By John Chuckman
[…]
Calling people names because you dislike their views is not logic and is not any form of argument. It is not even decent. I can’t see how this lawyer’s words differ from American Senator McCarthy using the dangerously-loaded slur, Communist, applied to anyone he didn’t want working in the State Department or in Hollywood.
If I indulge this lawyer’s name-calling, saying it resembles logic, what comes to mind is another lawyer’s argument at the trial many years ago of a man who had slashed a woman’s throat and then tried to strangle her with a lamp cord. That lawyer claimed his client had only been applying a tourniquet to a wound he accidentally inflicted.
[…]
Does he include decent, honorable people like Uri Avnery, former member of the Knesset, a citizen of Israel who writes regularly of the injustices committed by the country he loves? Does he include the great pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim who grew up partly in Israel and has many times criticized its policies? Does he include the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom who expressed his rejection of Sharon’s brutality? Does he include Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela who both have described what they see in Israel as the apartheid with which they are intimately familiar?
All people supporting any cause must be selective. You can’t focus on the facts if your attention is distributed among fifty causes, and advocacy or criticism without facts is vacuous. Ghandi had a focus as did Martin Luther King as did Tutu as did all the early Zionist leaders as did Arafat. Taking on every injustice in the world plainly makes it impossible to say much to the point about any of them.
So why does anyone focus on Israel? In part, for the simple reason that we are overwhelmed with awareness of Israel in our press. A day almost cannot pass that we do not have a news story about Israel. The slightest statement of Ariel Sharon is reported with about the same weight as the words of major world statesmen. We hear of every change in his cabinet. We hear of every change in his plans. We hear of every meeting he has with other leaders. When was the last time you read or heard a story about Tibet?
[…]
Why would it surprise any thoughtful person that Israel is far more on people’s minds than Tibet? But the question of focus on Israel involves far more than constant repetition, important as that fact is.
A good deal of the mess that we find ourselves in today, the so-called War on Terror and the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people, largely pivots on Israel’s policy and behavior towards the Palestinians and on America’s policy towards Israel. The problem of Israel versus the Palestinians has become a kind of geopolitical black hole which threatens to consume much of the energy and substance of Western society. Surely, we all have a right, and even a moral obligation, to address such a threatening situation without being called names.
Why doesn’t Israel just make peace? Israel holds virtually all the cards. The weapons. The intelligence information. The economic advantages. The immensely powerful ally. At least certainly compared to the pathetic group of people, the Palestinians, it calls its enemy.
[…]
Is Israel the only country somehow magically immune to Lord Acton’s dictum about power? I think not, but in saying that I risk being classified an anti-Semite.
John Chuckman lives in Ontario.
While I appreciate the article, unless you happen to be Chuckman and hold the copyright, posting the whole thing flaunts the fair use doctrine and could potentially get BooMan in trouble. The way to do it is to post an excerpt and leave the rest to the link. š
The copyright issue is a problem here. Is it elsewhere?
It’s why we have to quote, rather than reprint, articles in our BooTrib stories.
Haitham, do you have permission to reprint this article?
If not, you need to excerpt the points that you feel make it important and worth reading, and link to it so people that want to read the whole thing can go do so.
While I dislike the idea of filling up other sites with full articles that are perfectly available by a link, I don’t see any copyright notice at the originating site, so don’t know that there’s any IP issue here. The original writer and site do not make their wishes or claims known.
Interesting, DaveW. I find the copyright issue confusing sometimes.
A few years ago, I went after Truthout.org for publishing a story on whales that they took, word for word, from Greenpeace, but which they did not acknowledge or link in any way. (Truthout used to do this a lot … I don’t know if they still do. I hope not.) I let Greenpeace know, and Truthout removed the article entirely.
I’m sure you’ve seen diaries on Daily Kos that are wholly taken from an uncredited article or posted in such a way — without blockquotes — that it’s difficult to tell where the quotes begin and end.
