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Los Angeles and Israel Collaborating on Water Technologies
By Null / June 19, 2008
The thirsty city of Los Angeles has teamed up with the parched country of Israel on a crucial concern that they (and much of the rest of the world) share: Water. LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has signed a contract with Kinrot, an Israeli company that provides "entrepreneurs with incubation time of two years to develop technological innovations into applicable products for the water industry." The collaboration will allow Israeli water tech start-ups to use Los Angeles Department of Water & Power facilities for pilot projects.
Considering that approximately 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, collaborations like these could—and hopefully will—wind up being beneficial across the globe. Necessity is the mother of invention, and Israel has long had a great necessity for more water, which the country has chronically lacked for many years, and which is the source of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
It's a fantastic start, but perhaps we need more than water tech and politics. Perhaps we need a totally new mythology. Case in point: There's nary an American Jew who isn't familiar with the Jewish National Fund, famous for planting over 240 million trees (probably a few in your name) in Israel over the last century. The symbolism is simple and deep: Together with JNF, Jews around the world are laying down roots and making the homeland bloom. Fair enough, but I've heard firsthand accounts from friends who have worked as Ulpan counselors describing JNF-sponsored activities that included the planting…and immediate uprooting of trees. According to the JNF website, "Israel was the only nation in the world to end the 20th century with more trees than it had at the beginning." So many trees, in fact, that the they've run out of room, but are still utilizing the activity of tree planting to help kids establish a connection to the land.
In response to the Israeli water crisis that began in the late 80s, JNF has also built over 180 dams and reservoirs. What if, instead of an empty, useless tree planting activity, JNF found a way to create a new set of meaningful, spiritual rituals around reservoir and dam construction, water conservation and tech, river rehabilitation, and water recycling? What if they found a creative way to teach the kids and adults who participate in their programs that Israel's water challenges are actually the world's water challenges, and that by investing in and learning about this precious Israeli resource, they might ultimately be able to make the entire world a healthier, happier place?
It's time to step out of the shade cast by 240 million trees and start walking on water.
POST A COMMENT
P-A, I think I liked it better when you appeared more unhinged. This conversation is getting entirely too reasonable. I have a reputation for unwarranted invective to maintain, you know, and you're not helping.
A couple of observations:
1. I didn't mean "theoretical" to connote "easily dismissible". Perhaps I should have said "theory-laden", meaning that the term, while appearing straightforward, is in fact situated within a web of meanings and assumptions, sort of like the word "terrorist", which, chameleon-like, takes on the shadings its utterer favors. So I agree that race is clearly such a theoretical term. Nationality may be more complicated than you suggest. If we use your definition (the country of which one is a citizen), what is the nationality of a French Jew in 1947? Well, clearly French, for a start. But you claim Jewishness also as a nationality, so I guess our friend Pierre Liebowitz is a dual national? So where is the country we'd need to have to satisfy your definition? Also, if I understand correctly, there is no official Israeli nationality-ID cards in Israel have "Jewish" or "Arab" in the nationality field. So here are two problems with your definition. (By the way, where's "Lybia"? Anywhere near Libya? Sorry, it's a tropism. I can't help myself.)
2. Regarding your thoughts on the sociology of science, the idea that science (at least social science) is shot through with presuppositions that reflect, by and large, political paradigms is not a new one. Referring to this idea, I reject the notion that mainstream anthropology "owns" concepts whose contours are best limned through philosophical investigation. And you must know that some global warning denialists are themselves credentialed geologists, etc, which limits the utility of your example.
3. Ethnicity. Very troublesome concept, I think. Imagine a guy who's ancestors lived in what is now Mexico for a millenium. Several generations ago, one of them moves to Minnesota (yeah, I can't figure out why, either). Now, his great-great-great grandson operates a dry-cleaners in St. Paul. His wife's a Lutheran from Norway, he speaks not a word of Spanish, wouldn't know a tortilla from a tuba and has never visited Mexico. What's his ethnicity? We agree that race is not a useful concept here, so we can't appeal to quasi-biological factors. Is it American? Mexican? On what account? Is it possible to lack an ethnicity?
4. Re bigotry, you may be right that bad intention is a useful component of its definition. I still think, though, that the wholesale and total condemnation of an entire confessional group, and the attribution to that group of a cluster of nefarious political plans satisfies our intuitive and ordinary-language apprehensions of "bigotry", and this is what Hirsi Ali et al are up to. Note that this doesn't prevent us from condemning, e.g., FGM (keeping in mind that this horror, unlike the practice of circumcision among Jews, is not grounded in religious doctrine but is instead a local and cultural matter) or any other particular practice.
5. Here's the big one. I completely disagree with your take on the right of return (shocked?). First, it's not a matter of your taste or mine; it's a matter of international law. People who have been displaced by war have the right to return to their homes. Period. Second, are you not the slightest bit aware of how cavalier and self-absorbed you sound when you say that the Palestinians mustn't dream of inconveniencing the Israelis who displaced them, that the aggressors' claim to justice must be observed by the aggrieved?
You say, "Some things are neither feasible nor desirable to do no matter how "just" one believes them to be. Some things are neither feasible nor desirable, nor ethical to do, regardless of the amount of justice one ascribes to the cause in whose name they are performed. (Sorry, I realize that's incredibly clumsy, but grammatically correct). "
The grammar's fine (well, maybe you could lose that comma after the second "desirable"); the problem is that it's an assertion, not an argument, and a perfect example of begging the question, a concept over whose misuse, the longtime reader will know, I've torn my hair out. The very question we're trying to answer is how to obtain justice for the displaced. You must demonstrate the undesirability, immorality and unfeasibility of following the law, not simply assert it.
Note that I'm assuming your position doesn't depend upon whether you read history in the Zionist fashion or the accurate one. That is, even if you were to stipulate that Israel bore primary responsibility for the Palestinian diaspora, you would still argue that RoR is not an appropriate remedy. Correct me if I'm wrong, so we can keep the focus where it belongs.
What hardships will Israelis suffer under RoR? No more religious favoritism? A more open society? True equality for everyone, regardless of religion/race/ethnicity or whatever? Citizenship, not race/religion/ethnicity, being the paramount concern of the state? Quelle horreur!
There is now basically one state between the river and the sea. Roughly one half of its inhabitants, though, are treated unequally at best. As Ehud Olmert warned, we soon will see the mideast issue recast as a civil rights problem, not a territorial one. He wanted to avoid this; I think it's a development devoutly to be wished.
Sorry, forgot to acknowledge your menschlich confession, for which thanks and apology accepted. We should all take a lesson from you.
I'm assuming that the last two anons and the creepily-named "Ismail's anonymous lover" are all our friend P-A (fer chrissake, just take a fucking screen name and stick with it-it really makes things so much easier for all of us), so let me respond to him.
"…your readily apparent and consistent need to compensate for something…"
Sigh. Here is an example of the awful legacy that clinical psychology has bequeathed to us. Everyone's a shrink. Who knows what P-A sees in my writing that counts as "readily apparent" evidence of the need to compensate. Robust vocabulary? Ciceronian sentence structure, with clause embedded within clause like a grammatical clusterfuck? Delight in producing a sentence like that last one? Beats me, but I'm inclined to think that it's just that American suspicion of erudition that I've remarked on before.
What's the element of my comments that marks them as "compensation"? Note that I think the concept itself is quite useful, but not when it's bandied about by the laity.
Regarding the Jews-as-ethnic-group issue, you seem to dodge back and forth among race, ethnicity and nationality; each of these terms is highly theoretical and each refers to a different notion. Since we are unlikely to solve the vexing question of Jewish identity this week, I'd suggest looking at our disagreement without reference to that question. By "Zionism", let's mean "the specific political form that the larger theory of Zionism has in fact taken in the 20th and 21st century". This means we may stipulate that, for example, Jews compose a nationality without signing on to, for example, the expulsion of the indigenes from Palestine. That is, on this account, one may be a Zionist and support a more just and enlightened method for selecting a homeland than the wholesale murder and expulsion that preceded the founding of Israel.
In this sense, then, a critic of Zionism (the actual political horror show that we witnessed in the 20th century) in no way resembles the Hirsi Ali, Manji critics of Islam. This seems a hard step for you to take, but critics of an entire religion are doing something different from what a critic of a political movement is doing.
"You want to make a human rights case for the Palestinians? Then do try to show that you are on pace with the Western world's efforts in advancing civil rights generally. "
Here is the four billionth instance of "don't criticize Israel unless you criticize all bad actors" ploy, which I've shown to be sheer bullshit many times here and elsewhere. I'll not repeat myself, but a moment's thought should reveal that this principle would forbid any political action at all (since virtually every political actor makes a choice about what issue he or she is animated by, and that is typically not done by calculating the world's worst beast and going down the list from there). To boot, P-A reminds us, as all good Zideologues must, that fundamentalist Muslims have atrocious sexual politics. A shabby trick, this, because you don't for an instant believe I would support the hanging of anyone on account of their sexuality.
More important, my demands for the rights of Palestinians is completely independent of any ideological means test you may construct. Call me an unreconstructed antiquarian, but I still have great affection for those quaint 18th century notions of rights being absolute things.
"find me five anthropologists who deny the existence of the Jewish people as an ethnic group and then we'll talk."
Sorry, I don't subscribe to the idea that anthropologists form a sort of priesthood whose opinions about essentially philosophical matters are definitive. And you can emit all the smoke you want, but if entrance to a group depends upon the imprimatur of a religious authority, we are talking about a religious group.
Your list of "bigots" reveals the very sort of sloppy reasoning I think your grammatical solecisms mirror. Luther was primarily distressed about the politics of Rome-to the extent that he regarded Catholics themselves as, to a person, evil, then he was a bigot (as, of course you must know, he was towards Jews). He, Jesus and Paul had serious theological differences with their predecessors, but their criticism was not, as Manji's et al is, aimed at the average believer. Jesus did not warn of the terrible danger Jews posed to the rest of mankind-he disagreed theologically with them. Mohammed regarded both Jesus and Abraham with great veneration.
The point is that we lose a word if we apply "bigotry" to every instance of doctrinal change, reformation, etc. What's the added piece that transforms "difference of opinion" to "bigotry"? The wholesale condemnation of every member of a group owing to nothing more than their being a member of that group (unless, of course, the foundational and core belief of that group is clearly objectionable, such that one could not be a member unless she embraced that belief-think human sacrifice, Nazism etc.)
