-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.antiwar.com/mcconnell/mc011502.html
http://www.frontpagemag.com/horowitzsnotepad/2002/hn01-11-02.htm
(5000 word polemic)
}}}>Begin
Ground Zero
by Scott McConnell
Antiwar.com
January 15, 2002
An Open Letter to David Horowitz on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Dear David,
I read with great interest your 5000-word polemic on the Israeli-
Palestinian issue both because I have long been an admirer of your
rhetorical abilities and analytical fearlessness and because it is
quite effective for drawing readers towards your point of view. I
don't agree with a good deal of it, but hope something positive can
come from a candid exchange of opinions.
I admit to some worries that such an exchange might not be possible.
I've found in the past several months that when one disagrees with
one's Jewish friends about Israel, one risks losing those friends. I
would add that few things in my political and journalistic experience
have been more personally dispiriting.
Not long ago, I had, in the course of a long and wine-filled dinner,
a spirited argument about Israel and the Mid East with a Jewish
colleague from the NY Press. I commented afterwards that this "Jewish-
Christian debate," so rare in New York, had been quite refreshing.
He agreed, saying the problem was that there were generally "not
enough Christians" to carry their end.
Odd as it might seem, he was right: most American Christians who have given some
thought to the issues involved have views similar to mine � but given the rank
hostility their expression can provoke from Jewish friends an
d colleagues, have learned to simply keep their opinions to themselves. In so doing
they do a disservice both to their friends, and to their own interests as citizens. I
am not inclined to follow their example.
At the outset of your piece you write (correctly) that Zionism is the national
liberation movement of the Jews, and then remark how curious it is that Zionism is
opposed both by some leftists who typically back all nation
al liberation movements and by some conservatives who are habitually hostile to left
wing guerrilla organizations like the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Your point
is to account for such opposition to Israel by lin
king it the long history of European anti-Semitism, whose consequences made the quest
for a Jewish national state seem necessary.
I don't disagree with this general point, but in making it you cite Patrick Buchanan
as an example of a conservative supporter of a left wing Palestinian national
liberation movement "aimed at the Jews" and thus expressin
g "unique opposition to the Jewish homeland."
This is an error, and forgive me if I sound for a moment like the Buchanan campaign
staffer I once was in correcting it. While Patrick Buchanan has made hundreds and
possibly thousands of on-the- record statements about I
srael, has published countless columns and discussed Israel and the Palestinians in
several books and speeches, he never has "opposed a Jewish homeland."
By contrast, he has opposed certain policies carried out by the Jewish homeland �
including those that involve the suppression of the prospect for a Palestinian
homeland. But to conflate, as your sentences do, opposition
to Israel's maintaining control over the lands and peoples it conquered in 1967 (in a
war for whose outbreak the Arab leaders bear most of the blame) with "opposition to a
Jewish homeland" is not a fair accounting of Buch
anan's position � which is quite explicit in its support for Israel in its pre-1967
boundaries. Nor does it fairly summarize the views of millions of others, in America
and around the globe, who see no better solution to
the Palestine problem than two states, side by side, one for the Palestinians and one
for the Israelis � with the latter's boundaries conforming to the spirit if not the
precise lines of pre-1967 Israel.
There is another, more conceptually ambitious, thread to your piece: the argument that
the Palestinians, unlike the Jews, have no solid national claim to land their fathers
and forefathers lived on before the Zionist ente
rprise began.
To this end, you argue that that the Palestinians never had an independent national
existence for the arriving Zionist Jews to suppress, and therefore are not entitled to
one now. They were, you write "largely nomads who
had no distinctive language or culture to separate them from other Arabs . . . the
idea of a Palestinian nation did not even exist . . . [in 1950] they did not attempt
to create a state of their own . . ." and so on. You
probably overstate the case � there clearly was agriculture and commercial life in
Arab Palestine before the Zionists arrived.
