to see why that is not a very good reason to lead with them. Some are Syrians and Jordanians and Lebanese and Israeli.

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM:"The number of political parties and/or groups that argue Jordanians & Palestinians are one and the same are limited, and so this is a strawman (that appeals to you because of your viewpoint)."

It is not a straw man. They exist. This proves that some Syrians etc etc deny the separate existence of these nationalities which in turn proves that this is not a Zionist conspiracy or whatever.

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM:"Did you ever ask yourself just why exactly *is* half the population of Jordan Palestinian? Under what circumstances? Hint: 1948 & 1967."

Now that is a straw man. It is irrelevant. Moreover as you point out below, second and third generations are assimilated.

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM :"As for "telling them apart", I'm astounded that you could even bring this up as a point of contention. In terms of language, your reasoning is asinine. Any 2nd or 3rd generation resident of any country (regardless of their parents ethinicity/ethnic identity) will take on the dialect/mannerisms of the prevailing group."

Yes that would be interesting if it had anything to do with anything I said whatsoever. First generation Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians are barely distinguishable by dialect or folk customs and I'd like to see the expert that can reliable tell them apart.

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM:"Furthermore, you forget how important "Asl" (heritage/ethnicity) is in the Arabic culture."

Yeah sure - ironic if you think who the King is, but of course utterly irrelevant to anything I have said.

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM:"Even when speaking proper Arabic (fus7a), if you are of arabic heritage and/or study the culture/language/etc, you would be able to discern between the three as easily as you would be able to admire a "bile bile filled post" when you see it."

As I said, I'd love to meet an expert who can reliably tell between them. Let me know when you find one.

Posted by HeiGou | June 29, 2007 12:31 PM

If you've ever met a native Arab speaker, there is your expert go ask them. Not that it matters one bit. There were native Palestinian Jews who wound up in refugee camps because they didn't want to leave their community. There were also immigrant Jews that married Arabs and wound up in the same situation, and they would all identify as Palestinian.

I'm really not sure why this tangent is significant anyway, the issue is about ethnically cleansing a population and taking everything they own.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 29, 2007 12:54 PM

If you've ever met a native Arab speaker, there is your expert go ask them. Not that it matters one bit. There were native Palestinian Jews who wound up in refugee camps because they didn't want to leave their community. There were also immigrant Jews that married Arabs and wound up in the same situation, and they would all identify as Palestinian.

I'm really not sure why this tangent is significant anyway, the issue is about ethnically cleansing a population and taking everything they own.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 29, 2007 12:54 PM

It's tiresome to refute SLC's fantasies, but I'll try yet again.

His his Memoirs to the Peace Conference, British Prime Minster David Lloyd George laid out the British reasons behind the creation of Israel.

Within that discussion, he included comments by Edwin Montagu aka Lord Curzon -- a prominent British JEWISH leader --describing the situation within Palestine circa 1917. Here are two excerpts:
----------
"Palestine, on the other hand, before the war contained a population the highest estimate of which was between 600,000 and 700,000 persons, of which less than one-quarter were Jews and the remainder (except for small Christian communities or settlements) Moslems. The Jews were to a large extent congregated in the few towns, e.g., in Jerusalem, where, out of a total population of 80,000, 55,000 were Jews - for the most part living on alms or charity, or old men come to end their days in the Holy City. The Jewish colonies, about which so much has been said, contained a population of only 11,000. The remainder of the Jews were in the other towns and parts of the country. ..."
-------

"There arises the further question, what is to become of the people of this country, assuming the Turk to be expelled, and the inhabitants not to have been exterminated by the War? There are over half a million of these, Syrian Arabs - a mixed community with Arab, Hebrew, Canaanite, Greek, Egyptian, and possibly Crusaders' blood.

They and their forefathers have occupied the country for the best part of 1500 years. They own the soil, which belongs either to individual landowners or to village communities. They profess the Mohammedan faith. They will not be content either to be expropriated for Jewish immigrants, or to act merely as hewers of wood and drawers of water to the latter.

Further, there are other settlers who will have to be reckoned with. There are 100,000 Christians, who will not wish to be disturbed; east of the Jordan are large colonies of Circassian Mohammedans, firmly established; there are also settlements of Druses and Moslems from Algeria, Bulgaria, and Egypt.

