Shavit’s Distorted Vision vs. Jabotinsky’s Clarity

    …The Zionist leadership did what was necessary to create the state, and despite what anti-Zionist revisionist historians say, did not engage in mass murder (as Arabs did whenever possible)….And we do not “owe them” a state. In fact, because a Palestinian Arab state in Judea and Samaria is simply incompatible with the continued existence of the Jewish state — a result of military realities and Arab and Muslim intentions — we are obligated to oppose such a state.

Fresnozionsim.org..
28 December ’13..

Yesterday Ha’aretz reporter Ari Shavit was interviewed on NPR about his new book. Let me start by saying that Shavit is not a foaming anti-Zionist like his colleagues Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and (formerly) Akiva Eldar. And I have to admit that I haven’t read his book. But the interview reveals a certain mindset that is disturbingly common among the supposedly sane Left in Israel.

For example, Shavit said,

    It was part of the Ottoman [Empire] – and the entire region was, like, chaotic and tribal. So one has to remember, they did not conquer a well-established state, but those other people were there. And my great grandfather did not see them. Now, that’s the source of the tragedy, because on the one hand, you have this amazing triumph that is a result of the brilliant insight [of Zionism]. On the other hand, you have this ongoing tragedy of a 100-year war – more than that – that is the result of that basic flaw, that we did not see the Palestinians and the Palestinians would not see us, and…

This isn’t true, at least for those Zionists with decent eyesight. It was clear to Vladimir Jabotinsky as early as 1923, that as much as some of the more tender-minded Zionists believed that it would be possible to share sovereignty over the land with the Arabs, the Arabs would never willingly agree to it. Zionism does not require expulsion or expropriation of the Arabs, he believed, but it does require Jewish sovereignty, a Jewish state, and he was certain that this couldn’t come about through a voluntary agreement.

The collision of Jews and Arabs in the land of Israel was bound to have a winner and a loser, and Jabotinsky was convinced that a Jewish victory was not immoral, any more than an Arab victory — which history has shown us would have been far bloodier — would have been. Zionism was moral because there was no alternative for the Jews, while there were many for Arabs. But that doesn’t mean the Arabs have to be happy about it.


This is where Shavit’s own vision is distorted. For him, the only moral solution is one in which both Jews and Arabs are satisfied. Unfortunately there is no such solution. The choice is between a Jewish state and the survival of the Jewish people, or the opposite of that.

Shavit is full of guilt, as if there were another option which we could have chosen! As a paradigm for Zionist crimes, he discusses the expulsion of the Arabs from Lydda, a very controversial incident. Shavit concludes that Israel “owes” the Palestinians something — a state. He sees this obligation as absolute, just as he believes that they have an obligation to tolerate our state.

He is wrong. What we, as Zionists, are obligated to do is to create and maintain our Jewish state while doing as little harm to the Arabs as possible. Especially compared to other nationalisms — particularly Arab nationalism — we have done so. The Zionist leadership did what was necessary to create the state, and despite what anti-Zionist revisionist historians say, did not engage in mass murder (as Arabs did whenever possible). Certainly some Arabs were expelled from their homes, mostly — as in the case of Lydda — because of the conflict they were engaged in. Shavit’s feelings of guilt are inappropriate.

And we do not “owe them” a state. In fact, because a Palestinian Arab state in Judea and Samaria is simply incompatible with the continued existence of the Jewish state — a result of military realities and Arab and Muslim intentions — we are obligated to oppose such a state.

December 29, 2013 | 36 Comments »

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  1. CuriousAmerican Said:

    Actually we were discussing the narrative of both sides which INCLUDES ethnic cleansing of both sides.

    We were dealing with your fake narrative of a Palestinian identity which you appear to be running away from when you got caught with your pants down. You started with the fake pal identity and now you are on with the fake narrative of Israeli ethnic cleansing. You are merely a fraud, an obfuscator attempting to change subjects but keep the focus on the pals about whom few care about here. You are throwing cats among the chickens to distract.

    Meanwhile I have pointed out your fraud on both issues of identity and ethnic cleansing which you repeatedly submit just like the PAY THEM fraud.

