[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
The mighty Tsahal, the Israeli military, recently carried an air attack over the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The reason was the Qassam rockets that Hamas militants have been firing into the Jewish state for quite some time. After a week-long offensive, more than 100 Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombs. At least 25 of them were civilians, including nine children and three women.
Then the Israelis decided to end their bombings. “This operation has run its course,” said the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon. “This is certainly deterrence.”
Really?
No, not really. Actually, the people of the Gaza Strip were anything but deterred. According to the BBC, while Israel was pulling back, the Palestinians were “angry and unbowed in the face of Israel’s assault.” Not just them, but most Arabs and other Muslims around the word were, and still are, fuming against the Jewish State, whose bombs continue to kill women, children and babies.
Let’s get the matters straight. Israel is carrying out all such attacks, including its latest “war” in Lebanon, in order to “defend itself against terrorists.” Those “terrorists” indeed deserve to be called as such, because they deliberately target Israeli civilians. (Had they only targeted the Israeli army, that would be a gentlemen’s war.) But while Israel is hitting these militants back, it is also killing many civilians, and there are many signs suggesting that it does not give a damn about it. (In a famous occasion, the former chief of staff, Dan Halutz was asked what he felt when he ordered the dropping of a one-ton bomb on a residential neighborhood in Gaza in July 2002. The bomb targeted a Hamas militant, but also killed 14 innocent people, mostly children. All he feels when such bombs drop, Halutz said in reply to the question, is “a slight tremor in the wings of the plane.”)
Let me warn: The line between killing civilians deliberately and not-giving-a-damningly might not be as thick as the Israelis assume. Moreover, given the nature of the “asymmetry” between Israelis and their enemies, quite many people, at least in this part of the world, think that the tactics of both sides are not too different.
I know that there are many Israelis, including some good friends of mine, who care about the Palestinian suffering, and who question, criticize, and stand against, their own state. They say Israel is not acting morally by punishing whole populations for the actions of militants in their midst. Yet, unfortunately, modern states are not the greatest disciples of morality. Moreover, the Jewish state has its own political tradition that ridicules such notions. It was Vladimir Jabotinsky, the godfather of right-wing Zionism, who abhorred “childish humanism,” and counseled, “be always on guard, carry your stick always with you; this is the only way of surviving in this wolfish battle of all against all.” Today it is sad to see that the mindset of the Social Darwinist and ultra-secular Jabotinsky has been adopted by some of the religious Jews.
The ‘Realist’ Argument
Since morality does not count much in this situation for all those reasons, I will move on to the “realist” side of things. Here, the vision of the Israeli (or pro-Israeli) hawks is based on a reliance on ruthless force. “If people attack Israel,” they basically say, “we will teach them a lesson by giving them hell.” The argument goes that Palestinians need to be punished until the point that they concede defeat and accept whatever Israel gives to them. (The Japanese fascists or the Nazis, these hawks remind us, came to their senses only when they were “nuked” or totally defeated.)
If that would be the grand strategy of Israel’s militarists, then the “deterrence” operations they carry out against Palestinians are their tactical steps. But, as I noted above, this just does not work. The more Israel hits Palestinians, or the Lebanese, the more individuals among these nations swear to take revenge of their killed ones. Israel will never find peace and security within that vicious circle.
The best commentary I saw about this was the message on a poster held by an Israeli peace-activist: “There is no military solution to the Qassam!” (Yes, sometimes even the left get things right.) Therefore, just like Turkey’s state of affairs in its Kurdish question, Israel rather needs a “political solution.”
The analogies made to the Nazis and the Japanese fascists are misleading here. Nazis hated the Jews for simply who they were. The Nazi ideology, that evil incarnate, necessitated that Jews had to be wiped off from the earth. There was no way of making a deal with Hitler and his cult. But the anti-Israeli and the anti-Semitic attitudes in the Arab world are more related with what Israel does. Anti-Semitism was unknown in Muslim lands until the rise of Zionism in the 20th century. It became rampant after the Six Day War of 1967, when Israel occupied the lands of three Muslim nations, and started to create “facts on the ground” to make that occupation permanent.
