Pending my learning Movable Type, I'll comment here: what Cohen should have mentioned is not "some Christians" but "fewer and fewer Christians." When I lived in Israel in the mid-seventies, for example, Bethlehem was about three-quarters Christian. It's not about one-quarter and dropping, and they haven't left because of the depredations of the IDF.

Detroit has a substantial population of what are locally referred to as Chaldeans, Iraqi Christians. That is an ancient community being squeezed out. All over the Middle East Christians, whose ancestry in the area goes back as far or farther than Moslems, are being persecuted and pushed out.

This explains why the ire and indignation of their co-religionists, like the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, is directed towards...oh, wait, it's Israel.

The WaPo is a mistake.

Powerful rebuttal, Yehudit.

If Cohen is "not nefarious, just ignorant" - then why did the WaPo give him the space? Clearly *somebody* made a nefarious decision when just about every sentence he wrote can be so easily fact-checked. Doesn't the MSM have editors? They keep saying they do, and that's why they shouldn't be ignored. Where were the editors on this article?

Somebody knew better but decided the time was right to publish this garbage. They can't *all* be ignorant at the WaPo can they?

Unfortunately, Judith, this traitor's views are wide-spread. No doubt, result of the years of Red-Brown propaganda.

Had similar conversation recently, here. Note how nobody actually argued; no logical arguments offered. I think it's a faith with them.

Oh, I suspect Muslim rage goes even deeper than that -- to their realization and fear that their religion is a cheesy, half-baked ripoff of the Jews', and that Koranic claims of priority and supersession are, well, laughable.

They'll fight over temporal priority because Jewish spiritual priority is both incontrovertible and intolerable.

Once again I say we need to resume excommunication.

Cohen's essential error is his failure to allow that Muslims are self-motivated human beings who make moral choices. He dismisses that fact:

"There is no point in condemning Hezbollah. Zealots are not amenable to reason."

This is of course twaddle. If Hezbollah is not amenable to reason, it is because they do not want to be, not because they have some rare mosquito borne virus.

Israel's enemies have pursued their aims for reasons that seemed utterly rational to them at the time. They have desired to distract their subjects from their own dictatorial misrule. They have acted as stooges and foot pads for the Soviet Union. They have acted out their dreams of jihad and purification.

Egypt and Jordan, who were once leaders of the pack got out of the business. Syria only stays in via proxies. Iran is only involved in a desperate attempt to distract their own people from a quarter century of mis-rule.

The enmity between Israel and its neighbors is not essential. It was created by and is part of 20th Century politics. When it no longer profits the puppet masters of the Middle East, it will fade away.

Yehudit: You may wish to return to the post that Nelson Ascher put up in 2003 in the wake of the Tony Judt article, to which you and I commented heavily.

Link to main post

Link to comments

Judith, excellent, excellent post. Thank you.

"If Cohen is "not nefarious, just ignorant" - then why did the WaPo give him the space?"

He's one of their regular pundits and none of these major newspapers fact-check like they should. The NYTimes is usually worse.
Robert and Tatyana, thanks for the links!

"How come there are Arab Jews? Because they were there before the Muslims came, or before Arabs became Muslim."

I'd like to believe you on this, but alas this is your own whopping mistake. Many of the Arab Jews there came from other Arab lands after 1948, kicked out as a result of the creation of Israel. Also, although the Jews made up a slight majority of the population of Jerusalem, I believe that they were traditionally only 10% of the population of Palestine.

"although the Jews made up a slight majority of the population of Jerusalem, I believe that they were traditionally only 10% of the population of Palestine."

Both of us are accurate, your history just starts later than mine. Israel/Judea was the Jewish nation/homeland verifiably since about 800 BCE. Jews also lived in Persia and Babylon since about 500 BCE, predating Islam by 1000 years.

By the time the Romans renamed Judea "Palestine," yes, they had ethnically cleansed most of the Jews. Then the Arabians (under the banner of the new religion of Islam) ethnically cleaned the remaining ones. After that, they conquered other lands where Jews were already residing. Those Jews remained under Muslim rule until 1948 (except in areas like Spain where Western nations drove the Muslims out).