  2. CuriousAmerican Said:

    Both sides had ethnic cleansing in mind.

    even if this fraudulent lie were true there is no equality between thinking ethnic cleansing and doing ethnic cleansing. No Jews in gaza, jordan, PA west bank,arab nations of conflict but we see jews in Israel???? You attempts at equality are those of a disingenuous dissembler. I think you know what I really mean.
    However, it is not even true. There was dissension on the subject among the Jews but among the arabs there was none or little. It is the same today.
    You know everything I am telling you but you still come to declare all these falsehoods for the simple purpose of confounding the Jews into wasting time discussing your pets. Few here give a damn about the pals and their purpose in discussing the process is concerned with Israeli interests. You always try to focus discussion on the pals “plight”. this discussion really is not about the pals but in what Israel will get or lose. solving the so-called pal issues are red herrings. they are not a problem, they can be managed or expelled. The EU and the church are the main problem as they are the allies of the jew killers.

    I am curious as to your purpose here. You are not a Jew, you have no concern for Jews or israel; so what is your purpose here”? Is it related to Christianity, to the arabs, come clean?

  3. yamit82 Said:

    If it walks talks and thinks like a certain kind of duck why should we or anybody doubt he is a duck.
    Then this could be the reason for who he is.

    LOL, 😛

  4. CuriousAmerican Said:

    We were discussing the narrative of both sides, both of which include stories of ethnic cleansing.

    Can you differentiate between the two? I think not!

    Except for one of the conflicting sides wiping out the other transfer of populations what you incorrectly term ethnic cleansing is the second best way of solving intractable conflicts between different ethnicities and religious groups. Use of force to effect such transfers is an option of final choice.

    But if you maintain Jews guilty of such acts due to non military exigencies you should give objective verified citations and contexts of some acts of ethnic cleansing by Jews, otherwise I will have to resort to pillorying you most unkindly on this blog. 😛

  5. CuriousAmerican Said:

    Both sides had ethnic cleansing in mind.

    I do NOT deny the Palestinian’s intent; but neither do I deny that many Jews were in favor of ethnic cleansing and that it was carried out in many areas.

    So I do not trust the narrative of either side since both sides claim absolute innocence.

    Population transfer has been going on since the beginning and before recorded history. It has never in all of history been delegitimized as unlawful, unnatural consequence of conflict between nations religions and ethnicities. matter of fact in most cases it was effective and efficient in effecting it’s military and socio-cultural purpose/

    Ethnic cleansing: Ethnic cleansing is a literal translation of the Serbo-Croatian phrase ‘etnicko ciscenje’. Drazen Petrovic of Sarajevo University Law School says in ‘Ethnic cleansing–an attempt at methodology’, a 1994 article in the European Journal of International Law, that the origin of the Serbo-Croatian term is difficult to establish but that the preponderant role of military officers in the process suggests that it originated in military vocabulary. The English phrase ‘ethnic cleansing’ does not appear to have been used by any of the major western media earlier than 31 July 1991, five days after Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia. In a despatch regarding a decision of the Croatian Supreme Council to mobilize extra police reservists in the conflict with Serbian guerrillas in Croatia, Reuters reported that the Supreme Council had accused Serbian guerrillas of wanting to drive Croats out of towns mainly populated by Serbs and quoted the Council: ‘The aim of this expulsion is obviously the ethnic cleansing of the critical areas…to be annexed to Serbia.’ The obviously related expression ?ethnically clean’ (as in ‘ethnically clean territory’) appears in the Western media nearly a decade earlier. At the time, and for at least five years thereafter, it was used exclusively to describe the efforts of Albanian nationalists to drive Serbs from the autonomous Yugoslavian province of Kosovo with the goal of merging Kosovo into Albania.

    Although the process has been engaged in since antiquity the term didn’t enter the English language until the Balkan wars of the 1990s. The earliest citation of a phrase like it is from the New York Times, July 1982: “The nationalists have a two-point platform, according to Becir Hoti, an executive secretary of the Communist Party of Kosovo, first to establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania to form a greater Albania.” The article was written to investigate the exodus of Serbs from Kosovo in the 80s under the terror of Albanians.

