5 Responses to “Quote”

1. pdm Writes:
   June 18th, 2003 at 9:24 am

   I think there’s another quote that’s fitting, from feminist author Marylin French:

   “There have been many revolutions against various patriarchal forms over the past three or four thousand years, but in each case, what has succeeded an oppressive structure is another oppressive structure. This is inevitable because, regardless of the initial ideas and ideals of rebellious groups, they come to worship power above all: only power, they believe, can overwhelm power; only their greater power can bring them victory over an “enemy” that is the Father. But each victory has increased the power of the idea of power; thus each victory has increased human oppression.
   It is impossible to realize humane goals and create humane structures in a society that values power above all else. Well-meaning people tinker with the machinery, but the factory keeps turning out oppression.”

   That, IMHO, is Zionism’s greatest irony—and tragedy.

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2. Tom T. Writes:
   June 18th, 2003 at 11:57 am

   As Lilla’s statement seems to acknowledge, the French quotation in the comment above could apply at least as well, if not more so, to Palestinian nationalism.

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3. Donald Johnson Writes:
   June 18th, 2003 at 12:00 pm

   I liked the little fragment of Mark Lilla’s comment that you cited, but when I read the longer excerpt at Philocrates it wasn’t as good as I had hoped. He seems to be saying that the Europeans have the luxury of worrying about human rights because their countries were founded in the distant past. The same is true of America. We who are European-Americans can safely confess to our ancestor’s sins against Native Americans because it all happened safely in the past and no one is threatening to drive us into the sea or send us back to Europe.

   But that doesn’t mean the European-Americans were morally right to ethnically cleanse the Native American populations off the desirable bits of real estate and it doesn’t mean that all nations have a moral license to steal while they are young. It’s a little hard to see where Lilla is headed with this. If he’s saying that an ideal solution for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is unattainable at the present, he can do that without dragging in the weird notion that young countries shouldn’t be held responsible for human rights violations when they are under threat ore think they are under threat. Youth is totally irrelevant. The threat is of some relevance, but we all know that threats are used as excuses to commit crimes that one might want to commit for other reasons.

   Lilla also loses me a bit by bringing in anti-Semitism in connection with how modern young Europeans look at Israel and this after he has shown that in fact they aren’t anti-Semitic–they’re Amnesty International types. So why not admit it–one can be skeptical of Zionism and critical of Israel from a purely human rights perspective.

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4. Ampersand Writes:
   June 18th, 2003 at 1:08 pm

   Donald, yeah, I had pretty much the same reaction to his piece. That all countries, historically, have had morally questionable starts is no reason not to try and do better - and besides, Israel is now well past the “starting days” point.

   But I liked that quote so much on its own, I decided to post it here out of context. Oh, the joy of selective quotation…

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5. parallel Writes:
   June 22nd, 2003 at 10:33 pm

   The quotation assumes that it was inevitable that jewish immigration and the founding of Israel would cause arab misery. I disagree, and feel that arab muslim rejectionism is the greater factor.

   Without this rejectionism, there would have been no war in 1948 and no refugees. There may not even have been a partition. There would be no refugee camps still occupied after 55 years. There would have been no Six-day war, occupation of Gaza or the West Bank.

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