posted
I picked up a book at the library the other day: How Israel Lost: The Four Questions, by Richard Ben Cramer. To be honest the title made me pick it up. I found it engaging. The author gave examples of inhuman behavior on each side; however, based on my opinions prior to reading it, I would say it was biased toward the Arab side of the struggle.
Everyone should understand that I don’t have a lot of facts about the struggle. My primary data point is this book and a couple of Foreign Affairs articles concerning the “Fence”. My questions here are to gather information, not to promote an opinion or convince others of my opinion.
So my questions for the crowd are these:
1. Does anyone have any significant history reading Ben Cramer on this subject? In this book he is pretty hard on the Israeli government, people, and mindset toward the “conflict”. Is this due to an historical “axe” that he’s grinding?
2. Is the Israeli society as a whole as racist and religiously intolerant as Ben Cramer lead me to believe in this book? One example was a settler being ostracized after the settlement burned down his home. His crime was that he hired Arab stonemasons to build a decorative wall around the house and treated them with human dignity. Another example was that a couple’s marriage was not recognized by the state because of one partner’s religion.
posted
Not having been to Israel, I couldn't tell you.
Of the three Israelies I met while travelling abroad, two were the most obnoxious people you could hope to meet, while the third was downright pleasent.
Being surrounded on all sides by enemies has a tendency to polarize people and make them go on the defensive instinctively.
Are some Israelies rabidly racist? Sure. Does that characterize every last one of them? I doubt it. Every once in a while, you hear about militants in the Israelie settlements that attack Palestinians, although they don't opt for suicide bombers.
posted
Tom Gross Bret Stephens (courtesy of bugmenot.com -- use dontbugme as the login name and bugmenot as the password)
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posted
To your questions: 1. I can't say I know anything about this author in particular, but the media in general has shown a pretty strong historical bias against Israel and I'm sure you could fine plenty of books and articles completely in support of Israel and even its most hardline of policies.
2. I wouldn't be suprised if the first incident happened but that doesn't make it typical. Of course when you're under constant threat of terrorist attack it can tend to make you a little extreme. The second incident must be viewed in consideration that Israel is a Jewish state and is set on preserving that identity. That said I've never before heard of Israel denying inter-religion marriages.
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quote:I can't say I know anything about this author in particular, but the media in general has shown a pretty strong historical bias against Israel and I'm sure you could fine plenty of books and articles completely in support of Israel and even its most hardline of policies.
Actually, that's not true. There was a study done on this in the UK recently that showed that the pro-Israeli perspective is in fact heard more frequently than the pro-Palestinian perspective. Here's the first half of a Guardian article about the study, by Greg Philo:
Television news is the main source of information on the Israel-Palestine conflict for about 80% of the population. Yet the quality of what they see and hear is so confused and partial that it is impossible to have a sensible public debate about the reasons for the conflict or how it might be resolved.
This is the conclusion of exhaustive research by the Glasgow University Media Group, which brought journalists, academics and ordinary viewers together to study the influence of news on public understanding. More than 800 people were interviewed and researchers examined around 200 news programmes. Senior journalists told researchers that they were instructed not to give explanations - the focus was to be on live action. As Paul Adams, the BBC defence correspondent, put it: "It's covered as if it's a very large blood feud and, unless there's a large amount of blood, it's not covered." George Alagiah stressed a belief in the BBC that the attention span of viewers is about 20 seconds.
The result of this approach is that there is almost nothing on the news about the history or origins of the conflict and viewers are extraordinarily confused. Many believed that the Palestinians were occupying the occupied territories or that it was basically a border dispute between two countries who were trying to grab a piece of land which separated them. The great bulk of those we interviewed had no idea where the Palestinian refugees had come from - some suggested Afghanistan, Iraq or Kosovo.