And changing from "Muslims" to "Islam" doesn't make a difference, since adherents are found in all flavors and therefore criticism of "Islam" is so general as to constitute bigotry.
Note that none of this requires that I refrain from cocking my eyebrow at religious folks in general; I have little use for blazing bushes that talk or riding stallions into heaven, etc. And some people who profess such things-Pastor John Hagee, Rabbi Shmuel Eliayahu, Imam al-Sudais-are surely condemnable morons, but not on account of what they share with their co-religionists.
As far as your "honor killings" comment, you know of course that this barbarity is being challenged in many arenas of Arab civil society, particularly in Palestine. Like the fact that the weekly, non-violent (unless you count the IOF's regular savagery) protests against the wall remain unreported in Western media (but let a kid hurl a rock at a tank….hoo boy), the struggle within Palestinian culture to transition from feudal to modern remains unknown here.
More important, though, is the fact that these recitations of regressivism among some Palestinians have nothing to do with the Mideast conflict. They could be honor-killers to a person but displacing them, stealing their land and keeping them from food and medical care would still be wrong.
Apologies, Ismail. For some reason, the first time I read this:
"I regret any hurt feelings my remark may have caused to gay male or straight female readers."
I read correctly. And then when going back over it, for some reason, I took it as a reference to me (Perhaps it was after scanning through the comment again and having to skip over all the personal comments). So apologies all around. What you said here doesn't warrant the comment(s) I crafted in response to it. You've made good and regardless of who the person could have been that could technically merit the name "cockholster", you were obviously just playing with a funny word and didn't intend anything to merit the attitude I supplied in response. You weren't saying that perhaps there might have been a direct reason for me to take it personally, so the hautiness in my reply was pointless. Nothing you have to prove w/regards to the original remark in light of your follow-up, so the challenge I issued was simply not merited, and I take it (them) back.
Again, my apologies (for that!)
I'm not letting the Iranian (and Saudi, and Egyptian, and Sudanese, etc., etc., ad infinitum ad nauseum) governments off the hook for their treatments of female "cockholsters" either. It's just the way the most theologically-inclined authorities in the Muslim/Arab world are able to treat gays in 2005 (and I'm assuming 2008) is, to these Western eyes, particularly obscene. Perhaps our sense of shock and disgust with honor killings and the associated, misogynistic barbarities for which your corner of the world is well-noted has just happened to have run its course. We're sort of resigned to things not changing in that regard.
Oh, by the way, that wasn't a personal comment. It therefore doesn't merit a personal attack in response. I know you take such events and the practices I described very impersonally, so I'm sure there's no reason whatsoever for you to get upset at my mentioning them the way I just did. Or is that not obvious?
Since I admit, to be obsessed with your small penis would really be reason to seek therapy. Actually, I was commenting primarily on your readily apparent and consistent need to compensate for something – whatever that something is. Might not have been a small penis. Maybe it's your fear of your wife. In any event, it's really not worth getting into too extensively. And since you kept the personal attacks at a smaller total percentage of your comment than before (and I know how difficult this is for you), admitted that your love of words can obscure political, human and (heaven forbid) intellectual exigencies that might matter to even you, and since your humor is still humor regardless of the personal issues you can't help infusing into these comments, I'll try to respond in a way that makes sense to you. In all likelihood you won't respect that effort, but for some reason – perhaps my mood, perhaps the fact that it's been 3 days, perhaps the fact that you can't stand not responding – I'll go ahead with it.
First off, it's interesting that JCA can get offended about words he might think would cause offense to an Arab, but you assume that I can't remonstrate with you regarding your use of language that is obviously demeaning to other groups, without myself belonging to such a group. Think about that – especially when you want to appeal to others regarding a common sense of humanity you suppose they should feel on behalf of the Palestinians. Or don't. In which case, your case would probably receive about as fair a hearing as those made by these young lads. You want to make a human rights case for the Palestinians? Then do try to show that you are on pace with the Western world's efforts in advancing civil rights generally. I'm guessing you wouldn't want to be seen in terms as derisive as those in which the Iranian government sees gays. Just some advice to make you not sound stupid or stuck in the dark ages - whatever your prejudices, and however much fun you had with the word.
Short and sweet (so you don't get sidetracked):
Clarity and aesthetics are not the same thing. What is unclear to you may be perfectly clear (and coherent) to someone else.
Regarding Zionism, it's not the same as Judaism. I didn't say it was. You can read, can't you? Or are wet bed sheets obscuring the monitor? Most Jews are Zionists (not some), because they see no conflict in being Jewish as an ethnicity. Of course, no such conflict exists. Many if not most Jews who aren't Zionists deny nationalism as a phenomenon altogether; they are generally post-nationalist Chomsky-types who endorse some sort of anarchy or otherwise poorly thought-out global system. Try and be honest about these things, if you can. If this is news to you, we'll do what we can. Just ask for help.
Ethnicity doesn't mean others can't join, regardless of the requirements for marrying in – even if that includes rabbinical instruction and a conversion first. Ethnicity does not mean some sort of genetic stasis. Anyone can argue about whether or not Jews are an ethnicity or not. Even Jews can argue about it. But it is not the opinion of people quibbling about the meaning of their own identity or that of others that matters. You go find me five anthropologists who deny the existence of the Jewish people as an ethnic group and then we'll talk.
Regarding religious bigotry, I found this Ismailian tautology intriguing. I was going to drop it, but since you seem to keep hammering on about the totality of one's criticism:
Very sorry to have not replied in several days. I was away celebrating our independence.
P-A says,
"Nice homophobia, Irhabi."
Interesting that your first association to my epithet referenced gayness. After all, I could as well have been calling you a straight woman, right? In any case, good call on your part, and I regret any hurt feelings my remark may have caused to gay male or straight female readers. I was too taken with the poetics of the word "cockholster" to keep its politics in mind. My bad.
Let me retract and instead call you a worthless taintstain. There, unless there's a taintless community we should be in the clear.
"It suits Islamists and anti-Zionists to pretend that Judaism is a religion only, not an ethnicity, and therefore not entitled to its own sense of nationhood. But that doesn't make such an incorrect belief true. "
I assume this comment was meant to address my warning to avoid equating Judaism with Zionism. Well, the question of what constitutes Jewish identity may be settled in your mind, P-A, but you may be aware that it remains an interesting one for many. I haven't time to give a complete account of my thoughts about this, but let me offer one remark which bears on your point.
If I want to become a Jew (what you call a nationality) and have had the misfortune to have been born to a gentile mom, what's my recourse? Get ahold of an embassy person? A civil authority of some sort? Study up on the Israeli constitution? (oops…I forgot. No such thing exists.) No, no and no. I go to a rabbi, who will instruct me and then will or will not pronounce me sufficiently devout to join the tribe.
As I'm sure you will agree, having a religious authority determine nationality runs counter to the intuitions most liberal democrats entertain on these matters. As I say, it's a head-scratcher.
More to the point, though, is this: I said that your parallel between Pappe criticizing Zionism and Manji criticizing Islam was poorly thought out, since Islam is a religion while Zionism is a political system. A correct parallel would have Pappe criticizing Judaism, not Zionism (you'll recall that I left Shahak on the margin, since his work includes critiques both of political Ziuonism and orthodox Judaism itself. These are nuances you'd do well to appreciate).
You stupidly replied with your "nationality" remark. So let me make the point even more simply and decisively. Some Zionists are Jews. Some are not. Some Jews are Zionists. Some are not. Ergo, Judaism does not equal Zionism. This is not a matter of opinion; it's a matter of the formal, logical properties of language, and all your bed-wetting will not change this.
As to your references to my penis, well, I'll admit it's a sturdy and awe-inspiring example of its kind, but that's really not a matter for this blog. Kindly keep your fantasies to yourself. This phallic obsession, along with your musings about my onanistic habits, are best discussed with your therapist, assuming there are veterinarians who do therapy.
"And it would be nice to know what formal reasoning skills lead one to believe that criticism of a religion (especially by former adherents) is "bigotry". Alas, I suppose you don't have the answer to that one."
Alas, I do. Clearly, criticism of some religious practices or persons is perfectly benign. As I pointed out in my earlier comment, though (go ahead-reread it, and this time move your lips if it helps your comprehension), Hirsi Ali explicitly aims her criticism at every Muslim-every one!-just by virtue of their being Muslim. If you don't understand why condemnation of an entire religious group (and here I exclude those 20-member groups who preach race war, etc) constitutes bigotry, then you simply don't understand the meaning of the word. You know and I know that there are untold numbers of Muslims (the vast majority, according to "Who Speaks for Islam?", the recent extensive Gallup poll) who are law-abiding folks who go to work, raise their families and basically want to get along. So Hirsi Ali's totalist condemnation is bigotry. You could look it up.
"It's not a fucking medium for reviving Classical Arabic. "
Here we see the further regression towards derangement whose beginnings we glimpsed in your "penis" and "masturbation" fantasies. I was of course talking about good English, but your paranoia seems to have eclipsed your ability to reason.
"…most of those people value ideas more so than the aesthetics of how those ideas are expressed."
Here we have an honest disagreement. You seem to think that the relationship between form and content is an incidental one, while I think that clarity of expression mirrors rigor of thought. By the way, lose the word "so" in your sentence above. Makes you sound stupid.
"…until you manage to get a girlfriend…"
Not gonna happen. My wife would kill me.
Nice homophobia, Irhabi. But I'm not gay, just a simple dhimmi. So while you are entitled to assert superiority whenever you feel the inadequacy that prompts you to assert it, that doesn't mean that your facts weren't acknowledged. They were. No apology necessary. Beat up your own "cockholster" and ask for one from him or her instead.
It suits Islamists and anti-Zionists to pretend that Judaism is a religion only, not an ethnicity, and therefore not entitled to its own sense of nationhood. But that doesn't make such an incorrect belief true.
