Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Flogging a Dead Horse: Still Trying to Destroy Israel

The Centre for Muslim States and Societies, School of Social and Cultural Studies at The University of WA, and Australian Friends of Palestine (WA) co-sponsored a lecture at the University of WA on Monday 8th October, entitled “What Future for Israel/Palestine? Future Scenarios and Solutions” by Dr Ghada Karmi (UK).

Ghada Karmi is an honorary research fellow and an assistant lecturer at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter (UK). She is a Palestinian born in Jerusalem, but spent most of her life in Britain, where she studied medicine and initially practised as a physician. The promotional material for the lecture suggested that she “will be exploring the origins of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and describe the current situation. The lecture will also review the various solutions on offer, and propose the one-state solution as the only just, durable and realistic way out of the present impasse.” Regretfully, the speaker’s academic position and pseudo-civilised demeanour turned out to be mere fig leafs for a very shallow presentation, including gross distortions of fact, that was aimed at the destruction of Israel.

The lecture was prefaced by remarks from a local leader of the Friends of Palestine who explained that their organisation was committed to fighting the Palestinian cause through constant repitition of their “story” in the media … He also offered the audience kaeffiyahs and T-shirts for sale…

The speaker was introduced by Sameena Yasmin, Associate Professor, Political Science and International Relations at the School of Social and Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Muslim States and Societies at The University of WA.

The speaker commence her talk by referring to the creation of Israel as a “nakba” (catastrophe) and the Israel-Arab conflict as so prominent on the global stage because of “powerful and vociferous” pro-Israeli forces around the world. She suggested that if the Palestinian Arabs were fighting Chadians or others, instead of Jews, then most of the world wouldn’t really care, but because their “protagonists” (she meant “antagonists”) are Jews, their plight is well known, even in Australia.

In terms of explaining the cause of the conflict, Dr Karmi referred to a “couple of Rabbis” who allegedly travelled to Palestine at the behest of the Zionist Congress at the turn of the century to guage the suitability of that place as the object of Zionist efforts to re-establish a Jewish homeland there. They purportedly reported that “the bride is beautiful, but already married to another man…” This original sin more than 100 years ago, she suggested, is the root cause of all the problems and strife experienced by the Palestinian Arabs since. Not a single word about the possibilty that the Arabs had any responsibilty or in any way contributed to the region’s problems, implying that the whole Arab world is a mere helpless observer of the suffering of their brothers.

When it came to solutions, the speaker opined that two parties are needed in a settlement, and that “Israel is not interested” in settling the conflict. This gross distortion of the actual facts put an end to any hope I may have harboured in hearing a rational, intelligent address on the subject. It is on record, and common knowledge that Israel has accepted, but Arabs have categorically rejected every opportunity to form a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Note the following:

  • In 1937, the Peel Commission proposed the partition of what was left of Palestine (after Transjordan had been formed from 80% of the mandate) and the creation of a Jewish state on a tiny section of the territory around Haifa. The Zionists accepted the plan; the Arabs rejected it.
  • In 1947, the UN would have created an Arab state even larger than the 1949 Armistice line, as part of its partition plan. Zionists accepted, Arabs attacked.
  • At the Rhodes Armistice talks and Lausanne Conference in 1949, Israel offered to return captured land as part of a formal peace agreement. Arab rulers refused.
  • From 1948 to 1967, Israel did not control the West Bank. The Palestinians could have demanded an independent state from the Jordanians, but did not.
  • The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace negotiations offered the Palestinians autonomy, which would almost certainly have led to full independence.
    The Oslo process that began in 1993 was leading toward the creation of a Palestinian state before the Palestinians violated their commitments and scuttled the agreements.
  • In 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to create a Palestinian state, but Yasser Arafat rejected the deal.
  • Today, Hamas continues to reject Israel’s legitimacy and aims to destroy her.

This purportedly academic speaker went on to justify Palestinian violence as legitimate “resistance” and in a (very) thinly-veiled threat of terrorism to her Australian audience, suggested that the violent resistance is now “coming out of the region” to threaten all of us…

In reviewing possible solutions to the conflict, the speaker rejected the globally-accepted two-state solution as non-viable and warned against an alleged conspiracy to ultimately annex the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt. Which finally brought her to her punch line: a one-state solution for all residents of the region. She explained that she envisaged a secular, democratic state, but recognised that others may have “other ideas…”

In the Q&A after the talk, the speaker was asked by a member of the audience whether she wasn’t concerned that once in power, the Arabs would take revenge on the Jews of the region for their decades of alleged crimes against them. Dr Karmi simply shrugged off this possibilty by suggesting that only a “tiny minority” would do that, and in any case, most Jews hated their “brown-skinned Arab neighbours” so they would probably “go back to Europe, and this would solve the problem…”

I prefaced my question to the speaker by explaining that her one-state solution would lead to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, creating a Jewish minority in an Arab state.

What I would have added, if I’d had the time, is that this the grim realities of the challenges to be faced in replacing Israel with a new Palestinian-Arab-ruled state include:
• a stagnant class structure,
• unproductive economic habits,
• an uncurious and increasingly reactionary culture,
• deeply cruel relationships between the sexes and toward gays,
• no notion of an independent judiciary,
• inciting hatred of Jews, USA and the West, and
• a primitive religious mentality that bestows prestige and the promise of sexual rewards in paradise for suicide bombers
…. and no real challenge to any of these actualities is raised in her “solution” which promotes the propaganda and libels of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other irredentist and murderous Palestinian factions.

I also reminded the speaker, and audience,

  • that there had been a minority of almost a million Jews in the 22 Arab nations, 60 years ago,
  • that today a mere handful remain, having been expelled, and that Jews can’t even visit many Arab nations as tourists
  • that, in addition to Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Jordan were all created by Britain and France from lands conquered from the Turkish Empire in World War 1
  • that Jordan was in fact created from 80% of the British Mandate of Palestine, and
  • that the remining 20% was intended to be partitioned into a Jewish and an Arab state.

Which brought me to my question, which, by this time, I had to put over the top of some heckling from a few members of the audience and a “wind-up” from the leader of the Friends of Palestine. I asked: “if all these so-called artificially-created nations, together with some 170 other nations around the world, have a right to self-determination, then why is the one and only Jewish state not entitled to self determination; and why is she prepared to co-exist with Jews ONLY when they are a subjugated minority in an Arab state?"

Her answer was that Jews “may be entitled to a state, not in Israel, but in some other, uninhabited place, if they can get away with it….”.

Steve Lieblich

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