Sunday, November 22, 2009

The Invention of the Jewish People

This book The Invention of the Jewish People is an interesting one. It's apparently kicking up a storm in Israel, which is undoubtedly its intention.

In his book "[Sand] tries to prove that the Jewish people never existed as a "nation-race" with a common origin, but rather is a colorful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion. He argues that for a number of Zionist ideologues, the mythical perception of the Jews as an ancient people led to truly racist thinking".

Personally I haven't read the book (yet) and so can't begin to judge the academic thesis. Whatever the academic status, it seems to me this is mostly a straw man argument. The only people I know of who would go to the wall to defend the claim that the jews are a genetically distinct race all descended from Roman-era Israelites would be Nazis, and frankly I really don't mind some renegade academic disagreeing with them. I don't know of any jew who makes this narrow claim, thinks it important to do so, or bases any claims to political rights upon it, and frankly given:

1. the centuries (if not millenia) of organised pogroms and rape against jews
2. the existence of distinct ethnic groups within judaism, such as the Falashas
3. the possibility of conversion to Judaism

you'd be a bit of dickhead to do so.

I really struggle to think of what the modern-day political fallout would be of finding out (shock horror) that many people converted to judaism rather than every last one of the buggers being descendants of original Israelites. Even Zionism itself has not always been concerned with Palestine - among Zionists in the 19th century there was talk of trying to set up a jewish homeland in both Uganda and Argentina before they fixed on the Middle East, which had had a historical jewish community as well as being the location of the cherished Jerusalem.

Inevitably this new 'scholarship' (if that's what it turns out to be) will be seized upon by anti-Zionists and -semites in their droves to further deligitimise you-know-what. Amongst those delighted recipients of the thesis will be, I predict, the usual rabid Islamists, themselves literal interpreters of the Koran, but I'm sure quite happy to latch onto Old Testament debunking if it suits them. And it wouldn't occur to these people that a Pakistani muslim's love for Mecca might be on a par with a Khazar-descended* jew's love for Jerusalem.

Balls to them all, I say.

* see review

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Book review: The Invention of the Jewish People
From The Sunday Times
November 15, 2009
The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand
The Sunday Times review by Max Hastings

Every nation cherishes its own myths and legends. Most Americans believe themselves to be anti-imperialists, though their ancestors colonised a continent, almost annihilating its native inhabitants. The French fancy themselves descended from ancient Gauls, though like the rest of us they are mongrels.

But Israel’s favoured historical narrative possesses special significance, because it defines the state’s proclaimed right to existence. It holds that the world’s Jews are descended from the ancient tribes of Israel, evicted by the Romans following the fall of the temple in AD70, and today permitted to return to their rightful homeland after almost 2,000 years of foreign persecution.

Shlomo Sand, who teaches contemporary history at Tel Aviv University, rejects most of this as myth. He argues that the alleged history of the Jewish people has been distorted, reshaped or invented in modern times to fit the political requirements of Zionism.

His book, first published in Hebrew, has caused widespread outrage in his native land. But it represents, at the very least, a formidable polemic against claims that Israel has a moral right to define itself as an explicitly and exclusively Jewish society, in which non-Jews, such as Palestino-Israelis, are culturally and politically marginalised.

He disputes the claim that Israel existed for thousands of years as a nation. This, he says, relies chiefly on a willingness to suppose that the Old Testament story is broadly valid, in defiance of archeological and other historical evidence. He refuses to believe that a unified Jewish nation occupied Canaan in the era of David and Solomon, or that the flight from Egypt occurred as described. The Old Testament “is not a narrative that can instruct us about the time it describes” — centuries before it was written — “but is instead an impressive didactic theological discourse”.

He rejects the assertion, dependent on the testimony of the 1st-century Hellenised Jewish historian Josephus, that Jews were forcibly deported from Jerusalem after the fall of the Temple. Rome behaved savagely to defeated rebels, but never expelled whole populations, not least because it required their services.

Historical evidence, says Sand, shows large Jewish communities living all over the Mediterranean, including Rome, before AD70. Cicero complained in 59BC: “You know how numerous that crowd is, how great is its unanimity, and of what weight it is in popular assemblies.”

The author suggests that there was steady economic migration from Palestine after the fall of the Temple, but most Jews remained, eventually to be converted to Islam following the Muslim conquest in the 7th century and afterwards. Some modern Palestinians are more likely to be descended from the ancient Israelites than are modern Israelis who have migrated from Russia.

