Comments on: The Map: The Story of Palestinian Nationhood Thwarted After the League of Nations Recognized It

By: Hugh Sansom

Hugh Sansom — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:49:32 +0000

We could say that the rabidly pro-Israel/Israel-can-do-no-wrong camp are pulling out the big guns, except that they have no big guns in the intellectual sense.

They do have a legion of vicious bigots enamored of libel and slander — Jeffrey Goldberg, Alan Dershowitz, David Horowitz, Martin Kramer, etc. These are the big rhetorical guns. The big political guns are bigots like Senator Joseph Lieberman. And there are the big media guns — Thomas Friedman, The New York Times and the entire Fox Network.

(By the way, I do not the term "bigot" lightly. By any reasonable account, the people named above are bigots . . . and worse. Their arguments match very closely the 50s and 60s arguments of those who opposed equal rights for Blacks. In some instances, the pro-Israel rhetoric matches closely that of the Nazis — disturbing and depressing.)

Another weapon in the arsenal is now the "Lawfare Project," which (put kindly) seeks to oppose the abuse of domestic and international law to abuse freedom loving, democratic wonderlands like Israel.

Put truthfully, it is a campaign against the growing effort to apply law to the state which leads the world in defying international law — Israel. Even the US has to heed concerns about civilian casualties. Not so Israel, which has the US to cover for whatever atrocity Israel commits. No other nation enjoys this protection. Though states like the US and China enjoy effective immunity, they nevertheless pay some attention to morality for fear that popular opposition may prove consequential in the absence of state opposition. Israel, however, knows that the US will step in no matter what.

By: Jeremy R. Hammond

Jeremy R. Hammond — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:23:20 +0000

@Metternich, Cole quoted Article 22 not of the Palestine Mandate, but of the charter of the League of Nations, which is applicable to the Palestine Mandate, which, by definition, makes it a "Class A" Mandate.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:45:30 +0000

Professor Cole, writes "the Zionists had more esprit de corps and better weaponry."

Or perhaps they had just witnessed the mass extermination of their uncles, mothers, daughters, sons and friends in death camps because of the genocidal hatred and racism of the majority of Germans.

Faced with the threat from those who would also kill them, perhaps the "Zionists" felt a little more passion in defending themselves so that what happened in Dachau and Auschwitz and Buchenwald would never happen again.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:57:34 +0000

an excellent read! thank you for clearing out my confusion about this whole situation.

By: Metternich

Metternich — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:01:37 +0000

The "Mandate for Palestine" does NOT say what Cole claims. See the text here or explications from Wikipedia here or a deeper analysis here.

And it is not at all clear that the Palestine Mandate was class "A", or any other letter. It seems to be sui generis.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:16:46 +0000

Thanks Prof. Cole for the excellent piece. As back up for the facts conveyed I recommend two works: BEFORE THEIR DIASPORA, by Walid Khalidi, and the British journalist Alan Hart's two volume work, ZIONISM, THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS. It seems clear that the only solution now is a single, pluralistic, democratic secular state, where not only would it be unnecessary for fanatical Jewish settlers to go camp out on and take over Palestinian land, but Palestinians would be free to live in and among the Jews in the coastal cities and lands elsewhere from which they have been evicted by the Zionists, the West, and in particular, the enabler in chief, the United States. How radical is all that?

Bob in Virginia

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:46:04 +0000

the multi-cultural, multi-racial Brazilians

HAHAHAHA!!!

Read Anthony Marx, "Making Race and Nation". Just because people are "multi-racial" doesn't mean they're not racist. Brazil has a strong and long history of pigmentocracy.

Not to say that Avigdor Lieberman isn't an insane bigot.

By: super390

super390 — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:56:01 +0000

Given that they will hold the balance of political power in America's future, I wonder how Hispanic Americans view the distorted media narrative of Israel. Your map might remind them of the map of the United States and Mexico from 1835 to 1850.

However, that swings the other way. When will Jewish Americans' growing dismay at the behavior of their Israeli cousins be affected by the realization that neither Israel or the US can eternally forestall coming under the majority rule of "brown" people? People whose cheap labor is needed to do the growing amount of dirty work that "white" people can't get off the Internet to perform.