Replacement Geography & Anti-Israel Propaganda
Posted by Tim Stevens on 5 July 2008
I’ve got a new post up at Complex Terrain Lab Review, Replacement Geography - Get Off Yer Fat One:
Spotted at the Jewish Exponent, Andre Oboler, 3 July 2008, Google Earth’s New Platform for Anti-Israel Propaganda.
The influence of the Internet on our lives is increasing. The online world allows the creation of a virtual reality that at times bears only passing resemblance to facts on the ground.
The gap between reality and virtual reality is further exploited by political activists promoting what we term “replacement geography,” a means of controlling the virtual representation of land in place of controlling the land itself. In an information age, control on the common map may be worth more in negotiations than control on the ground.
Read the rest here. Also, check out Mike Innes’ piss-take of the recent Seven Meme business. Yours truly gets a public whipping. I’ll have my revenge, Mike.
12 July 2008 at 7:06 pm
So Israel, the Nation…for or against?
Fr. Robert
(Former Royal Marine officer)
12 July 2008 at 7:10 pm
Hi Robert,
So Israel, the Nation … for or against?
Who? Me?
12 July 2008 at 7:41 pm
Tim,
Yes, I just wondered your view?
Fr. R.
12 July 2008 at 7:48 pm
I taught philosophy and theology in Jerusalem for several years. I fell in love with both the Jewish people and the Nation of Israel. I am not uncritical, but I will always fall back in their support.
Fr. Robert
PS I fought in Gulf War 1 also, Royal Marine Recon officer.
12 July 2008 at 8:04 pm
Robert,
It’s not something that troubles me much, to be honest. A quarter-century before I was born, the colonial powers carved up the Middle East, took some land from those with a claim to it, and gave it to others who also had some claim to it. These claims derived from a potent mix of conflicting interpretations of a book written by a host of largely anonymous and partial authors, coupled with some deep-seated cultural tensions, virulent hostility even, fed by unbalanced policies derived in part from those self-same colonial powers.
In the sixty years since the founding of Israel, the parties conflicting over land rights have with few exceptions proven themselves to be spectacularly incapable of accommodating any other worldview than their own. Instead, they have resorted to terrorism, degradation of human rights, outright warfare, and violations of every form of acceptable behaviour. Censure from external authorities has been patchy, occasionally biased, blinkered, and riddled with post-Holocaust guilt. In 2008, Israel continues to expand its 1948/1967 boundaries, whilst Palestine cannot even decide which group of terrorists/freedom fighters should represent them at a negotiating table, should one appear.
When I say it doesn’t trouble me, I refer to the establishment of the state of Israel, not of the current situation, which is deeply disturbing and apparently intractable (although I don’t think it’s the root of all the region’s problems, unlike many people). I am not qualified to be either ‘for’ or ‘against’ the founding of Israel, and am content to treat it as an historical fact. That does not excuse anyone but me, but nothing I can ever do will change that history.
I am definitely not ‘for’ certain Israeli policies, but I am also not for the genocidal policies of Hamas, for example. I must have thrown my hands up a thousand times in my life, accompanied by some utterance like, “I give up! Let them destroy each other!”, only to once again hope something will change for the better. Each little step towards mutual accommodation seems to be scuppered by violence of some form or another.
I just think it’s a shame that Matthew 7:3 falls in the New Testament, rather than the Old (where perhaps the people that matter could read and take notice of it):
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
12 July 2008 at 8:20 pm
Tim,
Thanks for your take on this. Then you would not see any biblical-land warrant for Israel? I am not blank-check for Israel at all, but the issue over land and God’s promises to the Jewish people seems a real issue! Do we not have to respect that aspect, at least in principle?
Fr.R.
