The "Nakba Narrative"

What a spectacular cataract of perfect bullshit, as impenetrable a piece of lit-crit nonsense as I've seen in years.

No question among serious historians that the establishment of Israel required the expulsion of the Palestinians. No question that this occurred within the living memory of many. No question that people as a rule resist dispossession.  No question that the ATFP is as collaborationist an outfit as can be found among nominally pro-Palestinian voices.

End of story.   

Ismail: This article states that various tyrants past and present continue to make idiots of the Palestinians via the 'Nakba Narrative.' That's the crux of it right there.

 The same could be said of the other various conspiracy theories floating around in the Arab world for the past 6 decades: that 'the Jews' seek the destruction of the Al-Aqsa mosque, that 'the Jews' are trying to take over the world, and that every ideological product of the Enlightenment and Modern era is really a way in which 'the Jews' can take power. Not coincidentally, adherents to these 'unnatural' ideologies deserve nothing more than death or conversion.

As an aside, I am simply puzzled by your support for political movements that would have you killed for expressing your political views in the name of 'national liberation.'

I must confess that I am not puzzled at all by your tolerance for Hamas' openly expressed aim: namely, the annihilation of the Israeli Jewish populace. There are four possiiblities that might explain this tolerance: the first is sheer ignorance (unlikely); the second is a moronic assessment of their political motives, judged by two or three statements by Hamas spokespersons to the English language press, the third is that you do not care; the fourth, that you think it a desirable end goal. Whichever way you put it, it is either immoral or sheer idiocy.

Proceeding on the basis of the second assumption (unreasonableness), I should state that I draw my conclusion as to Hamas' motives from their public statements in the Arab-language press and media. Every statement I have seen made by Hamas leaders about Jews in those media depicts then as subhuman animals that should be wiped out. There is no reason to think that their intentions on this point are any different from their repeated statements to that effect, particularly because (i) Hamas was elected on the basis of its adherence to ideology and integrity and (ii) Hamas' statements were made to the Palestinian electorate, upon which it depends upon for its political survival. By contrast, statements made by Hamas spokespersons to the English language press or media are made on the footing that their intended audience rejects Hamas' racist views. Hamas' political survival does not depend on those statements in the same way that its Arabic-language statements do on its political survival, which depend on Palestinian support. To the contrary, political statements made by Hamas on the world stage are important to its survival only on the basis that they may provoke sufficient disillusionment with that movement so as to increase support for those who would remove it from power (witness and compare the strong Western support for the Gaza operation as opposed to Western views on past Israeli incursions). However, that goal is simply not on the agenda at the moment, because the Israelis are unwilling to use military force to oust Hamas entirely and reocupy Gaza. As a result, Hamas is less interested giving force to, or attaching weight to, its public statements to the English lanugage press, and we in turn should do the same.

Lastly, to provide an example of Hamas' intentions, here's a recent quote from the Hamas-run television station Al-Aqsa TV, broadcast by a preacher as the 'Friday sermon':

"Allah willing, the moment will come when their property will be destroyed and their sons annihilated, until not a single Jew or Zionist is left on the face of the Earth."

Source: MEMRI, http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=palestinian&ID=SP231809 

If co-existence along side Jews is still seen as "certain contamination" (as Khader himself mentions), then Obama's plan is to be throughly frustrated. 

 "No question among serious historians that the establishment of Israel required the expulsion of the Palestinians."

 Except for the 180,000 who stayed in Israel. What is this selective displacement? Perhaps the Palestinian Arabs "displaced" themselves from what was to become Israel in fear of real ethnic cleansing that never materialised?

Whenever the issue of Jewish refugees from the Arab world is brought up it is dismissed as an illegitimate grievance out of hand. They "moved".

Nevermind that they were hounded by the totalitarian regimes in these countries, and that their property was confiscated upon immigration. These people, and their second-class lives in the Arabic world, have been forgotten.  

After all, the Israelis did not deny these people citizenship for 60 years in order to use them as a political pawn and a PR tool. They needed soldiers. Soldiers to fight all those poor, disenfranchised "refugees" who were paid by the Arab League even before 1948 to raid Jewish settlements. 

The fact is that NO Arabs were displaced before the non-Jewish inhabitants of Paestine plus the outside Arab armies attcked Israel in 1948. The Palestinans were given a state in 1922 (Jordan) and again in 1948. If they had accepted this state no one would have been displaced. The thought of living under Jewish rule was just too much to bear. It's too bad because the Israeli Arabs are now the only Arabs in the middle east who enjoy freedom democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of the press and women's equality.

End of story.

Even if tomorrow Angel Gabriel himself descended from the heavens and told Ismail personally that the politics of the "Nakba" identity have largely caused the Palestinians' suffering, he would condemn him too as a  collaborator. 

So enough arguing that point.

What has still not been recognized, is that as a result of the Nakba identity the Palestinians' aspirations are NOT nationalistic in the sense in which the leaders of the "free world" have chose to view them. 

Nothing in the ideology of the current leaders of Palestine even suggests that they want a state to made for them along side Israel. They don't want East Jerusalem, they want all of Jerusalem. And Tel-Aviv. And Haifa.

The "Catastrophe" is not expulsion, it is the unrealized promise of returning to Palestine that was to be made Judenfrei by the Arab armies in 1948.

Under this ideological direction, so ardently promoted by Barrack Obama,  the Palestinians will not stop their "struggle" until every single hope of destroying Israel has been extinguished. 

"The fact is that NO Arabs were displaced before the non-Jewish inhabitants of Paestine plus the outside Arab armies attcked Israel in 1948."

Thank you, hunter14, for your amusing repetition of the Hebrew school fantasies told to gullible pre-adolescents for so many years. Sadly, these do not count as serious historical observations.

You may have heard of Deir Yassin, the Zionist assault on which occurred before May 1948. While the best known of such Zionist crimes, the effacement of this village was by no means unique. Irgun et al were quite busy committing multiple acts of terrorism prior to May 15 (or Nakba Day, as it is properly called).

And Plan Dalet, as specific a roadmap to ethnic cleansing as one could wish for, was concocted and finalized in the period prior to the nakba.

Revise and resubmit, taking care to distinguish hasbara from actual historical fact.

"Even if tomorrow Angel Gabriel himself descended from the heavens and told Ismail personally that the politics of the "Nakba" identity have largely caused the Palestinians' suffering, he would condemn him too as a  collaborator."

Your implicit assumption about me is correct; I am suspicious about the testimony of fictional, non-corporeal beings, and if I were to think one were talking to me, I would check myself in for observation immediately.

You might consider a similar move next time you find yourself communing with a seraph or unicorn. These guys are notoriously unreliable. 

"Even if tomorrow Angel Gabriel himself descended from the heavens and
told Ismail personally that the politics of the "Nakba" identity have
largely caused the Palestinians' suffering, he would condemn him too as
a  collaborator."

The only necessary change to this comment is that Ismail doesn't require such remarkable beings and events to get him to change his mind. He only requires something along the likes of "strongly held belief" (derived from wherever, but with provenance as obscure as a unicorn) to tell him so. Or we could envision a scenario in which the Palestinian mis-leadership makes the same admission. But as Ismail will note, they are notoriously corrupt and not to be trusted. They merely act to advance the cause that defines Ismail's perspective here - a cause which he perceives as too pure and celestial to be effectively besmirched by the corrupt Palestinian thugs and politicians that carry it out. For, after all, they are merely mortal. 

I'm not surprised you didn't respond to Zeevico, Ismail, and instead waited for what you preferred to see as low-hanging fruit from hunter and Fishman before responding.

But it's good to keep the comments going. This site has not been treated too kindly by the grave recession - something the commentariat should be aware of and sympathetic to. Thanks to Marcus and whoever else is still hanging around regularly enough to keep the space from turning into a site full of dead computer text and error messages.

Fantasies? Fantasies are what has brought the Palestinians to the state they are in. They live in a fantasy world where they don't recognize that they have been used by their Arab "bothers" and that no one in the Arab world cares about them. Where they don't realize that their "leadership" while stealing billions of dollars has not managed to build 1 road, hospital or school and that by continuing to say no to all offers they will be handed a stste on silver platter.

They recognize that. They just responded by trading in their Arab nationalism for an even narrower, more "Palestinian" and Islamist form of nationalism. One wouldn't think this development would tickle Ismail as it does. But, much like we would expect Rube Goldberg to do, he applauds it as a useful method for getting from point "A" to point "B".

People should be careful what they wish for, as recent elections in Israel have shown. But then again, we are talking about people much less pragmatic or concerned with human lives than the Israelis. 

"as low-hanging fruit from hunter and Fishman before responding."

Certainly, Isaac and Ismail hold the monopoly on masturbatory opining on this site. They are truly the "high hanging fruit". Me, what can I say? I'm but dust next to these giants of thought.  

