Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Michael Caplan and "Long War Denial"

Michael Caplan

Pro-Israel Writer, Michael Caplan
{This is a guest post from a crazed Canadian that I tend to see eye-to-eye with. It represents a broad overview, but I like broad overviews. I also did not go anywhere near the editing. I like my contributors to keep their own voice. - ML.}

A (from my perspective) sympathetic, well-informed, articulate, intelligent, proudly Jewish and pro-Zionist professor – one of the panelists in a warm-hearted discussion tonight on "Israeli and Palestinian Narratives" that was predicated on the possibility of communication (and warm-heartedness goes a long way, if not nearly far enough) – spoke, while valiantly trying to address the "flight and expulsion" of Palestinian Arabs in 1948 and 1967, of Israeli responsibility, then added something along the lines of, "I know the Arabs played a part, too."

And that's what I mean about "Long War Denial": in the most positive-minded, interest-group balanced (totally freakin' Canadian) discussion of the issue, with apparently well-intentioned people from "both sides" aiming to listen to each others' narratives (and yes, some of that did happen), what cannot, it seems, even be *spoken* is the very reason for the wars of 1948 and 1967 that resulted in Arab refugees. Israeli aggression is the absolute, unquestioned underlying assumption – even if then "excused" to some degree by a reference to the history of repeated Jewish persecution and the legitimate need for Jewish self-protection.

Now, this is could be understandable from Palestinian civilians who lived through the experience and didn't know the political machinations that were going on, perhaps. And it is understandable for those dedicated to "revisionist" histories like those fabricated by Illan Pappé. But is it in any way reasonable at this point in time, at a gathering with *this* sort of intention, and with the real history readily at hand? (This professor was *clearly* aware of it.)

Israel was attacked, both times, by massed Arab armies from multiple countries, with "Wipe them off the map!" on their minds. There was no other substantive reason for the wars than ethnic cleansing of the grossest type, the supremacist rejection of Jewish sovereignty even in the shared, pluralistic country that Israel sought (largely successfully, especially in such a context) to become.

As I've said in FB posts again and again (and will say, again and again): a bunch of Arab/Islamic supremacist thugs – like their version of the KKK, active collaborators with Nazis, and believing they had God on their side – took total control (not without resistance, thank goodness, yet with much support) of the leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, while coming to dominate the positions of the surrounding Arab world.

Hate assumed the reins of power and it has never released them – launching wars and terroristic operations, indoctrinating Arab populations with propaganda about nefarious Jewish intentions, misleading them with falsified history, manipulating situations on the ground to put Israel into no-win scenarios where, compelled to use force, the resultant suffering of Arabs (actually their own leaders' responsibility) can be used to make Israel and the Jews look criminal in the world's eyes.

More than 70 years of explicitly articulated, continually enacted warfare-by-any-means, motivated entirely by the prejudiced rejection of peace and cooperation, and all that the most "balanced" discussion can produce (from the Jewish, pro-Zionist professor on the panel) is "the Arabs played a part, too".

Long War Denial: today's favourite propaganda weapon of those striving for a more successful Shoah, a really "final solution" to the "Jewish question".

7 comments:

  1. "Took possession of..." as if the 'palestinians' weren't a gaggle of unhinged lunatics in 1920 or 1907 or 1881 or 1856 or 1848 or 1737 or 1653 or 1453 or 1287 or 1199 or 1131 or 1095 or.......

    As if somehow, through a process called 'magic' the Arabs who now call themselves 'palestinians' weren't waging pogroms until one day in 1948 when the Jews finally pushed back?

    Their 'narrative' wasn't coopted by anyone. It was embraced by a western polity that was looking for another reason for them hate and kill Jews.

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  2. "Two-State Solution" = "final solution" because:

    Why Israel’s 1967 Borders are Undefendable:

    www.algemeiner.com/2017/10/27/israel-cannot-withdraw-from-the-west-bank/

    https://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2017/03/guest-post-why-1967-borders-are-suicide.html

    ==========================

    www.algemeiner.com/2018/05/02/a-bleak-view-of-american-jewry/

    ==========================
    Basic Middle East Facts:

    https://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2018/04/basic-middle-east-facts.html

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  3. Perhaps it's better to look at this in terms of triangulation. Israel should announce that anything having to do with these irritating 'palestinians' is off the table unless and until Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Lebanon are sorted first. There is no reason to give up anything strategically if it means giving an inch to Iran &co. If the 'palestinians' want a dialog, which they don't, that's just smoke and bullshit, then tell them to help pressure Iran, Syria and Hezbollah to sign a peace treaty with the Jews. If not, then they can squat in the dust for another hundred years.

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  4. Thanks for publishing this, Michael! And thanks for the responses, Empress and Mr. Cohen.

    Regarding the somewhat conciliatory language (for those used to stronger Zionist stuff): this was written for a fairly mixed audience of Facebook friends, so I intended it to be as diplomatic as possible while saying something that 99% of the West NEVER HEARS. And, on top of that, I'm *Canadian* ... and we're not unfairly known for Niceness.

    As well, it's actually an issue of principle for me, in that my mother was a German Lutheran who spent her early teens going to Hitler Youth camps and her later teens picking bodies and things out of the rubble, but who came here and married a Jew. (And both families - except, apparently one aunt who "was a Nazi until the day she died" according to my mom - got along famously.) So I refuse to condemn an entire people and in fact try to "accentuate the positive", even though I can understand the condemnation.

    Finally, it's pragmatism. It allows people the possibility of going against everything they've been taught and believed about the "Arab/Israeli conflict" without losing face - because one can, if willing, imagine an indoctrinated bunch of "essentially decent people". (After all, as I said, even Germans *can* change. My mom was probably more pro-Israeli than I was, when I was still an indoctrinated lefty going on about "Palestinian suffering".)

    As for a notion like "essential decency," I know that, at a certain point, it just becomes moot. But it is, really, the truth of the situation, even if the indoctrination is as old as Islam, and today, as virulent as the 3rd Reich. I look at those videos of Palestinian children spewing their delusional and genocidal venom about "Jews" and I see the effect of generations of pure brainwashing, of generations spent living under today's true inheritors of the Nazi dream. I wonder what my mom, asked a comparable set of questions, might have said in 1940? Especially if the Reich were *already* a thousand years old...

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    1. And for the record, I'm one of the least crazed people imaginable....

      ;-)

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    2. Michael, thank you for dropping in.

      I appreciate it.

      ... my mother was a German Lutheran who spent her early teens going to Hitler Youth camps and her later teens picking bodies and things out of the rubble...

      I did not know this.

      I know that you have written about your family background, but I did not quite get that your mom was among the Germans picking up after the war.

      In any case, thanks for dropping by our little homestead, here.

      I like what you are doing on Facebook because I think that it takes guts and intelligence to stand against a mob.

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