The parallels between Palestine and Kurdistan
Posted on Friday 4 June, 2010
Filed Under International
THERE is a certain irony in hearing the head of the Turkish government condemn acts of state terrorism and rail against breaches of international law.
This is not to argue that Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s characterisation of the storming of Mavi Marmaris is at all inaccurate; the brutality of what happened on Monday is too readily evident to need restatement four days later.
It’s just that the head of a government that is clearly no slouch at the repression of ethnic minorities within its own borders is not best placed to issue such a critique.
Some 40,000 people have died since the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan launched its current insurgency in 1984. Nobody is suggesting that the PKK are choirboys themselves, but the bulk of the bloodshed has been perpetrated by the Turkish state.
The death toll exceeds, many times over, the number of Palestinians that have been killed at the hands of Israel over a comparable period. I believe that particular metric remains in four figures, although I stand to be corrected if any reader has accurate statistics.
Yet the inescapable parallels between Palestine and Kurdistan are stronger than some of those who find in Turkey an ally of convenience this week would probably care to admit.
At the heart of both conflicts is the denial of statehood to a people that aspire towards it, and deserve it on all of the standard criteria typically advanced in such cases.
The best that either has been granted is limited self-administration in a comparatively small part of the territory to they have historically regarded as their possession.
Of the two, it is the Kurdish problem that is by far the most intractable. In fairness to Istanbul, let it be said that Iraq, Iran and Syria are equally complicit in the cruelty.
However, it is Turkey that leads the way, regularly carrying out airstrikes against PKK bases in northern Iraq with apparent impunity. Its likely reaction were anybody to mount an aid convoy to Kurdish fighters in the region is only too easy to guess.
Nothing that is written above should be read as an attempt to exonerate Israel’s hateful and detestable conduct towards Palestinians, which lonh predates even the nakba.
But it is no accident that Turkey and Israel have traditionally been close military allies. Maybe Erdogan and Netanyahu would be better off swapping notes than slagging each other off.
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levi9909. How shall I butt out levi. Where is your documentary evidence for the Zionist programme prior to the Mufti. Why did you call me a Zionist. I am non religious. What is your religious allegiance!
Jimmy Glesga – you and Moddy are cluttering what could be an interesting thread. just quickly now, to answer your points
1 you can butt out by stopping asking silly question and making silly points
2 zionism isn’t a religion. it is the ideology and the project of the World Zionist Organisation (founded as the First Zionist Congress in 1897). Go read about it.
3 Asking the religious allegiance of someone who has only just told you they are an atheist is an exercise in futility as is responding to you but still I did, so be grateful and fuck off now.
Moddy – do you think people don’t notice your little getout, ie “on Dave’s blog”? This suggests to readers (if there are any left) that there are blogs, like say Modernity Blog and Harry’s Place where you have falsely accused people of antisemitism either directly or by innuendo and they’d be right, you have but don’t worry, I’ve focused mostly on what you (and Dave) did actually say here. Certainly I didn’t say that you do your bogus allegations “on Dave’s blog”. I actually said that you have dispensed with the bogus allegation of antisemitism here and have moved on to distracting people from Israel’s standing criminality with your cuttings from the Daily Mail and The Sun about Arab regimes.
Meanwhile, there is the little issue of the fact that the State of Israel’s existence from its foundation to the present (and foreseeable future) is predicated on human rights abuses, the quality of which differ from all other states and are routinely ignored by your anonymous (but not shy) self and sadly by our host, Dave Osler.
I must say that it is a tribute to this blog that Moddy doesn’t hurl his silly “far right” allegations around. At Harry’s Place he could be assured of support from the hosts and the faithful.
So where were we before being so rudely interrupted by me stating facts about the anonymous but “not shy” Moddy without the stipulation that his worst habits are (or used to be) vented on other blogs like his own and Harry’s Place?
Ah yes, Dave has said that there are parallels between Palestine and Kurdistan, the latter vis à vis the Turkish state, the former vis à vis Israel. This has been challenged mainly on the grounds that Turkey is trying to Turkify the Kurdish people whereas Israel is trying to Judaise the land of Palestine and definitely not the people. Dave also asserted that both Kurds and Palestinians are seeking independent statehood as if this applied to all Kurds and all Palestinians. This too has been challenged for being too vague and too generalised. There are many Kurds who do not seek statehood and the meaning of Palestinian statehood is far from a done deal.
What we have here is a post that claims that Israel is just like Turkey in the human rights abuse stakes and we have Moddy chipping in to support the idea by throwing in the fact that not only does Turkey abuse the rights of Kurds but Arab regimes abuse the rights of the Palestinians. The latter claims, Michael Caine style that “not a lot of people know that” in spite of the fact that everyone knows that. And then we have responses that say words to the effect of, “thanks for telling us what we already knew but there are issues around the State of Israel that stand out from your common or garden variety of human rights abuses”. Dave has yet to respond and Moddy has now provided two distractions, one of which admittedly, was my fault.
