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1.6.04
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AN ISRAELI READER WRITES, Several weeks ago you pointed out that Israelis are seemingly more sensitive to military losses than civilian ones. In today's Haaretz, Yossi Sarid talks about the same phenomenon.*
I don't know whether I agree with your call to cut Israel's aid. On the one hand, as a relatively left-wing Israeli, I have no problems if US shoves down Israel's throat the program of the Israeli Left, but on the other hand, if the US does ever abandon Israel, it will probably be a prelude to disaster (though, I suppose, you will not have to feel implicated if something bad happens).
I wrote back:
One thing is for sure.
The US will *not* repeat *not* abandon Israel. That itself would be a disaster and just, well, wrong.
But it gets me furious to read "Middle Israelis" like Imshin write that she doesn't care if the rest of the world goes down in flames (including the US). She has written that. And the things Israel does in the WB & Gaza with respect to the radical settlers doesn't help its security, while making the Arabs go nuts.
Does the US deserve this?
__________________
*Sarid writes:
The deaths of 13 soldiers in the Gaza Strip struck Israel like a bolt of lightning on a clear day. Even without a scientific test, it is possible to see the marked difference between the Israeli response to the murder of civilians compared to the killing of soldiers. When soldiers are killed the thresholds shift - when civilians are murdered there is a lot less excitement. Just look - the murder of Tali Hatual and her four daughters in Gush Katif did not precipitate a war in Rafah, but the killing of soldiers in their APCs did.
Then he talks about Lebanon and the Four Mothers movement. Isn't that almost exactly what I wrote? Is he reading me? I doubt it; there must be something in the air. Good. (I agree with his words about the Palestinians. I might have added "contemptible." But, that won't make them disappear.)
It's nothing new, I noticed this even in 1984-1985. It's the exact opposite response that you'd get in the US and, I venture, anywhere else in the world (especially in the case of the deaths of young mothers and young children), where, to be blunt, the deaths of young men in uniform, especially those who have volunteered for risky combat units, is considered forfeit during active hostilities. A tragic loss for their families, but one that society puts up with stoically. There is no public outcry over the deaths of soldiers in Iraq, or Afghanistan, and it would be considered, well, unseemly, for there to be. Even the peace movement. They are soldiers, for crissakes.
My partial explanation (because it does not explain the phenomenon totally; I have none) for Israeli oddity is that the country is run like an Eastern European ghetto and that young men in elite combat units occupy the same social status that yeshiva boys did in Eastern Europe.
Women in Israel are taken utterly for granted because they allow it. They brainwash themselves into thinking they are totally modern, but their "personal status" is controlled by reactionary rabbis scarcely better than mullahs. All women, everywhere, are paid less and have less public authority than men, but it used to be that women got some compensation by being treated like ladies and benefiting from chivalry, especially in socieities that were highly militaristic. Not so Israel. Israeli women don't even have to be bribed to put up with the system, they are so compliant. It's a militaristic society totally without chivalry. And, they have no civil marriage or divorce laws to protect them.
posted by Diana Moon @ 1.6.04
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POIMS. I have always found haiku impossible to write. In fact, any kind of poim. But one day on the subway, I suddenly wrote this:
This train is my address
And buried in its roar
Is molten majesty's impress
On my metallic core
Damned if I know what that means. Can you figure it out, perfesser?
We were going downtown.
posted by Diana Moon @ 1.6.04
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A READER ASKS. "How could we possibly create more animosity toward America than existed on 911?"
Answer: behave as if every young Muslim is a potential or actual member of Al Qaida. Treat Arab countries as if they are ours to take and break (the Pier One analogy). Fuck it all up beyond belief. Then expect the world to kiss our asses.
(This doesn't mean we shouldn't get the real bastards.)
