Taking the Mick out of Davis

If I were a rich man,

Yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum.

All day long I'd biddy biddy bum.

If I were a wealthy man.  […]

And it won't make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong.

When you're rich, they think you really know!

An absolute giant of Yiddish literature, Sholem Aleichem populated his stories with all the colourful characters of the Eastern European shtetl.  And one of the most convincing is the ‘gvir’: the rich Jew; the parvenu, the village boss who mistakes subservience for respect and trades ‘charity’ for influence and power.

The Jewish shtetl is a thing of the (nostalgic) past; not so the gvir; that tragi-comic character, it seems, still struts around: among us, but not quite one of us.

*** 

Sir Mick Davis is a very rich man.  He made his money in mining (coal, metals, petroleum); but don’t picture him in a hard hat with black on his nose – I suspect that he mines primarily from the comfort of a well-upholstered, directorial armchair.  And I guess he’s put that money to good use: he is an important donor to the Conservative Party (Labour also likes money; but it doesn’t like Jews – let alone rich ones!)  Davis served as Treasurer and – until recently – Chief Executive of the Tory Party.

I know, I know… a miner called Davis… what a cliché!  But no: Sir Mick ‘the Miner’ isn’t Welsh – he’s Jewish.  So, naturally, he also took an interest in the affairs of British Jewry: in 2009, he became Chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council.  How, you’re asking?  Well… previously, the JLC had been led by an elected official: the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.  It looks like Mr. Davis took advantage of a change of guard at the helm of the Board to shoulder aside the new President.  Or (to use the far more delicate language employed by the Jewish Chronicle)

he grasped the reins of its [the JLC’s] executive.

The newspaper commented – perhaps with a hint of irony – that this

may not have been exactly a palace coup but it showed who was boss in town.

Didn't it just!  I should warn you here: irony plays a big role in this story; where are you, Sholem Aleichem, when we most need you?

Mr. Davis first courted controversy in 2010, when he opined (in English and in public) that Israel ‘could become’ an apartheid state.  Some may see quite a bit of irony in that: Mick Davis was born and lived his formative years in Apartheid South Africa.  And… I might be wrong here, but I’ve never seen his name listed among the many South-African Jews who actively fought that appalling regime; unless, that is, one considers immigrating from South Africa to the UK as a brave act of social protest.  If indeed young Mr. Davis omitted to valiantly combat the apartheid in his home country, it must’ve been just a matter of  perspective: it seems it’s easier to recognise (and, consequently, criticise) potential apartheids that ‘may occur’ thousands of miles away; it’s not always easy to spot an actual apartheid operating under one’s very nose.

Mr. Davis’s comments on Israel’s putative apartheid-hood so outraged many in the British Jewish community that a petition was written demanding his resignation from public community positions.  But it was quickly withdrawn, when Sir Mick threatened to let the whole weight of his… err… indignation bear – by threatening to deploy his heavy legal artillery against the poor... err... much less indignant petitioner!  Not, God forbid, that Mr. Davis believes that freedom of speech is for him, but not for others; no, it’s just that, apparently, the petition had ‘misrepresented his positions’…

More recently, Sir Mick has once again become the talk of the (virtual) shtetl: in the cover-page article of the (almost bankrupted, but fortunately freshly resuscitated) Jewish News, he accused “Israeli politics” of “violat[ing] values of the Diaspora”.

I find the article full of (unintended) irony.  So let me read it to you with a running commentary.

Says Sir Mick:

Israel remains surrounded by hostility but its emerging existential threats come from within.

Now, when he’s right – he’s right: the Jewish state is indeed surrounded by enemies: there’s for instance Iran (80 times larger than Israel in area, 9 times in population, 5 times in economic output), whose Holocaust-denying leaders call for Israel’s blood every day – and twice on Saturday.  Leaving aside its nuclear ambitions, Iran has a large, strong and well-equipped military, which is currently busy entrenching itself in Syria, as close as it dares to Israel’s borders.  Another of those borders precariously separates Israel from an Iranian ally: Hezbollah – and its 100,000+ rockets.  To the south, there’s Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad; i.e., tens of thousands of rockets and mortar rounds, some capable of reaching targets hundreds of miles away.  In Sinai (a territory 3 times larger than Israel, which the Jewish state once controlled but ceded in return for peace and security) lurks a very active branch of the Islamic State.  You know – those nice people who’ve recently beheaded, crucified and burned a broad swath of blood and tears through Syria and Iraq.  And that’s before one thinks of threats that currently seem – for whatever that’s worth in the Middle East – less imminent: such as a certain manic dictator with neo-Ottoman ambitions.

Yet Sir Mick has decreed that these are not really existential threats.  ‘The problem’, he seems to preach to those Israelis who face the rockets, the bullets and the knives, ‘the problem is not that they want to kill you.  No, let me tell you what the real problem is: it’s your own suicidal tendencies!’ 

Now, Mick Davis is certainly entitled to his opinion.  It would be good to understand, however, on what specialist knowledge it is based?  Because, although Costa Coffee has hosted many a debate on grand strategy, it doesn’t actually count as an accredited military academy.

But, as we know, people don’t actually need to have a clue what they’re talking about – they can still talk.  The problem, says Sir Mick, is Israel’s 

own dysfunctional political system.  

And why is that political system so bad?  First, he explains, there are

the hazards of proportional representation.

And I thought “proportional” was actually a positive thing… stupid me!  I thought that it meant that each citizen gets a vote that is worth exactly the same; that the makeup of the Parliament is a true reflection of the views of the electorate, warts and all.  That’s not what ‘first past the post’ delivers. In 2019, for instance, 1 in every 8 Brits (circa 12%) voted for the Liberal Democrats; but, because of the ‘first past the post’ system, that party only has 11 MPs – i.e. a mere 1.7% of the House of Commons.  

In a proportional system, with 12% of the votes they would have gotten, of course 12% of the seats in Parliament – that’s what “proportional” means.

Don’t get me wrong: one can argue about the advantages and disadvantages of either system – till one’s blue in the face; if one donates to the Tories, I suppose that ‘first past the post’ is wonderful – it results in more bang for the buck; if I were to ask Liberal Democrat supporters, they might feel differently.  But is the “proportional representation” any less democratic?

So what is Sir Mick’s beef with Israel’s “proportional representation”.  Well, he tells us:

the outcome is a government the public didn’t vote for, led by a prime minister seemingly driven by holding onto power and propped up by parties who had previously pledged on principle not to govern with him.

So, Mr. Davis doesn’t like the outcome of the elections.  I get that.  I just don’t think that’s a good enough reason to change the system.  No disrespect, Sir Mick!

But why is this new government one “the public didn’t vote for”?  It represents a broad coalition, from left (the Israeli Labour Party) to centre (Blue & White) to right (Likud).  The prime minister will be Benjamin Netanyahu (leader of the largest party, which received 29% of the votes), followed by Benny Gantz (whose party received 27% of the votes).

True, before the elections Gantz promised not to serve in a Netanyahu government.  You caught him there, Mr. Davis, Sir!  He’s a terrible, terrible man – the first politician ever to break a pre-election promise.  I’m sure nothing like that ever happened while you were Chief Executive of the Conservative Party.  (In Gantz’s defence, he may have followed bad examples: before elections, every US president in the past 25 years promised to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem.  It took a quarter of a century to find one that actually did – and I doubt you like him much.)

It is, I agree, terrible that Israel has such a “dysfunctional political system”.  It gets people frustrated.  So unlike UK’s wonderfully functional political system; the one that produced a pro-Remain Parliament despite a clear pro-Brexit referendum; plus 3 years of paralysis, a government begging for elections and an opposition courageously opposing them, etc. etc.

Where Sir Mick is right is that Israel will now have (for a while, at least) a Prime Minister who faces “corruption charges”.  Netanyahu stands accused of having traded favours in return for a ‘kinder treatment’ at the hands of a major news outlet.  British politicians would certainly never do anything like that!  Although there were things… I seem to remember quite a few MPs (including ministers and shadow ministers) dipping their hands rather dishonestly into the public purse…  But that’s a different thing altogether!

Oh, I do admire Sir Mick’s principled stance.  In fact, I herewith demand that Netanyahu’s sorry ass be put in prison – if found guilty by a court of law.  It’s just surprising for me to hear rumours that, in the past, Mr. Davis may have taken a less righteous position against alleged corruption by one of his own underlings.  Well, given those false rumours, I’m sure that Sir Mick cannot but agree with me that people (including the Chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council and the Prime Minister of Israel) are innocent, unless proven guilty.

It’s only halfway through his article that Mr. Davis comes to the issue that really awoke his ire: the planned annexation by Israel of parts of the West Bank – in accordance with the latest US ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan.

