So monotheism popped up twice. And other monotheisms might have occurred which we dont know about. Actually this supports my thesis: like Z and J they faded or (more likely) were crushed. Monotheism was surely rare and it took five or six thousand years of agriculture for it to turn up. Its just not coherent to build an empire by conquest while following an, all-powerful god who promises eternal life in return for a sincere heart and being nice to each other. International relations is not like that.

Monotheism needs a stable state. It seems either (a) the earlier empires that supported it were not big enough, rich enough, secure enough, or durable enough for the monotheist message to prevail, or, (b) these monotheisms were not big enough to transcend the state and the monotheism died when the state died as in the case of Judaism.

After the long time it took to invent monotheism, it took another thousand years until Christianity arose. Its new twist was the separation of church and state. Christianity in its early centuries was about holding hands and singing Kumbaya. This cant generate wealth and it cant defend itself. It can only prosper within a wealthy, secure environment. The Romans allowed it where they would not allow Judaism. Though persecuted, the converts evidently outnumbered the martyrs.

After Christianity took over the empire (after 325 AD) it was no longer just Kumbaya; it became bureaucratic. But by then it pervaded and the egalitarian, meek shall inherit the earth philosophy at the core of Christianity, with its emphasis on poverty and humility, never died. The church in all its splendour mouths these sentiments to this day.

The behaviour of Medieval Christianity is not really relevant. Finally, the turn the other cheek philosophy of Christ doesnt seem to me to have been that important for most Christians most of their history Yes of course. But sociologically it is of vital importance. The Bibles relentless egalitarianism has repeatedly given rise to people like Luther and Calvin. For all the violations, this philosophy is now universal and informs all our lives.

There has to be an explanation for the rise of Rome and your remarks seem to fill the bill. The invention and application of wheel, chariot, bronze, phalanx, compound bow, rideable horse, writing, iron, and mathematics must have effects. These technologies would be crucial enablers for Rome because you couldnt do the engineering and rule such a vast empire without them. So mighty Rome had to wait for them and since they occurred at the rate of about two inventions per thousand years, it was a long wait.

So Ill stick with my thesis. If Rome hadnt been Christianitys midwife, wed now be two thousand years further along a well-worn path a few more empires would have risen and fallen, an Athens or two might have flared and faded, a few slave uprisings might have been quelled, there would be no forests left in Europe, and we might have stirrups and muskets.

A single god originated way before Judaism and persisted outside of Judaism too. I think the Zoroastians are credited with being amongst the first, originating (I think, without going to google) in the highly organised region of Persia.
You overstate the degree to which there was stability in the history of the Middle East. It wasnt merely a coming and going of civilisations, there was a gradual, almost imperceptible, increase in the level of sophistication of the empires. Bureaucracies became more intricate with more and more useful inventions (think of the census and ever more broadly educated individuals). Military technology kept improving as agricultural technology that could feed large armies spread and as weapons (including horses and the like) spread. This meant that it became easier and easier to have large empires for a while, meaning there were more and more societies to ‘parasitise of’.
Also, I am not sure Christianity is merely a parasitical religion. It survived without a major empire for several hundred years in the early middle ages. True, smaller kings and rulers had their uses for Christianity, but rulers have uses for almost any religion.
Finally, the ‘turn the other cheek’ philosophy of Christ doesnt seem to me to have been that important for most Christians most of their history. Turn the other cheek doesnt seem to have stopped the crusades, the inquisition, or, more generally, the pillaging of the Middle Ages.

Really? Why?

And Israeli’s should simply accept the rest of the world will take them in like they did in the 30′s and 40′s, which reminds me of that old saying…. How does it go?

Full me once…. Full me twice…

As a minor and largely irrelevant tiff, I dont think Christianity needed Rome. It was thriving nicely without its backing, but its certainly true that it had uses for Rome that Judaism didnt have. Its only a thought experiment, but I would venture that Christianity (or something like it) would have eventually taken over Europe anyway. The message of a loving god who rewards you in the afterlife even if you were a loser in this life is very enticing. A much nicer god to follow than the brutal pagan gods of the Romans or the Germanics.

Yes, it is irrelevant in the present context but I think I can show it is not minor. I dont think Christianity thrived without Rome, or could even exist without Rome.

For perhaps six or eight thousand years people warred as polytheist pagans. Uncounted empires rose and fell. This might have gone on for a million years but suddenly (so to speak) monotheism turned up. The Jews had a single all-powerful god who did not want to do deals which provide material services in return for expensive sacrifices. Instead He required sincere acknowledgement of Him.

