IS THIS A DEBATE?

Here is a small respectful debate with Richard Silverstein at his Tikun Olam 'Progressive' Blog concerning the Palestinian and Israeli Conflict.

Please note that Richard regularly deletes comments after the fact and the last statement copied below (by me) was in fact deleted by him a few hours after being posted. You decide if that was an appropriate actiom or not? And be honest if you feel I was over the top. Thanks.
Click HERE to go to Richard's post or copy link below into your browser

• www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2006/04/28/former-senior-state-department-official-and-ambassador-to-israel-calls-for-return-to-67-borders-and-modified-right-of-return/#comments

FULL COMMENTS STRING COPIED BELOW
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JAKE
“what’s Arab is Arab, and what’s Jewish is Jewish” granted that was an explanation (albeit simplified) vis a vis Jeruslaem but I think the bulk of Israelis view this as a basis of a peace settlement as a whole. A strong selling point by pragmatists like Rabin was that for Israel to remain a Jewish state, then she can’t lord over large populations of Arabs. Recent election results indicate (based on mandates for Kadima and Labor as opposed to Meretz) that the public generally views this pragmatism overall with favor. However, since Israeli’s keep in mind their own interests as well, and one of them being keeping Israel of Jewish character, how does this Arab ‘right of return’ to Israel proper affect the idea of a Jewish Israel?

As much as Pickering takes pains to explain that right of return can be defined and subject to clear and stringent criteria, (5 or 6 digit numbers for example) one does not require a lifetime’s experience in diplomacy to understand that moves like this will indeed serve as a precedent; a precedent for future and dynamically redefinded rights of return. Also, if one of the returnees from 1948 wants to go back to his house or vineyard in the Galilee (as opposed to let’s say Tulkarem), what if he only rented that property from an absentee landlord from Amman?

Sounds like the message they’re keeping secret is What’s Arab is Arab and what’s Jewish is Jewish but could/should/negotiably also be Arab. I know that’s a gross oversimplification but I’ve heard some proponents of “a two state solution with right of return”. Sounds like a clever way of saying “two state solution…..for now”.

What knocked me off attempts of linear thought was this non-sequitir of a quote:

“relocations, in places like Canada, the United States, Australia - whoever is willing to offer to take individuals who have no place [to go] but want to start a new life somewhere and who need international help to do that.”

Pickering was referring to those who are currently residing in countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Brazil. How and why did relocation (with “liberal funding” by whom?) to the U.S., Canada and Australia fall into the mix? If they can’t enter a newly nascent state of Palestine due to size limitations and have to remain in their Diaspora, why do they require relocation? Why is it a given that Palestinians outside of the concept of Palestine, already residing in the world at large such as Lebanon, Syria and South America are recipients of some kind of entitlement to move to the above mentioned 3 western nations? Is it because in the case of the Arab countries the Palestinian are languishing in refugee slums?

Is it only right-of-center agitprop that posits that the Palestinians stuck there because the PLO among other “leaders” has forbade their options of integrating into their host countries in order to keep the refugee issue alive and hot?

If the situation is different such as If the Lebanese and Jordanians are limiting the opportunities of the refugee camp dwellers because they don’t want more Palestinians in their midst then shouldn’t they be called to task?

Very strange.

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN

Jake: I’ve heard the reservations you’re expressing here before fr. others. All I can say is–sure there may be irredentists among Palestinians who believe they’ll accept half a loaf now & get the rest later. But that doesn’t mean they’ll succeed. Once a peace deal is signed & the world community (incl. the U.S.) has signed on as guarantors providing full security guarantees for Israel, I see no way that the Palestinians will ever gain MORE than what’s specified in the deal.

As for the right of refugees to be compensated if they wish to settle outside Palestine…the funding for that acc. to my understanding will come fr. Israel (to a small degree) and the U.S. (to a lg. degree), & perhaps some fr. the Europeans. I don’t think anyone’s expecting Israel to foot the entire bill for massive relocation costs for Pal. refugees. I also think this fund isn’t just meant to relocate refugees. It’s meant to compensate them for the exile & consequent suffering which seems reasonable to me.

