2022/8 Discussion for Daniel Sokatch's Can We Talk about Israel?-POLL WINNER

[Jan]

This is the place to talk about our poll winner for a book about Israel. --the August book, coming up soon.

[Jan]

I have started it!
He's giving an overview of history, an overview to the degree it's pretty general, and sometimes one might ask whether religion or history. Then I started liking this part. (near the beginning of the book)

[M]

started and abandoned - not going to learn anything new, except the author's leftist views

[Jan]

M wrote: "started and abandoned - not going to learn anything new, except the author's leftist views"

Hi M. Understand how you feel. But I can always learn something new.

What I noticed last night is in his history overview, he more or less left out eastern Europe, yet those are the guys who came up with the idea. To do so, they first had to resurrect the idea of Jewish peoplehood. We were so scattered that that idea had fallen on hard times. And, no, moving to the Promised Land hasn't been a real hope over the centuries. Yes, it's in prayers, but was not thought to be an actual possibility during Medieval times. Wouldn't have been countenanced by the powers that be. That's why Yehuda Halevi stood out. He wasn't "a Zionist" (concept hadn't yet been invented) but he did have the dream to go there!

Am also interested in what he'll say in relation to our current Pulitzer Prize winner, which I believe distorted history to squeeze it into our current polarized left and right. (I am also going to be rereading that with another group to see if I still agree with my original take. I panned it!)

So, I hope to get something out of Can We Talk....
But also want to get hold of The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People, touted so highly by an Atlantic writer and by Matti Friedman. M, since you're abandoning Can We Talk About Israel, maybe you'll give that one a try and tell us what you think. Would you consider doing that? Pretty please?

[Kszr]

I was very interested in hearing alternative narratives to the standard lines I was given in religious school. I thought this narrative was more dedicated to explaining and including other sides of the stories of the founding of Israel. I openly admit that I had bought into the narrative that Israel is always on the side of the moral right, but in truth, as in all truths, it is never that cut and dry. While I have heard about the comparisons to apartheid, this actually explained to me how these comparisons have come about.

I think it is important for us to hear and acknowledge other views on the same historical events. If Jews want others to care about what happens to us, we need to do the same for others. While this book looked into the political reasons for peace not being achieved, there is one thing that has held true to me throughout -
those that want to build a real and lasting peace are the ones that are marginalized by those in power. Peace is what will take that power away, and factions on all sides will do anything they can to keep that power.

[Jan]

Kszr wrote: "I was very interested in hearing alternative narratives to the standard lines I was given in religious school. I thought this narrative was more dedicated to explaining and including other sides of..."

I haven't gotten too far in the book yet, so will just say in support of your comment, Kszr, that being made to think is a good thing. Can be painful but in the end a good thing. Thanks, Kszr!

[Jan]

I have read a little further. On one hand this book isn't hard to read, yet on the other, there is something wrong, and that is that the author bends over backward to fit in with leftist views, even when what he's saying or implying is incorrect . For ex, he says Nineteenth-century Zionists described the Palestine they aspired to "return" to as "a land without a people for a people without a land." but that sentiment was coined in the 1850s -- a decade or more before there was any Jewish Zionism -- by a British statesman, Lord Shaftesbury. Yes, Christian Zionism preceded Jewish Zionism. In the 1850s, educated European Jews were still enthralled with the idea of assimilated into the countries within which they lived. They did not yet know that was not going to work. For Jews, Zionism had not yet emerged. Whether they later went around saying that, I do not know, and I doubt the author knows. People do go around saying that now, and they are using it the unfortunate way the author is doing.
When there is something to say to make Israelis look bad, the author says it, and, conversely, when there's something to say to make the Israeli situation understandable, he doesn't. The impression created is one of virtue signalling.

He does also make correct Zionist points, such as that the existence of Israel is not up for bargaining, and that the 1948 war was soon after the Holocaust and that Jews were not going to hold back in preventing another one. He is explicit about how rulers of Mideast Arab countries used anti-Zionism to manipulate their own populations and hold on to their own power.
He cares about Israel.

Therefore, he can virtue-signal all he wants, but for Jew-haters he is still going to be a hated Zionist.

I am reading on and will see what else I can see.

[Jan]

I read the section on the Six-Day War a couple nights ago. The writing is compelling. But I am not sure whether parts of what he's saying is true. Did Israel "know" that Nasser was bluffing? Will eventually find out!

Read the section on the Yom Kippur War, and that part is consistent w/what I've learned previously. Except re Jordan. Are there Jordanian natives who are not Palestinian? He skipped over the severity of the Jordanian Black September crackdown. Also no mention that the king's family is not native: put in place by England when that family lost out in the Arabian peninsula.

I've got to say this is a history you can sit down and read. More straightforward than My Promised Land. And something like Peace Not Apartheid is a jumbled mess that you cannot sit down and read as a history.

If you have an actual history you can compare and contrast w/other histories, which is a boon.

[Jan]

At the half-way point now & have continued to become more reconciled with this book.

Point to be considered: why are American Jews on the political left so apologetic when they talk about Israel? Why do they make obeisance to certain sentiments before they can get to the nitty gritty of what they actually want to talk about? Another example of this is Susie Linfied, author of The Lions' Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky.

In contrast, when thinking about America, we don't act that way about our troubles w/the previous administration. Could it be related to the fact the world is not condemning us over that (on the contrary, is sympathetic), at least not the part of the world whose opinion we care about?

On another note, the history covered by this author hasn't helped me to understand the pre-state politics alluded to by Joshua Cohen in his Pulitzer prize winner The Netanyahus I think I'll have to look for that in another history.