It might not be the first and only monotheism one could make an argument for Hinduism but the advent of monotheism in the ME was singular. A loving, all-powerful, disembodied god organising the afterlife arose. It arose just once. Why? I dont know. `

For 10 tribes He was not as powerful as the pagan gods and the 10 were lost – a holocaust. The remaining two tribes survived for seven centuries or so by exploiting their position as a buffer between the polytheist imperialisms around them. That might have gone on for seventy centuries but suddenly (so to speak) the Romans turned up. They didnt need any buffers and though they did not care about local religions, when the Jews refused to acknowledge Roman law, they dispersed those remaining two tribes.

There simply was no Christianity before Rome. It existed and spread within the empire, Judaism without Judaic law. It could not otherwise have existed for it was too other-worldly. That is (a) it was parasitic and only a wealthy economy could pay for it and (b) only a stable polity could provide the internal state security for its turn-the-other-cheek philosophy to be persuasive.

The above is very sketchy but I am suggesting that the advent of monotheism, and the advent of Christianity a thousand years later, are crucial turning points in the history of world. It took a thousand years for monotheist Christianity to arise from monotheist Judaism. It had to wait for the advent of Rome.

Was the Roman empire also a crucial turning point? Not really. Though bigger, it, like all empires, died. Without Christianity it would be just another of those pagan empires and we might have had dozens more of them and still be running around with swords and shields.

Because in January of 2006, the parliamentary elections that were held in the Palestinian Authority were largely about internal reforms in the Palestinian areas. Hamas was ready to deliver. What did they do? They came to the Palestinians and said Listen, folks. You’ve tried all these PLO people. They’re corrupt. They’re bad. Arafat was a thief. Abu Mazen is also a total failure. These guys stole your money [most of which Toameh has earlier readily acknowledged as true]. These guys are US agents, they are CIA. Why don’t you try us now? We will show you that we can establish good government. And, by the way, look at what we’ve done for you since 1988. We’ve established a vast network of educational, social, health, and economic services. Arafat built a casino, and we built two universities. Arafat gave his wife 100,000 dollars a month so she can do her shopping while we gave poor people money. Arafat built bars and restaurants in Ramallah while we built orphanages and charities. So the Palestinians said Let’s try Hamas. If they come to power there is nothing left to steal. They can’t be more corrupt than the PLO.

So, on the one hand, Hamas is a radical organisation willing to use terrorist means; intransigent to the last. On the other it’s done a lot of constructive work and (successfully) sought election (for which sins it is of course attacked by some its more radical brethren as a traitor to the Palestinian cause):

The group’s greatest sin, says Abu Mustafa, who is also the father of two children, is its effort to bring Islam and democracy together. “Hamas represents an American style of Islam. They have tried to curry favor.” Which is not such a bad thing for Abu Mustafa and his Salafis. “Hamas is like a block of ice in the sun,” he says. “Every minute they get smaller — and we get larger.[There are real worries about what might arise in Hamas' place were it to be destroyed.]

So, what are they? Well, I think they’re a work in progress; they have their own moderates and their own hardliners. Right now, after all that’s happened, the latter are almost certainly in the ascendancy. Which will win out depends in part on whether the Israelis (and the world at large) find a way to reward moderation. Israel’s failure to open the Strip had the opposite effect.

It’s also important to remember that symbolism is critically important to both sides of this conflict. This article in the NYT explored that territory off the back of a lengthy research survey (from 2004-08) involving 4000 Palestinians and Israelis. Here’s the concluding paragraph:

Making these sorts of wholly intangible symbolic concessions, like an apology or recognition of a right to exist, simply doesnt compute on any utilitarian calculus. And yet the science says they may be the best way to start cutting the knot.

You could try re-reading the Toameh piece:

Hamas is not a partner for any peace agreement because Hamas is not going to change. All these people who believe that Hamas will one day change its ideology, that pragmatic leaders will emerge in Hamas, these people are living under illusions. Hamas is not going to change. To their credit we must say that their message has been very clear. It’s the same message in Arabic and in English. They’re being very honest about it. They’re saying Folks, we will never recognize Israel. We will never change. We will not abandon the path of the resistance. They’re very clear about it.

After they won the election, by the way, the international community went to Hamas and said Listen. If you want us to deal with you, accept Israel and everything will be okay. And Hamas was very honest. They said No. We are not going to renounce terrorism. We are not going to recognize previous agreements between Palestinians and Israel. And we are not going to recognize Israel’s right to exist. They were very clear about it. And they say the same thing today.