 "You may have heard of Deir Yassin, the Zionist assault on which occurred before May 1948. "

Indeed I have. Dir Yassin was a village located 2000 feet above sea level which not only overlooked the only road that linked besieged Jerusalem to the coast, but also served as a point of passage for Arab fighters.  Thus, it was a strategically important point that had to be taken lest the Arab "freedom fighters" be forced to endure the bad PR that would inevitably come with making Jerusalem judenfrei. 

Other than the fictitious Jenin massacre, which didn't take place almost exactly  seven years ago, Deir Yassin is probably the most well known of the fabricated atrocities. A battle did take place at Deir Yassin, on April 9, 1948, but it was just that, a battle. In an effort to relieve the Jewish population of East Jerusalem and deliver much needed supplies, a group of Irgun fighters (part of the nascent Israeli Defense Force) attacked the Arab blockade that had closed the road to East Jerusalem and were keeping aid from getting through to the beleaguered Jews. At that time, the British still had the mandate to control the Holy Land, and the United Nations had decided that Jerusalem was to be an international city. The blockade was therefore an illegal act with potentially catastrophic consequences.

The Israelis used loudspeakers and other methods to warn the townspeople of Deir Yassin of their intention to open the road. The Arab fighters ignored the warnings and prevented many of the non-combatant Arab population from seeking safety. Women, children and the elderly were used as human shields. The fight raged on for several hours. Finally, as it became increasingly clear that the Irgun was winning the battle, groups of Arabs started to surrender. However, many of the Arabs were only feigning surrender and used the opportunity to lull the Jews into a false sense of security. As the Irgun soldiers moved to disarm the Arabs, the Arabs opened fire. Arabs also masqueraded as non-combatant women and used that ruse to catch the Israelis off guard. Both incidents resulted in the death of about 40 Jews.

Eventually the Jews won the battle and reopened the road to Jerusalem. Almost immediately, the Arabs claimed that they were the victims of a military atrocity. Arab leaders fabricated stories about the Jews raping Arab women and shooting unarmed civilians. These false reports were made on Arabic radio and in Arabic newspapers. However, when a Red Cross representative visited the town after the battle and held a press conference, there wasn't even the hint of a massacre in the report. A subsequent New York Times story about the battle also made it clear that there was no massacre. Moreover, every villager ever interviewed has denied that a massacre or any atrocities ever occurred. In fact, years later it was revealed that villagers were urged to make false statements on the radio in order to enrage Arabs and Muslims in other countries. Fortunately the scheme backfired, and instead of encouraging Arabs from around the region to join in future battles, it frightened them away.

Sadly, the Arabs have been so successful at selling the false story of Deir Yassin that many Israelis have come to believe that it really happened. However, Deir Yassin was no more of a massacre than was the anti-terrorist action that took place in Jenin. And although the Jenin massacre has now been almost universally acknowledged as a fabrication, the anti-Israel gang continues to try and keep the Jenin massacre myth alive.
  

"I'm not surprised you didn't respond to Zeevico, Ismail, and instead waited for what you preferred to see as low-hanging fruit from hunter and Fishman before responding."

I thought Zeevico's comment belonged in the same produce section as the other low-hanging fruit; some uninformed Hamas bashing, a defeated straw man or two-nothing much to see here. But if it will bring you delight, O Isaac, I'm happy to delineate Zeevico's blunders.

While there is no shortage of miscreant Arab leaders whose devotion to liberty, whether for the Palestinians or anyone else, is chimerical, this has no bearing whatsoever on the rightness of the Palis' demand that the Zio-boot be lifted from their necks.

Also, the nakba narrative is no conspiracy theory, and no points to Zeevico for attempting to slip it in there with Protocols rubbish. Always fascinating to hear from folks who warn us of the ubiquity of holocaust deniers and lecture about the Lessons of Our Common Humanity to be learned from the nazi crimes and then dismiss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands from their homes as a "conspiracy theory" and who appear grandly indifferent to the suffering their crackpot nationalism has caused to others.  

Which political movements do I support which would have me killed for expressing myself? I suspect you refer to Hamas, which I neither support nor fear. As I've explained before, I believe Fatah is composed of quislings who've exacted nothing from Israel while making compromise after compromise, hectoring Hamas while tsk-tsking as Israel gobbles up more of their country. Hamas is honest and effective and actually behaves like its nation is under assault by a bloodthirsty aggressor, which it is. The Palis deserve better than either of these jokers, but I understand the appeal to a besieged people of an organization which is perceived to take their plight seriously over one which demands its people be kind to their oppressors, even though I reject Hamas' non-secularism and its stupid charter. 

And I reject Zeevico's breezy assurances that Hamas' utterances fall into distinct ideological categories depending on language. But even if this were true, does it not seem even a teeny bit odd to you to sound the alarm about this crackbrained cleric or that bleating antisemitic nonsense when the Usurping Entity has in actual fact gone quite a way towards utter sociocide? The Likud charter still calls for an Israel encompassing the whole enchilada-annexing what you guys nuttily refer to as Judea and Samaria-its guy is in power, he renounces the idea of a Pali state, and he's industriously making certain that a viable one will never emerge. But we should be alarmed about a nutcase without money or an army talking about monkeys and pigs? (by the way, Judaism boasts its own charming racists amongst the clergy, does it not?)

As for the rest of your comment, O Isaac, it is as usual indecipherable. Your posts don't survive the switch from the original Klingon to English; you need to find a better translation device.

hunter14-

You neglected to address a single point in my comment, so I assume you are unwilling or unable to carry on a conversation. As an act of charity, I would advise you to refrain from such patently ridiculous claims as the Palis having not built a single school, etc. What has Israel been destroying, after all? Anyway, such idiocy only makes you entire perspective smell like ass-which it does, of course, but you needn't advertise it.

Fishman's and Stuart's (especially Stuart's) burlesque versions of the massacres at Deir Yassin deserve as much serious comment as David Duke's fantasies about the lovely swimming pools and freshly-laundered featherbeds enjoyed by the guests at Auschwitz; filthy, scurrilous denials of universally acknowledged atrocities. 

If my comments amount to "scurrilous denials of universally acknowledged atrocities" then the Palestinians' own universally recognized proof of "crimes" committed against them amounts to what exactly? 

Certainly not to any concrete evidence! 

Muhammad Bakri entered his deposition AFTER his "Jenin, Jenin" won the Best Film at the Carthage film festival and International Prize for Mediterranean Documentary Filmmaking & Reporting. As he himself admitted, he had staged scenes and fabricated testimony in this "documentary".  

It becomes hard to trust people whose charges of massacres by the IDF turn out to be spurious time after time. It happened with Jenin and with the UN school in the latest Gaza war. 

The twisted, sick idea that creeps to mind is that the Palestinians are trying their hardest to experience their own Shoah so that they can use it as a PR tool. How else does one explain these repeated exaggerations at best, and outright fabrications at worst?

One begins to doubt any claim  they make lest the next "war crime" allegation also falls flat. 

 http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42404  

the article about Jenin, Jenin director's deposition and fabrications.  

Rest assured, your prose is just as undecipherable to me... or to anyone else with an attachment to reality as it is recognized by people with something more productive to do with their lives than worship at the altar of their own egos. It reads more like Martian poetry, actually, describing a world so strange and filled with fantasy that I feel compelled to wonder what planet you thought you were on when you wrote it. As for the tone, your bleats of pique regarding Palestinian oppression ring just as hollow as when they are echoed by the usual members of the Arabian Dictators and Despots Club - whom you, incidentally, so accurately characterize. Given your lineage, I imagine you might descend from a long line of viziers, silver-tongued propagandists in the comfortable employ of this sultan or that, buying off the typical trials and tribulations of dhimmitude with rhetorical gifts just as detachable from any truly liberal sentiment as yours are. To pretend that, with this latest comment of yours, you can convince anyone that you seriously give a damn about Palestinian suffering, or any suffering whatsoever, is such an incredulous proposition that it might tempt an actual 18th century snake-oil salesman to get back into the business. Some truly high-octane bullshit is what you're peddling here. And you know it. 

Since you are obviously up to your old antics, playing a game instead of trying to make a convincing moral case for whatever perspective you'd actually care to interest anyone here into considering, I'll forego the urge to outdo your meandering response with one that is just as picturesque, and just parse out the little pieces of bullshit that decorate your reply. Perhaps that approach will yank you out of whatever remarkably sensual hallucination you just related to us. So put down the hookah pipe and put the clutch on your magic carpet in "Park". Wake up, snap out of your dreamy desert haze and down some of that Turkish coffee, quick. There is a new caliph in town and he has some pressing demands for your sultan. 