    The Real-Politik of Our Sages
    by Dr. Israel Eldad

    “One way out given to the Canaanites was to accept Israel’s terms. No autonomy but then no intolerance either…. The second method was to leave…. This idea in itself is not new to Zionism. Israel Zangwill suggested it in 1920, the British put it forward in the Peel Report of 1937 as did Avraham Sharon and Avraham Stern in the ’40s. Official Zionists opposed the plan due to moral hesitations (not a Jewish morality but one influenced by liberal emancipation and in continuation of their naive belief that the Arabs will agree to coexistence if we succeed in convincing them that Zionism is beneficial for them…. If the two foregoing are not acceptable — let it be as it may. There is no fourth solution of ‘autonomy’ in our sovereign area.”

    Are you saying besides being a christin missionary you are also a commie?

  6. @ honeybee:
    Texas rose from the ground like the,”The Tree of Life”. Blooming and baring the fruit of knowledge. Darlin, Texas was,is,and always will be.

    Are you equating Texas with the sacred name? Was, is and will be?

  7. @ bernard ross:
    were we discussing ethnic cleansing or did you just seize the opportunity to equate the ethnic cleansing of Jews from arab nations and pal areas with the ethnic cleaning of arabs by the Jews.

    We were discussing the narrative of both sides, both of which include stories of ethnic cleansing.

  8. CuriousAmerican Said:

    Both sides had ethnic cleansing in mind.

    were we discussing ethnic cleansing or did you just seize the opportunity to equate the ethnic cleansing of Jews from arab nations and pal areas with the ethnic cleaning of arabs by the Jews. arabs are in Israel but jews are not in gaza, pa west bank areas, jordan, and the arab nations. And yet you seek to paint the arab ethnic cleansing of jews as being equal. the usual MO

  9. CuriousAmerican Said:

    . It was just gloriously invented

    Texas rose from the ground like the,”The Tree of Life”. Blooming and baring the fruit of knowledge. Darlin, Texas was,is,and always will be.

  10. @ bernard ross:
    Does CA also buy the narrative that the Shoah did not exist or that the numbers were a lot lower?

    I am NOT a Holocaust denier.

    So stop your nonsense.

    I disagree on the narratives of 1948 from both sides.

    I came to this conclusion from studying Jewish documents such as the Palestinian Post where the Jewish Agency (headed by Ben Gurion) said they were comfortable with the Peel Commissions idea of forced relocation.

    If you need the quote, I may be able to locate it for you on the net.

    I have NO doubt that if the Mufti won there would have been a blood bath; but neither do I doubt that ethnic cleansing was used.

    From Yusef Weitz – who headed a transfer committee

    On June 22, 1941 he wrote in his diary: “The land of Israel is not small at all, if only the Arabs were removed, and its frontiers enlarged a little, to the north up to the Litani, and to the east including the Golan Heights…with the Arabs transferred to northern Syria and Iraq…Today we have no other alternative…We will not live here with Arabs.

    The Arab quotes talking of driving Jews into the sea

    “Personally I hope the Jews do not force us into this war because it will be a war of elimination and it will be a dangerous massacre which history will record similarly to the Mongol massacre or the wars of the Crusades. I think the number of volunteers from outside Palestine will exceed the Palestinian population.”

    Both sides had ethnic cleansing in mind.

    I do NOT deny the Palestinian’s intent; but neither do I deny that many Jews were in favor of ethnic cleansing and that it was carried out in many areas.

    So I do not trust the narrative of either side since both sides claim absolute innocence.

  11. @ honeybee:
    TX’s family are Texican because they arrived in Texas before 1835, A Great-great
    -grandmother was the first European child born in Medina county. If you read the book “Lone Star” you will learn that immigrants came to Texas in order to BE TEXAN!!!!!!!!

    The point is: Nations are invented. Texas was invented – and gloriously so; but it did not start out as an ethnicity.

    Nor did it have a prior currency, history, national existence, etc. It was just gloriously invented.

