# Jewish Dopers: Have you ever watched the film "Defamation"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 18, 2011, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018 "2011-01-18T00:12:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/241 "2011-02-19T23:23:32Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > That said, if millions of Chinese immigrants started pouring into Washington State and demanding that Washington State be given to them to be turned into a Chinese State, there would quite obviously be a massive amount of resentment directed at them. Well… yes and no. The real drive towards creating a separate state began once the sovereign power fell. It’d be much more like Chinese people moving to Washington state and forming a big ol’ China Town community, and then the US government fell, the United States ceased to exist, and the Chinese people there declaring that they wanted self-determination but that people who lived there would be free to continue, their new sovereign would just be Chinese instead of American. > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > One thing that had been true under the Ottoman system was that while the tennant farmers rented the land, they owned the olive trees that were on them. Do you have a cite for this? My understanding is that under the Ottoman land laws (at least from the middle of the 19th century and onwards), tenants had the right to usufruct, but only while they cultivated the land and they didn’t have the right to uproot trees (for example) and move them with them should they move to a different parcel of land. I’m unaware of any category of miri or mawat land that was treated as you describe, and musha land wasn’t essentially different, at least after the Ottoman Land Code reforms of 1858 and '59. > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > So the view of the Arab residents is hardly that unique. Never said it was unique, people hate landlords in general, especially absentee landlords, and they really hate having to move off land that they’ve been renting. That those who were dispossessed were annoyed is hardly surprising. > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > You’re certainly correct that the Arabs became quite hostile to the Jews in their lands, but lets not pretend the Jews of that time viewed the Arabs in any way that couldn’t be described as racist as well. I’m not going to speak about “the Jews” and more than I will about “the Arabs”, and honestly neither should you. Sure, a non-zero portion of both Jews and Arabs were bastards and more than a little hateful and prejudiced. But a non-zero portion weren’t, and I honestly have no idea what the actual percentages were. I will point out, again, that there was substantial disagreement within the socialist circles of Zionist movement, where many considered exclusionary hiring practices to be an abrogation of their responsibility to fellow workers. Obvious, the Communist Zionists often went further than that in their analysis. > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Moreover, as you seem to be conceding the Arabs actually had to import anti-Semitic imagery from the outside, because it previously hadn’t existed there. We’ve had [this discussion](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13374947&postcount=116) before. In [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13375211&postcount=128), in [a few places.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13375211&postcount=128) That anti-Jewish sentiment, and anti-group murderous violence existed in the Arab world is a fact. I do not grok, nor agree with, your distinction that it was fundamentally different than anti-Semitism. I contend that it was a different ‘flavor’. To use a rough and ready analogy, it’d be in the nation of Hypothetica, people had contempt and disdain for blacks because they thought that having black skin was the ugliest thing possible. And they would beat the shit out of/murder a bunch of them from time to time, and generally imposed discriminatory regulations and kept them as second class citizens, but then they got some pamphlets from the KKK and decided that they really hated blacks because they were scheming to rape non-black women and were all criminals, anyways. In any case, in the Arab world, the cultural diffusion of ‘western flavor’ anti-Semitism wasn’t _after_ the creation of Zionism. The Damascus Affair occurred in 1840, pretty much before any appreciable immigration from even the proto-Zionists. And again, there was significant opposition to Jewish immigration _before_ the OE fell, meaning that there was no practical chance at all for the new residents to seriously be planning to set up their own nation. > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > to the this day Arab citizens of Israel aren’t allowed to own most of the land in Israel This is actually inaccurate, and one of the more pervasive myths when dealing with this conflict. When you’re dealing with state owned land in Israel, about four fifths of the country (and about 9/10’s if you include JNF land), _nobody can buy it, Arab, Jew or sentient cuttlefish_. It can only be leased. But Arabs lease land that’s state-owned, and even some JNF owned land in Israel. The debate about the term “colonialism” is also a bit of a rabbit trail. When we refer to state-colonialism, we’re generally talking about a nation state dominating a foreign nation in order to obtain material benefit from its people and/or resources, usually by setting up an administration in their target country and sometimes by settling it heavily with some of their own citizens who retain extraterritoriality. In the case of Zionism, people who were representatives of no nation state were moving onto land and living there themselves as their home, first under the Ottomans and then under British rule. In that case, “colonization” is a synonym for “settling on” rather than something like “European imperialism”. And was some of the area already cultivated by its