Buried in the blizzard of comments that have been posted on this blog concerning the Israeli/Hamas situation there have actually been several comments addressed to me, and I am going to try to answer them now.
First of all, I do not yet know whether my study group on Marx next semester will be recorded or whether it can be shared with others. I will find out and let you know later.
Second, someone back there aways responded to my remark that I
knew next to nothing about the Israeli situation by asking what I knew about
South African apartheid or Afro-American studies when I demonstrated at Harvard
and joined the Afro-Am department at UMass.
When I joined the anti-apartheid demonstration, I had already spent six
weeks teaching in South Africa and had traveled around the country. I was
hardly an expert but I felt comfortable enough with what I had learned to take
a position. As for Afro-American studies, as I explained in the book I wrote
about my experiences in that department, I knew less about the subject in an
undergraduate major when I joined the department. I was invited to join by
people who knew that I was ignorant of the subject but who thought I could help
with the creation of the PhD program, which I did. At various times, I invoked
the experience of Eastern European Orthodox Jewish communities at which I little
Christian boy would come on the Sabbath and do things that the Jewish community
was forbidden by their religion to do, such as lighting the candles. I referred
to myself in a self-mocking way as the Shabbos goy of the Afro-American studies
department. Only after I had spent more than 10 years in the department and
read dozens upon dozens of books and learned a great deal from my colleagues did I feel comfortable about presenting my own views in a book. My total
experience of Israel was a three day visit with my wife on our way to Paris one
year about 20 years ago.
Despite by
level of ignorance, I will try to answer the question that was posed by
somebody (I do not remember now who asked the question), namely what I would
propose that the Israeli government have done in response to the Hamas attacks.
Let me
say, to begin, that I do not think the attacks constituted anything remotely
like a threat to the existence of Israel. Israel is the most powerful nation in
the Middle East, the only nuclear power. The attacks on October 7 were fully as
terrible as everyone has said but they no more constituted a threat to the
existence of Israel then the 9/11 attacks in the United States constituted a
threat to the existence of the United States.
Leaving
aside what Israel should have done 50 years ago or 30 years ago or even 10
years ago or one year ago, what could it have done on October 8 in response to
the attacks? I do not think there was ever the slightest possibility that
Israel would do any of these things, but it could have and here is what I say.
First,
they could have mobilized their military and paid attention to their
intelligence services to make sure that such attacks did not happen again.
Second, they could have worked as hard as they could to carry out a hostage
swap, releasing as many of their prisoners as they needed to to get back the
hostages. Third, Israel could have stopped supporting Hamas by green lighting
transfers of funds to the Hamas operatives in Gaza from Qatar and elsewhere.
Fourth, Israel could have launched a full-scale effort to support the creation
of an independent Palestinian state. Fifth, Israel could have ordered its
legendary security forces to start carrying out targeted assassinations of
Hamas leaders, in Iran, Qatar, and anywhere else they could be found. They
could make it clear that this was not a knee-jerk response to the attack but a
full-scale assault on Hamas from the top down that would continue so long as
there was anywhere in the world a Hamas leader who was still alive. Sixth,
Israel could have launched constant Secret Service attacks on Hamas leaders in
Gaza, after the hostages had been returned. Seventh, Israel could have pulled
some of the settlements in the West Bank back into Israel and created the
genuine possibility of a real Palestinian state. Finally, as part of this
effort, Netanyahu could have kicked the extreme right wing parties out of his
government and struck a deal with the centrist parties which included keeping him
out of jail, this being his price for all of the above.
As I say,
there was never the slightest possibility that the Israeli government would
doing any of these things but they could have and it would have saved 20,000 or
more Palestinian lives, gained them the immediate and undying support of the
world community, and actually strengthened Israel and made it more secure.
Well, you
asked and that is what I have to say.
93 comments:
I usually find something to disagree with in your comments, but this time I find nothing.
It's more fun to disagree, but...
state directed political assassination??? just remember, as we keep on seeing in that small part of the world, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander
RPW: When I joined the anti-apartheid demonstration, I had already spent six weeks teaching in South Africa and had traveled around the country. I was hardly an expert but I felt comfortable enough with what I had learned to take a position.
Touché.
Perfectly reasonable suggestions. Perhaps removing all the illegal settlements would be better. After the Munich thing there was a series of hits. Taking out Osama Bin Laden was a targeted assassination. Putin excels in these things. Anon, catch up.
No, aaall, I will not catch up. I regard such assassinations as not just morally repugnant but, more importantly, as politically dangerous. Though I can see how a shallow sort of political realism would urge me to 'get real.'
Anonymous,
Targeted assassination does seem like a way to get rid of Hamas without killing innocent civilians. Hamas, you will agree I'm sure, are not very nice people.
You will say that Netanyahu isn't a very nice person either. Agreed.
Let's try a thought experiment. Let's take Putin, who is about the evilest guy around.
He even looks evil. He not only invaded Ukraine, but also he's homophobic and a misogynist. He's jailed and assassinated dissidents.
Ok. Somebody assassinates Putin. Would you protest about that?
Another idea: Israel could kidnap Hamas leaders and take them to Jerusalem to be tried as they did Eichmann, whom they condemned to death and executed. Would you agree that that's ok?
Just asking...
Professor Wolff,
Your wish list for Israel is reminiscent of the food critic who has never spent a minute in the kitchen and is vastly ignorant about how a meal is made.
It is hard to cast away the suspicion you are pontificating rather like a sophist or in the throes of pipe dreams of a gentile prophet.
I'd bet all my shekels and some of my dollars that the Ramatcal knows more how to survive in the Middle East than a not humble enough amateur
Anon, way harsh. Besides, given Herzl Halevi's CV I would have expected better re: 10/07, both in the immediate response, the ongoing follow up, and allowing it to even happen.
"...I regard such assassinations as not just morally repugnant but, more importantly, as politically dangerous."
