Gadi Taub

When David Ben-Gurion declared, 61 years ago, that “This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State,” the vast majority of those who viewed themselves as enlightened, progressive, peace-seeking, and committed to human rights wholeheartedly agreed with him. (The full piece on Ynet…)

A (short of perfect) translation into English of the piece “War Crimes and Propaganda” can be found here. Written by Ma’ariv’s Ben-Dror Yemini, it made quite a splash in Israel. 

Update, April 29, 2009: You may want take a look at this analysis of the numbers of casualties conducted by the IDC, and based exlusively on Palestinian sources. The conclud that contrary to Palestinian claims 63-75% of the casualties were in active military or police service.

If the rockets aren’t stopped, there would be no way to move out of the West Bank. We had better get used to thinking about the conflict in new terms: Palestinian reluctance has been thwarting partition for a decade and a half, and when this campaign is over, unilateralism may again be the order of the day. The full piece is here, on the New Republic website.

To Israelis, right or left, it is clear that a constant barrage of rockets, aimed at Israel’s civilian population cannot be tolerated. This is not a matter of political opinion, nor is it unique to Israel. It is just that Israelis were actually slow to come to that conclusion.  Imagine 12,000 rockets coming down on Milan, or on Dallas, or on Liverpool. Italians, Americans, or the English are not likely to tolerate it for very long. Not as long as Israel has, in any case.
But a strange double standard seems to apply to the case of Israel. Hamas can deliberately target civilians, and not be accountable, and any Israeli response, no matter how carefully targeting military sites, is suspected of being a war crime. You can’t win this game – that is stop the rockets – if one party plays fair, and the other is bound by no rules.
It is sad that we have reached a point where nothing short of a massive strike can do any good. Had the international community, and Israel too, taken more stern measures – an economic boycott, a cutting off of gas supply until the rockets stop – we would have been able to prevent this last resort. But if the Hamas is never accountable, and Israel is responsible to the welfare of Gaza’s citizens while Gaza’s government is not, then Hamas can be the aggressor and still pose as the victim. Israel has withdrawn from Gaza unilaterally. It recognized that the occupation cannot go on. But Hamas has since been bent on teaching Israel that withdrawal is a bad idea. Israel will only get rockets in response.
Under these circumstances an attack on Gaza is not only justifiable. It is also necessary for those who believe that the occupation of the West Bank must end too. Because to get out of there we must first know that it is possible to prevent the barrage of rockets, which may well land on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem if Israel withdraws from these regions too. This is why supporters of peace here are no less in favor of the strike in Gaza. They are not only morally right in thinking so. They are also pragmatic.
It will probably not be long before a general outcry against Israel will be heard world wide. But until then Israel must show Hamas that it is willing to pay a price, even internationally, to reestablish deterrence. Anything short of that will mean surrendering to the enemies of peace.

Published in Corriere Della Sera (Italy) December 28, 2008.

Recently the content of the British UCU list-serve have been made public, exposing the tactics and arguments of the pro-boycott crowd. Since an outsider can’t participate (the list administrator has in fact silenced some of the anti-boycotters within the union by denying them access to the list), I couldn’t get these comments in, but they have been posted on the Engage site, and try to explain why the boycott, far from helping the struggle against the occupation, is actually putting obstacles in its way. Here’s why.

The future of the state of Israel is once again a topic of heated public debate. For good reasons: The possibility of a nuclear threat from a hostile Iran is one; deadlock in the peace process in the region, and the chance of a gradual shift into chronic civil war between Israelis and Palestinians, is another. But it has become common in some circles to ask not only whether Israel can survive, but also if it has a right to.

Some commentators believe that “the Jewish Question” that has been buzzing around in the West for some three centuries - the question of how this ancient people, the Jews, should fit into a modern political order - should be reopened. National self-determination for Jews in a state of their own, such critics say, can no longer be part of a morally acceptable answer. That is a telling development. As in the past, Western attitudes to the “Jewish Question” are reliable indications of larger political moods and of the shifting meanings of political concepts. (the full piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education)

The idea of a non-Jewish Israel has been circulating for a while. It is generally assumed that Israel would be more democratic if it stops being Jewish. But in order to renounce its Jewish character Israel would have to stop being democratic. It would also become far less hospitable to minorities. Because Israel is Jewish in a sense not all that different from the one in which Italy is Italian, Poland is Polish, and Britian is English. (The full piece was first published in the Jewish Chronicle.)

Here’s a sneak preview of the upcoming Peace Now report on settlement activity in Judea and Samaria (courtesy of Yariv Oppenheimer, head of the organization):     

According to the Ministry of Interior by the end of 2006 there were 268,000 settlers in the West Bank, a 5% increase compared to 2005. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics in the first three quarters of 2006 construction of 1272 housing units has begun. The construction of so-called “by-pass” roads, connecting settlements to Israel proper, continued. According to Peace Now estimates there are currently 3000 housing units under construction in the West Bank, including work in 30 of the illegal settlements in direct defiance of government decisions.   

So it is easy to see why some of Israel’s critics say that while Israel declares it opted for partition, it is actually strengthening its hold on the West Bank. But this, alas, is not exactly the case, and unless one is familiar with how politics work in this country, one can hardly be blamed for not seeing this. The religious settlers are an enormously powerful pressure group, and a disciplined and well organized public. Though they are a tiny fraction of Israel’s Jewish population, they exercise disproportional influence, partly through the structure of coalition politics in this country, and partly by a fierce determination to raise hell every time their will is defied (the case of Hebron in these last few days is a good example). And here’s the crux: every government which hoped to move for an agreement with the Palestinians assumed it could pacify settlers in the interim period, by granting them their wishes. Then, they all assumed, when agreement with the Palestinians is finally reached, the settlements will be dealt with in one fell swoop. But so far, agreement remained out of reach, and settlement activity went on undisturbed.  Israel’s public opinion has turned its back on Greater Israel; Israel’s government was elected on a platform promising to leave the territories. But the whole state, like a clumsy blind giant, is still pulled closer to the abyss of bi-nationalism by a group of zealots, as if held by a nose-ring. The public and the press turn a blind eye on all this. But the world and the Palestinians do not. And the world judges Israel by its deeds, not just its declaration. If Israel lets the settlers dictate its policy, it shouldn’t be surprised that the world thinks its policy is further settlement. 

Since the idea of a UN mandate in Gaza (see below, May 29th) seems to be defunct after the Hamas take over, the West Bank may serve as a model. Martin Indyk, one of the most sober commentators on the conflict, thinks a UN force in the West Bank is the way out of the impass. Here are his thoughts in Foreign Affairs.

Richard Rorty’s philosophical career is not easy to sum up. Many admired him, many others saw his advocacy of philosophical “light-mindedness” as a corruption of what they held dear. But many who never read him, and many others who didn’t know his name, were actually Rortians. In fact, most of those Americans who see themselves as “postmodernists,” though they salute French philosophers, actually speak Rorty’s dialect. In a deep sense, Rorty formulated the prejudice of our time. Or it was his formulation which many of us accepted. Some further thoughts on the occassion of Rorty’s death (on the Forward website).