Acknowledging uncertainty about much that happened in the last millennium before Christ and the first thereafter, Sand dismisses the proposition of Zionist historians that the Jewish communities that grew up all over Europe were descended from Jews driven out of Israel. Many, he says, were indigenous peoples converted to Judaism by small numbers of wandering, literate Jews.

He focuses special attention on the Khazar empire, the Jewish society that flourished around the Volga and Caucasus between the 4th and 13th centuries, and provided seed for the large Jewish communities of eastern Europe. Zionists assert that those Jews had migrated east from Germany. Sand says there is no evidence for this, save that they spoke Yiddish.

He believes, instead, that these were locals who adopted the Jewish religion. He claims that modern Israeli historians refuse to study the Khazar empire honestly, lest they find themselves confronted by evidence that might seem to delegitimise Israel. He writes scornfully of Zionists “entirely caught up in the mythology of an eternal ‘ethnic’ time”.

Sand launches a further broadside at Israeli geneticists who have devoted much energy to identifying a common “Jewish gene” among diaspora communities around the world. He is scornful of such research, perhaps not least because of the ghastly memory of Nazi scientists who pursued alleged Aryan identity.

Sand’s fundamental thesis is that the Jewish people are joined by bonds of religion, not race or ancient nationhood. He deplores the explicitly racial basis of the Israeli state, in which the Arab minority are second-class citizens. “No Jew who lives today in a western democracy would tolerate the discrimination and exclusion experienced by the Palestino-Israelis… The state’s ethnocentric foundation remains an obstacle to [its liberal democratic] development.”

It is easy to see why Sand’s book has attracted fierce controversy. The legend of the ancient exile and modern return stands at the heart of Israel’s self-belief. It is no more surprising that its people enjoy supposing that Joshua’s trumpets blew down the walls of Jericho — at a time when, Sand says, Jericho was a small town with no walls — than that we cherish tales of King Alfred and his cakes.

The author rightly deplores the eagerness of fanatics to insist upon the historical truth of events convenient to modern politics, in defiance of evidence or probability. No modern British historian’s reputation could survive, for instance, claiming the factual accuracy of all the charming medieval stories in Froissart’s Chronicles, which nonetheless bear a closer relationship to events than does the Old Testament.

Yet Sand, whose title is foolishly provocative, displays a lack of compassion for the Jewish predicament. It is possible to accept his view that there is no common genetic link either between the world’s Jews or to the ancient tribes of Israel, while also trusting the evidence of one’s own senses that there are remarkable common Jewish characteristics — indeed, a Jewish genius — that cannot be explained merely by religion.

Jewish faith is visibly declining, in Israel as much as anywhere else. There is much dismay among diaspora communities about the steady increase in the frequency of their members “marrying out”. Yet who can doubt that Jews possess a social identity that transcends any narrow issue of belief? Sand produces some formidable arguments about what Jews may not be, but he fails to explain what it is they are.

His book serves notice on Zionist traditionalists: if an Israeli historian can display such plausible doubts about important aspects of the Israeli legend, any Arabs hostile to the state of Israel can exploit a fertile field indeed.

Yet whatever the rights and wrong of the past, Israel has established its existence. If the Middle East is to advance beyond perpetual conflict, all parties must abandon both claims and grievances rooted in history, and address the now and the future.

Book review: Growing up Bin Laden

Try not to laugh.

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Book review: Growing up Bin Laden
The Sunday Times
November 15, 2009

Growing up Bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World by Jean Sasson, Najwa Bin Laden and Omar bin Laden
The Sunday Times review by Robert Harris

Growing Up Bin Laden purports to be the memoirs of his first wife, Najwa (mother of 11 of his children), and her fourth son, Omar, now 28 and married to a British woman. Their accounts have been woven into a fascinating narrative by an American writer, Jean Sasson. Anyone who has read the letters of Stalin’s daughter, say, or the memoirs of Hitler’s entourage, will recognise the same tone of bewildered loyalty warring with appalled disbelief. Indeed, the careers of Hitler, Stalin and Bin Laden seem to have many of the same toxic precursors: an absent father (Bin Laden’s died when he was 10); a strong maternal presence; a grudge against the world, nurtured in childhood; high intelligence, manifested by a prodigious memory (Bin Laden had such a genius for mental arithmetic “men would come to our home and ask him to match his wits against a calculator”) and an inner coldness (“my father…never cuddled me or my brothers”).

