Arab rights movements need to purify themselves of anti Semitism

[Carla786]

The historical roots of anti Semitism in Arab nationalist movements are very important. It does not make the cause itself wrong.

What it does do, though, is ensure that very unhealthy patterns are handed down.

A prominent example is Nasser's use of Nazis to write anti Israel propaganda.

Very different situation. Involvement of Muslim leaders from initial stage. Still horrendous results though on people of all faiths. Wasn’t one sided disposition of Muslims.

I know...to be clear, I was saying that Pakistani identity was by definition not really a thing before the 1940s, but we don't use that as a reason to say it's not legitimate.

Surely even hard-right Likud members now don't claim the land was literally 'empty'? If it were empty, how do they explain the war of 1948?

Jewish people doing any kind of morally questionable thing (as all groups do) is NEVER an excuse for anti Semitism.

I think we do acknowledge that Palestinian Arabs suffered too (as did Israelis killed), surely? In the mainstream narrative that is?

Colonialism did not help Pakistan but it's too simplistic to blame extremists like RSS and others on both sides (as well as Sikh) who encouraged violence solely on the West. Mountbatten was a poof choice for Viceroy, definitely.

I said 'historian' as that was what pp said. My focus was on campaigners.

Of course I don't think it takes an academic to know they are wrong. I haven't seen any Palestinian campaigners address the ugly historical parts of the movement though. Do you know any examples?

Of course this doesn't deligutimise Palestinian suffering.

This isn't about promoting positive views of Israelis. This about confronting the history of Nazi support in the historical Palestinian movement by figures like Mufti, Nasser, and organisations like Al-Futuwwa in the 1920s and from then on.

The Palestinian side also bear responsibility for why compromise did not happen : what effect do you think these Nazi links would have had? Anti Semitic massacres like the 1929 Hebron massacre egged on by the Mufti?

Don't Palestinians still treat the Mufti as a heroic freedom fighter? And Nasser as a brave ally?

You should also note that these Nazi links were legitimising hatred of Jews everywhere, not just Israelis (not that that would have been much better)

Palestinians also need to face how other Palestinians and Arabs were complicit in their plight.

The displacement following absentee landlords selling land to Israelis was wrong. But why are the Arab landlords who did this not equally blamed as the Israelis who bought it?

Another example would be Ha'aretz. They are often fiercely critical of Israeli government & other institutions, have reported on the gang- rape and murder of a Palestinian Bedouin woman during the 1948 war (the Nirim Affair, this was the basis for Adania Shibli's recent novel Minor Detail. David Ben-Gurion condemned this at the time but it was since hushed up.
the Yemenite babies affair, and much else.

Palestinians do not seem to have similarly self-critical publications. Part of the problem is that Hamas suppress criticism historical & current, but this doesn't excuse the lack from activists in US & UK etc (unless there is and I'm just unaware of it)

How self-critical wider Israeli society is is another matter, but there clearly is a strong strand of it, and the government to some extent does acknowledge crimes.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/nov/04/israel1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirim_affair

As detailed here, the Israeli organisation B'tselem has been (one of its members, Vivian Silver, was tragically one of those murdered on October 7) key in reporting on sexual abuse of Palestinian civilians & prisoners during the Gaza War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_and_gender-based_violence_against_Palestinians_during_the_Gaza_war

You say Palestinians were complicit in jewish people’s suffering under the nazis, personally I have not seen any evidence of that. I have heard of no connection between Palestinians and German nazis! To say some leaders were anti semitic as a justification of all that followed is not a real justification, if someone did to Americans what was done to Palestinians and justified it with any of the crazy shit Trump has said we would all say that he does not represent every American!

I do know that many Palestinian families took in jewish refugees - if you watch the documentary Tantura the original settlers interviewed say that they first came to the region as refugees and initially stayed with Palestinian families, the Israeli settlers say it was happy and they played with the Palestinian children. They then say it all changed when someone up high decided that the port was strategic and should be taken so Israeli soldiers came and wiped out the village, brutally - murder, rape, villagers set on fire etc… They say their relationship with the Palestinians changed after that point, which is sort of understandable.