“It may be that that kind of egalitarian, communitarian spirit, marching arm in arm to a glorious new dawn, is intrinsically unstable. ”
interesting thought, perfectly in line with standard economic reasoning about the impossibility of ignoring selfishness for long periods. I guess if one is looking for examples of sustained egalitarianism, you’d have to point to hunter-gatherer societies that were egalitarian and communitarian for very long times without any hint of instability. But then, such societies were not of the ‘go forward’ variety, but rather of the continuing variety. I guess the religious zeal aspect of it is missing in hunter-gatherer societies and there are intricate mechanisms for reducing the importance of selfishness within the group. Similarly, strongly religious egalitarian communities can keep going for a long time without much apparent change. Hence one would have to link the instability either to a degree of zealotry that is unsustainable or else invoke specific material circumstances under which communitarian systems break down.
On the other hand, there have been militaristic societies, like the Spartans, that had an egalitarian go-forward ethos within the warrior class. Such societies need to be fuelled by conquests though and you inevitably run of those. Hmmm, I think we can go on a long time like this….time for me to get back to work

Is indifference as bad as deliberate targeting? Arguable, but I don’t think so. Are the officer and Yon telling the truth? Probably. As I said, I can’t know whether (given the necessary expertise and equipment) Hamas would rather target Olmert’s office or a children’s playground. My guess is either the former, or both, but in the end it would probably depend on which was judged likely to be most politically effective. It would also depend on who was making the decision on the day; Hamas is not a monolith. That said, there’s no reason to think they’re not perfectly capable of deliberately targeting innocents; after all, they only renounced suicide bombing in 2006.

The critical thing as far as I’m concerned is that Hamas has shown itself willing to engage in the sort of compromises that constitute practical politics. They are a genuinely popular grass roots organisation that won an election (and have been harassed and pilloried ever since). This is not al Qaeda.

No, thank God, Israel hasn’t done a Dresden, or anywhere near. That wasn’t the point I was trying to make with that example; it was used because I have the impression you can’t bring yourself to believe that Israel could really behave badly, that the very idea is alien. They’re a civilised people, after all, as indeed they are. I was just trying to point out that this is no foolproof guard against savagery.

The French minority whinges about the majority German bumpkins but federalism means they dont get in each others hair too much.

It’s been a while since either side tried to kill each other. Keeping within the realm of inane inapt analogies, Belgium would be closer to the mark, sans the EU.

As for that last sentence, well, one reason the sun is hot may be that it is yellow.

Just as the Israelis arent listening to me: form Isratine and be a medium size modern country with a large minority of Jews. Switzerland is a good model. The French minority whinges about the majority German bumpkins but federalism means they dont get in each others hair too much.

You compare with our Aborigines. But the Palestinians are not a small minority. Even if Aborigines harboured the resentment of the Palestinians and we were at war with them, the Australian state would remain viable. One reason we are not at war with the Aborigines may be that they are not (now) systemically excluded from power.

I wanted to weigh in yesterday but I was too busy. Its the best excuse in the world: I have just submitted my PhD thesis.

Thanks for #54. Burg is vividly asserting what I was trying to analyse: People are not willing to admit it, but Israel has reached the wall. Ask your friends if they are certain their children will live here. How many will say yes? At most 50 percent. We are already dead. We havent received the news yet, but we are dead. Israeliness has only body; it doesnt have soul. There is no important Jewish writing in Israel.

The energy of the early Kibbutz days was hear-warming but, like the similar and contemporary energy building the Soviet Union in the 1950s, it has vanished and all that is left is the stubborn insistence on exclusivity. It may that that kind of egalitarian, communitarian spirit, marching arm in arm to a glorious new dawn, is intrinsically unstable. The new world is reached and people want their private lives and ambitions. It looks like that state no longer even has the will to live. As Rex R says, Israel is doomed and the tragedy is it will keep lashing out till somehow it is quashed.

No question, Paul, that those minorities in the melting pot are positive. That is just what I was saying. When they come to Australia (or America) they receive a fair share of power there are no impervious systemic barriers against them. At first they support each other in suburban enclaves but then their children are seduced by the opportunities outside their parents culture. And when their strange names dominate the school exam results we dont want to cut them down to size. Instead we salute them because (a) they DONT want to be exclusive and (b) we are not illiterate peasants.

In my view, Mahathirs racial policies of university places in proportion to population was sensible goal-oriented action. In the same breath as calling Malays lazy, he guaranteed them opportunity. He empowers Malays and undermines Chinese exclusivity. This did punish the industrious Chinese (who apparently trooped off to Australian universities) but surely not as badly as taking to them with machetes.

And no, of course it wasnt Christians out-breeding others in ancient Rome. Yes, they gave their adherents something. It was the Jewish be-nice-to-each-other but without the Jewish law, i.e. render unto Caesar. That way Christians could spread within the Roman empire. Unlike the Jews, they actually needed the empire and its wealth and law to live. Christianity is essentially other-worldly and wont provide wealth. (Are economists aware of this at all?)

But I suspect we share those meta-perspectives from perhaps opposite (albeit neither very extreme) positions. I think our positions are more defined by what we vehemently oppose than what we support. To wit, I suspect that you are mildly pro-palestinian & vehemently anti-likudnik whilst I am mildly pro-Israeli & vehemently anti-Hamas. Who knows, we may agree to hate the same things – that seems to be how alliances are made in that part of the world!