Life with such men is seldom congenial, but in terms of sheer domestic awfulness Bin Laden seems to be in a category of his own. Najwa, only 15 at the time of their marriage, describes him as “the most serious man I’ve ever known”, so devout in his Muslim faith that “everything lively was banned”. There was no music in the household, no television, no toys, scant furniture and, even in the heat of Saudi Arabia, no western fripperies such as a refrigerator or air-conditioning. Najwa succumbed to a regime that in the West would be seen as little better than slavery, thickly veiled from head to toe, forbidden to travel alone or set foot out of doors unaccompanied, powerless to control her children’s upbringing (she claims to have borne Bin Laden seven sons and four daughters), obliged to share her husband with three other wives in strict rotation.

Even before he became a terrorist, Bin Laden’s idea of family fun was to make his wives and children go into the desert and sleep in holes in the sand. “No one protested, not even our babies. Everyone did as told, slowly easing our bodies into those dirt holes, waiting for a long, long night to pass.” Laughter was permitted only if the teeth were not exposed. Prescription drugs were forbidden except for dire emergencies: young Omar, a chronic asthmatic, was told to relieve his symptoms by breathing through a honeycomb, a useless remedy. If Bin Laden’s sons failed to conform to his rules, he beat them vigorously with his cane. “Although our father was a quiet figure, and generally spoke softly, his patience hung on a short thread. He was easily angered and could reach a point of violence in an instant.” Bin Laden actively sought out hardship. “Life has to be a burden,” he lectured his son. “Life has to be hard.” Hence the overnight stays in holes.

more...

Friday, November 13, 2009

Winning hearts and minds

Huge Rise in birth defects in Falluja

"Doctors in Iraq's war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.

The extraordinary rise in birth defects has crystallised over recent months as specialists working in Falluja's over-stretched health system have started compiling detailed clinical records of all babies born.

Neurologists and obstetricians in the city interviewed by the Guardian say the rise in birth defects – which include a baby born with two heads, babies with multiple tumours, and others with nervous system problems - are unprecedented and at present unexplainable."

Thursday, November 12, 2009

'The fake threat from Afghanistan': Peter Hitchens

A rather long blog posting from Peter Hitchens on why the bogus threat to the UK from Afghanistan:

The fake threat from Afghanistan, and do eagles really drop tortoises on people's heads?

A number of correspondents took me up on my (though I say it myself) refreshingly frank admission that I don't know what will happen in Afghanistan if (or rather when) we leave that country, and by implication that I don't think that outcome, whatever it may be, will make much difference to us anyway.

Edward Doyle made a number of statements and assertions which I would ask him to substantiate. First, he refers to something called 'Al Qaeda', on the assumption that there exists a defined, centralised organisation going under this name. Can he tell me: a) where I can find AQ's statement of aims, as opposed to baseless journalistic and political assertions of what those aims are; b)where and when it was founded, and by whom; c) how does it raise and where does it bank or store its funds, and how and to whom does it disburse them? d) what specific aims, methods, etc allow an analyst to decide whether an Islamist terror group is or is not affiliated to AQ, as in ‘such and such an action “bears all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda” ‘. What precisely are these 'hallmarks'? In what way are they different from the modus operandi of any fanatical Islamist terror group, and what reason do we have to assume that they are linked, except in the vaguest sense, with the actions of any other such group, Islamist fanatics existing in places as distant and different as Bosnia, Leeds and the Philippines, and often being from differing and even hostile types of Islam? e) what its political front organisation is, and how we can tell objectively that statements or actions attributed to AQ by journalists or intelligence organisations or governments are in fact connected with it?

Just asking.

Mr Doyle then says that AQ has 'relocated to Somalia'. From where did it do this? How does he know? Who relocated? What does he think about the people who claim it is in fact in Pakistan's tribal areas? Are they mistaken? If so, on what basis are we to judge between him and those who disagree with him, and decide that he knows better. Or does it just depend on which paper he read most recently?

I really don't know what the increased use of the burqa (or more often in this country the hijab and niqab) has to do with this. It is undoubtedly so (the burqa is also almost universal in those parts of Afghanistan we claim to have liberated from Taliban oppression, I might add). That seems to me to have more to do with a general revival of the stricter versions of Sunni Islam promoted by Saudi Arabia during the last 30 years.

And then there's this statement: ‘To be sure, Afghanistan won't turn into a Westminster look-a-like democracy. But it could function in its own way as one, bringing stability to that part of Asia and the prospect of economic development. All this might lead to far better influences being exported from the region.’