12 July 2008 at 8:34 pm
Personally, and with all respect, I wouldn’t take as totally valid a book that has been translated at least a dozen times in its long life, but that’s a cheap way to avoid the issue of faith. Yes, I would say we do have to respect the Jewish belief that the land of Israel is theirs by virtue of a covenant with God. By the same token, we should respect those with a different interpretation of pretty much the same book, and of a different faith. It might be a bit easier if both sides of this particular conflict could come to a similar conclusion. Mutually exclusive nationalism and ideological intractability have turned the fertile crescent into a poisoned landscape. I’m just surprised that the rest of the world even seems to care anymore - another realisation that Israel and Palestine could perhaps attempt to understand before bulldozing another West Bank village or detonating another suicide bomb in a Jerusalem market.
12 July 2008 at 9:31 pm
Tim,
Yes your presupposition of the Judeo biblical text, would be yours. After having lived there for several years I came to see many things. The love, care and reverence that the Hasidic Jews for example had for their biblical text was profound! I came to love one very well known Jewish philosopher-theologian, who died in the 60’s: Martin Buber!
One factor that you have not spoken about straight-on is the hate that so many have for Israel and the Jews! This is just simply incredible! And I am an Irish born man, in my 50’s, and have seen a bit of religious hatred myself. I was theologically educated in England however (D. Phil.,Th.D.). So I love the whole of Great Britain too!
Sadly, we have not seen near the end of the problems in the mid-east! I personally believe that the radical Muslims, the leaders of Iran, Syria, etc. They will try to take their best shot at Israel. However, I am not sure Israel will wait too long before they go themselves. Just my own opinion.
Fr.R.
12 July 2008 at 9:55 pm
Actually, you make a very good point about the reverence Jews have for their texts. I like the idea that somehow the Torah substituted for the Temple of Solomon after its destruction in AD70, as the architectural space of the Temple unfolded into the wider, and still sacred, textual space of the book. No wonder then that orthodox Jews cherish these writings as integral, structural even, to their faith. I would be doing them a disservice if I didn’t recognise this.
Anti-Semitism is a problem, I agree. Besides the overtly hateful and conspiratorial rhetoric across a lot of the Muslim world, there is also still a strong current of anti-Semitism in Western thought. Muslims rightly perceive, for example, the British press (and some sections of the public) as Islamophobic, and view this as an acceptance of a form of proxy racism. The Jews, too, continue to be the target of explicit hate, physical or otherwise, as my conversations with the British Jewish community attest. A drift towards the right in parts of Europe has given a new lease of life to ‘quiet racism’, of which Muslims are currently the recipients, but the Jews will be back in vogue when the wind starts blowing in a different direction, we can be sure of that. We could also look at the furore over Walt & Mearsheimer’s recent ‘outing’ of the Jewish lobby in the US, though, as an example of how accusations of anti-Semitism are also used, by Jews among others, as a slur on a person’s integrity. Politics, politics.
I was thinking of Ireland earlier, and certain similarities between Israel/Palestine and Ireland do exist, although that debate can end up being somewhat facile. One thing that did occur to me was the demographic issue. Unionists/Loyalists have often talked of being driven from their country, their way of life watered down to the point of irrelevance. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Northern Ireland and I’ve heard plenty of Catholics talk about biding their time until ‘we outnumber them’ through higher birth rates. This might sound strategically ludicrous, but I wonder if Israelis feel the same way.
I share your concerns about the Shi’ite states (and Israel!), but I’m with Gramsci on this one, as I always am when considering the future. In his Christmas letter from prison, 1929, he wrote:
I am a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.
The internal struggle continues.
13 July 2008 at 12:21 am
Tim,
Yes the will, wrought by God in grace & glory, makes us spiritual beings! My triad is: will-intellect-emotions!
I am not that political, save a real conservative. But always first a spiritual being, graced by God In Christ!
Best of it mate for your work and studies/blog!
Sincerely,
Father Robert
13 July 2008 at 10:59 am
Robert,
Many thanks for the best wishes. Perhaps we could extend that to include the Middle East?! Pleasure to chat with you.
All the best,
Tim