We should also remember that since 1967, the only decent peace Israel made was thanks to not Israel’s ruthless “deterrence,” but the pragmatic land-for-peace logic. Egypt signed the Camp David peace treaty in 1978, because it got back all of the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula. Moreover, the relative military success the Egyptians achieved in the war of 1974 had given them a sense of dignity.
Dignity is really a crucial value among the nations of the Middle East. Israelis need to talk with their enemies — in hidden or overt ways — and look for solutions that will give the latter a sense of pride. The maximalist dreams of Hamas will, and should, never be realized, but there must still be a way of making their leaders accept an enduring peace. Even if they call it “hudna,” i.e., truce, that will become permanent once life gets back to normal and Palestinians start to have things that they will fear to lose.
Remember the Crusaders
Let me remind you a historical lesson. Israel is sometimes compared to the Crusaders, who, a millennium ago, invaded the Holy Land and established a state there. Although the Crusader’s initial carnage was abhorrent to all Muslims — and other natives such as Jews and Orthodox Christians — Muslims actually got used to live with their Kingdom of Jerusalem. What sparked a united Islamic effort (a “jihad”) against that kingdom, after seven decades of its genesis, was the fanatic and ruthless figures among the Crusaders, such as Raynald of Châtillon, who did everything to insult and infuriate the Muslims.
Israelis should be wise enough to refrain from following a similar course. A decent bi-state solution is achievable, but it demands concessions from both the Israelis and the Palestinians. By constantly harvesting hatred among the latter, and in the broader Arab and Muslim world, Israel is making that peace less and less attainable.
“Anti-Semitism was unknown in Muslim lands until the rise of Zionism in the 20th century. It became rampant after the Six Day War of 1967, when Israel occupied the lands of three Muslim nations, and started to create “facts on the ground” to make that occupation permanent.”
Are you joking?
a) please refer to the vast qur’anic references against jews (starting from their dhimmi status (9:11…etc etc) and going on with the ahadiths (sons of pigs and apes, the mehdi will come when the last jew will be dead…etc etc); who cleansed ethnically Arabia from their jews? It was Muhhamad, starting with the beheading of 800-900 jews of Medina and ending with the first “judenrein” nation in the world…
b) you are a sofist, who has been the agressor during the 3-4 arab-israeli wars? The land that was occupied during this time (as Jordania and Egypt did as well after the 1948 war, but no one protested…) from Israel should be 100%jewish bcs it has been con quered during a defensive war (international law docet). However, for political sake, it has been renamed “disputed territories”. If you would apply the same reasoning, Italy should give back Süd Tirol, France Alsace-Lorraine, The Tcheck Republik Boemien, Russia Kaliningrad, Polen West Prussia etcetc…
even if usually agree with pretty everything you write, this time your article seem way too much optimistic: your “pragmatic land-for-peace logic” has clearly worked with Egypt or Jordan (in this case it was even a “peace for peace” deal), but it ha been an obvious failure in Gaza and with Lebanon, where Israel is already back to the pre-67 border… but what they’ve got in change of this isn’t peace but rockets and kindnappings. I sadly can’t see much left than the military option
I delayed responding to this post. I woke up last night and a response came to me as a definition of a terrorist and a rule for responding to terrorists. A terrorist is someone who ‘indiscriminately’ targets children and who ‘deliberately’ uses children as shields. This definition covers those we all generally consider terrorists like suicide bombers who indiscriminately kill and who live among the local population to shield their activities. But it also describes groups like Hamas and Hezbollah who launch rockets indiscriminately at civilian centers and use civilian populations as shields to launch the rockets. So a group is not defined by its goals but by it tactics. The rule for responding to a terrorist is that it is legitimate to go after a terrorist wherever he is and if a child is killed the responsibility for the death of that child is not on the one who kills the child but on the one who used the child for a shield. I may agree that the Israeli raid into Gaza will delay a peace accord, but there can be no peace until both sides agree to this definition and this rule. As for the Muslim anger that such raids provoke. Muslims must ask themselves what is more important to them; their anger or their children. Are they willing to continue feeding the fire of their anger with their children? For there can be no compromise with terrorism even to appease Muslim anger. The turning away of Iraqi youth from Islam shows what can happen if Muslims continue to choose to feed their anger.
