Germany and Israel: Whitewashing and Statebuilding by Daniel Marwecki (London: Hurst & Company, 2020), 274 Pages
From the abstract:
[…] Thorough archival research shows how German policymakers often had disingenuous, cynical or even partly antisemitic motivations, seeking to whitewash their Nazi past by supporting the new Israeli state. This is the true context of West Germany’s crucial backing of Israel in the 1950s and ’60s. German economic and military support greatly contributed to Israel’s early consolidation and eventual regional hegemony. This initial alliance has affected Germany’s role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to the present day.
#Palestine and the UN / Imseis, Ardi. The United Nations and the Question of Palestine: Rule by Law and the Structure of International Legal Subalternity. Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New york, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Imseis criticizes the two-state solution, stating that it was not aligned with core principles of international law when originally envisioned and has contributed to Palestine's contingent status in the international legal order. Despite the Palestinian Liberation Organization's recognition of Israel in 1988 and acceptance of the partition plan of 1947, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territory remains in place, raising questions about the validity of this historical compromise.
[...] Put simply, partition could never be legal without the freely expressed consent of the governed, and in #Palestine the vast majority of the population outright refused partition as an abomination of international law and their right to self-determination vis a vis the European settlers in their midst. Examination of the #UN record, in the form of the public and private meetings and report of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (#UNSCOP) as well as the General Assembly debates that followed, demonstrates that partition was not based on these international legal considerations. Rather, it was driven by powerful European states and their settler-colonial affiliates. The UN record reveals that the declared goal of these states was to rectify Europe’s centuries-old Jewish question in the wake of the #Holocaust and to do so at the expense of the innocent third-party Palestinians.
#UNRWA / Preserving the Palestine Heritage: paper and film documents held by UNRWA need preservation
[...] Hundreds of thousands, 296,680, of family files containing more than 16 million documents, including travel documents; land deeds; birth, death and marriage certificates; guardianship papers; utility and tax bills; curfew permits from the British Mandate period and other documents dating back to the period of Ottoman rule before World War I are also held by UNRWA. They are being preserved now through a project that is seeing the digitizing and indexing of these files.
In #genocide and @colonialism / Ahmida, Ali Abdullatif. Genocide in Libya: Shar, a Hidden Colonial History. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021.
[…] Between 1929 and 1934, thousands of Libyans lost their lives, directly murdered and victim to Italian deportations and internments. They were forcibly removed from their homes, marched across vast tracks of deserts and mountains, and confined behind barbed wire in 16 concentration camps. It is a story that Libyans have recorded in their Arabic oral history and narratives while remaining hidden and unexplored in a systematic fashion, and never in the manner that has allowed us to comprehend and begin to understand the extent of their existence.
#reference/ Tabar, Linda, and Samia Al-Botmeh. 2021. “Real Estate Development Through Land Grabs: Predatory Accumulation and Precarity in Palestine.” New Political Economy 26 (5): 783–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2020.1849083
Global capitalist dynamics within the settler colonial realities in #Palestine, examining the implications for Palestinians struggling to remain on their land
#reference / Shlaim, Avi, Nadim Rouhana, Andre Zaaiman, and Na’eem Jeenah. 2012. “Pretending Democracy: Israel, an Ethnocratic State.”
The "Iron Wall" doctrine is a political strategy proposed by Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky in 1923. Knowing very well European Jewish presence in Palestine would never be accepted, It advocated for the establishment of a Jewish state as a so-called "iron wall". The doctrine argued that Zionists should prioritize building up their own military and economic power without making any concessions to Arab interests or seeking Arab cooperation.
[...] My central thesis in this chapter is that the iron wall was a national strategy to which rival Zionist political camps subscribed during both the pre-independence and the post-independence periods. In other words, it will be argued that there was a remarkable convergence between mainstream Labour Zionism and right-wing Revisionist Zionism when it came to the Arab question and that this convergence persisted after 1948 under the Labor Party, Likud, and Kadima. To say this is not to deny the existence of deep differences between the rival political camps. Clearly, there was always a European-style ideological divergence between the left and right wing on social, economic and political issues. Nor is it to deny that there were also significant differences when it came to the Arab question. Rather, the argument is that while left and right were divided on the territorial aims of Zionism, they were united on the strategy of the iron wall. Revisionist Zionism staked a claim to a Jewish state over the whole of the British mandate of Palestine, including Transjordan. Labour Zionists, on the other hand, accepted the principle of the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. At the risk of over-simplification, the two groups may therefore be described as territorial maximalists and territorial realists. Yet – and this is the crucial point – regardless of the extent of their territorial ambition, the two groups understood that, given the absolute Arab rejection of the whole idea, a Jewish state could be established only by force of arms.
