Professor Hicks,I read your pieces every time they come out, and I enjoy them. You customarily make a lot of sense, and even when I do not agree with you, I enjoy thinking about your position and testing mine against it. You make a lot of sense in this one too, with a caveat which I will get to in a minute.
I am not a young man anymore. I have lived long enough to remember why we have NATO, for example. I was a child when Russian tanks rolled into Budapest, but I remember it and the discussions of my relatives regarding it. I think I know exactly who and what Putin is. I could go on, but my point is that I fear we have many, many citizens who do not remember any of this, and may not understand the critical importance of NATO, SEATO, and our other alliances. I am actually older than the State of Israel, and I do understand the complexities of the Middle East from a layman’s point of view. You make some good points here.
The caveat concerns your animus against Critical Theory. You appear to dismiss systems that look at race and oppression, for example. I grew up in Birmingham during the 1950s and 60s. I was 18 when the four little girls were blown up. If you doubt systems of race and oppression, I would love to have coffee with you and share my memories from that period.
And to paraphrase Faulkner, the past isn’t dead; it’s not even past. We have a bank in Indianapolis being sanctioned right now for redlining. Systems of race and oppression are like death and taxes: they are always with us.
Interesting. As a former officer, what would you do if a foreign army invaded part of the United States? Would you fight them to the best of your ability? As a former NCO, I certainly would.
The equating of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is lazy thinking and it is dishonest.
After all, many Jews themselves are anti-Zionist. Are they also anti-Semitic? There's a great scene in the movie Munich where a Palestinian is talking to one of the undercover Israeli assassins. He says, "My father didn't gas any Jews", and that is the crux of the issue here.
Terrorist, freedom fighter, anti-Semite, anti-Zionist, all those terms are bullshit to obscure the central problem: Israel was created by Europeans to expiate their guilt for one thousand years of anti-Semitic pogroms and repression, which culminated in the Holocaust. But instead of doing it by giving Jews part of Germany, or part of France, or some other part of Europe, they "gave" them someone else's land. About 45% of Jews in Israel are Ashkenazi, meaning they are themselves European Jews or descended from European Jews. What right do those Europeans have to the land of Christian or Muslim Palestinians whose families have been there for more than a thousand years?
Why can any Jew, no matter where he is born, "return" to "his" homeland, but no Palestinian who was ethnically cleansed and pushed out in the last seventy years can return to his homeland?
The last five paragraphs of your post are full of so much lazy thinking, lazy argumentation, and factual inaccuracy I wonder at your ability to be a professor, a teacher.
To be anti-Zionist is not the same as being pro-Hamas. If you cannot understand that, it is because you WON'T understand it no matter how many facts you encounter.
It is entirely reasonable and humane to say that a country with F-16s, tanks, Apache helicopters, guided missiles and a trained army should not imprison 2 million human beings in a concentration camp 7 miles wide by 25 miles long. One of the justifications is "they voted for Hamas." But, that is irrefutably false since Hamas won elections in 2006 and half the population is younger than eighteen. In other words, they WEREN'T EVEN BORN when Hamas won elections.
Moreover, Netanyahu and the Israeli government GAVE MONEY TO AND SUPPORTED HAMAS.
Thus, by your reasoning, Netanyahu is anti-Semitic.
I find myself returning again and again to the words of Israeli leaders, who in private were at least honest, unlike you.
Ehud Barak: "If I were a Palestinian of the right age, I would join, at some point, one of the terrorist groups."
David Ben-Gurion: "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"
Again, Ben-Gurion: "Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country."
The difference between these Israelis and you is they, in private, admitted what they are doing. They are slowly but steadily ethnically cleansing the land by removing or just killing Palestinians.
I continue to wonder, what would a former officer do if foreigners invaded part of the United States because their god promised it to them two thousand years ago? Would a former officer just surrender, or would he fight the invaders?
You’ve made too many errors to bother refuting them all. Let me choose two conceptual problems.
The Levant hasn’t been free at any time in recent centuries. Both the people who call themselves Israelis and those who call themselves Palestinians have claim to nationhood. One didn’t expel the others. One side won, the other side lost a war of nationhood 75 years ago. Europe didn’t ’give’ Palestine to the Jews. Two groups fought it out, and separated. That won’t change unless the Israelis want it to or are destroyed by war. Neither of those will happen and your nonsense Sephardic/Ashkenazi race standards are meaningless. Welcome to reality.
The Palestinians have chosen not to create their own nation because it is hard, and would require a modern culture of compromise. The “I own this land” argument is nonsense in the 20th century. More than galf the worlds nations are younger than Israel (1947).
Gaza was, on Oct 6, a modern, vibrant city with a large university, schools, modern businesses and streets, with hospitals, museums and homes all on top of a vast terror network funded by Iran and others. The Palestinians in Gaza elected and continue to support Hamas. There’s no functional difference between a current Gazan than a German soldier or child who died in Berlin in 1945 who came of voting age after 1933. You pay the price for the illiberalism of your clan, and sometimes the price is life.
If Gazans want to build a future, they can develop a liberal democracy, just like every other vibrant, growing nation has done. That’s their choice. If they choose not to, they should prepare to be immiserates every couple decades until they are tired of it.