When we talk of existential threats to Israel, then annexation is the genuine article.

That’s, of course, a valid opinion.  Unfortunately for Mr. Davis, it is just the opinion of an outsider.  Sir Mick is not Israeli; he is a British citizen, paying his taxes in the UK.  It is Israeli citizens (i.e., people who live in Israel, pay taxes in Israel, serve in the army in Israel and risk being bombed to smithereens in Israel) that are entitled to decide (as opposed to opine) what constitutes genuine existential threats to Israel.  And a clear majority of those Israeli citizens voted for parties that accepted the US proposal.

But it doesn’t look like Sir Mick is content with ‘just’ an outsider’s opinion:

The keep your wallets open and mouths shut model of Israel-Diaspora relations was viable when Diaspora Jewry saw in Israel’s political leadership an embodiment of its values rather than a violation of them.

The “wallets open” was understood – and not just by me – as a hint.  After all, as the Jewish News says, Sir Mick is not just any outsider; he is

[o]ne of Britain’s biggest philanthropists to Israel.

I just wonder if, when Mr. Davis decided to give whatever he gave “to Israel” (or, more likely, to whatever causes and organisations he finds useful in Israel), he informed people that those donations came with a clear caveat: ‘I pay – I get the say’.  ‘Coz, had he said so to me (I’m Israeli), I would’ve told him to keep his money.  I have no idea what Sir Mick’s experience is with donations to the Conservative Party; but Israel is a sovereign country.

Isn't 'philanthropy' something done without ulterior motives?

Apparently, however, some sovereign countries have duties to set up other sovereign countries.  How else am I to understand Sir Mick’s sententious determination that Israel has a

moral and strategic imperative to extricate itself from ruling over [the Palestinians].

Before I read Sir Mick’s wise words, I rather stupidly thought it’s the task of every nation that doesn’t yet have independence to “extricate” itself from its rulers.  Including by making the necessary concessions and compromises to achieve that goal.  As Jews – and Indians, and Pakistanis – did in 1947.  In Sir Mick’s perfect world, however, it is the sacred duty of Israel to   offer

a tangible alternative on this issue.

Well, a (or, rather, another) “tangible alternative” has just been offered by the US Administration.  It may not be an administration to Sir Mick’s liking; it may not be an “alternative” he likes, or that the Palestinians like.  But, surely, Mr. Davis hasn’t made his millions by walking away from deals, simply because the opening offer wasn’t to his liking.  While the US document unsurprisingly expresses a US ‘Vision’, it also leaves the door wide open for negotiations:

The peace agreement that will hopefully be negotiated on the basis of this Vision should be implemented through legally binding contracts and agreements (the “ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE AGREEMENT”).

In fact, the reputed architects of the ‘Vision’ have gone to great pains to make that clear.  Speaking about the Palestinian leadership in an interview he gave to an Egyptian media outlet, Jared Kushner said:

If there are things they want to change, if they don’t like where we drew the lines, they should come and tell us.

Were they able and willing to make peace, the Palestinian leaders could simply have said ‘We agree with the principle that there should be an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.  Everything else – let’s negotiate.’

In the absence of such a response, Israel’s ‘duty’ of providing “a tangible alternative” becomes a duty to provide ‘a tangible alternative acceptable to the kind of leadership for whom no alternative was acceptable in the past 100 years’.  I am not as knowledgeable as Sir Mick – but I found no such ‘duty’ in the Torah.  Maybe it’s in the Statutes of Values of the Diaspora that he appears to own.

But the relationship with the Palestinians isn’t Sir Mick’s only imputation towards the Jewish state.  Israel, he intones

must radically improve social mobility within its own society.

And why does he think that Israel has such poor social mobility?  Because

for an OECD country, Israel’s gaps between rich and poor are extraordinary.

Some may view as ironic that a multi-multi-millionaire preaches about narrowing the “gaps between rich and poor”.  But beyond the irony, according to OECD data, Israel has a Gini Coefficient of 0.35.  UK’s is 0.36. Gini is a widely used measure of income inequality: 0 (zero) corresponds to perfect equality, 1 (one) to worst possible inequality – so the lower, the better.  Well, I’d like to think that Sir Mick applies more rigorous research and due diligence to his business dealings than he does to his pronouncements on social issues.  Otherwise, I’d say such sloppiness is… how should I put it… “extraordinary”!

Income Inequality in OECD countries.  Israel in red.  The UK is the 4th bar to the right of Israel.

Next, Sir Mick’s bounces from pseudo-economics back to pseudo-politics:

Israel advocates around the world, of which I am one, boast about the full citizenship rights of Israel’s Arab citizens and their role in Israeli life. However, the MKs those citizens elect are still considered governmentally trayf.

Firstly, on behalf of all my countrymen, I’d like to thank Sir Mick for his unparalleled advocacy.  It’s valiant defenders like him that make us feel so much safer!

However, the rest of the passage is a bit of a spin.  Those MKs are not considered “governmentally trayf” because they are Arabs (indeed, one of them happens to be Jewish); nor because they are elected by Arabs (there are Jews who vote for the ‘Arab List’ and there are Arabs who vote for the ‘Jewish’ parties);  no, the problem is not the ethnicity or religion of those MKs or of their supporters – but the political views that they represent.  It’s about Zionism vs. anti-Zionism, yes – but not just.  The Arab Joint List includes a communist party; a hyper-nationalist party; and an Islamist Party.  Given the record of those ideologies in the region and the world, mainstream Israeli politicians may perhaps be forgiven for not wanting such parties in the governing coalition.

But the issue is more fundamental than that.  In a parliamentary democracy, there is a right to vote, to elect their parliamentary representatives (and be elected as such); I wasn’t aware that there was a right to have one’s representatives included in the governing coalition – whatever their politics.  Are you making up democratic rules as you go along, Mr. Davis?

Apparently, Sir Mick’s list of Israel’s many violations of ‘values of the Diaspora’ also includes the fact that the Jewish state has failed to teach British Jews Hebrew:

How for example, can we nurture a thriving and mutual beneficial sense of shared peoplehood, when so many Diaspora Jews, particularly in the English-speaking world are unable to speak Hebrew, the language of their homeland?

That is indeed a problem – and I must thank Mr. Davis for pointing it out.  Too bad he pointed it out… in English; in a Diaspora Jewish English language newspaper!

And it’s not Israel’s only linguistic and cultural sin.  Mr. Davis also determines that:

Jewish Israelis need more and better education in Arabic and Arab culture. Arab Israelis need more and better education in Jewish culture and history.

Don’t you just looove one that always asks for “more and better” – but fails to even mention what has already been achieved?  To start with, most Israelis (or their parents or grandparents) hail from Arab lands – so Arab culture is hardly unfamiliar to them.  Arabic is part of the curriculum in most Israeli secular schools – at all levels.  True, it is not compulsory to study Arabic – it’s one of the optional languages students can choose to study (and many do).  In recent years, more teachers of Arabic are employed in Jewish schools – no doubt because Mr. Davis has determined that this is the way forward.  Most Arab Israeli parents understandably choose to give their kids an education in Arabic schools – but that education includes the study of Hebrew.

And actually, may I suggest that – before he idly shoots his mouth off again – Sir Mick takes the time and the trouble to watch the excellent Israeli series ‘Fauda’?  It is available on Netflix.  With English subtitles, Sir Mick; no worries!

Don’t get me wrong: Mr. Davis can actually have a say on how Israel looks like – and how she should look like in the future; once he comes to live there, of course.  I’m sure he has enough money to buy himself a decent flat in Sderot!

But, let’s face it – he is unlikely to make Aliyah.  In fact, he doesn’t even envisage such possibility.  He bashes Israel ‘as a Jew’ from the Diaspora.  Why?  A very charitable explanation would be ‘because he cares’.  It’s a very strange way to show it, but hey-ho…

Unfortunately, I am more inclined to believe an explanation that Sir Mick himself let slip at some point:

I think the government of Israel […] have to recognise that their actions directly impact me as a Jew living in London, the UK.  When they do good things it is good for me, when they do bad things, it's bad for me. And the impact on me is as significant as it is on Jews living in Israel.

There are no less than 4 rather emphatic me’s in that short peroration.  It would seem that Mick Davis does care deeply… about Mick Davis!

Well, Mr. Davis Sir, as an Israeli who served for 20 years in the IDF, I am sorry for all the inconvenience that we caused you!

Oh, and… for whatever it’s worth, this Jewish Israeli (of the Ashkenazi variety) loves the Arabic language and culture.  Take for instance this brilliant proverb, which applies so well to you and your hatchet-job of an article:

الكلاب تنبح والقافلة تسير

It means: ‘The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on’.  So long, Sir Mick!