So hopefully Moddy is happy that I am not accusing him of false allegations of antisemitism “on Dave’s blog” and he might even have finally understood why the case against Israel is one worth specialising in à la South Africa of old. But where is Dave to respond to criticisms of his post? He keeps lumping Israel in with the pariah pack and when he gets tackled about it he does a disappear. Dave ‘Spart? Osler bin Laden more like!
levi9909. Yeah what kind if atheist! That would not go down to well with Palestinian NAZI Hamas would it. Your invitatation to fuck off is declined.
“The main point here with regard to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem is that his existence was completely irrelevant to the implementation of the zionist project in Palestine though the zionists may have had to invent him if he hadn’t existed.”
I am interested in how history of the Middle East is so often mangled, by the British.
You might imagine, if you read British newspapers, that the region didn’t comprise dozens of countries, that it had vast wealth and that wealth was misused by its ruling elites.
Now the amount of coverage that you get in the British media of Middle Eastern countries, outside Israel, is very small, comparative to the 300+ million people that live there and their complex lives.
One consequence of that, is the distortion of history as demonstrated by Mark Elf’s above statement,
What is conveniently left out is that it was the British that “invented” the Grand Mufti and it was them that contrived to get him into that position of power.
The British, with all of their typical colonial arrogance, underestimated him, he used his office to stir up racial hatred and funded attacks on Jews.
In fact, without the British actions in Palestine it might have turned out very differently.
Not that you will hear that from the likes of Mark Elf, as I suspect he knows nothing of the Grand Mufti or the history surrounding his appointment, such is his palpable ignorance.
Again, it was the British that contrived to appoint Mohammad Amin al-Husayni to the position of Grand Mufti, over the heads of better qualified candidates. It was the British that provided him with funds in his position, and it was the British that couldn’t see how he would misuse them and stir up racial hatred in pre-war Palestine.
Mooralityblog:
“Not that you will hear that from the likes of Mark Elf, as I suspect he knows nothing of the Grand Mufti or the history surrounding his appointment, such is his palpable ignorance.”
Well, you would say that, now wouldn’t you, Morality? Of course Mark knows nothing about the Grand Mufti, after all no consistent commentator on the history of modern Israel has ever had to deal with such matters. We are lucky to have you, Morality, apparently.
modernity. The British did not invent the Grand Mufti. The British as normal indulged in such people as long as it was business as usual. The Mufti was not a genocidal maniac because of the Britsh. The Mufti met with Hitler and Mussolini regarding the Jewish question. The latter two had to draw the Mufti’s neck in for a while. The intended genocide had to be kept secret for a while. Well it is only history Mod. We all have our opinion. The Jews seem determined it will not happen again. Well done Jews.
On the contrary, the title of Grand Mufti was INVENTED by the British, specifically, by the High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel.
Mod. Well we can argue whether or not he was invented. But you cannot invent a human they are born. The Mufti was I am sure you will agree of the persuassion that genocide against the Jews was appropriate. You of course LIKE ALL GOOD SOCIAISTS! would be against genocide I suppose.
James Glasgow:
“You of course LIKE ALL GOOD SOCIAISTS! would be against genocide I suppose.”
What is that meant to mean, James?
Moddy – you lying, ducking and diving wanker. Of course I know that it was the Brits that invented the position of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and imposed it and its office holder on the Palestinians. My reference to zionists (having to invent him) was not to the British but to the zionists who went on to found the State of Israel in Palestine and my reference was to them having to invent the Grand Mufti’s stance vis a vis Jews if he had not gone over to the nazis still stands. But lying piece of anonymous shit that you are, you knew that already.
Jimmy Glesga – I’m starting to think you must be a young child. You are even worse than Moddy since Moddy has clearly told you something you didn’t know. Not only that, the Grand Mufti’s incitements against Jews didn’t start until it became clear that the intention of the zionist movement was the establishment of a state for Jews throughout all or most of Palestine. The World Zionist Organisation was founded in 1896 and the Grand Mufti was imposed on the Palestinians in the 1920s. I don’t know if he ever met with Mussolini but he didn’t meet with Hitler until WWII had begun. The main point about him is that nothing he did had any impact on the long-standing intention of the zionist movement to ethnically cleanse Palestine.
Moddy is still avoiding the fact that the State of Israel exists on a basis that is completely different from the basis for the existence of all other states in the middle east and elsewhere. He has persistently accused critics and opponents of the State of Israel, in particular anti-zionists, of antisemitism on his own blog and on Harry’s Place though apparently not on this blog. Since I didn’t say he has done it on this blog he has been even more flagrantly dishonest than I have suggested in the past.
I mention this now because, a) he has been so thoroughly dishonest to make out that his refraining from that allegation on this blog means that he never does it when he does and b) because this idea, contained in the post by Dave Osler, that there are other extant situations that bear direct comparison to the situation in Palestine contributes to that false allegation of antisemitism that the likes of Moddy so often resort to.