I don't know, sometimes, no man, no problem does work out.
"Targeted assassination does seem like a way to get rid of Hamas without killing innocent civilians. Hamas, you will agree I'm sure, are not very nice people."
Right out of Sun Tzu...
XIII. The Use of Spies
1. Sun Tzu said: Raising a host of a hundred thousand men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on the resources of the State. The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down exhausted on the highways. As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.
2. Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day. This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.
********
18. Be subtle! be subtle! and use your spies for every kind of business.
19. If a secret piece of news is divulged by a spy before the time is ripe, he must be put to death together with the man to whom the secret was told.
20. Whether the object be to crush an army, to storm a city, or to assassinate an individual, it is always necessary to begin by finding out the names of the attendants, the aides-de-camp, and door-keepers and sentries of the general in command. Our spies must be commissioned to ascertain these.
I cannot for the life of me remember if I had posted this previously...
What is the real root cause of terrorism from Gaza? and how to stamp it out?
Politicians have to realize that if there exists a radical regime change in Iran, money for Hamas & Hezbollah will eventually dry up. There are some Democrats in favor of the current Iranian government for I know not what? The current Iranian government's prosperity is the present bane of Israel. But if young people can bring about drastic change in Iran, Hamas will be done with in Gaza.
It's probably easier to defeat Hamas & Hezbollah through a regime change in Iran than through any Palestinian uprising in Gaza or the West Bank. The reason Democrats don't want to discuss this is because Trump wants to topple the current Iranian government & he wants to be U.S. President again. And they want to stop as many Zionists as possible from supporting Trump's reelection.
A real solution means either one democratic state (from the river to the sea) or a two state solution with realistic borders. Both involve the return of land to the Palestinians. Both involve the use of the IDF to uproot settlers, which essentially means civil war. Israel has deliberately painted itself into this impossible corner, but miscalculated what its desired steady state would look like. So now it's committed to the ethnic cleansing wing.
In the best of all possible worlds, Prof. Wolff's proposals would very likely lead to success. Nothing would be more desirable than this. Unfortunately, we do not seem to live in such a world.
Firstly, I believe that Prof. Wolff underestimates the conditions that people need to feel existentially secure. What events like September 11 or October 7 do to the collective subconscious of a society probably goes much deeper than the surface of everyday consciousness would suggest.
Can you imagine an Israeli society that has to reckon every day with murdering, raping, heavily armed gangs invading its villages and towns to kill children, women and old people in a bestial manner?
Secondly. Modern "war" - I find it difficult to use this term - is aimed exclusively at civil society and the very core that holds it together. It undermines the feeling of being able to live without having to reckon with one's own death at any moment. It undermines the security of being able to leave home and family without having to reckon with death and the devil moving in at home in the meantime. I think these are ancient existential needs and reason alone seems too young to rationalize Revenge.
When the murderous bloodlust among the Atrides was brought to an end by the goddess Athena and the elders of Athens at the Areopagus, unfortunately only a fairy tale was born. The case itself is still being negotiated today.
Anonymous @8:31,
That is very unfair. Prof Wolff said several times that he does not feel comfortable offering an opinion due to lack of knowledge, and only did so because we pushed him to. Moreover, he explicitly said he does not believe there is any possiblity Israel would do any of the things he proposes.
Eric,
To cheer up Anonymous (who is probably Howard) and Marc (who keeps sending me emails insulting me, you, Professor Wolff and others), here's Chris Hedges' latest post, The Death of Israel.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-death-of-israel?utm_source=substack&publication_id=778851&post_id=139865400&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=ojc6r
I don't know if Hedges is correct, but I do sense that Israel's finest hour is in the past.
s. wallerstein,
Killing individual Hamas leaders, assuming the entire leadership could be eradicated, would not address the root of the problem, which is not, as Michael Llenos thinks, that the Palestinians are receiving support from Iran or any other outside actors, but the injustice and anger that the Palestinians feel. Eliminating the Hamas leadership would just be a temporizing act, pushing the next wave of violent resistance perhaps a few years down the line, as has predictably occurred again and again in the past.
Pappé writes in "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine":
"After the 1929 uprising, the Labour government in London appeared inclined to embrace the Palestinian demands [for a single, democratic, majoritarian state], but the Zionist lobby succeeded in reorienting the British government comfortably back onto the Balfourian track. This made another uprising inevitable. It duly erupted in 1936 in the form of a popular rebellion fought with such determination that it forced the British government to station more troops in Palestine than there were in the Indian subcontinent. After three years, with brutal and ruthless attacks on the Palestinian countryside, the British military subdued the revolt. The Palestinian leadership was exiled, and the paramilitary units that had sustained the guerrilla warfare against the [British] Mandatory forces were disbanded. During this process many of the villagers involved were arrested, wounded or killed. The absence of most of the Palestinian leadership and of viable Palestinian fighting units gave the Jewish forces in 1947 an easy ride into the Palestinian countryside."
The killing and imprisoning of the Palestinian leadership in the late 1930s made it much easier for the Zionists to establish the state of Israel in 1948, but it did not eliminate the Palestinian yearning for justice and determination to resist.
The wanton carnage Israel has perpetrated in the past three months has only guaranteed another generation, or three, of violent resisters seeking revenge. That is the inevitable outcome of settler colonialism. When occupiers do not completely eliminate the population whose lands they have taken, either through physical genocide or complete cultural assimilation, there will always be a threat of violent resistance.
I've noticed that many pro-Palestinian/Hamas journalists refuse to dwell on the following logic: If someone strikes you in the face do you have a right to strike them back?
[It's hard to defend the aggressor so writers tend not to dwell on the above logic when they write about the current war.]
However has Israel gone too far in civilian deaths because of its bombing campaign & invasion? I believe it has.
[But I don't blame Israel for this but rather the Netanyahu government.]