#reference / Shlaim, Avi, Nadim Rouhana, Andre Zaaiman, and Na’eem Jeenah. 2012. “Pretending Democracy: Israel, an Ethnocratic State.”
My central thesis in this chapter is that the iron wall was a national strategy to which rival Zionist political camps subscribed during both the pre-independence and the post-independence periods. In other words, it will be argued that there was a remarkable convergence between main- stream Labour Zionism and right-wing Revisionist Zionism when it came to the Arab question and that this convergence persisted after 1948 under the Labor Party, Likud, and Kadima. To say this is not to deny the exist- ence of deep differences between the rival political camps. Clearly, there was always a European-style ideological divergence between the left and right wing on social, economic and political issues. Nor is it to deny that there were also significant differences when it came to the Arab question. Rather, the argument is that while left and right were divided on the territorial aims of Zionism, they were united on the strategy of the iron wall. Revisionist Zionism staked a claim to a Jewish state over the whole of the British mandate of Palestine, including Transjordan. Labour Zionists, on the other hand, accepted the principle of the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. At the risk of over-simplification, the two groups may therefore be described as territorial maximalists and territorial realists. Yet – and this is the crucial point – regardless of the extent of their territorial ambition, the two groups understood that, given the absolute Arab rejection of the whole idea, a Jewish state could be established only by force of arms.
#reference / Zwi Migdal (or Zvi Migdal) was a Polish-Jewish-run, most profitable prostitution ring in South America and beyond
Apropos Jeffrey Epstein’s unsealed court documents , his real heritage is possibly Zwi Migdal - a Jewish global crime syndicate trafficking Jewish women as sex slaves.
#reference / The Catholic Church, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
from Theodor Herzl's personal diaries [English translation]; Book I, May-June 17, 1895:
[...] Anti-Semitism has grown and continues to grow — and so do I.
[...] I can still recall two different conceptions of the Question and its solution which I had in the course of those years. About two years ago I wanted to solve the Jewish Question, at least in Austria, with the help of the Catholic Church. I wished to gain access to the Pope (not without first assuring myself of the support of the Austrian church dignitaries) and say to him: Help us against the anti-Semites and I will start a great movement for the free and honorable conversion of Jews to Christianity.
[...] And because the Jewish leaders would remain Jews, escorting the people only to the threshold of the church and themselves staying outside, the whole performance was to be elevated by a touch of great candor.
[...] We, the steadfast men, would have constituted the last generation.
While researching the work of the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC, or UNCPP) , came across this quote from Conciliation Commission member Mark F. Ethridge in Moris' "The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem revisited" (2012):
[...] Mark Ethridge, the Southern Baptist appointed by Truman to the PCC, quickly understood that the developing impasse over the refugees was lethal to any possibility of peace. Ethridge thought Shertok’s attitude – that the refugees were ‘essentially unassimilable’ in Israel and should all be resettled in the Arab world – ‘inhuman’. Israel’s views in this context, he said, were ‘similar to those which I heard Hitler express in Germany in 1933. It [sic] might be described as anti-Semitism toward the Arabs.’ At the same time, he believed that ‘it might be wise in long run to resettle greater portion Arab refugees in neighbouring Arab states’.
[...] Magid's book dissects and critiques terms like Zionism, anti-Zionism, identity, Indigeneity and antisemitism – subjects that have dominated the public discourse over the past two and a half months.
[...] "But still, amidst the mourning and devastation, when the fog of war lifts and the mourners rise from shivah or take down their mourning tents, the same dilemma will exist: competing claims for rights, claims of ownership, and the land, the land, the land. … We can think – we must think – a way out of the cognitive trap of exceptionalism and exclusivity, rights and victimhood, on both sides, and the illusion of seeing violence as a solution, whether terrorism or state violence, even if we must do so through tears of grief, of sorrow, and of pain."