So the repetition of the lie “anti-zionism is antisemitism” becomes reworded as “Israel is being unjustly singled out” and the old wording “anti-zionism is antisemitism” becomes implied or taken as read instead of being restated over and over.
Now Moddy, we are all ignorant of many things but you are deliberately dishonest. We have you and Jimmy Glesga cluttering up what could be a useful thread in disentangling Israel from the human rights abusing crowd. Glesga is making up silly facts and you seem more intent on talking about your anonymous (but not shy) self and others than engaging with the subject of the post that you have tried to take attention away from by telling people what you must surely know most people already know. In fairness, Glesga needed telling about the Grand Mufti, not that it has any relevance to the zionist project of colonial settlement, ethnic cleansing and racist laws, but no one needs telling that there are nasty regimes in the middle east. What you and Dave Osler have both avoided here, and not for the first time in either case, is the quality of zionist oppression of the Palestinians. You also ignore the fact that for all the State of Israel’s dependence on the goodwill of the west it seems to enjoy more independence in the sense of more freedom of action. For instance it was reported recently that Saudi Arabia allow Israel to use its airspace to attack Iran. Is that Saudi exercising a free choice? I doubt it. But Israel has wanted to attack Iran more than America has wanted it to. But let’s talk about the Grand Mufti, shall we?
Now please, Moddy, turn your attention to the relevant things. Stop ducking, diving and lying and focus on the question of the zionist conquest and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Thank you
Levi 9909: “the zionists who went on to found the State of Israel in Palestine and my reference was to them having to invent the Grand Mufti’s stance vis a vis Jews if he had not gone over to the nazis still stands.”
Do you mean that the “zionists” (ie Jewish refugees who fled to Palestine and founded a homeland) *invented* the idea that the Grand Mufti supported the Nazis and, indeed, that he tried to raise a Muslim regiment of the SS? All that is a “zionist” “invention”, is it? These “zionists” really are incredibly cunning aren’t they? Even Hitler was really a “zionist” dupe, you know: he gave them just the excuse they needed to found their own state!
Seems that people are reading about the Mufti. Good. The man was a genocidal Islamic fundamentalist bastard. He was very popular with the majority of his fellow muslims. Egypt gave the criminal asylum. Britain stayed quite because of its interests and not wanting to upset muslims. Says it all. levvi9909. You do enjoy indulging in name calling you blawhard.
levi9909. He met with Hitler, Mussolini and Vatican represntatives to discuss the divvy up of the Balkans and the forming the Catholic State of Croatia. He encouraged the formation of muslim battalions to fight alongside the NAZIS and assist with the genocide of Jews, Gypsies and Christian Orthodox.
There was a world before 1948 levi. The Jews in Israel would be stupid to capitulate. It would be on the trucks again to the holiday camps.
Jim – When it comes to sheer dishonesty you are stooping even lower than Moddy, which takes a little bit of doing so mazel tov to you. Must be a good year for Shiraz.
I am saying that the Grand Mufti is a complete irrelevance to the zionist programme of the colonisation, conquest and ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the zionist movement. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem led (I think) two Muslim units of the SS in Bosnia, not Palestine. He never enjoyed popularity there and ended his days between Syria and Lebanon, never suffering the indignity of being hunted by Israelis as Eichman was for example. In other words, even the Israelis found him to be an irrelevance until he became useful for propaganda.
You, Jim, are part of a thoroughly dishonest movement that makes out that zionism was some kind of secessionist movement rather than the colonial conquering movement that it was and still is. The WZO was founded by an Austrian in Switzerland, not Jews in Palestine.
It’s all very straight forward Jim.
There is a question of Jewish refugees in Palestine and how and why they ended up in Palestine but that should not detract from the basic facts of the case against Israel.
So what have we now?
Moddy has ditched his persistent false allegations of antisemitism (made on various blogs but not this one) in favour of telling people what he knows they know about Arab and other middle eastern regimes.
Jimmy Glesga knows some names and titles but not the chronological order in which they appear in the history of Palestine.
Jim Denham has moved further from the post, the thread and reality than anyone in trying to imply that there was a Palestinian SS. I think you will find Jim, that more Palestinian Arabs joined the British army during WWII than all the other Arab states put together. Gilbert Achcar said that in a recent Cif piece. I have no other evidence for the claim, before you start asking. But since it has no relevance for anything it shouldn’t matter.
Even if it was true that the Grand Mufti was the reason for the zionists’ decision to ethnically cleanse Palestine of most of its native population that still would not justify it. But it’s bollocks and everyone who restates it knows it to be bollocks. Nothing that the so-called Grand Mufti said or did had any bearing on the calculations or actions of the zionist movement and he was never hunted by zionists in the way that, say, Eichman was, in spite of the legendary efficacy of the Israeli secret services.