I honestly don't care what you think of how I express myself. If you didn't feel that you understood what I wrote, you wouldn't have had any reason to respond to it (and, in fact, you largely don't). I don't need the approval of unknown terrorist-sympathizers and your naturally nasty demeanor doesn't make my beliefs (which are quite open to constant re-interpretation) incorrect. And it would be nice to know what formal reasoning skills lead one to believe that criticism of a religion (especially by former adherents) is "bigotry". Alas, I suppose you don't have the answer to that one. But you likely do have a very small penis to rub quite vigorously while dreaming of the exaltation you feel your writing skills are owed. The fact that they are wasted in the comments section of someone else's blog/online magazine seems to escape you.
My ideas are complicated; but the fact that you can't grasp them doesn't make them incoherent. The fact that you feel offended by the convention that one should bother to try to understand them before insulting me is another matter. They could stand to be expressed better, I suppose. But the blogosphere is not a publishing company, thank god. It's more open, more free-form, and more willing to accomodate the way language is actually spoken, among other things. It's not a fucking medium for reviving Classical Arabic. Most people adept at making use of the medium (what's the URL for your own blog, by the way?) don't have a problem with that. But then again, most of those people value ideas moreso than the aesthetics of how those ideas are expressed. And that's because they appreciate the very formal reasoning skills that you mention. But what they don't have is a self-congratulatory conception of themselves as a romanticized artist/ruffian to perfect and masturbate to. You'll always have them beat on that score.
Is there a Sims game they could invent for your character? Perhaps one of the more pornographic versions would suit you? At least, it might until you manage to get a girlfriend (self-respect optional) that could put up with you.
Now go out and pretend that you're not a complete waste of everyone's time.
"But she does (along w/Hirsi, Sultan, etc.) provide an analogous if unequal niche within Muslim circles as Israel Shahak, Pappe, Morris, etc. provide within Israeli circles."
Completely and utterly incorrect, but very revealing of your shortcomings.
Shahak is a borderline case, but Pappe and Morris (until he went nuts) were critics of Zionism's instantiation in Palestine. They are not critics of Judaism. Manji, Hirsi Ali and Sultan are critics of Islam. Not "radical" Islam or some tiny subset of fanatics-Islam itself.
It suits Zionists to conflate Judaism with Zionism, so that critics of the latter may be tarred as critics of the former. No sale. And no parallel between Manji's, et al, religious bigotry and Pappe's political criticism.
I'll bet a lot of your incorrect beliefs are due to lapses of formal reasoning skills like this. Read more and talk less.
Oh, yeah, and when your opponent takes a comment of yours and demonstrates, by quoting half a dozen counterexamples, that it's bullshit, have the spine to correct yourself, not go off on another self-exculpatory tangent. Simple. It is not the case that everything I say is an ad hominem or a grammatical correction. I showed that decisively. This is your cue to apologize.
Of course, some things I say are grammatical gotchas or ad hominems. In that spirit, you are a complete cockholster and you write terribly.
I actually haven't read her - if buying her book, flipping through the pages, regularly visiting her websites, etc., count. But she does (along w/Hirsi, Sultan, etc.) provide an analogous if unequal niche within Muslim circles as Israel Shahak, Pappe, Morris, etc. provide within Israeli circles. Maybe that's what pisses you off, as the strongest sticking point I've emphasized over the last 30 posts has been that of the respective differences between the existence and/or strength of self-criticism within Arab /Muslim as opposed to Jewish cultures. I don't read Tom Friedman's regularly error-prone timetables of fortune-telling columns or the more recent and extensive platitudes he's managed to publish as if they could properly be called "books". However, he did deserve the Pulitzer he won and Beirut to Jerusalem is a great narrative of the Arab-Israeli conflict as it stood in the 1980s.
In any event, thank you for your advice on racism in the U.S. – the history of which and its and its existence/persistence as a phenomenon in general I take very seriously. I know some very good and respected scholars of racism in the U.S. who are much more pro-Israel than I suspect you would care to know. The history of race as a (largely social) construction and racism in the U.S. (as well as in Africa and Arabia) is a very important phenomenon to research and study, so thank you for the suggested reading materials you cite.
Is this JCA? Just wondering. I'm assuming it is, but the identity of who addresses me matters less to me than whether or not the discourse is meaningful.
Oh wait. You did manage to insert a fact or two into your diatribes.* The context for those selective facts was an effort on your part to hijack an article - which had nothing to do with those facts - so that you could disparage the country that charters a company to improve water technologies.
Now technically, your disparaging of Israel is not ad hominem, because countries are not people. But the conceptual space between disparaging a singular person and disparaging a whole nation of people seems subatomic to me.
And why do you disparage cultists so? I never said that adherents of a religious movement, no matter how eccentric, couldn't have day jobs. How wide is your "conceptual space" between a "true" religion and a cult anyway? Is it clear enough to cut right through the phenomenon of Scientology? Because I heard a lot of those "believers" have pretty diverse day jobs as well.
But I digress. That's your argument with Hirsi, not with me. Not that the space between your hyperactive limbic system and observations that offend your profanity-laden jihad exists at a level that is anything but subatomic.
Anyways, people who like to prove their moral and intellectual superiority to others don't refer to alleged displays of "idiocy" while proving their arguments to be correct in the next breath. That would be really idiotic.
Obviously your bigger problem is with Ali, not me. Her words reach a wider audience. Why don't you tell me what problems you might have with Wafa Sultan and Manji while you're at it? And try to make your dismissals substantive, rather than single-word labels. Expand the scope of your jihad/cause just a bit, because it looks like they're doing a whole lot more damage to it than I am. I mean, I know you must fancy yourself a brave little soul for using vulgar and demeaning language against anonymous people over the internet, but wouldn't you be better off relieving your frustrations by directing them at those who are both more effective at feeding them and ultimately more responsible for feeding them? Or does the fact that you channel these sort of responses toward someone as insignificant as me just represent a dialectical equivalent of terrorism?
I think you are managing to become a little bit more articulate, but you will have to do even better than that if you want to achieve an effective renunciation of Hirsi. The fact that this woman was subjected to a brutal clitoridectomy and countless other horrors give her the sympathy and breadth of audience she rightly deserves when speaking as articulately as she does about the civilization she comes from. Using words like "jingoist" and throwing around a simple, spur of the moment, one-line rebuttal of her characterization of the religion she was raised in as a cult, surely doesn't make your line of argumentation sound any more credible or effective than hers.
*And most of those were addressed early on, before you devolved back into the ad hominem addict that you are always so easily reduced to.
Oh, yeah, here's P-A again, referring to yours truly:
"His words amount to nothing more than ad hominems and grammatical edits."
And here are a few of my comments in this thread:
""The fact that Israel releases less water to Palestinians than the WHO declares necessary for minimal human welfare is no secret."
and
"Israeli colonists in the West Bank are allotted 1459 cubic meters per person per year of water. Palestinians? 83 cm pp py."
and
"Israel forbids drilling of new wells by Palestinians. Will you be surprised to learn that such restrictions do not afflict Jewish colonists? "
and
"Israel colonies Ariel and Kedumin are built over the Western mountain aquifer in prime Palestinian agricultural territory. Interestingly, the Apartheid Wall swings most deeply into Palestinian territory at just these points, insuring Israeli control of these resources."
and
"There is no question that modern Western agricultural practices produce greater yields, at least in the short term. Modern fishing practices yield greater catches, too, but we are now depleting reproducing populations."
and
"Regarding Arafat's complaint, he was alluding to the same thing that Moshe Dayan referenced in his famous speech at the Technion; namely, that part and parcel of the Zionist project in Palestine was the deliberate effacement of any scrap of Palestinian culture."
and
"Let's see, in the period between 1880 and 1930, Palestine was a net exporter of agricultural products to both their neighbors in the Middle East and to Europe. Some desert."
And so on. Please advise which of these are ad hominems and which are grammatical edits. You may find this easier to do if you first withdraw your head from your ass.
P-A, your idiocy is too bewitching for me to resist. You say,
"As for myself, I think I'll be off to read some racist works by Aayan Hirsi Ali, or Irshad Manji. Very racist, those two."
Here's Ali, in an interview with Reason magazine:
"There is no moderate Islam" and "There can only be peace between East and West if Islam is defeated." You must mean radical Islam, right, oh great spokesperson for human rights? "No. Islam, period. Once it's defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It's very difficult to even talk about peace now. They're not interested in peace."
She calls Islam's 1.3 billion believers a "death cult". Imagine-every Muslim-Indonesian granny, Lebanese bioresearcher, US postal worker-every one a death cultist.
Now, I realize that Islam is not a race, so technically Ali's off the hook. But the conceptual space between racism and the sort of religious bigotry that Ali endorses seems subatomic to me.
I wouldn't brag about taking solace from the musings of such a jingoist as Ali.
Give me a break, JCA. Logic prevents two mutually exclusive things from being simultaneously true. Your comments here:
"you had proven yourself truly dense"
betray all of the following:
"And yes, you are correct"
Jews for Clear Argumentation
JCA
06/25/08 3:39
Anonymous
There's an old Arabic saying that goes something like, and I'm trying to translate so that the nuance of the original is preserved, "When you find yourself confronted by a hugely passive-aggressive asshat whose every comment becomes more and more unhinged and unrelated to the question at hand, it's best to back away slowly, tossing bits of kibble if you have some handy to distract the beast, and, when at a safe distance, turn and walk away."
Or something like that.
G'bye, P-A. And your mom's right; you shouldn't skip your meds.
Actually anon, I stopped responding because you had proven yourself truly dense, and in doing so, began making a better case against yourself than I could. You're a curse on your people, anon. Even AIPAC has better sense than to employ your particular flavor of racism.
JCA's comments weren't pathetic. Your idolizing of him is. At least when you call him a saint, that is.
My own saints when it comes to calling the shots that you won't when it comes to that criminal enterprise known as the Palestinian political cause are here. Oh, and here.
Whoops! Sorry about that last one. It was just inserted to make sure that the pride that Abu beat into you is still intact. Or, as you call it, "conviction".
No one cares what you have to say. You carry on like this because you believe it to be a face-saving measure. Trust me, no one here sees it that way.
If you seriously want an explanation then stop being an asshole and I'll explain whatever you don't understand.
In the meantime, go plead your psychological case to Wafa.
No one is taking you seriously in any other respect, and that includes your obsessive-compulsive editorializing. JCA knew how to at least try to follow an argument. He also knew when there was nothing more to discuss. I can see why you are distressed and more aggressive than ever since his absence. At least if he came back, it might shut you up. Your frantic comments make it seem like your head must be about as wired as the vest of a suicide bomber, seconds before exploding.