Arab residents? Sure was. Were there also swamps that were drained by Zionist immigrants and rendered habitable? Yep, that too. Richon L’Tzion, for example, was a pretty awful barren stretch before its inhabitants got their shit together and made the area livable. And now it’s the location of Carmel’s winery, IIRC. > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > You’re reminding me of the people who refer to the Arabs of the 20s and the 30s as “Palestinians”, a term which the Arabs of that time would have found confusing. [nitpick]During the Mandate, all the people who lived in Mandate Palestine were referred to as “Palestinians”, Jews and Arabs alike. Citizenship was simply referred to as [Palestinian citizenship](http://web.archive.org/web/20070222095422/http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/a47250072a3dd7950525672400783bde/c2feff7b90a24815052565e6004e5630!OpenDocument). In fact, when Jews were visiting the US to try to solicit funds/raise support for Zionism, they were referred to as “Palestinians”. [/nitpick] ---
**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/242 "2011-02-20T01:32:08Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > I’m sorry but that’s a ridiculous comparison. Perhaps, but that is the problem with hypotheticals. They really can’t be expected to work ouit like you expect. > [@](#): > > For starters the Zionists both today and then when they used the term “state” weren’t thinking of the American concept of “state” but they were referring to an independent nation. Perhaps, but US states command a hell of a lot of independance compared to regional jurisdictions in most other countries. Utah has managed quite a distinction from the rest of the country that is just as dramatic as say Quebec from the rest of Canada. > [@](#): > > Now if you think that if large numbers of Mormons who don’t speak English moved into Illinois and declared that they wanted to make it into an independent Mormon nation that there wouldn’t be tensions then you’re being extremely foolish. But I didn’t say that did I. > [@](#): > > Secondly, gentiles in Utah are certainly not second-class citizens in Utah nor are they required to have the words “non-Mormon” stamped on their driver’s licenses the way Arab Israelis have the word “Arab” listed on their IDs. I didn’t know about that. Yes that sucks. > [@](#): > > Third, you’re ignoring the fact that the first US citizens to inhabit Utah were the Mormons and it was overwhelmingly Mormon when they petitioned to be made a part of the US. Well, I didn’t realize that the northern Utes don’t count. still don’t > [@](#): > > Fourth, if you think that the Mormons of the 19th Century faced no resentment then you need to reread the history books because they went to Utah because they were kicked out of everywhere else and they were at least as hated by the Americans of that time as the Jews of the early 20th Century were by the Arabs of Palestine. Certainly not arguing that point. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/243 "2011-02-20T02:41:55Z")
By the way, a cite that ethnic status is still included in ID cards would be good. My understanding is that that field hasn’t been filled in on the cards for about half a decade now. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/244 "2011-02-20T03:07:50Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > By the way, a cite that ethnic status is still included in ID cards would be good. My understanding is that that field hasn’t been filled in on the cards for about half a decade now. As late as 2003 Israeli ID cards still had the nationality of citizens listed on them. If that’s no longer the case I’d be quite pleased. Perhaps one of the Israeli dopers can answer if that’s still true or not. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/245 "2011-02-20T03:42:50Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > Well… yes and no. The real drive towards creating a separate state began once the sovereign power fell. It’d be much more like Chinese people moving to Washington state and forming a big ol’ China Town community, and then the US government fell, the United States ceased to exist, and the Chinese people there declaring that they wanted self-determination but that people who lived there would be free to continue, their new sovereign would just be Chinese instead of American. That certainly isn’t the way Herzl, Ben Gurion, Weizmann or any of the major Zionist leaders thought. The basic principal of Zionism, in the words of Abraham Sachar is that the Jews are a nation and entitled a state of their own. It was pretty clear that the Jews wanted to create an independent Jewish State there because they believed that it was their ancestral homeland. To pretend otherwise is ridiculous. > [@](#): > > Do you have a cite for this? My understanding is that under the Ottoman land laws (at least from the middle of the 19th century and onwards), tenants had the right to usufruct, but only while they cultivated the land and they didn’t have the right to uproot trees (for example) and move them with them should they move to a different parcel of land. I’m unaware of any category of miri or mawat land that was treated as you describe, and musha land wasn’t essentially different, at least after the Ottoman Land Code reforms of 1858 and '59. It’s from one of Justin McCarthy’s books on the Ottoman Empire I read a long time ago. Unfortunately it’s not online. I should add that I think this was more of a case of miscommunication than malice which is bound to happen with two different cultures and two different legal systems, particularly when so many of the Fellaheen were illiterate. > [@](#): > > I’m not going to speak about “the Jews” and more than I will about “the Arabs”, and honestly neither should you. Sure, a non-zero portion of both Jews and Arabs were bastards and more than a little hateful and prejudiced. But a non-zero portion weren’t, and I honestly have no idea what the actual percentages were. I can understand you’re feeling this