I am glad you do not debate historic crimes or the Palestinian’s suffering. All the jewish people I know in real life are horrified by Israel’s actions, historically and today. There are people online though who deny it or make excuses for it. Obviously generations have been born in the last 78 years bear no responsibility for what happened in 1948 and the land is their home now, just as it is the Palestinian’s home. The problem is that the
murder, displacement and settlements are ongoing and still happen. I do not blame jewish people or even Israeli’s for what is happening to Palestinians, many Israeli’s do not agree with it - I blame the people who take part in it, defend or deny it. The only way there will be peace in the lands is if there are equal rights and people on both sides are just allowed to live their lives! Equal rights and compromise is what brought peace in Northern Ireland - I strongly believe this is the only solution for Israel and Palestine. I actually don’t see a 2 state solution as being workable but think it should be a united state of Israel and Palestine with equal rights and all religions respected.

Groans..we've had the dreaded mention of Tantura. @Carla786 you really are flogging a dead horse.

Oh no the dreaded mention of a village that was massacred! Why is it dreaded? Because Israeli soldiers and settlers have gone on record and admitted villagers were executed, set alight with flame throwers, locked in a room and then blown up with a hand grenade, 16 year old girl raped and then murdered? Is it an inconvenient truth, a stain on a perfect state?

May I introduce you to Teddy Katz and, by his own admission, his flawed thesis.

What do you mean, Tantura? I've never heard of that. I will look it up now.

The gang rape and murder of a Palestinian Bedouin teenager in the Nirim affair is NOT contested. I've never heard of Teddy Katz and the historical truth of the Nirim affair doesn't appear to be rely on such a person.

Hi have you watched Tantura? It is a compilation of videoed interviews, primarily with Israeli soliders and settlers and some with the Palestinians who lived in the area. They all say it was a massacre, one if the soldiers admits go executing villagers and the others admit to witnessing barbaric acts of murder, violence and rape.

Yes, a compilation taken from an accurate, therefore invalid thesis.

Apologies, inaccurate data. I'm not going to argue further the validity of his research due to the sensitive nature.

It’s on Amazon Prime. It is well worth a watch. Teddy Katz was a phd student who interviewed over 200 people via audio as part of his thesis (a long time ago) about a historic massacre of 1000+ people in the port town of Tantura. He was put on trial and accused of making up the massacre and then taken by military and forced to sign a retraction in the middle of the night without his lawyer present. His career ended and he was vilified in the media, he was only really exonerated as an elderly man.

A few years ago a film maker came across the case and went and reinterviewed some of the people on camera - the worst stories came from the Israeli soldiers, some who witnessed and at least one who admits he took part. It was very sad on both sides - people being murdered was obviously recognisably awful but the soldiers basically said they had come from nazi germany, some from concentration camps and had been given this line of us or them to get them to carry out these brutal acts. Higher ups basically convinced them it was the only way to have peace at a time when they were suffering from severe ptsd and not thinking clearly. At least one person (the rapist) was properly insane but most of those interviewed were people who had survived unbelievable horrors and were manipulated to commit unbelievable horrors. Some said they made themselves forget what they did as it was the only way to move on. As part of the documentary the film maker also met the original judge who stripped Teddy Katz’s phd and she said he should have fought it as if she had heard the tapes there would be a different outcome. One of the saddest parts was that Palestinians from a neighbouring village were then made to dig the mass grave and bury the bodies - they interviewed the grave diggers who pointed to a car park in a popular beach resort and said that is where the victims are buried but Israel refuses to dig it up or acknowledge it!

Here's some more info.

told Schwarz in Tantura that Katz's thesis was flawed due to its heavy reliance on oral testimony,[35][36] and later criticized the film after it was screened due to what The New York Times paraphrased as "a paucity of other documentation [besides oral sources]."[37] This criticism and others about the film were also made by Benny Morris.[38] The family of one of the veterans interviewed accused Schwarz of misrepresenting the veteran's account,[37] and another veteran said a massacre had happened[39] but told The New York Times that the Israeli soldiers had acted without orders.[37]

In Tantura, Judge Drora Pilpel who presided over the court in which Theodore Katz had been accused years earlier, is shown listening to tapes with testimonies of soldiers from the Alexandroni brigade talking about having killed Arab civilians. Pilpel reacts by saying "This I never heard. If it's true, it is a shame...If he (Katz) had such things, he should have seen it through."[40]

Forensic Architecture investigation (2023)
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This section needs expansion. You can help by making an edit request. (May 2023)
In 2023, after being commissioned to do so by the Palestinian NGO Adalah, the Forensic Architecture research unit at Goldsmiths undertook a comprehensive investigation of the historical sources, cartographic and aerial photographic data together with oral testimonies, and produced a 3-D model indicating the existence of three grave sites beneath the beach resort.[41][42][43][44]

I'm not sure what I think, but it sounds likely that at least some war crimes took place. I will read more.