Was that last sentence a properly constructed metaphor? I'm sure you'll let me know.
Anyways, I know at least a few of these comments you'll consider shots just to set your angry, explosive self off. So I'll leave that otherwise sensitive soul of yours (despite your admitted lack of a "calm, inclusive tone") with this offer: Drop the inferiority complex, and I'll speak with you as an equal. But if you don't, that's fine. Persisting in a display of the sort of inferiority complex you put on here is sort of its own punishment. At least it is at "the grown-up table" that JCA isn't afraid to invite others (aside from spectators and shills) to.
Excellent! I make several substantive points, with which you may agree or disagree. Instead, you unleash a hissy fit and….accuse me of substituting vitriol for argument. Swell!
Your first paragraph is largely incoherent. If you want to sit at the grown-up table, you've got to express yourself more clearly. Let's try again. I wondered about your notion that a Jew articulating an opinion close to that of an Arab was "pathetic". I offered a couple of ways to understand such a comment, none of them flattering to you. This is the part where you acknowledge how primitive your comment was, or correct my misunderstanding of your remark. I expect you were trying to do the latter, but I have to take that on faith, since your remarks were indeciperable. Once again, simple question; what did you mean by the "pathetic" comment? Why is it "pathetic" for JCA to have made the comments he did?
As someone so averse to being psychoanalyzed, do you find it odd that you prattle on about "…a disappointed Ismail regresses back into the same triumphalism he's always held onto – trying to prove he's better than others by claiming that they think they're better than him.", as vacuous a piece of freshman-English Freudian flapdoodle as I've come across lately? No, I suppose you wouldn't…..
Incidentally, you describe my attitude towards some of JCA's comments as "idolization". What is your evidence? Did you mean something more than that I agreed with him? If so, what? Or maybe you were just making a cheap rhetorical point?
But your petulant refusal to adopt the simple courtesy of taking a screen name, now that is worth seeing in psychological terms. Perhaps I'll give you a name, since, like a dog, you're incapable of choosing one yourself. How about P-A Anon, for "passive-aggressive anon"? That suits quite well, I think.
And please, P-A, stop the boneheaded bombast about "triumphalism" when what you mean is simply that I have very strong beliefs about the Middle East, and that I think that, taken as a whole, Israeli policy has been not just wrong-headed or mistaken, but criminal. This is the sort of thing that we call "having convictions", a concept with which I'm sure you have no trouble in other contexts. What you need to do when you disagree is offer a counterargument, not spin silly "clash of civilizations" fictions about the roots of my beliefs. Lay off the Bernard Lewis and Huntington for a while; they'll corrupt your ability to reason.
Finally, P-A says, "Despite his predilection for diagramming sentences, the concept of good faith is clearly not in his vernacular." Whoops, here we go again. When you start a sentence with "despite", you're alerting the reader that the second clause of your sentence will confound the expectations the first clause raises; e.g., "despite his having been an English major, P-A can't obey the simplest rules of sentence construction". In the real world, sentence-diagramming abilities are not usually associated with one's reservoir of good faith. Also, you didn't want to use "vernacular"; "repertoire" or similar is what you had in mind.
Anything else I can help you with?
Out of all the questionable comments that Iss has posted, I'd have to say the one from earlier today takes the cake. Not even worth responding to. Better to stay silent and let him think and spew the worst. I'll let his paranoid goading, defensiveness and negativity speak for him. It's obvious that he can't engage anything without dictating which of two possible sides of an overly-simplified, dualistic "with me or against me" divide he defines on the part of himself and his interlocutor. That has nothing to do with tribalism and everything to do with getting beyond a mindset addicted to triumphalism. JCA has done it, and because of that Ismail idolizes him. But that doesn't mean that JCA is right. As such, a disappointed Ismail regresses back into the same triumphalism he's always held onto – trying to prove he's better than others by claiming that they think they're better than him. Sort of ironic tactic, but it does get the attention of the only intellectual allies he can cobble together in this never-ending game of his.
"I against my brother. I and my brother against my cousin. My brother, my cousin and I against the world."
I must say, I'm amazed at how undignified he's managed to make himself look. And when it comes to Ismail, that's saying a lot.
He should not look at this comment as a response to him. Despite his predilection for diagramming sentences, the concept of good faith is clearly not in his vernacular. People who don't act in good faith aren't worth being directly addressed. I do hope he enjoyed the post-triumphalist dialectic that he witnessed so attentively, though. Perhaps it was even constructive. At some point either he or his culture might mature to the point where he could have one with another Arab?
Naaahh!
It's clearly more fun for him to bash anyone not taking the Palestinian side (in whichever argument) as inhumane — or as Ismail's triumphalist thinking brands them: "subhuman". He knows not the difference. And he doesn't care to learn it, either. That would humanize his enemy – something he clearly cannot afford to do. And something he's not mature enough to do.
"On March 5th 2003 Asaf, a young high school boy was on his way
back from school. A suicide murderer that exploded on Asaf's bus
killed him and sixteen other innocent men, women and children.
Asaf was almost seventeen years old when he died and he is my
son.
As every young man does, Asaf would have finished high school and
army service and would have gone on a trip to see the world:South
America, the Far East, India or maybe Australia and New Zealand.
He wanted very much to go surfing at the famous beaches in Hawaii
and Australia. Asaf wanted to hike the high treks of Nepal and
the Himalayas.
Now I am sending Asaf on his world tour. Without a passport or a
back pack, I am sending you only this picture and his spirit and
ask you to help take Asaf to wherever you go. India, Thailand,
New Zealand or the Chinese wall. Wherever you go, take out his
picture, photoraph it in the place you are and email it back to
me ( <mailto:Yossi@Blondi.co.il> Yossi@Blondi.co.il).
If you are not travelling take the photo in your city or town, at
the mall, city stadium and even your front or back yard.
I will build Asaf's world tour photo album and post it on the
internet. This way Asaf will be at all those wonderful places in
the world he wasn't lucky to see.
You can print a few copies of the attached picture and leave
copies on your way, hang it on a bulletin board at the hotel or
the guest house you stay in. leave it along the trek, put it in
the visitor's book you write your experiences in.
Help me get my son around the world and make his world tour go
through each country on the globe.
Yossi Zur, Asaf's father
Email: <mailto:Blondi713@gmail.com> Yossi@Blondi.co.il
Web: <http://www.blondi.co.il/> http://www.Blondi.co.il
Thanks, anon (I assume you are a different anon than the one soiling his diapers in his protracted conversation with JCA since you are pithier) for clearing this matter up. It hadn't occurred to me that, because Arafat was a feckless thief, Israel is justified in depriving the Palestinians of water. Brilliant! Hey, let's not stop there! Arafat's thievery justifies cluster bombs in Lebanon! Credit crisis? Arafat! Subprime mess? Blame the keffiyeh!
Now stop being an asshat and go away.
Couldnt Suha Arafat buy the Palestinian people as much water as they need with all the funds Yasser stole from Chris Patten and the EU?
How prissy and humorless our anon friend turns out to be. I write an obviously snarky couple of sentences (complete with vernacularisms!) meant to comment on JCA's almost supernatural tolerance and patience, and our anon (who continues to resist the cost-free and painless suggestion that he adopt a screen name, which fact has obvious clinical implications, most clearly an unhealthy streak of passive-aggression–how's that for psychoanalyzing you, anon?) finds this compelling evidence of my commitment to violence. Anon needs to get out more, wouldn't you say?
And what shall we make of this gem: "Isn't it pathetic that the most prolific Arab commenter here, and perhaps one of the most prolific – if profane – commenters here period, looks to a Jew to articulate his case for him?" ? What is the evidence that I look to JCA to make my arguments? If I did, why would it be pathetic? Because he's Jewish and I'm an Arab? What does this say about your primitive tribalism or (boo! here comes one of them high-falutin', pointy-headed, ivory tower scare terms) essentialism? This is old news, but you really mustn't conflate your own feral version of Zionism with Judaism. There is nothing untoward about a Jew condemning Israeli crimes, nor an Arab condemning Saudi or Egyptian or Palestinian ones. Very revealing comment, anon.
As far as "…a culture that glorifies and makes a cult out of the suicide bomber" goes, recall that there are between 4 and 4.5 million Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Since 1994, there have been fewer than 100 suicide bombings in all of those areas. Clearly a rather small cult, as cults go. Compare to the Israeli schoolgirls scrawling messages of love onto the bombs about to be deployed to dispatch the innocents of southern Lebanon, or the Prussianesque adulation of all things military in Israel. Do you detect a whiff of death-cult? Let me guess; no, you don't. Am I right?
Before the forays into Locke and Jabotinsky, we were talking about Israeli water policy. My contention was that an article about Israel's heroic partnership with LA in formulating answers to water scarcity that did not mention Israel's rapacious actions regarding withholding water from Palestinians, commandeering aquifers, diverting rivers, irrigating lawns while keeping children dehydrated, et al was ignoring crucial aspects of the phenomenon it was reporting. You may disagree, but your disagreement must be a political, not technological, one. But rather than explaining why you imagined Israel was justified in in acting in subhuman ways towards those it occupies, off you went in a carnival of misdirection and crankiness.
If you care to be responsive instead of incidental, I'll be happy to reply. And rest assured, I will lace into you and go to town on your cracker ass. Can't help it. Such unthinking violence is bred into us from birth, as natural as camel's milk and hummus.
Oh, just so you know that we're also capable of concern for our fellow man, note that in your sentence, "Do you think there might be a subjective reason for why, instead of being encouraged by your approach, your words merely excite his own crude sense of violence and thoughtlessness?", the phrase "instead of being encouraged by your approach" modifies "your words", not "Ismail". I bring this up only to spare you the disdain of the literate. Like chili stains on your tie, things like this reflect badly on you and should be avoided, particularly when you're trying to be persuasive.
You're welcome.
It may come as a surprise to you that profanity can actually be used for emphasis.
I find it interesting that someone who dismisses the violence in Ismail's rhetoric feels qualified to pronounce on the alleged anger of others.
But if you're comfortable with that ("go with it"), then I can see why you go to such lengths and jump through such rhetorical acrobatics to coddle a culture that glorifies and makes a cult out of the suicide bomber.
If that's what works for you… go with it, man.