way, but just as I see nothing wrong with saying that most of the Palestinian Arabs were anti-semitic(or anti-Jewish for the pedants who whine how can semites be anti-semitic) I see nothing wrong with saying that most of the Palestinian Jews were racist. Keep in mind, “racism” at this time wasn’t the dirty word we think of it as now. The vast majority of Americans and Europeans were also racist. Nor for that matter, were racist attitudes confined to whites as anyone familiar with Mahatma Ghandi’s attitude towards Black South Africans can testify. > [@](#): > > This is actually inaccurate, and one of the more pervasive myths when dealing with this conflict. When you’re dealing with state owned land in Israel, about four fifths of the country (and about 9/10’s if you include JNF land), nobody can buy it, Arab, Jew or sentient cuttlefish. It can only be leased. But Arabs lease land that’s state-owned, and even some JNF owned land in Israel. Until extremely recently, JNF land could not be leased by Arabs despite the fact that much of it had been taken from Arabs including the “present absentees”(I’m sure your familiar with their tragic story). Beyond that, you know as well as I do that there’s considerable discrimination against the Israeli Arabs when it comes to land and water rights as well as education. For people interested in learning details about what it’s like for the Israeli Arabs, I strongly recommend David Grossman’s _Sleeping on a Wire_. [http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Wire-Conversations-Palestinians-Israel/dp/0312420978/ref=sr\_1\_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298172679&sr=8-1](http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Wire-Conversations-Palestinians-Israel/dp/0312420978/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298172679&sr=8-1) It does an excellent job giving one an intimate look at the lives of Israel’s Palestinian citizens and compares their lives not only to Israeli Jews, but also the Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. I should add Grossman is hardly an anti-Zionist and he does not hesitate to ask some of the tough questions or sugarcoat certain aspects of the Israeli Arabs that some leftists might have wanted him to ignore. > [@](#): > > In any case, in the Arab world, the cultural diffusion of ‘western flavor’ anti-Semitism wasn’t after the creation of Zionism. The Damascus Affair occurred in 1840, pretty much before any appreciable immigration from even the proto-Zionists. You’re right, the killings of the Damascus Affair were carried out by “Arabs”, or at least by people who today would be described as Arabs, but it was Arab Christians, and IIRC, the French government or at least the representatives of the French government who pushed for it. Unfortunately, Christians in the Middle East were often as anti-Semitic as their European counterparts. That’s one of the reasons many Jewish communities specifically placed themselves as far away from Christian areas and well within the Muslim ones as they could for protection. Again, I certainly don’t dispute that Muslim Middle Easterners weren’t capable of anti-Semitism and did in fact commit some massacres, such as at least one in Persia in the 1830s. However, historically, anti-Semitism wasn’t remotely as strong as in both the Christian parts of the Middle East and Christian Europe. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/246 "2011-02-20T04:03:58Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > To pretend otherwise is ridiculous. Do you have a cite that, during the Ottoman Empire, anybody thought that they could overthrow its control and form a Jewish state in the region? After the fall of the OE and after Balfour it was a different matter, but it’s not at all ridiculous to state that Zionism wasn’t always about establishing a sovereign state. > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Until extremely recently, JNF land could not be leased by Arabs despite the fact that much of it had been taken from Arabs including the “present absentees”(I’m sure your familiar with their tragic story). True, but it’s not impossible, which is what your comment suggested. Both state land and JNF land is open to being lived on by Jews, Arabs and Christians. And yes, there is still discrimination on many levels of Isreal’s society, but the Israeli supreme court has pretty consistently ruled against it. Of course that doesn’t make it okay, but the fact that the courts pretty routinely stand against it is at least a good sign. And discrimination is still a different matter than a total inability for Arabs to live on state land. > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > You’re right, the killings of the Damascus Affair were carried out by “Arabs”, or at least by people who today would be described as Arabs, but it was Arab Christians, and IIRC, the French government or at least the representatives of the French government who pushed for it. It wasn’t quite that simple. While the whole mess did start mostly due to French meddling, Mohammed Ali certainly didn’t do anything to stop it (although he did stop the torture of the Jews who were accused), and Sherif Pasha seems to have enthusiastically prosecuted the witch hunt. