everyone hates the jews

[davetlv]

as for the land grab i was referring to the creation of the state of israel.

For me, the above quote says it all. You, as well as some others, still see the creation of the State of Israel as a land grab! This is the same nonsense peddled by factions within Fatah and other Palestinian organisations. The same people that still today show maps of the region without Israel in it.

You are indeed correct, the physical size of the State of Israel has indeed increased since its inception in 1948. The facts that any 'extra' land added after Israel had been drawn into wars not of their making just to guarentee their survival. Spoils of war mate!

1948, 1956 and 1967 were not wars of Israels making, they were attacked by surrounding countries bent on their destruction. The fact that we managed to fight off the aggressors seems to make us the bad guy. Go figure!

BTW I didn't think most of your post was trash . . . just the parts after your apartheid comments!

As for the , well i just think it looks pretty on the screen!

[face]

indeed the idea of zionism disturbs me a little. because weizmann discovered a way to make synthetic acetone, he became friendly with balfour, the foreign secretary of england, who in 1917 promised british support for a national homeland for jews in palestine. balfour actually said that acetone converted him to zionism!

even before weizmann though, look at herzl and "der judenstadt." he was for a national home for all jews, but not necessarily in palestine. many other places were discussed as potential settling locations, even uganda. however, amidst internal struggles and disagreements herzl acted to preserve the zionist movement's unity by agreeing on palestine as the place for their national home.

between the first and second 'aliyahs' in 1897 herzl convened the first zionist conference in basel, switzerland. this was also right at the time of the dreyfus affair in france, which was truly an embarassment. i do understand that 'anti-semitism,' including the pogroms in russia and persecution elsewhere, was rampant in eastern and western europe well before the rise of nazism.

it is true, however, that those who immigrated to ottoman palestine were entering a society that was already populated by a jewish minority, as well as several christian sects, druzes, and muslims among others. ottoman law, through western european influence and pressure, was very lenient and religious minorities were not just tolerated, they were accepted. one only has to look at the 19th century ottoman guild system in bilad al-sham (palestine, syria, lebanon) to see how muslims, jews, and christians coexisted and cooperated.

and yes, i understand the consequences of war and that land was acquired through these wars in which israel was the attacked and not the attacker. i condemn pretty much all of the wars after 1948, and even the 48 war itself, where leaders of other arab countries had jumped into the cause solely for their personal gains and agendas. and you look at sadat who was killed for making peace with israel. but then you have rabin who was killed for almost making peace.

if you read michael b. oren's "six days of war" you will see how badly the other arab nations screwed palestine's chances at statehood and peace. on that note, i would also recommend reading howard m. sachar's "the history of israel from the rise of zionism to our time."

[rubyraks]

guys a very interesting discussion indeed! One I'd love to get involved in but both of you have covered most of my ground

I'll merely make these comments:

1. most people who look at this issue tend to do it through a bias on one side or the other. Problem here is that all too often there have been mistakes, corruption, greed, unnecessary violence, etc. on both sides. Neither of the leaders have ever lived up to their word. The Israeli government had continued to expand settlements at the same time as the Palestinian government had continued to support the intafada (inaction would be the equivalent of support here). And those are just two blatant examples of the deception that has gone on by both sides.

I just feel that if the situation could truly find unbiased moderators (unfortunately most countries have some bias), a solution may be possible. Someone really needs to just call them all out and stop trying to pin the blame on just one side...and I don't just mean the Israelis and Palestinians, but I'm also referring to the US, the European and the neighboring arabic countries biases. It truly has been bilateral actions aimed to provoke that have created the situation and certainly made it worse.

2. face, I had a comment for you and I mean it in no way harshly, but by looking at your list of sources to read I find that they all come from merely one side of the equation. Personally I believe to fully understand a situation you have to make the effort to read from both sides, right and left. I apologize if you have that ground covered but chose not to list any contrasting views.

[face]

you're right: in my first post on this subject the texts i mentioned were all from one 'side' of the conflict in a way. not to say that palestinian academecians all fail to point out faults and weaknesses on the part of palestinians where it is evident, but again the inherent bias is obvious.

my last post mentioned two texts that i think balance it out a bit--the oren text about the 67 war is very critical of outside arab interference, like i said. and the history of israel text, well, is just that; it can be seen as a direct counteragent to the text i mentioned by yezid sayigh (both are about 1000 pages in length too!)...

i also have read many texts by what you might call "pro-israeli" and/or conservative (in terms of politics) authors: the names bernard lewis, daniel pipes (as i mentioned before; check out danielpipes.org), martin kramer all come to mind here.

i also just finished reading this short article by josef joffe in "foreign policy" ( http://foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.p...737&page=0 ). it's interesting to see that perspective, but i have to disagree with alot of what he says.

for a truly insightful 'blog' style site, check out http://www.juancole.com . juan cole is former president of the middle east studies association and teaches middle east and south asian history at the university of michigan. i can't wait until the MESA has its annual convention here at georgetown--not that daniel pipes would ever accept but i'd love to see a heated debate between him and juan cole. once the late edward sa'id and bernard lewis had a steamy debate at the mesa convention, but i was just a young'un back then!

and of course don't forget to check out dennis ross's first-hand account of the 2000 camp david talks, which is in complete contrast to clayton swisher's first-hand account. you may also want to read madeleine albright's memoirs, where she mentions camp david as well. while both ross and albright are former public officials and have the obligation to maintain their "official" story of what happened, you then have clayton swisher (a former body guard of albright's who was also at camp david, and later interviewed hundreds of people involved) who had some wonderfully (almost incriminating) embarassing quotes from albright, who later retracted them and made swisher edit them out of his book...