But to be fair it wasn't just a matter of someone striking you in the face by surprise. It was also many family members and relatives and friends being cruelly tortured and raped and murdered by surprise. That is the source of Netanyahu's bloodlust.
[But if there is something unforgivable that Netanyahu is doing it is not a full commitment to negotiate for the Israeli hostages to come home. If Netanyahu is trying to double down just so he can get kudos in the future by his countrymen and future historians from his unwavering position that is something I believe is unforgivable.]
I'm not saying he's doing that (I don't know what is going on in his head), but if he is doing that that it is something you could look at as unforgivable.
Here's Owen Jones, who probably needs no introduction, talking to Paul Rogers, an expert on warfare, on why Israel can't win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML1Vc3B-y2w
Take a look at the map for the 1947 UN partition plan for two states (passed by the UNGA, never implemented). Even if one thinks, as Eric does, that this was unjust and unwarranted, it's pretty clear in retrospect that a lot of suffering and death in the last decades would likely have been avoided if it had been accepted and implemented. According to Wiki, Mahmoud Abbas said in 2011, with the benefit of hindsight presumably, that its rejection was a mistake.
Take a look at the Arab proposal for Palestine from 1946.
https://www.loc.gov/item/2017498789/
And explain how it was fair, as LFC apparently believes, to give the Zionists 60 percent of the land when the Jews accounted for only a third of Palestine's population (and that only because of massive immigration of Jews from another continent in the preceding two decades).
(As for what Mahmoud Abbas says, scroll up to see that 90% of Palestinians want Mahmoud Abbas, whom they consider a corrupt Vichy traitor, to resign.)
For those who do not click on the link above, here is one of several important, relevant sections. This is what the UN was rejecting when they endorsed the 1947 partition plan.
"The following are the proposals submitted by the Delegations of the Arab Governments at the Palestine Conference held in London in October 1946....
(1) 'The first step would be for the High Commissioner to establish ... a Provisional Government consisting of seven Arabs and three Jewish ministers of Palestinian nationality....
(4) ... These directives would provide for the enbodiment in the constitution of the following principles:--
(i) Palestine should be a unitary State.
(ii) It should have a democratic constitution, with an elected legislature.
(iii) The constitution should provide guarantees for the sanctity of the Holy places, covering inviolability, maintenance, freedom of access and freedom of worship in accordance with the status quo.
(iv) The constitution should guarantee, subject to suitable safeguards, freedom of religious practice in accordance with the status quo throughout Palestine (including separate religious courts for matters of personal status).
(v) The law of naturalization should provide amongst other conditions that the applicant should be a legal resident of Palestine for a continuous period of ten years before his application....
(vi)(b)...The right of any resident in Palestine to apply for and acquire Palestinian citizenship on the same terms and conditions without discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, or language.
..."
Eric,
Professor Wolff's suggestion about assassinating Hamas leaders, outlined in the original post, is coupled with the removal of at least some settlements from the West Bank and an Israeli effort to promote the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
If the settlements are removed and an independent Palestinian state comes into effect, then
Palestinians would have little reason to launch another wave of violent resistance in the future. Some may mourn the assassinated Hamas leaders, to be sure, but as Machiavelli points out, people resent you much more for stealing their land and wealth than for murdering their father.
The only objection I see in their proposal that someone who purports to stand for democracy and self-determination could reasonably raise was that they wanted to block at the constitutional level all further Jewish immigration into Palestine "unless and until legislation provides otherwise" and "the consent of the Arabs in Palestine as expressed by a majority of the Arab members of the Legislative Assembly" were granted.
(The Trumpian move of blocking all immigration of a particular race or nationality of course sounds odious to our ears, but recall that the US had legislated massive immigration restrictions essentially along those lines a few years earlier. And at this very moment the regime in the UK is trying to send Africans who seek asylum in Britain to Rwanda.)
(In my last post, by "their" I meant the Arabs in 1946, not to s. wallerstein's comment.)
Some interesting bits in this: an Israeli lawyer who has David Cameron's ear estimates that 200,000 of the 700,000 settlers would need to be moved to provide enough space for a viable Palestinian state: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/17/two-state-solution-would-mean-relocating-200000-settlers-says-israeli-lawyer-who-has-david-camerons-ear
Eric,
I did not say I thought the '47 partition plan was fair. I said that, had it been accepted, the last 70 years or so in the region would have looked very different. Hindsight of course is 20/20, but it's hard to argue the Palestinians are better off now than they would be in the counterfactual world in which they had agreed to the (arguably unfair) division of the land between a Palestinian and an Israeli state in 1947-48.
Eric, the most relevant part of the proposal you posted is on page 14 where it states that Palestine is too small to be divided into two viable states. Subsequent population growth squares with that observation.
One problem with the 1947 partition is that the Jewish part would have 538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs. Whatever could go wrong?
Likewise the Guardian article JR referenced leaving 500,000 settlers in the West Bank and compensating for that with land swaps doesn't sound doable. I assume most if not all of the productive land is claimed and the rest is desert. Acre for acre would never work.
aaall
Your second paragraph is questionable, imo. In a counterfactual world where an Arab majority had been willing to accept the '47 partition, it's conceivable that Jews and Arabs could have lived together. (But no pt in wondering too much about counterfactuals, I suppose.)
aaall
Why are you so eager to believe that a 2 state solution can't work? You don't seem to have a workable alternative to offer btw.
The biggest mistake the Netanyahu Government did was equate 0ctober 7th to 9-11 or Pearl Harbor instead of making it out to be a 2nd Holocaust.
People may bark False Equivalency & state 6 million Jews died in the First Holocaust so 10-7 was more like Pearl Harbor or 9-11 instead of the Jewish Holocaust in the sense of numbers.
When the 7th of October was over, 3,300 Israelies were injured & some 1,200 Israelies were murdered.
But the Netanyahu Government could have stated that it wasn't the numbers that made it another Holocaust but the moral degeneracy & inhuman violence and motivations for the attacks.