I have to support my being anti-Hamas, first by pointing out that you don’t address my contention that mere indifference to civilian deaths is in and of itself probably as bad as calculated targeting. Secondly by disputing that there is any mere indifference. From a recent Michael Yon guest-post on Instapundit:

The officer explained that the peak times for launch are when the kids are going or coming from school, and shoppers are in the open, for the greatest odds of casualties.

Is the officer lying? Is Michael? Can you even be bothered trying to believe that either are?

OTOH I have read and considered your comments on letting Israel off too easily. I would note that the second sentence (about Dresden et al) appears to me implicitly refuting the first – Israel hasn’t committed any Dresdens despite decades of existential conflict. Maybe they have a higher form of civilisation?

Your point about alternatives and opening up the strip is still valid, though. I guess where we differ is on the validity of opening up the strip. If, like me, you believe that Hamas was probably not capable of earnestly committing to a truce and certainly not capable of enforcing one, then you can see that opening up the strip was on balance likely to make life more dangerous for Israelis. If you differed, as you apparently do, then it would seem the logical thing to do.

I am not sure if that difference can resolve itself, turning as it does on judgments as to the character of men we have both heard much about but neither of us knows.

The only point I was trying to make about Hamas is that their rockets aren’t targeted at all in any meaningful sense; what they end up hitting is essentially random. If they had far more precise weapons, perhaps they’d target Olmert’s office, or perhaps children’s playgrounds; any prediction from me would be mere opinion. These attempts at greater clarity, by the way, don’t imply any sort of approval for the firing of these rockets, or for suicide bombing or anything else that targets civilians. As far as I’m concerned, that should always be taboo.

I wonder, though, if you’re not being a little too generous with Israel. Even the most civilised nations and people are capable of great savagery; for proof we need look no further than the fire bombing of Tokyo and Dresden. War, particularly more or less constant war, can break down constraints and that’s even more true when those one wars against are the other (I think this applies equally to the Palestinians, it’s just that their war making capability is so much less).

Given their strategy, tactics and the actual outcomes, how hard Israel tries not to harm civilians seems to me open to debate. Perhaps even more important, though, is the question of whether there were alternatives open to Israel that wouldn’t have inevitably resulted in widespread civilian deaths. Here I think the evidence is against them. I won’t rehash all the points covered earlier in this thread but there seems to be a wide body of opinion that thinks a fresh truce could have been arranged without too much difficulty had Israel been willing to open up the Strip.

The blockade suggests a willingness on Israel’s part to engage in collective punishment. It’s not the Hamas fighters who’ll suffer most from the closed borders, it’s the frail and the powerless. If Israel is willing to impose suffering indiscriminately on Gaza’s population (presumably in the hope it might lead to a lessening of Hamas’ grip on power), I think there’s reason to wonder about how fastidious they’re going to be about their military operations.

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As for the blockade issue, Rob, it would make things easier if you actually read my responses (including the info I link to). There was no suggestion (either from me or the source I noted) that the blockade was total (although apparently it pretty much has been as far as exports are concerned). It’s simply that the quantities of aid, and trade, have been greatly reduced, at times to the point of near strangulation.

According to the chart in the BBC overview, in May 2007 (before the Hamas takeover and subsequent tightening of the blockade), the number of trucks entering Gaza monthly was about 10,000 (ie roughly 500 per day or 2500 per week). By Feb 2008, the monthly total had been reduced to less than a thousand. During the period of calm, the totals rose again to 2500-3500 per month which was still only a quarter to a third of the earlier levels. Similar (but far less drastic) reductions occurred in the various fuels.

I see no reason to doubt the MFA figures. Those from earlier in the period (eg the week of Sept 7-12 shows 689 trucks coming in) seem to line up OK with the figures noted above (ie the reduction was around 75% during the time when the truce had eased things a bit). Later ones, especially once hostilities broke out again (and the figures you quote fit into this period) were down by much more. Indeed, the December weeks you selected look to be a reduction in volume of around 85-95%.

You generally seem unhappy with sources of information that don’t accord with how you see things, so let me supply at least one that may pass muster and so allow you to accept there has been a blockade. It’s a brief report (on the MFA website) about the Israel Supreme Court’s decision to deny a petition for order nisi and temporary injunction submitted by a number of organizations to the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense regarding the Israel government decision to reduce or limit the supply of fuel and electricity to the Gaza Strip on October 28, 2007. The full text of the decision can be found here.

The official figures from Israel’s MFA are here.

Scroll to the bottom and work backwards.

The last two weeks of the hudna:

Week of Dec. 14-18
On Sunday, Dec. 14, the crossings were closed (with the exception of Erez). On Dec. 15 and 16, the crossings were open (see below) until rocket fire began, resulting in closing all of the crossings except for Erez. Rocket fire continued and the crossings were still closed on Dec. 17.

