Holocaust denial

[alfred russel]

Too bad b/c Eritrean food is great.  Like Ethiopian (which is delicious) but with more Italian influence.

Never had Eritrean, but I've had Ethiopian which I agree is delicious.

Isn't modern ethiopian food out of a UN care package?

[Barrister]

Unfortunately, your thesis has a major hole in it - it does not explain why US support for Israel increased enormously after 1967.

The "support" that Jewish immigration to Palestine received from America has plently of precidents - it is similar to the fashionable support than any downtrodden group receives if it has the ability to broadcast its plight to key opinion-makers. Think for example of the Tibetans. In point of fact, the supporters of Jewish DPs mostly came from the political left at the time.

Point is that we are talking about two different things. You are talking about support for the plight of Jewish DPs. That is not the same thing as support for the nation of Israel. The people doing the supporting are not the same (mostly the political Right as opposed to Left), the object of support is not the same (a mass of miserable DPs vs. a successful modern nation). 

There are lots of examples of support for the downtrodden. Not so many examples of support for a nation on the ascendant, for the simple reason that there are very few examples of a nation which has the same mixture of characteristics, as I discussed above.

Demanding that one produce other examples with the same mixure of characteristics isn't a very fruitful exercise, as we are discussing history and not natural science. Certainly the situation with Israel is pretty well unique and it is the reasons for this uniqueness which must be explained. The existence of a minority group with a powerful lobby is simply not sufficient, as Washington swarms with powerful lobby groups - why don't all of them enjoy such success? Holocaust pity isn't sufficient, because there are plenty of groups which have suffered genocide - why don't Americans care about them? 

It is obviously a mixure of important factors which leads to this unique result, and I submit that a key factor is the mythology of Israeli military successes against great odds. This would not be sufficient unto itself, but mixed together with cultural, historic and religious factors ...

First I wouldn't say that support for Israel "increased enormously".  What increased was direct aid to Israel, and that is easily explained.  Neighboring states, namely Syria and Egypt, started getting a lot of aid from the Soviet Union.  That was all cold war.

And your comment that support for Jewish DPs doesn't equal support for Israel.  But as you pointed out - the US wasn't accepting the DPs, and wasn't promoting them emigrating somewhere else.  It was pushing for immigration into Palestine.  I think that sentiment translated directly into support for the state of Israel.

And yes, there is a lot  of general sentiment for the downtrodden, and usually nothing comes of it.  But US support for the Jews was remarkable, and not just muttering a few nice words.

Wiki isn't going to cut it, so I'll see what I can dig up tonight.  A couple of books come to mind...

[The Minsky Moment]

Convergance of these factors explains US sympathy much more effectively than "amazing Zionist lobby tactics" or "Religious lunatics and their armageddon fantasies".

I see your argument, but I do think you are underestimating the armageddon fantasies.  That is a very significant and powerful bedrock of support. 

Another factor in American support both official and unoffical is the *lack* of sympathy for Israel's enemies.  When Americans see the likes of Arafat, Black September, Hamas, Hezbollah on the other side, they don't get excited about national liberation movements, they get disgusted.  You don't need an all powerful lobby to get the people in Congress to pick you over that.  Even a thug like Bibi knows how to clean up and speak decent English on TV; the only Palestinian spokesmen that don't make one's nose curl are powerless academic types like Ashwari or the late Edward Said.

Americans also don't engage in self-deception about what they would do if a weaker neighbor started lobbing rockets over the border.  When right-thinking Euros look at Lebanon 06 or Gaza 08, they think "disproportionate response".  When Americans look at those interventions they think "got what was coming."

[Admiral Yi]

In what respect?

The Jewish part was something like 60% Jewish; the Arab part was something like 97% Arab.

[The Minsky Moment]

In what respect?

The Jewish part was something like 60% Jewish; the Arab part was something like 97% Arab.

Your conclusion does not follow from that fact.

The majority Jewish areas were primarily coastal and urban and by their nature more heterogeneous.  Assuming that a partition was going to take place, how would you have done it differently?

[Malthus]

Convergance of these factors explains US sympathy much more effectively than "amazing Zionist lobby tactics" or "Religious lunatics and their armageddon fantasies".

I see your argument, but I do think you are underestimating the armageddon fantasies.  That is a very significant and powerful bedrock of support. 

Another factor in American support both official and unoffical is the *lack* of sympathy for Israel's enemies.  When Americans see the likes of Arafat, Black September, Hamas, Hezbollah on the other side, they don't get excited about national liberation movements, they get disgusted.  You don't need an all powerful lobby to get the people in Congress to pick you over that.  Even a thug like Bibi knows how to clean up and speak decent English on TV; the only Palestinian spokesmen that don't make one's nose curl are powerless academic types like Ashwari or the late Edward Said.

