Brawling Judgements

“Where blind and naked Ignorance
Delivers brawling judgements, unashamed,
On all things all day long.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King, ‘Merlin and Vivien’ (1859)

It would be amusing to toy with the idea that Alfred, Lord Tennyson had with his above words somehow predicted the nature of the Guardian’s flagship blog 150 years into the future, but even though that was doubtless not the poet’s intention, his verse certainly hits the spot and nowhere more so than on the recent Carlo Strenger thread. Internal Israeli politics are fascinating, but for a discussion on the subject to have any merit whatsoever the participants must at least have some idea of what they are talking about. That is why, to put it mildly, an article such as Strenger’s on CiF can achieve nothing other than to bring out in force the noisy empty vessels who indeed deliver their ‘brawling judgements’ on a subject about which they amply display their ‘blind and naked ignorance’.

gazagirl
16 Feb 2010, 11:46AM
Yes, Israel is full of paradoxes — is it not, Mr. Strenger?
What a shame that so many of your so-called liberals (are you yourself a liberal?) stood back and remained quiet when the political and military upper echelons of your state enacted the barbarism of the Gaza onslaught. I think you have more than an image problem here.
I notice you have a slot at online Ha’aretz that you call “Strenger Than Fiction”. Very appropriate.
theyislying
16 Feb 2010, 12:19PM
liberal in israeli terms is someone slightly to the left of leibermann. so we shouldnt get too worked up about israels liberals and their silence..we should in fact expect it.
the issue can only be resolved by israelis accepting and grasping their arab ethnicity instead of the illogical and untenable belief that they are somehow unrelated and separate.
Ozleftie
16 Feb 2010, 12:37PM
The fundamental problem with the so-called “left” in Israel is that its members generally identify themselves first and foremost as Jewish Israelis and only secondarily as adherents to the more universalist values of equality, justice and tolerance that are normally associated with the left. We saw this most starkly during the Gaza War when almost all Israeli leftists either went silent or supported Israel’s actions.
It seems that for the Israeli left, ethnic solidarity trumps any principled concern for the human rights of Palestinians who are largely invisible for most Israelis living in the comfortable bubbles of Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem.
MsBeeton
16 Feb 2010, 2:42PM
In lecture theatres, in pubs, at the watercooler and on the net the tide is turning; not so much in the press and on TV yet, but there is a simple reason for that. Israel as presently constituted does not have a long term future, and may not need one if foreign passports are as easily obtained as it would seem from the news out of Dubai.
Birben
16 Feb 2010, 3:07PM
Jubiltation1
FYI, I lived in Israel and was there during the slaughterfest in Gaza. I assure you, the people outside Israel watching that on TV were more informed about it than the Israelis were.
Apparently, the use of white phosphorous is nothing to you!
Birben
16 Feb 2010, 3:46PM
Dear Jubilation1
your points resonate among Israeli Jews, but only among them. As I said earlier, there’s little to be said to make Israeli Jews change their commitments (which are essentially based on emotions and nationalism rather than reason informed by western, humanist values). As far as the international readership of the Guradian goes, I don’t need to counter what you last wrote. I rest my case.

Fortunately, some of the people still posting on CiF have enough knowledge to try to counteract the ignorance of the majority, but instead of allowing them to contribute to the discussion initiated by the above the line article, for some unfathomable reason CiF appears to view them as a threat to it, as shown by the fact that all of the following comments were deleted. This does make one wonder why Strenger’s article was commissioned in the first place and certainly puts paid to the idea that any sort of balanced view can be presented and discussed at CiF – but of course most of us reached that conclusion long ago.