Without history or context, news reports tend to focus on day to day events and, in reporting these, there is a strong emphasis on Israeli perspectives. The research found that Israelis were interviewed or reported more than twice as much as Palestinians. There were also a large number of statements from US politicians who tend to support Israel. They were interviewed twice as much as politicians from Britain.
The language of the "war on terror" is frequently featured and journalists sometimes endorse it in their own speech, as in this example: "That attack [by a Palestinian] only reinforced Israeli determination to drive further into the towns and camps where Palestinians live - ripping up roads around Bethlehem as part of the ongoing fight against terror". (ITV, early evening news in March 2002). This report also illustrates a familiar theme in news coverage whereby the Palestinians are seen to initiate trouble and the Israelis are then presented as "responding".
There are very distinct and different perspectives on this conflict which should be represented on the news. The Israeli authorities and much of the Israeli population see the issue in terms of their security and the survival of the state in the face of threats from terrorists and hostile neighbours. They present their own actions as a retaliation to attacks. The Palestinians see themselves as resisting a brutal military occupation by people who have taken their land, water and homes and who are denying them the possibility of their own state.
The analysis of news content suggests that the first of these perspectives tends to dominate news reporting. Between October and December 2001, for example, on BBC1 and ITV news, Israelis were said to be responding to what had been done to them about six times as often as the Palestinians. This pattern of reporting clearly influenced how some viewers understood the conflict. As one young woman put it: "You always think of the Palestinians as being really aggressive because of the stories you hear on the news ... I always think the Israelis are fighting back."
That's obviously UK-centric, but I don't think that makes it less valid. The study dealt with a number of issues that come up in the media, not just this one in particular, so I wouldn't call its authors biased; they were interested in how events are presented by the media, not in what the actual events were.
As to Rubble's questions, I don't know this author. However, the best thing you can do for yourself when it comes to forming an opinion on the issue, if you're genuinely interested, is to do your homework, and always make sure that every significant factual statement in what you're reading is backed up with references. Check the index of Cramer's book and see if you can find some of his sources yourself. If you can verify what he wrote independently, chances are he wasn't talking out his ass.
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posted
It's true that a Jew and a non-Jew cannot get married to each other in Israel, but that's because Israel is a Jewish state, and is trying to make sure it stays a Jewish state. They do recognize marriages between Jews and non-Jews that were performed in another country.
As for the bias being slanted more towards Israel or the Palistinians.... It depends on where you stand. If you're completely pro-Palestine, than even a semi-neutral report is going to seem biased towards Israel. Same thing for the other way around. And of course, if you believe that the Palistinians should be classified as terrorists, than almost any report that tries to sympathize with the Palistinians will seem biased towards the Palistinians. I really don't think that a biased report about bias in the media can actually provide any useful facts. Bias is rarely something that can be measured, because it comes in so many shapes, sizes, and slants.
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posted
I will concede that in the US, I don't often hear stories about Israelie enthusiasm or have any particularly deep coverage of the Palestinian perspective.
That may be because we have classified Palestinian suicide bombers as terrorists and do not want to give them extra news coverage as incentive? Just speculation on my part.
And while I have been accused of being anti-Israelie or perhaps anti-Semitic, I am not. When you deal with extremists, extreme measures are necessary. But my loyalty lies with the United States and not Israel.
quote: That may be because we have classified Palestinian suicide bombers as terrorists and do not want to give them extra news coverage as incentive?
I hope you're not trying to imply that maybe suicide bombbers shouldn't be classified as terrorists.
My problem is that the world is so quick to condemn suicide attacks and offer condolences to Israel but then just as quickly condemns Israel for taking any retaliatory action.
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quote:Twinky, that's exactly what I mean, the Guardian is incredibly anti-Israel and then of course they're used to show how the media is really not.
The Guardian didn't commission the study and wasn't involved in it unless they were one of the media outlets studied. It's certainly true that they are usually pro-Palestinian, but that doesn't affect the study, which is the point of interest here.