Haitham makes the source very clear here, which is good. If it were I, just to be safe, I’d put the story in blockquotes, and only quote a portion of the story.
I agree, Susan. It is highly unethical, at the least, to quote anything without attribution. Even with Copyleft and similar open schemes it’s also a violation.
But that didn’t happen here. I have no problem with pointing out that copying a whole article is a waste of bandwidth most of the time, and to be discouraged. It’s the kneejerk appeal to the sacredness of copyright that bothers me.
In the case of something like one of David Brooks’ exercises in idiocy, for example, it might be justifiable to post the whole column if it needs point-by-point refutation. I think we have a right to do that with anything that purports to be “news”.
Automatically siding with the “rights” of the publishers helps erode an important basic right and advance the cause of privatizing the commons.
The reason it is discussed is this. http://www.techlawjournal.com/intelpro/19991020.htm
The Free Republic was sued by the Washington Post for posting an entire article.
How you feel about it is about the same as me, but the law exists. If we do not follow it we put Kos and Booman at risk.
I am all for Open Source, Copyleft, and preserving the public commons. You can not support the privatization of the commons and still realize that a lawsuit in the current legal climate would not be beneficial to our hosts.
This paragraph gives me an idea about how they would feel.
http://www.counterpunch.org :
“The use of a copyright notice is no longer required under U. S. law, although it is often beneficial.” See http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html for copyright basics. Copyright law can be confusing and often unfair, but the core principles exist to protect authors and creators of works from being ripped off.
It is hard to imagine a more virulent anti-Semitism than associating crimes against humanity with Jews or Judaism.
I remember once on a self-proclaimed “progressive” site, I said something in a post to the effect that peace and tolerance are traditional Jewish values.
A number of “progressive” Likud supporters were outraged by this, complained to the administrators, and I received a warning about making generalizations about religious groups or something to that effect.
On another “progressive” site, a Holocaust survivor who opposes the occupation of Palestine and associated atrocities was decried by a self-styled “Pro Israel” poster as having lost his Jewish identity.
(If you google “John Chuckman peculiar state,” you will see that this piece has appeared in many places. Putting a block quote box around it should take care of any issues, he has a link already, he could always add 6 or 7 more. š )
Both sides need to reign in their extremist factions–the settlers and the terrorist groups. Israel holds many cards, but so do the terrorists and the surrounding Arab nations that support the terrorists. Israel cannot unconditionally declare peace because many groups still talk about driving Israel into the sea.
Both Israel and Palestine have a right to a secure and free existance. Neither side has yet been fully willing to do what it takes to achieve that. Much of the blame can be placed on outside forces–US policy, Arab nations–that do not want peace. Those hurt most are the Palestinians followed closely by the Israelis. The US and Arab nations who fuel the conflict suffer the least.
Israel doesn’t need to start by declaring peace with the Arab World, it needs to start by granting the Palestinians an autonomous State. Why do they keep putting it off? After all if there is a separate Palestine, then there could be legitimate borders. Israel is the one with the most powerful army in the region, the State with the most powerful backing, it has the luxury of taking the high ground. Truth of the matter is that it wants more land.
More by Ran HaCohen:
Yes. I don’t argue with that. But the Palestinians and Arab nations have to be far more willing to reign in the extremists. In essence the extremists give Likud an excuse to be assholes and, in fact, essentially brought Sharon to power. If the Arabs had laughed at Sharon when he did his stupid power play with his bodyguards on the temple mount he never would have gotten elected. But they fell for his bait and handed him the government.
I do not excuse Israel for refusing to give Palestine it’s existence. But please don’t forget that it was not Israel that originally prevented Palestine from coming into existence. It was Jordan, Syria and the other Arab nations that invaded. They hold Palestinian territory as well. So again, I blame the Arab nations more than either Israel or the Palestinians for the problems there. Not to say that the Israelis and Palestinians are innocent. They all have blood on their hands and have committed stupid acts. But the Arab nations invaded in the first place and continue to fan the flames even as they treat the Palestinians even worse than the Israelis ever do.
