Israel: What is being defended? Who is the victim?

25Jan
by Maximilian C. Forte

bengurion

David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), Israel’s first Prime Minister, said:

If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel. (source)

To his credit, he also admitted the following:

If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that? (source)

and

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. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice (source)

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Debunking lies:

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Meet the children:

Speaking of “children,” long an established trope of 19th century cultural evolution that cast all non-European peoples, the colonized, as existing in a state of infancy in comparison with the European masters…this is what Dr. Marwyn S. Samuels, retired Professor of the Maxwell School of Public Affairs at Syracuse University wrote in the International Herald Tribune on 12 January 2009:

Israel doesn’t need land for peace. It needs Palestinian adulthood. Instead, they chose, continue to choose and are fully supported in their choice for perpetual childhood—as victims to be coddled and excused for their own irresponsibility including the resort to as much violence as they can produce, the result of which is greater suffering, more coddling and continued irresponsibility. They will never be free until their intellectuals, their leaders, their supporters and the world at large stops treating them like abused children who need to be protected from everyone and anyone except themselves. One does not have to be a great philosopher or moralist to understand that freedom only comes with responsibility. If the Palestinians truly want their freedom, they need to look squarely in a mirror.

So let’s look squarely into their faces…meet the children here:

Children of Palestine…


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3 thoughts on “Israel: What is being defended? Who is the victim?”

  1. Tali

    Hey Max,
    Good stuff (what seems- after a thorough rummaging- to be the usual with you). Just one question:
    In the Marwyn S. Samuels quote- who is the child?

    1. Maximilian Forte

      …but imagine this as well, an established professor, at an elite school, this man had to pass decades of peer review, publishing, speaking at conferences, teaching and mentoring students, winning awards, etc., etc. And then, at the end of it all, his analysis comes close to a racist one: Palestinians are like children. That is the depth of it.

      Then someone like Ward Churchill comes out and calls what happened to American Indians a “holocaust”, and only then do you hear howls: “That’s not scholarship, that’s not objective, that’s not science! That’s propaganda!”

  2. Tali

    You took the words out of my mouth, Max. I just wanted to make sure, because that quote is confusing. I’ve read it over and over again and I still can’t tell who the man is referring to. If he’s talking about Israel, then the last sentence doesn’t make any sense. If he’s talking about the Palestinians, then there’s a pronoun problem there.

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