The Political Reasoning for equating 10-7 to WW2 or 9-11 were quite obvious. So the Netanyahu Government could, in their military counter attack, be free from being held liable or responsible for civilian casualties by the United States and its allies because WW2 standards would apply.
A lack of laser-guided munitions is the old problem of the Israeli military--even though the IDF is quite powerful as foreign militaries go.
This political policy turned out to be a grave strategic mistake by Netanyahu & his Political Staff.
M.L.
Netanyahu was going to follow the strategy he has followed, regardless of what historical precedents he chose to cite. The problem is the strategy, not primarily the historical "analogies" that he deployed.
Kurt Vonnegut at a symposium in 1997 on Bureaucracy and War.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BvNcGzl-zQ
"This is the 60th anniversary of a very interesting event.... There was a civil war going on in Spain. WWII had not begun yet. The Germans had chosen sides ... and their air force bombed a little town of about 10,000 people called Guernica. This was so horrifying that the Nazis were revealed to be sub-human to bomb a city like this. Now, their point was to make war seem so terrible that everybody would say, 'Let's just quit.' ...
Freeman Dyson is a native of England my age. He is a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton nowadays, and I am whatever it is I have become. We are now 74 years old, God help us. On February 13, 1945 we were 22. The Second World War in Europe was winding down back then. German armies were in retreat on all fronts. In two and a half months, Germany, which lay in ruins, would surrender unconditionally.... Freeman Dyson ... was then a uniformed office worker working for the Royal Air Force in England.... That night, the Royal Air Force burned Dresden to the ground. The greatest manmade firestorm in history. Killing 135,000 men, women, and children. That is more people than were killed at Hiroshima....
Many years later I corresponded with Freeman Dyson.... He told me of the minor clerical part that he had played in its planning and execution. I asked him if he had any idea why all those civilians had been killed.... He said it was purely bureaucratic momentum. What are we going to do tonight?
Now the war, remember, had been going on for England for nearly five years. Huge organizations had come into being there and here too, essentially corporations whose business interest day after day, month after month, was to wreak havoc on Germany and its allies. These bureaucrats were not meticulously supervised, could not have been meticulously supervised by the great leaders on our side, Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Josef Stalin, God help us. The effectiveness of such leaders in wars which cannot be finally settled for years and years depends on their delegation of most life and death decisions to well-chosen subordinates. The chief executive of the bomb-dropping division of the Royal Air Force was Sir Arthur Trevars Harris, nicknamed 'Bomber Harris.' And there came a day when there was nothing more for the employees of Bomber Harris to do, unless they wanted to bomb Dresden....
Now, I have said before ... that the destruction of Dresden ... did not free a single death camp prisoner a microsecond earlier, didn't cause a single German soldier to stop fighting a microsecond earlier....
After WW2 ended, the British govt did not honor Arthur Harris (other commanders at his level were given a peerage). M. Walzer writes: "He had done what his government thought necessary, but what he had done was ugly, and there seems to have been a conscious decision not to celebrate the exploits of Bomber Command or to honor its leader." (Just and Unjust Wars, 1st ed. 1977, p. 324) As for Churchill, he knew what Bomber Command was doing and was "ultimately responsible for military policy...." (323) The full discussion is at pp.323-325.
LFC
I meant that the first thing Netanyahu did wrong was try to link America's Pearl Harbor & 9-11 with their received attack on 10-7 instead of the Jewish Holocaust.
[I realize as political axioms such a tectonic shift in their initial policy would have changed their overall strategy for the better.]
Whatever would have happened I believe Netanyahu most likely would have had more support abroad and close to 100% favorability back home in Israel.
Of course, all this is guesswork.
In a section of Just and Unjust Wars in ch. 16 that has stirred much debate etc. over the years, Walzer suggested that in the early days of the war, when bombing was the only offensive capability Britain had, the policy might have been justified as a response to a "supreme emergency." However, as he went on to note: "...the supreme emergency passed long before the British bombing reached its crescendo. The greater number by far of the German civilians killed by terror bombing were killed without moral (and probably also without military) reason." (p. 261)
(Btw, having read something Walzer wrote fairly recently on Gaza, I'm sure he would not accept a parallel betw. Israel's actions in Gaza and the Allied bombing of German cities. But his view is not necessarily right. I didn't think very much of the piece.)
M.L.
Given that it has become fairly common to hear/see the 10/7 attack referred to, at least in the U.S. media, as "the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust" -- or language close to that -- I'm not sure I get, or agree with, your point. (But I'll drop it.)
The last ellipsis of my transcription of Vonneguts remarks leaves out this (@ 21:30):
"Sir Arthur Travers Harris--Bomber Harris--an enthusiast of the leveling of cities by the Royal Air Force, and by our Air Force as well, died of natural causes in 1984 at the age of 92. It was proposed that he be immortalized by a statue in London, which has in fact since been erected. But this honor was strongly opposed by many of his countrypersons, who still felt that wholesale killing of civilians and the wrecking of cities a thousand years or more in the making for little or no perceptible military advantage was nothing to be proud of."
You can find pictures of the Queen Mother unveiling the statue honoring Marshal Harris here:
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/23120
s.w. way back at 7:06 PM on god knows what date: “
“Ok. Somebody assassinates Putin. Would you protest about that? “
Well, as we saw with the archduke, an assassination can be approved at one level and profoundly regretted for its consequences at another level.
As to what the assassination of Putin—by whom? by ‘a lone gunman’, by the agent of some state, etc.—might achieve, my guess is not much. To think of Putin as the omnipotent dictator of Russia is rather reminiscent of the old Cold War thinking that, e.g., Stalin was in absolute control. Such Cold War (mis)thinking, which was argued against by quite a number of Western analysts of the old Soviet Union, who wanted to encourage that that place was a political entity where politics of some sort determined state actions, has unfortunately, in my opinion, again become too dominant among so many of those critical of Russian action in recent years.