It has been said that if Israel didn’t exist the Arab nations would have to invent it. I think there is something to be said for that. The Arab nations don’t care a rat’s ass for the Palestinians and have killed them at will when it suited them. Israel may be bad but they have been practically angels compared with Syria’s treatment of the Palestinians.
I want to see BOTH nations exist in peace and prosperity. I want to see Israel AND the Arab nations give Palestine land. And I want to see the Arab nations and Palestinians give up the “from the river to the sea” mentality. But I doubt ANY of this will happen in my lifetime.
Neither democratic governments nor stability in the region would serve the interests of key US industries.
Removing the US will not produce instant utopia, the scars of colonization are deep and slow to heal.
But it will be a start, and if it is done in time, the lives of many people, including Americans, could be saved.
It would, however, involve a substantial and sudden decrease in revenue for key western business interests.
Hmmmm…
It seems that the US is getting blamed for the actions of BOTH sides. Maybe that is reasonable, but I am not convinced.
If our policy towards Israel is the root of so many problems, and the Arab states are such a large part of the problem, and they are our client states, then ,maybe Clinton’s peace initiatives could have worked!
I think you are at least partly right here. But I don’t think that the nations in that area would be any more democratic or peace oriented without US involvement. We, especially under Bush, are largely doing everything wrong and fanning the flames. But the Arab nations would not necessarily be any better if we weren’t involved.
THe scars of colonialism probably go deeper in that area than anywhere else in the world. Historically, that area has ALWAYS been at the mercy of empires, from Sumer to Egypt to Persia to Alexander to Rome to the Ottomans and only very recently France, Germany, Britain and then the US. One problem is that the area has seldom NOT been part of an empire. The Palesitinians and the Sabra Israelis are descendents of the Caananites and are probably natives of the area. Only briefly were there Philistine city states and Hebrew nations separate from any Empire. Since the Romans took over, there has been no native rule of the area until the UN created Israel and Palestine. So I think you are right. How do you create native rule in an area that has been so dominated by one empire or another? Certainly you DON’T invade on day 1 of independence like the surrounding nations did. The Israelis and Palestinians never had the chance to form two nations because their neighbors invaded to eliminate both. THey succeeded in destroying Palestine but not Israel.
I agree that the US has played a bad role with the exception of Carter and Clinton’s brief peace initiatives. But those Arab nations invaded on day 1 of independence, destroying Palestine, on their own initiative, not as client states of the US. I don’t think that their actions since have been so dominated by us that we can completely blame the US for the mess. We are PART of it, but by no means completely to blame.
A good first step would be recognition that ‘native’ does not include you. (You in this case being the US)
Americans take for granted that the world, its people and resources, including oil, are US property.
This principle is so deeply ingrained in the culture that it is difficult, I don’t know if it is even possible, for most of them to view any situation, in the ME or elsewhere, through a different lens.
The problem is, no matter how strongly Americans believe it, the world remains populated by people who believe just as strongly that their resources, their land, and their people, do NOT belong to the US, but to them.
That principle is the core value of what the US calls terrorism.
Israel is in a much more stable position since it is but one country. When you speak of Arab Nations you’re lumping all kinds of different nations, beliefs and groups from Iraq to Morocco together. The Palestinians should not be made to pay for their neighbors. Should we lump all Americans together, whether or not they support Bush – and say they are all warmongers who want to conquer the world?
Point is: I don’t have any control over what you do, any more than the Palestinians have over the Saudis. If we help create a Palestine, (a fair one) then we have leverage with the Arab nations – until then it will be exploited by them as much as by us.
If you didn’t read my link, please do.
True, but those Arab nations are also the main source of funding and arms for the extremists among the Palestinians. I suspect that the Palestinians are more likely to make peace and to rein in their more extremist members if the Arab nations were out of the picture.
But yes. Israel needs to allow Palestine to exist. But Israeli security also has to be recognized by the Palestinians.
just an attempt to redress a ridiculous imbalance.