PS, taking things personally that obviously aren't is an indication of extreme narcissism and immaturity.
posted by Diana Moon @ 1.6.04
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YO, if I wear that t-shirt I will get lynched but the scarf is beautiful beyond words, and the mystical/magical bracelet is now on my right wrist.
posted by Diana Moon @ 1.6.04
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31.5.04
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SPEAKING OF COMPUTER RENDERINGS, am I the only one who finds them cheesy and unconvincing? Give me a Cecille B. Demille epic any day. Yes, I realize that his "special effects" were not up to the standard that we can create today but you always know that they are special effects so you make allowances. DeMille couldn't create crowd scenes with computer rendering, however, so he was forced to employ thousands of extras. Excuse me but I think that actually imparts a greater sense of reality to his old chestnuts than to the latter day supposedly more historically-informed epics, like Gladiator, which I thought was a stupid dud, completely derivative of Spartacus. Go rent Spartacus and see what I mean. Even in DeMille's Ten Commandments you can see affecting close-ups of real people who were supposed to be the Hebrews. Nowadays that would all be done with computers and it would look like a total fake.
posted by Diana Moon @ 31.5.04
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THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. Saw it last night. Is it possible to make a disaster flick with some intelligence? This movie was totally devoid of creativity. Just a bunch of stale cliches. I would say "warmed over" but in this case, they were frozen.
The computer renderings of New York were awful! They left out the Chrysler Building, which is only 8 blocks north and a few blocks east of the Empire State Building. How could they do that? The Chrysler Building is the most beautiful building in the city.
Afterwards the guy next to me said he's read that the director didn't care about authenticity but just chose buildings that he liked. There was one exterior shot of what was supposed to be the 42nd Street Library that looked more to me like a shot of Philadelphia's City Hall, which is a great building, but was inauthentic.
Also, I hate to be one of those nitpicky types, but in one of the interior scene that was clearly supposed to take place in the 42nd Street Library, you saw interiors from the Museum of Natural History. I'm not referring to the actual interior shots of the Museum, but of a brief scene that took place after they've all collected in the Library. You can see one of the dioramas of Stone-Age people. It was very confusing.
Also, there were a couple of nasty anti-New York stereotypes. Slick guys with big noses and briefcases bribing people. Everyone who was mean had a thick Hollywood-style New York accent (dems, dese, dose). I really got annoyed at that, especially since the part where the huge wave of water looked uncomfortably like the huge dust storm that followed the melting of the Towers, and no one acted like that during our real disaster, you Kraut fuckhead.
Stinko! I really wanted to enjoy this movie, and I did up to a point. The point where you say to your brain: stop functioning. Then when you start thinking again you realize you've been had.
posted by Diana Moon @ 31.5.04
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NOTES. Anthony Zinni was on the Brian Lehrer show to plug his book--oops, to pay homage to the fallen on Memorial Day.
Notes from the show.
Zinni: My criticism is not of the President.
The military did a superb job.
They got stuck with this job.
Caller: who lied, then?
Zinni doesn't answer directly. He provides a checklist of the lies and says, "someone lied and we have to find out who did."
Chalabi, why trust him? I don't know. I warned against him in 1998.
Me: Nice bit of self-aggrandizement.
Lehrer: Your book singles out McCain for criticism (in the matter of trusting Chalabi.)
Zinni: No it doesn't.
Me: Why doesn't he call for the President to fire them?
Zinni on the neocons: "they are not in control" but "that's the one [presumably he means, 'they are the ones'] we want to hold accountable."
Me: They are not in control but we need to hold them accountable, while 'your criticism is not of the President'? Hunh?
Caller: Why don't you hold the President responsible?
Zinni: He based decision on those who gave him info. I don't feel he let down the country.
Caller: (emotional, accented English, female): Why do you defend the US invading other countries and killing thousands of people, Grenada, Panama, Vietnam and making things worse? How would you like it if someone came into your home and told you how to run your home?
Zinni: (sounds a bit truculent/defensive): We don't always get it right. We didn't invade Rwanda/Burundi people criticize us for that. The Balkans.
Me: Scumbag! You use an example of our calculatedly distancing ourselves from genocide where the two contending parties are of no consequence to us to defend our meddling in societies where we say that we do! We didn't get involved in Bosnia until after the whole thing was over.
Caller: I resent the fact that this whole thing is being blamed on Israel. I blame it on Iran.
Zinni: I agree.
Lehrer: Wolfowitz, Perle, Abrams, Feith are all Jews. Do you think that they dragged us into a war for Israel?
Zinni: I would never make that charge. Perle calls himself a neoconservative right on the cover of his book. I take it at face value--
Me: When a politically connected person says, 'I take it at face value,' he is doing anything but.
Zinni: that no American would ever have an ulterior motive. It's not an issue. I can't even tell you whether they are Jewish or not.
