Note: This was posted accidentally in a first draft earlier this afternoon. By the time I noticed, it had been reacted to. Though I doubt it had been read. I had intended to post it tomorrow. This is a later draft. Further revisions will probably come as well.
While it would be hard to identify the stupidest of the regular commentators at Duncan Black's blog, I will admit that there are those even stupider than Steve Simels, the guy who has seldom allowed a day to go by without lying about or misrepresenting what I've said with Black's obvious, almost always tacit, approval for most days in the past five or so years. But he's stupid enough to be getting on with.
He is repeating his accusation that I'm an anti-semite because I don't believe states have rights. States are artificial entities made by people and imposed by those who assent to the formation of a state on those who don't accept that formation. I think the idea that artificial entities have rights, as opposed to natural beings and human beings is one of the most dangerous of all superstitions. In the formulation of the state I live in it is asserted that all people were endowed by their Creator with rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in that grotesquely inadequate list with which the author of the Declaration of Independence enumerated .
Natural beings, individuals, are the only embodiment of rights, NOT ENTITIES CREATED BY PEOPLE*.
Even the fashionably deistic members of the Constitutional Convention were at a loss to explain any other origins of rights and, also, their wider distribution than the British conception that associated those with monarchy and class. The language of the Constitution asserted equality while the writers and adopters of it, those who pledged their lives, their honor their sacred fortunes to its declarations were dependent on violently keeping slaves and the slaughter and dispossession of other people, many of them living in what were, in fact, other nations who they certainly didn't allow any rights. In the mean time. they enumerated what were later so disastrously termed "rights" to states and to the national government. Such "rights" especially those allowing the keeping of slaves, led to the unprecedented carnage of the American Civil War and the equally appalling Jim Crow period. We are still living with the echos of the original intentions of that document, the sacrifice of individual rights and lives to that vague and dangerous language.
-------
I am only describing the reality of states and why it is extremely dangerous to endow the state with rights, as did the Nazis, the Stalinists, the Maoists, the American Confederates, etc. . That is something I think will always come at the expense of the rights of individuals and, especially, those groups, THE PEOPLE, who the state chooses to oppress and destroy.
That the 20th century atheist regimes, those regimes which attempted most strenuously to put their understanding of science into practice through their various states were notable for the greatest genocides in history, genocides only approached by earlier monarchs and officials who asserted the rights of the state were embodied in their will, would force the idea that the belief that states have rights is an extremely dangerous delusion. That such states, obviously, didn't hold that individuals were equally endowed with rights by their creator is certainly relevant to their character and their behavior. The most extreme current example is probably North Korea, that "workers paradise" the state with probably the largest percentage of hereditary slaves kept under Stalinist confinement in the entire world. If there a metaphysical concept backing the reality of the North Korean government it is the idea that the state has rights that obliterate the rights of people.
--------
That the slogan which makes threats about "driving Israel into the sea" has been used as much by the champions of the state of Israel as by those who enhance their own status by asserting they will do that, is unfortunate but it doesn't endow Israel with any more rights than it does the Palestinian nation. The majority of voters in Israel and its allies, most of all the United States does everything in their power to suppress any national aspiration of the Palestinian people. That, does nothing at all to endow Israel with rights it just means that it has the military might and the backing of the United States to do that. If Israel is to be held to have rights then Palestine has rights, they have the right to not be driven into Egypt or Jordan or into the sea or starved to death in Gaza, as would seem to be, now, long standing Israeli policy.
The future existence of the state of Israel isn't a matter of the state of Israel having rights, it's a matter of it getting along with those people within its borders and outside of those.
The assertion of rights, especially the rights allegedly gained by taking land from people who lived there before the Israeli state occupied it aren't anything that anyone will feel the need to take seriously in perpetuity. I doubt that the present status will hold for much longer.
That "right" has been asserted for most of the 20th century and it is probably accepted by fewer people today than it was the first time it was made. I don't think that number is likely to increase as compared to that of those who don't find the present policy of the Israeli government acceptable.
The extent to which Israel can be expected to continue to exist depends on it allowing the Palestinian people to form their own, independent, contiguous state BECAUSE THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE HAVE ABSOLUTELY AS MUCH RIGHT TO DO THAT AS THOSE WHO FORMED ISRAEL DID. THEY CERTAINLY HAVE AS MUCH OF A RIGHT.
The matter of Israel remaining a state is not a matter of the assertion of superior rights based on the history of the oppression of Jews in Europe. That is something that the Palestinian people had no hand in. The demand that they were the ones who had to pay the price of that is grotesquely unjust. As some pointed out at the time of the creation of Israel, if it were a matter of justice it should have been formed in the European heartland.
