Eli E. Hertz
mythsandfacts.org
21 June '11
http://www.mythsandfacts.org/article_view.asp?articleID=208
On June 18, 2011 the New York Times published an OP-ED by its Columnist Thomas Friedman, named "What to Do With Lemons," suggesting to "update Resolution 181" and take it to "the more prestigious Security Counsel." Friedman's writing is so biased that it casts off Arab's aggression and terrorism to be irrelevant to the search for peace. By twisting history as he does, Friedman's 'solutions' can only produce incitement, aggression and hostility.
Historical Facts: In 1947 the British put the future of western Palestine into the hands of the United Nations, the successor organization to the League of Nations which had established the "Mandate for Palestine." A UN Commission recommendedpartitioning what was left of the original Mandate - western Palestine - into two new states, one Jewish and one Arab.
What resulted was Resolution 181 [known as the 1947 Partition Plan], a non-binding recommendation to partition Palestine, whose implementation hinged on acceptance by both parties - Arabs and Jews.
The resolution recognized the need for immediate Jewish statehood (and a parallel Arab state), but the 'blueprint' for peace became a moot issue when the Arabs refused to accept it. Subsequently, de facto [In Latin: realities] on the ground in the wake of Arab aggression (and Israel's survival) became the basis for UN efforts to bring peace. Resolution 181 then lost its validity and relevance.
Aware of Arabs' past aggression, Resolution 181, in paragraph C, calls on the Security Council to:
"Determine as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution." [italics by author]
The ones who sought to alter by force the settlement envisioned in Resolution 181 were the Arabs who threatened bloodshed if the United Nations was to adopt the Resolution:
"The [British] Government of Palestine fear that strife in Palestine will be greatly intensified when the Mandate is terminated, and that the international status of the United Nations Commission will mean little or nothing to the Arabs in Palestine, to whom the killing of Jews now transcends all other considerations. Thus, the Commission will be faced with the problem of how to avert certain bloodshed on a very much wider scale than prevails at present. The Arabs have made it quite clear and have told the Palestine government that they do not propose to co-operate or to assist the Commission, and that, far from it, they propose to attack and impede its work in every possible way. We have no reason to suppose that they do not mean what they say." [italics by author]
The UN Palestine Commission's February 16, 1948 report (A/AC.21/9) to the Security Council noted that Arab-led hostilities were an effort:
"To prevent the implementation of the [General] Assembly's plan of partition, and to thwart its objectives by threats and acts of violence, including armed incursions into Palestinian territory" [Which shows that Palestinian territory referred to Jewish Palestine territory].
By the time armistice agreements were reached in 1949 between Israel and its immediate Arab neighbors (Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Trans-Jordan) with the assistance of UN Mediator Dr. Ralph Bunche, Resolution 181 had become irrelevant, and the armistice agreements addressed new realities created by the war. Over subsequent years, the UN si mply abandoned the recommendations of Resolution 181, as its ideas were drained of all relevance by events. Moreover, the Arabs continued to reject 181 after the war when they themselves controlled the West Bank (1948-1967) which Jordan invaded in the course of the war and annexed illegally.
The attempt by Thomas Friedman to 'roll back the clock' and resuscitate Resolution 181 more than six decades after the Arabs rejected it 'as if nothing had happened' are a baseless ploy designed to use Resolution 181 as leverage to bring about a greater Israeli withdrawal from parts of western Palestine and to gain a broader base from which to continue to attack Israel with even less defendable borders.
The metaphor of Israel having her back to the sea reflected the image crafted by Arab political and religious leaders' rhetoric and incitement.
There were 6,000 Israeli dead as a result of that war, in a population of 600,000. One percent of the Jewish population was gone. In American terms, the equivalent to more than 3 million American civilians and soldiers killed over an 18-month period. Both Palestinians and their Arab brethren in neighboring countries rendered the plan null and void by their own subsequent aggressive actions.
