Johann Hari: Palestinians should now declare their independence

[IndianaGreen]

Johann Hari: Palestinians should now declare their independence

Benjamin Netanyahu has responded to the US request with a big concrete slap

Friday, 12 March 2010

Could the Israeli government make it any more obvious they have no intention of sharing the Over-Promised Land with its other inhabitants?

This week the Obama administration – who give Israel $3bn a year, more than they dole out to any other nation on earth – made a meek and craven request for Israelis to simply have a pause in seizing even more land, and to sit down with the Palestinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded with a big concrete slap: the announcement of 1,600 more homes to be built on occupied Palestinian land from which Arabs will be forcibly kept out. He has made it plain he will not loosen his grip by an inch, announcing: "Even if Abu Mazen comes along and says he's ready to sign a peace deal on the spot, we will restore settlement construction to its previous levels." No compromise. Never.

How does this look to the Palestinians? Their story is so rarely explained without disinformation that it still seems startling when it is stated plainly. Until 1948, the Palestinians were living in their own homes, on their own land – until they were suddenly driven out in a war to make way for a new state for people fleeing a monstrous European genocide. They lived huddled and dazed in the 20 per cent of their land they were allowed to keep. They hardly fought back: they wept and dreamed of return. Then in the 1967 war, even these small strips were conquered with tanks and platoons.

Day by day since then, the remaining Palestinian land has been taken and given to fundamentalist settlers who claim it was given to them by God. They watched while Israeli Prime Ministers said they didn't exist – "there are no Palestinians", announced Golda Meir – or described them as animals: Menachem Begin called them "beasts walking on two legs", while Yitzhak Shamir said they should be "crushed like grasshoppers... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." They tried peacefully resisting, launching a programme of sit-downs and civil disobedience. Yitzhak Rabin responded by ordering the occupying Israeli army to "break their bones." After decades of this treatment, they fought back with violence – some of it targeted horribly and unacceptably at Israeli civilians.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-palestinians-should-now-declare-their-independence-1920130.html

[provis99]

1. its the rotten Christian fundamentalists who are wrecking our Mideast policy.

If not for the 40-50 million religious fanatics in this country who see Israel as some kind of apocalyptic sign of Jesus' imminent return, we could got back to an Eisenhower-age balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

[Hardrada]

3. That's a big part of the problem.

I knew some fundies as a kid but I have no idea where all those Zionist fundies came from. A real crackpot religion whose resemblamce to actual Christianity is purely coincidental was brewing away somewhere and I was totally unaware of it.

[shaayecanaan]

5. Neither do I (know where the Zionist fundies came from)...

I have thought about it a couple of times but never really found an answer to my satisfaction.

Part of it, I suspect, lies in the fact that many famous evangelists were quite anti-Semitic before such attitudes became distinctly unfashionable. Therefore, they needed to become barrackers for Israel in order to compensate.

Another thought is that "Christian Zionism" tends to co-incide quite closely with colonial attitudes and other such imperialistic hubris. The first Christian Zionists were British, back when they were Byzantine kingmakers carving up the world (Lord Balfour and so on). Of course now that the Americans are the new hegemon, they are also the main champions of Christian Zionism. By and large Christian Zionism does seem to be an Anglo-Saxon thing, which gives credence to the idea that it is basically a crusade by-proxy.

[Hardrada]

6. It's not a Lutheran or Catholic thing that's for sure which makes

it unfortunate that the Anglos got the better of the culture wars during WW1. My ancestors had to be speak English on the telephones.

[shaayecanaan]

7. The Anglos got the better of the culture wars pretty much everywhere....

which I suspect makes a difference as well. World War 2 is as celebrated as it is largely because it is the only war where the Anglo-Saxons were on the right side.

I think you are quite right in identifying the distinction between Lutherans/Catholics, etc. Anglicans and Presbyterians tend to support the Palestinians quite actively, Catholics do so more diffidently. Lutherans I dont really know.

It is mainly the Pentecostal-type Protestant sects that support Israel. Perhaps it is as simple as the Anglicans being rather left wing and the Pentecostals being right-wing in their politics.

[Hardrada]

8. As for the present day, the Anglo culture is not the default culture

of the Midwest. WASP stuff is distant and not very interesting whereas Scandinavian and German traditions predominate with a big nod to the Irish-Americans this time of year. Fox hunting and the Social Register could as well be on another planet.

[shaayecanaan]

9. WASP stuff?

You mean like the English language, the Baptist Church (which started in England), golf and baseball (yep, that came from England too)?

Not to mention a certain national anthem which derives its tune from an old English dance-hall ditty. Of course, there was another contender for the title of American national anthem which went a little bit like this:-

`My country, tis of thee
Sweet land of liberty
Of thee I sing`

I`ll leave you to figure out where the tune for that one came from.

Blightly stitched you up good and proper, me old mate. The midwest is about as German as Earl Grey tea.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

10. Mainline protestants are actively in favor of a just peace.

Episcopals, Methodists, Presyberterians, Lutherans, etc.

Most Christian fundies are evangelicals, southern baptists, etc. Their private piety usually lines up well with a right-wing conservative political beliefs: Jesus, guns, military, no abortion, prayer in schools, a Christian nation supporting a Jewish Israel (as a prelude to the end times when all the Jews will ..... ).

[Hardrada]

12. That's the tune to Heil dir Im Siegeskranz! Of course.

You surely remember that one. The Imperial German Anthem. My part of the Midwest has and has few Baptists. And golf came from Scotland, did it not? I suppose baseball does possibly derive from cricket but I read it started in the U.S. as a game called "One Old Cat!" The Midwest would be more obviously Germanic and Nordic if it weren't for all the oppression against "hyphenated-Americans" begun by the Wilson admin in order to make sure the UD became stupidly involved in WWI. You can guess who I wish had won that.

[LeftishBrit]

14. 'You can guess who I wish had won that'

I can indeed guess; but hope I'm wrong.

This isn't the 'English/German forum' in any case.

[Jim Sagle]

13. Not so unfortunate from where I sit.

If the culture wars had gone the other way, I'd have been butchered in World War II, right here in America.

As for the southern Anglo right-wing culture which we all piss and moan about, as bad as it is, it's INFINITELY better than what it killed and replaced - the pro-Nazi right-wing culture of the 30s.

Your mileage may vary. No credit to you if it does.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

2. Israeli's to Palestinians, Step away from the rock, don't pick up the rock.

[Alamuti Lotus]

4. sidebar: so rarely see that "Break their bones" comment in print

Nice.

[LeftishBrit]

11. The interpretation of history is simplistic; but I do agree with the conclusion

However the situation arose, it has reached an impasse which has to be ended. And the current Israeli leadership don't show too much interest in ending it. It is about time that the Palestinians did declare an independent state, unilaterally if necessary. Unfortunately much of their leadership don't seem interested in ending the impasse either, or something like that would probably have happened already.