By Tom Kando
The Jewish-Palestinian conflict is interminable. It has raged since before I was born, and it will not be solved by the time my grand-children are gone. It is what it is. It almost seems mystical. One of the world’s sine qua nons. Fate, or God, or something, has decreed that this problem must not be solved.
Many of the arguments on both sides hinge on who should own the turf, i.e. who was there first. So how far back do we go? Do we just look at 1948, when Israel became independent, or do we go back to Moses, 5,000 years ago?
Here are some historical facts you might consider:
1. Palestine’s Jewish population in biblical times is anybody’s guess, but it is certain that Jews were a majority. There were several million Jews in Palestine. King David’s census suggests 5 million - which may be inflated.
2. There were many diasporas, at the hands of conquerors. For example the Babylonian captivity in the 5th century BC and the expulsion of Jews by the Roman emperor Titus during the 1st century AD.
3. During the 1st century, Jews were the majority population in the region, Perhaps 2.5 million.
4. More than a millennium later came the Ottoman and British Mandates: Between the 13th and 16th centuries, the Jewish population declined to almost nil - maybe 5,000. Jews were now a minority, Muslims a majority, although all groups suffered decline, due to the black death and other Malthusian conditions.
5. By 1890, Jews were a growing minority of about 43,000.
6. In 1914, just before World War II and the Balfour Declaration, Jews were a growing minority of about 100,000.
7. By 1931, Jews had continued to grow as a minority, approaching 200,000.
8. In 1947, just before Israeli Independence, Jews were a large minority of about 600,000. Much of the increase was due to the massive post-World-War-Two immigration of Holocaust survivors.
So the current conflict is between two competing nationalisms. While Muslims outnumbered Jews before Israeli independence, there WAS a significant Jewish presence all along. Then in 1947 the surrounding Arab countries declared war on Israel, and they lost. As a result, Israel annexed (additional) territories. It also expelled many Palestinians, although many of those fled from their homes in anticipation of a victorious return, which never happened.
Israel’s history resembles that of many other countries, including the United States. Most countries have expanded at the expense of neighbors whom they defeated. Most international boundaries are the outcome of turf battles. How much territory did America take from Mexico? How often have France and Germany gone to war over territory? Or Hungary and Rumania? Or practically every other country? Not that this is justified, but it is reality.
In a way, Israel’s situation is MORE legitimate than that of most other countries: Israel has at least a plausible historical claim to Palestine, albeit a very ancient one. And its umbilical cord to Palestine was never totally severed. There has always been a Jewish presence there, fluctuating from millions to a few thousand, and resurging well before the 20th century.
Another mitigating feature of Israeli "imperialism," compared to others, is that it has often generously returned many conquered territories (for example the Sinai). If it is holding on to (parts of) the West Bank, that's because the old borders are impossible to defend. The country would have an 8-mile wide "neck."
Furthermore, Israeli “occupation” of much of its territory is more benign than the alternative would be. Areas such as the Negev would be wastelands if not for the irrigation, agriculture and other forms of developments brought there by a modern progressive state, the only affluent and democratic country in the Middle East.
So while I am of course for the two-state solution, compromise regarding the West Bank and all the other things the world has been talking about for almost three quarters of a century, there is one thing which should be non-negotiable: Israel’s right to exist. leave comment here
21 comments:
Good post Tom but as I think about solutions, I wonder if yet another rehash of one historical narrative among many can help.
Our experience of historical facts is quite problematic. Historical "facts" and their interpretations vary based on whose doing the recollecting. Each history teller tells their story differently but we cannot recall historical facts in order to examine them under a microscope. We have not way to objectively determine the truth value of one history over others. Historical facts are after all, just stories people tell to explain their situation in the here and now and justify their actions going forward.
If we think we can use history as an explanation, a lesson and as a guide to the future, we are going to have to begin by deciding whose history--whose story---we will use. Whose history can be made into "our history"?
If we can't decide on "our history" to everyone's satisfaction, then ethical and moral litigation of who is right and who is wrong, leaves us stuck in intractable conflict of story v. story, forever and ever and only might makes right.
Steering our way into the future by staring in the rear view mirror doesn't seem to work very well. It seems to me, a different method is needed for going forward.