No doubt a prodigal expenditure of wealth will secure the expropriation of some of these. But when we reflect that the existing Jewish colonies, in the most favoured spots, after a prodigious outlay, extending over many years, have only in a few cases as yet become self-supporting, it is clear that a long vista of anxiety, vicissitude, and expense lies before those who desire to rebuild the national home.

I spoke earlier of the dreams of those who foresee a Jewish State, with possibly a Jewish capital at Jerusalem. Such a dream is rendered wholly incapable of realisation by the conditions of Jerusalem itself. It is a city in which too many peoples and too many religions have a passionate and permanent interest to render any such solution even dimly possible. The Protestant communities are vitally interested in

{p. 731} the churches and in the country as the scenes of the most sacred events in history. The Roman Catholics collect annually large sums and maintain extensive establishments at Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The Greek Orthodox Church regards the Holy Places with an almost frenzied reverence. Great pilgrimages come annually from the Slav countres and Russia. I recall a fourishing Russian monastery on Mount Tabor. The Hellenic clergy have large properties in the country.

Finally, next to Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem is the most sacred city of the Mohammedan faith. The Mosque of Omar, {ed. - the Dome of the Rock} on the site of the Temple of Solomon, is one of the most hallowed of the shrines of Islam. It contains the great rock or stone, from which Mohammed ascended on the back of his miraculous steed to Heaven, and which is regarded with so much awe in the Moslem world that when, a few years ago, an Englishman was alleged to have been digging under it, the uproar spread throughout the Moslem world. It is impossible to contemplate any future in which the Mohammedans should be excluded from Jerusalem. Hebron is a site scarcely less sacred to Islam. It is no doubt from a full consciousness of these facts that the wisest of the Zionists forgo any claim to the recovery of Jerusalem as the centre and capital of a revived Jewish State, and hope only that it may remain as a sort of enclave in international, if not in British, hands. "
REf: http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/l-george.html

NOTE: I have compared the several pages of the above online transcript against the hardcopy of Lloyd George's Memoirs -- it is a correct copy.

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:13 PM

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 29, 2007 12:54 PM:"If you've ever met a native Arab speaker, there is your expert go ask them. Not that it matters one bit."

Been there, done that. There are differences *between* regions in Syria and even Palestine - between rural and urban, bedouin and peasant, Gazan and the rest - but to all intents and purposes these make up one dialect of Arabic. If things had worked out different I have no doubt that Syria could easily have absorbed Jordan and Palestine without anyone noticing.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 29, 2007 12:54 PM:"There were native Palestinian Jews who wound up in refugee camps because they didn't want to leave their community."

Then surely they would have remained in their communities and not those refugee camps. Let me doubt what looks like a myth anyway - can you give me the name and address of one not married to an Arab?

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 29, 2007 12:54 PM:"the issue is about ethnically cleansing a population and taking everything they own."

Indeed. And we don't want to do that - so Israel needs to remain strong and secure. Oh no, wait, you're talking about the ethnic cleansing that took place 50 years ago? OK. How, as a matter of interest, does a new act of ethnic cleansing make up for one that took place before the parents of the majority of Palestinians were even born?

Posted by HeiGou | June 29, 2007 1:17 PM

Re Lord Curzon's comments about the ancestry of the Palestinians, it would be interesting to do a DNA match of Palestinians against the DNA of Jews whose families have long been in the Middle East. I suspect the Zionists are killing close relatives.

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:18 PM

Come to think of it, I recall that Haim Saban's family is from Egypt. In his Haaretz interview, he recalled the prejudice he suffered in Israel from European immigrants over that origin.

So why don't compare Haim Saban's DNA with that of a Hamas terrorist leader along with the DNA of Charles Krauthammer, Richard Perle, and William Kristol. Any bets on where the closest match will be?

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:22 PM

How, as a matter of interest, does a new act of ethnic cleansing make up for one that took place before the parents of the majority of Palestinians were even born?

How about just giving people their bank accounts and houses back? If living with Arabs, and treating them as equal human beings is such a hardship then don't live in the Middle East.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 29, 2007 1:29 PM

Re Peggy Sawyer's comment "So why aren't people agitating for a free Kurdistan? What makes the Palestinians alone so dear to people's hearts?