Martin Bebow
p.s. this view is a product of my own rational processes and is not the view of any specific group that I’m aware of.
Echnaton, I’d advise you to debate with bin Laden – you both would agree on all issues re Muslim-Jewish relations.
Here is what I’d tell you regarding your arguments:
For a)
1. Please refer to the Torah (Bible):
“God” thru Moses orders that
All men, including the unarmed ones, were to be executed (Deuteronomy 20:13).
All women and children were to be taken as spoils of war (Deuteronomy 20:14).
For the others, kill and destroy every creature that is breathing – that is all men, women, children and animals (Deuteronomy 20:16-17).
2. You’re paranoid about the dhimmis in Muslim lands: I won’t list arguments for why such a status for minorities, which has been practised since the 7th century, is much better than the status of minorities in Europe until 1950s! Just tell me than why Arabs in modern and “democratic” Israel are third-class citizens NOW?
For b)
If we follow Zionist logic, then Native Americans should enclose all other Americans (living in US for tens of generations) into a tiny territory inside a “separation wall”. Even this analogy is more legitimate than the Zionist argument.
Now, imho, there is no a “two-state” solution for this conflict, because there can never be a viable Palestinian state even if Israel leaves the West Bank – those who believe it are absractionists. And if there can’t be a viable Palestinian state there will never be a peace.
My idea may also seem too idealistic, given how powerful the Jewish community has been for the last 100 years and its unwillingness for compromises, but THERE IS NO OTHER SOLUTION THAN:
One country on a territory once called Palestine, personally for me it doesn’t matter how it would be called Israel or “Union of Israel & Palestine”. Both Jewish and Arab peoples would be living in one truly democratic country and the international community would guarantee equal rights for the three communities (incl. Christians). Major Muslim countries and organizations (such as OIC), the Vatican (& others) and major Jewish organization would also agree to respect such a settlement and apply all available efforts to promote mutual respect and understanding.
The current condition in Palestine/Israel is very similar to the apartheid regime of the white minority in South Africa. It is so abhorrent that many countries who didn’t give a damn on the sufferings of blacks in SAR, now don’t miss a chance to pay respect to Nelson Mandela. I wonder would anybody be ashamed when apartheid regime of Israel and occupation of Palestine ends…
Anti-Semitism was unknown in Muslim lands until the rise of Zionism in the 20th century.
Liar.
“Anti-Semitism was unknown in Muslim lands until the rise of Zionism in the 20th century. It became rampant after the Six Day War of 1967″..
Of course, bcs 1948 an-nakba has been a huge tender hug from 4-5 arab countries…
“Echnaton, I’d advise you to debate with bin Laden – you both would agree on all issues re Muslim-Jewish relations.”
You have not carefully read my post, otherwise you would have noted that, if what you say is true (on my alleged same standing with OBL): a) and b) would be contradictory…It’s a question of simple logic you know….Actually, I just refer to islamic orthodoxy. You know, what the four schools of sharia and what you can find in the tafsirs of ibn Kathir and al-Jalalayn (the two most repected and influential traditional commentaries on the Qur’an)
“Here is what I’d tell you regarding your arguments:
For a)
1. Please refer to the Torah (Bible):
“God” thru Moses orders that
All men, including the unarmed ones, were to be executed (Deuteronomy 20:13).
All women and children were to be taken as spoils of war (Deuteronomy 20:14).
For the others, kill and destroy every creature that is breathing – that is all men, women, children and animals (Deuteronomy 20:16-17)”
With these statements you just showed how deep your ignorance (=not knowing) is of the Bible. The Bible is composed by 52 books, each has a different style and is of different species. You cannot compare for example Genesis with Deuteronomy, or the Psalms with Leviticus. Deteronomy is (guess what?…..) an historical book, it is not an open ended command, for all time (as the Qur’an is). Moreover, as like any other linear (historical) fact, you have to put it into context. Just the fact that you take these verses out as you can do for example with the Qur’an shows that your knowledge on this topic is very limited.