[rubyraks]

fair enough

and one more point...I tend to find that much of the "history" of that region seems to be dictated by those who are most culpable of creating the situation and I by no means am referring to either the Israelis or Palestianians, but rather to the US and Europeans, as well as the neighboring middle-eastern countries. It's no surprise that there's little self-reflection/criticism in that "history".

[Yao]

Europe and the US have had their hands in a lot of shit when it comes to world politics. Mostly in formerly colonized area's, but they've tried no less (mostly Europe so far) to get into other area's too, like the Middle East.

[face]

yeah like i said, America is new to the region. Britain and France had and still have distinct ways of dealing with their (former) colonies.

as for the US, well, we're just not slick about what we do. a number of agendas or programs come to mind in the region. one of my favorites is our involvement in Iran in the 1950s: after helping to set up the shah's very own CIA-like intelligence apparatus (SAVAK), somehow this guy by the name of Musaddeq (sometimes spelled Mosadegh) was elected president (i think in 1953?) who was about to reverse all the hard work the US had invested in Iran. so, in a classic move, the CIA sends John Foster Dulles and Kermit Roosevelt (yes, they are related) with literally suitcases full of millions in cash to just hand to the public...Musaddeq was eventually given the boot, the Shah regained control and the rest as they say is just history

that one certainly backfired in '79, though, didn't it?

[Yao]

Found this:

There is not much in the NYT article itself that is not covered in my article on the coup (?The 1953 Coup d?Etat in Iran? published in 1987 in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, and available in the Gulf2000 archives) or other sources on the coup. The most interesting new tidbit here is that the CIA?s agents harassed religious leaders and bombed one?s home in order to turn them against Mossadeq. The article does not say, but this was probably done by Iranians working in the BEDAMN network, which is described in my article. There are also some new details on how that US persuaded the shah to agree to the coup, including a statement that Assadollah Rashidian was involved in this effort and that General Schwartzkopf, Sr. played a larger role in this than was previously known. There are also a few details reported in the article that I knew about but chose not to reveal, including that Donald Wilber and Norman Derbyshire developed the original coup plan and that the plan was known as TPAJAX, rather than simply AJAX. (The TP prefix indicated that the operation was to be carried out in Iran.) The NYT article does not say anything about a couple of matters that remain controversial about the coup, including whether Ayatollah Kashani played a role in organizing the crowds and whether the CIA team organized ?fake? Tudeh Party crowds as part of the effort. There may be something on these issues in the 200-page history itself.

Much more important than the NYT article are the two documents appended to the summary document giving operational plans for the coup. These contain a wealth of interesting information. They indicate that the British played a larger?though still subordinate?role in the coup than was previously known, providing part of the financing for it and using their intelligence network (led by the Rashidian brothers) to influence members of the parliament and do other things. The CIA described the coup plan as ?quasi-legal,? referring to the fact that the shah legally dismissed Mossadeq but presumably acknowledging that he did not do so on his own initiative. These documents make clear that the CIA was prepared to go forward with the coup even if the shah opposed it. There is a suggestion that the CIA use counterfeit Iranian currency to somehow show that Mossadeq was ruining the economy, though I?m not sure this was ever done. The documents indicate that Fazlollah Zahedi and his military colleagues were given large sums of money (at least $50,000) before the coup, perhaps to buy their support. Most interestingly, they indicate that various clerical leaders and organizations?whose names are blanked out?were to play a major role in the coup. Finally, the author(s) of the London plan?presumably Wilber and Derbyshire?say some rather nasty things about the Iranians, including that there is a ?recognized incapacity of Iranians to plan or act in a thoroughly logical manner.?

Perhaps the most general conclusion that can be drawn from these documents is that the CIA extensively stage-managed the entire coup, not only carrying it out but also preparing the groundwork for it by subordinating various important Iranian political actors and using propaganda and other instruments to influence public opinion against Mossadeq. This is a point that was made in my article and other published accounts, but it is strongly confirmed in these documents. In my view, this thoroughly refutes the argument that is commonly made in Iranian monarchist exile circles that the coup was a legitimate ?popular uprising? on behalf of the shah.

In reply to Nikki Keddie?s (UCLA) questions about whether the NYT article got the story right, I would say it is impossible to tell until the 200-page document comes out. Nikki?s additional comment that these documents may not be entirely factual but may instead reveal certain biases held by their authors is an important one. Wilber was not in Iran while the coup was occurring, and his account of it can only have been based on his debriefing of Kermit Roosevelt and other participants. Some facts were inevitably lost or misinterpreted in this process, especially since this was a rapidly changing series of events. This being said, I doubt that there will be any major errors in the 200-page history. While Wilber had his biases, he certainly was a competent historian. I can think of no reason he might have wanted to distort this account.

Here are a few other notes. It is my understanding that these documents were given to the NYT well before Secretary Albright?s recent speech, implying that they were not an attempt to upstage or add to the speech by the unnamed ?former official? who provided them to the NYT. I think there is still some reason to hope that the 200-page document will be released with excisions by the NYT. I certainly hope they do so.

Original

[face]

yeah that NS archive looks interesting. and by the way, the Tudeh Party referred to in that article is the Iranian Communist Party, FYI.

if you're interested in further reading, i recommend checking out "the eagle and the lion" (i'm pretty sure that's the title?) by James A. Bill. he was one of my undergraduate professors and one of the leading iran experts in the US--he just retired this year (and i'm missing his retirement dinner!).

can you imagine how embarassing that would be to have dozens of iranian students storm the US embassy in tehran and actually recovering and reconstituting every single classified document that the americans had shredded just minutes before?

real slick! now they make the shredders that cut the paper in two directions!