MIKE NARGIZIAN (MWA/ME)

Wow a discussion where Richard is actually sensible. Kudos to Jake for a very well put comment altogether.

The whole poit is that even in a Peace Agreement the level of “right of return” is going to remain ambiguous and not clearly defined as it was in the Geneva Agreement which Richard actually refers to in this post. And Richard can not provide anywhere a survey that does not indicate that most not some Palestiniasns desire the “Right of Return” as a “natual” right and legitimiate “grievance” coming to them. The idae that only some have this “irredentist” view is Richard’s spin on this.

Finally, the expulsion of Jews from Egypt, Syria, Iraq especially and other Muslim countries to a lesser degree is then to be recognized and they should be compensated as well. However, since this is the Arab world where they only view the world through their lense and their pre emient “suffering” when compared to all others….. this is left out and noentheless ignored by the so-called “Progressives” as to not piss off the Arab world and “ruin” the chances for the “final peace agreement” which they dream of solving the conflict. The bottom line is the conflict is muti-fasceted but the core of it is a Mental State of War and rejection of Israeli’s right to exist, humanity and being…. on all lefvels in all fascets of society. That some or many depending on your opinion support and/or commit terrorism is irrelevant… the Zeitgeist of the Arab world is a Massive Mental State of War on Israel….. and this is the BGTTOM line to the conflict. Richard either choses not to recognize this because it destroys his drream of Tikun Olam.

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN REPLIES

• Richard can not provide anywhere a survey that does not indicate that most not some Palestiniasns desire the “Right of Return” as a “natual” right and legitimiate “grievance” coming to them. The idae that only some have this “irredentist” view is Richard’s spin on this.

I can always count on Mike to either misstate or misunderstand what I say. Of course Palestinians see the Right of Return as a “natural right” just as we Jews see our Right of Return to our Jewish homeland as our natural right. But that doesn’t mean that every Palestinian must exercise that right just as not every Jew in the world has exercised their right to make aliya. I think the point of a peace agreement would be to gently move the locus of Palestinian dreams away from returning to former homes now in Israel and toward Palestine. The latter would be the place where Palestinians would be encouraged to focus their energies and build their future.

Mike knows very little about the history of Jews in Arab lands. Jews were not expelled from the lands he mentions. While there was friction between Muslims and Jews in many of them, the Jews mainly emigrated by choice. And we must remember that in some of them like Iraq, Ben Gurion helped them make up their minds by sending Israeli saboteurs (with the connivance of the Iraqi government) to bomb Jewish sites and instill fear that would induce them to make aliya.

Palestinian Arabs living within Israel by and large did not have this luxury of making a choice as a great many of them were forcibly expelled by Haganah/Palmach forces. This is why there are entitled either to return or be compensated for their suffering.

MIKE NARGIZIAN - I REPLY

So basically you didn’t refute that the Geneva Accords delineated an exact formula for returning to Israel and left it ambigious…. your insults to me aside… which are amusing.

• Mike knows very little about the history of Jews in Arab lands.

Really, I know very little? lol…. how many Serphard or Mizrahi expats do you personally know? I know quite a few… I would luvvvvvvvv for you to meet them and tell them what happened.

Also, please cite the source that states Ben Gurion “conspired” with the Iraqi Gov’t to get the Jews out…. did he also conspire to have them hang and disembowel a few as well? or that was sordove a fortuitous surprising occurence… And when the Iraq government kept the 2500 years worth of Jewish heirlooms, bank accounts, assets and personal belongings was Ben Gurion in on that as well?

• Palestinian Arabs living within Israel by and large did not have this luxury of making a choice as a great many of them were forcibly expelled by Haganah/Palmach forces. This is why there are entitled either to return or be compensated for their suffering.

Your arrogance is really astounding. What you meant to state is that the Jews were welcomed and resettled in a foreign place where they didn’t speak Hebrew. Whereas Arab often moving 30-40 miles away to an area where they spoke the same language and had virtually the same customs were imprisoned by their own brothers.