Give peace a chance!

Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ between Israelis and Palestinians may yet prove to be the Flop of the Century.  But its architects have been amazingly successful at keeping mum: I can’t remember any other political programme that has been kept so secret for so long, in the face of such keen curiosity from journalists, pundits and political adversaries.  Nobody knows what the plan is; no details have leaked, no positions have transpired.  Unheard of!

No wonder, then, that everybody is jittery: Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, left-wingers and right-wingers… Kept in the dark, they are reduced to… well… guessing.

One understands this; it’s human nature.  Guessing is one way to try and gain some control in a world plagued by uncertainty.  But assuming the worst when knowing the least is not mere guessing – it’s something else.

It may be distressing to see the Palestinian Authority rejecting the new peace plan before even knowing what it contains; but a surprise it ain’t: after all, that Authority is made up of people who make a nice living out of the status-quo; from their point of view, any change (whether led by Trump, Obama or Clinton) risks being a change for the worse.

Waaay more surprising is the deluge of negative reactions from the ranks of the self-proclaimed 'progressive', 'pro-peace' camp.  Granted, these people don’t like Trump (I’m being a bit British here: they hate his guts, actually).  But hey: God (or the forces of Dialectical Materialism) moves in mysterious ways.  After all, those same self-proclaimed 'progressive', 'pro-peace' activists like the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty; which was signed not by doves, but by right-wingers Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat.  So why not wait until a few details have been revealed about the Trump plan?  It’s likely to happen in a matter of weeks, if not days.

I find it disturbing to see so many 'pro-peace' activists ranting against a peace plan – any peace plan.  And in particular one that they (along with everybody else) know nothing about.

"Pro-peace" – but only if it's the "correct" peace.

Writing in the Times of Israel, former Knesset Member Ksenia Svetlova attacks the ‘Deal of the Century’ for trying to offer economic benefits, rather than political solutions:

“So what is left of Trump’s peace plan if we take out the whole matter of an independent Palestinian state? Only the ‘economic peace’ that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been talking about for so many years."

Following a well-known activist’s gambit (when your argument is thin or dishonest, bring up a ‘human story’ to stir up readers’ emotions), Ms. Svetlova goes on to describe the plight of… Palestinian ice-cream manufacturers.  Apparently, Israel does not allow one such manufacturer in Gaza to export its products, claiming that “it [i.e. Israel] has not yet set up the required supervisory [i.e. security] mechanisms”.  An excuse that Mr. Svetlova derides:

“The State of Israel, which has pioneered advanced technological and human capabilities to detect whether the mother of an American Jewish tourist has friends in B’tselem, has no technological solutions to enable it to inspect goods from Gaza.”

In fairness, I tend to agree with her: I’m sure a technological solution can be developed, which would allow soldiers to detect explosive material, weaponry or parts thereof frozen inside a box of ice-cream.  What is, however, less clear to me is: why would Israel use its taxpayers’ money to develop and implement such a solution in order to enable exports from a hostile territory – when the most likely outcome would be that the resulting profits (or parts thereof, at least) would end up financing Hamas’s rocket capabilities, tunnels, attempts to break into Israel and other such goals?
But it’s not just Gaza – there are apparently also ice-cream manufacturers in the West Bank.  And, while Israel in principle allows the West Bank to export its products, Ms. Svetlova tells us that in practice

“The owners of the Al-Araz ice cream plant in Nablus would also be happy to reap the economic benefits of peace. But ice cream is a delicate and fragile product, and long waits at the checkpoints do it no good."

Upon reaching that passage, I’m sure that some of Ms. Svetlova’s readers will be wiping a tear: despite their occupation-induced misery, the poor-but-brave Palestinians manage to produce a bit of ice-cream – enough to export even!  But those nasty Israelis make them wait at the checkpoints, causing the ice-cream to melt, along with the readers’ tender hearts.

Except that, in the very next sentence, we learn that the same Palestinian ice-cream manufacturer

“whose ice cream is every bit as good as its Israeli counterparts, markets to the West Bank and to Jordan, and a bit to Dubai."

Now, that’s surprising.  Because, to sell in the West Bank and Jordan, the Palestinian ice-cream has to cross checkpoints manned by the same nasty Israelis.  As for shipping to Dubai (about 1,500 miles away from Nablus), surely that takes longer than crossing even the most vicious Israeli checkpoint?
When the tears are wiped off and the brain gears engaged, one finds more than a hint of dishonesty in Ms. Svetlova’s story: ice-cream is indeed a “delicate and fragile product”; which is why it is always moved around (even in frigid Scandinavia, let alone in the torrid Middle East!) in frigorific road trucks, railway cars and shipping containers – designed to keep that product from melting, whether en-route to Dubai, Jordan, Israel  or South Patagonia.  So, whatever it is that’s preventing Al-Araz from exporting ice-cream to Israel, it is not “long waits at the checkpoints”.

But a closer look at the primary thrust of Ms. Svetlova’s article reveals that it, too, is fatally tainted by dishonesty.  After all, she describes the – yet unpublished and unknown – “Trump’s peace plan” as merely an attempt to bribe the Palestinians:

“It’s supposedly a simple idea. We’ll give the Palestinians financial incentives so that they can develop their economy, create factories and jobs, and in exchange they will cease their military and political struggle and stop dreaming of freedom and sovereignty. In exchange, the economic flourishing will bring stability and quiet to the entire region."

Having ‘established’ that, she goes on to teach us how “real life” works:

“The problem is that in real life, the economic, the military, and the political cannot be separated from one another.”

That’s a cogent argument – if one ignores the fact that it’s based on a lie.  In fact, the new peace plan’s architects have been very clear that, while the plan included economic incentives, those are designed to come alongside – not instead of – political solutions.  In fact, Jason Greenblatt – one of the plan’s main architects and, in consequence, one of the very few people who really know what it contains – made that clear repeatedly; including on 20 May, two days before Ms. Svetlova penned her diatribe.

One can argue against the ‘Trump plan’ (if one is inclined to argue against anything ‘Trump’) without resorting to dishonesty.  It would be more than legitimate to doubt, for instance, whether either economic incentives or political solutions can be delivered in practice, given that both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have already rejected them out of hand.  One can argue that, in the face of that rejection, the ‘Trump plan’ is doomed to fail.

But then, decades of two-state-solution negotiations – including those led by Ms. Svetlova’s own party – have also failed.  It is difficult to see why the same approach that failed umpteen times in the past would succeed this (umpteen + 1) time.  And it is difficult to understand what's to be gained by rejecting a new approach out of hand – before even learning what that approach actually is.

Among the cohort of critics of the yet-unpublished peace plan is the British-Jewish organisation Yachad, which describes itself as “pro-Israel, pro-peace”.  The group is so keen to attack that peace plan, that it even promoted an article from Al-Monitor, a ‘news’ website accused of being a mouthpiece for the Assad regime.

Yachad added their own view:

Once I got over my awe at the stentorian tone, I asked myself: how do Yachad activists know what the “Palestinian aspiration“ is?  Beyond the rather neo-colonialist tendency of attributing to other cultures our own ‘way of doing things’?  Of course, the Palestinian Authority/PLO/Fatah screams that aspiration to the entire world.  But what does that count for?  The last (and only) time Palestinians in West Bank, Gaza and E. Jerusalem had something remotely resembling free elections, a plurality voted for Hamas – whose declared goal is certainly not a sovereign state living in peace alongside Israel.

Yachad activists have visited the West Bank and met Palestinians – typically those that are themselves activists on behalf of the same Palestinian Authority/PLO/Fatah.  I have no doubt that, when queried by some starry-eyed Yachad activist, those Palestinians delivered the ‘correct message’.  But, again, what does that count for?

The 'peace activists' will tell you a tale of across-the-board Palestinian rejection of
Trump's plan.  But, as usual, the picture is more nuanced...

As I wrote elsewhere, the Palestinians are certainly entitled to their aspirations.  But what these aspirations actually are, it’s hard to know.  If anything, the more trustworthy opinion polls show them as ambivalent at best on the issue of ‘two-states’.

In fact, I would suggest that, leaving aside the corrupt political class, the Palestinian Arab masses are yet to make up their collective mind as to how their future should look like.  And why would it be any different?  The same can be said about Arab masses at large.  The fact is that Palestinians (like other Arabs) live under dictatorial regimes, with no freedom of speech and political debate.  It does not help that they also live in an ultra-conservative society rife with taboos, in which dissent is frowned upon and worse.

