The tale of Israel as an emergency creation of Jews jumping
out of a burning building, Europe, and landing on the backs of an innocent
people, the Palestinians, has made its rounds. First I heard of it was in
something by Isaac Deutscher, probably in his "The Non-Jewish Jew," where he was
trying, best as he could, to come to terms with the necessity of a Jewish
state. Christopher Hitchens makes use of this parable, with minor modification,
in "Hitch-22."
My version is more problematic: yes, the Jews jumped out of a
burning Europe and landed on the backs of Palestinians who had no part in creating
the inferno. And yes, no question, the Jews continued to beat, belabor and even
evict Palestinians, as happens to this day.
What's missing from that account, though, is that the
Palestinians from the start wanted nothing more than to push the Jews back into
the sea, and have never been able to fully repress that urge.
A piece by Todd Gitlin presents the situation graphically,
by means of maps.
Palestinian maps, the ones Palestinian children are bought
up on, manage not to include a place called Israel; for them the whole place is
labeled Palestine.
Jewish maps, all too many of them, depict an Israel that
extends from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, without reference to a green
line, on the other side of which is a Palestinian territory known as the West
Bank, the basis, should justice someday prevail, for a Palestinian state.
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/196424/the-one-map-solution
a response to this post at the Augean Stables.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theaugeanstables.com/2016/02/21/what-about-jewish-triumphalism-response-to-harvey-blume-and-gitlins-maps/