Also, I'm an officer in the army of a liberal democracy, and bound to our Constitution, by a sworn oath, for the rest of my life. I would not serve a dictatorship or terror organization. I wouldn't fight for land, or kinship or religion or any of that bullshit. I fight for a simple statement that begins "we hold these truths . . ." Hamas and I aren't the same. We don't fight for the same things, we don't share the same love of liberty, we don't share a passion for individual rights. I'm happy to see them dead on the battlefield, and hope surviving Gazans will pursue a future as a liberal democracy. But, neither I nor the Israeli's can make them do that. However, Israel might make them wish they had.
No, I haven’t. You’re just a lazy thinker and writer on this topic. If you could refute them, you would.
What claim to nationhood do Europeans have in the Levant?
Based on what?
You think the Palestinians weren’t expelled? Well, if the actual words of the first Israeli leader don’t convince you, then nothing will. Tell me again who is ignoring reality.
You think Jews weren’t given the land to create Israel? Then why wasn’t Israel created two hundred years ago? Oh, right, now I remember. Two hundred years ago another empire controlled that region, and that empire wouldn’t have given Jews that land to re-create Israel. Israel was created out of a partition by decree by the United Nations. So yes, it was given to Jews. Before all that, of course, the Haganah, a Jewish terrorist organization had murdered hundreds of people and increased Jewish numbers through illegal immigration to Mandate Palestine.
Was there a war? Yes. It was fought on one side by Jewish terrorists (the Haganah) who now called themselves an army. On the other side were people fighting foreign invaders from Europe. Those invaders were there to ethnically cleanse the land, as Ben-Gurion himself admitted.
I note well you have nothing to say about the words of Israeli leaders.
But the point of recounting all this history you either don’t know or willfully ignore, is that Israel and Israelis are not innocent victims. Half of the original Israelis at the time of its creation were foreigners, Europeans, and their leaders knew exactly what they were doing: They were violently dispossessing much of the native population.
And they have violently continued to steal land to build illegal settlements. They have boxed the Palestinians into Gaza and the West Bank. They murder twelve and thirteen year olds with impunity, calling children terrorists.
When I see one side has F-16s, Apaches, tanks, artillery and an organized army, and the other side are the descendants of people expelled from their homes, fighting back, I know which side is fighting for freedom, and which side are the invader/occupiers.
Similar to our American Revolution. Or do you think the British were right and our forefathers in the Continental Army were murderous terrorists too?
I note well you also fail to address the point about Jewish anti-Zionists. It’s telling.
Professor Hicks,I read your pieces every time they come out, and I enjoy them. You customarily make a lot of sense, and even when I do not agree with you, I enjoy thinking about your position and testing mine against it. You make a lot of sense in this one too, with a caveat which I will get to in a minute.
I am not a young man anymore. I have lived long enough to remember why we have NATO, for example. I was a child when Russian tanks rolled into Budapest, but I remember it and the discussions of my relatives regarding it. I think I know exactly who and what Putin is. I could go on, but my point is that I fear we have many, many citizens who do not remember any of this, and may not understand the critical importance of NATO, SEATO, and our other alliances. I am actually older than the State of Israel, and I do understand the complexities of the Middle East from a layman’s point of view. You make some good points here.
The caveat concerns your animus against Critical Theory. You appear to dismiss systems that look at race and oppression, for example. I grew up in Birmingham during the 1950s and 60s. I was 18 when the four little girls were blown up. If you doubt systems of race and oppression, I would love to have coffee with you and share my memories from that period.
And to paraphrase Faulkner, the past isn’t dead; it’s not even past. We have a bank in Indianapolis being sanctioned right now for redlining. Systems of race and oppression are like death and taxes: they are always with us.
Interesting. As a former officer, what would you do if a foreign army invaded part of the United States? Would you fight them to the best of your ability? As a former NCO, I certainly would.
The equating of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is lazy thinking and it is dishonest.
After all, many Jews themselves are anti-Zionist. Are they also anti-Semitic? There's a great scene in the movie Munich where a Palestinian is talking to one of the undercover Israeli assassins. He says, "My father didn't gas any Jews", and that is the crux of the issue here.
Terrorist, freedom fighter, anti-Semite, anti-Zionist, all those terms are bullshit to obscure the central problem: Israel was created by Europeans to expiate their guilt for one thousand years of anti-Semitic pogroms and repression, which culminated in the Holocaust. But instead of doing it by giving Jews part of Germany, or part of France, or some other part of Europe, they "gave" them someone else's land. About 45% of Jews in Israel are Ashkenazi, meaning they are themselves European Jews or descended from European Jews. What right do those Europeans have to the land of Christian or Muslim Palestinians whose families have been there for more than a thousand years?
Why can any Jew, no matter where he is born, "return" to "his" homeland, but no Palestinian who was ethnically cleansed and pushed out in the last seventy years can return to his homeland?
The last five paragraphs of your post are full of so much lazy thinking, lazy argumentation, and factual inaccuracy I wonder at your ability to be a professor, a teacher.