I see why Ismail eventually had to resort to small words and short sentences. You're great at getting angry anon. If that's what works for you… go with it, man.
No one's attempted to "silence" you. So you can stop with the self-pitying bullshit. Or at least with the appearance of it. Whichever the case may be.
The only one who could be said to be obscuring objective reality is the one who has been dismissive of it. Name one fact that I've mentioned, and asserted as fact, which you would like to construe as not "objective, let alone innocent." Oh, that's right. You don't deal in facts, only in "categories" and "construels", whatever the fuck that means.
The reason I'm done, is because, you're right. I am better than that. Conversations can be manipulated with facts and logic (assuming one is too selective with those things and others aren't resourceful enough in asserting contrary facts and logic that take precedent), but they are much more easily turned into the kind of artistic but meaningless drivel that was more influential before the internet, with "categories", postmodernism and the other, much more rhetorical devices upon which you clearly rely.
I clearly stated that I didn't think that subjective understandings (which is basically a way to understand the psychology of things) were completely worthless. And you seemed to "reciprocate" with your backing away from a lambasting of objectivity altogether. But this is not an exercise in niceness and reciprocity and an equal valuation of alternative approaches to things. It is not about how there is some long-lost sense of niceness and mutual respect over which we must periodically lament, and which we must attempt to re-establish with every other post and nurture and reinforce as if that will somehow resolve irreconcilable epistemologies. It is how, at the end of the day, I have no use for your relative sense of reluctance to appeal to facts as the structural basis for your arguments. That's all.
Anon,
as it seems clear from your post that you have yet to get your head around what I've been emphasizing–even as you assure me that you "follow"–allow me to quote some excepts from what I'm already written:
1. Everything we say here can be
contested, but your rhetoric comes off as a blatant attempt to silence
me while imposing particular–not objective–categories through which
to theorize reality. I have, in this post, only tried to show that
other constructions are possible, constructions which show what your
discourse obscures in the name of "objective reality."
2. I see in your attempt–which I assume is in good faith–to maintain a
sense of "the objective" coupled with your own common sense assumptions
about the relevant actors in the conflict and their
positions/sides/narratives/etc. Your categories are not objective, let
alone innocent. They represent one construel of the conflict, one which. I believe erases other important connections and distinctions.
3. As far as I'm concerned, we've been having the critical conversation;
if what you mean is "would I like to have the conversation you believe
is most relevant" well, I will just point you to what I've already
written…and say again, come on, anon, I know you can follow this line
argumentation…you're better than that.
–those "connections and distinctions," anon, are not "my own subjective opinion," they are not simply "what I believe," they are elements of reality which are lost in the representations of the conflict you present. I have tried to make this clear to you. I have hoped you would be able to appreciate the distinction. As much as you might like to think, the terms of this debate do not break down: anon for objective reality, JCA for subjective opinion. That would be convenient for you, wouldn't it anon? But alas, it's not what I'm getting at…either you follow, or you don't, not both, pick one.
But I'm not going to go there with you.
Follow?
:-)
Well, it's obviously too late to have a conversation with you on how to determine a more objective and realistic understanding of the world. But I'll give you a hint.
Signs that one isn't ready for that might include the following. An over-reliance on constructions that go like this:
1. "I don't think 'lace into that mofo' is particularly violent…definitely not as violent as attempting to justify…" blah blah blah
2. "I think the core of the conflict lies in the heart of the Jewish ethno-national state-building project."
3. "I don't think you could have had a Jewish State here without displacing hundreds of thousands of non-Jews, just because they were non-Jews."
4. "what seems most important…"
5. "I do, in fact believe that."
No one gives a flying fuck what you "think", feel, "believe", or how things "seem" to you, JCA. The only thing that any person with a brain should, in the end, give a damn about, is what can be independently verified. I've presented at least a few verifiable facts. You seem to shy away from the way that some of the more readily verified facts can get in the way of your opinions.
Since you obviously don't have any respect for the sort of more elevated discourse that Ismail seems incapable of (at least when it involves a few of those facts which are inconvenient to him), I'll speak to you using the style of language he loves (or that loves, that you seem to find so innocent: Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one… well, at least one. And nobody cares about yours, either. Or his.
If you like, you could send me your e-mail address and I could diagram that out for you.
Until then,
P.S. I know that living in the real world can be a real bitch sometimes. But hang in there!
I'll try to address these issues as succinctly as possible
1. I don't think "lace into that mofo" is particularly violent…definitely not as violent as attempting to justify what seem to me like clear inequities in resource distribution, or erase the effects of a 40+ year military occupation and settlement experiment on Palestinian civil society.
2. No, I meant collude…"to act together through secret understanding,
especially with harmful or evil intent." If you still don't get what
I'm saying, send me your address and I'll be happy to draw you a
diagram.
3. What I was doing was not "psychoanalysis." I was analyzing the implications of your discourse. I'm not particularly concerned about id, ego, or super ego, or your own secret, repressed drives that motivate your actions…and I'm definitely not interested in analyzing your dreams. I actually feel as though I have gone through great pains to give you the benefit of the doubt, and attribute to you the best of intentions. It is not your intentions/motivations I care about, but your discourse (and those in which you participate)…in my last post, what I objected to was your efforts at collusion (yes, that's right, anon, collusion) in a manner I took as obscurantist. If you experienced that as "me taking it personally," well I'm glad I have the opportunity to correct you. If you read my posts I think you'd realize that I am chiefly concerned with the social implications of speech. For example, in the last post, I was simply trying to offset the alliance you seemed to be establishing with me vis-a-vis the subject of rhetorical style. Put simply, I'm not buying what you're selling.
4. I'm happy to talk about whatever. But here's the thing, anon…you can't just set the terms of the debate, expect me to go along with those terms, and get upset when I find them unconvincing. What I have been insisting upon, and trying to show you, is that 1. the categories with which you think about "objective reality" are unclear and their implications therefore ambiguous. 2. your ethical framework is inconsistent. 3. you insist on setting the scale of what is "relevant" to the conversation. I don't accept your premises. That is what I have been trying to get at. As far as I'm concerned, we've been having the critical conversation; if what you mean is "would I like to have the conversation you believe is most relevant" well, I will just point you to what I've already written…and say again, come on, anon, I know you can follow this line argumentation…you're better than that.
I'll try and make things a little more clear for you:
I think the core of the conflict lies in the heart of the Jewish ethno-national state-building project. I don't think you could have had a Jewish State here without displacing hundreds of thousands of non-Jews, just because they were non-Jews. Whether those non-Jews resisted or not, were hostile to a Jewish presence here or not, what seems most important is that, either way, a Jewish State here requires–even before one settler sets up shop–the removal of a large portion of the people living here. My issue with political, statist Zionism (i trust you know the distinction I'm making here) is thus not historically contingent…but a matter of ethical principle. This, as I've said before, is different from whether I think Jews have rights to live in Israel/Palestine based on sources and frameworks other than ethnic-based sovereignty…I do, in fact believe that. As such, I am unwilling to speak with you about water rights–or any other issue–in a way
that simply ignores or attempts to normalize that historical
precondition to Jewish statehood….follow?
First off, please do not attempt to collude with me regarding Ismail's speech. I don't feel the same way as you do about it. I don't think it is "thoughtless" or "violent" for that matter. Furthermore, I think that your focus on his rhetoric is a quite convenient way of avoiding the implications of his speech–implications that deal centrally with the issue of state violence. If anything…someone has to disrupt the otherwise masterbatory conversations about "Israel's invention of the first double flush toilet" or something equally mundane and irrelevant. The disagreement, as Ismail so clearly pointed out, "is a political one." Opting out of the tough ethical and political questions is hardly an answer to them.
I did follow the argument, and I am capable of following a complex issue – thank you for noticing that. You, however, were the one who dismissed objective reality, not me. The way I see it, that ends the conversation. At least to any objective realist or person who holds that goal in mind.
And comments from the one-man, vulgar mob version of a peanut gallery aside, no one's justifying "withholding water from children". We're attempting to follow arguments that are more complex than that. Obviously. But I understand if some find that difficult to relate to.
JCA, there were quite a few ideas you spoke of that I felt like addressing. Way too many of them, in fact. But having digested your dismissal of objective reality, I realized that I was less interested in having the intellectual equivalent of an art gallery show and more interested in sticking to things that could be verified. That's how I tend to approach serious discussions. I think your way is interesting, something I wouldn't mind engaging to an extent, and I think there is a time and a place for addressing subjective impressions/perceptions – but not at the larger expense of the addressing the obviously serious issues at play here in a verifiable way.
Isn't it pathetic that the most prolific Arab commenter here, and perhaps one of the most prolific – if profane – commenters here period, looks to a Jew to articulate his case for him? I think I understand the subjective angles of both sides relatively well. I also think it's unfortunate that only one of those sides has managed to articulate their case effectively. Perhaps you attribute that to power. But perhaps you could also be subjective enough – (if that's what's required for you to have an open mind) – to see how it could just as easily be attributed to articulating a better objective case: a case that has undergone more self-examination than has that of its adversary.
anon,
I think if you had followed my argument you would appreciate that what's at stake is not simply a given individual's "subjective" understanding of the conflict. I'm sorry you cannot accept the historically contingent nature of the categories you seek to posit as objective. It does not follow, though, that my position is then "subjective"–or even that yours is. The task is to appreciate the (political, material) ways in which particular categories (which are never merely subjective) become authorized as "objective" in the first place–and the consequences therein.
Come on, anon, you can follow this argument. I know this is something you can get your head around. You are clearly capable of treating what are undeniably complex and important issues with the sense of complexity and importance they deserves. You're free to end the conversation. I just thought you'd do it with more respect for the subject…you're better than that.
My dearest anon,
I regret having upset you. It was not my intention…though perhaps given my previous comments, you should have no need to be concerned with my intention. I hope, though, that you take this expression of having little intention to upset you as some kind of clarification.
As for your comments. If your personal attacks on my intentions or character were generated out of a response to what you felt was an attack…I understand. However, if you're going to try and make me look bad in response, I would hope that your arguments stand on their own merits. That is, if you're going to insult my intelligence or analysis, at least justify yourself in doing so by providing arguments that are water tight. Otherwise, it just looks like you're trying to force upon me your understanding of the facts, an understanding which alas I will not accept.