Thank you for your post.

I think you have a strong point that the fact many Israeli soldiers had PTSD, had lost family to Nazis etc had an impact on some atrocities committed, surely. It is no excuse but it is part of the explanation.

Elie Wiesel, for one, noted at the end of his terrible memoir Night that some survivors he knew went 'to rape German shiksas' after they were released from the camps as 'revenge'.

It's a tragic truth that some survivors of atrocities can end up reacting by dehumanising others.

Are you saying that all the Palestinian civilians who claim to have witnessed war crimes there are lying?

And that the soldiers who claim to have witnessed them are lying too? Why would they do that?

We know war crimes against Palestinians took place during the 1948 war. Why is it so inconceivable they could have taken place at Tantura? Armies throughout history have committed war crimes, and the highly charged situation and the trauma of many soldiers in the army would have only made it more likely.

To make clear, the Nirim Affair was totally separate from Tantura, I'm unsure why you leapt to linking them. They took place at separate places and in different years.

Why do you write dismissively of Palestinians who suffered war crimes? It doesn't negate Israeli suffering or justify anti Semitism to say that Israeli troops have sometimes committed war crimes. It makes them human, with all the brutality that can entail.

I never referred to Nirim. I was addressing the post that quoted a documentary that was part of a defamation case. I am not denying events, I am questioning the validity of the research on which that particular documentary was based. You said you were going to look into Tantura, May I suggest you do that before coming for me.

Thank you for this post. I want to address your points gradually.

'You say Palestinians were complicit in jewish people’s suffering under the nazis, personally I have not seen any evidence of that. I have heard of no connection between Palestinians and German nazis! '

• I don't mean Palestinian people as a group. Did you read my OP? Leaders of the Palestinians who are still seen as heroes today did have strong links to Nazis. The Mufti of Jerusalem urged 'killing Jews wherever they are' as a holy act, stirred up a massacre of Jews at Hebron in 1929 and collaborated with Hitler. It is disputed but there is some evidence he wanted to help establish a 'final solution' involving crematoria if the Axis had broken through to Palestine.

Nasser was a key ally of Palestinians in the Six Day War. He called during it for 'driving all the Jews into the sea' and used ex-Nazis who had committed Holocaust crimes to write anti Semitic propaganda to stir people up against Israel. Similar happened in Syria.

The Palestinian youth movement of the 1930s, Al-Futuwwa was based on the Hitler Youth. The Iraqi branch drove the Fahud, the murder of Iraqi Jews which forced them from Arab lands.

My point with this was not to negate Palestinian suffering or blame them as a whole for actions taken by leaders. But I do think the Palestinian rights movement ad a whole needs to come to terms with ugly parts of its history just as Israelis have had to confront war crimes, terrorism by Irgun & Lehi. Instead figures like the Mufti seem to idealised.

I agree Palestinians did sometimes take in Jewish refugees and that should be remembered. I agree too on the ideal of a binational state. This is what people like Theodore Herzl, Ahad Ha'am and Martin Buber advocated: either a binational state (Buber) or a single state where Jews and Arabs collaborated on an equal footing (the other 2). Theodore Herzl in his novel Old New Land (this is what Tel Aviv means) even dreamed of rebuilding the Second Temple near the original site so it could be restored without harming the Dome of the Rock.

Yes I have heard accounts of awful crimes against German civilians after WW2 and after people in other countries who were accused of being collaborators. In some cases women were raped, paraded through streets naked and often murdered for being collaborators because nazis took over their houses or raped them and didn’t fight them off. People do awful things when they have been hurt and need someone to lash out at.

There have been studies on the brain that show that the parts of the brain that deal with empathy and right & wrong are impacted when someone suffers severe trauma - it really does explain why some abuse victims go on to abuse. I believe there is an element of that on both sides and both sides have evil men at the top that fully understand trauma and know how to use it to manipulate people. War crimes on both sides are unforgivable but we shouldn’t pretend that they came about from thin air - violence begets violence and the cycle continues.

I apologise if I have misunderstood something.

May I clarify which of my posts you were referring to when you wrote this :

'Groans..we've had the dreaded mention of Tantura. @Carla786 you really are flogging a dead horse.'

That's OK. I was only referring to the mention of Tantura as though it's based on fact. It's shrouded in controversy because of its inaccuracies. As I mentioned before, I'm not going to get bogged down in case details, both inside and outside of the documentary because of the sensitive nature. I wouldn't do that. Thank you for your acknowledgement.