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/247 "2011-02-20T04:32:24Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > Do you have a cite that, during the Ottoman Empire, anybody thought that they could overthrow its control and form a Jewish state in the region? After the fall of the OE and after Balfour it was a different matter, but it’s not at all ridiculous to state that Zionism wasn’t always about establishing a sovereign state. Well, here’s Benny Morris, an Israeli historian whom I like and who has a tremendous amount of respect on both sides because he’s hardly a knee-jerk critic or apologist and has always been willing to criticize both Israeli and Palestinian extremists. [QUOTE\*\*] But the major cause of tension and violence throughout the period 1882-1914 was not accidents, misunderstandings or the attitudes and behaviors of either side, but objective historical conditions and the conflicting interests and goals of the two populations. The Arabs sought instinctively to retain the Arab and Muslim character of the region and to maintain their position as its rightful inhabitants; the Zionists sought radically to change the status quo, buy as much land as possible, settle on it, and eventually turn an Arab-populated country into a Jewish homeland. For decades the Zionists tried to camouflage their real aspirations, for fear of angering the authorities and the Arabs. They were, however, certain of their aims and of the means needed to achieve them. Internal correspondence amongst the olim from the very beginning of the Zionist enterprise leaves little room for doubt\*\*. [/QUOTE] He further provides these excerpts from the letters of several of the First Aliyah’s leaders. > [@](#): > > Vladimir (Ze’ev) Dubnow, one of the Biluim wrote to his brother, the historian Simon Dubnow, in October 1882: “The ultimate goal … is, in time, to take over the Land of Israel and to restore to the Jews the political independence they have been deprived of for these two thousand years … The Jews will yet arise and, arms in hand (if need be), declare that they are the masters of their ancient homeland.” (Dubnow himself shortly afterward returned to Russia.)[11] > > Ben-Yehuda, who settled in Jerusalem in September 1881, wrote in July 1882 to Peretz Smolenskin in Vienna: “The thing we must do now is to become as strong as we can, to conquer the country, covertly, bit by bit … We will not set up committees so that the Arabs will know what we are after, we shall act like silent spies, we shall buy, buy, buy.”[12] > > In October 1882 Ben-Yehuda and Yehiel Michael Pines, who had arrived in Palestine in 1878, wrote to Rashi Pin, in Vilna: “We have made it a rule not to say too much, except to those … we trust … the goal is to revive our nation on its land … if only we succeed in increasing our numbers here until we are the majority [Emphasis in original] … There are now only five hundred [thousand] Arabs, who are not very strong, and from whom we shall easily take away the country if only we do it through stratagems [and] without drawing upon us their hostility before we become the strong and populous ones.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First\_Aliyah](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Aliyah) Unfortunately, I don’t have his book _Righteous Victims_ on me, so I can’t fully authenticate those quotes, and that passage from the wikipedia article, but when wikipedia articles give detail citations from reliable sources, such as Morris, I’m considerably more willing to take them than way they use Norman Finkelstein or Bat Yeor as their sources, though I’m hardly a fan of using wikipedia as a source. > [@](#): > > It wasn’t quite that simple. While the whole mess did start mostly due to French meddling, Mohammed Ali certainly didn’t do anything to stop it (although he did stop the torture of the Jews who were accused), and Sherif Pasha seems to have enthusiastically prosecuted the witch hunt. The point is that it was an example of Christian anti-Semitism, not Muslim anti-Semitism. That said, there certainly were examples of Jews being massacred by Muslims long before Zionism came about. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/248 "2011-02-20T05:10:32Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > The point being that the possibilities you suggest are not mutually exclusive: she has probably always thought that way and had enough self-control to inhibit saying it, but she, like some others with aging, may have had some frontal lobe strokes or have some early dementia that has knocked out the executive function that previously inhibited their expression. Not necessarily so. Old people who lose their marbles sometimes change in their attitudes towards people as well. They become suspicious of previously trusted close relatives, launch weird accusations against neighbors, and so on… So, I’m not sure why they wouldn’t became racist too even though they really weren’t before. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/249 "2011-02-20T19:18:10Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > He further provides these excerpts Hrm, thanks for that but I’m really still not sure. Dubnow, for example, quit the place and returned to Russia, so I’m not at all sure that his ideas were indicative of anybody but himself. Ben-Yehuda was the person most clearly responsible for the rebirth of Hebrew as a language, but what strategic planning he actually conducted on behalf of the greater movement, in terms of military planning, is unclear to me. Likewise, Pines was a proponent of religious Zionism, which would have placed him in a rather small camp. I’m not saying that Morris’ interpretation is necessarily wrong, but I don’t see how those folks’ views indicate that it was _Zionism’s_ aim to conquer the country. “Two Jews, three opinions”, after all… I still find it quite fantastic that there was a widespread view that the, largely impoverished aliyah were planning on defeating the Ottoman Empire. Hell, something like 50% of the Zionists of that time period quit and returned home because simply eking out a living was too hard. Still, thanks, I was unaware of those quotes and may check that book out of the library one of these days. I’d rather read it in context than the bits that people have snipped for wiki, and I’d certainly like to see Morris’ reasoning in full. > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > The point is that it was an example of Christian anti-Semitism, not Muslim anti-Semitism. I disagree. I think it’s actually a very good example of the fusion of Christian and Muslim anti-Semitism, where classical European anti-Semitic tropes found fertile soil and were put to use by influential Muslim leaders. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018.md?page=12)