Two of my favorite websites provide some hints as to the subject of "our history".
Up until 10,000 years ago.
http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/
From 10,000 years ago until today.
http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/history-of-religion.html
Practically speaking, that's the way it is. What should we make of it?
Sorry for commenting up your blog but speaking of who's right and who's wrong...
Just now the news from Israel and Egypt is quite horrific. While we have our eyes riveted on our military adventuring in Libya, Egypt has recalled her ambassador to Israel and Egyptian mobs are calling for the expulsion of Israel's ambassador to Egypt in Cairo. Egypt is massing forces in Sinai to "protect" her border, while after two days of heavy rocket bombardment, Israel is massing forces to strike launch sites in Gaza.
With nation-states now on the front lines rather than amorphous terrorists organizations, things begin to read like a history lesson titled "The Winds of War".
The "Arab Spring" is no such thing. It is the unfettering of a century of smoldering hatreds kindled with the West's destruction of the Ottoman Empire.
If we stop looking in the rear view mirror, trying to assign who is right and who is wrong, the following vista appears in the front windshield going forward.
The Israeli aim is to achieve some optimal condition by some complex calculus of power that will allow her to survive going forward. Her optimal outcome would be a recognition of her right to exist and, practically speaking, a live and let live accommodation.
The Arab aim is to achieve a maximal condition by the simple arithmetic of the destruction of the state of Israel.
This conflict of aims, and the differing moralities that underpins it, lies at the root of the struggle that is currently escalating beyond control.
The right and wrong of the situation cannot be determined in the rear view mirror of the past. It can only be determined by the view through front windshield of aims going forward.
Thanks, Marc for your always insightful comments.
1. I note that you and I agree about the essential premise that Israel has the right to exist.
2. Your comments about history are fascinating. They raise points far too profound for me to be able to do justice to them. Is history useless? Or, the opposite, should we live our lives according to the lessons we learn from history? Or (your position): what matters is WHICH history (or rendition of history) do we go by? Plus: The rear-view mirror is a poor guide. All excellent points.
A confession: Some of my best friends are historians. Sometimes we banter. When my friend Henry teases me about those damn sociologists, I rebut him by saying that he only studies dead people, bah.
Then there is Hemingway’s definition of history: “Just one damn thing after another”.
Or Lenin: History is written by the victors (or something to that effect)
Don’t tell Henry, but for some reason, I love history. If I had to do it again, I might become a historian rather than a sociologist.
Part I:
In substance we do agree about Israel but...
- You say that Israel has a legitimate right to exist based in history. We might also add, based in law as decreed by the victors following WWII.
- Alternatively, I say Israel's "right" to exist is based in the practical condition that Israel actually DOES EXIST. Although the concept of "facts"
is problematic, for the purposes of discussion, Israel's existence is a "fact" on the ground that must be addressed going forward.
We can say that anything that exists has by definition, a "right" to exist because it is there. How could it be otherwise?
This way of seeing is not just nit-picking. It actually comports with today's science and has substantive implications for the the human project.
The historical narratives we construct--the theoretical models we use to explain why and how what we experience as being here and now, came to be here now, are based in our predictive intentions going forward. In present experience, there are no facts from the past that can be examined, measured, tested and verified. The present rules. Our narrative accounts of the past are our current theories, constructed in terms of our predictive intention moving forward.
As we both know, the view of theory in science is that theories cannot be proven. In science we accept the principle that we favor those explanations that demonstrate the greatest predictive power given the questions we ask.
Of course the questions we ask are those we deem important, useful and relevant to our purposes. How could it be otherwise in an infinite universe of possible questions? These are conditions of knowing.
Like you, I am a great fan of history--better said, histories, but what can a historian do when she realizes that there is no verifiably "true" single history from which the lessons of history can be applied going forward or the moral rightness of present circumstances be adjudicated?
Part II:
Like any modern scientist, the historian must ask herself, Given our present experience, which historical narratives work better and which work worse given our predictive intentions going forward?
This view of the business of historians (his-tory tellers) gives them common cause with all scientists. That common cause (that aim) is prediction, given our experience in the present and our intentions going forward.
The job of historians is no more arbitrary than any other scientific enterprise that takes as its subject matter, the explanation of observed events that give us cause to question, with the aim to predict the future relative to our stated purposes or purposes implied by the questions we chose.