Me: Oh puhleeze. You telling me that you led platoons of men in battle and you didn't take into account their backgrounds?
Blah blah about Sharon, Palestinians, etc. I fuzz out.
Zinni: Intent to make a fact on the ground. Compensation of Palestinian refugees. Mediation: when imposed, not goo.
Me: Tell me about it.
I fuzz out.
Caller: why not call on Bush to fire them?
I tune in.
Zinni: It's not my place to tell the President what to do. It's up to him. The judgement on his decision-making comes on Election Day. My issue is accountability.
Me: Please, someone, review his book and flay him alive.
Caller: should we institute a draft, and do you think that doing so would discourage military actions like Iraq?
Zinni: No, and no. The key to retaining a high-quality military is benefits and career opportunities.
Me: You forgot rotten wages, low career opportunities and an entrenched class system (think Lynndie England), not to mention sadism and associating masculinity with pushing people around (think Charles Graner).
Zinni: I don't believe in fixing dates because that encourages the enemy. We need to create a viable government by "January or whenever."
Me: I guess that "whenever" really means a lot to the "insurgents."
Zinni: ...train Iraqis to police their borders and their country...
Me: Abu Ghraib
Zinni: ...get their economy up and running.....
End of interview. I am nearly blowing a gasket. Lehrer opened the line for reactions to Zinni and I called. I followed up the contradiction between Zinni's call for accountability, saying that the neocons weren't the ones who have the ultimate power and blaming them while letting Bush off the hook, and further his pointedly refusing to suggest that the President fire Rumsfeld and Co. if they've been such bad employees.
Unfortunately we got off on a time-consuming tangent about Zinni's motivations for taking this point of view. One thing I did manage to get in is this. When you are a subordinate, your productivity is measured by an iron rule: figure out who is appraising you and give 'em what they want. The idea that Zinni is trying to peddle, that all the President's men misled him down the road to hell, is patently absurd. (If true--and I don't allow that--but if--then Bush's judgement is so crappy then for that alone he deserves to be impeached. But the conclusion that he was misled by neocons with an agenda doesn't fit with his family history.)
When you are on the radio you have only a short amount of time to make your point so I regret that, but I'd like to address it here.
I don't trust a book that has a co-writer, especially one that purports to be a memoir. A memoir should be that: something you YOU write. You don't have to be a published writer, a professional writer, or even a good writer. I'm sure that Zinni is sufficiently bright to write something good enough for an editor to bang into shape.
This is not a memoir but a political positioning paper. Lehrer disagreed with me there: he said that Zinni was 70 years old, and as I indicated, we wasted time in trying to figure out how old Zinni was--Lehrer's assistants found cites indicating he'd been born in 1943 and in 1947. In either case he's plenty young enough to have political ambitions, and I don't necessarily mean the national ticket.
Zinni's book is a collaborative effort by a significant wing of the Republican party to salvage something out of this mess. They are blaming it on the neocons while pointedly excluding the President from their critique. Although I don't think of Zinni as anything like a paleocon, that's their line. What do you think is going on here?
posted by Diana Moon @ 31.5.04
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30.5.04
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CUT THE AID. The Gaza Strip comprises a total area of 141 square miles and is home to over 1.3 million Palestinians. With a population density of 65,800 persons per square mile, the Palestinian areas are among the most densely populated places on earth. The 7,800 Jews who live in Gaza occupy 21 square miles; the population density in the built-up area of the Jewish settlements is 1,700 persons per square mile. Settlers, comprising one half of one percent of the population, inhabit 15 percent of the land. Together with military controlled areas, 20 percent of the Gaza Strip is under Israeli control.
According to the World Bank, 75 percent of Gazans live below the international poverty level of two dollars per person per day. (LINK)
If we want this to stop, cut the aid. This insane situation is not the creation of the United States, but it is American-sponsored. It would end the moment we decreed it to. (Yes, it would.)
I read things like this:
After the tanks and bulldozers left the camp, I walked toward where my house had been. I was shocked at the devastation. I was hysterical, and began to cry and scream....
And I want to scream myself.
My first urge is to scream: "You have lied to me, you have deceived me, you have taken my good will, and my ability to influence the policies of my very powerful country and used them to commit crimes in my name."