Karni crossing: 58 trucks with 2134 tons of grains.
Kerem Shalom: 78 trucks with 1784 tons of goods
Nahal Oz depot: 642,200 liters of heavy diesel fuel for the power station; 174 tons of cooking and heating gas
Erez crossing: 60 people (patients and companions)

Week of Dec. 7-13, 2008
After a quiet day without rocket launchings, the Defense Minister gave permission to open the crossings (Dec. 9 & 10).
Erez crossing: (open every day to patients and to international humanitarian traffic) 142 medical evacuations
Kerem Shalom: 189 trucks, 2317 tons of goods on Dec. 9-10 and 1340 tons on Dec. 12: food, tools and raw materials, agricultural equipment and medicines.
Karni: 117 trucks, 2664 tons of grains and animal feed on Dec. 9-10 and an undisclosed amount on Dec. 11.
Nahal Oz: 865,900 liters of heavy diesel fuel for the power station, 379 tons of cooking and heating gas. In addition, special fuel supplies were transferred specifically for UNRWA: 299,000 liters of heavy diesel fuel, 101,000 liters of fuel for transportation, and 50,000 liters of gasoline.

No doubt some will guffaw and say, well, the Israeli MFA would say that, wouldn’t they? But that response is not evidence or argument, it is simply polemics. If these figures are correct, there was no blockade. If they are not, adduce your evidence evidence.

It’s a simple point and you made it above @ 60: “The fundamental moral discrimen between Hamas and Israel is that Hamas is trying to kill children and innocents, whilst Israel is trying not to.”

Yet it seems so hard for many to grasp.

My guess is that it doesnt matter to them as long as the attacks serve a political purpose.

That seems about as bad to me.

I didn’t mean, btw, to impute either belief to you, just to outline how I saw the morality of it.

As for the Israeli position, for me they are legitimately seeking to destroy Hamas, given my view of Hamas’ actions. That they try pretty hard to not kill civilians seems to be about as much as they could do, to me. I think, and I think just war doctrine would bear me out here, that there is a vast gulf between being aware that you are likely to cause some civilian casualties but trying to minimise them, and actively targeting civilians or even being merely indifferent to civilian casualties.

I think that is where proportionality is usually invoked.

I’ve often wondered if Israelis have some sense that their dream was founded on a fundamental injustice, and if so how much this colours things. A bit like the guilt that to varying degrees (including, of course, none at all) affects white Australians, except in the Israeli case, it all happened within living memory and the consequences are in daily, painful view. (As JC suggested earlier, tolerance here might change into something quite different if we perceived ourselves as universally pilloried and under real threat.)

The tragedy (or at least the latest manifestation of it) is that matters seem to be spinning away from any resolution. Perhaps the Israelis are no longer able to pull out of the spiral they’re caught in (that appears to be one of Burg’s fears). And if they can’t, I don’t like the odds that the Palestinians will be able to; far too much bad blood has been created in the last few years since the initial evacuation of Gaza.

Perhaps in the end it was fear that prevented the Israelis from opening up the Gaza borders and letting things unfold. Fear that Hamas would acquire more destructive weapons, or fear that they would make a decent fist of things in the Strip in which case Abbas and the PA would be fatally weakened. And yet . . . . if so, what has this fear brought them but more reasons to fear? As JC says in #61, much of the problem might in time go away if there was hope in Gaza (and the West Bank) of a decent, settled and potentially prosperous life.

In any case, unless someone, somewhere is able to to make a leap of faith (and be willing to take some reverses and pain without losing that faith), it’s hard to see anything but a remorseless descent into greater turmoil. If the US (and the ROW) has any useful role to play at all, it must surely lie in trying to break this downward spiral.

———————–

Patrick, I think I understand what you’re saying and I don’t excuse the rocket attacks. They’re indiscriminate, randomly lethal and immoral. I’m not sure it’s quite right, though, to say that Hamas set out to kill children and innocents. My guess is that it doesn’t matter to them as long as the attacks serve a political purpose.

As for Israel, I don’t think they’re setting out to kill civilians (although there have been some disturbing reports about messages inculcated into IDF soldiers in the recent battle and about actual IDF behaviour). Here too, though, I think the issue is a little more complex than it first may appear. The Israeli leadership (and the IDF) know that conducting war with figher bombers, attack helicopters, artillery barrages and tank attacks will kill large numbers of civilians. How much does it change things in the moral sense that this isn’t their specific aim? I don’t really know, but it does seem to me a rather scholastic type argument.