My contention here is that the difference in this view of the role of historical narrative and theory-making in general, represents a paradigmatic shift on par with, and actually similar to, Darwin's view of the emergence of varieties of species that are only perpetuated in function and form based on whether or not they "work", practically speaking.
You will recognize of course, that this view of history and theory-making in general, is very SI (Symbolic Interactionist) in a grand theory sort of way.
Given our intentions, our linguistic faculty for imaginative prediction is the name of "our" game. Theory-making is a predictive enterprise. Rather than being a rear-view mirror project, history-telling can/should also be understood as a forward-looking enterprise.
Finally, this paradigmatic shift I propose is important--our survival going forward depends on it--because it enhances our ability to construct more predictively efficacious theory going forward. I am saying that the dominant rear-view mirror paradigm, a legacy of a mystical/Platonist mindset, is taking us down a road that no longer "works" given our present circumstance.
Practically, change is needed, but unlike the panda's thumb, we have the ability to choose. This is why I continue to explore a sociology of knowing and why I pick on you, knowing as I do that you are among the few who can understand my theory-making project.
some minor quibbles:
it is incorrect to describe the subjects of King David as Jews; Israelites is more accurate.
The Roman diaspora is more probably dated to the second century CE
Ottoman Empire, not mandate.
It is instructive to note the growth of the Arab population of the area as well as the Jewish during the last 200 years.
Cheers,
PS: who *are* the 'Palestinians'? Jews who were forced to convert to Islam, perhaps? Immigrants from Syria?
Tom,
I am thinking of you and your recent blog about Israel & Palestine as I read Super Cooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We need Each Other to Succeed by Martin Nowak & Roger Highfield.
Nowak is Prof. of Biology & Mathematics at Harvard. Based on game theory, he presents interesting propositions for a cyclical pattern between competition and cooperation among all forms of life.
It's one of those books that merit discussion in a group.
Marc, Dwight and Susan,
Thanks for your erudite comments, corrections and analyses.
I am leaving for Holland in a few hours
Tom, in an earlier comment I made some remarks on your use of ‘collectivity terms’; remember? Now, in your piece on ‘Israel and Palestine: Whose Turf is it?’, you go again, a bit wild: ‘The Jewish-Palestinian conflict’, ‘Palestine’s Jewish population’, ‘Jews ‘, ‘Muslims’, ‘Palestinians’. Of course, any ‘national’ or ‘ethnic’ category is problematic, or in other words ‘a chosen action’. What I found extra-problematic in your use here is 1) the use of ‘Muslims’, which suggests that you use the category ‘Jews’ also in a religious sense, which you probably did not intend, as you know that the current category of ‘Palestinians’ also includes ‘Christians’; and 2) your not using the category Arab, which in terms of the historical shifts in ethnicities, territories and religions, might make your overview a bit less confusing.
Paul has a point, stating that, if by 'Jews', Tom means an ethnic group, he should compare them to 'Arabs' as another ethnic group.
Although using the word 'Muslims' to denote a group of people in the context of Israel is not entirely unjustified. It is, after all, just as much a religious conflict as an ethnic conflict, especially in the eyes of Arabs who are opposed to the existence of the State of Israel.
What is there for we American and Euro-centric intellectual types to say here that hasn't been said before?
Sometimes it seems like American and European Conservatives pimp Israel, while their Liberal neighbors pimp Palestine.
Will these folks in Israel and Palestine ever have a chance of living in peace while being exploited by foreign pimps?
Steve,
I like your "pimp" analysis, assuming a pimp is someone who uses disproportionate power to exploit others in the service of his or her purposes, irrespective of the interests of the pimped.
Of course there is one reduction in which it seems reasonable to think that that we are all foreign pimps and pimped by foreigners. Ultimately this explanation devolves down to me v. you. We have built quite an edifice upon this model of human enterprise.
So how might we quit this rather unsavory vocation?
Lots of activity, to which I cannot do justice, from overseas. The machines at my disposal make it difficult.
Nevertheless, a brief acknowledgement: Paul and Madeleine claim that I use words such as Jewish, Palestinian and Muslim in a confused manner.