To be anti-Zionist is not the same as being pro-Hamas. If you cannot understand that, it is because you WON'T understand it no matter how many facts you encounter.
It is entirely reasonable and humane to say that a country with F-16s, tanks, Apache helicopters, guided missiles and a trained army should not imprison 2 million human beings in a concentration camp 7 miles wide by 25 miles long. One of the justifications is "they voted for Hamas." But, that is irrefutably false since Hamas won elections in 2006 and half the population is younger than eighteen. In other words, they WEREN'T EVEN BORN when Hamas won elections.
Moreover, Netanyahu and the Israeli government GAVE MONEY TO AND SUPPORTED HAMAS.
Thus, by your reasoning, Netanyahu is anti-Semitic.
I find myself returning again and again to the words of Israeli leaders, who in private were at least honest, unlike you.
Ehud Barak: "If I were a Palestinian of the right age, I would join, at some point, one of the terrorist groups."
David Ben-Gurion: "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"
Again, Ben-Gurion: "Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country."
The difference between these Israelis and you is they, in private, admitted what they are doing. They are slowly but steadily ethnically cleansing the land by removing or just killing Palestinians.
I continue to wonder, what would a former officer do if foreigners invaded part of the United States because their god promised it to them two thousand years ago? Would a former officer just surrender, or would he fight the invaders?
You’ve made too many errors to bother refuting them all. Let me choose two conceptual problems.
The Levant hasn’t been free at any time in recent centuries. Both the people who call themselves Israelis and those who call themselves Palestinians have claim to nationhood. One didn’t expel the others. One side won, the other side lost a war of nationhood 75 years ago. Europe didn’t ’give’ Palestine to the Jews. Two groups fought it out, and separated. That won’t change unless the Israelis want it to or are destroyed by war. Neither of those will happen and your nonsense Sephardic/Ashkenazi race standards are meaningless. Welcome to reality.
The Palestinians have chosen not to create their own nation because it is hard, and would require a modern culture of compromise. The “I own this land” argument is nonsense in the 20th century. More than galf the worlds nations are younger than Israel (1947).
Gaza was, on Oct 6, a modern, vibrant city with a large university, schools, modern businesses and streets, with hospitals, museums and homes all on top of a vast terror network funded by Iran and others. The Palestinians in Gaza elected and continue to support Hamas. There’s no functional difference between a current Gazan than a German soldier or child who died in Berlin in 1945 who came of voting age after 1933. You pay the price for the illiberalism of your clan, and sometimes the price is life.
If Gazans want to build a future, they can develop a liberal democracy, just like every other vibrant, growing nation has done. That’s their choice. If they choose not to, they should prepare to be immiserates every couple decades until they are tired of it.
Also, I'm an officer in the army of a liberal democracy, and bound to our Constitution, by a sworn oath, for the rest of my life. I would not serve a dictatorship or terror organization. I wouldn't fight for land, or kinship or religion or any of that bullshit. I fight for a simple statement that begins "we hold these truths . . ." Hamas and I aren't the same. We don't fight for the same things, we don't share the same love of liberty, we don't share a passion for individual rights. I'm happy to see them dead on the battlefield, and hope surviving Gazans will pursue a future as a liberal democracy. But, neither I nor the Israeli's can make them do that. However, Israel might make them wish they had.
No, I haven’t. You’re just a lazy thinker and writer on this topic. If you could refute them, you would.
What claim to nationhood do Europeans have in the Levant?
Based on what?
You think the Palestinians weren’t expelled? Well, if the actual words of the first Israeli leader don’t convince you, then nothing will. Tell me again who is ignoring reality.
You think Jews weren’t given the land to create Israel? Then why wasn’t Israel created two hundred years ago? Oh, right, now I remember. Two hundred years ago another empire controlled that region, and that empire wouldn’t have given Jews that land to re-create Israel. Israel was created out of a partition by decree by the United Nations. So yes, it was given to Jews. Before all that, of course, the Haganah, a Jewish terrorist organization had murdered hundreds of people and increased Jewish numbers through illegal immigration to Mandate Palestine.
Was there a war? Yes. It was fought on one side by Jewish terrorists (the Haganah) who now called themselves an army. On the other side were people fighting foreign invaders from Europe. Those invaders were there to ethnically cleanse the land, as Ben-Gurion himself admitted.
I note well you have nothing to say about the words of Israeli leaders.
But the point of recounting all this history you either don’t know or willfully ignore, is that Israel and Israelis are not innocent victims. Half of the original Israelis at the time of its creation were foreigners, Europeans, and their leaders knew exactly what they were doing: They were violently dispossessing much of the native population.
And they have violently continued to steal land to build illegal settlements. They have boxed the Palestinians into Gaza and the West Bank. They murder twelve and thirteen year olds with impunity, calling children terrorists.
When I see one side has F-16s, Apaches, tanks, artillery and an organized army, and the other side are the descendants of people expelled from their homes, fighting back, I know which side is fighting for freedom, and which side are the invader/occupiers.
Similar to our American Revolution. Or do you think the British were right and our forefathers in the Continental Army were murderous terrorists too?
I note well you also fail to address the point about Jewish anti-Zionists. It’s telling.