You’re finding paranoia where none exists. Norm’s right. Keenan was a lecturer in English literature so understands the use of language even if you don’t. But we can do without this information because in the extract you reproduce, he helpfully explains with the second sentence what he meant by the first:

The word “holocaust” entered my head as I looked back at the devastation. History is supposed to tell us what not to repeat – but it seems that for the Israeli military machine, the needle has got stuck.

What ‘holocaust’ could it be that ‘History’ tell us not to repeat could he be referring to? Duh!

Haven’t you noticed the way this thing works? Haven’t you been paying attention for the last few years? You’ve had a holocaust but we’ve had a holocaust. Holocausts are ten a penny, thanks to the semantic virus that seeks to appropriate the terminology of WWII, and specifically the Shoah, whenever suffering is found in the world.

Having placed his own, counter-intuitive slant on Keenan’s remarks, Norm concludes…

Counter-intuitive indeed! I don’t mean to be rude. You’ve produced some thoughtful, if painfully long, posts on this site before. But I have to say this one is profoundly stupid and a waste of the obviously little time you took to compose it.

What ‘holocaust’ could it be that ‘History’ tell us not to repeat could he be referring to?

Sorry: What ‘holocaust’ that ‘History’ tell us not to repeat could he be referring to?

Jeebus, Shuggy, what is it that you need here?

Would it help if we agreed a convention under which we all refer to ‘the Holocaust™’ just so you know when we’re referring to the events of 1936-45 rather than using the term in its generic (and much older) sense.

Holocaust (capitalised here only because its at the start of a sentence) is an entirely appropriate noun to use when describing the scene that Keenan refers to in his article and, in the context of the article the history that the Israeli military machine should learn not to repeat is not that of the Nazi state of the 1940s but that of their own past involvement in the Lebanon in 1970s/80s – and that of Syria and Iran, of course, as one must never, ever, forget that one CANNOT level any criticism at Israel without criticising the others states who treated the Lebanon as the own private little version of the ‘Great Game’, even if it does reduce the overall tone of the debate to something akin to dishing out sweets to a group of recalcitrant five year olds.

I realise that history has never really been the ‘decent’ left’s strong suit – had you paid more attention to it you might have figured out why the Iraq War was a monumental fuck up waiting to happen – but FFS even the Medieval warlords of Europe managed to figure out that if you start killing civilians (however unintentionally) you only end up serving up a new batch of fresh recruits to the enemy. Forget about politics and morality, its a basic military error – just plain bad soldiering, not that we’re short on that these days either.

I agree with Shuggy on this one.

You might have a point, Unity, if Keenan didn’t use the word “holocaust” and then, in the same rhetorical breath, follow it up with a reference to “History” as being “supposed to tell us what not to repeat”.

Brian Keenan is an educated and an eloquent man. You’re trying to tell me that he doesn’t understand exactly what he is implying by writing those words? Pull the other one. Norm is right, for me, to argue that Keenan, at the very least, has a case to answer here.

It’s perfectly fine, IMHO, to describe a flattened city neighbourhood as having suffered a “holocaust”. And you could argue that Keenan’s reference to history repeating itself refers to Israel’s previous invasion in 1982. But not when you put them together in direct conjunction. When you do that, you make the meaning painfully clear even to the slowest of minds.

And, by way of postscript, anyone who uses the word “holocaust” in any context relating to Israel, and then claims not to have known that it might raise hackles, is being disingenuous.

“But the same purpose can be served using what Leo Strauss called the
reuctio ad Hitlerium to cast the Jews as having committed crimes
identical to the Nazis’. They must be identical of course , so the
work of self-delusion can be accomplished. We did one , the Jews did
one. Now We’re even-steven”

Christopher Caldwell

Shuggy is right here. It takes a real strain to read Keenan in the way Unity is suggesting. If it was his intention when conjouring the lessons of history for Israelis in the context of a ‘holocaust’ to refer only to recent battles in the Lebanon, then he is, at best, spectacularly inept at expressing himself and should clear it up pronto.