I think we simply differ on some core principles…not ethical necessarily, but definitely epistemological. I, as much as you might want to impose this, do not believe in an objective world which stands outside of subjective experience…which is not to say that I believe the inverse either. My arguments depart from this presupposition…and I will try here and explain what I feel are the merits of such a departure.
I see in your attempt–which I assume is in good faith–to maintain a sense of "the objective" coupled with your own common sense assumptions about the relevant actors in the conflict and their positions/sides/narratives/etc. Your categories are not objective, let alone innocent. They represent one construel of the conflict, one which I believe erases other important connections and distinctions.
I'll give you an example. You lay out "a two-way street," one which should be constituted by "good faith" and "good behavior" from both sides. These sides to which you refer seem to be constituted by "Israel" on the one hand and "Palestinians"–however politically construed on the other. Yet where you see self evident sides, I see, and have tried to make an argument based on this conception, internally variegated entities which cannot be reduced to a narrative or set of political actors. I assume the Palestinian actor you speak of is not the collective spirit of the Palestinian ethnic group, but a political entity or set of political entities which act on their behalf. Which one, exactly, do you mean to reference? Maybe Hamas, maybe Jihad al-Islami, maybe Fatah, maybe the PLO or PA. Lets say you are speaking of the PA, the closest thing to a representative government in the West Bank and Gaza–and the one who Israel has held responsible for attacks coming from any segment of Palestinian territory. I would argue that the PA is perhaps better understood as a surrogate who's emerging role–if Israel has its way–is to secure Israeli security and economic interests in the West Bank (and maybe gaza). I'm sure this is not what the PA wants, but it is constrained in such a way so as to make it likely that this is how it will function. As such, I think they must be treated–as every group must– in a more complex way that simply the manifestation of the "Palestinian side."
You have not only "Palestinians" you have non-violent and violent resistance, family based affiliations, collaborators with Israeli intelligence, Hamas, Fatah, Jihad, PFLP, DFLP etc divisions, refugees, refugees in camps, West Banks Gazans etc. Yet in your last e-mail, you reduce these complexities to a "Palestinian narrative" or a "two way street" while lauding the virtues of "objective reality." I'm sorry, anon, but I am not willing to accept the very categories and terms in which you seek to ground your reality. I wouldn't do so with regards to Israeli society and definitely not the Jewish collectivity more broadly.
Also, and perhaps most importantly, I think speaking of "two sides" actually erases the fact that one of those "sides" (and here I am speaking of political leadership in the West Bank and Gaza) is under a military occupation–for whatever reason–which seriously curbs and constrains its ability to act decisively, develop its economy, and so forth (though not to deter its ability of some elements to launch kitchen-made rockets into Israel–Israel can't even stop that). By speaking of a two-way street, your discourse dissolves this element of the conflict. At the same time, by attempting to defame and humiliate me, while simultaneously demanding that I accept what are in fact your particular claims about reality, you attempt to force upon me what is clearly a version of that reality–one which seems particularly well tailored to the conclusions you seek to draw from this conflict.
Furthermore, anon, if you are going to demand that I "clean up my language" when it comes to discourse of colonialism, I would ask that you yourself at least offer a more complex discussion of the term. That is to say, please make sure you've killed my line of argumentation before you attempt to "nail my coffin" as is were. There are many different colonial relationships: mercantilism, industrial, settler, etc. Zionism did not resemble British colonial ventures in India, or French ventures in the Middle East…in which colonial national/citizens set up administrative and economic rule for the betterment of the colonial agent. One might fruitfully think of Zionist settlement as a surrogate colonial venture, whereby promises were secured though certain colonial agents to allow for Jewish collective rule in certain areas of the Levant. Hertz, Weitzman, et al, did indeed propose that such ventures would be advantageous for Western interests in the region–though not necessarily under the same relationship of direct rule to a specific country. For you, colonialism seem to be a term which is useful only if colonial agents as citizen/nationals of the settling country and retain that citizenship while in the colonized context.
But Zionism–political Zionism at least–is better thought of as a settler-colonial enterprise–not unlike Australia or the US–in which a population attempts to settle permanently and, if necessary, replace the indigenous population permanently.
Look, honestly anon, I have little invested in the term. The Zionists did in fact manage to replace much of the indigenous population and continues to do so. This to me seems like the important point. If someone wants to call this process "settler colonialism" there is certainly a case to do so. Point in fact, the Zionist movement in America, for example, during the pre-state era itself often used the language of colonialism when talking about Jewish settlement in Palestine. Furthermore, ideas like the "iron Wall" or Hertzl's notion that the Jewish State as a barrier against barbarism in the Middle East, and an outpost of Western culture definitely has it colonial analogues.
The argument against using such a term seems to amount to the fact that you don't like it. So you defend the Zionist project by reducing colonialism to one genre of its organization thus obscuring the fact that the Zionist movement did the work which the word "settler colonial" has attempted to describe. If you would like to find a different word, feel free, but please do not do so at the expense of making Zionism look like just another third world liberation movement–themselves often equally full of ethno-national presuppositions.
What I regret most, anon, is that these are actually all really important issues to discuss. Does Zionism's settler-colonial elements make Jewish life here illegitimate now? I would argue no. In fact, most versions of justice that seem at all just are one in which Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and many other centers of Jewish life remain…but that fact does not imply that political Zionism did not result in the displacement of the indigenous population in the creation of the state—something we refer to generally as settler colonialism. Zionism also created a refugee for Jews languishing in DP camps in Europe, but it does not follow that political Zionism did not result in the displacement of the indigenous population. Israel may have developed wonderful, world changing water conservation and desalinization technology, but it (say it with me) "does not follow that Zionism did not result in the displacement of the indigenous population…"
Please, anon, do not attempt to bully me. Everything we say here can be contested, but your rhetoric comes off as a blatant attempt to silence me while imposing particular–not objective–categories through which to theorize reality. I have, in this post, only tried to show that other constructions are possible, constructions which show what your discourse obscures in the name of "objective reality."
In the first of these unfortunately long posts I wrote at the end "For a good example of this kind of critique in Israeli center, I would visit the website of the New Israel Fund Funded Mossowa center for Arab Israeli rights." I did not mean to put "center" here…"context" would be more appropriate… apologies
You write in your last post that "[Israel] has possession of the West Bank because it was shelled by the Kingdom that did at the time, and remains in possession because no polity mature enough to credibly take responsibility over the area's security has managed to successfully negotiate a change in that status."
But at the same time, you want to argue that its use of the land is a different matter: As though the conquering of the land and its use were different: "How and why Israel uses the land in the meantime is an entirely different matter. " I hope you are not trying to be misleading and are simply misinformed. I'm not entirely sure where to begin, other than to suggest you take a look at Gorenberg's Accidental Empire, or basically anything else not taken off the AIPAC website. To try and make the claim that the occupation of the West Bank occurred only because Israel was attacked, and was not connected to a desire for settlement and territorial expansion seems a difficult claim to make outside an audience which is totally unfamiliar with the history of the conflict, Zionist political ideologies, or Israeli military doctrine. There are many overlapping reasons Israel took over that land and began to settle it, and almost none of them can be justified under the notion that "It was just attacked." (from a right-security perspective, see the "thin middle" argument about Israel's geographic shallowness, from a right-settler perspective, read well, just about anything on the settler movement and the state's accommodation of it).
Also, as it relates to both you and Ismail. I'm a little confused about why you are interested in Israel's intention in conquering and occupying the West Bank. It seems to me to matter little whether "it" did so because "it was only attacked" or because it inherently expansionist seems beside the point. Israel should be judged on its actions, not its intentions. If Israel's actions involve the starvation of the people of Gaza, or the displacement of much of the Palestinian population, I care little whether Israel "means" to do so or not. I care little whether Israel took over the West Bank for resources, for ideology, or for new soccer fields for that matter. I'm judging Israel based on its actions, and the effects of those actions on those whom it rules–whether it does so willingly or not. You don't know what Israel's intentions are, anon. You have no way of determining them. The claim that 1. you know them and 2. they are fact, is nothing short of theological.
I'm also surprised at your language, anon. I was sad to see you use the word "mature" to measure the Palestinians ability for self government. Maybe you're familiar and perhaps not, but the baggage of terms "maturity" when referring to indigenous/non-Western/global south governance carries quite a lot of colonial baggage. You, whether you want to or not, implicitly establish a teleos in your logic, one in which "childlike" indigenous people have simply not "matured" to the political state which marks "western" political institutions. You might not have "intended" that baggage when you used the term, though you might want to consider whose company you keep when you use such language. This marks another difference between you and I. You think you are sovereign over your language. That you control its intention and meaning. That is why you think you have not identified yourself with rather unsavory figures (like Jabotinsky) or ideologies like right Zionism. Your words, though, are not your own. They make associations and identification about which you are not the arbitrator. You are not at liberty to use to words like "mature" as they were somehow divested of their colonial implications. You have, perhaps knowingly perhaps unknowingly, "animated" a colonial discourse that precedes you, and which will follow you.
Furthermore, if you visit even the World Bank reports on why the Palestinians territories have not developed into an entity ability to impose the legitimate use of force on a specific territory (if you like a Weberian definition of the state), you will find that the reason given deal with Israeli control over land, airspace, boarders, its ongoing settlement activity, etc. Not to mention its insistence of undermining political moderates, etc. I bring this up because I'm pretty sure your next move is to place responsibility for on the Palestinians for not "developing" properly…as though Israel were not at all responsible for strangling Palestinian political or economic autonomy. Maybe it's not your next move, but I figured I'd try and preempt it before having to write another post. In any event, if you were going to go there, suffice it to say that the dual claims that the PA is not strong enough to negotiate because it does not maintain control, and that it is simultaneously strong enough to set the course of its own development is specious at best.
And Ismail is right…you should read M. Warschawski.
I am glad to see your acknowledgment of Locke, JCA. He is infinitely more relevant to the conversation. Perhaps, at some distant point in the future, you might come to appreciate how.
And once that occurs, you might come to grips with your obsession with useless references to this Jabotinsky character. I didn't mention him, I don't make arguments based off of his, and clear argumentation might necessitate avoiding an urge to use third parties to characterize the actual people you address. Because characterizing the people you address is something that those familiar with argumentation refer to as "ad hominem" - a tactic often employed to deliberately shift focus away from the argument and onto the person. In more popular terms, this is called shooting the messenger (to avoid addressing the message). And you're free to do it. But don't think that Jews are so easily confused as to mistake this for anything resembling "clear argumentation". They like to argue. But they're not fucking stupid.