First off, you need to stop speaking of "the rightness of the Palis' demand that the Zio-boot be lifted from their necks". I realize that speaking in metaphor helps you to avoid using language literally, with terms that people actually find useful. But give it a try. A society ruled in law requires definitions, and you might want to consider getting your hands on some of them before the "jokers" do. Of course, you are too brave and established to "fear" the post-occupation bunch, but your co-nationalists might not be so lucky. Not all of them cling to the same silver spoon that I suspect Abu Ismail did. The upper crust of Palestinian society might not have as much to fear from the corrupt political class as the shabab. But if you want to appropriate the rhetoric of revolution, you'll want to pretend that you give a damn about the lower classes among your Arabian brethren. After all, they will be the ones to wipe your ass once you re-establish the Ismail clan alongside the mansions of your dear "quislings" and their rivals.

The rest of your diatribe is not worth addressing as it makes the elementary (and expected) mistake of not accounting for current political realities. American policy will impel the current Israeli government to either fall or broaden its coalition to include the opposition Kadima party, led by a Tzipi Livni whose stance is built around accelerating further withdrawal from those precious sand castles of yours, and from which she and everyone else will encourage a state to emerge. Of course, you will probably be too occupied with the usual romantic al Qaeda-esque ravings to understand or appreciate or account for this changed reality. But when the sultan slaps you on the back of the neck with a new propaganda project to busy yourself with, your rhetoric will be forced to change.  

Hope you had fun while it lasted. Playing "helpless victim of colonial oppression" must be a real hoot.

 'And I reject Zeevico's breezy assurances that Hamas' utterances fall into distinct ideological categories depending on language.'

There it is: amidst a 5 paragraph 'response', there lies one sentence directed towards the actual contention I make.

Firstly, words mean something. They mean a lot in the right context, which is what I was trying to show here. Dismissing that in one sentence is to ignore history. 

Hamas--its leadership, its membership and its clergy--has acted on its genocidal intentions many times. It has supported suicide bombings countless times. Not so recently, it supported the actions of a man who took an axe to a 13 year old and a 7 year old boy. For Hamas, this occurred 'in the framework of the resistance.' Tell me--when one is resisting a group in a manner that involves the intentional targetting of its civilian populace, what does this say about it? Hmm?

This is known as a lesson of history, Ismail. When people say they want to kill someone, or a group of people, and mean it seriously, they are going to do so given the chance. And usually they do it because they see that opposing group as subhuman. This particular lesson has played out countless times. It has played out in the Middle East. It is being played out in Sudan today. It was played out World War II, and doubtless before World War II. Again and again it happens, Ismail. What I am asking you to do is show me how Hamas differs from these cases in the historical sense. Not in the moral sense: I don't care if Hamas is fighting for the Palestinian people, anymore than I would in respect of Kach when it asserts that it fights 'for the Jews', or when the Hutu tribe slaughtered the Tutsis to prevent 'Tutsi domination', or any other rubbish. There is a simple, logical historical fact to be considered here, and I am asking you to either accept it or show why you think it is wrong, either in general, or as it applies to Hamas.

Sociocide, I should also point out, is not the equivalent of the slaughter of millions. That's part of what I'm trying to tell you.

Comparing Hamas to Jewish racists of the religious stripe is fine, but try to keep in mind that these racists have no hope of attaining power, are not in power at the moment, and have never been in power in the course of Israel's history. No, Virginia, a token place at the coalition table does not equate to a power to conclusively determine Israeli foreign policy. Big hint: Netanyahu refusing to say the words 'two-state solution' is a sop to the far-right; not a symbol of their incredible influence oer actual policy.

Nice to ignore the facts to post some Holocaust bait.

What an pseudo-intellectual. 

the idea presented in the original piece seems to be, that the past has its place, but if its place is too large it will cripple the future.

and why is the atfp collaborationist? is any advocacy for the two state solution as envisaged in geneva 2003, collaborationist.

Obviously the enemy is now the evil U.N. and its blasted partition resolution.

This is actually the view of most Palestinians and Arabs. But the current momentum toward implementing it will brand Ismail and his ilk extremists - which they of course are. Ismail won't mind this; he'll likely find it funny. After all, he's the kind of swarthy bloke who gets to dress himself up in sweaters and tweed jackets while dressing down his raging Arab nationalism in empty, mild-mannered philosophical platitudes - using interrogative sentences if possible and pretending to appeal to such universals as humanity and reason. But he'll bitch about the practical consequences of being "victimized" and stereotyped as a result of his unreasonable and parochial obstructionism - a better characterization of his approach which his pretensions to the contrary betray. And that is because he is a hypocrite and a dissimulating liar who long ago divorced his political musings from any interest in accuracy.  

And he knows it.

It really gets my goat that we were too taken with Ismail's comments to focus our discussion on Khader's theses.

 Why is his voice not publicized in the West?

Instead we get Hinyah, Ahmudinejad and their degenerate clique.  

Leave your poor goat alone. 

I suspect that people are responding, albeit negatively, to my comments rather than Khader's because mine are coherent and specific, while Khader's is a perfect example of obscurantist academic piffle.

Palestine was never a paradise? So people only pine for the lands from which they were ejected if those lands were paradisical? I still miss my crummy two bedroom in Brooklyn, no paradise, believe me.

I understand why Zionists would find comfort in Khader's silly words, scolding as they do an entire people for not acquiescing in their expulsion.

I say it's horseshit, and I say to hell with it. 

Zeevico's second sentence: "Firstly, words mean something. They mean a lot in the right context".

 Zeevico's last sentence: "Big hint: Netanyahu refusing to say the words 'two-state solution' is a
sop to the far-right; not a symbol of their incredible influence oer
[sic] actual policy."

So, why exactly do words mean something, A LOT! even, when said by Palestinian governments, but not so much when said by Israeli governments?

And Isaac: "After all, he's the kind of swarthy bloke [...]"

Seriously? "Swarthy bloke"? And all that nonsense about his vizier ancestry, and flying carpets? I know Ismail would disagree with me, but you're better than this. You can make your point, and even score cheap points against Ismail without being this tasteless. 

I will find less tasteless ways to make a good point about the destructive effects of Arab nationalism the moment Ismail stops embracing the latter.

But I do appreciate your scolding me; I am in fact better than that. As I said, this need not be a narrative about twin nationalisms that compete to devalue each other. It's a pity, therefore, that Ismail makes it so. 

Isaac, if you accept jer's mild rebuke, just say so. Don't reflexively drag me into it-that's just graceless and whiny.

Now, if you don't mind, I have to go back to looking for a 10 year old virgin to marry and a couple of dhimmis to behead. Then off to the hookah bar where I'll plan the next oil price increase, thence to the flying carpet repair shop to have them check my transmission-not clutch-which will not go into "Park".

Ah, but you are a part of it. Do you honestly believe that the defense of Arab-Islamic nationalism doesn't comprise a significant part of your motivation for chiming in at Jewcy? If not, why do you find that perniciousness so much less troubling than Jewish nationalism?  

Other than that, you must give up this Catholic habit of harping on things like grace and guilt as a way to obscure the difference between complete and partial responsibility for something. Arabs have played an enormously destructive role in this conflict, and I am no more wrong for mocking the way their proud nationalism feeds into that than you are for mocking Zionism, Hebrew school, or for using words like "hasbara" pejoratively. Just graceless. After all, it's not as if the Jews' greatest sin throughout "the pages of time" has been to spread lies about how innocuous they were, while those graceful Christians were fighting the good fight, exposing our role in spreading the plague, drinking children's blood, coveting all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates, and so forth.

I had a feeling you would bring up that whole thing about transmissions. And at the behest of an inclination toward perfectionism and retroactive editing, I'll spare you the expense of putting forth the effort of pointing out another mistake. Snake oil salesmen were a nineteenth-century phenomenon, right? But on the other hand, maybe engaging such intellectually picayune shenanigans is the way you get your kicks...

"But on the other hand, maybe engaging such intellectually picayune shenanigans is the way you get your kicks..."

Definitely. Pedantry is my opium.

While we're at it, besides the automotive and snake oil howlers, you referred at one point to "Abu Ismail". I believe you were referring to me, but this kunya would actually denote my dad.

Three for three. Quit while you're behind. 

I was referring to your dad, dumbass. The context should make that clear.

You should have quit before you ever began.

And my own self-edits don't count.

So we're tied. Just the way you like it.

Feel free to keep ignoring the relevant commentary, though.

"I was referring to your dad, dumbass. The context should make that clear."

Very well, I stand corrected and happily aver that you are wrong only 67% of the time and not the 100% I originally declared.

On the other hand, my dad was a poor shlepper with a high school education who wouldn't know a silver spoon from a scimitar, so maybe we're back to 100%...

Now, you may reply and you will have the last word, at least in this volley which must be boring others to tears. A return to the issues raised by the original poster would be fine, though.

And he seems to lack a significant disagreement with either me or Khader: Palestinian nationalism, especially as it is expressed when channeled through excessively self-pitying narratives such as "The Nakba", is a phenomenon that practically suffocates any social or political progress that could be made by the Palestinian people.

