Is a person of Jewish descent who is an atheist actually a Jew? Is a person of Arab descent who is an atheist actually an Arab? What exactly is a person of Arab descent practicing Islam and living in Israel? What exactly is a person of German descent practicing Roman Catholicism and living in America as a fourth generation American? Is a person of Palestinian birth, now a citizen of Belize and an atheist, still a Palestinian? Is a person born and raised in Israel who emigrates to the U.S. and becomes a citizen still an Israeli in a political or national sense?

I find it interesting that the current situation in the Middle East is viewed in terms of both religious indentity and national identity. For example, the Lebanese people are comprised of a mixture of Islamic (religion) and Christian (religion) faiths, but are regarded as Arabs (regional)because their primary language is Arabic, but they are not descendents of the Arabs (Saudia Arabian)who, under Mohammed, conquered the region in the 8th century, “converted” the populace to Islam and moved westward. Linguistically, the term “semitic” applies to the major language group of southwestern Asia and northern Africa. It is especially fascinating to have met many Israelis who are atheists and consider their Jewishness to be strictly sectarian in nature. In analyzing and confronting the perpetual violence in the area, it is essential to determine how people view themselves relative to the place in which they live (community) and the political entity under which they are governed (state). People living in refugee camps do not consider themselves “citizens” of the camp, but consider the place from which they fled to be their “homeland”. Persons who have fled their traditional homeland to another location often adopt that locale as “home” and begin a new life, as seen in the migration of, say, Lithuanians to the United States after WWII; or the migration of large numbers of Hmong people to the U.S. follwing the Viat Nam war. In one way or another, these migrants are assimilated into the predominant culture and political entity over time. While they may retain liguistic and cultural aspects of the “old country,” they become participatory residents of the new locale.

In terms of Israel, the Jewish peoples fleeing the Roman destruction of their cultural homeland rarely assimilated into the political and cultural states/communities to which they fled, continuing instead to regard themselves as Jews, both in religious and cultural terms. As such, they were regarded as outsiders in Europe, Asia and even in America. They were regarded, at best, as clannish foreign beings who had no true place in cultural, religious and linguistic communities and political states in which they resided, worked, raised families and owned property. At worst, they were the victims of persecution and death at the hands of local communities and states. The founding of a Jewish state, regardless of the political validity of that state, offered Jews of every nation a place to return to home, despite the fact that many of them had lived in other states for many generations. Their return to Israel, a state politically carved out of a now Arabic ethnic region, could bring only conflict as the current inhabitants were displaced by the returning “wandering Jews.”

How then can we look to the origins of personal identity in a region to discover what, if any, means can be employed to minimize conflict and maximize peaceful coexistance?

Thank you.

We are now witnessing the downstream consequences of that. The British government abstained in the UN debate on the future of the Palestine mandate in November 1947, warning that partition of Palestine would lead to continuing conflict. That predictive insight has proved absolutely correct.

It amounts to a trevesty to blame Britain for Palestine when British ministers were subject to terrorist threats and the then government abstained in the UN debate which created the separate state of Israel in Palestine.

As for what should we do about 1.5 billion muslims worldwide, I’m unclear precisely what Bro. Bartleby has in mind as his preferred alternative to a new diaspora. Genocide of the muslims?

Iranian Parliament Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad ‘Adel, the Iranian News Channel (IRINN) on July 18, 2006:

Gholam-Ali Haddad ‘Adel: “The Palestinian refugees should return to the land of their forefathers, and you, who came to Palestine from other countries, should return to your homes too.

“Today is the day of the liberation of Palestine, and the day of resistance. As said by Hassan Nasrallah, this courageous, vigilant, and informed religious scholar, the war has just begun.”

[...]

“We say to America, England, and the supporters of Israel in the West: You will not benefit from supporting Israel. You are earning the hostility of 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, under the pretext of supporting a handful of Zionists, whom you brought and stuck, like a dagger, in the hearts of the Muslims in the Middle East.”

Crowd: “No more humiliation.

“No more humiliation.

“No more humiliation.”

http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD121006

Our enemies are terrorists because they murder our civilians.
But we can kill their civilians because terrorists don’t have a truly civilian population.

Finally! A way to have someone else’s cake, and shoot them too!

What on earth are you trying to say? Are you asserting that Hezbollah has declared South Lebanon a “non-defended locality”? I note that you claim S. Beck’s question wasn’t answered, which is untrue.