Other than that, you might want to consider that your obsession with Israel's statehood could be leading you to think that this is an obsession which you share with everyone. Perhaps Ismail shares it. I do not. Nor am I moving between Lockean liberalism and Jabotinsky. But you're free to assert that I am - that is, assuming you have some kind of unjustified faith that people familiar with "clear argumentation" might not also clearly see a crude straw man for what it is.
No, I addressed the difference between your focus on the aquifers and Ismail's on the aqueduct because one clearly starts within pre-1967 "green-line" Israel. I'm assuming the nature of any debate over Israel's water carrier would carry different legal implications than those focused on its tapping the aquifer from sites within the West Bank. Denying that would be obfuscation.
There is only one thing in Ismail's polemic worth addressing. Israel didn't take the West Bank for its water. Nor did I argue that, retroactively, it should have. It has possession of the West Bank because it was shelled by the Kingdom that did at the time, and remains in possession because no polity mature enough to credibly take responsibility over the area's security has managed to successfully negotiate a change in that status. How and why Israel uses the land in the meantime is an entirely different matter. But I understand if Ismail would prefer to put these questions out there. They shift focus to the morality of occupation while conveniently avoiding factual considerations regarding its objectives. Of course, that is not the same as saying that "Israel may do what it wishes as long as its own standards of necessity are satisfied". And although I wouldn't count on it, with the passage of time, perhaps Ismail might come to understand why that is.
If I choose a name to register under, perhaps it could be "Ismail's nemesis". Or perhaps it could be "The nemesis of things so odious that only Ismail ignores them – when it suits his purpose, as self-proclaimed exemplar of all things moral, to do so". And once I do that, we could talk about how witty uses of language do not obviate the goals of a serious discussion. Which is something that Ismail might lower himself to considering, once he agrees to allowing the nature of the Palestinian character to be as easily given to debate as he does that of the "Israeli character".
In the meantime, I'll just take his request that I do so as being indicative of a reluctance on his part to emphasize arguments - a reluctance to emphasize the message as opposed to the messenger whom he thinks he can much more easily shoot down. And until I see evidence to the contrary, I'll take that request about as seriously as he takes his own arguments. Which is to say, not very seriously at all.
First, I commend JCA on both his clear (and, to me, decisive) reasoning and his calm, inclusive tone. Alas, I can assert no claim to the latter.
Anon is correct about the timbre of my remarks (and, before we go any further, may I again request that commenters choose a screen name, in the service of clarity and ease of conversation? As we all know, discriminating among the various "anons" that crop up in a discussion is cumbersome. Choosing a name does not require registration and takes no more time than posting anonymously does. It costs nothing and helps us all. Do it.)
As I say, I admit to unforgivable quantities of snark. I recoil, though, at anon's charge that this is deployed in order to evade staying on topic or to cover my inability to "best" an opponent. Near as I can tell, I best them all, no contest.
I also reject the accusation that I spend a of of time complaining about the tone of remarks aimed at me. I'll check out Ismail's Greatest Hits (thanks, Craig), but I really don't think I'll find much whining.
Anon might also pay attention to the difference between literate wordplay and silly kid stuff like rendering my name "Is he male?". I'm sure he thinks that Dorothy Parker's green with envy and Oscar Wilde's wilting from the competition, but no….merely unfunny and sporting just a whiff of gender condescension to boot.
I hasten to add that I'm more than fine with being attacked; just please make it clever.
I will add to JCA's comments that international law proscribes not just "occupation" but the several components of same; displacing locals, settling the occupiers' citizens on occupied land, and…ready for it…. taking water from occupied territory for the occupiers' use (not to mention use by colonies within occupied territory, themselves already illegal).
But JCA's point is a much wider one; how do we ground our ethical imperatives? And he's right that before anon gets into the minutiae of hydrological technology, he needs to answer the prior question; do Israel's perceived needs legitimate the occupation? I would say that, by answering yes, anon excuses himself from the domain of moral discourse, for this answer, when stripped of verbiage, reduces to "Israel may do what it wishes as long as its own standards of necessity are satisfied". Even the casual observer will recognize this position as the ethics of the toddler, all appetite and minimal recognition of the other. If, on the other hand, anon has the sense to answer no,….well, then we have something to talk about.
Finally, there is something disgusting about anon's proposing his Popular Science imaginings about what miracles the future may hold as appropriately responsive to the brute reality of Israel's vicious theft of water now, today, as we write. I find this blithe and high-handed indifference quite common among right-Zionists (recall Dov Weissglass's filthy "putting Palestinians on a diet" comment, or the swinish bleats of the commenters above who find the dehydration of Palestinian kids the source of a good joke) and suggest that anon and his pals have a look at M. Warschawski's concerns about how the occupation has contributed to just this sort of coarsening of the Israeli character.
I'm sorry to hear about such vitriol, anonymous, and I look forward to your response. I will say, however, that I do not quite understand the implications of your final comment, and want to. Do you mean that Ismail is striking at the legitimacy of the Zionist state-building project itself, while my arguments are confined to the West Bank, and that as a result my arguments are legitimately up for discussion while his are beyond the pale?
I understand your discomfort at what was clearly a polemical foregrounding of Jabotinsky et al. The point is that there is an inherent incompatibility between their positions and that of a Lockean liberalism. What I am asking is that you make clear the ethical framework against which Israel's actions may be judged right or wrong. It need not be Locke nor Jabotinsky, but moving back and forth between the two looks like obfuscation.
Anonymous: I do imagine you're correct. I would not support each and every motion or law passed by the UN…but you misread my argument by assuming that I intend to collapse universal ethics and international law. I admit, upon rereading my last post, that this might be my own fault. I did after all, make reference to the "international community" critiquing Israel on the grounds of universal ethics. Indeed, the framework through which those critiques are made is often international law, which does represent the most material and relevant embodiment of universal ethics to which we might make reference.
And yes, you are correct that Israel's highly developed, industrial based economy does require higher water intake than the largely agriculturally based (for now) economy upon which Palestinian society supports itself. These are real problems to be worked out within the realm of policy.
What I am trying to point to is something a little more basic, something which I feel rests at the core of the problem here. I think it's important to look first–before we move into the complex arguments related to divisions in resources, etc–at Israel's presence and actions in the West Bank over the past 40 plus years. If you believe that Israel has a right–however framed–to move its civilians into conquered territory at the expense of Palestinians in the region, then your arguments about water divisions etc are totally legitimate.
However, if you believe–according to international law or otherwise–that Israel should not in fact settle its citizens in a territory it conquered–particularly at the expense of the people living there, then it matters little, whether Israel needs or does not need the water held within West Bank aquifers.
Now, I would ask you, on what ethical grounds would you suggest Israel lay claim to West Bank acquifers? Through what means does it even become a question as to whether or not Israel may or may not have such rights? And here we see the crux of the dynamic I laid out in my previous argument. Your ethics must be based–whether on international law or not–on a notion of Jewish rights (in this case to water) predicated on Jewish ethnic particularity secured by the political instrument of the modern state, Israel. Through what institutions and through what policies? Through the military and military courts, and the legal system it thereby imposes protected by the institutions of the army and police. To even speak of the minute details like those you laid out early is to obscure the fact that you have not provided a position on whether or not you believe Israel maintains some rights to resources in the West Bank/Gaza.
But perhaps you need not state this position explicitly. Indeed, there is already an ethics embedded in the presuppositions of your argument. Whether you recognize them or not is beside the point here. To consider even the small minutia of what the UN has to say on this or that water issue in the west bank is to already grant Jewish collective rights–which in this case are secured through the power of the state–to west bank water resources.
Now, I think we should take seriously the consequences of this position. By refusing to discuss ethics as they relate to water from the core issue of the ethical legitimacy of the occupation itself, we hand over our ethics–whether based on international law or not–to the concept of brute, ethnically based, political force.
This is why I brought up the figures of Jabotinsky and Begin. These were individuals with a clear vision of the relationship between ethics and politics as they related to Jewish security. They saw the institution of the state as the only instrument through which Jewish security could be secured. There was no hope for life in the diaspora, no hope for solidarity across lines of difference, no hope for coexistence between Jews and non Jews. As such, the only moral option was to secure Jewish life at any cost. The political, coercive instrument of the ethnic state becomes the guarantor of ethics. If Israel needs water in the West Bank, if it feels it needs water, it takes it. End of discussion. It is, by virtue of their needing it, the ethical option.
So again, feel free to associate yourself with these figures. But do not, at the same time, attempt to position yourself as someone interested in universal ethics–whether grounded in international law or just simply on the notion that you seek to better humankind other than Jews. You have already made it clear that you do not. If this is not the meaning you intend, I suggest you look again and the presuppositions upon which your argument is based.
Though perhaps I misjudge you. The defaming manner in which you have chosen to speak to someone who entered this discussion space as a non-Jew, and one who puts forward opinions which are clearly in the minority here may already speak volumes about where you stand on these positions of power and force. This is not to defend Ismail, he is capable of defending himself. It is rather to express a sense of disappointment at how you and others here have chosen to conduct yourselves in a Jewish space. I hope I would be more warmly welcomed as a Jew expressing unpopular opinions in non-Jewish spaces.
JCA, your comments are valuable, but they're a stretch. They might be more pertinent if you could clarify exactly what legal instruments in the "International Community" establish "universal ethics". Such florid prose is very heartening, but the fact is that no such community can effectively govern absent a legal basis for doing so. And lawyers will disagree on what the law says, what the law does and what the law is – no matter how grandiose the sense of community defined by that government.
Suffice it to say I highly doubt that you endorse every UNGA or UNSC ruling on an ethical basis.
Suffice it to say I highly doubt that even someone as naive as Ismail could endorse every UNGA or UNSC ruling on an ethical basis. Suffice it to say that I strongly suspect there are at least a few that fall under that category.
Then there's a technical argument. Israel has a much more highly developed economy, and a much greater water requirement – largely for industrial uses which make up the lion's share of a country's water use. Of course with both you and the naive little Ismail we could get into a chicken-and-egg argument over whether economic development does or should follow increases in water use or vice versa. And all of this assumes that there is a way to divide water resources that would be considered satisfactory and equitable to all parties.
