Heidegger

On 29/05/2006, at 2:39 AM, Anthony Crifasi wrote:

> Secondly, it is not difficult to see the logic of why the falsity of a
> popular casualty count would call into question the
> characterization of
> “massacre.”

You deny then that murdering 100+ people in a village then publicly
exaggerating the massacre as a massacre is a ‘massacre’? How is that
logical?

>> with the
>> massacre being exaggerated by the terrorist perpetrators of this war
>> crime for propaganda purposes, as in the ethnic cleansing of Arabs,
>
> Please tell me where the evidence I gave indicates that the purpose
> was
> “ethnic cleansing.”

The ‘massacre’ was publicised and served its purpose in removing
Palestinian Arabs from the roads and hinterlands, as you admit below.
Have a read of Benny Morris’ account of the war. We’re talking
numerous rapes and murders in a focused terrorist campaign led by Ben
Gurion’s forces against Palestinian Arabs within the borders of the
nascent state of Israel. Men, women and children were murdered, and
Jewish terror drove the Palestinians from Israel.

> You know very well what the situation was: the main road
> leading to Jerusalem was being blockaded, the result being that
> Jerusalem
> was starving. Jewish forces were trying to retake the road by
> securing towns
> along its length, including Deir Yassin.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. What you are explaining here is
the justification for cleansing, as in the practical necessity of
driving Palestinians from their homes in order to secure Jerusalem
for Jews. Benny Morris would I think agree with you that the terror
attacks were necessary, although still clearly war crimes. But such
is the moral grey zone all colonists must face. As we know all too
well here in Australia, when it comes to colonizing new lands you
have to break a few indigenous heads, it’s inevitable if officially
regrettable. The imperial British authorities called it “terra
nullius”. It’s also a very troubling heritage that will never go away
no matter how successful the colonists are, beyond of course complete
genocide.

But anyways, back to your four quotes:

>> this means that Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt amongst others are
>> all “innocently ignorant” when it comes to understanding and
>> identifying fascism when they see it.
>
> Again, unlike us, they did not have the opportunity to see the
> following
> things:
>
> 1. Bir Zeit University, a prominent *Arab* university on the West
> Bank,
> published a comprehensive study in 1987 of the history of Deir
> Yassin which
> cut the popularized number of civilian casualities by more than half.

Again, half a propagandized massacre is then somehow a revelatory non-
massacre? A mere mini massacre? You again offer me no argumentation
for why this means Einstein and Arendt were naive ignoramuses when it
comes to recognizing fascist roots in Begin’s Freedom Party.

> 2. The same study stated that the number of civilian casualities was
> inflated “in order to frighten Palestinian residents into leaving
> their
> villages and cities without resistance.” This corresponds with the
> explicit
> testimony of the original source for the inflated number, a Jewish
> commander
> (Raanan) who has said, “I told the reporters that 254 were killed
> so that a
> big figure would be published, and so that Arabs would panic.”

And this military inflation “in order to frighten Palestinian
residents into leaving their villages and cities without resistance”
is not terror propaganda founded on an actual massacre of over 100
people? And terrorizing Palestinian residents into leaving Israel is
not ethnic cleansing? Where is your logic here?

> 3. The editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service’s Arabic news
> in 1948,
> Hazem Nusseibeh, has admitted that he and Palestinian leader
> Hussein Khalidi
> agreed to fabricated atrocity claims about Deir Yassin in order to
> convince
> Arab armies to come fight in Palestine.

Yes, and you can see here the same ruthless pragmatism displayed by
the Israeli hawks. Where the struggle for power is concerned truth
becomes propaganda as a mere means to an end. Ethnic cleansing on the
one hand and recruitment propaganda on the other. How is this
‘revelatory’ in relation to the terrorism of the Stern gang and the
rise to power of Menachem Begin?

> 4. The recent discovery of the actual report filed by the Jewish
> intelligence officer Meir Pe’il, the eyewitness who gave
> credibility to the
> account of a massacre, shows that by his own account, he arrived
> many hours
> after the battle, and was therefore not an eyewitness after all.

And for you this signifies … what? That no massacre occurred at
Deir Yassin or anywhere else? That no terror campaign by propaganda,
rape and murder was conducted by Ben Gurion’s forces? It was all made
up by one demented Jewish intelligence officer?

> Given that they did not get to see these things, it is quite
> understandable
> that their conclusion was one-sided. But neither I nor you have
> that excuse
> today.

Exactly my thoughts Anthony. We have the good fortune of historical
hindsight at least in regards to historical events if not to current
ones, and yet I have read your quotes but still have no idea of what
logically brings you to conclude that these great thinkers were one-
sided and innocently ignorant, quite apart from the fact that Deir
Yassin is mentioned in passing while their main focus is the Freedom
Party and the history leading up to it. You still haven’t given me an
argument for what seem to be your completely one-sided conclusions
based on bare quotes and explanations that have no real consistent
logic to them as far as I can see.

> Einstein, being a victim of Nazi anti-semitism himself, had personal
> experience of who was and was not resisting the Nazis in his
> circles. He SAW
> that, which was why he said what he said about the Vatican. He did
> not see
> the things I cite above, because all those relevations came after
> his death.
> That is why it is not in the least inconsistent for me (which, of
> course,
> was the implication you were sending) to make the distinction I
> made between
> his two opinions.
>
> Is that logic clear enough?

What logic? That Deir Yassin wasn’t a massacre perpetrated by
terrorists for the purposes of driving Palestinians from their lands?
None of your quotes question that but rather reinforce it. Your
entire argument seems to rest on the fact that the terrorists
exaggerated the massacre for propaganda purposes and …
therefore … Einstein was ignorant when he denounced the Freedom
Party as a terrorist and fascist organization. Can we have a sane
conversation sometime soon?

>> I’m not interested in tarring Israel with the brush of fascism unless
>> we also recognise the same historical potential within our own modern
>> industrial democracies, European or American. I don’t think any one
>> nation has had a monopoly on the totalitarian impulse, whether they
>> be Roman, Mongol, Ottoman or British imperialists. Quite the
>> opposite, I think the Nazi’s were democratic industrial capitalists
>> like the rest of us and that Nazism was just one extreme form of our
>> same technological modernity, perhaps an exemplary form for some.
>
> In our discussions over the past few years, I have given you ample
> evidence - both factical and philosophical - for the distinctions
> which you
> refuse once again to make here.

What distinctions and evidence exactly, and in relation to what part
of my argument? Or are you just not wanting to engage in a debate at
this time Anthony? I’m very much interested in the cross cultural
potential for terrorism which also seems to be at the heart of
fascist propaganda and the misuse of military and industrial power.
For me this isn’t a question of ethnicity or religion, but a question
about human being, technology and our herd-like yet predatory nature.

Regards,

Malcolm

***************************
Dr Malcolm Riddoch
Electronic Arts
School of Communications and Contemporary Arts
Faculty of Communications and Creative Industries
Edith Cowan University, 2 Bradford St, Mount Lawley
Perth Western Australia
+61 08 9370 6034

Posted on Sunday, May 28th, 2006 at 7:45 pm
comment | rss 2.0 | trackback