Really? How, exactly? This is an enormous 'but if', around about the size of the Himalayas. Yet he skips lightly over it as if it were a sand-castle. Mr Doyle is arguing that men - his neighbours and mine - should be sent to fight and die for a cause. The burden's on him to show good reasons for this. This is a wishful and wholly unrealistic claim of the type I've mentioned before, which falls into the category I've previously mocked, that of ‘With a ladder and some glasses, you could see the Hackney Marshes, if it wasn't for the houses in between’. Indeed you could, if you had the ladder and the glasses, and it wasn't for the houses. But you haven't, and the houses are there. So you can't.

For example, if Afghanistan functions 'in its own way' which is as a village-based patriarchal clan system, then it won't be a parliamentary democracy. The two are mutually exclusive. See the recent laughable 'elections'.

He then says, quite reasonably: ’There is a real danger, in at least some parts of Britain, that they come to resemble Northern Ireland - opposed community groups with totally different values living cheek-by-jowl, presided over by a liberal elite who understand neither (and of course allowing the BNP to get a foothold all the while).’

But he follows this with a complete non sequitur: ‘Afghanistan is not a liberal war. It's about establishing or maintaining community cohesion over here.’

I am sorry. I simply and genuinely do not understand the connection. I cannot reply to Mr Doyle's reasoning, by which he presumably links his fear for the Ulsterisation of Britain and his belief that our military presence in Afghanistan will prevent this. I cannot reply to it because he appears to have left it out. Has he left it out because he forgot to put it in? Or has he left it out (as I rather suspect) because he has no idea what the connection is? If so, let me reassure him. Nor have I. But in that case, what is his point?

I am asked if anyone has ever been killed as a result of an eagle dropping a tortoise on his head. The Greek classical dramatist Aeschylus is said, by some accounts, to have died in this rather unpleasant and annoying (in that it is so unlikely and rather ridiculous) way. But I am not sure where the database is, that gives statistics on this risk in the present day. When I say that I am as likely to die by this method as I am to die by the hand of a terrorist, I am simply making a point that we are much too scared of terrorists, and that most of us are at no risk whatever of being killed or hurt by terrorist attacks, to which we over-react unreasonably and ludicrously. Compare the stoical response of the British population to the much greater risk from German bombing raids and guided missiles.

Dermot Doyle meanwhile rebukes me as follows: ’We would let so many people down, if we abandoned them to the uncertainty of a future controlled by a bunch of medieval hairy savages, with more wives than teeth, and the eventual consequences for ourselves. Islamic terrorism apart, the single issue of Taliban treatment of females of all ages is worthy of our intervention. We surely cannot sit back and allow a repeat of what we saw in Afghanistan, after the Russian propped regime collapsed.’

It is amusing to see him using the same excuse for our intervention in Afghanistan (emancipation of women) as was employed by Leonid Brezhnev's USSR in the 1970s, for their equally doomed intervention. It is also based on a misunderstanding of reality. Mr Doyle should look into the treatment of women in the non-Taliban areas of Afghanistan (including NGO-infested Kabul) run by our current 'friends', the corrupt and violent warlords who control the country under the figurehead presidency of Hamid Karzai. It does not differ much from the treatment of women under our former 'friends', the Mujahidin whom we financed and armed in their war against the 'progressive' Soviets, and whom we now call 'The Taleban' or 'Al Qaeda'. (People should get hold of the profane but clever and disturbing film Charlie Wilson's War to see the contradictory mess we have got ourselves into with our fantasies of intervention in this part of the world).

The age of imperialism is over. I might regret that, and in fact often do, but it is so. It is none of my business, even if I had the power to do anything about it, how other people wish to order their countries. Unselfishness and neighbourliness are of no worth if they are not effective. As the other Mr Doyle rightly points out, we have more urgent concerns, not being addressed, close to home (where charity begins). What's more, those aims would be achievable, if we tried, whereas cleaning up Afghanistan will be as easy as draining the Pacific with a teaspoon. Do these advocates of war ever look at a map, and see how tiny our presence is, in what is a small part of this rather large country? Do they notice how much of our time is spent in first taking, then abandoning, then retaking the same places?

We intervene in these countries not to do good, but to make ourselves feel good about ourselves. This is why I recommend idealists, who think they can liberate the womenfolk of Afghanistan, to form a volunteer international brigade and go and do it themselves. Actually, only two political figures have ever succeeded in de-Islamising any society. One was Kemal Ataturk, whose work in Turkey is now being busily undone by the AK party, with Western support. The other was Josef Stalin, who banned the veil and brought female equality across Central Asia and the Caucasus. Both men were utterly ruthless. Both, in the long term, failed in their objective. Do we wish to follow their examples? Do we think we shall succeed where they ultimately failed?