Anyway, to answer your tendentious query more directly than it deserves, I wouldn’t celebrate Putin’s assassination; I’d be very wary of the consequences.
I still, however, protest against the killings of Lumumba and Allende, inter alia. And I still stand with Malcolm X when it comes to watching the chickens coming home to roost (blowback from Vietnam, in case you don’t recall).
PS. In response to Eric's reference to Bomber Harris, one of those who criticised his actions was his nephew (I heard him say so in person), who taught at a university in Wisconsin, I think.
And since I've gotten into family responses to the (mis)celebration of relatives, this may be of interest to some:
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/famine-was-widespread-under-stalin-why-do-we-only-know-about-ukraines/
Anonymous,
Thanks for answering my tendentious query.
Allende committed suicide by the way.
Really getting into the weeds here, but it appears the story is a bit different than Walzer thought. Citing a 2006 biography of Harris, Wikipedia says: "Bomber Command's crews were denied a separate campaign medal - as they were already eligible for both the Air Crew Europe Star and France and Germany Star - and, in protest at this perceived establishment snub to his men, Harris refused a peerage in 1946; he was the sole commander-in-chief not to become a peer." So by this account, he was offered a peerage and refused.
Anonymous @2:24pm,
The linked article provides useful commentary on some of the political goals of Ukrainian nationalists.
But it mischaracterizes the nature of the famine in Ukraine. Historian Grover Furr (who, though a medievalist by training, is a scholar of Soviet history) has written widely (including in book-length works), and lectured and given interviews, showing that the famine was not deliberately created by Stalin to punish Ukraine.
see for example
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/03/the-holodomor-and-the-film-bitter-harvest-are-fascist-lies/
Of course, if you take the Ukrainian famine completely out of the equation, Stalin still committed enormous crimes.
A bit off topic, but directly inspired by some comments: I can't resist noting that the greatest novel about the Stalinist show trials, Victor Serge's The Case of Comrade Tulayev, concerns something like the scenarios suggested above. A fellow inexplicably buys a pistol he can't really afford, bumps into the Fearless Leader, and fails to shoot him. He then gives the gun to another fellow who, again wandering about, bumps into Comrade Tulayev, a high-ranking party official, and guns him down. The rest of the novel describes in harrowing detail and with astounding psychological penetration the arrests, 'trials', and executions of the medium-to-high-ranking bureaucrats who must have been part of the Trotskyite plot to kill the beloved Comrade.--No relevant moral, but perhaps the targeted assassinations of high-ranking members of Hamas, outside of any political process aiming at something other than the extinction of Palestinians, would be another, albeit spectacular, instance of what has been called 'mowing the grass'.
"Stalin still committed enormous crimes." No doubt. But to state it that way risks letting all his facilitators and colleagues, great and small, off the hook. That's like focussing narrowly on Trump while giving all his facilitators and colleagues off the hook. Ditto Putin. Ditto Netenyahu. Ditto etc. etc.
And then, should that be acknowledged, one is surely then led to the serious inquiry, where and why did the facilitators and colleagues come from? (That was the point I was at least trying to imply by referring to the shallowness of so much Cold War scholarship, a style that has re-emerged in recent times.)
Anonymous @4:34 p.m.,
I agree that pretty much all regimes have internal power struggles and factional struggles, and that autocrats have people who help them carry out their wishes. But the factional struggles can co-exist with a fairly heavy concentration of power in one person. The degree of such concentration can vary, of course; Xi Jinping, for instance, seems to have gathered more power into his hands than his immediate predecessors did, though the basic character of the Chinese regime is still what it was (i.e., a one-party state).
I am not at all an expert on the history of the Stalin years, but offhand I would think it's probably a permissible shorthand to say that "Stalin was in absolute control" -- meaning that nothing happened at the level of basic policy that he did not want to happen and that dissent, except in the contained highest circles if that, wasn't tolerated. That would be compatible with struggles among his subordinates for favor, etc. And I assume that with Khrushchev's "thaw" the space opened up somewhat for more initiative to be taken by actors below the Politburo and for more internal policy debate -- again, I'm definitely not an expert on this. That said, while there were some changes, my impression is that the main thrust of Soviet foreign and economic policy did not fundamentally change until Gorbachev.
This is separate, to an extent, from the question of which side was responsible for keeping the Cold War going. Within the Cold War, there were of course periods of détente and progress on arms control, alternating with periods of high tension and intense arms racing, but the basic premises of the superpower competition seem to have been mostly taken as given by both sides until the mid-to-late 1980s. Each side developed a military-industrial complex that had an interest in high military spending, and that's still true in both the U.S. and Russia, though U.S. spending (both in absolute terms and maybe also as a share of GDP) is higher than Russian, except now Russia is on a war footing so the percent of GDP may be evening out. (Not bothering to look it up.) And I doubt Russian industry is as good at producing the precision machine-tooled parts that sophisticated weapons systems require.
Stalin eliminated all rivals and potential rivals.
Who in the Soviet leadership dared to contradict Stalin?
Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag Archipelago tells the story (which may be invented, has at least a certain poetic truth to it) that Stalin gives a speech to the Party Congress and immediately all rise and begin to applaud him.
The applause goes on for 15 minutes, then half an hour and finally, somebody, maybe with sciatica like me, sits down.
That guy is purged the next day.
I'm pretty sure if reelected Trump will give Alaska back to Russia for free in exchange for gulags where Trump can send his political enemies. There might even be an invasion later by via Alaska and Canada. This is because California might break away from the Union if Trump can't secure it as a Republican electorate & has too tight of a reign on liberals there.
An evidence free prediction, Michael. It's saddening that such speculation is so rampant across the political spectrum. And by the way, you mean "rein" not "reign."
anon.