Of course, as a raging Arab nationalist, it is impossible to inure you to this point - even with the equipoise of tolerating a similar judgment of Zionism. So you will continue to go about happily seeing the Jews as subhuman on account of your obsession with their supposedly diabolical possession of political power - in the belief that voiding their narrative will somehow make yours more meaningful. Luckily, others are disabused of this notion of zero-sum, mutually exclusive morality and competitive dignity, even if Khader cannot complete the Herculean task of getting you to admit to the overwhelming reasonableness of so straightforward a truism as the alternative perspective.

BTW, is there a reference mentioning Procrustes for an expression that denotes the position of having one's head up his ass? Because that's exactly what you look like when you assume that your own observations account for 100% of all observations.

I hope you're not missing Michael Weiss too much. At least he was a much better educated father figure than your real dad was. But what about Abu Ismail's abu? Was he more fortunate... either here or in the old country? Or do you mean to convince me that you actually descend from a long line of shleppers? And hence, the sly pedantry, which then assumes a more oedipal explanation?

there is no question that the leadership that the palestinian people have produced over the years has been very disappointing.  from the venomous mufti to the duplicitous corrupt arafat to the current crop of hamas and fatah dwarfs there is little to engender hope.  even such talents as edward said and hanan ashrawi seem (seemed) to have been contaminated by the hatred that the suffering and the solidarity have "required".  so if mister khader speaks about the cage that the nakba narrative has created there seems to be wisdom in his observation.

but what about us zionists? the mediocrities of recent years: olmert and barak and netanyahu.  the hope that we placed in sharon was symptomatic of how desperately we were clinging to anyone who at least represented action.  since rabin, we have been cursed with second raters. and now we have lieberman.

in retrospect we mustn't fault ourselves for following a realist like ben gurion rather than a dreamer like buber, but our current reality was made by dreamers like levinger who outsmarted realists like peres and golda, so you'll forgive me for feeling a bit overcome by history.

"so if mister khader speaks about the cage that the nakba narrative has created there seems to be wisdom in his observation"

Yes, he is speaking about an ideological cage. He says that the idea of Palestinian return to the lands which are now Israel has been ignoring reality of Israel's existence. He blames the perpetuation of the "refugee" identity for making "the return" a overarching goal that has impeded the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel thereby giving the Palestinian Arabs a national identity. 

Palestinian Arabs to this day cannot become citizens of other Arab countries even if they marry into citizens' families, or if they have lived there during their entire lives.  

Rabin was a tremendous loss.

He was? 

I do not advocate murder as a tool of policy, or anything else, but it seems that Rabin's efforts would have ended up frustrated by the people who before him and after him perpetuate the hatred of Jews in the region. 

That is the entire point of the Nakba narrative: that Palestinian Arabs will remain "refugees" until they return to Tel-Aviv, Haifa and all of Jerusalem.  

I have a question for the anti-Nakba crowd, and it's an honest one, not a gotcha:

How is the Palestinian adoption of the Nakba different from the Jewish idea of the expulsion? The core idea of Zionism is that the Jews were refugees, a diaspora, until they resettled in, well, Tel-Aviv, Haifa, and certainly Jerusalem. For two thousand years! Jews have said, "if I forget thee Jerusalem, let my hand lose its cunning"; we've stomped on glass at our weddings, we've mourned Tisha B'Av -- our whole identity for two millenia has been based around the idea that we're waiting to go home. Surely Khader's thesis could equally well describe pre-Israel Judaism: 

"[Judea], in reality, was never a paradise; nor was it lost. It
was a remote part of the [Roman] Empire, inhabited by poor
peasant-farmers..." etc. 

Why was Zionism not an "ideological cage" for the Jews, blinding us to the possibility of having a stable, Jewish state in Sitka, Alaska (see: Yiddish Policemen's Union), or central Europe, or that ex-Soviet Jewish settlement zone whose name escapes me? 

We waited two thousand years; why is it absurd for the Palestinians to expect a bit of a delay as well?

Because Jews were expelled from all of the land, whereas the Palestinians were just given the option of accepting a partition of it between themselves and the original inhabitants.

If Nablus, Hebron, Gaza and Jericho aren't good enough for them, then why would anything else be? 

It's about hegemony over others and (supposedly lost) pride, and not much else.

it is hard to accept someone mourning on the day of our celebration.  and it's easy to attribute our righteousness with their rejectionism.  but, the fact is that the establishment of israel did involve a catastrophe, a setback to those who were living here.

    the primary image of twins from our tradition are jacob and esau, which of course brings to mind that most pessimistic of "laws"- the law of nature that esau hates jacob.

     nonetheless the image of twins born at the same time- our independence and their catastrophe, is something that we cannot deny.

      nor can their catastrophe be undone in one stroke or even with an army of doctors laboring for hours in the operation room.  the first step, if optimism bears fruit, would be a peace treaty with refugee Palestinians accepting their homeland of the West Bank and Gaza.  and then over generations trust will be rebuilt and the necessities of survival will give way to the sweeter luxury of harmony and we will learn to share this land.  that is the messianic hope and promise.  it may take a few hundred years, but if we know what we're aiming for maybe it will take 150 years instead of 250 years.

"Because Jews were expelled from all of the land, whereas the
Palestinians were just given the option of accepting a partition of it
between themselves and the original inhabitants."

I don't think this is true; as any Zionist knows, there was never a time when no Jews were present in the land; I mean, the Jews were left with Yavne, after all. Wikipedia says 43 Jewish communities existed into the 6th century in Palestine. But even ignoring that, I think your answer is missing something. The expulsion is more than just a political event; Tisha B'Av is a religious, cultural, and national holiday.  Similarly with the Nakba. Yes, there is its political element, the "we've lost land and we want it back" part to it, but there is also the cultural aspect, the bit where a people expelled from their homes and forced to live in refugee camps try and forge a common identity, and a common understanding of their history. Why shouldn't Palestinians regard themselves as a diaspora? To answer, "their political aims suck" is to answer a different, if related question. I mean, it's not like the Jews turned to non-violent civil disobedience immediately either. If the Bark Kokhba revolt doesn't show that the "expulsion" was an ideological cage for the Jews, why does the current Palestinian resistance prove that the Nakba is a cage for the Palestinians?

Zionism is an idea that Jews should have a state. That's it. No land specifications (originally).

In the early stages of the movement various locations were asked for: Uganda, Madagascar, parts of the Ottoman empire. So the Jewish diaspora proved to be "not too particular". No Nakba-esque mind paralysis here. 

The idea of Palestine is a good rallying point (as jer points out, its lasted 2000+ years) , and it was insisted on as the future location of a Jewish state by the Russian Jewish community in Herzl's movement, but followed only after all the other plans proved abortive. 

The difference between Zionism and what we see as the Palestinian movement is that one is a national cause and the other has morphed into an Islamist movement. They had an opportunity to create a state in 1948, but chose to try and destroy a nascent Israel instead. That is not how a true national movement behaves. 

In the years immediately before and after the 1948 war Arab governments cultivated the Palestinian Nakba identity so that they could channel the hate onto Israel.

Nakba is a cage because instead of promoting the goal of Palestinian statehood (the Return), defending it against both Arab exploitive governments and extreme Zionists, it made the Palestinians puppets of various Islamist and pan-Arab movements. 

Surely fishman can see the difference between a movement composed largely of Russian, Polish, British and American Jews, living for centuries within one polity or another around the world, being open to a number of geographical possibilities for their state, and the Palestinian wish not to be displaced from the particular place they'd lived in for as long as anyone could remember. 

Can't he?

And it's inaccurate to describe the Palestinian movement for sovereignty as "Islamist". While there are Islamist elements among Palestinians, the wish to be free from occupation unites the entire community, as it would among any occupied people.

"Because Jews were expelled from all of the land, whereas the
Palestinians were just given the option of accepting a partition of it
between themselves and the original inhabitants."

I don't think this is true; as any Zionist knows, there was never a
time when no Jews were present in the land; I mean, the Jews were left
with Yavne, after all. Wikipedia says 43 Jewish communities existed
into the 6th century in Palestine.

An incomplete expulsion, but an expulsion nonetheless. Much like what happened to the Palestinians.

But even ignoring that,

Hmmmm....

I think your
answer is missing something. The expulsion is more than just a
political event; Tisha B'Av is a religious, cultural, and national
holiday. Similarly with the Nakba. Yes, there is its political
element, the "we've lost land and we want it back" part to it, but
there is also the cultural aspect, the bit where a people expelled from
their homes and forced to live in refugee camps try and forge a common
identity, and a common understanding of their history. Why shouldn't
Palestinians regard themselves as a diaspora?

No one's saying they shouldn't. At least not outside the borders of mandatory Palestine.