Unlike certain 'peace activists', I do not think Palestinians are stupid.  Why would they 'aspire' to a "sovereign state", if that just means exchanging Israeli occupation for the local brand of corruption-cum-tyranny?  For decades, foreigners and their local allies have tried to tell Palestinian Arabs what they should 'aspire' to: pan-Arabism, Islamism, or perhaps Western-style nationalism...  The one voice we have not heard is that of the Palestinians themselves.  But that does not seem to bother self-proclaimed ‘progressives’ who feel that they know what’s good for ‘the natives’.

Doesn’t it make sense, that, in order to formulate their collective “aspiration”, Palestinian Arab masses (and Arab masses in general) need to have the tools of free expression and the economic wherewithal that would allow them to think beyond tomorrow’s meal?

***

For decades now, ‘peace activists’ have been yelling at me: “Give peace a chance”.  Well, I listened.  And I did: I supported the two-state solution; the Oslo Accords; the withdrawal from Lebanon; the ‘disengagement’ from Gaza.  I rooted for Barak’s proposal, for Clinton’s parameters, for Olmert’s offer.

“You failed”, I tell the ‘peace activists’.  “But no matter, I will still give peace a chance.”
“Not this one”, they respond.  “This one’s different.  It’s wrong.”
“How the hell do you know?” I blurt, befuddled.  “And what’s ‘wrong’ with ‘different’, anyway?”
“Don’t you understand?” they yell, exasperation growing into shrill hysteria.  “This is coming from TRUMP!!!”
I shrug.

Chilcot, Israel and the Kiss of Judas

احذر عدوك مرة وصديقك ألف مرة فإن انقلب الصديق فهو أعلم بالمضرة

Beware of an enemy once and of a friend a thousand times, because a duplicitous friend will hurt you more. (An Arabic proverb)

I admit: I expected the Chilcot inquiry to be just another sop.  If nothing else, the inordinate length of time it took seemed to bode no great desire to reveal unpleasant truths.  So, had I been asked a couple of weeks ago, I would have expressed low expectations from that inquiry; and I would have been wrong.

Sir John Chilcot, Chair of the Inquiry

True, like the biblical Jacob, we had to wait seven years for this bride; it cost us more than £10 million.  In taxes, not in sheep, goats or camels.

But at least the bride is lovely and wise.  Sir John Chilcot and his team have done good, serious work.  That’s not to say that their report should be seen as The Ultimate Truth – far from it.  Inevitably, the assessments, judgments and conclusions are all subjective, coloured by the authors’ own experience, beliefs and ideological inclinations.  But a huge body of evidence has been uncovered; and the analysis (while far from infallible) is also quite useful.

The Chilcot Inquiry findings will no doubt fascinate people for years and maybe decades to come.  As usual, the honest historian in search of truth and understanding will be followed by the ‘revisionist’ seeking to justify preconceived ideas for the sake of publicity, royalties and tenure.

Even before that, an army of journalists and politicians will exploit the report – without reading it, of course – to further their own interests and careers.  The most unscrupulous ones have in fact already  started to do just that – before the ink has had a chance to dry on Sir Chilcot’s signature.

But there is one aspect revealed by the inquiry which has so far completely escaped attention; which has not even been touched by the journo-political Commentariat.  And yet, reference to that aspect was obvious even in John Chilcot’s public statement, which accompanied the release of the report on 6 July 2016.  Says Sir John:

“On 28 July, Mr Blair wrote to President Bush with an assurance that he would be with him ‘whatever’ – but, if the US wanted a coalition for military action, changes would be needed in three key areas.”

The Commentariat herd has focused its entire attention on Blair’s promise to support Bush “whatever”.  But it’s worth taking in the entirety of John Chilcot’s statement.

What was that “coalition for military action” that Blair was so keen to organise?  And why was he that keen?  A look at the written records gives us the answer: Blair wanted to cover his proverbial bottom, in case the sh** hit the fan (as it eventually did).  On 28 July 2002, Blair wrote in his message to US President Bush:

“The US could do it alone, with UK support.  [but]  If we win quickly, everyone will be our friend.  If we don’t and they haven’t been bound beforehand, recriminations will start fast.”

Blair’s message details the potential dangers:

“The danger is, as ever with these things, unintended consequences.  Suppose it got militarily tricky.  Suppose Iraq suffered unexpected civilian casualties.  Suppose the Arab street finally erupted, eg in {CENSORED}.  Suppose Saddam felt sufficiently politically strong, if militarily weak in conventional terms, to let off WMD [Weapons of Mass Destruction].  Suppose that, without any coalition, the Iraqis feel ambivalent about being invaded and real Iraqis, not Saddam’s special guard, decide to offer resistance.  Suppose, at least, that any difficulties, without a coalition, are magnified and seized upon by a hostile international opinion.”

Throughout his message, Blair advocates a political and military coalition as an antidote against those “any difficulties”.  And not just any old coalition, but one that would include Arab countries; just like in Bush Senior’s First Gulf War.

On the face of it, this made sense.  After all, many an Arab dictator feared and loathed Saddam Hussein; his military might and (especially) popularity on the Arab street threatened their royal thrones and gilded presidential armchairs.  But Arab tyrants are good negotiators; their power and very survival depends on astutely playing other people’s ambitions and fears, hopes and worries.  Accustomed to play by the rules, Western politicians are no match for such predatory instincts.  Tony Blair was easily persuaded that the West needed to pay a price for the Arabs’ militarily ineffective but politically convenient cooperation.  What price?  Well, the Arab autocrats needed to throw their hapless subjects a bone; and in the world of tyrants, where power is admired as the supreme value, that means being able to declare a victory.  Not just against a fellow Arab dictator, but against the habitual scapegoat – Israel.  So the Arab dictators persuaded Blair that the West needed to pay for their cooperation and that the currency needed to be Israel’s security.  As usual, the entire thing was to be disguised under the euphemism ‘progress in MEPP’ – the Middle East Peace Process.  In Blair’s own words:

“The Arabs may support but are far less likely to do so, if MEPP is where it is now.  When I met {CENSORED} and said we would do Iraq, he said: ‘fine – just do it with total force’.  But when we started later to talk about MEPP, he said he was far more optimistic about it.  ‘Why?’, I asked.  ‘Because obviously, with Iraq coming up, the US will put it in a quite different place, he said.  When I said, we couldn’t guarantee that, he looked genuinely shocked.  Then Iraq would be a very different proposition, he said.”

For anyone familiar with Middle Eastern negotiation euphemisms, a deal had been offered: the West would be allowed to “do Iraq” if the Arab dictators could, to at least some extent, ‘do Israel’.  If we needed proof that ‘MEPP’ was all about imposing a "movement" that was "contrary to Israeli worries", we get that from another Blair-to Bush message, dated 11 October 2001:

“This is the huge undercurrent in this situation.  It is the context in the Arab world.  The trouble is it’s damn difficult, though your comments on a Palestinian state and {CENSORED}  […]  It will be very tough, but we need a big, new initiative.  I wonder if we could do as follows: pull out every stop to halt terrorist activity on the Palestinian side or at least have Arafat so clearly trying, that it’s obvious to all; then use this break in the weather, to launch a new talks process, effectively accepting at the outset that the outcome will be 2 states living side by side.  {CENSORED} involvement and it’s your call but, for what it’s worth, I have believed for 2 years now that the US just can’t take the strain of this alone; and that contrary to Israeli worries, the {CENSORED} into a reasonable deal.  After all, it’s the {CENSORED}.
If we showed movement here, the Arab moderates would regain the upper hand quickly.”

We do not know who “the Arab moderates” were in 2001.  Did they include Egypt’s President Mubarak?  The absolute monarchs of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Jordan?  Perhaps Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad, the (then) newly enthroned President-for-Life of Syria?

But what is clear is that Tony Blair was in search of a "reasonable deal".  Only problem was – in his mind it needed to be reasonable from the point of view of the USA/UK interests in Iraq; and that meant disregarding "Israeli worries" to keep the "Arab moderates" happy.

Now, let us remind ourselves what was going on at the time – in 2001-2002, when Tony Blair was so nonchalantly advocating the brushing aside of those annoying “Israeli worries”.

The Camp David Summit (Bill Clinton, Arafat, Ehud Barak) had ended in July 2000, with no agreement.  In January 2001, Arafat was finally forced to put in writing the Palestinian official response, rejecting out of hand the so-called Clinton Parameters which had offered Palestinians a state in 100% of Gaza Strip and 95-97% of West Bank, plus 1-3% of swap land from pre-1967 Israel.

Arafat also refused to budge during the Taba negotiations, despite the offer being reiterated, detailed and expanded.

Even while the negotiations at Taba were going on, a campaign of terror against Israelis was unfolding.  It cost the lives of 207 Israelis in 2001 and 457 in 2002.  There were 40 suicide bombings in 2001 and 47 (i.e. roughly one every week on average) in 2002.