That people thought that Palestinians and their cousins in the Middle East would be any more accepting of what happened than they would have in Europe, I think that is due to the same racist assumptions that led Europeans to believe they could forever keep the indigenous populations in their colonies under control due to a belief in their intellectual and moral inferiority.
I will note that when I suggested that a Jewish State would have been more safely established on land donated for that purpose by my own country, the United States -which might barely notice the subtraction - the idea was derided as if the Holocaust had happened here instead of the United States having helped end it. I still say that a Jewish homeland surrounded by the United States would almost certainly have flourished in a state of peace instead of having been in a state of war for its entire history.
But all of that is a moot point, now. That wasn't the path that was taken and the millions of people, ALL OF THEM THE POSSESSORS OF EQUAL RIGHTS, there on the ground in 2016, is the context in which any settlement will have to be attempted.
If it will succeed is unknown but to let the matter remain unsolved because it might fail is only beneficial for the worst of politicians and demagogues. Such are the ones who have benefited the most from the status quo. And the terrorists, they have benefited mightily from this situation. It is one of the ironies of Israeli history that what began in the aspiration of social democrats is ending up the kind of military state that is the inevitable result of being at a state of war for years and decades. I think the Jewish people deserve entirely more than that, as do the Palestinian people and, in fact people of other countries in the area and everywhere. They deserve more because among those rights everyone is endowed with by our Creator are those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
If the most extreme supporters of Israel demand even with all of their dirtiest polemical tactics that the entire world treat Israel as if it were the embodiment of a unique exceptionalism they are deluded. Whether or not they believe that exceptionalism is real, the majority of the world do not and will not ever grant its reality.
The same kind of grotesque and horrible consequences come when that has been asserted by many in United States. The present assertion of it is a warning sign that we are in grave danger of devolving into fascism, It is one of the reasons that we face the prospect of an actual fascist being nominated by one of the two real parties here. Assertions of American exceptionalism have been behind a majority of the worst acts taken by the United States. The concept of manifest destiny is an assertion of the right of the American state to commit genocide. Other assertions of the right of the American state and individual states are some of the forces most destructive of personal rights here and around the world. It is enormously dangerous and it is bound to descend into worse as the majority of the world does not acquiesce to that delusion only to the further rage of the deluded.
And if you think the United States and Israel are the only places that can happen, that the assertion of the rights of states is safely segregated to those two countries, you are deluded. Russia is only one place where that is also a terrible and grave danger. The only safe thing to do is to give up the delusion.
Update: Simels is now telling me to shut up on this topic, one I hadn't planned on writing about this month. If he doesn't like that I have said what I have, he only has himself to blame. I can point out that compared to what Gore Vidal said, I've been entirely even handed on the topic.
* I have commented on the mistake of calling the privileges granted to the press "rights" and how that endangers self-government. The fabled "Founders" sacrificed clarity in favor of rather minor late 18th century poetry a number of times.
Update to the later revision: The idea that a Jewish homeland surrounded by the United States would probably have flourished in peace instead of having been in a perpetual state of war since the late 1940s is being derided. All I can say is that the idea that a Jewish homeland on land taken from the Palestinians, surrounded by them in refugee camps in countries that were hostile to that act and the founding of Israel where it is would eventually flourish in peace is now obviously known to have been a delusion.
I would still be in favor of that offer being made because I think the world would be a much safer place if it happened. I'd love there to be millions of more Jews living on North America. I'd love there to be millions of more Jewish citizens of the United States. For some reason my antagonist hates that idea, whereas he's lived here his entire life. Maybe he just doesn't care for Jews all that much.
Ok, that was said to be provocative. But it's still the truth.
Update 3: Again Mr. Simpey claims that there would be more peril in the establishment of a Jewish Homeland surrounded by the United States than in Palestine. I have to wonder how he could feel secure living in the United States if he's so sure of that. I don't understand why he hasn't fled the lesser NYC area for that land of peace, security and safety, Israel, if he really believes that. Why hasn't he fled this hell hole? Someone once said, "A Zionist is someone who thinks YOU should move to Palestine.
Update 4: Oh, yeah, Simps, that's because everyone knows that all American anti-semites would love to have millions of more Jews as citizens of the United States. I have to admit that I've got a selfish motive, I think if there were millions more Jews in the United States we may never have another Republican president and the prospect of a fascist like Trump or Cruz becoming president would be ever so much more remote.
So, if it's so bad here, why are you securely seated in the NYC area? What a brave guy you are, giving up he safety of Israel for this place of peril.
No comments:
Post a Comment