Then I shake myself awake and say, "Don't blame anyone else. No one can deceive you without your permission. You deceived yourself. You saw it all when you went to Hebron yourself."
I sometimes try to imagine what it must be like to live in a place where the heavens can suddenly open up and rain down missiles.
I do, too. A few months ago I wrote about sitting thru a dull performance of Balanchine's Jewels. During an especially arid part of the evening my eyes wandered up to the ceiling of the New York State Theater, and I said to myself, "at least you are in no danger of a bomb crashing through." Thank God for small mercies.
posted by Diana Moon @ 30.5.04
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GOURMET HAMBURGER RECIPES. Agreed: certain kinds of food shouldn't be gussied up. But naked hamburgers are just kind of, well, undressed, and I got this technique from Julia Child that really tastes great. Just cook the hamburger in a pan till its done to your taste. Then melt a piece of butter in the pan, fry some finely chopped shallots and deglaze the lot with a good red wine, scraping up all the brown bits. Salt and pepper to taste. Pour the sauce over your burger. That's not gussied up, that's good.
posted by Diana Moon @ 30.5.04
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29.5.04
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AN OPEN EMAIL TO ANDREW SULLIVAN.
Do you think this claim is credible?
Mr. Sullivan, I don't fool myself as to my relative importance in the grand scheme of things. I make my stats public. I get maybe 180 readers per day. But, you are a big cheese, and a generous promoter of smaller blogs. You think that we perform a service. I am posting this on my blog, and I am writing to you in private.
And I am asking you to say whether or not you think that this claim is bullshit, as you dismissed the claim that the US fired on an Iraqi wedding, killing many innocent people.
For the record, I accept the claims as true, until proven otherwise. At this point, US credibility is meaningless.
Diana
posted by Diana Moon @ 29.5.04
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ANIMAL SIGHTINGS. I want so much to write a big fat post about Israel, Iraq, the neocons, and the American Jewish community but I can't because the subject is so big it defeats me. I usually write posts on the fly--open up blogger and bang away. This time, I think, I'll have to go home and curl up with the laptop and compose something more thoughtful.
I finished The Bible Unearthed. Now I have to read it, and The View From Nebo, again, because my background on Biblical history is sketchy. Briefly, the authors of TBU think that the Bible was written during the reign of King Josiah. They go through the Bible's account of historical events chronologically (although the Bible itself doesn't).
The composition of each chapter consists of:
1. Here is what the Bible says happened;
2. Here is what the "extra-Biblical evidence" (i.e., Egyptian, Assyrian or Babylonian court records), plus the latest archaeological evidence says;
3. Here is what was going on during the reign of King Josiah, which is why we think what we think.
I don't question why they wrote the book this way, but if you do not have a background in 7th Century Judahite history, it necessitates a second reading.
So let me talk about my recent experiences with animals. I was recently walking in the woods in an area north of New York City. I heard a noise. Funny, but I can't remember the exact sound of the noise. Was it a hiss? Or a cough? Or a click? It was the strangest sound. I had been lost in thought, and suddenly I realized that in the woods, you must pay attention. I looked up, and to my left, and I saw a deer about 20 feet away looking straight at me.
"What are you doing here?", he was asking. Well, I can't be sure what he was saying, but he was trying to communicate something. It was a startling and uncanny experience. He made a noise, and must have "known," on some level, that I would respond. And he stood there, and stared at me.
It didn't have antlers so it was either a fully grown female or a juvenile male. I advanced towards it, and it sprang away. The reason it was so startling was because my first instantaneous reaction was that it was the dog in an area near this stretch of the woods that had menaced me because I walked too near its property. They were almost the same color.
A few days later I was walking west on 42nd street, towards Eighth Avenue. The environment could not have been more different. A mounted policeman on a gorgeous horse got a lot of attention as he rode west. I decided to follow at a safe distance. The horse was very stout for its type--not fat, but massively muscled.
Something was troubling the horse because he was neighing fairly consistently. I should have kept more of a distance but instead...I approached closer. There was something fascinating about the beauty and power of the horse, and about its neighing. I became mesmerized by the sound and rhythm of its shoes clopping on the road. The whole spectacle of a horse on 42nd Street struck me as so incongruous, almost, a sacrilege. The horse stopped neighing but at that point a lot of traffic in the opposite direction came towards us. I wondered: this is a skittish horse. Will he get distracted or bothered by that traffic?