As far as your assertion the Sephards all simply had a nice sojourn to Israel while the Arabs were ALL pushed out by the evil Zionists……

So you have the exact formula to which % -
1) innocents forcibly expelled by the Hagannah
2) innocents fleeing fighting between Hagannah and Arab forces
3) left before the war at Arab urging
4) left before but were middle class and took their $ and assets to France and Europe
5) left after war ended on their own6) were laborers that had emigrated in the last few years and were new to the area……

Please tell me where you got that formula please. Cite the source.

Since you seem to “know” that all or most Sephards were “tricked” into leaving and had the “luxury” of making a simple sojourn to Israel… while all the Arabs were forced out by the Hagannah. Please cite the sources.

Also please cite the source that shows how many Sephards were actively fighting against the places they lived in versus what % of Palestinian Arabs were fighting in the war against the nascent state of Israel?

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN REPLIES

• Also, please cite the source that states Ben Gurion “conspired” with the Iraqi Gov’t to get the Jews out

Tom Segev in Haaretz is but one source of many:

• The British embassy in Baghdad relayed to London its own assessment of the motives behind the attack: Activists of the Zionist movement wanted to highlight the danger for the Jews of Iraq, in order to spur the State of Israel to accelerate the pace of their immigration. At the time, there was serious debate in Israel on this issue and some wished to slow down the rate of emigration from Iraq. The British embassy’s appraisal is quoted in a book by Esther Meir of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The embassy also offered a second possible explanation: The bombs were meant to influence well-off Jews in Iraq who wished to stay there, to get them to change their minds and come to Israel, too.…
  
• The bombing] still has significance, some of it political - because the bombing at the synagogue fueled a whole host of rumors and accusations. Some claimed that it was carried out by Mossad agents, with the objective of frightening the Jews and encouraging them to move to Israel. This claim is also accepted by several Mizrahi scholars and activists, and is sometimes cited as one of the arguments against Zionism…
  
• …The issue has remained a mystery…because the state continues to conceal information related to the episode.

This article goes on to quote an Israeli agent in Baghdad at the time who says that the original bomb was planted by the Muslim Brotherhood. But that a member of the “Zionist underground” later DID plant bombs at Jewish communal sites in order to prove to Iraqi authorities that the Jews who’d been arrested for the first bombing couldn’t possibly have done it.

• Arab often moving 30-40 miles away to an area where they spoke the same language and had virtually the same customs were imprisoned by their own brothers.

The Arabs didn’t “move” 30-40 miles away as in I sell my house in New York and move to Connecticut. They were either driven from their homes by Israeli forces at the point of the gun or they fled in terror after hearing the stories of the forcible removals of other Arab villages. This isn’t just a walk in the park as you make it sound like. This is harsh exile; exile perpetrated by Israeli forces in violation of international law.

I have no formula regarding how many Arabs left Israel and for what reason. Such a formula is a ridiculous notion. How can you tally such a number? Where would you find evidence to support it? Undoubtedly you do have such a formula given your extraordinary qualifications and credentials as a scholar of Zionist history. Perhaps your fellow justifier of the 1948 expulsions, Benny Morris, has made such calculations. Why don’t you read him to find out?

HERE IS MY REPLY WHICH HE DELETED
MIKE NARGIZIAN

Benny Morris -
Yes the man Norm Finkelstein - the pre-eminent anti Israeli zealot - for years referred to as the pre-eminent historian on the topic. Paraphrasing here - "goes through the history in a dispassionate thorough fashion"?

Since you don't refute the fact that the Arab Palestinians often moved 30 miles to an almost exact culture and language versus the Sephards move to a foreign culture and language.... I'll assume you're granting that as well.

Since you do not have the answer to the question as to who was expelled by the Hagannah, who fled on their own before and after and who fled during either via "news" of the Zionists expulsions (more doubtful imo) or via "hyped propaganda" the Arab world was putting out......... (Of course, who could answer that) -

It seems rather arrogant to insinuate most fled due to the "Hagannah Aggressions".... while insinuating most Sephards left via a cute trick....

The latter seems rather silly to even strongly insinuate even if Ben Gurion did the above the charge is more valuable as a powerful piece of ‘emotional mud; for the jury - versus value as a measure of the main cause. Since you’re an academic I assume you realize this.