Mr E,

Keenan is, as you say, an intelligent and eloquent man – sufficiently intelligent and eloquent to be making a carefully nuanced commentary on the Israeli invasion of 1982 and or leaving deliberate ambiguities in his remarks in the hope of pricking a conscience or two.

So, by all means, ask the question ‘do you really mean what I think you mean?’ but FFS ask first rather than bale headlong into condemnation, the latter approach destroys all possibility of a nuanced debate before the debate even gets under way.

Yes, Keenan’s comments are amibiguous, I knew that perfectly well before I wrote this piece and wrote it as I did in the full knowledge that it would almost certainly draw the kind of reaction I got from Shuggy. After all, it’s much the same kind of reaction that those of us on the rational left who opposed the Iraq war on practical/pragmatic grounds had to put up with all the way through that whole poisonous debate, even though we’ve since been proved right in both our assessment of the monstrous cost of the war in human lives and in calling, well ahead of time, the chaos that ensued in the wake of the removal of Saddam Hussein.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out where that was going, just someone with the sense to read a history book – the Ottomans were many things but certainly not stupid so when you find that they treated what is now Iraq as three entirely separate provinces throughout the entire period that was under Ottoman rule then perhaps the first thing you do when planning for war and reconstruction is figure out why they kept such a neat separation in place for centuries.

The same thing goes for Israel.

Deep though the mark of the Holocaust may be on the Jewish psyche – for obvious and very understandable reasons – it is almost entirely incidental to the political and military situation in the Middle East today other than as crude rhetorical device.

It has no bearing whatsoever on the legitimacy of the modern State of Israel or the levels of support Israel receives from the US, support it receives because it suits the US’s strategic interests. Its too easily forgotten that America was distinctly cool on creation of Israel at the outset and changed its view only with the rise of Nasserite Arab Socialism and Ba’athism, and only then when Egypt, Syria and Iraq started cutting deals with the Soviet Union.

Nor is it relevant to efforts to restart the peace process and, indeed, the reasons why that process has stalled but for being a handy distraction from Israel’s territorial objectives which, since Sharon, have been limited to fully encapsulating Jerusalem into the State of Israel as its unified capital city. The Israeli government might keep schtum about what its actually up to, in part out of sensitivities towards international opinion and in part to avoid internal difficulties with its own hardliners, those who still cling to the dream of a ‘Greater Israel’ stretching from the Med to the Jordan but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the overall objective is that of ringing East Jerusalem with enough settlements to dissolve, by default, the prior arrangement which designated that part of the city as the notional capital of a Palestinian state on the West Bank. That’s the real precondition for progress towards a two-state solution, not whether Hamas recognises the State of Israel or whether they’re a bunch of idiot anti-Semites and to suggest otherwise – as some are prone to do – is not only disingenuous but seriously underestimates Israel’s nous and ability as a major foreign policy player in the region.

We’ve been here before. And the fragrant Melanie has stuck her oar in,

Mark Elf:
Israel threatens “holocaust” against Palestinians
About time too. Israel has been carrying on a creeping, sometimes galloping, genocidal campaign against the Palestinians for many a decade. It has been likened to the nazis by at least one of its own ministers before now. And of course there was the Israel commander who told his troops to learn how the nazis destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto so that they too could learn how to destroy a ghetto. Now, according to the Guardian, we have an Israeli minister threatening to inflict a holocaust on the Gaza population. See this:

“The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves,” Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defence minister, told army radio.

Shoah is the Hebrew word normally reserved to refer to the Jewish Holocaust. It is rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi extermination of Jews during the second world war, and many Israelis are loath to countenance its use to describe other events.
I was never keen on holocaust uniqueness arguments but the zionists have really blown it this time.

I couldn’t find a reference to this mention of ‘holocaust’ at the good professor’s blog but he doesn’t have search and his archive system sucks so I gave up.

But how about this. Lets hold a competition for a name we can all call what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. You go first Shuggy.