maleEdale
16 Feb 2010, 11:35AM
The silence of Israel’s liberals
Fair enough, Now, how about an article on the silence of Israel’s neighbour’s Liberals?
Jubilation1
16 Feb 2010, 11:44AM
Carlo I agree with you by and large, especially over the clumsy Lieberman and the intransigence of the extreme right.
The extraordinarily bad manners of the Moslem Student Associations in the reception of Ambassador Oren and Minister Ayalon are symptoms of their own bad breeding and the lack of discipline their universities exert. As Ambassador Oren said we welcome guests in the Middle East, that is good manners. We don’t invite them and then insult them when they accept invitations.
I also however agree heartily with maleEdale that we have never heard from our neighbour’s liberals.
DavidUk84
16 Feb 2010, 3:19PM
First-time visitors from abroad are often surprised: based on what they see in the news they expect a backward, theocratic police state,
They would expect such a thing only if their sole source of information about Israel came from reading CiF and opinion pieces in the Guardian and Independant newspapers.
Of all the states in the Middle East, Israel is by far the most democratic and closest to secular, social democratic ideals Guardian readers claim to believe in. But they no credit for this whatsoever in the relentlessly negative and hostile coverage of the left wing press.
Israel rightly looks after it’s own defence. Because they know that if the Arab world were to succede in it’s aim of wiping them out, western “liberals” would watch the massacre unfolding, and say that it was a terrible shame, but that really they had it coming. . . . . . .
clivex
16 Feb 2010, 4:25PM
Why should Israel worry about “its image to the world”?
When the world starts to give proportional attention to Sudan Congo, Sri lanka, etc etc etc,…then israel can take the views seriously.

I personally found Strenger’s article rather disappointing from several points of view. Firstly, his concern with the perceived silence of Israel’s liberals purely in relation to our image in the world; what worries me much more is the recent impotence of the Left on internal social issues. Like much of the Left the world over, the Israeli Left has concentrated its efforts mainly on subjects pertaining to security and international relations and has largely neglected its traditional areas of campaign such as social equality and secular liberties.
As Ben Gurion famously said, “What matters is not what the Gentiles say, but what the Jews do” and whilst our world image is certainly of importance as far as international politics are concerned, we should nevertheless take world opinion of the moment in proportion because it says just as much about the world as it does about us. If there’s one thing we should have learned from our long and tortuous history it is that the world relates to us differently than it does other nations – a fact which should be amply clear from its tepid reaction to the prospect of the potential annihilation by five Arab armies in 1948 of a nation state it had itself only just created. If our memories do not stretch so far back, we can also remember the gushing international commitments to our security in 2005 when we evacuated Gaza and the tragic reality of the world’s indifference to the reality by which we were confronted in the aftermath of that disengagement.
Interestingly, Strenger himself pre-empted some of the questions he raised in this CiF article in a piece he wrote last November for Ha’aretz in which he correctly stated that “Instead of admitting that it had been partially wrong, the left tried to explain away all the facts that didn’t square with its theory by putting the onus of responsibility for Palestinian actions exclusively on Israel’s policies.” Again, this type of behavior is far from limited to the Israeli Left; it has become an international phenomenon. To my mind, Strenger still has a way to go and he demonstrates this in his CiF article. Change within the liberal Left, be that in Israel or elsewhere, can only occur when the Left acknowledges its past mistakes and reforms its approach to the subject of international terrorism. Tragically, it is not doing this; it is not allowing any serious review of its past and present mistakes. Seemingly the majority of the Left cannot come up with a more innovative approach than supporting dubious NGOs, attending publicity stunt demos in Bil’in or London or attacking Israel’s problematic politicians. What country does not have its fair share of those? Is the UK judged and defined on the international stage by the ridiculous outbursts of Tonge, Galloway, Griffin or Bradshaw?
It is very disappointing that as a representative of the Israeli Left, Strenger allows himself to co-operate with the Guardian’s self-defeating ethos of avoiding the real issues at hand and perpetuating the myths in which the Left finds solace. Those of us for whom the Left is still our natural ideological home need to be the first to oppose this kind of political self-harm being cultivated by the Guardian and others; if we wish our voices to be more than ‘brawling judgements’ we must first take a long, hard look at ourselves and the reasons behind the Left’s abandonment of its traditional principles as illustrated by its current attitudes towards Israel which are, after all, only symptoms of a much wider malaise.

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