“2. You’re paranoid about the dhimmis in Muslim lands: I won’t list arguments for why such a status for minorities, which has been practised since the 7th century, is much better than the status of minorities in Europe until 1950s! Just tell me than why Arabs in modern and “democratic” Israel are third-class citizens NOW?”
Why paranoid? It’s the first time I take out this argument. Either I touched an open nerve or it tells more about you than about me….You might be right on this argument (but of course you start from the position that it is better not to be free and to be treated as a second class citizen than to be free; but I doubt it, it’s enough to see how muslims react around the world as they –presumably- feel beeing treated as second class citizens…). And even if you were right on that, as you say, from 1950 on the minorities in the Western world are even better treated that majorities…some homework to do?… Moreover, about the way arabs are treated in Israel, I see that you are full of propaganda. In Israel, arabs have the same rights and the same duties like any other Israel citizen. They can freely vote for example. They even have their own MPs (that are free to call for the destruction of their own israeli nation)! Could you imagine to do the same as a jew from Morocco to Pakistan?
“For b) argument. If we follow Zionist logic, then Native Americans should enclose all other Americans (living in US for tens of generations) into a tiny territory inside a “separation wall”. Even this analogy is more legitimate than the Zionist argument”
What are you talking about? You seem a little confused. Please study a little of international right, and don’t come again with this laughable examples of native Americans. Have you an idea when the whole process of international right has started? Might be we should re-read the whole history starting with the Hittites and Hattusa? Or form Qadesh on?
“My idea may also seem too idealistic, given how powerful the Jewish community has been for the last 100 years and its unwillingness for compromises,”
Hahaha, this is the best…”the unwillingness for compromise “ of the Jews! But on wich planet do you live? Wake up…ah sorry, you meant…the fact that Israelis should let themselves be killed and thrown into the sea by the arabs like sacrifical lams…ok, sorry
“I wonder would anybody be ashamed when apartheid regime of Israel and occupation of Palestine ends…”
Apartheid apartheid…wash your mouth before talking about something that you don’t know. Of course, you don’t’ have apartheid in KSA, In Jordania, Iran etce etc, just try to walk as a Jew around In Rhyad, Amman, Damascus, not to say in Mecca and Medina (for all other non muslims as well)…of course you don’t have any apartheid there…because you would not survive 2 minutes
uf uf uf
Quo usque tandem abutere patientia mea?
Firstly, let me to thank you for your article which shows -at least- an honorable position of an intellectual from Turkey rather than other who have no difference from ultra-zionists.
Secondly, it is funny to read such comments posted to this article including cliche and morally bankrupted sentences. This is not j.post or nytimes. It is a web page of Turkish intellectual who is neither a zionist, fascist nor a stupid.
Liar, anti-semitism and bla bla bla…
What hell you are doing in the heart of Muslim World! What hell you are deliberately and systematically massacring Palestinians?
Zionist state of Israel is an occupation state of which end is being prepared by their own founders and ultra-fascists groups including rabis,commanders, politicians and so-called intellectuals who are praising the brutal, nazi-like occupation state to live.
However, all these comments and others do not have any but any dignity, honor, truth or effect! Just slogans of which are empty tins. Blam, Blam, Blam!!
Thanks Mustafa, Thanks Normon Finskeltein and thanks to all honorable people in the earth against fascism, occupation, brutality, nazi-like states and monsters.
Echnaton, you are a sick person. Heal your heart, brother…
No anti semitism or anti judaism until the 20th century?
—————
From the 9th century CE the Islamic world imposed dhimmi laws on both Christian and Jewish minorities. The 11th century saw Muslim pogroms against Jews in the Iberian Peninsula; those occurred in Cordoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066. Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted in the Middle Ages in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Jews were also forced to convert to Islam or face death in some parts of Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad at certain times.
The Almohads, who had taken control of the Almoravids’ Maghribi and Andalusian territories by 1147, far surpassed the Almoravides in fundamentalist outlook, and they treated the dhimmis harshly. Faced with the choice of either death or conversion, many Jews and Christians emigrated. Some, such as the family of Maimonides, fled east to ‘more tolerant’ Muslim lands, while others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms.
I don’t know if Mustafa’s comment that there was no antisemitism in the Muslim world before the 20th century is correct.