After all, it’s much the same kind of reaction that those of us on the rational left who opposed the Iraq war on practical/pragmatic grounds had to put up with all the way through that whole poisonous debate

That’s the second comment you’ve made which conflates my taking issue with what I thought was a pointless and ill-conceived dig at Norman Geras with my support for the invasion of Iraq. I’m not precisely sure what you mean by what those of you ‘had to put up with’ because of your opposition to it – but I can guess. And I am equally certain that it wasn’t coming from me. Unless you can find something from my archives that suggests otherwise, I think some kind of retraction of your remarks would be in order.

Btw, I noticed you swore in your first comment. I was rather under the impression that this wasn’t allowed. Can I too, please? Thanks:

Lets hold a competition for a name we can all call what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. You go first Shuggy.

Is this what you imagine to be sarcasm? And do you have any reason for assuming that I in someway approve of what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians? No you don’t – so go fuck yourself, Mike Power.

Or indeed, do you have any reason for assuming that I defended Matan Vilnai’s use of the word, or tried to reduce it in the way you assholes are doing now? No you don’t – because I didn’t – so as I said, go fuck yourself.

Copying and pasting this just in case you frighteningly illiberal liberals decide to do a bit of editing.

Silly me. I thought that you were posting your comment because you, like the good professor, were concerned about the abuse of that sacred word ‘Holocaust’.

Perhaps YOU could point to anything in my comment that suggests I assumed ANYTHING about YOU at all. Indeed I made no reference to YOU at all, apart from my invitation to you to suggest a word. I just thought that as you were so concerned about the way words are used you might be just the person to start the ball rolling. I don’t know about Unity finding paranoia where none exists but I think we’ve seen a pretty clear example of it in your last two comments.

And how am I (an arsehole, no less) trying to ‘reduce IT’ – the word ‘Holocaust’ that is? What, in my comment, justifies that assertion?

May I suggest a little tip before you call people arseholes and tell them to fuck themselves?

READ THE FUCKING COMMENT, YOU MORON!

And here we have further proof that it is impossible to have a rational discussion on any blog post containing the word ‘Israel’.

Well this thread’s going well….

Hi Shachtman – good to see you on LC

Backs slowly out of the room……..

Hi Cath.

Hope you had a good Bank Holiday !

They’re a rowdy lot tonight aren’t they !

Sorry but it’s hard to take Unity serious on this especialy after his reply in the comments box. Maybe he should just admit he was wrong instead of digging.

Eve Garrard has an gets it spot on

http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2008/03/ambiguous-rheto.html

Ha ha, Brilliant! Good to see the Trots are always up for a calm debate.

Unity is giving us an argument to the effect that the attacks on Sderot and Ashkelon are bound to be counter-productive – as he says, even a European medieval warlord could work out the likely consequences – and it’s quite a persuasive argument at that. (Eve Garrard)

So… tit-for-tat is a great thing then? Shall we all celebrate it and start arming each side up to their teeth?

Perhaps I should clarify a couple of points here.

My comments on Israel’s policy objectives are based on a particularly hard-nosed reading of the current situation and developments over the last ten years or so. That may not sit well with some who prefer to moralise about the situation out there and pretend that domestic niceties like ethics have some bearing on the situation but that’s just tough because whether you like it or not, when you step away from the public rhetoric of politicians the only foreign policy game in town is realpolitik, which is the game that diplomats and foreign policy analysts play, even when they claim they’re not.

And its a game in which the Israelis are widely considered to be amongst the most effective players you’ll find anywhere in the world which is why they punch well above what would otherwise be their conventional strategic weight.

With that in mind, lets clarify the Hamas thing – of course any final peace settlement will be contingent on recognition of the legitimacy of the State of Israel by Hamas, not to mention other states (Syria, Iran, etc.). It is, however, a mistake to think that recognition is an absolute precondition of progress because it isn’t – whether Israel insists on getting it up front before negotiating other issues or gets it as part of a negotiated deal is neither here or there in the grand scheme of things. Its a precondition at the moment because Israel has other priorities it needs to pursue – the final status of Jerusalem being the major one – and it ’suits’ Israel to leave things hanging from the time being in diplomatic terms (although it could happily do without the rocket attacks and suicide bombings which its getting as well).