In the back of my mind, it occurred to me that if I got too close to that horse, he could kick me to death. If he fell on me, he'd crush me. A city girl like me rarely gets the chance to appreciate the awesome power of a horse, which is not only in its size but the way the animal is constructed.
I then became conscious of several things happening at once. First, the horse had begun neighing again, and this time there was a distinct, hysterical tinge to the sound. Second, the juxtaposition of his small, delicate, elegantly shod feet with his massive back and gluteal muscles rippling in the sun. Third, the policeman pulling up on the reigns in an attempt to regain control of the horse that he had momentarily lost control of.
Fourth: the horse staggering and bucking in my direction, his back feet doing little Lippizaner dance movements while the cop was pulling up on the reigns.
What happened was that the horse had broken away from his master and a split second after that, it occurred to me that the traffic really had bothered him, but my mind played a trick on me and I transposed the events.
Finally, I became aware of my own reaction: a total, stark fear reflex, as I literally jumped to my left as far as I could onto the pavement, as far away from that beast as I could.
The cop regained control of the horse, but I stayed well away.
The strangest thing about the whole encounter was that the horse was the same color as the dog, and the deer. If I were a Native American, I might make something of that. But I'm not, so I won't.
posted by Diana Moon @ 29.5.04
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28.5.04
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SHOOT AND CRY. A comment on Aziz's blog.
I'm really tired of "shoot and cry" (a phrase that was coined in the first intifada).
Why not just say, "it's a dirty, rotten job but someone's got to do it?" If people are really sorry, then that would lead to some positive action and killing kids would stop.
In fact, the real feelings of so-called Middle Israelis is, as far as I can tell: "better their kids than mine."
If they really didn't want it to happen, it wouldn't. Remember those Four Mothers. Their sweet little boys were being picked off one by one in Lebanon. They wouldn't take it. They spearheaded a movement. Israel pulled out of Lebanon.
It really is that simple. Israel is, at the end of the day, a democracy. If the Israeli people were truly morally disgusted at directing live tank fire (tank fire!) at kids, it would stop. There's such a thing as crowd-control techniques, there's water cannon, hell, there's the famous rubber bullets (which somehow have ended up, with astonishing precision, in the back of the heads of demonstrators, but let's cut 'em some slack, riots are no fun to control...), but TANK FIRE?? After a rampage that accomplished absolutely nothing other than terrorizing a bunch of twice-dispossessed people?
Tell me another one.
posted by Diana Moon @ 28.5.04
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27.5.04
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Which Extremity of the World Are You?
From the towering colossi at Rum and Monkey.
posted by Diana Moon @ 27.5.04
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26.5.04
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SINCERE THANKS. There have been more emails. Thank you to everybody. I am consistently shocked (yes, shocked) that intelligent people (some of them, credentialed) read me.
posted by Diana Moon @ 26.5.04
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BEFORE THE WAR, I considered writing a post about evading responsibility for supporting the war, in case things went badly. Pinky swear!
Those of us old enough to remember Vietnam also remember the slimebags and reptiles who supported the war when it looked as if things were going swimmingly. Many of these deserted when the truth became painfully apparent.
That's why I vowed never to lie about where I stood on the war: I supported it until July 4, 2003. I was totally wrong! And I despise people who lie about it. (Did you see my teeth clench as I said the word "despise"?)
About those lying reptilian slimebags. Such a specimen is Steve Sailer. I was going to dig up his old posts supporting the war, but Godless Capitalist has done my heavy lifting.* Sailer's weak-tea defense is the old you've-cherrypicked-and-quoted-me-out-of-context. What a crock. For which he has earned a place in my dumpster along with his nemesis, Andrew Sullivan. Heh.
I placed the following comment on Gene Expression:
Oh dear.
Going through my blog archives, I would estimate I devoted about four times as much space to puncturing the arguments of the pro-war crowd as of the anti-war crowd.
That's completely irrelevant to GC's point. If you came out in favor of the war, you should be honest and upfront about it.
You did.
It's easy to cherry-pick isolated quotes out of the thousands of words I wrote, so I would invite readers to look at the bottom of iSteve.com's yellow blog column and read through my archives.