I believe the question is whether it is made to inform the totality of their national identity. And whether that is allowed to retard their political advancement.

To answer, "their
political aims suck" is to answer a different, if related question. I
mean, it's not like the Jews turned to non-violent civildisobedience
immediately either. If the Bark Kokhba revolt doesn't show that the
"expulsion" was an ideological cage for the Jews, why does the current
Palestinian resistance prove that the Nakba is a cage for the
Palestinians?

Well, yes. Their political aims do of course suck. If other native, local or ethnolinguistically-related regional communities were living among the Jews at the time, advocating their removal would have also been beside the point. This is a separate issue from whether the Jews would be allowed to live in the land contiguously as an autonomous political community.

Maybe it was a cage of sorts for the Jews. But I daresay Jewish culture was and is much more sophisticated and variegated - and capable of liberal self-criticism - for an identical description to be as appropriate in the same sense.

And the Bar Kokhba revolt didn't do a damn thing. As I recall, Jewish self-determination in the Holy Land was finished by 73 C.E. And even the violent actions that led to that point were stupid. As I've stated in other threads, turning to radicalism and foresaking the Roman-Jewish alliance was, as best I can determine, a stupid, provincial and short-sighted move.

Lessons for the Palestinians, perhaps...?

An incomplete expulsion, but an expulsion nonetheless. Much like what happened to the Palestinians.

That's my point.

I believe the question is whether it is made to inform the totality of their national identity. And whether that is allowed to retard their political advancement. 

Again, we see the same thing in Jewish nationalism/Zionism. The idea that to go to Israel is to go "home", even for people whose families haven't seen the middle east since the Roman empire was still in business; the whole "negation of the diaspora" school of thought -- we have defined ourselves in terms of our exile for a very long time, and Zionism is no exception. As to issues of political advancement; if the Jews had been willing to accept Roman occupation, would the exile have lasted so long? Who knows, I guess, but starting a messianic war that ends in the complete expulsion of your people is hardly advancing a political cause; no one seems to think, though, that this invalidates our national aspirations.

Maybe it was a cage of sorts for the Jews. But I daresay Jewish culture
was and is much more sophisticated and variegated - and capable of
liberal self-criticism - for an identical description to be as
appropriate in the same sense.

First of all, let's distinguish between Jewish culture then and now. Maybe these days you  have an argument for sophistication, but the Jewish culture of two thousand years ago was not what we have today. Further, I think that's a pretty one-sided view of the Palestinians: remember, this thesis that the Nakba is a cage comes from within the Palestinian community. There's obviously self-criticism coming from that quarter. 

And the Bar Kokhba revolt didn't do a damn thing. As I recall, Jewish
self-determination in the Holy Land was finished by 73 C.E. And even
the violent actions that led to that point were stupid. As I've stated
in other threads, turning to radicalism and foresaking the Roman-Jewish
alliance was, as best I can determine, a stupid, provincial and
short-sighted move.

Lessons for the Palestinians, perhaps...?

Again, that's the point I'm trying to make. For all this, "oh the Palestinians are so dumb, why don't they get over this Nakba shit" coming from some people, no one seems to have noticed that the Jews went through the exact same phase. And yet, no one thinks that this idea of returning to Zion is an ideological cage, or that our resort to violence somehow invalidated our right to a homeland, etc., etc., etc. Jewish culture idolizes Bar Kokhba still, and we still say "l'shana ha ba b'yerushalayim", and we still have Tisha B'Av, and many people still think that no Jew can be a complete Jew in the diaspora... but if the Palestinians hold similar views, then they must be crazy! It's a double standard.

"An incomplete expulsion, but an expulsion nonetheless. Much like what happened to the Palestinians."

That's my point.

I don't think so, Jer. Not unless Arab Israelis think of themselves as being "in exile". 

As far as I know, no one's preventing them from moving to the West Bank/Gaza. 

Again, we see the same thing in Jewish nationalism/Zionism. The idea
that to go to Israel is to go "home", even for people whose families
haven't seen the middle east since the Roman empire was still in
business; the whole "negation of the diaspora" school of thought -- we
have defined ourselves in terms of our exile for a very long time, and
Zionism is no exception.

Jer, this doesn't make sense to me. I am not aware that Jews who don't live in Israel have been thought less of. Maybe (some) Israelis form certain impressions of those other Jews. But to say that Jews, for the most part, believe that they haven't been able to achieve their highest aspirations because all of them don't live in Israel, or in "greater" Israel, or whatever your point is, doesn't sound accurate. 

As to issues of political advancement; if the
Jews had been willing to accept Roman occupation, would the exile have
lasted so long?

I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here, Jer. Roman occupation occured long before exile. And after exile, I'm not sure there was a Jewish community capable of accepting some hypothetical offer of "return". The Romans wouldn't have offered it anyway. Why would they have done so?

Who knows, I guess, but starting a messianic war that
ends in the complete expulsion of your people is hardly advancing a
political cause; no one seems to think, though, that this invalidates
our national aspirations.

Yes. And? 

Every now and then you say something that leads me to believe that we agree on a certain point, but that you might not have been aware of that.

First of all, let's distinguish between Jewish culture then and now.
Maybe these days you  have an argument for sophistication, but the
Jewish culture of two thousand years ago was not
what we have today. Further, I think that's a pretty one-sided view of
the Palestinians: remember, this thesis that the Nakba is a cage comes
from within the Palestinian community. There's obviously self-criticism
coming from that quarter.

Ok. Point taken.

The Jews weren't liberal in the sense later defined by the European enlightenment, nor even by certain standards of Greco-Roman thought. At the same time they were admired by the Romans for certain philosophical and social innovations that were later incorporated by their society through Christianity. But I digress. We are talking about the 21st century.

As for views of the Palestinians, they can be slightly more sophisticated than absolutely unipolar in their outlook and yet still much less sophisticated than a whole host of other societies and cultures. We are talking about comparitive differences and a difference of degree. So if you want to make unattributed and unquantified statements (cf. "there's obviously...") your point is taken. I just don't see how meaningful a point it is within the context of the discussion. 

Again, that's the point I'm trying to make. For all this, "oh the
Palestinians are so dumb, why don't they get over this Nakba shit"
coming from some people, no one seems to have noticed that the Jews
went through the exact same phase.

Absolute bullshit. 

There was significant resistance within the Jewish community to Zionism. This sentiment still persists but has been since relegated to the Neturei Karta sect - a minor group which sends emissaries to Iran during its odious "conferences" on Holocaust denial and anti-Zionism. You find me the counterpart for this phenomenon in Palestinian culture as a starting point and then we'll go from there. 

And yet, no one thinks that this
idea of returning to Zion is an ideological cage, or that our resort to
violence somehow invalidated our right to a homeland, etc., etc., etc.

That's right. Because most sane people in their right minds (barring certain cultural barriers) understand and have accepted that the Jews are a people like any other with a right to self-determination... which has been achieved!

The only exception to this among Westerners, the only ones who are or were ever hostile to Zionism, were the Soviets - and that was after they recognized Israel. They did this for blatantly political reasons and are, interestingly, now modifying their diplomacy to a more favorable and receptive accomodation of Israel, given both countries' mutual interest in being able to fight violent extremists with violent measures. 

Jewish culture idolizes Bar Kokhba still, and we still say "l'shana ha
ba b'yerushalayim", and we still have Tisha B'Av, and many people still
think that no Jew can be a complete Jew in the diaspora... but if the
Palestinians hold similar views, then they must be crazy! It's a double
standard.

Jews commemorate many silly events and characters from the past without taking the act of memory literally, but symbolically. Once the Palestinians learn how to see anything in their history in context then perhaps their narratives could be used as learning devices for achieving less narrow, less maximalist aims, as well.

Ismail, where, oh where on the modern Palestinian political arena do you see a movement for sovereignty?

Where have you ever seen it among Palestinian Arabs?

Perhaps you discovered it in the 19 years following the first Arab-Israeli war, when Jordan occupied the West Bank, and Egypt occupied Gaza, and during which 14,000 Palestinian Arabs were killed? Was there an Intifada against that foreign rule?

Maybe you discerned the Palestinian national initiatives during the UK Mandate?

  Where were the Arab Irgun or Haganah during the UK colonial rule and during WWII? They were first active in various pro-Nazi movements, and then in the Arab Liberation Army, and the sole purpose of both was murdering Jews at the Colonial governor's bidding. 

The Palestinians' desire for statehood and its feasibility, are two halves of an idea manufactured by naive Western politicians who think that the Islamists and the Arab nationalists of the Nassar stripe can be appeased by one-tenth of one-tenth of Middle Eastern desert.

Sorry guys, that trick only works on the Jews, and even they turned to Palestine only after all other possibilities had proven politically unfeasible.