What you won't see is American media outlets carrying this story. It's only because the Guardian leans to the Palestinian side of things that they're willing to report the results of this study, which basically supports their stance since no one else in the UK is willing to take it
Somebody has to present the other side of the issue, and it simply isn't being done.
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quote:My problem is that the world is so quick to condemn suicide attacks and offer condolences to Israel but then just as quickly condemns Israel for taking any retaliatory action.
And why shouldn't they? Quite frankly, I think a suicide bombing and the demolishing of thousands homes are morally equivalent, regardless of which one happened first. Somebody has to be the bigger man here, and it isn't going to be the Palestinians since Israel is constantly destroying their infrastructure; there's no possible way they could set up a workable government. Israel essentially hamstrings the Palestinian Authority at every turn and then complains about it being impotent.
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posted
No worries Newfound, I firmly believe that suicide bombers are terrorists - they wantonly attack civilian targets in an attempt to sway public opinion.
However, it's difficult to provide a "fair and balanced" reporting of the issues if we never hear from the other side.
As for demolishing houses, I fully support the action. It provides real consequences for suicide bombers - they realize while they might be dead and martyred against the "enemy", their families will be held accountable.
If you choose to indulge in extreme measures against the enemy, you cannot cry foul when the enemy takes extreme responses. What's good for the goose, etc.
quote:If you choose to indulge in extreme measures against the enemy, you cannot cry foul when the enemy takes extreme responses. What's good for the goose, etc.
You're making two assumptions: 1) that the Palestinians are a monolithic entity, analogous to the Israeli state, and 2) that home demolitions are a response to suicide bombings.
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quote:Finally, I'd like to point out that being pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian are not mutually exclusive, unless one cause can only be satisfied by the destruction of the other.
Fixed it for you.
edit: corrected the spelling of my fix.
[ July 19, 2004, 04:00 PM: Message edited by: Bob the Lawyer ]
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The only home demolishings that I am aware of were instituted as a punishment directed against the families of suicide bombers.
I'm lumping all groups using suicide bombers under the same banner, deserving of the same harsh retribution.
-Trevor
Edit: It is unfortunate that innocent Palestinians get caught in the crossfire, but I cannot fault the Israelie border patrol stopping an ambulance with a pregnant woman at a border checkpoint because, quite frankly, if I'm willing to employ suicide bombers (great labor, no health benefits required - retirement packages are incredibly simple), I'm certainly not above using a pregnant woman as a diversion to bypass security or even faking a medical emergency to bypass security.
The guards have no choice but to be cautious and wary. Much to the detriment of the legitimately pregnant woman inside.
posted
1) Israel has been demolishing Palestinian homes for decades. This is not a new thing. For example, in the eighties they demolished three towns to build a park called "Canada Park," using donations from the Canadian Jewish community... and they built it in the Occupied Territories, not in Israel proper.
2) It's not just innocents getting caught in the "crossfire." It's the Palestinian Authority, which is essentially impotent (for a number of reasons, one of which is Israel's constant destruction of Palestinian infrastructure; cf. homes).
If you're going to hamstring the body you're negotiating with, and then complain that the other party is not negotiating in good faith, that's pretty hypocritical.
There's plenty of hypocrisy to go around in this conflict. It is not limited to the Palestinians.
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quote: Somebody has to be the bigger man here, and it isn't going to be the Palestinians...
Because it would take "a really big man" to just not encourage terrorism... You know, really big men like Queria and Arafat.
Honestly I've never heard of Israel demolishing homes for reasons other than terrorism but even if they did the Palestinians must learn to stop responding with violence. If their cause truly is just they should start taking a page from Ghandi and Martin Luther King.
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posted
Would a marriage between a Jew and a Muslim be more welcomed in an Islamic state?
People who say sh** don't frighten me. They just make me wrinkle my nose and go for the scroll button.
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quote:Because it would take "a really big man" to just not encourage terrorism...