Now could the host or anyone else address the issue of Israel standing out from other serial human rights abusers as being a state that invites people from all around the world to come and live there whilst denying that right to people who actually come from there?
Also, could the host tag this with Israel/Palestine and not just international. I email people sometimes to draw attention to the posts on this blog that bear on Palestine and finding them all in one place would be very useful.
Thanks
ps – If people really want to know about the Grand Mufti, Wikipedia is by no means definitive and contributors gets things wrong occasionally (sometimes maliciously) but it isn’t too bad.
Levi 9909: “It’s all very straight forward Jim.”
Glad you think so Levi. It’s people – on both sides – who think the Middle East is “all very straight forward” who tend to be part of the problem.
I notice you do not deny *any* of the facts I have stated. I made no detailed comments about *where* al-Husseini proposed to lead SS units – merely that he *did*. Similarly, I made no comment about how popular or inflential he was, which can be debated. Peter Mansfield’s generally pro-Palestinian “A History of the Middle East” for instance, grants him much more influence in Arab/Palestinian politics in the 1930′s than you seem to, while noting that his attempts to mobilise Muslim world opinion for the Nazis in the 1940′s “had little impact.”
I’m still mystified as to how he was an “invention” of the “zionists.”
Finally, what exactly do you mean by this:
“There is a question of Jewish refugees in Palestine and how and why they ended up in Palestine but that should not detract from the basic facts of the case against Israel.”
So don’t let such minor details as pogroms, organised anti-semitism and the holocaust detract from the case for driving the Jews into the sea, eh?
levi9909. Here I am providing you with a grandstand for your perverse views and all you do is insult me. The Mufti was before during and after the war an Islamic genocidal proponent of the massacre of Jews irrespective of the forming of Israel. He also encouraged Palestinians and others to attack British convoys. And what about that Hamas scum being caught by Panorama talking about wiping out the Jews and Infidels. That includes you if you really are an athiest. So athiest! wise up.
Jim – last things first. I do not support any proposal to drive Jews into the sea and nothing that I have ever written or said could lead any honest person to that conclusion. To suggest that people who claim the issues in Palestine are straight forward are part of a problem that causes so many people to suffer so grievously is, like Moddy’s outpourings, sanctimonious twaddle. You are a zionist and you cannot make a case for Israel so you smear the critics, opponents and victims.
I didn’t say the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was an invention of the zionists. What I actually said was that if he hadn’t existed zionists would have to invent him, meaning that his genocidal antisemitism and well-known association with the nazis have been used as an excuse for the ethnic cleansing of the bulk of the native Palestinian population and for Israel’s racist laws and relentless aggression.
I said that since the zios always intended the ethnic cleansing of the non-Jewish Palestinian natives, the rantings and associations of the Grand Mufti did not feature in zionist calculations or the implementation of the zionist project and they are only used now for zionist propaganda purposes.
With regard to the position of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, that was made up by the Brits and the person to fill the position was selected by the Brits. He subsequently turned against the Brits. That’s straight forward. Incidentally, the man who imposed the Grand Mufti on the Palestinians was a British zionist called Herbert Samuel. So if I did say that he was a zionist invention it wouldn’t have been entirely wrong. But I am not suggesting that his history was an invention by anyone. And that much is fucking obvious to anyone who actually read all of what I said.
What I meant by saying that the question of how, when and why Jewish refugees ended up in Palestine – those that were indeed refugees and not self-conscious colonial settlers – should not detract from the case against the State of Israel in that it is a separate question from the fact that the expulsion of the bulk of the native non-Jewish Palestinian population was and is central to the zionist programme of the establishment in Palestine of a colonial settler state for the world’s Jews and not for the people that actually come from there or live there if they are not Jewish.
The post says that there are parallels between Kurdistan and Palestine and I am saying that the parallels, such as there are, are superficial. Moddy has engaged with the post to say that there are other nasty regimes in the middle east and I have tried to point out what makes Israel stand out. You seem to be saying that Israel has excuses for what it is and what it does. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t what it is and doesn’t do what it does do. So go go ahead and proclaim Israel a colonial settler state based on ethnic cleansing and segregationist laws but that it has lots of excuses. Even if it is true that it has excuses, it still doesn’t make the quality of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians the same as the quality of the human rights abuses of neighbouring or more distant states.
So, in a nutshell, my issue with this post is that the distinguishing of Israel from common or garden variety human rights abusers is very important because it helps people understand why anti-racists focus so much on Israel. Raising the notion that Israel is the target of undue criticism, that other states don’t get criticised for, even when the criticism is true is the thin end of the wedge, the fat end of which denounces anti-zionism as antisemitism.
I gather that no one has accused anyone of that latter in this thread or on this blog but it does happen and Moddy and Jim certainly used to do it all the time.