  12. CuriousAmerican Said:

    I AGREE ISRAEL HAS THE BETTER AND PRIORITY CLAIM.

    the usual bone that CA throws the Jews before offering his true agenda.
    yamit82 Said:

    There were Palestinians in Chile who formed social organizations decades before 1964 called Palestino.

    an isolated fact proving nothing but meant to muddy the waters., Jews also called themselves Palestinians before the modern state ofIsrael.
    CuriousAmerican Said:

    I do not think Palestinian identity can be so easily dismissed. People invent themselves all the time.

    A mental patient may call himself Napoleon but that is no reason to take his claim seriously
    CuriousAmerican Said:

    ISRAEL HAS THE BETTER AND PRIORITY CLAIM, BUT PALESTINIAN IDENTITY WAS NOT INVENTED BY THE PLO IN 1964

    the bone and the propaganda stated together. We all know that the Shoah existed but there are those that have apparently come up with convincing arguments for those who wish to believe differently. Likewise we are all here now familiar with the myth of the “palestinian” identity but that does not prevent CA from submitting spurious claims to the contrary and getting the Jews to waste their time discussing his spurious claims.
    Why does CA choose to believe in the dishonestly created faux palestinian identity?
    Is CA ignorant of the same facts that we are or does he intentionally ignore those facts in order to propagate the Pal narrative? Are we dishonest? Perhaps CA is correct and the Jews are the liars? Perhaps the Jews are mistaken or dishonest?

    Does CA also buy the narrative that the Shoah did not exist or that the numbers were a lot lower?

  13. CuriousAmerican Said:

    , Texicans

    TX’s family are Texican because they arrived in Texas before 1835, A Great-great
    -grandmother was the first European child born in Medina county. If you read the book “Lone Star” you will learn that immigrants came to Texas in order to BE TEXAN!!!!!!!!!

  14. This is NOT an argument over Israel.

    I agree that Israel has a right to exist in the land as a home for the Jewish people. Including in Judea and Samaria.

    But dismissing Palestinian national identification is not valid, either.

    Immigrants to Chile from Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beith Sahour, and Beit Safafa (Eastern side of Jerusalem) set up a soccer team called Palestinos in 1920, and a social club called CLUB PALESTINO in 1938 – and got legal recognition by the British.

    They did NOT call themselves South Syrians.

    Nations do not have to be a distinctive ethnic group. Think about it. How much ethnic difference is there between Canada and the USA.

    Nations INVENT THEMSELVES

    There was a nationalist newspaper called FILASTIN in 1911 in Jaffa.

    Israel has the better claim. But in order for Israel to live, Palestine must die.

    This is a necessary – though not a pretty – transaction.

    This makes people uneasy. Not you Yamit, but others.

    It is much easier to say nobody was there than to admit that a nascent nation had to be aborted.

    But when God told the ancient Israelites to take the land and possess it, He did not say there is no such thing as Canaanite culture or nationality. He said take it anyway.

    Likewise, a Palestinian identity was coalescing just as the Zionists were returning. That cannot be denied.

    ISRAEL STILL HAS THE BETTER CLAIM, but it cannot be denied that Palestine as a nation (in formation) had to die.

    This is what makes the struggle so vicious.

    I have seen videos of Palestinians from the 1930s offerring the Jews a democratic vote in a state of Palestine; but they would not accept that the country be divided.

    There was a sense of nationality.

    EVEN IF ISRAEL HAS THE BETTER CLAIM, it was born by war.

    Egypt did not technically absorb Gaza. Under Nasser, Gaza was still distinct and the Gazans did NOT have Egyptian citizenship. Egypt held it as a care taker.

    Again, Israel has the better right; but it cannot be denied that at the same time Zionism was starting, a sense of Palestinian identity was starting.

    Israel had a right to take the land, but the land was not empty, nor were the people without identity.

  15. CuriousAmerican Said:

    I dare you to tell honeybee that Texans do not exist.

    You called?????????? Mexicans living in Texas before 1835 called themselves Tejanos, not Mexicanos. They saw themselves as “a people set apart”, even before the arrival of Americans and Europeans. Many of these Mexicans were of Shephadic dissent.