————————

Finally, a few thoughts on the Derbyshire piece that Rex referred to. It’s intriguing that he accepted his gloomy conclusion (democracy is no match for terrorism) without considering the possibility that terrorism may just wither and die once the underlying causes are settled. Not only because constantly nurtured grievances are necessary to provide, in his words, the iron determination to press on for decades, for generations, brushing aside all reverses, weathering all storms, expelling all doubters, holding steadfast to the golden vision but also because in their absence, the soil from which fresh recruits germinate turns barren.

Perhaps he sees terrorism as some sort of vocation, entirely isolated from root causes. Even then, though, those that could be so characterised, nihilisitic, deracinated groups like Baader Meinhof and the Red Brigades were either caught, killed or finally tired of the game. Very odd. It almost makes one wonder who really belongs to the intellectual, litigational, over-educated elites.

FWIW, I think democracy has tremendous resilience, providing people aren’t encouraged to panic by their politicians and leaders, thereby sacrificing the very things that make an open society strong.

I think a little to do with solving the Irish situation was the economics side of things. Ireland at the time was growing at Asian tiger rates and there was for the first time inward migration from the need to fill jobs.

So a wealthier society and the chance of finding a decent paying job created less of a desire to make trouble.

If Gazans had the same living standards as the Israelis or a fast growing one I would think a great deal of the problem would go away.

Economics and economic growth is hugely important and seems more than a little under-estimated when looking at these problems.

Britain was never paranoid as far as I can recall about the bombing in its pubs and busses – it was stoic and was never vengeful, the British didnt really need Northern Irish territory the same way the Israel thinks it needs Palestinian territory, the British didnt provide the same level of institutional support to the extremist Provos that Israel provides its armed settlers,

I must have learnt about a different Britain and a different Ireland then. Maybe that was a parallel universe.

As far as I can see, no-one has really addressed from the Arab perspective the moral issues (although Rob’s comments about the law of armed conflict (?) touched on them). To my understanding of the moral issues, absolute harm is relevant, but only incidentally. The fundamental moral discrimen between Hamas and Israel is that Hamas is trying to kill children and innocents, whilst Israel is trying not to.

I find it very hard to find any sympathy or excuse for Hamas after that, but I find plenty for Israel.

In 2002 Conservative columnist John Derbyshire came to this conclusion also.

I had better step out front and center here and admit that I am a pessimist, of the Unz party. I think Israel will go down.

Interestingly though he in-part bases this on a pessimistic assessment of the possibility of solving Irish terrorism. “Democracy is no match for terrorism”, says Derbyshire because it is the stamina and ruthlessness of the terrorists that will see the democracies undone.

But as we know the Irish problem was solved, and solved politically, so why not solvable for Israel? The answer lies I think in Ingolf’s piece. Burg depicts an Israeli culture that is traumatised, paranoid and feeling unloved in the word. If Burgs depiction is true – and it rings true to me – then the paranoia of Israel is what drives them to behave in a way that is considered by people in many other nations, who admittedly do not face the same stresses, as quite noxious. (Incidentally I don’t accept Mike Pepperday’s view #43 that it is Jewish exceptionalism that is an important factor)

A global brand survey in 2006 ranked Israel as the worst brand name in the world, and a 2007 BBC poll provided a country by country assessment of Israel’s image revealed that even Australians viewed Israel in a mostly negative light. It is the USA, almost alone, that stands out as the great supporter of Israel.

In Isreal we have a culture that feels fenced in, feels consistently threatened, and feels generally unloved – and so its no surprise that they lash out viciously the way they do, with so little regard for the helpless amongst the Palestinians, and often in defiance of much of world opinion. In the process stoking the cycle of revenge and making themselves yet more unloved again.

And here’s where the Irish parallel becomes interesting, because the democracy in that case was Britain. And Britain is not Israel in so very many respects. Britain was not surrounded (in the same way that Israel feels surrounded by Arabs), Britain was never paranoid as far as I can recall about the bombing in its pubs and busses – it was stoic and was never vengeful, the British didn’t really need Northern Irish territory the same way the Israel thinks it needs Palestinian territory, the British didn’t provide the same level of institutional support to the extremist Provos that Israel provides its armed settlers, and finally the British never felt unloved by the rest of the world. They were confident of their place in it.

In short Britain had all the reasons to be generous in its approach to the Irish problem, while Israel, although occasionally attempting generosity and being rebuffed and disappointed – falls back on the old paranoid habits and brutal unpleasantness that just keeps the rage burning.

And this problem for Israel will go on, and on, and on probably for another fifty – maybe one hundred years until Israel’s biggest supporter, the USA, its own power diminished, has had enough and can’t afford to support it anymore (While a ascendant China most certainly won’t be stepping up to the plate). Then comes, as Mike Pepperday chillingly notes, some kind of ‘Final Solution’.

So like John Derbyshire, I am pessimistic about the future of Israel – not because of the terrorists – but because Israel’s inability to change how it sees itself.

As a final wrap up, it is interesting to note how Derbyshire’s views of a slowly withering Israeli culture reflect those of Burg’s in Ingolf comment at #54 above.