But you are right to say there was no Palestinian nationalism at the time of the
Balfour Declaration. Furthermore, that Palestinian "nationalism" which had come into
existence a generation later, by the time of the UN par
tition plan, was not nearly so politically developed as Zionism. Another way to say
this is that Jewish nationalism was derived from (and a response to) the European
nationalism of the 19th century; Arab nationalism (incl
uding Palestinian nationalism) arrived one or two or even three generations later, as
part of the wave of Afro-Asian nationalism born after World War I.
At every stage in the confrontation between the original Zionist settlers and the
Palestinian Arabs, the consequences of this Zionist head start were manifest. The
Zionists had leaders (of every ideological stripe) with a
clear sense of the Jewish national mission; the Palestinians were represented by
local "notables" who reigned over a semi-feudal system. A typical Palestinian Arab in
the years before 1948 might have had a sense of his o
wn village and those in the next valley, he did not think of "the Palestinian people."
The Zionist settlers, by contrast, were among the most sophisticated and nationally
conscious people the world had ever seen. The Jews were all literate, many
Palestinians, not; the Jews could understand the necessity of
training and arming all their available men (and many women); the Palestinians' armed
resistance was by comparison haphazard and formless. The Zionists could tax their
entire community (in Israel and, in a way, in the Dia
spora) to subsidize the building an army and of a new state; the Palestinians were
unable to do so. The Jews had leaders who could move effectively in corridors of world
power; the Palestinians were geographically remote
from key decision-makers and feeble in their ability to estimate accurately the
political situation they faced.
It is not too much to say that it took establishment of Israel and the experience of
Israeli rule on the land occupied in 1967 to give birth to a genuine Palestinian
nationalism and spur the Palestinians to embark on the
long course of trying to catch up. Of course if the Palestinians had been as
nationally self-conscious as the Jews from the outset, Zionism would never have
fulfilled its ambitions, at least not in Palestine.
But it has never been customary for the United States to recognize as legitimate only
those national movements that arrived first. Nor does the important fact of earlier
political development grant the more advanced peopl
e a moral right to perpetual domination. The fact of Irish ancestry may have rendered
me (actually of mixed Anglo-Irish descent) somewhat more conscious of how this can
work. For hundreds of years, the British who ruled I
reland were better organized, more literate, more technologically advanced, more adept
at the mobilization of men and resources, in short more powerful. The phrases they
used to describe the Irish were seldom more generou
s than those you use to describe the Palestinians. Many intelligent Englishmen could
not imagine decent Irish self- government . . . ever, nor conceive of the development
of a political entity which might allow the Irish
to look the English in the eye as equals.
Yet history has almost finished making that turn in the Irish Republic and Northern
Ireland, and (however the remaining embers of that conflict are ultimately disposed
of) has provided a striking example of how comparativ
e latecomers to modernity and nationalism can narrow gaps in national development that
once seemed completely unbridgeable.
You make an important point about the UN partition plan which created the legal basis
for Israel's establishment: had the Arabs accepted it, there would be no Middle East
conflict. I certainly concur that the Arabs would
have been better off if they had agreed to partition, instead of initiating wars they
were not prepared to fight. But I'm not sure that their acceptance would have put an
end to the conflict.
As you know, from the time of the state's very founding, there have been important
Israelis (and not only in the Likud Party) who aspired to expand Israel to what they
called its "natural borders," who wished to ethnicall
y cleanse the Palestinians whose lands they coveted. ("Transfer" was the preferred
euphemism.) Diplomatic necessity prevented the Israelis who thought this (including
Ben Gurion, for instance) to restrain themselves but I
am not sure that Arab acquiescence to the original partition agreement would have
satisfied the Zionists who had long dreamed of the lands of Biblical Judea and Samaria.
You yourself seem relieved that that the Palestinians did not accept their half a loaf
in a timely manner, devoting several paragraphs in support of the notion that Jordan
is the logical place for a Palestinian state anyw
ay. Sharon is known to share this notion of "resolving" the Palestinian problem, which
would be acceptable neither to the Palestinians nor Jordanians.