Memorial for the victims of the Dolphinarium suicide bombing. 21 Israeli youngsters (the majority teenage girls) were killed in June 2001 by a 22-year-old Palestinian terrorist. 

As his message to Bush proves, Tony Blair was well aware of the situation and of the basis for “Israeli worries”; he did not believe that Arafat was “clearly trying” to “halt terrorist activity on the Palestinian side”.  In fact, in yet another message to Bush (in December 2001), he was stating, in reference to the wave of Palestinian terrorism:

“The issue is not whether [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon takes tough action.  He is bound to and so would any of us in this situation.”

Needless to say, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians had nothing to do with Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s regime.  So, was Tony Blair truly naïve enough to believe that this conflict (rather than, for instance, the lack of freedom and democracy) was “the context in the Arab world”?  Doubtful; he was just cynically willing to pay for Arab benevolence with Israeli blood and tears.

Nor was Blair’s attitude new and unheard of.  The cooperation of Arab dictators in the First Gulf War (among them Mubarak of Egypt and Assad Senior, father of the current Syrian president and a prodigious murderer in his own right) had been ‘rewarded’ with the Madrid Conference, in which Israel was forced to ‘negotiate’ (read: face in a public or semi-public showdown) simultaneously with Syria, Lebanon and a joint PLO-Jordanian delegation, under the watchful co-sponsorship of United States and the Soviet Union.

These days, Blair’s 2001-2002 cynical manoeuvre has become a typical Western (or at least European) approach.  Why else would the European Union still refer to the (stubborn, but low intensity) conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as ‘the conflict in the Middle East’?  Isn’t the conflict between Sunni and Shi’a Islam an infinitely more suitable candidate to that title?  Shouldn’t the EU seek to initiate (let alone progress) a Middle East Peace Process for that conflict, which is many centuries old, has resulted in millions of casualties, involves a huge swath of territory including at a minimum Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and is a colossal threat to world peace?

Like Tony Blair in 2001-2002, current European politicians are keen to buy Arab dictators’ connivance at Israel’s expense.  In addition, they hope to ‘sweeten’ the bad taste left by their efforts to keep Muslim refugees out of Europe and to ‘endear’ themselves to their own already large and restive Muslim minority.

The problem with that tactic – besides, that is, its stench of advanced moral rot – is that it won’t work.  Despite what crypto-racist Europeans may think, brown Muslims are not stupid.  Sure, moved by a mistaken sense of Islamic solidarity and/or by anti-Semitic prejudice, some of them may raise their lips in praise for Europe’s cynical policies towards the Jewish state.  But, even when yelled at the top of the voice, such praise only comes from the lips.  In their hearts, many Muslims (both in the Middle East and in Europe) will be thinking: ‘if they do that to Israelis, whom they call their friends, how will they ultimately treat us?’

The Audacity of Hoax: the real story behind the ‘Iran nuclear deal’

Have you by any chance read the framework agreement recently signed by Iran and six world powers?  No?  Of course you didn't – no  agreement was signed.  True, after missing the original deadline, the negotiators did show up with exhausted-but-triumphant facial expressions, slapping each other on the back like NBA players that just scored a slam dunk.  But there was no slam dunk at all: the negotiations had only produced an agreement… to agree.

Years and a small fortune – nay, make that a laaarge fortune to you and me – have been spent; ministers have neglected their other duties, to pursue all-important nuclear negotiations; and all they have to show for all that is... a verbal agreement???  One that the parties already ‘remember’ in at least three different, conflicting ways?  Now, think hard: when was the last time a grave international dispute was resolved through a verbal agreement?  International treaties are long, carefully worded legal documents, signed with ceremony by leaders and ratified by parliaments.  A verbal agreement?  Seriously???

Folks, we are being taken for a ride; they’re playing us for fools, with ‘fact-sheets’ meant only to hide the ‘agreement’s’ blatant non-existence; its being but a figment of deceitful minds.  In reality, after months and years of negotiations – there is no agreement; nothing beyond a loose, vague, reversible, oral ‘understanding’ on some bare-bones ‘principles’.  That’s a truth politicians thought best to keep from us, ordinary Joes.  What a brazen hoax!  What incredible chutzpah!  How they mock our honesty, our genuine trust!

And it’s not just sordid politicians, these mollusks who make a living (and a good one, too!) from falsehood and deceit; it’s also regimented ‘journalists’, the politicians’ intellectual prostitutes; those swiftly mobilised to prop up the fraud.  Take, for instance, Time Magazine’s Joe Klein: he has already produced at least two 'articles' – two shameless pieces of Soviet-style propaganda – praising the verbal ‘framework’ (which he dubs, of course, ‘the agreement’ or ‘the deal’) as the best thing since sliced bread.  Just in case someone should doubt his ‘expertise’ in Middle Eastern affairs, Klein starts by brandishing his ‘Jewish’ credentials, informing readers that he’s just celebrated Passover Seder with his friend Ramin

"an Iranian leprechaun, if such a thing is possible – born a Muslim but converted to Judaism…"

Needless to say, the personal opinion of this starry-eyed ‘Iranian leprechaun’ (who, we are informed, “does favor regime change, but through peaceful means”) is harnessed to serve Klein’s ‘argument’ – or rather is employed in-lieu of an argument.  After all, as a mercenary pen-wielder, Klein’s ‘conclusions’ are pre-determined by ideological fixations.  So why bother to perform research or interview some genuine authority?  Much easier to pen an article based on casual conversations with friends over chicken soup and matzo balls!

Joe Klein, the 'resident Jew' in charge of propaganda

Despite his a priori enthusiasm for ‘the deal’, Klein does mention in passing a certain Mohammad Reza Naqdi; who, as the negotiators were still backslapping, declared that for the Islamic Republic of Iran “erasing Israel off the map” is “non-negotiable”.  Naqdi is neither a leprechaun nor one of Klein’s bohemian friends; he’s a much more prosaic (but much, much, much more influential) General and senior commander in the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard – a vital power base of the ayatollahs’ regime.  But don’t expect Klein to assign any importance at all to Naqdi’s genocidal threat.  In fact, the journo only mentioned Naqdi so he could take another swipe at Benjamin Netanyahu; no doubt, because the latter chose to react to the Iranian general’s spittle – and not by pretending it’s rain.  Of course, Netanyahu isn't necessarily right; the point is, however, that he has the right: his own family is on the line, within striking distance of Revolutionary Guard’s ballistic (and potentially nuclear) missiles.  If it’s Klein who got it wrong, the only personal pain he’s likely to feel is that caused by his own haemorrhoids, gingerly seated in a soft armchair in Midtown Manhattan.

So what’s gonna happen now?  Well, not much: they will continue to negotiate ‘the details’ of an as-yet non-existent agreement.  The new deadline is June 30.  But don’t worry – it will be extended, of course.  After all, the old deadline (March 31, the ‘deadline’ for the ‘framework’ concocted on April 2!) was itself an extension of the extension…  Eventually, some sort of agreement may emerge; or the whole thing might just fizzle out, as the world’s attention turns to some other crisis.  Ukraine, perhaps; or Yemen; or South China Sea…

In truth, it makes no difference if an agreement is signed or not; it’s all the same if you judge it to be a good deal or a bad one; it does not matter whether, like Klein, you’re stupid enough to trust the ayatollahs’ regime to abide by any agreement.  In general, it makes absolutely no difference what you or I think; or what Klein thinks, or what Barack-effing-Obama thinks.  What really matters – the only thing that matters, folks – is what people in the Middle East think.  Not all people, of course, just those few people in power.  And we know what they think: not one of them trusts the ayatollahs; not one of them puts his faith in the likes of Obama, John Kerry and François Hollande.  And why would they?  Aren't these just foolish Westerners, weaklings who want to ‘lead from behind’?  Hasn't their ilk already allowed North Korea to get The Bomb?

Says Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s main foreign policy spokesman:

"I've always said whatever comes out of these talks, we will want the same.  So if Iran has the ability to enrich uranium to whatever level, it's not just Saudi Arabia that's going to ask for that.  The whole world will be an open door to go that route without any inhibition, and that's my main objection to this..."

Obama re-assuring the (now dead and buried)
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

The Saudi nuclear programme will of course be entirely peaceful.  Just like Iran (world’s fourth-largest reserves of crude oil) Saudi Arabia (world’s second largest) simply wants to produce a bit of atomic energy.  Which is why in March, just as the negotiators were hammering that Klein-acclaimed Iranian ‘framework’, the Saudis were quietly signing an agreement (a written agreement!) to purchase two South Korean nuclear reactors.  In total, the oil-drenched desert kingdom plans to build no less than 16 nuclear reactors.  All of them utterly peaceful, of course!  Egypt’s military rulers want an equally peaceful nuclear programme; which is why, in February, Egypt’s General-turned-President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi met Russia’s President-turned-Prime Minister-turned-President Vladimir Putin.  The two triumphantly announced an agreement to build a nuclear reactor in Egypt.  Doubtless, a few other Middle Eastern kings, sheikhs and presidents for life will follow the lead, using their oil wealth to buy themselves a bit of nuclear oomph.