1. Previously I learned several years ago that the Russian people and Putin have wanted Alaska back for some time.
2. Trump is crazy about President Putin and wouldn't mind a greater alliance with Russia & Putin.
3. Put #1 & #2 together and what do you get if Trump is reelected?
Poetic truth I’ll leave to others.
Even were it possible it would be tedious to try to argue the matter at length. So I’ll just refer to a brief account of “The policy process of the late Stalin period” in”How the Soviet Union is Governed” (Harvard 1979) by Jerry F. Hough and Merle Fainsod—it’s actually Hough’s emendation of Fainsod’s original to explore in greater detail “the policymaking process in the Soviet Union.” But for what it’s worth:
“It is difficult to be sure about the freedom of the policy debates [conducted over interminable dinners at Stalin’s dacha], let alone the patterns of influence, within the top ruling circle. Khrushchev suggested . . . that ‘we were supposed to tlk intimately and freely,’ and Milovan Djilas asserts that this did seem to be the case at dinners which he attended early in the postwar period. The dinners, he found, were marked by an ‘atmosphere of cordiality and informality,’ and featured ‘rambling conversation’ that ‘touched on the most serious political and even philosophical cubjects.’ ‘An uninstructed visitor might hardly have detected any difference between Stalin and the rest. [However, Stalin’s] ‘opinion was carefully noted. No one opposed him very hard. It all rather resembled a patriarchal family with a crotchety head whose foibles always caused the home folks to be apprehensive’.” [p. 184]
“Djilas’s statement that ’no one opposed Stalin very hard’ clearly indicates that even the views of the Soviet leader could be opposed with an intensity less than ‘very hard,’ and the memoirs of World War II generals contain many eaxamples of such disagreement with Stalin, even by sub-Politburo figures.” [p. 185]
“Despite the fear in which Politburo members lived . . . [they] did, in fact, push forward their policy ideas.” [pp. 184-5] One reason why they did so, one might say had to do so, was because they too were but the representative tips of bureaucratic and regional structures of policy making, implementation, and evaluation. Such a complex system as was the Soviet Union could not simply function according to any one person’s or any small group of persons whims. It had to be to some degree reality based. [p. 363]
I also suggest reading the Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore (2003), which does not picture a Stalin who was open to hearing his own opinions contradicted. I don't have the book here, so here's an Observer Review. Those around Stalin, according to the book, lived lives of great insecurity because for no reason at all Stalin might see them as potential troublemakers and do away with them.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/20/biography.features
s.w., may be of interest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Ag3nCyZZSBg
'And by the way, you mean "rein" not "reign."'
If Trump becomes Dictator, the word reign is also appropriate.
aaall,
Thanks for the video.
Pablo Neruda wrote an Ode to Stalin. Chileans named their children "Stalin" in his honor.
He had his fan club. He still does in Russia, they say.
Mandelstam of course wrote under duress an Ode to Stalin, but it didn't save him. The supreme artistic praise of old Koba has got to be The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet's 'Stalin Wasn't Stallin'' (also memorably covered by Robert Wyatt): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI3u80z1qKo&ab_channel=warholsoup100
This looks like something worth reading, though not sure, given other things on my list, if/when I will get to it:
Nathan Thrall, _The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine_ (2017).
(He has a more recent book but it's about a particular story, it seems, not so much the "macro" view.)
@John Rapko Thank you for the musical link. I went down the Robert Wyatt rabbit hole. Great stuff. Here's a nice anti-Thatcher one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Res3-YX4X8g
There are credible reports to the effect if or when reelected Trump will sell everything east of the Mississippi to Putin and to the west, to Xi
He will then take his place as the world's richest man and America will not even be a kingdom
@ ML
"I've noticed that many pro-Palestinian/Hamas journalists refuse to dwell on the following logic: If someone strikes you in the face do you have a right to strike them back?"
Micheal I've watch a good deal of YouTube videos and while it is true that there are journalist sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinians, I've yet to see a pro-Hamas journalist. Now maybe I just have yet to come across one, but can you point me in the right direction?
also, if someone strikes you in the face,do you have a right to strike them back? Of course it depends on whether the one doing the "striking" is a state or a nation, or an individual. I take it you are talking about a legal right and not a moral right. Nations have a right to defend themselves,but when does defending ones nation turn into the extreme of pure over-blown aggression?
Anonymous (at 4:23 PM),
Thank you. Your sense of humor made my day.
"Micheal I've watch a good deal of YouTube videos and while it is true that there are journalist sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinians, I've yet to see a pro-Hamas journalist. Now maybe I just have yet to come across one, but can you point me in the right direction?"
I think there are no official pro-Hamas journalists on YouTube. But I believe that out of all of the journalists on the planet, since many journalists are anti-Israeli, and are in favor of the Palestinians, some of the latter would rather see Hamas win the current War than Israel to do so. That is a pro-Hamas journalist albeit in a indirect or incognito sort of way.
To assume that none of the latter exist is to either believe in the spurious or to be naive.
And what is it to be anti-Israeli? What do I mean by that? To favor the Palestinians over the Israelies in issues involving the Middle East.
Michael Llenos,
This isn't a football game where you root for your favorite team.
There are humanitarian and human rights issues here that lead many of us to question Israel's attack on Gaza and the incredible quantity of civilian deaths, not to mention the destruction of hospitals and people's dwellings.
That has nothing to do with supporting Hamas either. I've seen no one in this blog who supports Hamas who are a fundamentalist religious group, guilty of acts of terrorism with a homophobic and misogynistic mindset.
LFC, I am guessing the Israel's 1990's political heel turn made rational action impossible. If a settlement couldn't be reached when Israeli politics was considerably to the left, no way now as the Right in every nation is inherently irrational (e.g. Cameron/Johnson - Brexit, that worked out well). Stupid to mendacious and murderous sort of goes with the brand world-wide.