You state that the Palestinians who didn't flee in 1948 and remained in what is now
Israel have more political rights than any Arabs in the Arab world. This too is not an
insignificant point � just as it was not insignifi
cant when Senators from the segregationist South argued that American blacks had far
more rights, and were far more prosperous, than blacks in Africa. But the yearning for
political self- determination (or equal civil rig
hts) has become a nearly universal political drive � whose claims any political
realist has to acknowledge. I can think of no instance in which it has been trumped by
the allure of exercising circumscribed minority rights
in an alien and hostile polity.
When your essay reaches the Oslo period, I sense some uncertainty creep into your
argument, as if you yourself are not sure whether you are disappointed, relieved, or
ecstatic at the apparent breakdown of the peace proces
s. If, like Ariel Sharon, you believe the "Palestinian homeland" is "Jordan" � then of
course you would be delighted at the failure of Oslo, and can look forward to further
Israeli measures to demolish homes and drive the
Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
But something tells me you aren't completely comfortable there. You are of course on
strong grounds when you decry the Palestinian Authority's failure to more effectively
prepare the Palestinian people under its jurisdict
ion for peace. But your treatment is one-dimensional: there were years during Oslo
when the PA's behavior was quite responsible, when its suppression of those
Palestinian elements that rejected Oslo and any peace arrangem
ent were sincere and forceful. The PA's behavior seemed to correlate with the actual
state of the peace process � the Palestinians acted responsibly prior to Rabin's
assassination, far less so after Netanyahu succeeded hi
m and began to stall and delay full implementation of the agreement.
Remarkably, in such a long essay, you fail to mention even once the word "settlements"
� though of course you must know that the settlements are the main locus of tension
between the occupying forces and the Palestinians
on the West Bank and Gaza. In political terms, the settlements are "facts" by which
the Israelis say to the Palestinians: We have power here in your home and you do not.
We control your water supply and your movements; we
build roads that are for our use only, while choking yours with military checkpoints.
You will never establish full sovereignty over this, your ancestral land.
I'm sure, David, that there is much in Arab political culture which is irrational,
inured to the spirit of generous compromise, and even hateful, but I can think of few
peoples in the world which would accept such treatme
nt without resisting. And as you know, during the Oslo peace process, which was
supposed to lead to the creation of a Palestinian state, the Israelis increased the
number of settlements, and all the access roads and check
points which go with them, by roughly one-third. This did much to sour the peace
process, and stands in my mind in a sort of rough moral equivalence to the
anti-Zionist propaganda taught in Palestinian schools which you q
uite rightly despise.
Your largest point is that the Palestinian national grievance is "a self-inflicted
wound." Perhaps you mean that the Palestinians did not have leaders with the
intelligence and foresight to recognize that Zionism was the
greater force � there to stay � and make a timely accommodation with it. This is
undeniable � the Palestinians waited far too long to recognize Israel and give up the
idea that other Arab armies, or even they themselves,
would destroy the Jewish state.
But that doesn't mean the grievances of the present Palestinian people are not
legitimate. When Palestinian children are shot for sport by Israeli marksmen (New York
Times correspondent Christopher Hedges describes this u
gly enterprise in the September Harper's) or Israeli special forces leave booby
trapped bombs on the pathways outside Palestinian elementary schools (as happened last
month) these actions create grievances as compelling a
nd legitimate as those felt by the Jewish victims of suicide bombers in Haifa or
Jerusalem.
When Palestinian women are forced to give birth in ditches because Israeli checkpoints
make it impossible to reach the hospital, that is not a manufactured grievance but a
real one.
I of course agree with you that the Palestinians erred grievously in failing to make a
realistic counterproposal to Barak's offer at Camp David; and that the Palestinian bid
for "right of return" for their refugees to pre
-1967 Israel is a complete nonstarter. I have heard sophisticated and politically
active Palestinians make these same points. I was glad to see that Arafat's latest
appointment as the PLO's political representative to Jer
usalem, Sari Nusseibeh, has said much the same thing. His appointment I think belies
your contention that no Palestinian leaders acknowledge Israel's ties to the Holy Land.