In a charming and civilised post, Tom Bumstead says that a linking organisation can be identified which connects terrorist actions in Britain with Afghanistan. Well, I'd subject such claims to the questions I ask above about 'Al Qaeda'. Those in the intelligence business both love constructing these spider's webs (usually post facto) and often need them to get the US government to finance and support their work (this is the fundamental reason behind the adoption of the name 'Al Qaeda' by American intelligence organisations). But let us assume that Mr Bumstead's connections are correct. He goes on: ‘Every real attack on the UK has a link with this group and the UK will not be safe from this particular threat until Al Mujahiroun has been shut down in the UK and in Afghanistan/Pakistan. You ask why a British presence in Helmand is required - the answer is that now that Pakistan is no longer so safe a haven for terrorism as it once was - Afghanistan could take its place unless protected. The forces of civilization need to be on both sides of the border to make this area safe. There is no other area in the world which could breed this kind of terrorism - this is not an idealistic swing in the dark against evil - it is surgically precise.’

Did you spot the sleight of hand? Yes, Mr Bumstead has rather cleverly invented a country . It is called ‘Afghanistan/Pakistan’. It is necessary for his argument because, if there are such 'training camps' and if they are important, and if they do play a role in terrorist actions in this country (an argument for another time) then the trouble is that they are in Pakistan, a member (I think, currently, though this comes and goes) of the Commonwealth with which we have diplomatic relations, and with which we are not at war, and to which we gave independence in 1947. We're not sending British troops there, I think. Pakistan is also incidentally a nuclear power, and would not take kindly to our invading it. Further, Pakistan was also until recently under the control of a military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, who we appear to have helped to destabilise (again in the name of 'democracy') in favour of a government which seems far less capable of controlling such things than he was. But that's by the way.

By pretending that Afghanistan and Pakistan are the same country, Mr Bumstead hopes to avoid my question, which he knows perfectly well is coming: ’How does the presence of our troops in Helmand province in Afghanistan in any way influence the existence or operation of Islamist training camps a long way away in Pakistan, a different country? Helmand, according to my map, is a good deal closer to Iran than it is to South Waziristan, the scene of Pakistan's battles with the Taleban (alias the Pashtuns). And that battle is all about the (British Imperial) misplacing of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, leaving large numbers of Pashtuns in a country they don't want to be in, a problem worsened in recent years by the many Pashtun refugees from the Russo-Afghan war, who have settled in Pakistan and so wield political influence there. I need from him simple, easy-to-follow factual explanations as to how this process - of British troops in Helmand preventing terror attacks on Britain - works. I can't make it out myself. And, once again, the burden of proof must rest on those who propose and defend this very bloody and costly military action. I don't have to prove it's futile (though 95 percent of military operations are) .They have to prove it's rational and effective.

One small non-Afghan point. A person styling himself 'Geraint' writes: ’Mr Hitchens's logic is rather faulty. He says the Tories should be destroyed but then says that the obvious successors like UKIP or the English Democrats are Cravat and Blazer brigade or too small. Yet a party starting from scratch would suffer the exact same problems. Besides which he lambasts UKIP yet at the same time praised Norman Tebbit for telling people to go vote for them at the Euro elections. Which is it Mr Hitchens you cannot have it both ways!’

I dealt with this only last week (Google the November 5 posting ‘Please stop trying to get me to endorse UKIP’. Or find it in the archives). UKIP is not 'the “obvious successor” ' to the Tories. As long as the Tories remain unsplit, no serious rival can develop. Any new party will be built out of the ruins of the Tories, and will have to win a large part of the vote which the Tories have hitherto counted upon. It will not be 'starting from scratch'. It will be reordering the conservative forces in this country which exist, but are currently trapped in impotence, or reduced to abstention. They are either too disillusioned to vote, or they are chained by habit and misplaced loyalty to the Useless Tories. That loyalty can only be shaken by a further Tory failure at the election, a real possibility (The last Tory score in the polls was 39 percent, of 67 percent of the electorate, which in reality means the support of about 25 percent of voters as a whole).

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Obama

I'm starting a general all purpose Obama thread. Kicking it off with Peter Hitchens' surprising comment on Obama below:

"I never joined in the exaggerated swoon of praise for Barack Obama. But I have some respect – so far – for his unwillingness to be panicked by generals into deepening the futile deployment in Afghanistan.

I was also impressed that, unlike our own leaders, he had the decency to stand and salute the returning dead, whose homecoming George W. Bush tried to keep secret.

If soldiers’ coffins were carried through the Commons, with the maimed following in their wheelchairs, our pathetic frontbenchers might get round to debating this moronic, doomed war, and getting us out of it."