Why? Because the minimum acceptable territorial settlement in domestic terms is one in which Jerusalem is unequivocally and wholly Israel’s capital – the idea of sharing cities might have seemed like a good idea back in the 20th century but as Jerusalem is the last remaining example of such an attempted settlement and every other example that’s gone before it has turned out to be a disaster I think we can safely put it down as an idea that might have looked good on paper but turned out in practice to be completely unworkable.

So Israel’s primary objective is to establish full claim to Jerusalem and its slowly working towards that by ringing the city with its own settlement – that’s the Sharon plan and its a pretty well though out one in foreign policy terms, where possession is more like 99.99% of the law than merely nine tenths.

Now that’s not to suggest that Israel is not sincere in pursuing a two state solution as an end point to all this, just that it has some very unequivocal views about where the respective capital cities of those two states will be and only one of them will be in Jerusalem. In diplomatic terms Hamas are their own worst enemies in all this as their intransigence on the question of Israel’s legitimacy, not to mention their record of terrorist activity, is pretty easily turned against them – it would actually be much more difficult for Israel to pursue its objectives vis-a-vis Jerusalem were Hamas to concede the recognition issue given that the whole settlement thing is a little ‘difficult’ in terms of international law, although it has to be said that as there’s never actually been any final agreement on exactly where Israel’s actual borders are then appeals to international law are about as much use as chocolate teapot when it comes to trying to sort this all out.

That’s why the real stumbling block is Jerusalem and on Hamas’s part its not their refusal to recognise Israel that create a barrier to progress but the understanding on both sides that even if they did recognise Israel they wouldn’t recognise its full claim to Jerusalem – so the politics of necessity dictate that the Israelis settle the matter by default by asserting their territorial claim using the time honoured method of occupying the territory it claims and possessing sufficient military capacity to defend that claim against all-comers.

Once that’s achieved then the question recognition of ceases to be an absolute pre-requisite for any talks and becomes an objective to be achieved by negotiation, a subject of talks although still a requirement for any lasting settlement.

Now some may think all that to be a pretty amoral and unethical reading of the situation but that’s just the way foreign policy goes – talk of ethics or morality in situations like this is just window dressing for the consumption of domestic audiences who, for the most, don’t understand that foreign policy is nothing at all like domestic politics.

Hopefully that clarifies my earlier comments sufficiently that people can see where I’m coming from here – I make no moral or ethical judgements in any of this because the situation is what it is however you want to feel about it.

As for the comment about medieval warlords the background to that is simply that it was pretty common practice in medieval siege warfare for an invading army to drive civilians – well more peasants to be exact – off the land surrounding their objective, after a fair bit of raping and pillaging – on the theory that loading down your enemy with civvies would either deplete their supplies more quickly (if they bothered to feed them) or cause unrest (if they didn’t) and general cause them to experience the kind of hassle that would shorten the duration of the siege.

The downside to all this that this whole business of raping, pillaging, looting and all things related would give the besieged town/castle a nice fresh influx of seriously pissed off locals, usually the kind that were so pissed off that they didn’t really care too much about anything other than a bit of revenge, even their own lives.

So the counter move to the dumping hungry peasants on the local warlord strategy was put the seriously pissed off and homicidal lot right at the front and shout ‘charge’ – give them a weapon and point them in the direction of the enemy and off they go, instant but expendable shock troops who not be very effective – most will die in first 10-15 minutes of fighting, but any of the enemy the kill will mean less for your trained troops to deal with.

That’s what medieval warlords eventually learned from experience, that the best reason for leaving civilians alone is not because its unethical to attack non-combatants but because if you piss them off enough then they’ll have a go back and hang the consequences to themselves – and Eve’s quite correct in thinking that that’s a lesson that cuts both ways in any conflict, including that taking place in the Middle East today.

