or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
May 22, 2007
The Path To Peace
I'd never seen this Moshe Dayan quote before. It's in a book review in the New Yorker:
The Israeli leadership could not conceive of itself as anything less than benign, and even persuaded itself that a subjugated Arab population would come to appreciate its overlords. “The situation between us,” Dayan creepily informed the Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan, “is like the complex relationship between a Bedouin man and the young girl he has taken against her wishes. But when their children are born, they will see the man as their father and the woman as their mother. The initial act will mean nothing to them. You, the Palestinians, as a nation, do not want us today, but we will change your attitude by imposing our presence upon you.”
The weird thing about the Palestinians is they don't respond well when people occupying their land explicitly compare the situation to rape. History shows that all other national groups do.
AND: Extra sensitivity points go to Dayan for referring not just to a man, but to a "Bedouin man." I hope Fadwa Tuqan appreciated Dayan putting it in terms Tuqan could understand.
Posted at May 22, 2007 10:18 AM | TrackBackYou're right. Tuqan probably wrote a poem about it:
There once was a man from Dagania*
Who said to the Arabs, "Be gone, ya.
"Because we need this land.
"But soon from our hand
"You'll be feeding on scraps just like manna."
*Dayan's birthplace acc. to Wikipedia was kibbutz Dagania Aleph
(Apologies to Robert Frost)
Posted by: Stinky Flamingo at May 22, 2007 11:52 AMAh yes, the reliable old Benevolent, Enlightened Despot Theory, and it works EVERY time.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at May 22, 2007 01:06 PMThere once was a man from Dagania*
Who said to the Arabs, "Now we're stayin' 'ya
because we need this land.
But soon from our hand
you'll be eatin' even while we're slayin' ya"
And of course if it was Moshe Dayan's ox being gored, he certainly would have understood and accepted with great stoicism the treatment thrown his way.[sarcasm mode off] Maybe a decade or so as the top bunk, pin cushion guy in a prison cell would have given him a more sobering perspective on how the other half lives. What a jackass.
Posted by: Ming The Merciful at May 22, 2007 06:56 PMI can't believe it takes two books and a New Yorker article to discuss why the Six Day War is still being fought. Hint: it involves sending religious zealots to occupy someone else's land and trampling on their rights.
Posted by: alec at May 22, 2007 10:50 PMThe Palestinians will eventually do to their Israeli fleas what the black South Africans did to their Dutch fleas...
Outbreed and outlast them.
Posted by: at May 23, 2007 09:11 AMJust for the sake of argument, if the state of Israel ceased to exist tomorrow, how would that affect US national security interests? Would it be a plus, minus, or a wash?
Posted by: Sam Thornton at May 24, 2007 05:05 PMNeither. Israel is a helpful luxury not a necessity. Like Cuba was to the USSR.
Posted by: at May 25, 2007 01:22 AMA luxury? If so, it is one increasingly hard to afford. Israel is not an asset (it is an albatross) to the US in the region; it is a liability forced upon us by the Israel lobby. A basic understanding of Mid East unrest starts with the immutable fact that the root cause of all problems in the Mid East is the 1948 partition of Palestine which resulted in the creation of the state of Israel with its more than 60 UN sanctions for human rights violations and, as Jimmy Carter suggests in his book, a policy of apartheid toward the Palestinians. The injustice to the Palestinian people is, in Bin Laden's own words, a primary reason for the existence of Al Quaeda. The disappearance of Israel would resolve all Mid East conflict. It is the "thorn in the side", the "rock in the shoe". And our implacable support of Israel is the reason we were attacked on 9/11. As Ron Paul tried to tell his running mates, it is called blowback.
Posted by: at May 25, 2007 12:52 PMMany in the USSR made that argument during Viet Nam, Operation Condor and the subsequent Contra Wars, but it didn't hash. Cuba was still more beneficial than detractive.
The U.S. wants war and chaos with the Arabs and how anyone cannot see that is astounding. Israel was meant to bring death and chaos to the Middle East, period. Why else give them the only arsenal capable of attacking and defeating the U.S.?
Posted by: at May 28, 2007 05:50 PM