The programme included taped interviews with some living Israelis who had been tasked at the time by Lehi or Irgun to assassinate Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary in Attlee’s government, and bomb the Houses of Parliament in London. This is the relating BBC website posting:

“Mike Thomson investigates Jewish insurgency in Palestine after WWll and a plot to assasinate Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin. . .”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document.shtml

Illuminating insights from Matthew Parris on all this: Two reasons why I cannot bring myself to write about the Israel problem:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2277670,00.html

I’m reminded of the sheep in Orwell’s Animal Farm?

“Four legs good, two legs baad.”
http://www.george-orwell.org/Animal_Farm/index.html

This is unquestionably true. But does it really matter? One of the key differences between Nazi racism and the racism shown by the British Empire was precisely this: Nazis believed that some races (Jews, Slavs, ‘Negroes’) were simply biologically inferior and should be used as slaves (or pets?) or simply killed.

The British Empire on the other hand, bought into the idea that that there was such a thing as ‘progress’ in cultures, creating an ideological ‘pyramid’ with white, protestant, anglo-saxon, ‘male’ (and then, later, democratic) society at the top, with Catholic ‘culture’ underneath that, then Jewish/Muslim cultures/religions, then ‘oriental despotism’, and, at the bottom, ‘tribal societies (i.e. the native cultures of South America, and then, at the bottom, Africa).

Not only was this dubious enough on its own, but it’s notable that it was pretty easy to adapt this to an openly racist discourse: after all, many in the British Empire believed in this ‘pyramid of cultures’ and ALSO managed to be biologically racist as well. It’s not an either/or.

But the key point (apart from the fact that, from an anthropological point of view it’s nonsense) is that this provided a motivation for a certain kind of ‘paternalistic’ imperialism. ‘Aha!’ went the thinking. ‘”We” have “discovered” all these people. They are biologically the same as us. But, you see, they have an inferior culture. Therefore we, with our superior culture must invade. Then we can civilise them. Eventually (at some indeterminate point in the future) we will have raised them up to the level of culture already achieved by ourselves, and then we can “allow” them to govern themselves’.

There are so many problems with this kind of thinking I could easily turn this into an essay, but let’s just leave it at this: the non-racist cultural supremacy style of rhetoric is still very much a kind of discourse associated with a certain kind of imperialism.

Ummm, most forms of racism—including the South African kind—come heavily mixed with pretensions to “rational” fear and hostility (tribal societies, violence, relatively low levels of education—sound familiar?). The “revelatory enlightenment” in South Africa wasn’t the fall of any “physical-genetic barrier,” but rather the realization among some parts of the white citizenry that a pariah apartheid state was becoming unsustainable, and among other parts that the national myth of having given the natives a “fair shake” was a lie.

The thread commenced with “disgusting” claim of Alan Dershowitz. Just as contingency plans are about possible events, so the changing nature of war requires discussion of emergent elements such as, what is a civilian? It is not as if Dershowitz is first or the only one to confront this issue.

“The conduct of war – Whom can you fight?
The practical question is this: “Is it immoral to kill civilians in war?”
An issue of growing importance

This question has become more important during the last 100 years because a century ago most people killed in wars were professionals.
·At the beginning of the twentieth century only 10%-15% of those who died in war were civilians.
·In World War 2 more than 50% of those who died were civilians.
·By the end of the century over 75% of those killed in war were civilians

May well be regarded as combatants
civilians who are helping the war effort – these are people working to supply the troops and to provide them with weapons or helping in other ways.

They aren’t combatants in the sense of bearing arms, but they are an essential part of the war machine and constitute a threat to the other side”

BBC religion ethics war site.

S Beck’s question, “Now if somebody can explain how Dershowitz goes beyond what is permitted by the Geneva Conventions, I’d be much obliged.”
I don’t think anyone did oblige. I will add to his question by asking whether those who consider that Israel is wrong in their manner of fighting would find this view of the international Red Cross as in fact supportive of the Israeli position, though I absolutely sure that the Red Cross would not like the Israelis to be given leeway.

“Any inhabited place near or in a zone where armed forces are in contact and which is open to occupation by the adversary may be declared a non-defended locality. Such a locality must fulfil the following conditions:[P. I, 59]

a) all combatants, as well as mobile weapons and mobile military equipment must have been evacuated;
b) no hostile use may be made of fixed military installations or establishments,.
c) no acts of hostility may be committed by the authorities or by the population,.
d) no activities may be undertaken in support of military operations.

As long as these conditions are met, no attack can be launched on the locality by any means whatsoever”

Many here appear to be arguing that Israel may not attack South Lebanon by any means whateversoever. But surely what Dershowitz says is that because activities are undertaken by “civilians” in support of Hizbollah’s military operations, the locations and hence the individuals in them may be attacked. There is not an absolute definition of “civilian” or for that matter “innocent” Should it not be an issue for discussion?