I am not sure that they are right. I use these words in historical contexts. For example, there were no Muslims in Antiquity. You have to use the word which applies at any given time.
Another unwarranted criticism: Are Jews a religion, a race, an ethnicity? In Antiquity, the only way they could be distinguished was probably as a religion.
To Hitler they were a race and nothing but a race.
But every introductory Sociology textbook cuts through the Gordian knot by saying that Jews are the prime example of an ethnicity, a concept which straddles culture and race. Blacks are an ethnicity. Jews are an ethnicity (religion; culture). Sammy Davis Jr. was a converted black Jew.
As to the pimping exchange between Steve and Marc, I'll stay out of that one.
Tom, those European keyboards really slow me down too.
But, even the concept of ethnicity produces confused narratives that obstruct our way forward.
Our "sciences", and no more so than our "social sciences", are a product of the Victorian era in which classification and reduction were the focus of inquiry. The phylogeny of races, ethnicities, cultures, religions, were all concepts conceived it the interest of classifying groups of people. In much the same manner as Newton's physics, the mechanical interactions between classes so defined, were then applied in analysis to explain events.
The Victorian narrative of classes of humans is very much rooted in the Christian mythology of the superior white anglo race (aka Western thought), and imperial ambition explained in terms of natural law and pursued as racial "duty".
The Victorian narrative is very much alive today and continues to shape the mainstream of the "social sciences". (This explains the widely held consensus that Sociology is a useless profession made up of anal retentive enumerators.)
An alternative approach to the social sciences would be to focus on the process by which various narratives emerge and contend in the context of power realized in a practical sense---military, economic, territorial, technological, etc.
About 10,000 years ago the transformational technology of agriculture created the conditions for the rise of city states and Western monotheism---One Law Fits All. In the context of city states that gave rise to nation states, the Hebraic monotheism gave rise to Christian doctrine that gave rise to Muslim doctrine as well as to the many contending sectarian doctrines that plague all the monotheistic doctrines.
The "One Law Fits All" model--a universalistic rather than circumstantial-situational organizing principle--begs "War". According to eminent war historian John Keegan, the very notion of "war" is entirely coincidental with the rise of city states and their concomitants.
Today it is becoming clearer that the job of science is not, as the Victorians practiced it, to classify and thereafter rationalize the boundary conditions of the classes we've defined. To do so is to see the world going forward through a rear view mirror.
The task of science is to predict the future by creating models of the PROCESS by which groups become coalesced and/or divided. Marx and Weber pointed the way forward methodologically but their approaches to analysis were roundly beaten down or disregarded by Victorian science.
The appropriation of Darwinian theory in the form of the social Darwinism that today forms the basis of free-market theory, is another salient example of the suppression and/or co-optation of ideas that explain, and potentially enable, change.
As current events make abundantly clear, we are living under a Victorian "One Law Fits All" intellectual tyranny that systematically undermines all attempts at understanding and enable practical change for the better.
It is not possible to respond to the wealth of ideas in Marc's latest response - most of which are brilliant, as always.
Just one random point, in defense of Sociology: - Marc reminds us that Sociology is often viewed as useless because it only consists of enumerations.
I assume that Marc knows better than that, being a sociologist himself.
This widespread view of Sociology is a misunderstanding: The essence of Sociology is entirely different: It is the holistic perspective which teaches us to view social conditions structurally and not individualistically. Without this (Durkheimian, emergent) view, we can never fully understand society, the sources of its problems, and the plight of individuals.
Tom,
You and I agree. Viewing the world from the perspective afforded by the study of Sociology--the collective process of human enterprise wrought in interaction among collaboratively "realized" selves and the world at large--provides the single most powerfully predictive. and potentially instrumental, approach to understanding.
In its most elemental form, the sociological perspective can provide the key to sorting out the very nature of our knowing and our behavior as a knowing species. Through the sociological theoretical lens it becomes possible to "Know Thyself" in the deepest and most consequential sense.
So how many people reading this will think to themselves, "YES! Sociology really is powerfully revealing and useful"?
I would venture that most would say, "What are these guys smokin'"?
