In Confessions of a Once-Hopeful Leftist, or How ‘Disengagement’ Reveals the True Character of the Proposed Arab State in the West Bank and Gaza , Jared Israel apparently sets out to show the supposed fundamental wrongness of the Palestinian cause or even its basic complaint and, by contrast, the fundamental rightness of the Israeli cause and their actions and policies. His method is essentially to reveal the supposed negative and foreign character of the PLO and, well, that’s about it. Jared seems to believe that if only the PLO can be shown to be rotten, the basic facts of Palestinian displacement and oppression will become questionable or irrelevant to other possible ‘Once-Hopeful Leftists’. But even if this were a reasonable approach, which it is not, there is still the matter of assessing the value of Jared’s attempt.
Jared’s is a very careful argument. He very carefully crafts a narrow, misleading argument, that is. The PLO is revealed as an organization founded by non-Palestinian Arabs. It is also revealed that the intentions of the Arab states are not always pure. Shocking, I know. These things are essentially true, ergo, the Palestinian complaint is corrupt, neither reasonable, nor valid.
He starts off by showing that the Arab League, in the persons of 13 Arab state leaders, founded the PLO in a 1964 meeting in Cairo. He cites the notion, then prevalent, of Pan-Arabism, the idea that all Arabs are one people and should live in one Middle-East-spanning nation, as the motivation for founding the PLO. He cites this as proof that the PLO was a foreign organization with an essentially foreign agenda, not a native Palestinian one. He considers these facts a blow to Palestinian claims of theirs being a just cause. What he fails to consider is that the Palestinian complaint is still valid in spite of the fact that non-Palestinians founded the PLO for non-Palestinian reasons. He also fails to mention the fact that the PLO, following the 1967 war became a relatively independent organization and was effectively no longer the plaything of Pan-Arabists. That is, it became a more Palestinian organization. Not necessarily a perfect organization, whatever that is, or an organization entirely independent of Pan-Arabist or foreign influence, but certainly more independently Palestinian. The Pan-Arabists and the Arab League had seen better days. The Palestinian nationalists were moving on.
His second piece of evidence has, relatedly, to do with the idea the PLO’s definition of Palestine shifts in keeping with the interests or territorial composition of Arab government benefactors. For this he provides one example. A dated one at that. Before the 1967 war, since, as I’ve acknowledged, the PLO was indeed a creature of the Arab League and not so much of the Palestinians, Egyptian and Jordanian territory (Gaza and the West Bank, respectively) were not officially demanded by the PLO. Jared notes that once the war was over and those territories became Israeli occupied, the PLO begins suddenly to demand those territories at least, or in conjunction with the rest of Palestine. This shift Jared implies is evidence of PLO/Palestinian shiftiness. Again, he fails to consider that PLO corruption or imperfection is not an argument against the basic Palestinian complaint: displacement and oppression in their own land. Beside this, a case could be made that although the Arab League PLO was disingenuous in its claims, the new, post-1967 war PLO was simply being more honest in its territorial claims without concern for whether the other Arab states thought those territories should be returned to them.
Jared also cites the translations of supposed Palestinian incitements to murder and mayhem by the U.S.-based, pro-Israeli government organization MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute). He doesn’t evince any recognition that MEMRI’s work is highly suspect and considered essentially to be anti-Palestinian propaganda. As Brian Whitaker wrote in ‘Selective MEMRI’ (The Guardian, 08-12-02), “...the stories selected by Memri for translation follow a familiar pattern: either they reflect badly on the character of Arabs or they in some way further the political agenda of Israel.” Jared notice this, or if he does, he doesn’t care. It also should prove interesting to know that an executive of MEMRI, one Colonel Yigal Carmon, is a former member of Israeli military intelligence, that is, the sort guys who specialize in manipulation and deception. (See this and this, also. )
Jared also wants to forget the fundamentally racist and colonial nature and origin of the Israeli state. He ends by writing “On April 28, 1948, the Haifa (Jewish) Workers’ Council published a declaration calling on Arab workers not to respond to the demand, broadcast by Haj Amin Al-Husseini’s Arab Higher Committee, to leave Haifa. Instead, the Arabs were urged to stay and build Israel for Jews and Muslims alike.”
He fails to recognize that the commendable actions of some Jewish leftist settlers in 1948 were or are hardly typical or indicative of the overall character of the Zionist enterprise, which was always one of terror, murder, aggression and domination. For the Zionist Israeli government, the dream of a non-racist, quasi-anarcho-communalist coexistence was always a nightmare. That Jared cites the dream in defense of Israel is pure horseshit. Palestinian psychos, and there are certainly some, are no argument against the general basic goodness of the Palestinian people and the validity of their basic complaint.
One might also ask, if the ‘disengagement’ (the separation of Arabs and Jews by the evacuation of the Gaza strip) is part of an evil Palestinian Arab agenda, why is it being carried out by the right-wing Israeli government of Ariel Sharon? Jared will likely answer the U.S. government (in league with the evil Arabs, of course). Jared and other Zionist fanatics will likely not tell you that Israel is the biggest recipient, per capita, of U.S. aid (our dollars) of any country, not just in the Middle East, but the entire world. Another fact that may prove interesting in the wake of the huge disaster and emergency in New Orleans and the surrounding region, is that every single Israeli family being evacuated from the Gaza strip, that is, from stolen land, is being gifted by you and me to the tune of $200, 000 - $300, 000 to be relocated. How much do you want to bet the tens of thousands of homeless people in New Orleans and beyond will never receive anything like that?