Cherrypicking implies that GC has deliberately distorted quotations. Can you give an example where GC has done this?
I think he's done an admirable job of selecting quotations that represent your point of view. He couldn't quote verbatim everything. If anyone thought that he was quoting in a manner whose purpose was to deceive, all they had to do was click on the hyperlinks.
Of course you can clear up all confusion right now and simply say that you were against the war. And that you made that clear on your blog.
Were you?
I'm very concerned that you are blaming the mess on the neocons, and that you are letting Bush off the hook.
I don't like the neocons. I think they should be held accountable for their contribution to the war fever that helped to cloud the judgement of otherwise rational people (I plead guilty here), but the ultimate authority is Bush.
You prefer to pound on the neocons rather than hold him accountable, while evading your own moral responsibility. I wonder why.
I'm going to develop this theme of "neocon obsession" in the future. For now I believe I have made myself clear enough. They are deeply implicated, but the buck stops in the Oval Office.
posted by Diana Moon @ 26.5.04
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WE HAVE A SAYING: "Don't make me laugh." I say: "Please make me laugh." Oh, they just did:
heads of the 22-member Arab League publicly insisted that they had made history with their calls for human rights and modernization.
They "publicly insisted" so it must be true.
I'm dying of laughter.
Really.
(Other than that, this article is better than the usual on Antiwar.)
James Pinkerton is a columnist from my local paper, Newsday,which has been publishing groundbreaking stuff on the tyrant-in-chief. Here he writes something so far above the rancid remains of William Safire that it's embarassment to compare the two. To do so would be insulting the elderly. But Pinkerton should be writing for the Times, not Safire. (Aside: can anyone confirm whether my memory is correct? I seem to remember that I once learned a word in Farsi: taraf, which means, loosely, "bullshit." And Iranians use it a lot. Chalabi just fed us a line of "taraf." No offense, that's life.)
Pinkerton is a disillusioned Republican. May his tribe increase. I can assure all foreign readers that the vast majority of NYC-area Republicans will not vote for Bush. When I say New York area I mean that the city itself is overwhelmingly Democratic (five to one), but the surrounding suburbs tend to be white and Republican. However they are moderate Republicans who mainly vote pragmatically. Their default position is a mild right-of-center.
They went for McCain the last time during the primary, and they ain't voting for this nutcase this November. But New York state was going Democratic anyway, so it doesn't matter if Bush loses by 10 percentage points or 34, due to the Electoral College.
Just give us the states we won, Florida and New Hampshire. That's all it takes. Please pray for us, even the atheists among you.
WHAT HARM COULD IT DO??
posted by Diana Moon @ 26.5.04
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HAGGAI was kind enough to send me the entire Martin Peretz article referred to in his latest post. I could only get thru the first paragraph:
Tel Aviv's Rabin Square is an iconic site. It is where, after an exuberant peace rally in 1995, the prime minister was murdered and where, on perhaps a dozen occasions since, Israelis have gathered to rekindle the dewy sentiments about relations with the Palestinians that he so awkwardly--and so late in life--appeared to embody. But, by now, almost everyone understands that his faith in a viable Palestinian negotiating partner was, to say the least, naïve...
before I gave up. I couldn't take the sneering.
Is Peretz not aware that Rabin was murdered by...a right-wing anti-peace Israeli??
And he is blaming the collapse of the process on...left-wing Israelis? (and those evil Palestinians)?
Does he have the remotest ability to read his own gobbledygook?
posted by Diana Moon @ 26.5.04
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A FISKING. I linked to this article yesterday. It's a Christian news outlet's very biased reporting on the new Biblical archaeology spearheaded by Israeli archaeologists. As promised, here is my fisking. I'm in indents.
Israeli Archeologist Says Bible Stories Are a Myth
By Julie Stahl
CNS Jerusalem Bureau Chief
29 October, 1999
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Pointing to 70 years of extensive excavations as evidence, some archeologists now believe Bible stories are simply myths, according to Tel Aviv University archeologist, Professor Ze'ev Herzog.
Not simple myths but very complicated ones: a polemical literary creation that was written during the middle of the 7th century BCE for specific religious and political reasons.
The conclusions, sure to dismay Bible believers, may also have political ramifications: Some Palestinians have long questioned the Jewish biblical attachment and claim to the land of Israel.