  16. bernard ross Said:

    Obviously there is hardly one arab who would have the same perspective as fool Jews like Shavit. This article is correct the position of the left is totally unrealistic now as it was then and the left remains blind as always not knowing the difference between desires and reality.

    The left are endowed with the intellectual pathological disease called Cognitive Egocentrism ( projecting onto others your own beliefs and POV’s)

  17. CuriousAmerican Said:

    Most independence movements start with autonomy.

    Name them, some of them even.

    There is a world of difference between Pan Arabism and the idea of a Caliphate, and narrow Palis nationalism. Again apples and tomatoes and illustrating zero relevance.

    The Palestinian Authority is a charter member of the “Big Lie”

    What does that say about those who readily believe and accept those lies? You accept them because you want to, even need to (theologically).

    Since you have indicated your belief in christian end times myths occuring in the next 20 years may I remind you that were it to occur as you believe and hope for, that you will not be around to see it’s final last act. 😛

    “For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those that shall escape.”
    Yoel 3:5 and Ovadia 1:17.

  18. Ted Belman Said:

    you cannot erase the Palestinians from history.

    It’s the Palis and their christian helpers who are the ones trying to erase Jewish history,and our connection to the land of Israel and ultimately the Jews themselves from the Land of Israel by Big lie & historical revisionism.

    Part of the Palestinians’ success is due to the fact that most people do not know the history of the Land of Israel and of Jerusalem.

    Rewriting the history of the Land of Israel by erasing Jewish history and replacing it with a fabricated Palestinian history is a central goal of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and something that the early generations of Palis leaders, including the notorious Hajj Amin Husseini, who led the Palis Arabs to their 1948 defeat, dared not do. This fictitious history, which ignores all historical documentation and established historical methods, is based on systematic distortions of both ancient and modern history with the aim of denying Israel’s right to exist.

    “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth”. (Orwell 1984)

  19. CuriousAmerican Said:

    People invent themselves all the time. Texans literally invented themselves overnight in the midst of a revolt against Mexico’s Santa Ana in 1835.

    ISRAEL HAS THE BETTER AND PRIORITY CLAIM, BUT PALESTINIAN IDENTITY WAS NOT INVENTED BY THE PLO IN 1964.????
    Palestine is not even an Arabic word and they can’t even pronounce the word correctly as there is no P sound in Arabic.
    There were Palestinians in Chile who formed social organizations decades before 1964 called Palestino.

    ISRAEL STILL HAS THE BETTER CLAIM …. but it is not anti-semitic, nor anti-Israel, to recognize the identity of Israel’s opponents.
    IRRELEVANT MY EX WIFE HAD AN IDENTITY CARD CALLING HER A PALESTINIAN BECAUSE SHE WAS BORN IN MANDATED BRITISH OCCUPATION OF ISRAEL CALLING THE TERRITORY PALESTINE
    Right up until 1776, most Americans were still calling themselves Englishmen.???? Irrelevant!!!! Even a stupid analogy

    Identity with Texas was Geopolitical, not ethnic or specifically racial nor theological. There is absolutely nothing that uniquely endows by definition the concept of a Palestinian ethnic and national distinct people. There has never been any historical Palis state, nor any indigenous political system and institutions. The Land of Israel witnessed many conquerors over the course of its history, but in the last two thousand years since most of the people of Israel went into exile—albeit not without leaving an uninterrupted presence in the land—it was not the home of any indigenous political entity. Not only has there never been a Palis state and a Palis people, but there were no other political entities besides those established by invading forces, such as the crusading statelets or district capitals created by Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs.

    Most of the population now known as Palis descended from migrants originating from the surrounding Arab countries and from local Bedouins. Many migrated in waves from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. Others were imported by the Ottoman Empire and by the British for infrastructure and agricultural projects, or migrated to the region following Zionist economic success, which produced a staggering population growth. Palestinians are perhaps the newest of all peoples, comprising many scattered groups. In fact, in origin they are more Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese, and mainly Bedouin, than Palis.