Here's a fun question for you to ponder: what would happen to Palestinian Arabs if Israel had lost in 1948? Would the monarchs of Egypt and Jordan have been stewards of Palestinian statehood? Would the boobs in the Obama administration and the EU call as fervently for the creation of Palestine?

I don't think so, Jer. Not unless Arab Israelis think of themselves as being "in exile". 

As far as I know, no one's preventing them from moving to the West Bank/Gaza. 

The Palestinians living abroad and in refugee camps do; that's the whole point of the Nakba. 

Every now and then you say something that leads me to believe that we
agree on a certain point, but that you might not have been aware of
that.

I think we both agree that the Bar Kokhba route is not the best way to go. But I don't see the Nakba narrative as being "excessively self-pitying", nor how it "practically suffocates any social or political progress
that could be made by the Palestinian people." For all that ardent Jewish nationalism has led us down some wrong paths (and for all that I'm at best lukewarm towards nationalism in general), it seems to me that to buy even a little bit into the Zionist narrative one has to accept that it is somehow NOT excessively self-pitying to remember your lost homeland for 2000 years, long after any individual exiled from thence has died...but it is self-pitying a mere sixty years after the event, with survivors still living in refugee camps. My arguments from the Bar Kokhba revolt are just to make the point that the political response is separate from the psychological/social response; it's okay for Jews to feel exiled, but not okay for them to rise up in violent revolt. That's cool. You can say that you don't think something like the intifada can ever be justified. Fine. But all that means is that the Nakba idea is being chanelled in poor ways. The problem is not how self-pitying it is, but how it's being used.

You find me the counterpart for this phenomenon in Palestinian culture as a starting point and then we'll go from there. 

Well, there are all the examples I mentioned above: Tisha B'Av as commemoration of our exiles, the Bar Kokhba war to regain the conquered homeland, the idea of the Messiah -- a reincarnated king who will lead the people back to their homeland (a central tenet of Judaism, let's not forget), all the way through to  Zionism in the present day, which holds that Jews have a right to the land of Israel rivalling that of the land's immediately previous inhabitants, as well as its undercurrent of diaspora negation. Let's have a quote, shall we?

"That is how Judaism died; for something atrophied is like something inanimate
even if deep within it a tiny spark of life is still concealed. That is how a
healthy, living Judaism expired. It expired, in fact, at the moment when Israel
became a people without a land and commenced two thousand years of heroic
suffering on behalf of its sacred heritage."

That's Jabotinsky.

"Were I to know that all German Jewish children could be rescued by
transferring them to England and only half by transfer to Palestine, I
would opt for the latter, because our concern is not only the personal
interest of these children, but the historic interest of the Jewish
people."

That's Ben Gurion. 

I don't see how you can deny that Judaism is wedded to the idea that we were disposessed of our rightful home, and that we will one day reclaim it. I mean...it pervades secular Judaism and religious Judaism. Conservative siddurim have a prayer for Israel that calls it "reshit smichat geulatenu", usually translated "the dawn of our redemption". To be honest, this is the part of your response I find most bizarre. Do you seriously believe that Jews, as a whole, don't regard the land of Israel as particularly important? That we're not as a rule too concerned about having been booted off by the Romans, and only came back to it because of the Holocaust (and even then, that it was no more special than any other patch of available land)?

Because most sane people in their right minds (barring certain cultural
barriers) understand and have accepted that the Jews are a people like
any other with a right to self-determination... which has been
achieved!

This is another one of those "we seem to agree, but don't realize it" moments. This is just what I've been trying to say; that most sane people don't begrudge the Jews holding on to a particular version of their history, for the reasons you mention. What I want to know is why the same argument doesn't go through with "Palestinian" in for "Jew" (except of course the "which has been achieved!" bit). 

Once the Palestinians learn how to see anything in their history
in context then perhaps their narratives could be used as learning
devices for achieving less narrow, less maximalist aims, as well.

This is silly; for one thing, the Jews have had two thousand years of looking back on things to forget the immediate pain of having lost their homes. The reason the Jews take their expulsion as a more symbolic thing is because for the Jews, it's been two millenia. For the Palestinians, there are still dudes with keys to houses that they can't go into. 

"But none of this should mask the significance of either his piece from 1998 or today’s offering, which appeared in the leading Arabic daily Al Hayat. Actually, those anti-Zionists who jump up and down with glee whenever an Israeli academic questions, say, the justice of the 1948 War of Independence might want to ponder Khader’s implicit challenge to the kind of historical representations contained, for example, in the opening paragraphs of PACBI’s call to boycott Israel."

Khader's critique is entirely about practice, not history.  Nowhere in either piece does he deny the Palestinian refugees were dispossessed en masse through terrorist campaigns, sieges, bombings, massacres, forced marches...  After all, he uses quite normatively the phrase, "In the conflict that arose between an immigrant settler minority and an indigent majority, which eventually led to the defeat and expulsion of the majority..."  How there's any incompatibility with that and PACBI's phrasing, "Denial of its responsibility for the Nakba -- in particular the waves of ethnic cleansing and dispossession that created the Palestinian refugee problem" goes over my head.

The following phrase seems to epitomize what Ben Cohen is jittery about:  "Could there be a question of historic responsibility, in light of which the entire Palestinian entity (before 1948), with all its social, political, cultural and economic institutions, might be subject to accountability, revision and criticism?"  Although Khader's article is bereft of specifics, one of its flaws, this isn't exactly an admission from one honest Arab that the Palestinians should have smiled and waved at the settlers preparing for military conquest of their country.  Like Tony Cliff and Ghassan Kanafani pointed out, the feudal leadership wanted cake with its national liberation and so the Mufti saw no problem fighting for his country while assassinating trade unionists and rival clan leaders.  Is this the responsibility Khader was talking about?

Now, it's not my business to tell Palestinians how to deal with their situation, so I don't know how to react to ideas like, "raising the issue of the right to return to the status of the sacred...  place the Nakba above politics, or rather before it, and obstruct our ability to clearly grasp the fundamentals of our political realities."  Is he suggesting the Palestinians develop a new praxis that will enable them to deal with Israel, or is the whole point a case for accepting Israel?  In al-Hayat he proposes no concrete alternative down from at least calling for a "model of statehood" in al-Ahram.  What's more, this time he's more explicitly scolding.  Even I feel the sting from, "as if the sixty years of Nakba and a hundred years of conflict in and over Palestine, could not yield a moment of reflection or a single lesson learned."  This could've been written by Dershowitz or Efraim Karsh!

In fact, I'm inclined to believe the point of Khader's writing is to pave the way for normalization with Israel.  Though questioning what happened in 1948 is not tenable, he can wave a paternalistic finger at the refugees who entertain quaint notions of fighting for their homeland.  This admission, 'What is referred to as the "Israeli entity,” which has become a regional power to which the Arabs are seeking to adapt, is therefore rendered nothing more than a shadow in Plato’s cave,' seems to bare out As'ad abu Khalil's contention that Saudi media is backhandedly pro-Israel (al-Hayat is owned by Prince Khalid bin Sultan).

However, this Khader fellow isn't totally for the birds.  Critiquing the narrative by which you view history is in fact a good idea.  Thanks in no small way to an anti-communist public education, I grew up ignorant of the socialist movement in Europe.  Thus, the way for Jews to deal with anti-semitism was to flee to America or Israel.  The way to combat anti-semitism was to make people aware of the Jews' accomplishments in medicine, science, politics, nation building, what have you.  And of course anti-semitism is the eternal enemy of the Jew.  The lesson in all this is to heavily arm Israel, play big power politics through ADL and AIPAC and pretend these institutions are actually interested in anything other than conscripting Jews for a perpetual war of colonial settlement.  Well, that and making lots of profit for the arms industry. 

We're the good guys is about all mainstream political America learned from Nazism.  On both D and R worship of our military might and soft power runs rampant.  The ability of middle class, professional Jews to take part in the American social fabric is viewed as a step up from the old country and that's a dangerous illusion.  Not because the establishment are secretly anti-semites but because, like the British colonials who sponsored Zionism, they view everybody through a utilitarian lens and when somebody isn't useful they drop 'em like flies.  While the professional class champions US support of Israel, they overlook how US warmaking ensured Iraq will never have a Jewish community again.  That is definitely one narrative to criticize.  While Jewish communities in Europe can experience a revival, we're supposed to love Israel which could only be maintained logistically by depopulating Jews from Arab countries and ideologically by sending Jewish community life in the middle east on a viking funeral.

Zionism was a marginal movement that made about as much sense as Marcus Garvey's African return scheme.  Today we respect MLK while Garvey is a footnote, yet the reverse is true for Herzl and Rosa Luxembourg.  History loves winners and that's not unique here, except we can't see Herzl's programme is going to lose in the long run and by all rights should have already.  Bad luck had the Levant taken by Brit imperialists who wanted to employ this movement as a counterweight to bolshevism and then came the Nazis.  Today I can read in the local hasbara paper anti-racism mixed with support for a human replacement regime.