[...] Magid's book dissects and critiques terms like Zionism, anti-Zionism, identity, Indigeneity and antisemitism – subjects that have dominated the public discourse over the past two and a half months.
[...] "But still, amidst the mourning and devastation, when the fog of war lifts and the mourners rise from shivah or take down their mourning tents, the same dilemma will exist: competing claims for rights, claims of ownership, and the land, the land, the land. … We can think – we must think – a way out of the cognitive trap of exceptionalism and exclusivity, rights and victimhood, on both sides, and the illusion of seeing violence as a solution, whether terrorism or state violence, even if we must do so through tears of grief, of sorrow, and of pain."
#reference / Solidarity and the Palestinian Cause: Indigeneity, Blackness, and the Promise of Universality. Zahi Zalloua (2023).
[…] Foregrounding Palestinian Indigeneity reframes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a problem of wrongful dispossession, a historical harm that continues to be inflicted on the population under the brutal Occupation of the West Bank and #Gaza. At the same time, in a global context marked by liberal democratic ideology, such an approach leads either to liberal tolerance – the minority is permitted to exist so long as their culture can be contained within the majority order – or racial separatism, that is, appeals for national independence typically embodied in the two-state solution.
Aburish, Saïd K. 1989. Children of Bethany: The Story of a Palestinian Family. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
In the 1920s and 1930s, life in the peaceful village of Bethany, outside #Jerusalem, was dominated by its flamboyant headman, Khalil Aburish, guardian of the tomb of Lazarus. Said Aburish, grandson of the headman, relates the vivid history of his family which, like so many others, has been torn apart by events in Palestine in the course of the century.
In 1948, with #Palestine in flames, the Aburish family scattered. Some remained in #bethany. Others began a new life across the world, establishing themselves as journalists, advertising executives, professors, bankers-even revolutionaries.
The Aburishes who stayed in Bethany watched as their peaceful way of life was destroyed by events in the outside world-culminating in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank which threatens their very existence.
#reference/ Chances for Peace: Missed Opportunities in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. University of Texas Press, 2015.
“Drawing on a newly developed theoretical definition of “missed opportunity,” Chances for Peace uses extensive sources in English, Hebrew, and Arabic to systematically measure the potentiality levels of opportunity across some ninety years of attempted negotiations in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
With enlightening revelations that defy conventional wisdom, this study provides a balanced account of the most significant attempts to forge peace, initiated by the world’s superpowers, the Arabs (including the Palestinians), and Israel.
From Arab-Zionist negotiations at the end of World War I to the subsequent partition, the aftermath of the 1967 War and the Sadat Initiative, and numerous agreements throughout the 1980s and 1990s, concluding with the Annapolis Conference in 2007 and the Abu Mazen-Olmert talks in 2008, pioneering scholar Elie Podeh uses empirical criteria and diverse secondary sources to assess the protagonists’ roles at more than two dozen key junctures.
A resource that brings together historiography, political science, and the practice of peace negotiation, Podeh’s insightful exploration also showcases opportunities that were not missed. Three agreements in particular (Israeli-Egyptian, 1979; Israeli-Lebanese, 1983; and Israeli-Jordanian, 1994) illuminate important variables for forging new paths to successful negotiation.
By applying his framework to a broad range of power brokers and time periods, Podeh also sheds light on numerous incidents that contradict official narratives. This unique approach is poised to reshape the realm of conflict resolution.”
Yacobi, Haim. 2016. “From ‘Ethnocracity’ to Urban Apartheid: A View from Jerusalem\al-Quds.” Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 8 (3): 100–114.
Over the past 20 years, changes in demographic control, militarization, and state violence have radically transformed the city from an ethnocracity into an urban apartheid.
An ethnocracity refers to a city where a dominant ethnic group appropriates and controls the city apparatus to produce a contested, unstable space. Jerusalem was previously theorized as an ethnocracity.
Urban apartheid combines ethnic exclusion and segregation with market-driven forces like privatization, gentrification, and tourism planning. It relies less on formal legal structures and more on economic restructuring.
Urban apartheid intentionally segregates groups and allocates resources/rights based on race rather than residency. It is an intentional creation reflecting ideology and policy goals of domination, not just individual choices.
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