Finally, I am suggesting that by conflating issues around Palestine and Kurdistan, Dave Osler makes it easier for the supporters of the last of the colonial settler states to get away with distractions, distortions and false allegations of antisemitism, though, in Moddy’s case (and maybe even in Jim’s), not on this blog apparently.
Levi 9099: “I said that since the zios always intended the ethnic cleansing of the non-Jewish Palestinian natives”: bollocks! The entire history of the Jewish-Arab relations in the region in the first half of the 20th Century, including the 1937 Peel Commission proposal and the 1947 UN General Assembly partition plan, is one of attempts to reach a livable acvcomodation between Jews and Arabs/Palestinians – in every case vetoed by the Arab leaders.
PS: I like “zios”…
PPS: If you think Israel shouldn’t exist, even behind pr-1967 borders, then you *are* indeed in favour of driving the Jews into the sea.
PPPS: I notice you’ve (wisely) backed away from trying to down=play the importance of the Nazism of al-Husseini: Lenni Bremmer and Jim Allen made some very sweeping and ill-judged accusations of “Zionist” (ie Jewish) “collaboration” with the Nazis on much. much flimsier and more debateable evidence (ie: if it was “collaboration” at all, it was “collaboration” at tyhe point of a gun). Yet a known out-and-out pro-Nazi on the Arab/Palestinian side is brushed aside and downplayed as of no significance, by anti-Israel zealots like you. Your hypocrisy and anti-Jewish bigotry is sickening.
levi9909. Yeah levi9909 you would I agree not drive the Jews into the sea. Some may be able to swim.
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_history.php For levi9909.
Denham writes, ‘Lenni Bremmer and Jim Allen made some very sweeping and ill-judged accusations of “Zionist” (ie Jewish) “collaboration” with the Nazis on much. much flimsier and more debateable evidence (ie: if it was “collaboration” at all, it was “collaboration” at tyhe (sic) point of a gun).’
No it wasn’t ‘at the point of a gun, the future Israeli prime minister’s organisation LEHI (Stern gang)volunteered an alliance with the Nazis.
http://www.mepc.org/journal_shahak/shahak39.asp
‘LEHI showed its uniqueness in its very earliest political strategy, namely in its persistent search for an alliance with Nazi Germany throughout 1940 — 41. Unlike all other Jewish groups of that time, the LEHI men respected Hitler. Later, the veterans of LEHI tried for a long time to deny that they had ever made alliance overtures to the Nazis. Unfortunately for them, documents proving the contrary were found by Israeli scholars and journalists and published long ago. The search for that alliance and its implications are best described in the above-mentioned book by Heller. (ref. below) He shows that the drafting of the Principles of Renaissance took place at the same time, and he argues that LEHI’s pro-Nazism was by no means unrelated to the contents of this document.’
see LEHI: Ideology and Politics, 1940-1949, by Yosef Heller, Zalman Shazar Jewish History Center, 1989
Why does Denham deny the historical fact of (actual and attempted) Facist Zionist alliances with Mussolini and Hitler?
resistor. Nice bit of history twisting. It is common knowledge that some Jews knowing Hitler wanted Germany to be made Jew Free attempted to get German support in having a homeland. An alliance with the NAZI! Nice one resistor. The Jews at that point did not know they were off to the holiday camps. Even levi9909 has not come up with that one. Yet!
Jimmy obviously can’t read dates. The LEHI proposed an alliance with the Nazis in 1941. The Nazis came to power eight years previously in 1933. I think he’s the one twisting history.
“THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)
resistor. Some more waffle. What has the Pastor said that has relevance to your previous.
“Moddy – you lying, ducking and diving wanker. Of course I know that it was the Brits that invented the position of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and imposed it and its office holder on the Palestinians.”
Oh, right Elf, you know when it has been explained to you…
“Moddy has ditched his persistent false allegations of antisemitism (made on various blogs but not this one) in favour of telling people what he knows they know about Arab and other middle eastern regimes.”
No, Elf, all I have done his try to correct your misrepresentation of my views, which you persist in.
My point above which you ***can’t*** understand, is that in my view, there is a very limited debate on the *whole* of the Middle East, and comparatively little knowledge amongst the British Left.
Again, don’t misrepresent my views simply because you can’t understand them. The Middle East comprises probably over 20 countries (dependent on how you define it), and, empirically, there is comparatively little coverage in the Western media.
There are snippets of stories, but little in-depth which deals with the people of the Middle East all of them, all 300+ million.
Please, Elf, we might disagree on many things, but it is that sheer intellectual laziness and your incapacity to read what I write and represent it accurately, that is a bit annoying and not only that it makes you look silly.
Quick round-up before I go to bed.