For American Jews who vicariously identify with Israel it's nothing more than a massive power trip, a messianic fantasy and surrogate revenge on all those Cossack and Waffen-SS killers.  And as far as I'm concerned, if ADL is going to measure anti-semitic incidents, some logical cases include Abe Foxman posing with Berlusconi and any given lecture on Winston Churchill that sweeps under his view of bolshevism and the Jewish people.  And then there's the greatest delusion of all, that Israel could've prevented the shoah and is preventing one now.  Like if Israel had been invaded in 1942 through Sinai it would've made the Polish and Red armies look like chumps.  As it happened, the western allies protected Palestine in Egypt and the Brits' flucuating immigration policy made Palestine an unreliable haven for Jews.

Whatever can be said about Palestinian narratives, tactics and goals and their historical figures, there's a lot more to criticize on the Zionist side.  Even counterposing the Zionists and Palestinians is a fallacy, because the former is a political outlook and a Palestinian is a person from Palestine regardless of how they think, which is of no consequence to the Zionist regime.  They just happened to be there.  Conflating Jews and Zionists or making Zionism a part of Judaism is also fallacious.  Doesn't stop so many of us doing it, sadly. 

The Palestinians living abroad and in refugee camps do; that's the whole point of the Nakba. 

The Palestinians living in refugee camps (or being confined to refugee camps, as it were) have not been exiled from their historical country of mandatory Palestine. That's the whole difference between partition and expulsion. 

For all that ardent
Jewish nationalism has led us down some wrong paths (and for all that
I'm at best lukewarm towards nationalism in general), it seems to me
that to buy even a little bit into the Zionist narrative one has to
accept that it is somehow NOT excessively self-pitying to remember your
lost homeland for 2000 years, long after any individual exiled from
thence has died...but it is self-pitying a mere sixty years after the
event, with survivors still living in refugee camps.

That's right Jer. It's not. Palestinians post-1948 - living in exile from mandatory Palestine (i.e. not in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza) or otherwise - never would have been made into a distinct, targetted minority community - that is assuming their Arab co-nationalists hadn't decided to do so for incredibly malevolent political reasons. You talk of nationalism as if it's a nuisance at best, a bane at worst. I, on the other hand, see it as a phenomenon no more malign than the fact that distinct communities speaking different languages and adhering to different belief systems have formed around the world. I find it entirely natural that these separate communities have largely decided to organize themselves politically around autonomous forms of leadership that speak their particular language and that understand or relate to their particular belief system. I understand (vaguely) that many writers and thinkers over the years have voiced their scorn for nationalism as a selfish, destructive and artificial phenomenon. However, my relative lack of contempt for that phenomenon stems from my appreciation for the many different ways in which people from all over the world have naturally, organically formed cultures over time that have worked specifically for them. 

Did your parents ever provide this book to you when you were young?

The day we all speak Esperanto and adhere to a political philosophy which proclaims itself as communism's successor is the day when nationalism will be obsolete. We seem to have not yet reached that day, however. And I hope we don't. I don't see why we will or should. I no more wish to see national cultures abolished than I wish to see the disappearance of Thai food, Scandinavian design, Italian rustic inns or Brazilian samba contests. What's next? A move to abolish the preservation of local history as it is commemorated by small communities?

Get with the multiculturalism bandwagon, Jer. Most libs have. Perhaps that's the progressive's way of coming to terms with nationalism - at least in terms of seeing it as a phenomenon that's not exclusively political.  

And barring the odious and unprecedented effort by fellow Arabs to pervert the natural course of Palestinian nationalism (save for in Jordan), I think the Jews' history over 2000 years sort of entitles them to be thought a bit more realistic for defining their nationalism in terms of survival, rather than in terms of self-pity. But I suppose that's why the Palestinian camp is so intent on making Nazi analogies of Israel. Perhaps then an equivalence of sorts will be achieved. 

Notice, also, the Palestinian obsession with painting Zionism as a "conspiracy" in which Jews sold out their co-religionists by making pacts with the Nazis. Sort of makes sense that they would do this given the Arab conspiracy of refusing to allow the Palestinians to assimilate and escape the constructed oppression of living within an Arab diaspora. I say "conspiracy" because, as everyone knows, the Arab leaders maintain whatever shred of legitimacy they have by keeping the Palestinian issue alive and confronting Israel. Perhaps this is the pact they have made with each other - at the expense of the Palestinians. Just like the Zionists made a pact with the Nazis at the expense of European Jewry. Supposedly.

Two thousand years or not, they should be more fucking original and less fucking solipsistic. 

My arguments from
the Bar Kokhba revolt are just to make the point that the political
response is separate from the psychological/social response; it's okay
for Jews to feel exiled, but not okay for them to rise up in violent
revolt. That's cool. You can say that you don't think something like
the intifada can ever be
justified. Fine. But all that means is that the Nakba idea is being
chanelled in poor ways. The problem is not how self-pitying it is, but
how it's being used.

The intifada and the Nakba are being chanelled in immoral ways. 

"You find me the counterpart for this phenomenon in Palestinian culture as a starting point and then we'll go from there."

Well, there are all the examples I mentioned above: Tisha B'Av as
commemoration of our exiles, the Bar Kokhba war to regain the conquered
homeland, the idea of the Messiah -- a reincarnated king who will lead
the people back to their homeland (a central tenet of Judaism, let's
not forget), all the way through to  Zionism in the present day, which
holds that Jews have a right to the land of Israel rivalling that of
the land's immediately previous inhabitants, as well as its
undercurrent of diaspora negation. Let's have a quote, shall we?

"That is how Judaism died; for something atrophied is like something inanimate
even if deep within it a tiny spark of life is still concealed. That is how a
healthy, living Judaism expired. It expired, in fact, at the moment when Israel
became a people without a land and commenced two thousand years of heroic
suffering on behalf of its sacred heritage."

That's Jabotinsky.

"Were I to know that all German Jewish children could be rescued by
transferring them to England and only half by transfer to Palestine, I
would opt for the latter, because our concern is not only the personal
interest of these children, but the historic interest of the Jewish
people."

That's Ben Gurion. 

I don't see how you can deny that Judaism is wedded to the idea that
we were disposessed of our rightful home, and that we will one day
reclaim it. I mean...it pervades secular Judaism and religious Judaism.
Conservative siddurim have a prayer for Israel that calls it "reshit
smichat geulatenu", usually translated "the dawn of our redemption". To
be honest, this is the part of your response I find most bizarre. Do
you seriously believe that Jews, as a whole, don't regard the land of
Israel as particularly important? That we're not as a rule too
concerned about having been booted off by the Romans, and only came
back to it because of the Holocaust (and even then, that it was no more
special than any other patch of available land)?

What on earth are you talking about, Jer? I mentioned Neturei Karta. That's precisely the "phenomenon" for which I asked you to find a Palestinian equivalent. Do you know who they are? Whether they are nationalists or not may depend, I suppose, on how you define nationalism as it relates to the Jewish people. But you are aware of their stated positions concerning the existence of Israel, right? 

I don't think you got my point. Do you want me to link to a Wikipedia page on them for context?

"Because most sane people in their right minds (barring certain cultural
barriers) understand and have accepted that the Jews are a people like
any other with a right to self-determination... which has been
achieved!"

This is another one of those "we seem to agree, but don't realize
it" moments. This is just what I've been trying to say; that most sane
people don't begrudge the Jews holding on to a particular version of
their history, for the reasons you mention. What I want to know is why
the same argument doesn't go through with "Palestinian" in for "Jew"
(except of course the "which has been achieved!" bit). 

They also don't begrudge them for forming a nation based on an identity that wasn't made distinct merely through narrative, but through those pesky other attributes I mentioned earlier: A separate language and system of belief. But what can I say? We "nationalists" tend to crazy things like that! We don't vote for people to lead us who come from other countries and campaign and lay out their agendas to us in languages that we weren't brought up speaking, while attempting to relate to us through systems of belief that we are unfamiliar with. Maybe we should, though?

Oh. But the word for that would be "imperialism". A benevolent, internationalist, and perhaps even liberal imperialism. But an imperialism nonetheless. 

"Once the Palestinians learn how to see anything in their history
in context then perhaps their narratives could be used as learning
devices for achieving less narrow, less maximalist aims, as well."

This is silly; for one thing, the Jews have had two thousand years
of looking back on things to forget the immediate pain of having lost
their homes. The reason the Jews take their expulsion as a more
symbolic thing is because for the Jews, it's been two millenia. For the
Palestinians, there are still dudes with keys to houses that they can't
go into. 

And dudes who also refuse to comprehend that the current occupants are there by virtue of having escaped the horrors of either Nazism and its precursors or an Arab nationalism no less pernicious and oppressive than Zionism. 