Because, Dear Russ, Israel is an American ally. People who don't like the U.S. (b/c they don't like capitalism or their parents or whatever) have decided that the Palestinians are the flavor of the month as a result"
---------
This, of course, is deceitful bullshit.

I question US policy toward the Israel-Palestinian issue because that conflict was one of the motivations for the Sept 11 attack -- a fact that supporters of the Israel Lobby have concealed.

I question it because the Israel Lobby has dragged the USA into an UNNECESSARY WAR with 1 billion Muslims -- an unnecessary conflict in which we have lost 6000 dead, probably over 10,000 crippled for life,
and these loss of $2 TRILLION. $2 TRILLION that we could have used to alleviate American poverty, educate our children, and provide healthcare.

For NO GOOD REASON. Anyone who doesn't question why this is happening is not loyal to the American people.

To dismiss Peggy's metaphor, the Last time I checked, the Kurdish Lobby had not inflicted such damage on America.

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:31 PM

Oy!

Posted by The Other Alan | June 29, 2007 2:34 PM

I'm really not sure why this tangent is significant anyway, the issue is about ethnically cleansing a population and taking everything they own.

I had no idea we were discussing American history.

Posted by David | June 29, 2007 3:53 PM

Yeah, genocide does indeed solve a bunch of post-colonial problems.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 29, 2007 4:09 PM

There are over 300 reservations in this country.

We can start by giving these people their land back...

Posted by David | June 29, 2007 5:10 PM

We can start by giving these people their land back...

OK.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 29, 2007 5:36 PM

Native Americans have the right of return, actually. I'm always amazed at Israel-defenders bringing up the American example--in no way does it help their case to show that America also engaged in ethnic cleansing.

Posted by Anon | June 29, 2007 6:09 PM

Every place in the world has seen forced population transfers at some point or other in their history.

The are no original inhabitants anywhere.

Posted by Picket | June 29, 2007 6:54 PM

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 29, 2007 1:29 PM:"How about just giving people their bank accounts and houses back? If living with Arabs, and treating them as equal human beings is such a hardship then don't live in the Middle East."

Bank accounts? What bank accounts? You mean the Jews who were driven from the Middle East to seek shelter in Israel do you? Well I am all for them being given back their bank accounts and homes when the Palestinians get theirs. Why do you think any real numbers of Palestinians in 1948 had any bank accounts? In the meantime they have got billions of dollars in aid via the UN. More than enough to be considered compensation. The Palestinian refugees are one of the best educated Arab communities in the world.

As for living with Arabs, a fifth of the Israeli population are Palestinians. I should not have to point out they are treated equally - and vastly better than any other minority in the Middle East - and most Israelis have few problems living with them. Where in the Middle East is that true for Jews?

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:31 PM:"I question US policy toward the Israel-Palestinian issue because that conflict was one of the motivations for the Sept 11 attack -- a fact that supporters of the Israel Lobby have concealed."

Probably because it is not true. Bin Laden did not cite Israel as a reason until late. Even if it was, so what? Their hatred is no reason to change our policies - you assume their hatred of Israel is rational. Why?

How exactly has anyone concealed anything?

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:31 PM:"I question it because the Israel Lobby has dragged the USA into an UNNECESSARY WAR with 1 billion Muslims"

Last I checked 1. Bush went to war, not the Israel Lobby, 2. we are not at war with 1 billion Muslims (although they may be at war with us or at least some part of them) and 3. it was not unnecessary.

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:31 PM:"Anyone who doesn't question why this is happening is not loyal to the American people."

You mean they are really in the pay of the vast Jewish conspiracy?

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:31 PM:"the Last time I checked, the Kurdish Lobby had not inflicted such damage on America."

Which is probably why the Left does not support them.

Posted by HeiGou | June 30, 2007 5:35 AM

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM:"Your opinions lean very heavily towards a Zionist and/or Isreali viewpoint:"

Posted by HeiGou | June 29, 2007 12:31 PM
The racism implicit in that sentence is pathetic. Of course Je^H^HZionists are all liars aren't they?

---------------------------Ummm...noooo- I'm saying you're viewpoint is one dimmensional, and you need to be able to see more than just one perspective (namely that of a Zionist/Israeli/Conservative Fundie/etc.) Projection does not become you-really...----------------------------------------------

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM:"If you are even remotely familiar with the Palestinian/Isreali issue, you would've been smart enough NOT to lead off with the Druze because of the controversy that surrounds them amongst the Arab population in the region."