Americans also don't engage in self-deception about what they would do if a weaker neighbor started lobbing rockets over the border.  When right-thinking Euros look at Lebanon 06 or Gaza 08, they think "disproportionate response".  When Americans look at those interventions they think "got what was coming."

The armageddon fantasies explain popular religious support but don't explain the support that ordinary not-particularly-religious Americans tend to provide.

I agree that having unattractive enemies is an extremely significant factor: that's all part and parcel of the 'they are guys like us facing people who are not like us'.

The crux of it is that Americans are simply more open to the narrative of a group moving into some new land and setting themselves up in it, for the simple reason that this is part of the *American* mythological narrative, too - often using the exact same cultural terminology. Europeans invaded other places it is true, but to hold them as *colonies* of the metropolitan - hence their mythological narrative is all about "colonialism" and they see everything through that lens. Americans naturally enough tend to view the Israeli situation through the lens of their own history.

[Razgovory]

Too bad b/c Eritrean food is great.  Like Ethiopian (which is delicious) but with more Italian influence.

Never had Eritrean, but I've had Ethiopian which I agree is delicious.

Those people are scrawny and have no meat on them.  Also kinda gamy.

[Razgovory]

I don't think the Armageddon fantasies have a great deal to do with it.  I think that's fairly recent.

[Malthus]

Too bad b/c Eritrean food is great.  Like Ethiopian (which is delicious) but with more Italian influence.

Never had Eritrean, but I've had Ethiopian which I agree is delicious.

I wasn't a big fan of Ethiopian. Seemed like a sort of stew served on a big bread platter. Instead of cutlery, you were supposed to use bits of the bread to scoop up the stew.

Not my favorite.

[Barrister]

I wasn't a big fan of Ethiopian. Seemed like a sort of stew served on a big bread platter. Instead of cutlery, you were supposed to use bits of the bread to scoop up the stew.

Not my favorite.

Now this I can agree with.  I've had Ethiopean (but only once or twice) and didn't think much of it.

[Admiral Yi]

Your conclusion does not follow from that fact.

The majority Jewish areas were primarily coastal and urban and by their nature more heterogeneous.  Assuming that a partition was going to take place, how would you have done it differently?

How I would have done it and how it could have been done more evenly are two seperate questions.

I don't think you're right when you say urban areas in mandatory Palestine were more heterogeneous.  I believe Tel Aviv was overwhelmingly Jewish and Haifa was (and still is) overwhelmingly Arab.  My hunch (derived from Exodus and other academic sources) is that the heterogeneity was in the countryside, where you had kibbutzes cheek by jowl with Arab farms.  So you could do it through a mathematical process, similar to gerrymandering, in which you slice off smaller bits of territory with slim Arab majorities as you approach the goal roughly equal proportions of each ethnic group assigned to foreign rule.

[alfred russel]

Too bad b/c Eritrean food is great.  Like Ethiopian (which is delicious) but with more Italian influence.

Never had Eritrean, but I've had Ethiopian which I agree is delicious.

I wasn't a big fan of Ethiopian. Seemed like a sort of stew served on a big bread platter. Instead of cutlery, you were supposed to use bits of the bread to scoop up the stew.

Not my favorite.

I once ate ethiopian and was told after the meal part of it was raw pork. Kind of gross.

[Admiral Yi]

I once ate ethiopian and was told after the meal part of it was raw pork. Kind of gross.

I very much doubt it.  They have a raw beef dish called kitfo; I'll bet that's what you had.

[MadImmortalMan]

It's just the underdog syndrome. Israel is a small patch of plucky democracy in the desert trying to survive surrounded by a sea of enemies. With a good lobbying organization. I don't think it's much more complicated than that.

[The Minsky Moment]

I think there is a tendency to misunderstand the true nature of the role played by the Holocaust in the creation of the State of Israel.  It was not a matter of people feeling bad for the Jews and wanting to give them something as recompense.  It was a lot more realpolitik.  The Allied Powers faced a real problem in having to deal with the surviving Jewish refugees.  Keeping them in camps was not desriable from many POV, of which the echoes of the Nazi concentration camps was only one.  They couldn't be sent back to their places of origin, which were predominantly under the Soviet zone and in utter ruin - any thought that might go in that direction would be finished off by the "little pogroms" in Poland in 46.  The exhausted western European "victors" had no interest in taking in masses of Jewish refugees.   The US took in many, but there were practical limitations to what even the Americans were prepared to do.

In that practical context, the prospect of being able to dump off masses of refugees into Palestine was very attractive.  It was in a sense a true solution to the "Jewish Problem."  The Jews couldn't be heard to complain, b/c that is what they said they wanted.  It saved the Allied Powers from the burdens of dealing with them.  And if bad things happened to them in Palestine, well then, it would be a shame, but couldn't be helped - they had a fair shot.

Partition happened b/c it was convenient for the victorious powers (other than the UK which as mandatory power was caught in a tricky position).  Had it been otherwise, it wouldn't have happened.  Holocaust or no.