    Perhaps the most conspicuous fact regarding the novelty of the Palis nation is that when it was within their power, the Arab leaders never seriously sought to create a Palis state during the 1940s, and after the establishment of the State of Israel, from 1948 until 1967, when the West Bank and Gaza were under Egyptian and Jordanian direct rule. Moreover, during that time all Arab leaders referred to the Palis issue as a refugee problem. They did not call for the creation of a Palis state for the Palis nation. Even after the 1967 Six-Day War, United Nations Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967, mentions only “refugees,” not even “Arab refugees”—let alone a Palis people and a Palis state. Calls in earnest for a Palis state did not begin in the United Nations or elsewhere until the late 1960s or the early 1970s.

    Even today, as all Arab states pay lip service to the idea of a Palestinian state, and Palestinian leaders are treated as equals by their Arab counterparts, it is far from clear that a Palis state is a real priority. If the Palis are a people today, they are indeed a new invention. However, do they deserve a state? Establishment of a Palis state would rightly open the floodgates for the creation of numerous states based on both new and old national identities. The Kurds and the Berbers, for example, have lived for centuries in the Middle East. They are distinct and ancient peoples that were not invented in the full light of history, but unfortunately, their existence does not translate automatically into statehood. If it did, such a process of granting statehood to all peoples would begin to unravel the fabric of the modern Arab world. Arab leaders, especially under pressure from the Arab upheavals of 2011 show no enthusiasm for this or anyone else for that matter Obama possibly being the exception.

    It’s evident that Palis political evolution is closely tied to Israel’s territorial and political development in two continuous phases. The first emerged after Israel’s independence in 1948 and differentiated the Palis as a social group of Arab refugees, also called “Palis Arabs,” and lacking obvious cultural, social, or political characteristics that distinguished them from their Arab kin, who largely reviled them. The second phase developed after the 1967 Six-Day War; Palis then became a political group seeking to develop a national identity during the period of global anti-imperial and anti-colonial ferment.

    Arabs calling themselves Palis, as opposed to Arabic-speaking residents, have not been in the area west of the Jordan River from the Islamic occupation, from the Ottoman Empire, or even from British rule since 1917. No Palestinian state has ever existed, and so, no Palestinian people has ever been robbed of its land. There is no language or dialect known as Palestinian; there is no Palestinian culture distinct from that of surrounding Arab ones; and there has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians at any time in history. For these reasons, Palestinians have been driven to fabricate a past by denying and expropriating that of Jews and Israel.identity has been developed and marketed, it is overwhelmingly founded on the negation of its rival, namely Jewish and Israeli identity, rather than on positive attributes or real history.

  20. CuriousAmerican Said:

    A disagreement of opinion is not anti-semitic.

    Quite right but that is not what we have here. Explain what our difference of opinion is here. Bottom line is that I wrote that we are only trying to erase their false narrative, not them themselves. As you well know, we are not trying to erase them. In fact the opposite. We support their economic growth.

    The reason I raised the specter of antisemitism was because you were making claims of wrong doing on our part when you know that such claims cannot be substantiated. Perhaps if you had been more explicit in your criticism you would have had to make the necessary distinctions.

  21. @ Ted Belman:
    . Who is trying to? What was, was. Prior to independence there were Palestinians (Jews) and Arabs. The Palestinians you are referring to didn’t exist prior to the PLO. Before that they had no history for us to erase. We want to erase their false narrative, that’s all.

    It is assertions like this that the “clique” consider antisemitic and probably a lot of other people, too.

    A disagreement of opinion is not anti-semitic.

    I AGREE ISRAEL HAS THE BETTER AND PRIORITY CLAIM.

    But while I agree that Israel has the better claim; I do not think Palestinian identity can be so easily dismissed.

    People invent themselves all the time. Texans literally invented themselves overnight in the midst of a revolt against Mexico’s Santa Ana in 1835.

    Prior to 1835, there was never an independent Texas, a Texan language, a Texan religion, a Texan currency, a Texan capital, a history of Texas, etc. Yet, within six months by dint of one successful battle in 1836, they became a nation until annexed by the USA nine years later. They did not even know what to call themselves: Texans, Texicans, or Texians?

    I dare you to tell honeybee that Texans do not exist.