Since the "scientific revolutions" in Renaissance Europe, emergent in Cabalistic numerological occultism, Neo-Platonistic cults of true value, and the Reformation (Yates), the role of theory has inexorably displaced the role of faith, though they are not really very far apart. (Durkheim)
In faith we accept all that is "given". In theory, we seek to explain the "given" in universal (one law) terms. Theory is at its most elemental, the search for the codex that will allow us to decode the true world. At its root, theory making is understood as the path to Godlike power--omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipotence.
Although thinkers on the cutting edge of Physics and those steeped in the deepest recesses of philosophy, would beg to differ with idea that there is a codex--a Holy Grail of grand unification---the predominant wisdom remains that the Teacher's Answer Book really exists.
At the top of the popularity list of the Book of books is the quest for the "God Particle" in physics--the ultimate and immutable numerological unification.
Economic theory, particularly micro-Econ, probably has the most substantive impact. Rooted as it is in a debased version of Darwinian theory, it purports to decode all human experience in terms of motivations decreed by "human nature". All is conflict.
Psychological theory is another popular reduction that promises a path to perfection by decoding "abnormal" or "dysfunctional" selves, and by way of construction or deconstruction, depending on where you start, the correction of erroneous selves.
Galton's Eugenics notwithstanding, modern genetics promises to provide the helical codex by which to decode all human experience, exorcise imperfections and soon enough, unlock the key to eternal life.
Physics, Economics, Psychology, Genetics, and not incidentally, the closed-system numerological machinations of mathematics, represent the principal thrusts of knowledge production in todays intellectual marketplace (fun and profit). But where is Sociology?
It seems to me (and you may wish to correct me), that Sociology has become a theoretical backwater preoccupied with obscure but fundable, politically correct, enumerative studies. Although sociological theory, in the grand sense, has the ability to produce a powerful and much needed critique of the "one law" Cabalistic juggxrnaught that dominates the production of knowledge today, she remains, for reasons that can be explained, mute.
Well, the conversation began with Israel and Palestine, and now I am being lured into a debate about the value of Sociology, or the lack of it. This is tedious and meaningless to most readers and dysfunctional for the blog. I am not going to go there.
"This is tedious and meaningless to most readers and dysfunctional for the blog."
Wow, that's a conversation stopper. Well done!
I apologise for my rudeness.
I wont list my excuses for it (although I do have a few).
Tom,
I place great value in dialog. Someone expresses some ideas--a thesis--and invites others to participate in an exploration of those ideas wherever they lead. Dialog has become a rare art in our results oriented society and we are paying the price as a people.
As is illustrated by the various commentaries on your blog, some exchanges are more fruitful than others. Some go on and others are short lived. As an avid blogger myself, I am always pleased when people comment so long as their aim is constructive rather than confrontational. If nothing more, they have at least taken the time to read what I have written and tried to understand.
I have never found it necessary to respond to a commentary with terms like "tedious", "meaningless" and "dysfunctional". I know that I always have the option to not respond or, in the wort cases, I have a delete key.
Apologies work for me. I give them and accept them whenever I can see they are needed. But an "apology" with unspecified caveats ("I wont list my excuses") is no apology at all. What's the point? You may mean "Because I had a bad day" or you may mean "Because I think you are an ass".
Just to set the record straight, I came to your blog by your invitation following an email I sent to you offering praise for your rather brilliant article, published in 2008, "What is the Mind? Don't Study Brain Cells to Understand it." That article was enough to convince me that there was a mind at work that would take pleasure in exploring some very unorthodox ideas about the nature of mind. Regrettably, I have not seen similar daring in your blog posts but, up until now at least, I have continued to try and call forth the remarkable insights expressed in your article.
More to the point at hand, I recently sent you a personal email with some of my thoughts about one of your posts, suggesting that my comments might be too long, too tedious and too obtuse for your blog audience. You assured me it was not and you posted it in two segments to your comments section.
So how might I know what you deem tedious, meaningless and dysfunctional? Experience and reason tells me to shrug off your comment as the work of a fool---just another nail in the coffin of constructive dialog. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that I am not unlike most others in regarding your comment as intended to inflict harm and your "apology" without healing power.
It is easy to agree with this. I do agree that a two state solution might be best. But Israel must be recognized as having a right to exist as state here...as does the Palestine.
What is missing here is the concept that Jerusalem is a city of universality...three great religions have important history here. Somehow Jerusalem needs to be recognized as World City.
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