” the idea of sharing cities might have seemed like a good idea back in the 20th century but as Jerusalem is the last remaining example of such an attempted settlement and every other example that’s gone before it has turned out to be a disaster I think we can safely put it down as an idea that might have looked good on paper but turned out in practice to be completely unworkable.”

So Israel’s strategy as you see it – or at least its goal – is legitimate, given that sharing would be unworkable.

On the minister’s use of “shoah” point, I believe a number of bloggers have suggested
that “hashoah” is used by Israeli hebrew speakers to refer to the historic holocaust rather than “shoah” which can be used in its original meaning.

“Israel has been carrying on a creeping, sometimes galloping, genocidal campaign against the Palestinians for many a decade.”

Not a terribly successful one.

“So Israel’s strategy as you see it – or at least its goal – is legitimate, given that sharing would be unworkable.”

In as much as it represents a solution to an otherwise unworkable situation then, yes, it a legitimate objective. Whether the means by which Israel pursues that solution is ‘legitimate’ is somewhat more open to question but then so is the question of what constitutes legitimacy in such situations because regardless of any pretensions to International law, etc. the foundations of legitimacy in territorial disputes is still very much predicated on what you can, first, grab hold of and defend successfully and, second, ultimately get ratified by some sort of treaty.

In the sense, this situation is not that dissimilar to that of the Falklands back in 1981 – the Argentinians made their play and gambled on Britain lacking either the will or the resources to take the islands back. Had we not sent the task force they would have dug in and tried to hold on in the hope that we’d eventually cut a deal and cede the islands by treaty rather than incur the cost in lives and resources of trying to take them back, establishing the legitimacy of their position at the same time. Had that scenario played out as the Argentinians hoped then with the treaty all questions of the legitimacy of their methods would have become entirely moot.

Of course things didn’t turn out how they hoped but that doesn’t mean that their strategy was an invalid one, only one that was ineptly executed.

Its much the situation with the Israeli strategy for Jerusalem. As long as they show sufficient restraint in the methods on the ground to stay the right side of the international genocide and war crimes statutes – and they’re certainly not dumb enough to get on to the wrong side of them – then matters will run their course and any lingering questions of legitimacy will be settled if and when a treaty is put in place which finally sets an agreed set of territorial borders.

Such a treaty will entail giving some concessions – the Syrians will want the Golan Heights retuned and perhaps a few assurances about non-interference in the Lebanon in return for their acceptance and one can expect that the Jordanians and Egyptians will probably lead on securing assurances on matters such as the future of, and access to, the Al Aqsa mosque and financial support for construction of a viable Palestinian state, some of which may well be identified, for the purposes of sweetening the deal, as some form of compensation for historical losses of property and land rights linked to a package which sorts out the whole settlements issue.

if you can get past the Jerusalem issue then its not difficult to work out what the parameters of a final peace deal will look like, it’s getting there that’s the difficult part and looked at in its full strategic regional context that has actually has much less do with Israel and Hamas than it has to do with the US and Iran, which is where the real Grand Game is being played out.

Those genocidal Israelis at work:

“JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel has granted a Palestinian a rare residency permit after the man, who is gay, said his sexuality put his life in danger in the West Bank, a Defence Ministry official said on Tuesday.

The 33-year-old Palestinian from Jenin was issued a temporary permit to live with his Israeli partner in Tel Aviv after arguing he faced death threats from fellow Palestinians who disapproved of him being gay, the official said.

Israel’s Interior Ministry rarely issues permits for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank who want to live with their partners in Israel, regardless of sexuality. Requesting such a permit can take years.

“In this case the man’s lawyer said his life was in danger because of his sexual preference,” said Peter Lerner, spokesman for Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, whose office comes under the defence ministry.

“On this basis we issued the temporary permit,” he said.”

http://uk.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUKL2586865820080325