..Sick of terror, longing for a normal bourgeois life, those who can those who have education, talents, marketable skills will slip away. The dumbed-down remainder, outnumbered and outwitted, will sink into a defeatist lassitude punctuated by crude, insensate acts of rearguard violence. The only great nation at all inclined to act as protector will tire of doing so, making all sorts of excuses as she backs away from her obligations..

You’re right but I think here are also some important differences.

In Australia, New Zealand, Canada and so on, the low point in relations with the original inhabitants was reached a long time ago. The improvements since then may leave a lot to be desired but I think it’s fair to say things are broadly cooperative and heading in a positive direction. The opposite is true in Palestinian / Israeli relations.

I read an interesting article by Conor Cruise O’Brien this afternoon. It was written in 1985 and is titled Why Israel Can’t Take ‘Bold Steps’ for Peace and subtitled Political reality in the Middle East. Although he was pro Israel and Zionism (he wrote Seige: The Saga of Israel and Zionism), O’Brien wasn’t unsympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. A lot of things struck me in his essay but this one seems relevant to your argument:

In the ten years after June of 1967 the Open Bridges policy and Israel’s little-heralded “adversarial partnership” with Jordan (in Ian Lustick’s phrase) led to a kind of working arrangement on the West Bank whereby the Arab inhabitants were left as far as possible to their own devices and allowed to continue to feel part of the Arab world. This arrangement–inspired mainly by Moshe Dayan–allowed the Arab population to develop peacefully and to attain a considerable degree of prosperity. Civil administration and Arab education on the West Bank remained generally under Jordanian control, and the Jordanian dinar remained legal tender on the West Bank.

This suggests a working arrangement wasn’t impossible. Perhaps with some delicacy, some give and take, some compensation (as you suggest), a similar principle, carefully and cooperatively applied in a more general fashion, might have avoided much of the bloodshed and travails of recent decades.

What derailed this arrangement was:

In the following years, especially from 1980 on, the Likud pressure for augmenting Jewish settlements (often close to densely populated Arab areas), combined with the manipulations of Begin-style autonomy, made for increased Arab unrest and some violence. The old working arrangement, amounting to a kind of tacit condominium between Israel and Jordan over the West Bank, was strained by these developments but did not collapse.

There was, moreover, an evident and apparently growing tendency on the far right of the Israeli political spectrum to deliberately provoke the West Bank Arabs, in the apparent hope of inflaming violence, which would have to be met by Israeli repression, in a cycle that could eventually force the Arab population out.

That cycle has been pretty much continuous ever since. I think it’s the constant sense of being chipped away at, surrounded, harassed, discriminated against (and periodically attacked) that keeps the wound open and festering on the Palestinian side, JC. I imagine with suicide bombers, rockets and the general air of unsettled menace it must also feel that way for many Israelis.

The only encouraging takeaway from the essay (viewed from the present) is how far things did move in the years after the piece was written. The fact that the Camp David Summit even occurred (and, arguably, almost succeeded) would, I think, have seemed well nigh impossible to O’Brien back then.

So, perhaps everything isn’t quite yet set in cement.

I look at the problem is pretty down to earth way. There are plenty of examples of displaced people or lands taken over by other groups. This isnt something that was suddenly invented by Jews.

On a personal level my great grand parents were displaced refugees from Nice and were forced to move after the French took out the entire the Riviera that once was part of Italy or would have belonged to Italy. I dont really hate the French. Well let me qualify that, I dont really dislike the French for that reason as there are plenty of other reasons

There are numerous examples of displaced people. The Aborigines, Eskimos, South America Indians, Hawaiians, North American Indians, Tibetans. These are just a few. For that matter what about the displaced Jews from Arab countrys that had to leave with only a suitcase on 24 hour notice?

Was the birth of Israel unfair on the local Arabs that lived there? On balance sure it was. However it was also unfair to all the displaced people around the world.

The aboriginals being exhibit A as far as were concerned. The fact that it happened 200 odd years ago vs 60 years ago in Israels is really beside the point. Its a little dishonest for say, Australians to be taking a harsh line against Israel when our history is basically the similar. How about this then (which I read some time ago and thought was a very good analogy)? If the black man here started to take matter into his own hands and began to blow himself up in crowded areas of the big cities and continued doing this with no respite the bet is that a lot more people would begin to feel sympathetic to the plight of Israelis having to live in deadly fear of rocket attacks and seeing the local bus getting blown up.

Israel, like Australia, the US, Canada are done deals. They may have been very unfair to the locals but thats how history has been.

The Arabs that are alive and lost their land or homes should receive compensation in the same way that Arab government ought to compensate those Jews that lost their land when they were kicked out.

If theres any agitation after such an agreement is reached the retaliation should be remorseless and fully sanctioned by the UN.