Would their lack of encouragement stop it? Not a chance. They have no real control over the various factions that the Palestinians are divided into. If they tried to put an end to Palestinian terror there would be a bloody civil war. Israel has a state. It is, in that respect, a monolithic entity. Therefore it can act in a unified manner, something the Palestinians cannot do, especially if Israel constantly destroys their infrastructure, as they have been doing for decades. Israel is also the occupying power. It is therefore incumbent upon Israel to be the proverbial bigger man -- otherwise, no progress will be made.
quote:Honestly I've never heard of Israel demolishing homes for reasons other than terrorism but even if they did the Palestinians must learn to stop responding with violence. If their cause truly is just they should start taking a page from Ghandi and Martin Luther King.
Israel has been demolishing Palestinian homes since 1948. There were lulls and swells over the decades, obviously, but the IDF has been destroying Palestinian homes and property since its inception.
As to peaceful resistance and other avenues, Arafat appeared before the UN in 1973, seeking resolution to the conflict. What has happened since then? Nothing. What did the first intifada of the 80s accomplish? That was relatively peaceful; mostly kids throwing stones and molotov cocktails, a veritable olive branch compared to what's going on now. What came out of that? Oslo, which never went anywhere after Rabin was assassinated. Then stagnation for the better part of a decade while settlement construction in the West Bank continued apace, and finally we're back to violence again, this time worse than ever before.
They've tried everything else and nothing has worked. Entire generations have lived under occupation now.
quote:If Arafat cannot control the attacks made by other groups, then he has no leadership with which to negotiate.
How, exactly, are the Palestinians supposed to set up a government that has any sort of power or control over anything when Israel constantly hamstrings the one they have now? Sure, I'm not a great fan of Arafat or the PA (but Arafat in particular; he's corrupt and has been practically worthless as a leader for decades now).
For me, the bottom line is that if you want to form a meaningful opinion on this particular subject, you absolutely have to do your homework. The history of the region goes back thousands of years, through numerous wars, invasions, and occupations even before the colonial powers divided things up after World War I and essentially kickstarted the whole mess (one of the major reasons that Iraq is such a disaster, for instance, is that its border was drawn up by the colonial powers with no regard for religious and ethnic lines).
My basic problem, and the reason I see no solution to the conflict, is that Israel and the Palestinian extremists constantly goad each other. Some kid blows himself up on a bus in West Jerusalem; Israel demolishes a few hundred homes and continues work on its wall; lather, rinse repeat. Somebody has to stop first, and because the Palestinians don't have a cohesive voice or a government that can exercise any real power, it really can't be them. It can be Israel, because Israel has the ability to act as a single entity, but I don't expect Israel to unilaterally cease fire; as such I don't see a solution to the conflict.
Pretty sad, all things considered. It really is a very special and beautiful place.
Edit:
This thread has strayed pretty far from its original topic, and nobody has been able to answer the original questions. So now that I've given my view as cohesively and coherently as I think I can, I believe I'm done with this thread.
quote:It's not bull****. I personally people who have been refused entry to or or were detained in Saudia Arabia, Syria, and UAE on suspicions that they were Jewish or that they had been to Israel in the past.
Gee, aren't you special? I know of Jews and Christians who live in Jordan. I guess your blanket statement really is the bull**** I called it from the first.
posted
If Arafat is as useless and as corrupt as you say, why shouldn't the Israelies continue to strike back in a manner that has kept their country intact over repeated invasions?
As long as Arafat is alive, he will remain as the figurehead which in turn hamstrings the Palestinians' own efforts. Until or unless the Palestinians can deal with one effective leadership, you are absolutely correct - no progress towards peace will ever be reached. But I will also submit that just like the IRA, once these groups are formed, they prove unwilling to fade away.
With that said, yes - the Israelies could be the bigger man. But sometimes turning the other cheek just means the other fellow can hit you harder the second time.
And since you're leaving this thread, later Twinky.