I love how some people argue that Israel and Zionism are doomed.

 Zionists took the smallest opportunity given by the British and went with it. Even when the British reneged time and time again on their original promise it didn't stop them. The world was pretty much against them and needless to say Jews in general, and yet they persevered. And they fought a war of independence and have been facing opposition of some kind ever since. 

And some people are so foolish and vain as to join the fools' parade of pronouncing Israel doomed.  I don't get it. Is this that sort of old fashioned Jewish antinationalist pro-communist leftism that mostly got shot into the pits of the Ukraine or zapped with the Rosenbergs?

Let's be honest. Israel may not be perfect or living terror free, but the Esperanto ideology or whatever you want to call it has been wiped off the map and into the crematorium. 

I know, it certainly doesn't make me seem very pleasant, but sometimes you "Zionism is wicked and doomed" people need to be spoken to in your own language.  

Isaac brings up a good analogy that I hadn't considered before in his discussion with jer. I generally avoid using biblical arguments in favor of Israel, but Isaac touches on a good one. Indeed a big difference between the nakba and the diaspora is that the diaspora was total. You can quibble about the very small communities that clung on after 135AD, but that's the exception that proves the rule. 

My ancient Jewish history isn't the greatest, but I do recall that most of the time they were sharing "the land of Israel" with many other peoples. In other words, they were compromising the land. If Jews living in the plains of Asher were booted out by arriviste Phoenicians, and they had the opportunity to relocate down in the Jerusalem area, we still call that a period of Jewish continuity in the land of Israel, not exile. The other exile is the Babylonian exile. But when Jews have even a small portion of the land of Israel, it's not considered part of the exile.

That would seem to be precedent for differentiating between the Jewish diaspora and the nakba narrative. 

Aside from the fact that the "quibbles" over whether or not the Jewish expulsion was complete are pretty important -- as your whole distinction depends on those small communities not counting as Jewish settlement -- my biggest problem with your post is that there's no reason why the completeness of the exile should count. A genocide doesn't have to be complete to count as a genocide; no one thinks there is less justification for the Holocaust to be a national trauma simply because not every last Jew survived. 

Why is that the criterion by which we judge a national narrative?

The Palestinians living in refugee camps (or being confined to refugee
camps, as it were) have not been exiled from their historical country
of mandatory Palestine. That's the whole difference between partition
and expulsion.

Not exiled from their historical country, but exiled from their homes where their families had lived for generations. I guess the Trail of Tears isn't an expulsion, since their was no historical country of Choctawland, or whatever. Something like three quarters of a million people were disposessed of their homes, and forced to live as refugees. Saying that it's "excessively self pitying" for these people to regard themselves as having been exiled from their homes is, to me, outrageous. You can disagree with what they've chosen to do about it, you can disagree with how they go about trying to achieve their aims, fine. But at a minimum, I don't see how you can ask that they not take this as a traumatic event in their history; an exile.

Palestinians post-1948 - living in exile from mandatory Palestine (i.e. not
in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza) or otherwise - never would have been
made into a distinct, targetted minority community - that is assuming
their Arab co-nationalists hadn't decided to do so for incredibly
malevolent political reasons

I have no idea what would have happened without the rest of the Arab world rallying to the Palestinian cause, so you may be right. However, communities that have just undergone a common trauma, like exile, are just those that tend to become more distinct. Think of the Jews during the first expulsion: within a span of fifty years, the community in exile and the community that stayed behind are essentially different nations. Similarly, look at the various Germanic tribes over the course of the last hundred or so years of the Roman empire: various Germanic peoples coalesce into nations like the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Siling Vandals, etc. Before their various trials, they were loosely confederated peoples who spoke similar languages, and had some similar customs. By the end, they are huge nations controlling vast swathes of territory. Some of these changes occur over a period of only a few decades. I see no reason why the same would not have played out with the Palestinians. Having been exiled, and having found themselves refugees, why wouldn't they band together, focus on the shared elements of their identities, and forged a separate identity as Palestinians, as opposed to just unlucky Arabs.

I also don't quite understand what you're trying to say with your paragraph about nationalism. I'm not coming down either for or against nationalism. I'm trying to say that insofar as a national identity has been a good thing for the Jews, up to and including perpetuating a national myth about our exile and eventual return, the same should apply for the Palestinians. And, insofar as Palestinian nationalism and focus on historical grievances has been bad for the Palestinians, it has been bad for the Jews as well. I haven't committed to pickind either of those options, but you're trying to have it both ways, saying that national memory is okay for Jews, but not for Palestinians. But I still don't see how, if it's okay for one, it's not for the other (or, alternatively, if it's not for one, it is for the other). 

As for the rest of it, I don't know why you think my being less than fully enthusiastic about nationalism as a political phenomenon means I hate Thai food, but, since I don't, I'm not going to respond to that. Feel free to clarify how it relates to your general point though, if you think I'm being obtuse.

I don't think you got my point

Definitely not. I know who Neturei Karta are, I just have no idea what you're bringing them up for. My examples were intended to show that the idea of a diaspora, or the idea that the land of Israel was necessary for Judaism to survive, were mainstream ideas in Judaism and Zionism. Like I said, "the Jews went through the exact same phase", i.e., the Jews too have built up the myth of their lost homeland into an integral part of the national identity. My Jabotinsky and Ben Gurion quotes were illustrative of this process, and designed to show that Zionism was certainly not immune. I still don't see how Neturei Karta play into it; even they buy into the idea of an exile, they just disagree on the circumstances under which it is to be ended. And I hardly think they can be credibly called anything other than  "extremely marginal" in Jewish society. So, I think my point stands: Judaism has been there, done that and indeed still is there, sill doing it when it comes to inflating a onetime historical event into a tragedy of epic proportions that defines the nation ever afterwards. 

They also don't begrudge them for forming a nation based on an identity
that wasn't made distinct merely through narrative, but through those
pesky other attributes I mentioned earlier: A separate language and
system of belief.

Yeah, I mean, what a crazy idea: nations that are distinct because of common history rather than language or religion. I mean, what's next, the English and the Australians are different nations? Laughable! Or hey, Canada and the United States?  Anyway, I'm sorta confused as to what all that jazz about imperialism was in there for; I think you're gonna have to take another go at convincing me that anything in there was at all relevant. 

And dudes who also refuse to comprehend that the current occupants are
there by virtue of having escaped the horrors of either Nazism and its
precursors or an Arab nationalism no less pernicious and oppressive
than Zionism

Again, I'm not saying that the Jews don't have a right to their national myth. I'm saying that the Arabs have just as much right to theirs. The Jews came to Israel because of the horrible things done to them; the Palestinians want to go back because they've been kicked out, and are afraid worse is to come. Both have good reasons, even if both will exaggerate their own reasons and overlook the other's. I agree that the Nakba doesn't trump the Holocaust, or whatever. But it's still a legitimate grievance. Moreover, the reasons it is legitimate are the same reasons that make the Jews' grievances legitimate. 

"Something like three quarters of a million people were disposessed of their homes, and forced to live as refugees."

Forced to live as refugees by the U.S. Government or by the Choctaw nation? Forced to live as refugees by the Government of Israel or by the Palestinian leadership? Perhaps in both cases you don't see a difference. If I were interested in absolving certain people of any responsibility I might not see one either.

And there is a difference between exile and expulsion. 

As for nationalism being both good and bad for Israel and Palestinians, or neither, or whatever depending on whether historical grievances are brought into it or not, I'm going to have to reject your equivalency on this one as well. Jews aren't going about suicide bombing Rome and rejecting its people's history and Palestinians can easily assimilate within other Arab cultures without losing any part of their identity other than the somehow overwhelmingly critical (but not very useful) narrative of "the catastrophe". How horrible. 

I brought up Neturei Karta as an example of how much broader the spectrum of Jewish thinking on nationalism (and its relationship to it) is as compared to Palestinian thinking on nationalism.

You are being silly to assert that the historical differences between Canada and Australia present those two nations with any more of a challenge when assimilating nationals from the other country than when either nation attempts to assimilate non-English speaking, non-Protestants. 

No one's saying the Palestinians don't have a "right" to their myth. I'm saying that it's a narrower and more decontextualized one - and less constructive to achieving a just and workable settlement. That, and the fact that their narrative or national mythology isn't built on much more than that. They should try to broaden their sense of history. Or else learn to appreciate someone else's infinitely richer history (hint, hint), and the lessons that could be learned from that, for fuck's sake. 

I'm beginning to wonder whether you are capable of understanding the degree to which Palestinian nationalism has needlessly made its existence reliant on degrading the Jewish nation.  I'm also beginning to wonder whether you are capable of understanding the degree to which Arab nationalism constructed Palestinian identity, and the nationalism that it gave rise to, simply in order thwart a Jewish polity in the Middle East.