Mike Pepperday:

Heres a question for you. You more or less suggest Israel should not exist in the present form. If that were your position how would you feel if aboriginals began to demand more than the crappy lands we have offered? How about if someone asked you to give up your house as it was built on ancestral land?

My point is that Israel is being treated differently than the way we would expect for ourselves.

Absolutely. I kind of liked this little exchange between an interviewer and Geoffrey Wheatcroft, author of A Century of Zionism (1996):

You point out that over the past thirty years, the Holy Land, with its seven million people, has attracted more television and newspaper coverage than all of tropical Africa or all of India. Why this world-wide fascination?

The Israeli affair takes place in what one could almost call the spiritual and mystical center of the world, in a region that was very much in the center of the Cold War and that is peculiarly volatile. But I mentioned the intense media scrutiny not to offer an explanation for it but to present a paradox. The heart of my book is that a hundred years ago, Herzl said that he would resolve the Jewish Question by removing the Jews from the pages of history, normalizing them, and making them like any other nation. All the conflicts and anguish within the Jewish people would come to an end once they had a Jewish state. But have a look at the Op-Ed page of The New York Times any day of the week. It is a very ironical comment on Herzl’s vision to see the sheer amount of space devoted to ferocious debate on the future of Israel by western commentators, notably by Jewish-Americans. [my emphasis]

The Jewish question has not disappeared. Zionism has changed and complicated the Jewish question, but it has quite plainly not wound it up.

All those reasons, and oil, of course . . . .

There really is a deep anti-Zionist pattern in you. Emotionally, you are with German Jewry and American Jewry. They excite you, thrill you, and by comparison you find the Zionist option crude and spiritually meager. It broadens neither the heart nor the soul.

“Yes, yes. The Israeli reality is not exciting. People are not willing to admit it, but Israel has reached the wall. Ask your friends if they are certain their children will live here. How many will say yes? At most 50 percent. In other words, the Israeli elite has already parted with this place. And without an elite there is no nation.”

You are saying that we are suffocating here for lack of spirit.

“Totally. We are already dead. We haven’t received the news yet, but we are dead. It doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t work.”

And you see in American Jewry the spiritual dimension and the cultural ferment that you don’t find here.

“Certainly. There is no important Jewish writing in Israel. There is important Jewish writing in the United States. There is no one to talk to here. The religious community of which I was a part – I feel no sense of belonging to it. The secular community – I am not part of it, either. I have no one to talk to. I am sitting with you and you don’t understand me, either. You are stuck at a chauvinist national extremity.”

That is not completely accurate. I am aware of the Jewish richness you are talking about. But I am also aware that the basic Zionist analysis was correct. Without Israel there is no future for a non-Orthodox Jewish civilization.

“Take the purest Israeliness there is. Moshe Dayan, for example. And we will shed all the Avrums from him. Totally immaculate Israeliness. No nudniks. No effete types. Nothing. Are you sure that this living-in-order-to-live will endure? Take on the other hand the ‘kites.’ Martin Buber, George Steiner. You say that these [ethereal] kites will not get anywhere. But my historical experience tells me that these kites get farther than the troopers.”

You are actually preparing tools for exile.

“I have been living with them from the day I was born. What is it when I say in prayer that because of our sins we were exiled from our land? In Jewish history the spiritual existence is eternal and the political existence is temporary.”

In this sense, you are essentially non-Zionist. Because the energy needed to establish and maintain this place is tremendous, and you are saying that we must not give our all to this place.

“There is no Israeli whole. There is a Jewish whole. The Israeli is a half-Jew. Judaism always prepared alternatives. The strategic mistake of Zionism was to annul the alternatives. It built an enterprise here whose most important sections are an illusion. Do you really think that some sort of floating secular Tel Aviv-type post-kibbutz entity will [continue to] exist here? Never. Israeliness has only body; it doesn’t have soul. At most, remnants of soul. You are already dead spiritually, Ari. You have only an Israeli body. If you go on like this, you will no longer be.”

Shavit’s passing comment the energy needed to establish and maintain this place is tremendous also inadvertently confirms that, as structured, Israel is swimming upstream (this is hardly news, of course, but it’s interesting to see it confirmed by a strong pro-Zionist in such an essentially unconscious fashion). Perhaps, as you (and Paul) believe, the required energy will not be found in the future in which case it will only be a matter of how it fades.

I can certainly see that things may turn out that way but I’m not convinced it’s the only possible outcome. As you say, if there was a window in 1948, they blew it. It still seems conceivable to me that a new window could be created (however farfetched it seems right now) in which case the current against which they’re swimming would be much reduced.

Unfortunately, what makes this much less likely is the way politics in Israel seems to be heading. From the outside at least, the hardliners appear to be in charge, and perfectly prepared to amp up the decibels.