Some Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem at various times by Christian and Muslim rulers, kicked out again by other Christian and Muslim rulers. It wasn't until the 19th c. that they were able to return in large numbers, for various historical reasons.

Those damn Jews just don't know what's good for them.

Wow! Very compelling...and helpful for future discussions with misinformed friends.

Several Russian Orthodox acquaintances, who seem to have a good handle on the nature of the Islamist threat, maintain a dislike for Israel on behalf of their Palestinian Orthodox Christian brothers. Why is that? How do Palestinian Christians see all this?

Sherry, I need to add some links to sources for some of my assertions.

Some Palestinian Christians see it like this. (BTW I think Palestinians deserve a state as much as anyone else, but their denial of Israel's reality and their methods of getting one are morally wrong and disastrous. Their state is going to be on historically Jewish land, just like the US is on historically native land. But - even though Americans have justified our invasion and massacres in the past and haven't really come to terms with them - we don't deny we did them or try to convince the rest of the world that the natives came there after we did.)

"Several Russian Orthodox acquaintances, who seem to have a good handle on the nature of the Islamist threat, maintain a dislike for Israel on behalf of their Palestinian Orthodox Christian brothers."

They were anti-Semites long before they had ever heard of Palestinians.

P.S. Did you know that most Palestinians cannot say Palestine. There is no P in Arabic, and words that begin with a P will usually be pronounced with an F or a B.

"Did you know that most Palestinians cannot say Palestine. There is no P in Arabic, and words that begin with a P will usually be pronounced with an F or a B."

They call it "Filistin." But place names often mutate based on who's living there, so that doesn't prove anything. Arabic-speakers have lived there for centuries.

Great rebuttal, but one tiny quibble:

The Romans/Byzantines were not the first Christian nation. Armenia beat Rome to that particular punch by a few years, adopting Chritianity as the state religion in the year 301 C.E.

Things I didn't know. Thanks, Ephriam! (And the Armenian genocide by the Turks was another massacre of dhimmis by Muslims, according to Bostom.)

Yeah, may be that's why Armenia repeated after Shirac *well, when he was "against" before he was "for"):

"...Armenian Foreign Ministry said Israel should stop its air strikes against civilian targets in Lebanon..."

Short memory. Or other, not very noble considerations.

Yes, the Amenian position is disappointing. But they're in a tough spot and need to make sure that Armenian communities in Arab/Muslim countries are not victimized. Small weak countries have to blow with the wind.

Realpolitik demands that Israel cozy up to Turkey, it's only ostensible "ally" in the Muslim world and not talk about "those events". So the Armenian genocide cannot be called what it was lest Israel ruin its relationship with Turkey. I am sure every right-thinking Jew feels that morality dictates they stand with the Armenians, but Israel cannot afford to do that, as much as I am usre they would like to.

And for the same reason, Armenia cannot stick up for Israel, even if they wanted to.

i'm not sure what you mean about Saudi Arabia. not that i'm defending Wahhabism or anything. but a lot of modern Arab history's been concerned with Israel, and up until twenty years ago (Hezbollah and then Hamas) that's been an issue of nationalism, not Islamic fundamentalism. as for those two groups, i know Hezbollah is not influenced at all by Wahhabism and i don't know that Hamas is.

i tend to give KSA more credit as an ally than most people seem to, even though it'd be better if they were a secular ally in the vein of Egypt or Pakistan. and if their population wasn't generally anti-American -- but that's a problem with the whole region.

but anyway, informative post. lotta stuff i wasn't aware of.

Very, very well done.

It is important to continually reiterate these facts. There is a significant element of western liberal thought - predominant in Europe and growing here in the US - that is gradually morphing toward an "Israel should just cease to exist" position. Cohen's piece is a step on the way there.

"Both of us are accurate, your history just starts later than mine."