Professor Julius Stone, a leading authority on the Law of Nations, wrote about this 'novelty of resurrection' calling it 'revival of the dead.'Resolution 181 had been tossed into the waste bin of history, along with the Partition Plans that preceded it.
Just a reminder Mr. Friedman: The resolution did not partition anything - It only recommended to partition.
For overview of UN Resolution 181 please Click Here
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Posts
The Audacity of Thomas Friedman
ReplyDeleteI have, over the years, frequently followed the ideas and thought processes of Mr. Friedman, via his writings and appearances on late night talk shows such as "Charlie Rose".
Mr. Friedman, as also President Obama, is often observed photographed as if lost in a moment of deep introspective thought, eyes lost in shadow and one hand gently propped against the chin, reminiscent of August Rodin's famous statue, The Thinker.
The trademark walrus mustache of Mr. Friedman, whose ends always hang in a defiantly downward direction, as if to suggest his all knowing infallibility and sense of authority, is no doubt groomed each morning with fastidious care.
No doubt, as Mr. Friedman, staring at himself in the bathroom mirror (as well as any other mirror within fifty miles), as he prunes his appearance for the day's events, which might include yet another appearance on the "Charlie Rose" show, - is rapturously in love with himself, a victim of self-adoration, convinced that he- and he alone- has all the answers and surely the best answers to everything one can point a stick at-in particular to the almost insurmountable, vexing problems of the Middle East, and the Arab/Israeli conflict.
Humility, humble, human fallibility, these are not words that spring immediately to mind when one thinks of Mr. Tom Friedman. And why should they since the man "knows" he is a genius, a true "Legend in his own mind", possessing one of the sharpest, most insightful minds on the planet- perhaps in the galaxy.
Clearly, whenever Mr. Friedman appears on the "Charlie Rose" talk show, it seems that Mr. Rose- surely no dummy himself- seems to listen to Mr. Friedman energetically expound on the world's most vexing problems, as if no one could ever hope to approach Mr. Friedman's heightened senses of Reason and all knowing Wisdom.
Mr. Rose invariably hangs on Mr. Friedman's every word as he were the Sage of the Ages. And Mr. Friedman, for his part, never fails, by his style of speaking and verbal delivery, to assure any listener that he- Mr. Friedman- is well aware that he is nothing, if not an intellectual genius, par excellence. Why else, after all, would the world have showered him with Pulitzer Prizes.
Like so many other highly educated, and in their own individual ways, talented human beings, Mr. Friedman has risen to that level in his professional life, where inconvenient facts can just be brushed away as if they do not exist and/or never happened in the first place.
Just as some people like to claim the Holocaust never happened.
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ReplyDeleteMr. Friedman knows in his gut what is really preventing a solution to attaining 'Peace' in the Middle East. And the fact that so many of the world's most respected writers and intellectuals agree with Mr. Friedman, must give Mr. Friedman the comforting feeling that he is being patted on the back from sunrise to sunset. And then perhaps even in his dreams.
But for all that has been said there is yet, in the final analysis something terribly annoying about people such as Mr. Friedman. There is something about his smugness, his style of speaking and the self-righteous manner in which he states his opinions, that in the end, gets on one's nerves.
It is fortunate for Israel that Israel's destiny is not under the sole control of and/or depend upon Mr. Friedman. For all Mr. Friedman's abilities as a spinner of words, his apparent lack of ability to understand and fully digest the lessons of history, would make him a poor choice to be made the caretaker of Israel's future.
So much has been written about the Middle East that one is often amazed to see how people can always find more to write about all the problems and then suggest ever newer and supposedly "improved" and better solutions.
But for all those who are paid by the word and by the line, I imagine pontificating about the problems, issues, and seemingly unsolvable challenges of the Middle East, becomes automatic and second nature.
If one were ever to simply sit down and state what is at the route cause of all the problems in the Middle East, there would be little else to say after that.