Posted by HeiGou | June 29, 2007 12:31 PM
Israeli. And the controversy is? You mean the Islamists hate them as well? I fail to see why that is not a very good reason to lead with them. Some are Syrians and Jordanians and Lebanese and Israeli.

-------------------Oy... pardon moi for the typo. As for the controversy, it's telling how you jumped to Islamists when in fact, the Druze are not well liked by most Arabs- Christian and Mulsim alike (not that it's right) because they serve in the Israeli Army- unlike their Palestinian counterparts. And if serving in the Army, then they can technically kill the very same "cousins" you purport would rally the Druze masses in protest if treated harshly. This is why the point is moot. Furthermore, if one were to take any one example, how about taking, oh- I don't know, the Palestinians living in Israel proper today as the main example? But alas, that would be too much to ask. Willing them away will not make them *go away*. It hasn't worked for the last 50 years and it won't work in the next 50 either.-------------------------

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM:"The number of political parties and/or groups that argue Jordanians & Palestinians are one and the same are limited, and so this is a strawman (that appeals to you because of your viewpoint)."

Posted by HeiGou | June 29, 2007 12:31 PM
It is not a straw man. They exist. This proves that some Syrians etc etc deny the separate existence of these nationalities which in turn proves that this is not a Zionist conspiracy or whatever.

----------- Good God, man- don't you read? Who said anything about a conspiracy? I'm saying YOUR OPINION LIES WITH A FUNDAMENTALLY SMALL MARGIN OF THE POPULATION and therefore holds less merit because it's a very weak theory/point of view (and rightfully so.)

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM:"Did you ever ask yourself just why exactly *is* half the population of Jordan Palestinian? Under what circumstances? Hint: 1948 & 1967."

Posted by HeiGou | June 29, 2007 12:31 PM
Now that is a straw man. It is irrelevant. Moreover as you point out below, second and third generations are assimilated.

------------ No dear, it's not a straw man. Your contention (and by all means, please don't be shy :: /sarcasm :: and let me know if I'm misunderstanding your argument) is that because half of Jordan is already Palestinian, that all the Palestinians should just move to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, etc and/or have them merge into a greater Jordan/Syria/Lebanon- and you agree with either of these? (Which explains why you're so heavily invested in these views.)------------------------

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM :"As for "telling them apart", I'm astounded that you could even bring this up as a point of contention. In terms of language, your reasoning is asinine. Any 2nd or 3rd generation resident of any country (regardless of their parents ethinicity/ethnic identity) will take on the dialect/mannerisms of the prevailing group."

Posted by HeiGou | June 29, 2007 12:31 PM
Yes that would be interesting if it had anything to do with anything I said whatsoever. First generation Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians are barely distinguishable by dialect or folk customs and I'd like to see the expert that can reliable tell them apart.

-------------------------------I'm not an expert but I am an Arab-American who can easily tell them apart by their customs, by their food, their clothing and by their dialects and sub-dialects as well. 1st Generation are EASILY distinguishible, and I mean EASILY. It's akin to being able to tell a native from Bay Ridge Brooklyn and comparing him to someone from Fargo.

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM:"Furthermore, you forget how important "Asl" (heritage/ethnicity) is in the Arabic culture."

Posted by HeiGou | June 29, 2007 12:31 PM
Yeah sure - ironic if you think who the King is, but of course utterly irrelevant to anything I have said.

------------------------------And why is this ironic and irrelevant? You keep moving the goal posts. Stay still dammit!! And please, do tell, how did they react when he married the Mrs? They went up in arms because she was of Palestinian descent.--------------------------------

Posted by Sylvia | June 29, 2007 12:05 PM:"Even when speaking proper Arabic (fus7a), if you are of arabic heritage and/or study the culture/language/etc, you would be able to discern between the three as easily as you would be able to admire a "bile bile filled post" when you see it."

Posted by HeiGou | June 29, 2007 12:31 PM
As I said, I'd love to meet an expert who can reliably tell between them. Let me know when you find one.

------------------------------ You've found one in me. What prize do I win? I hope it's a car. I could really use one.....--------------------------------------------

Posted by Sylvia | June 30, 2007 6:06 PM