I do know that:
1-It wasn’t Arabs, or Muslims, who perpetrated the Holocaust, it was Northern European Christians, but it had way more to do with nationality and ethnicity than religion.
2-Europe has a long tradition of tremendous antisemitism. For a good comparison of European-Muslim treatment of minority Jewish populations, see the History of Spain.
Q: Where did the Jews flee after the Christians expelled them from Spain?
A: The Ottoman Empire. Wonder why?
3-We can certainly say that Antisemitism increased dramatically in the Arab world after the establishment of Israel. We can say that Antisemitism in the Arab world only increases with each incursion into Gaza or Lebanon.
One would think after many decades of military responses to assymetrical terrorist acts that the Israeli leadership would learn that this approach clearly isn’t working.
Q: Where did the Jews flee after the Christians expelled them from Spain?
A: The Ottoman Empire. Wonder why?
———————————————-
That’s what they teach you in Turkish schools, right. What they don’t teach you is that the Netherlands was a safe heaven for Jews for centuries.
==========================================
See the History of Spain….you mean when the Arabs invaded it and started with prosecuting Jews?
1-It wasn’t Arabs, or Muslims, who perpetrated the Holocaust, it was Northern European Christians, but it had way more to do with nationality and ethnicity than religion.
===================================
The Shoah for Jews started with the establishment of Islam.
Being a Jew is related to religion. I can become a Jew tomorrow.
Your statement above ‘that being a Jew has to do with ethnicity is crap, as Hitler made the same mistake.
Behruz, with attack “ad hominem” you are showing that you are very very short of arguments (otherwise you would have answered me point by point, as I took the time to do with you). And moreover, this is just your opinion, who cares (but shurely you feel better at throwing shit on others, aren’t you)? If I’m sick bcs you feel that I stand with islamic orthodoxy, than yes of course, I’m very very sick, but in this case as well you don’t seem to understand neither my standing, neither logic (bcs I assume that you are muslim), and you are kicking the ass of your own religion with your own statement..how funny isn’t it?
Spac3…A good example of the first holocaust and the first “judenrein” state has been Medina under Muhammad.For no other reasons Hitler and the mufti of Jerusalem were very good friends (you should know that Hussein…the mufti..offered to establish a brigade to clean “palestina” from yews)… years before the establishment of Israel…sounds strange that the head of a religion, on religous ground wanted to follow the example of its prophet?
Noone is denying that there was antisemitism in Europe during centuries and centuries, but you should know and study the history of Spain more carefully; Muslim had their “inquisition” years before the catholics started their own. Moreover no yew was expelled bcs of his faith, but bcs of the history of the “marranos” and bcs of the danger posed to the new established reign of Spain (by the marriage of elisabeth and fernando). THe myth of al-andalus has been widely exxagereted by the jews themselves in order to denigrate the Spanish reign. Moreover, Spain has not at all been more “hard” that other European nations, but you can guess why everyone is concentrating on just this issue. MOreover, during the middle age, what do you think was more human: to behead everyone or to expell?
Yews didn’t only go to TUrkey you know? Guess where the biggest sephardic coommunity in Europe that was expelled from Spain was established? In Rome…the siege of the Pope!!! HOw funny isn’t it? Sent away form catholic Spain, but wellcomed by the spiritual and and secular head of Catholicism…And you know why yews were so wellcomed as well in Turkey? bcs they darely needed brite and interpreneriual people, bcs after the conquest of Bisazium, situation was stagnating…You should know what the great Maimonide (that grew up in al-andalus and endend in the ottoman empire) told about the treatment of Yews by the Ottomans/muslim….
Do you think that Israel cares about antisemitism in muslim countries? THey already know how muslim see and think about them (in eschatological terms)…but you would like them to be killed like sacrifical lambs?…the problem is that (as has been stated recently by a palestinian leader: “what did we get in 60 years?..we are still where we were in 1948″) with hate, refusal to compromise, terrorism and indiscriminate killing of innocents, palestinian and arab leadership still has not understood that THIS approach clearly isn’t workig (you should know that the arab league still stands to his 1948′s 3 NOs: no compromise, no peace, no Israel)