Another good friend: former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak

As for the rest of us, one day we will wake up to a Middle East (yes, the Middle East of sectarian beheadings and suicide bombings!) able to wage nuclear jihad.  A prospect that should send some mighty shivers down Western leaders’ spines.  If, that is, they were leaders; or had spines.

Revising ‘revisionist history’

Freedom of information is one of the most fundamental human rights.  But so is the right to live in security – and the two rights need to be balanced and reconciled.  With that in mind, UK law statutes include the so-called ’30-year rule’, which compels Her Majesty’s Government to review and declassify secret documents upon the passing of three decades.

Amazingly (given the difference in the security situation between the two countries), Israel has the same rule.  Which – let us remark in passing – has led certain researchers to claim that Israel emulated the UK in this respect.  Avi Shlaim, for instance, writes that

“Israel adopted the British rule for the review and declassification of foreign policy documents.” [‘The Iron Wall’, Penguin Books 2000, Preface page xvi.  ISBN 13:978-0-140-28870-4]. 

Ilan Pappé makes a similar claim in ‘The Israel/Palestine Question’ [Routledge 1999, p. 153. ISBN 0415169488].

The only problem with this theory is that the relevant Israeli law (The Archives Law) has been promulgated in 1955, i.e. prior to the British law (The Public Records Act, issued in 1958).  Which may lead some historians to conclude that it’s the UK that adopted the Israeli rule; assuming, that is, that the two practices are related in the first place, and that ‘some historians’ are more interested in chronology than in ideology.  Two big assumptions, admittedly!

Be that as it may, the point is that Israel’s foreign policy documents (including minutes of cabinet meetings, communications among governmental and parliamentary officials, etc. etc.) are declassified and made available to researchers upon the passing of 30 years.  These documents complement others that are already available, including even the private diaries of former government officials (such as that of the country’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion).  Needless to say, such unusual wealth of easily-accessible information is a true bonanza for researchers and history scholars.  And indeed, through the years many have availed themselves of that brilliant research opportunity.

Among those who took advantage of it was a group of Israeli historians that came to be collectively known as ‘new’ or ‘revisionist historians’.  It is a very eclectic group, comprising staunch Zionists like Benny Morris, alongside anti-Israel zealots like Ilan Pappé and ‘post-Zionists’ like Avi Shlaim and Tom Segev.  But whatever the differences, they also have quite a few things in common.  True to the ‘revisionist’ moniker, the ‘new historians’ all see as their mission to disprove what they regard as ‘the official Israeli version’ of history, to ‘debunk its myths’.  Don’t get me wrong: anything and everything can and should be challenged; and if found to be wrong, ‘official versions’ should be disproved.  But for the ‘revisionist historians’, all too often the diagnosis of ‘wrong’ seems to be a starting point, rather than a conclusion.  Time and again, their research appears to be less about extracting knowledge from facts and more about finding facts that fit the preconceived theory.

This should not come as a surprise: the ‘new historians’ tend to approach ‘history’ from a position of left-wing or extreme left-wing political activism (in Morris’s case, that initial leftism seems to have evaporated in time, leaving behind what one might describe as ideological confusion – if, that is, one is kindly predisposed).

Ilan Pappé is the most candid in that respect; in an interview he gave to Le Soir (Brussels, Nov. 29, 1999) he confessed:

“I admit that my ideology influences my historical writings […] Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts.  Who knows what facts are?  We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers.”

For those unaware of Mr. Pappé’s ideology, it may be interesting to note here that the mentioned interview took place barely six months after his attempt (and failure) to get elected to Israel’s Parliament on the Communist Party list.

Avi Shlaim is slightly more subtle with regard to his ideological motivations.  Nevertheless, in the preface to his book ‘The Iron Wall’, he declares:

“Like the British historian E.H.Carr, I believe that the main task of the historian is not to record but to evaluate”.

A political activist first and foremost, Edward Hallett Carr is remembered among other things for his ardent advocacy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany and later for his enthusiastic admiration for Soviet Union and Maoist China; Carr’s main claim to the title of ‘historian’ stems from authoring a 14-volume book about Soviet Union’s first 12 years of existence…  Needless to add, he was also an acerbic critic of Israel.

Whether motivated by political ideology or not, the ‘revisionist’ stance has served the ‘new historians’ exceedingly well.  A relatively humble lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa, Ilan Pappé’s obvious scholarship (or was it his obvious anti-Israel fervour?) has propelled him to the position of Professor at the University of Exeter and Director of that university's European Centre for Palestine Studies.  A Reader of Politics at the University of Reading, Avi Shlaim’s ‘revisionist’ activity got him headhunted by Oxford, where he was soon created an Emeritus Professor of International Relations.  And that’s in addition to other ‘signs of appreciation’.  In the words of Shlaim himself:

“My greatest debt is to the British Academy for awarding me a two-year research readership in 1995-1997 and for giving me a research grant.  The readership freed me from my teaching and administrative duties at the University of Oxford, while the grant enabled me to travel, to visit archives, and to employ research assistants.  Without the generous support of the British Academy, this book [‘The Iron Wall’] could not have been written.”

Pappé and Shlaim are feted darlings in anti-Israel circles – and not just in the academic ones.  Both are frequently invited to speak at ‘Israel/Palestine debates’.

In this context, one must feel a bit of compassion for Benny Morris: from a strictly chronological and scholarly point of view, his work may claim priority over those of both Pappé and Shlaim; but his refusal to abjure the ‘mortal sin’ of Zionism made him ineligible for exalted positions such as professorship at the likes of Exeter or Oxford, let alone grants from the British Academy.  He therefore has to contend with the decidedly more humble station of Professor of History at Israel’s University of the Negev.  Prof. Morris’s 2010 invitation to speak at Cambridge was withdrawn when the University’s Islamic Society agitated against inviting such an ‘Islamophobic hate speaker’.  Even as an ‘Islamophobic hate speaker’, however, Morris must be an abject failure; perhaps that is why the British media shows so little interest in his contributions.  Meanwhile, The Independent recently gave Ilan Pappé ample space to denounce Israel as a “society inspired by visions of ethnic purity and supremacy”; while in The Guardian, Shlaim engaged in a moving defence of Hamas, which he declared “indeed guilty of terrorism but […] also a legitimate political actor”.

But let us concern ourselves less with who the ‘revisionist historians’ are and more with what they do – with their contribution (or lack thereof) to the science of history.  For this case study, I have chosen Avi Shlaim’s book ‘The Iron Wall’, authored in 1999 and published by Penguin as paperback in 2000.  The book is in many ways typical for the work of ‘revisionist historians’, although it is not the most outrageous example of that work.

In its author’s own words, the book aims to

“offer a revisionist interpretation of Israel’s policy towards the Arab world during the fifty years following the achievement of statehood”.

But then the author also writes:

“I should state at the outset that this is not a comprehensive history of the Arab-Israeli conflict but a study of Israel’s policy towards the Arab world.  Consequently, the emphasis throughout is on Israel – on Israeli perceptions, Israeli attitudes, Israeli thinking, and Israeli behaviour in the conflict.”

Such limitation is ‘standard policy’ for ‘revisionist historians’.  Shlaim attempts to ‘sell’ it as legitimate: the overall subject (‘the Arab-Israeli conflict’) is vast; hence, the prudent researcher defines a workable scope for himself.  This allows him to disregard anything that falls outside the scope – without the risk of being accused of sloppiness or intellectual dishonesty; this is standard academic practice, isn’t it?  Well, it is of course – provided however that the selected scope makes sense, that it enables insightful analysis aimed at producing better understanding of the subject.  Had Shlaim defined his scope as ‘Israeli-Arab politics between 1948 and 1998’ (or even ‘between 1948 and 1950’), that would have been the case.  But how can “Israel’s policy towards the Arab world” be understood, without looking at Arab world’s policy towards Israel??  That makes just as much sense as providing a commentary on a football match, by focusing exclusively on the actions of one team, while completely disregarding those of the other.  Isn’t it rather obvious that “Israeli perceptions, Israeli attitudes, Israeli thinking, and Israeli behaviour” were – at least to some extent – triggered, generated or at the very least influenced by Arab perceptions, Arab attitudes, Arab thinking, and Arab behaviour?  How can one be cogently and insightfully studied without researching the other??  Why, then, the ‘standard policy’ of ‘limiting the scope’ to Israel alone?