The archaeological evidence would undermine their claim to Israel as well. The evidence now seems to say that the early Hebrew tribes didn’t conquer Canaan. They were indigenous.
"Most of those who are engaged in scientific work in the interlocking spheres of the Bible, archeology and the history of the Jewish people - and who once went into the field looking for proof to corroborate the Bible story - now agree that the historic events relating to the stages of the Jewish people's emergence are radically different from what that story tells," Herzog wrote in Friday's edition of the Hebrew daily, Ha'aretz.
"The Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom," he wrote.
"And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel ... had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai," Herzog added.
However, another leading archeologist, Amnon Ben-Tor, criticized Herzog's declarations as misleading to the public.
"The problem is a lot of people are talking about things they don't know about - that makes headlines...You need the tools to understand what you're talking about," said Ben-Tor, who is Yigal Yadin Professor of Biblical Archeology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Ze’ev Herzog certainly knows what he’s talking about, as does Israel Finkelstein. They have both done painstaking work on archaeological sites in Israel, and as scientists this is what they have come up with. I am very skeptical of someone whose title is Yigal Yadin Professor of Biblical Archaeology. Most of Yadin’s datings and conclusions are overturned by the new archaeologists.
this, Ben-Tor told CNSNews.com, "there are the political implications" of what he referred to as the "unholy trinity of Archeology, Bible and Politics.">>
Yes, as there are with denying them for the sake of upholding traditional orthodoxy.
Ben-Tor related a story about a historian, whom he declined to name, who had challenged archeologists 10 years ago to prove that King David had ever existed.
Seven years later, an Aramean stela (slab or pillar) was discovered with an inscription that said an Aramean king had battled with a king from the House of David. But the historian refused to admit this constituted proof, instead accusing the archeologists of forgery. >>
This would be Thomas Thompson*, of the University of Copenhagen, a confirmed “minimalist.” He was wrong and stubbornly persists in his wrongness. There is aother minimalists (sorry, forgot name) who is even more outrageous: he denies that Omri existed. Omri’s existence is referred to in many extra-Biblical sources!
So what? Thompson and Keith Whitlam aren’t Ze’ev Herzog and Israel Finkelstein.This is not argument, it’s smearing honest scholars by association. Ben Tor knows perfectly well that Finkelstein is currently engaged in a debate with Hershel Shanks about the dating of Solomon’s palaces—he attributes them to the Omrides, 200 years later. Finkelstein is NOT saying (like Whitlam and Davies) that there was never an ancient Israel. On the contrary, he says that there was an ancient Israel, it was quite prosperous, and that its accomplishments far outshone those of tiny little fundamentalist Judah, where the Bible was later written—which is why the Judahite writers slander the Israelite kings.
"These are things that the public knows nothing about but is very interested in knowing," Ben-Tor said.
You don’t want to know about any of it if it contradicts their beliefs and questions their absolute right to "rule the land."
Many Israelis consider their heritage in the Land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria, commonly known as the West Bank, to date back thousands of years. This, they believe, justifies their existence today in the Land of Israel.
Like I said.
But declarations such as Herzog's fuel the view of Palestinian revisionists, who say the Jewish people never lived in the Land of Israel.
At the risk of being repetitive, the Palestinians are misusing what has been written by responsible scholars. This is always a problem, but we shouldn't allow that to inhibit free inquiry. As someone once wrote, 'the truth shall set you free.' In some silly book by that silly Edward Said I read a reference to the "invasion of the Hebrew tribes." Isn't it ironic that this is one thing that a Palestinian maximalist and a Zionist maximalist can agree on? What if it turns out that no such invasion took place, and that the Hebrews were simply indigenous Canaanites?
A few years ago, for example, PA Minister of Higher Education Hanan Ashrawi, an ethnic Christian,
An ethnic Christian? That’s a new one on me.
grabbed the world's attention when she declared that Jesus was not a Jew but a Palestinian. PA Chairman Yasser Arafat has repeatedly called Jesus "the first Palestinian freedom fighter."
They can have him.
Ben-Tor said the Arabs would certainly make political mileage out of Herzog's claims. "They are definitely going to make use of this," he said.
It’s 2004. I’m not aware that the Palestinian national movement has done anything with them.
