Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Israel as Victim (part 2) . . .

If you blog about the Middle East you are always guaranteed to get at least a few comments by erstwhile readers who are compelled to read anything about the subject. Unfortunately most of these comments are not even worth keeping because they often consist of just rehashing the talking points of the Israeli government and fail to constitute any real analysis. Most of these people are simply historical revisionists who ignore the remarkable acts of violence and terrorism that were involved in the success of Zionist forces in the Middle East. Like the Hollywood film-makers who portrayed the success 19th century as one long massacre of 'peaceful' settlers by crazy 'Indians,' these Israeli revisionists have no interest in the real events and the theft of Palestinian lands. Rather, they are simply eager to portray Israel as victim of a bunch of crazed 'Arabs' while simultaneously ignoring the actual history of militarism and expansionism on the part of the Israeli State. So they will simply divert attention away from actual analysis and the violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by saying "Oh no, we're the victims and everyone is out to get us." But it won't wash.

I, on the other hand, will be glad to discuss the violations of human rights and the militarism on all side but Israeli supporters blindly ignore the militarism of Israel and the long and consistent expansionism of this nation.

At least the Palestinians who use violence will admit that they are actively using violence to pursue their cause.

There will be no peace until Israel as well as Palestinians want peace. But at the moment the Israeli state is as little interested in peace as the most extreme factions of the Palestinians. They hide their real aims behind an image of victim, and being considerably richer and more influential in the powerful Western  nations, the Israelis are writing (or should I say 'rewriting') history.

3 comments:

Pale said...

The commenters...
Have a look at your logs....See if you can identify anything similar in the referring links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_tool

They use it to do the talking points far and wide to make it appear they have more support than they do. :) Kind of smacks of desperation to me...Anyhoo.

Anonymous said...

Just pointing out that Israel isn't a signatory to the NPT.

Also. Israel has demonstrated a willingness to withdraw from conquered land, such as the Sinai.

That doesn't excuse the victim angle. Anytime anyone uses the victim card it's lame.

-Leo

Kirbycairo said...

Thanks for the comment Leo. Yes indeed, Israel is not a signatory to the NPT but its closest ally, the US, would demand any country, signatory or not,stop the development of nuclear weapons if that country was not an ally. The double standard is what is at issue here.

As for the Israeli withdrawal from the Sanai this only strengthens the point that Israel is willing to make deals with other militarist powers (in this case Egypt) to further its goal so the illumination of a the Palestinian people. I am sure they would leave the Golan Heights if Syria was willing to completely abandon the Palestinian cause.

What I really think is at issue here is the simple fact that Israel, like many countries, is a military expansionist power that pretends that it is not. And the right-wing which usually claims to use the standard of `real politik' forgets about such analysis when it comes to such questions.