And things were so good for the Sephards that over 100,000 all who lived in Iraq for over 2500 years all got up and fled in a short period of time?
I guess the riots and mobs in Iraq and Egypt where Jews were lynched and murdered in public and the general atmosphere had nothing to do with it?

This is rather amazing since you imply that the Palestinians mainly fled due to "news" of the Zionist aggressions? How do you reconcile that apparent irony?

Oh, and for the record, how big were the Arab brother armies coming to fight the Zionists?
How big were the armies coming into Iraq or Egypt to help the Jews?
ANY LINKS FOR THOSE #’S?

You also insinuate that the Arabs fled solely bcs "they heard" of other expulsions by the Israelis... Yet, many many Israelis have stated that the propaganda coming out of the Arab side at the time of "horrible Zionist" crimes were a major factor in their flight. I’m not talking about the rebuffed radio transmissions so don’t even use that as a red herring either.

And many fled after the war simply because they assumed the Israelis would treat them as the Arabs would treat the Jews if they were the victors. My neighbor said his Arab friends in Haifa got up and gathered all their stuff and left.

But to discuss the complex situation outside of you simplified reductionist thought that the Zionists simply caused them to flee is somehow unthinkable?

And this from the same person who harshly criticizes Jewish groups for not discussing the Holocaust in a rational manner? Hypocrisies abound here.

You also commit the biggest crime of a historian.

You analyze and pre-suppose history looking back knowing the end result already. Another words, since Israel won they should have known they didn't have to fight so hard and “cause so much Arab flight”. That's kind of like the person who chastises someone who shoots someone who breaks into their house in the middle of the night with his family in the house.

Well you get the point.

Mike

UPDATE: May 11, 2006

The rumor particularly haunted former minister Mordechai Ben-Porat, the Mossad's man in Baghdad: Ben-Porat even sued for slander, and won an apology. In the Haganah archives, correspondence between Mossad agents in Baghdad and their handlers in Tel Aviv is preserved, and includes their reports on the synagogue bombing. The impression that arises from the exchange of telegrams is that the Mossad agents in Baghdad and their superiors in Tel Aviv did not know who was responsible for the attack.

Now a recent publication is shedding new light on the mystery. The revelations come from Yehuda Tager, an Israeli agent who operated in Baghdad, was exposed and spent about 10 years in prison there. According to Tager, the bombing of the Masuda Shemtov synagogue was not carried out by Israelis, but by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, at least one activist from the Zionist underground, Yosef Beit-Halahmi, did apparently carry out several terror attacks after the arrest of his comrades, in the hope of proving to the Iraqi authorities that the detainees were not involved in these actions. This is the first time someone involved in the episode is confirming that members of the Zionist underground did commit bombings in Baghdad.

The interview with Tager, now 83, appears in a new book by the British journalist Arthur Neslen, titled "Occupied Minds." Tager quoted a conversation he had with Beit-Halahmi's widow: "She said she had asked him (if he had thrown the bombs) and he had replied that if a bomb was thrown while we were in prison, it would have proved that it was not us who bombed the Masuda Shemtov. She implied that he, on his own initiative, without orders from Israel, did it in order to save us."
Ehud Ein-Gil, deputy editor of Haaretz Magazine, who came across this information, called up Tager and the latter confirmed the version of events depicted in Neslen's book. But when he appeared before the Mossad's commission of inquiry in 1960, Tager did not tell this part of the story. Ein-Gil asked him why.

Tager: "There is a time and a place for everything. At that time, saying something like that would have been greatly frowned upon by the community. The conditions have changed since then, and here in Israel the true story is already known, at least among former Iraqis."

Of course you didn' include the rest of the details.I will don't worry.
Further your disgusting hypocrisy is still evident.

While Arab leaders have admitted they urged Palestinians to leave and it is not known how many left as a result of the Hagannah directly - You imply that the Jews left Iraq due to the Mossad.... and rally for reparations for the Palestinians and dismiss any mention of the Sephardic Jews loss even being recognized by the Arab world.

You're not a relevant person except in your own mind, because you can't even cover your hyocritical bias and blanket thinking. You do what any Utopian (in your own mind) does you delete, silence and edit anything so that it remains a neat story to fit your deluded mind's take on the complicated world.

Mike