Glesga has shown that he knew even less about the Grand Mufti than Moddy, Jim Denham and me though Moddy and Jim Denham have played equally silly games about his significance for the ethnic cleansing that always lay at the heart of the zionist project. For anyone who is interested in what I knew to date about the Mufti (since I’ve been on the receiving end of a barrage of baseless allegations) they could always punch the word er “Mufti” into my blog where they will see me as early as 2006 referring to him as “British imposed” and drawing on credible historians who point out that his influence on Palestinians was negligible and that anyway, the zionists had their share of equally egregious collaborators. It isn’t just Lenni Brenner who says so. There are zionists who have written extensively on the Transfer Agreement, the glee with which many zionists greeted the rise to power of Hitler and the sought after collaboration between Shamir et al and the nazi regime, not to mention the collaboration in Hungary when hundreds of thousands of Jews were called to transportation centres by collaborationist zionist leaders.
Glesga is wrong about zionist collaboration aimed at saving more Jewish lives. It wasn’t. The transfer agreement of 1933 cost Jewish lives as it favoured Jews going to Palestine which most Jews were unwilling or unable to do. The transfer agreement seems to have trapped some Jews inside nazi Germany. Also, Ben Gurion was clear in 1938 when the holocaust was well on the cards that if he could save 250,000 Jews and have them go to Palestine or 500,000 Jews and have them go elsewhere, he would opt for the former because half a million Jews going elsewhere would attract other Jews and “that would be the end of our movement”. Words to that effect.
Jim Denham – You are a liar, a racist and a bit of a loon. You have played even more ridiculous games than Moddy with his silly “I didn’t say that HERE” nonsense. You claim that you didn’t say anything about where the Grand Mufti organised Muslim SS divisions but if you were not implying it had relevance for Palestine then why bring it up? You’re a despicable liar, that’s why.
Let’s just revisit the post. David Osler, not for the first time, has implied that the quality of the zionist oppression of the Palestinians bears comparison with the oppression of other peoples by other extant states. He’s mentioned Burma before now. In this post he has suggested that there are substantive parallels between the Kurdish situation and that of the Palestinians. I (et al) have said that this is not the case because Israel’s existence is predicated on ethnic cleansing.
Hopefully Moddy has said his bit in telling everyone what they already knew about the oppressive nature of other middle eastern states. We’ll leave his dishonest disclaimers to one side.
Now we have Jim Denham pretending that I had said that the zionists invented the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and his incitements to genocidal antisemitism and his association with the SS and the nazi leadership. I didn’t say that. I merely said that if he hadn’t existed it would have been necessary for zios to invent him and his history.
I can’t be too bothered with Jim’s nonsense but I could have sworn that he has now said that the Peel Commission was an earnest attempt at a fair settlement of the situation in Palestine that was rejected by Arabs or their leaders. I didn’t read what he said that thoroughly but I know the Peel Commission proposed a partition of Palestine and the removal from the Galilee area of between 225,000 and 300,000 Arabs. I also know that the Commission’s proposal was rejected by the zionist leadership and Arab leaders. I don’t know why Jim would expect the British colonial rulers to deal fairly with Arabs and Jews in Palestine when they never dealt fairly with anyone else. But then I did only skim what he wrote because I’ve already wasted too much time on him and Moddy when all I wanted to do was point out that Israel exists on a different basis from all other states, which was on topic whereas Jim and Moddy have to maintain permanent intellectually thuggish guard over Israel’s, ahem, integrity.
The next proposal for the partition of Palestine came from the UN in November 1947 in which 55% of Palestine, containing almost the entire Jewish population that comprised about 30 – 33% of the entire Palestine population and the main hubs of the entire Palestine economy together with fifty per cent of the Arab population. If you do the maths, this means that the UN was proposing that a Jewish state be established with an equal number of Arabs and Jews. Actually adding the harder to count Bedouin in the Negev, the Arabs had a slender majority in the “Jewish” area. The area proposed for the Arab state comprised an almost entirely Arab population which was the other fifty per cent and it had none of the hubs of the economy. It was non-viable as a state.
The USSR and its allies invoked the holocaust as an excuse for supporting partition and, by extension, ethnic cleansing to give Israel a Jewish majority whereas even less plausibly the other states that supported partition tended to use a much mangled version of the national self-determination argument. This didn’t tally with the fact that most of the states which supported zionism after WWII when Jews were a one third minority in Palestine, already supported zionism by the end of WWI, when Jews were less than 10% of the population.
Anyway, the Arabs openly rejected the proposal whereas the zionists led by David Ben Gurion pretended to be accepting it whilst immediately moving to conquer 5 towns on the Arab side of the proposed border and depopulate those five towns together with one town on the proposed Jewish side. This is very well documented as is Ben Gurion’s comment that the zios would go through the motions of acceptance whilst building an army that would conquer the rest of, in his words, Eretz Israel, within twenty years, which they did. The latest work that I have read on it, I may have already mentioned, is From Coexistence to Conquest, International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1891-1949 by Victor Kattan.