(BTW, I just now see the Colorado SC has barred Trump from the state's primary ballot.)
This is a personal prejudice but I have to agree with the proposal that Eric posted. There isn't enough land to make two viable states and that was with a population of a million or so.
So we have Israel having to shoot well armed settlers and deal with the after effects decades of Palestinian terrorism and Palestinians raw over decades of abuse and Israeli terrorism. So much bad blood. May work out but that's not the way to bet.
Assassinate Putin? Why not? In addition the world would be better off if the settler-colonist state known as the Russian "Federation" was right-sized back to a somewhat reduced Duchy of Muscovy. All this blather about settler-colonialism and it never seems to be mentioned that the oldest and worst offenders are Imperial Russia/USSR/Russian "Federation" and Dynastic China/PRC.
You forgot the USA, aaall
Anon, oldest and worst of the last couple thousand years. You might look up the reports of various royal commissions on how the Portuguese and Spanish behaved back in the day (or read some Las Casas).
On the other hand, the whole settler-colonial meme used as a club to beat up some but not others is sort of lame. East African Plains Apes left southern or eastern Africa over a million year ago. Succeeding waves of our genus have moved into areas occupied by other creatures (Homo or not) and driven them off or driven them into extinction. It's what we do, its who we are.
"There are humanitarian and human rights issues here that lead many of us to question Israel's attack on Gaza and the incredible quantity of civilian deaths, not to mention the destruction of hospitals and people's dwellings."
I've noticed that even before the Gaza Invasion that many pro-Palestinians didn't give two cents for the over 4,000 Israeli casualties that were caused by Hamas on 10-7. Evidence? I saw on the news a congresswoman defending the attack on 10-7 with many people cheering her on. Not a football game? Tell them that.
However, if anyone says that Rep. Tlaib means goodwill towards Israelies when she shouted out "From the River to the Sea" I would tell them that that's enough snorting of coke for today.
Michael Llenos,
Even if Rep Tlaib had genocidal intentions when she yelled that slogan (we can't read her mind of course), I would have imagined that you, as a practicing Christian and a philosophically educated person, would have resisted the temptation to see the situation in binary terms and have committed yourself to a peaceful resolution of the conflict without siding with Israeli vengefulness which has now taken about 20 thousand Palestinian lives, destroyed most of the housing, schools and hospitals in Gaza as well as forced millions of Gazans to flee to the extreme south of Gaza living under precarious conditions without sufficient water and food, conditions under which infectious diseases will take more and more lives of weaker members of society, children and older people.
By the way, the general figure used for Israelis murdered on October 7 is 1200, not 4000 as you give above, unless you are including wounded and psychologically traumatized.
Anyway, I was mistaken about your degree of sensitivity to suffering and I will not bother you again.
aaall,
I don't see a one-state solution as very feasible; in my view it will have to be a two-state solution. And that means that, instead of spending time bemoaning Israel's "heel turn" -- which seems to be one of your favorite phrases -- one should spend time looking at the extant proposals for a solution. Just this morning I heard on the radio a couple of former diplomats -- one Egyptian, one Israeli -- who apparently have published just such a proposal. I don't have time now to track down the reference, unfortunately.
Anyway, we're clearly not going to agree about this, so I don't think discussing this subject further with you is going to be very productive for either of us.
sw
Actually I do feel empathy for the Palestinian sufferings concerning the lack of shelter, basic necessities, & health care status. Plus the fact that Netanyahu has caused their relentless bombing in Gaza which hasn't ended.
Nonetheless I'm greatly upset over the fact that I've noticed on the news (since the attack on 10-7) that pro-Palestinians have been intentionally dismissing the fact or lightly ignoring that Israeli women have been brutally raped and Israeli babies have been cruelly murdered (by decapitation) on the 7th of October.
I've seen much lip service, but the vibe I get from anti-Israelies is the belief that the Israelies had it coming to them. And that attitude makes me sick to my stomach.
We know there are many pro-Palestinians. But among all of those pro-Palestinians there must be a considerable amount who hate Israel. So when pro-Palestinians shout "From the River, to the Sea" it makes you wonder how much of that is hate speech...
Michael Llenos,
I think that reading some of the things you say here, like your praise for Henry Kissinger, would bring Jesus to tears.
I continue receiving very serious and sad news about Gaza. Unarmed civilians are targets for bombs and gunfire. And this has happened even within the parish complex of the Holy Family, where there are no terrorists, but families, children, people who are sick and have disabilities, sisters. A mother and her daughter, Mrs. Nahida Khalil Anton and her daughter Samar Kamal Anton, were killed, and other people were wounded by the shooters while they were going to the bathroom… The house of the Sisters of Mother Teresa was damaged, their generator was hit. Some are saying, “This is terrorism and war”. Yes, it is war, it is terrorism. That is why Scripture says that “God puts an end to war…the bow he breaks and the spear he snaps” (cf. Ps 46:9). Let us pray to the Lord for peace.
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/angelus/2023/documents/20231217-angelus.html
Michael Llenos: Israeli babies have been cruelly murdered (by decapitation) on the 7th of October
Source?
Well, it's only taken him 2½ months, but Senator Sanders has finally begun to forcefully denounce Israel's atrocities against the civilian population of Gaza.
But, perhaps unsurprisingly, what he is proposing as the next steps is woefully inadequate. Where is the sense of urgency? I find myself wondering, WWJD?
(What would Joe Manchin do?)
"Let me put this in historical perspective: ... The destruction in Gaza is now equivalent to that of Dresden, Germany, where two years of bombing by the United States Air Force and the British Air Force during WWII destroyed half of the homes in that city and killed about 25,000 people. Gaza has matched that in just two months--not two years, two months.... And hundreds of thousands of children are going hungry tonight in Gaza....