However, it doesn't matter what we think, said Ben-Tor. "We [Israel] are not here because of David; we're here because of the army."
You said it. The funny thing about the Bible is that it says the exact opposite. The book was written during the period of time when Israel had been destroyed by the Assyrians and was threatening to do the same to Judah. So the Judahite writers created something greater than imperial armies: a living faith in a just God. That's not my belief, but I find it admirable and touching nonetheless. The dangerous thing about putting one's faith in military solutions is that the other side can figure that one out as well. Eventually they will, once they've freed themselves of the millstone of their own orthodoxies.
Herzog wrote that archeology in "Palestine" began in the 19th century because of "the country's relationship to the Holy Scriptures." However, over the years, archeologists discovered that the "facts" didn't fit the story, he added.
Repeated attempts by CNSNews.com to contact Herzog proved unsuccessful.
I guess he’s got better things to do than to talk with fundie outfits.
But in an interview on Israel Radio >>
You see, he prefers to speak with more objective news outlets.
Herzog said, "Ironically the more we excavate the more we find that the historical development, the organization and the people who lived in this country were presented us a different picture than one that is described in the Bible."
Why oh why is that so controversial?
Speaking about the Biblical period known as the United Monarchy when King David and his son King Solomon reigned, for instance, Herzog said, scholars had "exposed the factual remains of this period ... in Jerusalem."
"No remains [were found] which would fit the description provided in the Bible and we do have remains of earlier and later periods. So its not that the site was not occupied, but in this specific period it was much poorer [than described in the Bible].">>
That’s about it: a small, poor, tribal kingdom in the mountains of Judah.
Ben-Tor, who does not characterize himself as a Bible-believer, nevertheless believes that the Bible relates historical facts. >>
The bit about Ben Tor not being a Bible believer is deceptive. It means he’s not an Orthodox Jew as that is commonly understood. But “secular” Israelis have been taught that the Bible is basically historically true. He should admit his biases upfront. He’s simply not being honest.
"Everyone agrees there was a Biblical period, however there are issues that we do argue about," Ben-Tor said. "Parts of the Bible are history [such as] the stories of the patriarchs [and] the conquest of Canaan."
Chortle. “Everyone” does not agree about this, and even so traditional a biblical archaeologist as William Dever admits that the events before the 10th century (the so-called United Monarchy) are legendary.
However, he said, "there is no objective history. In recent years it became fashionable to attack anything related to the Biblical period."
There is objective evidence. Unfortunately it’s not going your way.
Though Ben-Tor believes that the Bible is full of "exaggeration," he believes there is an "historical nuclei" in the stories. It is wrong to throw out the entire Bible because some of the facts don't line up. His goal is to see "what light archeology [can] shed on what happened."
I think Israel Finkelstein would agree with you, as would Herzog.
Historical and political wrangling aside, religious leaders and archeologists agree that archeological discoveries will not affect the faith of Christians and Jews who believe in the Bible as truth.
"Every few years there's an archeologist or a scientist or a biblical scholar with a small 'b' and a small 's' who's going to come up with some kind of shocking revelation," Rabbi Shalom Gold told Israel Radio.
"These theories they come and they go and in the final analysis we have a history that reaches back over four thousand years since the time of Abraham ... They can't bring into question the living evidence of a living people."
After a few generations the truth does seep through, and has a way of undermining orthodoxy. The trick is to see that the shattering of simple-minded beliefs doesn’t lead to nihilism, but to a respect for the truth, and an appreciation of what really happened. It’s much more interesting than the Bible, I assure you.
"This great revelation of Professor Herzog will get its little moment in the light and then it's going to pass from the scene because ultimately the truth of Torah [the Bible] ... will continue to remain strong and vibrant and alive," Gold said.
For the people who take the Bible as divine, that is true. But frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn about you. I do care about the secularized Jewish middle classes who do not take the Bible as divine. For the most part these people believe that the Bible is roughly historical. Oh, exaggerated and mythologized, but in the main, accurate. One day they will learn that this is not the case. Then what?
*I didn't provide a URL for Thomas Thompson because the only ones that were available were from websites that I didn't feel comfortable linking to. You'll have to read the books and find out why he is so controversial! For the record I disagree with him completely. I think he is a stubborn, wrongheaded man, and not even a scholar.
posted by Diana Moon @ 26.5.04
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