By the time the State of Israel had declared its existence and the Arab states mobilised, there were already 300,000 Arab refugees and the area under zionist control was already bigger than that proposed by the UN and by the end of the first war, the Arab states, outnumbered throughout most of that war by three soldiers to one, lost and over three quarters of the Palestine Arab population were refugees. Israel emerged on 78% of Palestine but Jordan (then called Transjordan) collaborated with the zios and got the West Bank on, it turned out, a temporary lease and Egypt moved into Gaza equally temporarily. If they had not mobilised it is easy to imagine Israel taking these areas and using all the same excuses we hear for all of their subsequent attacks on the natives and neighbours of Palestine.
Of course, all of this is very well documented and now it is well known. There has been much muddying of the waters, not least by the likes of Jim Denham who seems to think that the abolition of a state is the same as the annihilation of a people and that it is ok to punish whole peoples for the actions or statements of leaders, even British imposed ones and even invented or irrelevant actions. That, for humanists, is a racist position, a hideously racist position that only Israel benefits from. I know of no other situation where the punishment of a whole people for the rest of time is considered just by anyone in the mainstream or on the left, with the possible exception of the removal of Germans from various areas of central and eastern Europe following WWII. But even these are different in that no state owes its existence to the removal of Germans native to that state.
The fact is that Israel exists on the unique basis that it invites people from all over the world to come and live there whilst denying that right to most of the native population. The west supports this because it is in the interests of powerful forces in the west to do so. It is not the Israel lobby. Their role is simply to silence the oppo. And it is certainly not because the west is nice and Israel is nice. It is the boring old military industrial complex which reaps enormous benefits from this situation tailor made by imperialism for a permanent state of conflict with a permanent garrison state, a foreign legion ready to whip natives of the middle east out of any real or imagined recalcitrance.
Now Israel has tried to extend its murderous impunity to international people and international waters we may see the tide turning but anti-racists have to guard against opportunists at a time like this. Israel has a rubber stamp from the UN to exist on a uniquely racist basis. Apart from that it is an illegitimate entity like no other. The consistent position of anti-racists is to seek the abolition of the State of Israel as a state specially for the world’s Jews and to oppose those who project their own support for racist rule on to the abolitionists who seek the end of racist rule throughout the whole of Palestine.
And so to bed….
levi9909. I thought you were in bed permanent.
woops, not just yet – have a little look at this post on my blog. It deals with the ridiculous idea that the western states and the Soviet bloc supported zionism because of the holocaust and the equally absurd idea that the Balfour Declaration and the Peel Commission were in any sense fair proposals.
Nite nite
Moddy – We seem to have crossed. By the next time you look at this post you will see that I referred to the Grand Mufti as “British imposed” as early as 2006 or even earlier. But then, lying piece of shit that you are, you probably knew that already and were just showing off.
In accusing you of falsely accusing Israel’s critics of antisemitism I didn’t misrepresent you as you know. You have either abandoned the false allegation altogether or you realise you can’t rely on the support here from the trolls you could expect at Harry’s Place though Jim Denham is as low a life form as can be found by your side at HP.
In saying that you are telling people what you know they know about Arab or other middle eastern states I am not misrepresenting you either. There is not a whole lot people can add to the fact that middle eastern states had their borders and governments imposed on them by an alliance of the French and the British with subsequent back up from the Americans. For all your decrying of intellectual laziness, I am yet to see you recommend a source for all this reading you must have done on the Hashemites, the Sauds, the al Sabahs and the distribution of Kurdistan across a handful of middle eastern states suggested by the British civil service as a means of dividing linguistic groups either side of boundaries and lumping potentially hostile tribes together within boundaries. But perhaps you have referred to lots of works on these things and I’m just misrepresenting you again. You lying piece of shit.
The fact is Moddy, you are a lying, ducking and diving wanker. The charge that you falsely accuse people of antisemitism is not confined to on this blog as has been made clear and it is not intellectually lazy (or antisemitic) to single colonial Israel out from the neo-colonial pack of middle eastern regimes.
It is you that lacks understanding even when things are explained many many times.
Still I’m glad you’ve ditched the bogus allegation of antisemitism. The trouble is that it is implied in the “don’t single out poor little Israel” plea.
Ah well, little acorns…..
Elf,
You drone on eternally, you have little skill or grasp of the facts, yet I must say in terms of volume you beat most people.
I have already made clear my views on the above subject several times and yet you didn’t get them, not because you can’t read, but basically you can’t ***understand*** what people say.
I will explain this once more for you and please could you use your brains or get someone else to read it for you:
I do not, repeat I do not, believe that most of the Anti-Zionists that I run across are antisemites, I can think of only two individuals who might be classified in that area, they are a very, very, very small minority.
However, I do believe that people tend to use extravagant language and exaggerate when it comes to these topics, and so it might appear that they are bigots or racists, when the truth is they know little and like shouting a lot (much like you, Elf)
Finally, whilst I often disagree with many Anti-Zionist’s, I don’t think the ones I run across here or at other sites are what *I* would call antisemites, granted many use inflammatory language and are unnecessarily provocative but that doesn’t mean they’re ingrained racists, just a bit silly and lazy with their language.