But isn't this a major flaw in your argument? All parties (you included) want to start the clock at the particular point in history at which they had the upper hand. This just plays to the classic "cycle of violence" tactic of claiming that everything would be fine if your side would just run up the white flag.

I believe this is why, as Krauthammer argues today and in the past, there is such clarity from most of the world on the current conflict. There was a zero point when Israel withdrew from Gaza and Lebanon. Muslims were the sole aggressors after that point. To argue otherwise looks to me to be the position of those who believe that there is no circumstance under which Israel can be allowed to exist.

Not much of a surprise really coming as it does from the people who baldly state that it is their intention to bring that non-existance about. But very inconvenient for the people who want to defend them by claiming they are victims.

"i tend to give KSA more credit as an ally than most people seem to, even though it'd be better if they were a secular ally in the vein of Egypt or Pakistan. and if their population wasn't generally anti-American -- but that's a problem with the whole region."

I agree with you to some extent, although the Saudis tend to give with one hand and take with the other. They help us catch terrorists because they don't want the most extreme Wahabis destabilizing their monarchy.

At the same time they fund extremist Wahabi maddrassas and mosques all over the world, and Islamist university endowments. And some of them do fund terrorist groups.

It is indeed a mixed bag.

What I meant is that SA is more of a "mistake" than Israel and no one questions its legitimacy. Israel used to be a nation, then its people were dispersed. SA used to be "Arabia," but it wasn't ruled by the Wahabis, the Brits essentially created Saudi Arabia as a country and elevated this small extremist tribe as the ruling family. Jordan was created at the same time. no one qeustions its legitimacy either.

"All parties (you included) want to start the clock at the particular point in history at which they had the upper hand."

No. Joanne's history isn't equivalent to mine, it is a subset of mine. Jews who lived in Arab lands originally came from Israel, and always considered it their homeland. Arabs who lived in Israel never considered it their homeland until the middle of the 20th century, although many of them owned land there for generations, and that claim should be respected or compensated for, but that is a personal claim, not a national claim. Arabs in Israel were Egyptian or Syrian or Arabian or Bedouin or Druze, or other identities based on cities or small regions.
There was a nation of Judea/Israel, where it is now, from which there is a direct line in peoplehood and religion and language to today's Jews. Since our residence in that country we have continually treated it as our homeland, and Jerusalem as our capital and holy city, even in diaspora. We use its seasonal calendar, the rituals established there, and the sacred writings we created there as our history (and some of it is verifiable history, as some of my sources show).

Jews do not have another homeland and never have. I didn't go into this in detail, but Jews tried to return to Israel and reside there as much as possible for the past 2000 years, depending on who ruled it at the time and travel conditions (including war). There was no more than a noncontiguous 100 years - in 2000 years - when there weren't some Jews living there. If the 20th c. Jewish country had been created in Germany or Mozambique or whatever was proposed at the time, Israel would still be our homeland, and many of us would still be trying to live there.

No other group feels that way or has that history with that land. for Christians it was a place of pilgrimage, in Jesus' footsteps. It wasn't their homeland. To Muslims it was neither a place of pilgrimage nor a homeland. To Palestinian Arabs of the 20th century, parts of it are now considered a homeland based on a nationalist movement over the last 50 years, in response to the resurgence of Jewish national feeling and the refusal of Egypt and Jordan to take their territories back. (And as I said, there is precedent for creating a new state for a new people, and I don't begrudge them that in theory, but not based on their refusal to accept Israel, their worldwide propaganda campaign to erase Jewish history, and their methods of pursuing their goals.)

"There was a zero point when Israel withdrew from Gaza and Lebanon. Muslims were the sole aggressors after that point. To argue otherwise looks to me to be the position of those who believe that there is no circumstance under which Israel
If you are referring to this column, Krauthammer doesn't say anything related to your comment except that now is a moment when Hezbollah is so clearly aggressor that Israel sort of has a bit of a green light for a short period of time. Krauthammer knows Jewish history, and he also knows that this is not the first zero point by far. This is just the latest one and it too will be forgotten or massaged by those who want to delegitimize Israel.