That was when he didn't even bother to pretend that he wasn't a terrorist.
quote: What did the first intifada of the 80s accomplish? That was relatively peaceful; mostly kids throwing stones and molotov cocktails, a veritable olive branch compared to what's going on now. What came out of that?
You really don't get it do you? Violence is not reacted well to by the Israelis.
quote: Oslo, which never went anywhere after Rabin was assassinated
It never went anywhere ever.
quote: They've tried everything else and nothing has worked. Entire generations have lived under occupation now.
They haven't tried suppressing the terrorists nor following up on their word which obviously means nothing to them. No generations would have ever lived under "occupation" if the Palestinians would have just accepted the original UN proposal. Furthermore, maybe you should start referring to the occupation by Jordan and the general treatment of Palestinians by other Arab nations if you're talking about generations.
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quote:Why can't you argue using facts instead of obscenities and sarcasm?
Why can't you read? I said they live in Jordan. Live. They are not visiting. Your hyperbole is tiresome and your rhetoric based on untruth.
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quote:because when Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians everything they're asking for now, they responded by starting the second intifada.
I'm not going to argue any of your points -- there's nothing to be gained from that. I will, however, ask you to look at a map of the proposed Palestinian territory that Barak offered (look, not glance). After doing so, if you remember, tell me what you saw. I'd be interested to hear what you saw and what it made you think.
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Thanks to you as well. Somehow I managed to miss your links when I read the response posts. I think I decided to come back to them after reading the entire thread but forgot after getting to the end.
I don't know if you read the articles or just linked them. The Stephens article was particularly good with respect to my question of authenticity because it showed a significant deviation from factual discourse by Cramer. One of my significant concerns after reading the book was that my knowledge of the history was not good enough to catch this sort of factual error. So, it was important to me to see these errors pointed out.
Thanks again.
p.s. Congrats on being a star in Mooselet's story!
posted
Justa, what are you trying to prove? That the Muslim countries have never been guilty of ethnic cleansing and have always treated Jews fairly?
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posted
You're welcome. I did read the articles -- in fact, I believe I had read one of them previously. However, since all I know of the book and author is what I read there, I figured it made more sense to link there, rather than give my second-hand take of someone else's review. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Justa, what are you trying to prove? That the Muslim countries have never been guilty of ethnic cleansing and have always treated Jews fairly?
Where the heck did you pull that from? He said that they don't allow such citizens now in a sweeping, generalized statement, and I told him I know citizens now, which makes him a liar. So, unless he has some documented proof that isn't just another Muslim-hatin' site to quantify his BS, it remains BS. Some nations over there, like Syria and Saudi Arabia, are as he described. Others are not.
Ethnic cleansing is never right. Neither is mass-relocation. Neither is discrimination (despite claims to the contrary here, it happens often).
Instead, people are drawing lines on both sides of the issue, claiming the other is totally wrong while theirs is totally right. It's stupid and worthless to take part in. Twinky had the right idea.
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quote:First of all, there's difference between being a liar and being mistaken. I don't think he was either in that argument but if you disagree with him I think you'd be better off telling him he was mistaken and not a liar.
You don't think he was either, even though he stated that nations in the Middle East outside of Isreal don't allow Jews, and I pointed out that I knew people who lived in a Middle Eastern nation outside of Isreal? You have an interesting outlook on reality.
quote:If "others" refer to Jordan, Jordan definetly has commited ethnic cleansing and other crimes against Jews in the past, such as in 1948 when all Jews were forced to leave Jordan.
You know, "in the past" is all well and good, but in the present, things have passed. The United States has had a horrible record for treating non-whites "in the past," but I think you would be hard pressed to argue that the US is hostile toward all non-whites today.
Considering some of the people I know personally live in Jordan, I think that you're going to "find a link" outside of more of the same anti-Mid-East rhetoric that says so. The real world is often much different than the extremist rhetoric that gets spouted, most especially on the internet.
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