And you can quote me on that (not that you will).
I’m surprised such a scholar as you complains at having too much to read but I have to nail the predictable lies and I have three racist liars to contend with.
Ok Moddy you’ve dropped the bogus allegation of antisemitism. In fact, you may never have used it ON THIS BLOG. But you have used it many times before on your own blog and on Harry’s Place. But never mind because there are other ways you can be an apologist for Israel. One is by pretending that neo-colonial regimes are the same or worse than the last of the colonial settler regimes: Israel.
I have not accused you of saying anything that you have not said and I have not accused you of being ignorant of something you know, except you are a transparent liar and a fool and you seem to be ignorant of the transparency.
You have said that I didn’t know about the Grand Mufti being foisted on the Palestinians by the British and I have demonstrated to you that I did know that. You made a bogus assumption. That’s intellectual rigour, is it Moddy? Assuming that someone doesn’t know something because they didn’t mention it in a blog thread isn’t intellectually lazy? Perhaps you will now offer another example of my ignorance.
Maybe you decided that since the Grand Mufti was irrelevant to the ethnic cleansing that always lay at the heart of the zionist project, you’d just ignore it. But you didn’t ignore it, did you Moddy?
Unlike you, Jim Denham and Jimmy Glesga I have been falsely accused of holding views I don’t hold, of not knowing things I do know and that I am on record showing that I know, and I have been accused of saying things I have not said even in this thread.
Quit it now Moddy. In spite of the fact you smear people anonymously, you even claimed not to be shy. You are liar, a fool and an outrageous hypocrite.
Why should I quote a liar, a fool and a sanctimonious hypocrite? That’s rhetorical Moddy. No need for one of your thoroughly dishonest evasive responses. If my responses are long, at least they are honest.
To summarise, yet again. You’ve ditched the false allegation of antisemitism and you are now pretending that it is intellectually rigorous to denounce Arab regimes whilst saying not one word of criticism of the racist war criminals of the State of Israel. What a scholar.
Meanwhile, you have dodged most of my points, deliberately misunderstood what I was accusing you of, you have failed to engage with the post and your only engagement with the thread was to show how slippery you are.
Moddy, you talk about understanding. What is your understanding of the difference between Turkey and the State of Israel and the former’s treatment of the Kurds and the latter’s treatment of the Palestinians?
Go on geezer, try the topic. I did. You didn’t. But then I’m an honest anti-racist and you are a lying racist.
Prove me wrong Moddy. Don’t be shy.
Elf,
Show me where I call someone an antisemite on my blog, show me or shut up.
There Moddy
Moddy you have now gone from denying falsely accusing anyone of antisemitism on this blog to denying that you have ever accused anyone of antisemitism ever. You fucking idiot. You should have stuck to the main point of the post but then so should I have.
I said you are a liar, a fool and a hypocrite and you have now in one line shown yourself at least to be the first two. The third is in your ridiculous complaints of intellectual laziness and ignorance when your only evidence of my ignorance was shown to be false. I had to prove a negative and now you want to waste even more of my time. Accusing people of being on the “far right” when all you have to go on is that they criticise Israel is a false allegation of antisemitism. Don’t try to be clever Moddy. I remember Linda Grant saying that she doesn’t say that anti-zionism is antisemitism but she said that to say that zionism is racism is unfair to Jews. That’s the kind of thing you used to do but not on this blog.
I’ve wasted enough time on you already Moddy. Let’s just be thankful that you have now ditched the false allegation of antisemitism and deal with the difference between neo-colonialism (Arab states et al) and settler-colonialism (Israel).
The Kurdish cause is not the same as the Palestinian cause.
Moddy – I’ve just noticed that you have dodged the central question which was
Even when you’re not accusing people of antisemitism you can use antisemitism as a distraction.
Anyway, let’s see some of this scholarship you demand of others but never practice yourself.
Thanks
Elf,
Show me where I call someone an antisemite on my blog, show me or shut up.
[That link doesn't work]
Rather typically Elf, when you’re called out on an issue you can’t provide any evidence, you’re just a big mouth.
A big mouth without any sense, you shout, you scream, accuse others of bad faith (Dave O, etc), you drone on about everyone else being a liar in one way shape or form.
Yet you make an assertion about the opinions of others, a faulty assertion and when you are asked to provide evidence to back up your loudmouth comments, you can’t. It is as simple as that.
But being the egomaniac that you are, you can’t admit the bleeding obvious so you are reduced to shouting “liar liar, pants on fire”.
Once more:
Elf,
Show me where I call someone an antisemite on my blog, show me or shut up.
Good grief: I’ve only just seen the rest of this thread: those anti-semites like “levi9909″ ain’t half fanataical, eh?
Still ‘an all: hopefully their fanaticism itself will show folks that we’re up against a bunch of Hitlerites here, eh?