    ISRAEL HAS THE BETTER AND PRIORITY CLAIM, BUT PALESTINIAN IDENTITY WAS NOT INVENTED BY THE PLO IN 1964.

    There were Palestinians in Chile who formed social organizations decades before 1964 called Palestino.

    ISRAEL STILL HAS THE BETTER CLAIM …. but it is not anti-semitic, nor anti-Israel, to recognize the identity of Israel’s opponents.

    Right up until 1776, most Americans were still calling themselves Englishmen.

  22. @ CuriousAmerican:You are comparing apples to oranges. Prior to the PLO there was never an Arab/Palestinian liberation movement. Any previous Arab rebellion had nothing to do with creating a “Palestinian” state. The Palestinian narrative is all about the latter. The Palestinians were never a people. They were just Arabs and tribally very close to the Syrian Arabs. For the most part they accepted Ottoman rule though the Ottoman’s were not Arabs. Now the Arabs could claim to be a people having a common language and history but the “Palestinians” could not, not having a unique history or unique language. The only reason their is any feelings of nationalism is because their identity has been manufactured. Whatever Arab rebellions you see are due to tribalism and not nationalism.

    The Arab rebellions in the first half of the twentieth century in Palestine were not driven by nationalism but by antisemitism and anti-zionism.

    CuriousAmerican Said:

    you cannot erase the Palestinians from history.

    . Who is trying to? What was, was. Prior to independence there were Palestinians (Jews) and Arabs. The Palestinians you are referring to didn’t exist prior to the PLO. Before that they had no history for us to erase. We want to erase their false narrative, that’s all.

    It is assertions like this that the “clique” consider antisemitic and probably a lot of other people, too.

  23. @ ppksky:
    If the Arabs in the territories of Israel, in its former and current shape actually wanted some sort of share of this territory as an independent state, then there would have been one long before Zionism came along. The Ottoman Empire did not exclude the identification of regions of ethnic identity except where the history confounded Muslim dominance, as with the Armenians.

    Not exactly true.

    The Ottomans tried to crush a Lebanese Christian independence movement; and nearly committed a genocide.

    The Arabs themselves were agitating for a pan-Arab autonomy even before 1914.

    Most independence movements start with autonomy.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Antonius

    Antonius traced Arab nationalism to the reign of Muhammad Ali Pasha in Egypt. He argued that the Arab nation (which consists of racial and cultural-linguistic elements) has been “dormant” for centuries, and that Protestant missionaries from United States had a specific role in the renewal and “awakening” of the Arabic as a national language. He saw the role of the American University of Beirut (originally the Syrian Protestant College) as central to this development, although he notes that later on, by the end of the 19th century, that role has diminished, since the college initiated instruction in English. By then the torch of the movement had been passed to Arab intellectuals (residing in Greater Syria and in Europe) and to Arab officers in the Ottoman army that formed a secret society to ultimately promote Arab nationalist interests.

    There was a major Palestinian Rebellion in 1834

    ISRAEL HAS THE BETTER CLAIM but you cannot erase the Palestinians from history.

  24. This is where Shavit’s own vision is distorted. For him, the only moral solution is one in which both Jews and Arabs are satisfied. Unfortunately there is no such solution. The choice is between a Jewish state and the survival of the Jewish people, or the opposite of that.

    Obviously there is hardly one arab who would have the same perspective as fool Jews like Shavit. This article is correct the position of the left is totally unrealistic now as it was then and the left remains blind as always not knowing the difference between desires and reality.

  25. If the Arabs in the territories of Israel, in its former and current shape actually wanted some sort of share of this territory as an independent state, then there would have been one long before Zionism came along. The Ottoman Empire did not exclude the identification of regions of ethnic identity except where the history confounded Muslim dominance, as with the Armenians.

    The Muslims of Israel do not want an independent state in Israel, they want to eradicate the Jews in Israel and destroy the Jewish state. These are the only foundations of the fake cause of Palestinian nationalism. If Muslims had ever demonstrated anywhere that they were willing and capable of living alongside anyone who was not Muslim, there might be something to negotiate in anyone claiming the cause of Palestinian nationalism.