Partially, the answer is to be found in a type of pseudo-leftist (and actually crypto-racist) ideology which views ‘native’ populations (read: non-white people) as forever passive victims of ‘white colonialists’.  In the Arab-Israeli context, a branch of this ideology tends to see the Arab-Israeli conflict as a kind of argument between wilful adults (Israelis) and innocent children (Arabs); the former are held to behave responsibly – the latter cannot be expected to.  Therefore, the results of the argument, as well as ending it, are Israel’s exclusive responsibility.  This infantilisation of Arabs allows misbehaviour from their part to be disregarded or excused; not so misbehaviour by Israelis who, as ‘adults in the relationship’, are held to a much more demanding standard.

The ideological reason is reinforced, however, by a more practical one: simply put, research of “Israel’s policy” is easy.  It involves little more than reading documents freely offered by the State Archive, in a language familiar to the researcher.  And, if one is a ‘good revisionist’ such as Shlaim, this can even be undertaken with the help of research assistants generously funded by British Academy grants.  Researching the Arab side is, of course, much more difficult.  As Prof. Shlaim explains in the Preface to his ‘Iron Wall’:

“Arab governments only open their records for research, if they open them at all, in a haphazard and arbitrary manner.”

They also tend to open such records only to ‘researchers’ who do (or rather write) what they are told.

Not that this makes research of ‘Arab policies, Arab perceptions, Arab attitudes, Arab thinking, and Arab behaviour’ impossible; it only makes it more difficult.  Indeed, in the bibliography section of books written by other researchers (see for instance ‘Palestine Betrayed’ by Ephraim Karsh, or ‘The Shaping of the Modern Middle East’ by Bernard Lewis), one finds tens if not hundreds of Arab sources – from correspondence among Arab leaders to speeches, memoirs, official documents, transcripts of radio transmissions, etc. etc.  But then, both Lewis and Karsh took the trouble to actually learn Arabic and search extensively for Arab sources; perhaps Avi Shlaim’s British Academy grant did not really cover such strenuous efforts…  As it is, Shlaim’s Arab sources are notable only by their embarrassing absence.  The book’s list of interviewees includes exactly four Arabs: three former Egyptian politicians and the late King of Jordan.  The Egyptians were interviewed in 1981 and 1982; as for King Hussein, Shlaim met him in 1996.

Speaking about sources, there is another fact worth mentioning: given the ’30-year rule’ and since the main research for the book was completed, as we have seen, between 1994 and 1997, Shlaim only had access to official Israeli documents (his only serious primary source) up to the mid-1960s.  But Shlaim’s book does not end with the mid-1960s; it continues to ‘analyse’” Israeli policies, Israeli perceptions, Israeli attitudes, Israeli thinking, and Israeli behaviour” up to and including 1999...  What’s more, the transition between the two parts of the book (pre- and post-mid-1960s) is seamless and opaque to the unsuspecting reader.  There is no signpost saying ’Reader Beware!  Up to this point, what I wrote is based on documents; from here on, it will be based on… well, on my personal opinions!’

But, beyond all these rather fundamental flaws, what is it that ‘The Iron Wall’ says?  The ‘myth’ that this revisionist book sets out to debunk is that of Israel’s desire for peace.  To use Shlaim’s own words:

“Why was there no political settlement between Israel and its neighbours after the guns fell silent [i.e. after the armistice agreements of 1949]?  Why did peace prove to be so elusive? […] The traditional Zionist answer to this question can be summed up in two words: Arab intransigence.”

Shlaim’s answer , however, is that it was actually Israeli intransigence – an intransigence that continues to this day (or at least to 1999, when the book was completed).  Needless to say, from a commercial – if not scholarly – point of view, such claim makes the book much more interesting.  As some journalists have long ago realised, sensationalism ‘sells’.  And if it sells newspapers, why not books of ‘history’?  After all, ‘Dog Bites Man’ is such a banal story!  Whether true or not, ‘Man Bites Dog’ is interesting news.

But on what evidence is that new theory based?  Says Shlaim:

“Evidence for the revisionist interpretation comes mainly from Israeli sources.  The files from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, for example, burst at the seams with evidence of Arab peace feelers and Arab readiness to negotiate with Israel from September 1948 on. The two key issues in dispute were refugees and borders.”

The statement above – which all but summarises the book’s ‘message’ – is the historiographical equivalent of a mine field: for the unsuspecting reader almost every word conceals treacherous pitfalls.  To uncover the deceit, suffice to ‘dissect’ several of Shlaim’s ‘euphemisms’.

The “from September 1948 on” bit is crucial in this context: it ‘glosses over’ certain facts that, rather dishonestly, Shlaim chooses not to share with the readers.  Why “from September 1948 on”?  The UN Partition Resolution had been adopted by the General Assembly in November 1947.  It proposed the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into two independent states: a Jewish State and an Arab State.  At that point, there were no refugees.  If the Arab states wanted peace, all they needed to do was accept that Resolution.  If dissatisfied with the proposed borders, they could even have accepted the principle of partition, subject to negotiations on the actual borders.  There were sufficient precedents for such an approach, not in the least the Jewish Agency’s response to the 1937 Peel partition proposal.

But that is not what the Arab states did.  They – every single member of the Arab League – rejected the principle of partition lock, stock and barrel; and vowed to oppose it, including by force.  This is so well-documented that no one – not even Avi Shlaim – bothers to deny it; he simply chooses ‘not to focus’ on that issue.

What’s more, the Arab states’ rejection of UN’s Partition Resolution in November 1947 still did not close the door to negotiations and peaceful resolution, had those states desired such outcome.  The concerted Arab attack on the Jewish State came only on May 15, 1948.  Even then it was not too late.  There were additional attempts at mediation, but they were all rejected by the Arab League states.  In July 1948, they even rejected Count Bernadotte’s proposal, which abandoned the concept of partition in favour of a ‘union’, with the ‘Jewish member’ of that union awarded only limited sovereignty in a tiny portion of the territory.

What, then, caused the Arab position to change so radically – if indeed it did – between July and September 1948?  Shlaim's failure to analyse the reasons for such bizarre volte-face is a strange omission for someone who believes that “the main task of the historian is not to record but to evaluate”!  Let us, then, try to fill that gap:

The full-fledged Arab military onslaught on Israel had begun on May 15, 1948.  The Arab armies were (with the exception of the Arab Legion – the British-equipped and officered Transjordanian army) rather poorly armed, trained and led; but they were still regular armies – with artillery, tanks and airplanes.  Facing them was, initially at least, a clandestine militia (the Haganah) equipped for and primarily experienced in civil war skirmishes.  As a consequence, in that first phase of their invasion (May-June 1948), the Arab armies registered important successes.  Advancing in two directions, the Egyptian army managed to reach positions 20 miles south of Tel Aviv, as well as on the outskirts of Jerusalem.  By making contact with the Arab Legion, the Egyptians had succeeded in cutting the Jewish-controlled territory in two.  For its part, the Arab Legion reached the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, interdicting Jewish traffic and thus blockading Jerusalem’s Jewish neighbourhoods.  In the North, Syrian, Iraqi and Lebanese forces had occupied strategic positions, threatening to cut off Eastern Galilee.  But the IDF was gaining strength: weapons were being procured, additional recruits were being trained and in July 1948, when the Egyptian Army violated the truce, it encountered a much stronger adversary.  In just ten days of fighting in July, IDF successfully checked the Arab offensive and pushed the enemy forces back.  After ten days, a new ceasefire imposed by the UN stopped the IDF offensive, leaving the Arab forces still in control of large swathes of territory.  But by September, their situation was considerably weakened.  With long lines of supply and few reserves, the Arab armies were over-stretched and increasingly vulnerable to concentrated attacks by a better supplied and more mobile IDF.  The Arab forces needed time to consolidate their gains and re-supply.

Was the sudden Arab interest in sending “peace feelers” to Israel “from September 1948 on” just a ploy to gain time?  Ben Gurion certainly thought so – and his assessment looks more than reasonable, given the sequence of events.

Had Shlaim’s intention been truth-seeking, rather than revising “the traditional Zionist answer”, he might have wished to “evaluate” how genuine the “Arab peace feelers” really were.  That would have required, however, more than reading “files from the Israeli Foreign Ministry”; it would have necessitated researching ‘Arab policies, Arab perceptions, Arab attitudes, Arab thinking, and Arab behaviour’ – something that, as we have seen, Shlaim is neither equipped for, nor interested in.  In fact, throughout the book Shlaim simply assumes – either with no evidence or against the evidence – any secret diplomatic contact coming from the Arab side to be a genuine peace offer, while viewing Israeli leaders’ public peace proposals to be nothing but ‘double-talk’.