Not every Israeli objection is in bad faith or a stalling tactic. There are some practical concerns behind an "unequal" share that the very technology described could obviate – technology that is that much more likely to arise in the setting of the advanced economy that Israel's water resources support. Perhaps Israel might take advantage of their greater share of water resources by becoming sufficiently adept at technological innovations in water conservation, so that one day they might live comfortably with 10%, while the Palestinians take 90%.
All this is speculative, of course. But at least it takes into account some very real principles and considerations. These are not abstract caveats, and this is merely one illustration of all the variables that impede the sense of omniscience implied by a "universal ethics", or at least one which is sterilized of the sort of legal challenges that are normitive in the Western canons - normitive for some damn good reasons.
However, I take it you don't subscribe to any Lockean principles in your conception of "universal ethics", particularly vis a vis matters of land use. That's fine if you don't. But you should recognize the constraints that would place on your claim to an unchallenged notion of "universal ethics". And those constraints should make the humility you prescribe to Jews as applicable to yourself when hailing the high and mighty One-Law – this fanciful notion to which, for some reason, you would seem to advise that we should all now bow down.
…finally some thoughtful comments. Are the political implications of flouting Israel's acheivements so hard for North American Jews to grasp? There is a water dispute in which Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza do not receive the portion of water they would otherwise be entitled to under international law. This is the point. Israel has come up with brilliant solutions to the meager water shortages, but reserving a disproportionate portion (90-95 percent in the West Bank) of the water resources for Israeli bodies, seems difficult to justify while still working within a framework of universal ethics–the framework under which Israel is critiqued in the International Community.
Please, feel free to adopt a different ethical framework. Be my guest: As Jews, we are free to be particularist…Jabotinsky, Begin, et al. had little need for a universal ethical framework under which Israel's actions were and are judged in the international community, and (baruch ha'shem, increasingly in the US). They offered a simple alternative: Jewish life comes first. When having these discussions, it would be helpful for everyone if all parties made clear whether they sought to legitimate or invalidate Israel's actions based on an ethical system that strives to treat people equally, or one in which Jewish life is a higher priority.
Israel's water policies are entirely justifiable under the context of a "Jewish life first" ethical framework, but difficult to do under a framework in which Palestinian life is considered equally valuable. The former is a vocal position within Israeli politics, particularly on the right. But please, it is intellectually dishonest, let alone logically confusing, to try and legitimate Israeli policies toward resources like water in the West Bank according to a universal ethical framework.
We as a community come off as ignorant or at least illogical, when from one side of our mouth we try to defend Israel on universal ethical terms, and then try and silence those who only highlight issues like Israeli water expropriation. We may be able to fool each other, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to fool others.
(Also, please please please do not attempt to present arguments about the total derth of water resources to go around. Israeli's consume on average almost 100 cubic meters more water than Germans per year… see this articule…I also heard this guy speak in Jerusalem…http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/961667.html
Let me get down on all fours so we can approach one another eye to eye. I'll also try to use short sentences and simple words.
The disagreement we are having is a political one, not only a scientific or technical one. There is no question that modern Western agricultural practices produce greater yields, at least in the short term. Modern fishing practices yield greater catches, too, but we are now depleting reproducing populations. That is, there are consequences to our practices.
In the case of Israel, aquifers have become brackish due to irresponsible water use. This a problem of hydrology. To slake its thirst, Israel has diverted the Jordan and appropriated more and more of the West Bank's most aquiferous areas. This is a political problem. Simply braying about Israel's technical accomplishments misses the larger point of sustainability, ecological degradation and colonial expansionism.
Regarding Arafat's complaint, he was alluding to the same thing that Moshe Dayan referenced in his famous speech at the Technion; namely, that part and parcel of the Zionist project in Palestine was the deliberate effacement of any scrap of Palestinian culture. Towns were razed or renamed, local memorials were removed and, yes, even things as seemingly minor as popular snacks were recast as Israeli in origin. Not an uncommon way for crusaders to behave, by the way.
I have no problem with recognizing the important contributions of Israelis. Daniel Barenboim is both a first-rate musician and a man of great conscience. Uri Avnery is a brave speaker of truth to power. When the cultural or technical efforts of Israelis are embedded in a political reticulum that deserves exposure, though, I'll expose it.
My main point was simply that talking about Israel's relation to water without mentioning those Israeli water policies which massively and illegally disadvantage its occupied population is spitting in the eye of reality.
Well, if you wanted to look at it in a realistic way, in just the same way that you could say that Colorado grain exports prove how much drier Nevada is, and how tiny the population of Colorado is relative to its grain exports. But then you'd actually be making an analogy that doesn't make you sound like an idiot.
I think somewhere between "empty and barren desert" and lush pastures lies the real picture – an arid, rocky landscape that was productive in some areas and experienced improved productivity in areas that the Zionists further cultivated with improved techniques. I realize that admitting that more accurate narrative would make you a traitor to your cause, but let's not allow for Arabian cultural expectations to get in the way of the whole point of the article. If you want to deny that Israelis have been at the forefront of improving agricultural techniques and hydrological innovations, then just fuckin' say so. But I suspect that even your jealousy isn't sufficient to lie that brazenly. So don't think your shifting of the discussion to water sharing detracts from the accomplishments. After all, it's not like the city of LA is seeking out contracts with businesses developed by Ismail or chartered in… wherever your grievances lead you to next.
Next thing you know Ismail will claim that Kinrot ripped off the technology they developed from those innovative Palestinians. Which would almost be as pathetic as the time Yasir Arafat complained to the U.N. that Israel ripped off falafel sandwiches as the Palestinian national snack. But instead, Ismail just shifts the discussion to whatever grievance of the moment prevents an Israeli from receiving recognition for doing something meaningful.
"Sorry. This proves nothing other than how much drier other Middle Eastern countries were by comparison, or how tiny the population of the country was relative to its own agricultural yields."
Well, you could look at it that way, in just the same way that you could say that Kansas grain exports prove how much drier Nevada is, and how tiny the population of Kansas is relative to its grain exports. But then you'd be an idiot.
Here's another for you:
"“We abroad are used to believing Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed, and anyone who wishes to purchase land there may come and purchase as much as he desires. But in truth this is not the case. Throughout the country, it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed."
This from the Zionist Ahad Ha'am (Asher Ginsburg) in 1891.
Note that my point is not that Palestine was an overwhelmingly fecund place, only that it was not the fruitless desert of Zionist fantasy, and that the indigenes cultivated the land in a manner that its topographical and geological features would support. That is (and this is the ideologically interesting point, as opposed to your senseless comparisons), pre-invasion Palestine was an economically sound place which produced enough food for its population with enough surplus to maintain a significant export sector. Furthermore, it managed this while observing the limits of its geography. It was not, as Zionist fiction would have it, an empty and barren desert, awaiting the kind ministrations of European Jewish crusaders in order to bloom.
Zionist boasting about blooming deserts belongs in the same dustbin of short-sighted hubris as golf courses in Arizona and lush green lawns in Saudi Arabia.
Now, stop being a dullard and go learn something.
"all i can say is we made the desert bloom"
Let's see, in the period between 1880 and 1930, Palestine was a net exporter of agricultural products to both their neighbors in the Middle East and to Europe. Some desert.
Israeli "desert blooming" was accomplished by ignoring the most fundamental rules of land stewardship, with the resulting increased brackishness of freshwater aquifers and the turn towards piracy via diverting water from the land of others or outright commandeering of that land.
Zionists need to stop constructing tortured rationalizations for their depredations and put some energy into making things right.
I would also suggest drumming out of the tribe altogether such moral morons as those who get a kick out of the idea of children being deprived of the minimal requirements of adequate hydration.
working with water industry in israel for over twenty years
all i can say is we made the desert bloom
Mateo – love the cartoon veggies dancing to Japanese "Mayim Mayim"
Finger Lickin'!
They could always eat their camels Issy! Aren't the humps a good source of water?
How fitting that Los Angeles, whose own history of chicanery and deceit regarding its water supply is legendary, should partner with Israel, a world-class water thief, in dealing with this most precious resource.
Israel's chronic lack of water has been a "… source of conflict between the Israel and the Palestinians." ? Very decorous formulation, that, with no specifics nor attributions of agency.
Let's rectify that, shall we? Israel controls all the water resources in Israel/Palestine and doles it out in a disgustingly racist formula-swimming pools for Jews, puddles for Arabs. The fact that Israel releases less water to Palestinians than the WHO declares necessary for minimal human welfare is no secret.
For your information:
1. Israeli colonists in the West Bank are allotted 1459 cubic meters per person per year of water. Palestinians? 83 cm pp py.
2. 3% of the Jordan River lies within Israel proper. Palestinians have little access to the 97% within their territory due to Israeli closures, restrictions, etc., although Israel obtains close to 1/4 of its water from Jordan River diversion.
3. Israel forbids drilling of new wells by Palestinians. Will you be surprised to learn that such restrictions do not afflict Jewish colonists?
4. Israel colonies Ariel and Kedumin are built over the Western mountain aquifer in prime Palestinian agricultural territory. Interestingly, the Apartheid Wall swings most deeply into Palestinian territory at just these points, insuring Israeli control of these resources.
5. All seven of the wells of the town of Jannous have been annexed by Israel or destroyed by the Wall.
This list goes on and on, but the gist should be clear to even the most casually attentive.
Using the bland and contentless phrase "…a source of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians" obscures the salient fact of Israel's terrible behavior regarding water policy. It would be like saying, in 1960, that voting booths were a source of conflict between blacks and whites in Mississippi.
Let it be said that I'm all for teaching kids (and everyone, for that matter) about ecology, the environment, agrarianism, etc. etc. etc. I'm just saying that since Israel/JNF is sort of maxed out on trees, they might as well create a new ritual and in doing so, promote and expand knowledge, thinking, and participation in finding solutions to a different global challenge.
I feel bad for the deracinated shrubs. It may be good for the kids
to learn how to plant, and to connect to the land thereby, but I can't
help but wonder if the "a tree has been planted in your honor…" gifts
I've given (and have received) don't have the lasting value I'd
originally expected.
As for the kids and water…they've got the a song and dance down, at least. Good place to start…
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