The Jewish people have not been accepted for two thousand years. Part of the reason- a big part- was the way the organized Church went to such extensive lengths to demonize the Jewish people as the "Killers of Christ"- himself a Jew.
Then all the age old myths dealing with "ritual killings" and then the infamous "Protocols" and so much other rubbish which both the ignorant and the educated, throughout the centuries, swallowed hook, line and sinker.
And don't forget- you can always recognize a "Jew" because they have horns on the top of their head !
The present problems in the Middle East began and have their symbolic and also real origins in events that have transpired over a period of thousands of years.
But to read and listen to someone like celebrity writer and talk show guest, Tom Friedman, one might actually start to think and believe that all the problems of the Middle East began in 1948 when the dastardly myth and bald-faced lie was first concocted that the world had decided to make the Arabs of the Middle East "pay the price" for what was done to the Jewish people during the Holocaust.
The thing about a lie, as Hitler's professional propagandists knew so well, is that if you repeat it often enough, even the worst and most implausible lie begins to take on a life of its own.
To the less inquisitive and less enlightened, less educated, the lie can start to take on the most appealing sense of reality and finally, in a very sick and twisted height of obscenity, the lie can start to possess a "ring of truth".
Thus the great lie, the great Myth- that the Jews- the "outsiders", the interlopers, came and stole the lands of the Middle East from the Arabs. And then the simple conclusion to be arrived at, based on these great lies, is that the Jews must be uprooted and driven out.
Just as the Jews, in days of antiquity, needed to be "driven out of the Temple".
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ReplyDeleteBut for Mr. Friedman and his ilk, that narrative is too simple, too short, altogether reflecting a tone possessing too much of a sense of finality.
And certainly if people ever began to see and understand what the whole story of the Middle East is really all about, then what would become of all the "spinners of words" who have to find a way to fill their quotas of words each day, endlessly expounding on the topic of the "Middle East".
And then there are all the millions who need a "feel good cause" to live for to convince themselves of what an important contribution they are making to the world on a daily basis.
The above would include the passengers on the Flotilla sailing into Israeli waters and of course all the "spinners of words" who will be there to record in grisly detail the "barbarous" actions of the Israeli Navy to viciously prevent much needed "humanitarian aid" from reaching the sorely oppressed people of Gaza.
(What truly oppressed human being on this Earth would not wish, would even risk their lives- to be shopping at this very moment in a Gaza shopping mall. The thousands of Syrian refugees come to mind though there are so many, many more all over the world desperately requiring respite from their daily suffering.)
But Mr. Friedman and the people who make up his world and his loyal, adoring readership, will go on living in their fantasy worlds comprised of age old myths, that also include so many despicable lies.
Neither you nor I can change them- not even utilizing even the most gargantuan of efforts.
When you read how many of the passengers involved in the Flotilla headed to the Middle East are Jews and that the parents of one Flotilla passenger are said to be Survivors of the Holocaust, one begins to realize the enormity of the challenges and problems facing the State of Israel.
In a world in which the most heinous and barbaric slaughtering of innocent human beings is taking place on a daily, even hourly basis, whether in Syria, Africa, et al. it is the Flotilla that has galvanized all the media's attention.
Hollywood always teaches that you should stick with what the public already knows- or at least thinks they know. And has not the world been well taught by the media, via sheer repetition, that it is the Jews who are the chief obstacles to "peace in the Middle East".
But the "audacity of Tom Friedman" will propel him forever forward to spin and fulfill his daily quota of words. Never mind if his words are based on the truth or even the freely available facts.
After all, anyone who appears on Television or wins a Pulitzer Prize must represent some type of Oracle of Truth. Just ask the New York Times.
Or if the NY Times is sold out, just pick up a copy of the Guardian.
The folks at the Guardian have their own brand of "audacity" - as well as "agenda".
But then that is a whole other story.