This is the place to note that, when Shlaim writes “Arab peace feelers and Arab readiness to negotiate” he actually refers to meetings conducted and/or messages conveyed under heavy veil of secrecy.  But why were those “Arab peace feelers” so secret?  Why do we have to learn about them, 30 years down the line, from declassified Israeli files – rather than from contemporaneous newspapers, or from the speeches of Arab leaders?  Simply because for Arab politicians and diplomats any contact with Israelis was anathema – something that could at most be done under the blanket of utmost secrecy.  Admitting to such contacts would – in their view – ‘legitimise’ Israel.  But then, why would Israel give any credence to vague hints expressed in secret by people who in public vehemently denied its very legitimacy?  In contrast, every single Israeli leader expressed readiness to negotiate, directly and with no preconditions, towards peace treaties.  Yet Shlaim chooses to (mostly) ignore and (occasionally) discount Israel’s numerous public and unequivocal proposals, while building his ‘revisionist’ theory entirely on the few “feelers” that came from the Arab side.  Referring to Golda Meir, for instance, Shlaim writes:

“Meir never tired of repeating that she was prepared to go anywhere at any time to meet any Arab leader who wanted to talk about peace.  Given her expansionist policies, these statements had a distinctly hollow ring”.

Expansionist policies??  Golda Meir became Prime Minister in 1969, long after the Six Day War; she resigned in 1974.  During her tenure, the territory controlled by Israel did not ‘expand’ one square inch; on the contrary, it decreased somewhat, as a result of armistice agreements concluded after the (Arab-initiated) Yom Kippur War.

To even more fully understand Shlaim’s systematic and outrageous double standards, let us analyse the first so-called “Arab peace feeler”.  On September 23, 1948 a certain Kamal Riad, claiming to act as an emissary for King Farouk of Egypt, secretly met in Paris with an Israeli diplomat.  According to Shlaim,

“Riad suggested Egypt’s de facto recognition of Israel in return for agreement to Egypt’s annexation of a large strip of territory in the Negev”

In passing, let us make clear that “de facto recognition” does not mean peace: as legal documents, peace treaties constitute actual, de jure recognition; clearly, what was on offer was not a peace treaty – but some form of armistice.  The price Israel was required to pay for such temporary arrangement (assuming the offer was genuine) was what Shlaim rather deceitfully calls “agreement to Egypt’s annexation”.  ‘Deceitfully’, I say, because the Negev had been awarded by the UN Partition Resolution to the Jewish State; most of that territory was at the time under Israeli control and included Israeli villages.  It was not Israel’s “agreement” that Egypt’s monarch was purportedly seeking – it was Israel’s evacuation of a large part of its sovereign, legitimately held territory.  Yet somehow Shlaim does not view Farouk’s demand (to annex territory he had no legal claim to) as evidence of “expansionist policies” imparting “a distinctly hollow ring” to his “peace feelers”!

Shlaim’s next “Arab peace feeler” was that of Syrian President Husni Zaim, in May 1949.  According to Shlaim,

“He openly declared his ambition to be the first Arab leader to conclude a peace agreement with Israel and offered repeatedly to meet with Ben-Gurion to work together toward this end.”

There is only one problem with that idyllic description: Syria’s Army Chief of Staff Colonel Husni Al-Za’im (to use his correct name) became President in April 1949, after conducting a military coup d’etat which imprisoned the former President and suspended the Constitution.  What’s more, the coup was sponsored by the CIA, which was interested in a ‘friendly government’ in Damascus – one that would approve the passage through Syria of Arabian American Oil Company’s Trans-Arabian Pipeline.  Al-Za’im’s tenuous hold on power lasted all of 4 (four) months – in August 1949 he was in turn toppled and summarily executed by another military satrap.  Shlaim somehow omits to inform his readers of these rather essential facts; instead, he manages to present the short ‘reign’ of this incompetent dictator as ‘yet another’ peace opportunity missed through Israel’s damnable intransigence.

And so Shlaim proceeds, picking facts that prop-up his theory – and sweeping everything else under the proverbial rug.  He even manages to imply (not for the first time) that Israeli leaders ‘colluded’ to divide Palestine Mandate with Transjordan’s King Abdullah in 1947-1949.  A very strange ‘collusion’, given that the battles between IDF and Abdullah’s Arab Legion were arguably the war’s bloodiest and most costly in human lives on both sides!

Needless to say, people unfamiliar with the historical facts (and who already may have an anti-Israel bias) easily fall victim to such misinformation.  In fact, they tend to swallow such ‘alternative history’ hook, line and sinker.  Take, for instance, the ‘Historical Background’ compiled by the British Methodist Church in 2010, as part of its justification for anti-Israel boycott.  At times, the document haplessly reproduces Shlaim’s ‘Iron Wall’ theories:

“King Abdullah I of Jordan was assassinated by a Palestinian nationalist for his suspected collusion with Israel. An offer of a full peace treaty with Israel by the Syrian leader Husni Zaim was rejected…”

Nowhere are Shlaim’s aberrant interpretations more blatant than when he examines the causes of the Palestinian Arabs’ plight.

As we have seen, the Egyptian army’s 1948 invasion was motivated by territorial expansionism, as well as internal and inter-Arab politics.  It had little to do with ‘providing support’ for the Palestinian Arabs.  And Egypt’s motivations for invasion were in no way singular; they were exhibited, in one form or another, by all participating Arab states.  In the words of the prominent contemporary Arabist Elias Sasson:

“The Arab states’ official military intervention in Palestine […] stems not from concern for the fate of the Palestinian Arabs or opposition to the creation of a Jewish state in a partitioned Palestine, but from fear of a unilateral invasion by Transjordan that would conquer the country’s Arab areas and improve the prospects of the realization of [King Abdullah’s] Greater Syria scheme.” [Karsh, Efraim (2010-08-20). Palestine Betrayed (Kindle Locations 4345-4346). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.]

His opinion was shared by the Mandate’s High Commissioner, British General Sir Alan Cunningham.  Both an anti-Semite and generally contemptuous of the Arabs, in this case Cunningham was, however, over-optimistic regarding the chances of inter-Arab accommodation.  In a report he sent to Westminster in February 1948, he estimated that

“The most likely arrangement seems to be Eastern Galilee to Syria, Samaria and Hebron to Abdullah, and the South to Egypt, and it might well end in annexation on this pattern, the centre remain uncertain.” [Ibidem (Kindle Locations 4105-4107)]

Even Arab League’s Secretary General Abdel Rahman Azzam admitted to a British reporter that

“Abdullah was to swallow up the central hill regions of Palestine, with access to the Mediterranean at Gaza. The Egyptians would get the Negev. The Galilee would go to Syria, except that the coastal part as far as Acre would be added to the Lebanon if its inhabitants opted for it by a referendum (i.e. the inhabitants of the said coastal strip). In Jewish-controlled areas (including Haifa) the Jews would get some measure of autonomy.” [Ibidem (Kindle Locations 4108-4109)]

Were it not for that external aggression, the Palestinian Arabs would have been able to establish their own independent state in the territory allocated to the ‘Arab State’ by UN’s Partition Resolution.  Yet Shlaim manages not only to gloss over these well-documented facts, but to throw the responsibility, as usual, onto Israel:

“Israel […] succeeded in expelling all the Arab forces from Palestine with the exception of the Arab Legion, which remained in control of the West Bank.  This sealed the fate of the UN plan for an independent Palestinian state.  The Palestinians were left out in the cold.  The name Palestine was erased from the map. […] It was a striking example of the unsentimental real-politik approach that had dictated Israel’s conduct throughout the first Arab-Israeli war.”

Well, what exactly was “a striking example of the unsentimental real-politik approach”??  The fact that Israel expelled the invading Arab forces?  The fact that Israel did not expel the Arab Legion from what was supposed to be the Arab State?  Or perhaps both??  Shlaim does not quite explain; but, whatever the details, one thing is sure: it’s Israel’s fault!

I could continue... But to expose the entire extent of disinformation contained by 'The Iron Wall', I'd need to write an entire book.  Perhaps the British Academy would like to facilitate that by awarding me a two-year research readership and a generous research grant??

Seriously, I do not know how many people bought Shlaim’s ‘Iron Wall’, but I do know that they wasted their money.  Because, if one wants to read sensationalist contraptions uncomplicated by scholarly scruples, one can do so at significantly lower cost, by purchasing a tabloid.

As for ‘revisionist history’ – there is simply no such thing: there is of course history; and then there’s political activism.  I have nothing against the latter – when it is honest and well-intentioned.  But the ‘new historians’ are guilty of mislabeling the goods: they deliver ideology, when it says ‘history’ on the can…