Let's be frank. What we are talking about now in Gaza is not just a humanitarian cataclysm, but a mass atrocity. And what is important for every member of this body to understand, and every American to understand, is that all of this is being done with bombs and equipment provided by the United States of America and heavily subsidized by American taxpayers. We are paying for the carnage in Gaza right now. Our bombs. Our ordnance. There is no denying that we are as a nation complicit in this carnage....
These bombs and shells are manufactured here in America and supplied to Israel by the United States of America....
This campaign, I am sorry to say, very likely violates US law and US policy.
And that is why I have introduced a privileged resolution under section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act. The resolution requests that the State Department provide information on any credible allegations of human rights violations in Gaza caused by indiscriminate or dispropotionate military operations and the blanket denial of humanitarian access. ...
We will be voting on this resolution in January....
The Netanyahu government is continuing its military approach which is both immoral and in violation of international law. And in my view, the United States must end its complicity in those actions....
While it is appropriate to support defensive systems like Iron Dome to protect Israeli civilians against incoming rockets, it would be irresponsible to provide an additional $10.1 billion in military aid beyond those defensive systems....
Bottom line: We should not be giving more money to a rightwing extremist government in Israel to conduct a horrific and immoral military campaign which includes indiscriminate bombardment...." (my emphasis)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpmw4RSi4EA
Source? Here is a news brief:
"https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231027-israeli-officer-says-he-found-baby-beheaded-in-hamas-attack"
[A wicked Hamas is capable of doing anything wicked. Hamas is a modern terrorist group. All modern terrorist groups are wicked. Therefore, Hamas is wicked. And wicked groups have a great desire to do anything wicked.]
What do you think IDF generals did on 10-7 in their command center? Do you think they looked at the incoming casualty reports and looked around the room and said:
"Man... we gotta report that some Israeli babies got their heads cut off! That will make Netanyahu look good..."
I hate to break this to anyone, but the worse the reported casualties of Israelies at the border, the more likely the people responsible for the security at the border, like Netanyahu & his generals & staff, will be held accountable by future parliamentary proceedings in Israel. I believe Netanyahu knows this.
It's probably the same bat crap crazy conspiracy theorists that think that baby beheadings were a plot by Israel who also similarly believe the Nazi Holocaust was set up by Zionists for the sake of waging more war on the Palestinians.
Historical footnote on the quoted Sanders remarks: I think he probably should have referenced WW2 aerial bombing more generally, or perhaps more recent wars (e.g. Afghanistan), rather than just Dresden, where the majority of the damage and casualties occurred in one notorious night-time bombing operation late in the war. While the damage to Dresden was no doubt cumulative, that one raid has rightly acquired an infamous status, as the remarks by Vonnegut posted earlier by Eric suggested (it figures in one of Vonnegut's novels also), so while Sanders' remarks might have been technically accurate they reflect a lack of awareness, on his part and that of his staff, of the significance of that one night. This has no real bearing of course on the substance of his remarks about Gaza but if you're going to draw on history you might as well get it as right as possible.
Dear Eric
You are frankly irate and for no good reason. You go around aching for a fight and my fervent wish is that you get what you want.
Irate people lose perspective and in your case rant.
You say Israel is disproportionately reacting to Hamas's barbaric rampage- you are losing all sense of decency and perspective yourself as do Anti-Semites such as yourself.
You are guilty of emotional reasoning, all are nothing and labelling and perhaps more.
Probably you're an angry person, that's what justice means to you, rather like Martin Luther who hates Jews as do you.
You are ignorant of us and the situation Jews face. The Palestinians are victims but not innocent victims and victims or their own belligerence
We are accepted among the nations until the world turns on us and lectures us as do you, in your case a rant
Eric, I think you have a very good reason to be irate. Please keep on speaking for the dying.
It's probably not necessary to say this, but Anonymous above (probably Howard) accuses Ericc of anti-semitism.
As a Jew, I do not believe Eric is anti-semitic.
Eric would condemn U.S. aggression against any smaller nation, for example, Viet Nam or Russian aggression against any smaller nation, for example, Ukraine just as strongly as he condemns Israeli aggression against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
That is, he does not condemn Israel for being Jewish, but for being imperialistic.
Israel has done a first-rate PR job in convincing much of the world that they represent the Jewish people. My mother was a successful PR free-lancer and so I recognize good PR work when I see it.
Professor Wolff is Jewish and Eric is clearly an admirer of Professor Wolff. Professor Wolff could proclaim himself to represent the Jewish people with the same authority as the current government of Israel does.
In fact, I myself could claim to represent the Jewish people or David Zimmerman could. I mention myself and Professor Zimmerman because we both receive emails from Marc Susselman
insulting us for our criticism of Israel. Maybe anyone who insults me or Professor Zimmerman is anti-semitic.
Joking aside, Jews today are tremendously diverse and form countless subcultures. Jews range from the late queer poet Allan Ginsberg to homophobic fascist Zionists in the current Israeli coalition government.
We're all Jews. No one speaks for us. Everyone speaks for themselves in this diverse postmodern society.
Mr Wallerstein makes it clear that no Jewish person speaks for the class of all Jewish human being in the world. It is antisemitic to say that the great replacement theory emanates from Democrats and Jews. Denouncing the barbarity of the right-wing fanatics in the Israeli government is not anti-Semitic, no matter how often many Zionists say it is.
AS Mr Wallerstein says the condemnation of Israel is based on its imperialism not for being Jewish.
The Zionist project of Israel and in its current manifestation shares ideology with other fascist and racists regimes past or present. But this truth in my opinion will continue to face harsh obstacles to its free expression. I think, if i recall correctly B. Spinoza experienced the rath of that hatred centuries ago.
I agree with the general point of s.w.'s comment above, and C. Lamana's.
However I'd add a couple of things. First, I don't think Eric was esp. condemnatory of Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- somewhat the opposite in fact. Second, I don't think imperialism is all that much at issue here, but that wd be a separate discussion. What's at issue immediately is the character of Israel's response to 10/7.
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