There were several spots in your essay where I thought your summaries or brief
quotations didn't convey the full sense of the facts � your depiction of the Mitchell
Commission report as exonerating Sharon's behavior when
he marched with 1000 troops up the Temple Mount/Holy Sanctuary is one such instance.
But since you cover so much ground so artfully, I will spare you arguments that might
seem like nitpicking.
But I don't want to leave you without asking one major question: how you think
American interests would be served by adoption of the policies implicit in your
argument? You paint the Palestinian national movement as a fra
ud and the effort to build a state in the occupied territories as a nonstarter, and
suggest the Palestinians "try Jordan" if they want a state of their own. Though this
is not an uncommon view on the Israeli Right, it is
generally kept under wraps because sophisticated Israelis understand how poorly it
plays with international audiences.
So, again, what are the American interests in this situation? Of course you recognize
that Israel's day- to-day suppression of the Palestinians is now covered by television
throughout much of the Muslim world, and for num
erous reasons (in part surely to deflect popular attention from the shortcomings of
Arab governments) the Arab-Israeli conflict has become the emotional center of Arab
politics. Though Israel might well be able to dominat
e the Palestinians without American weaponry, financial assistance, and diplomatic
support in the UN and elsewhere, the fact that it is generously supplied with all
three makes that domination easier.
The Arabs know this. Arab leaders who are friendly to the US had been warning
Washington with increasing urgency of the explosive feelings the unresolved
Palestinian problem was generating among their own people. Last Sep
tember 11, Americans got a bitter taste of the consequences. Not because the bin Laden
crew was directly linked to the Palestine problem, but because the widespread anti-
Americanism in the Arab world which provides, as i
t were, the sea in which Al Qaeda's fish can spawn and swim, is inexorably linked to
Israel's unrelenting domination of the Palestinians.
In short, Israel's efforts to deny the Palestinians a homeland on the territory which
the United Nations allocated for that purpose poses a problem for the United States,
for the way Americans are perceived and treated in
the world. Washington is rightly committed to Israel's security, and if a peace
settlement gave Israel recognized borders, I would support guarantees to protect those
borders � not that Israel, with its extremely compete
nt military and advanced weaponry, would have any trouble defeating any conventional
assault. (The potential long-term security threat to Israel from ballistic missiles
containing non-conventional weapons is hardly attenu
ated by Israel's domination of the West Bank and Gaza.)
But as Israel's sole and generous patron, the United States risks the unleashing
against its own citizenry of the anger felt by the Palestinians (and spilling into the
rest of the Arab world) over their continued national
dispossession. Indeed, that anger has already been unleashed. Even if � as you argue
� it was the Palestinians' own fault that they lost their homeland, or that they have
no legitimate claim to any of the territory alloc
ated them by the United Nations partition of the Palestinian mandate � why would it be
in America's diplomatic and strategic interests to endorse such arguments, considered
completely ridiculous in most of the world?
A relevant analogy here might be the civil rights movement and the Cold War: many
American southerners argued that American blacks were better off than those in African
countries, and there were sound reasons why they sho
uld attend separate schools or be denied the same rights as white people. But even if
such arguments had been right (they were not), there were far more compelling global
reasons during the Cold War 1950s and 1960s that m
ade it imperative for the United States to end segregation.
Similarly, at a moment when the United States, facing a long and treacherous struggle
against a ruthless terrorist enemy, must wage a focused and successful campaign for
the hearts and minds of a billion people in the Ara
b and Muslim world, why should it continue to subsidize an Israeli occupation which
undermines everything else it is seeking to accomplish?
David, I hope you know this letter is written in a spirit of friendly, even comradely,
disagreement, and that it comes from someone who has plenty of appreciation for
everything you have done since you came out as a "Left
y for Reagan" seventeen years ago, and who was an avid Ramparts reader a dozen years
before that.
Best wishes, Scott McConnell
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