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This summarizes the main findings of a book on this topic.  The Ottomans had experts in Zionism who monitored writings and developments very carefully.

This podcast has surprising  findings.

Note:  This was recorded during covid times as a class lecture (when we were not allowed to go live).  

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Evangeline was a standard assignment in the 8th grade when I was a kid.  It was long and had big words but we read it because it made us better people.  This is the story of this poem, and of my experience with it.   

It is also the story of Longfellow, the most popular poet of his age, and of his poems.  The Village Smith, Paul Revere's Ride, Haiwatha, and the powerful Christmas poem/song, "I heard the Bells on Christmas Day." 

Longfellow had a painful life, but he kept writing those wonderful poems. 

Have you ever read a single poem by Longfellow?  This is your chance to encounter his creativity. 

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In January, 2024 Hamas published a paper called "Our Narrative . . .  Operation Al -Aqsa Flood."  It is an 18 page document discussing their perspective on the events of October 7.  I had not read any Hamas explanations, beyond short statements quoted by people not friendly to their side, so I immediately printed this out and read it.  More than once. 

As I read this document, I realized I was not the only person who had never heard the Hamas perspective on those events.  I knew immediately that it was something I should turn into a podcast.  So here it is.  

I did make a mistake in the podcast.  The Israeli representative to the UN tore up a document in 2021, which I reported as 2001.  Then he got elected as Vice President of the organization in 2022, which I reported as 2002.  

  There is a word Nakba which many of you will recognize but some may not.  The word means Catastrophe.  It is the Palestinian term for the events of 1948 when Palestine ceased to exist and the Palestinian people lost most of their land and mostly ended up in exile.  

March 3 update:  Regarding whether there were sexual assaults during the attack of October 7,  there was a New York Times story with the rather inflammatory headline about the "weaponization of rape."  Then there was an expose of that story  alleging that one of the authors had a bad history involving racist references to Palestinians.  Then the NYT began an investigation of who had leaked such information (and more specifics) to the media.  Arab-Americans claimed they were being singled out in this investigation.  The NYT "guild" has filed a grievance against the Times leadership. 

Second update:  the UN issued a report saying there had been incidents of rape.  

 I have not read either of these stories.  

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This is a summary of the main points in the ICJ ruling.

Below is a summary of other International Humanitarian Laws.  These definine various crimes that occur within the context of war.  They are distinct from genocide but could be a part of genocide.  They would be heard by the International Criminal Court rather than by the High Court of Justice.  The three most commonly discussed offenses are Ethnic Cleansing, Crimes Against Humanity, and War Crimes.

Ethnic Cleansing

"rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove from a given area persons of another ethnic or religious group."

 Crimes Against Humanity

Unlike other human rights violations, war crimes do not engage State responsibility but individual criminal responsibility. This means that individuals can be tried and found personally responsible for these crimes.

Prohibited acts include:

• Murder
• Extermination
• Enslavement
   Deportation or forcible transfer of population
• Imprisonment
• Torture
• Sexual violence
• Persecution against an identifiable group
• Enforced disappearance of persons
• The crime of apartheid
• Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health

 War Crimes: Elements of the Crime 

War crimes are those violations of international humanitarian law (treaty or customary law) that incur individual criminal responsibility under international law. As a result, and in contrast to the crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity, war crimes must always take place in the context of an armed conflict, either international or non-international.

Some examples of prohibited acts include: murder; mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; taking of hostages; intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population; intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historical monuments or hospitals; pillaging; rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy or any other form of sexual violence; conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 years into armed forces or groups or using them to participate actively in hostilities.

War crimes contain two main elements:  A contextual element: “the conduct took place in the context of and was associated with an international/non-international armed conflict”; and A mental element: intent and knowledge both with regards to the individual act and the contextual element.

In contrast to genocide and crimes against humanity, war crimes can be committed against a diversity of victims, either combatants or non-combatants, depending on the type of crime. In international armed conflicts, victims include wounded and sick members of armed forces in the field and at sea, prisoners of war and civilian persons. In the case of non-international armed conflicts, protection is afforded to persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed ‘hors de combat’ by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause. In both types of conflicts protection is also afforded to medical and religious personnel, humanitarian workers and civil defence staff.

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In December, 2023 South Africa filed a document before the High Court of Justice in the Hague accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza.  This was for its actions against Gaza in the wake of the blood-chilling Hamas attack on Israeli military positions, towns, and a music festival on October 7.  Those attacks killed nearly 1200 people. 

There are three recent developments worth noting.  First, Mexico and Chile are preparing to charge Israel in the International Criminal Court with War Crimes.  This has a much lower standard of evidence for conviction than genocide.  Also various parties have raised the issue of "complicity in genocide."  What does this mean from a legal perspective?  I am not entirely sure but the U. S. and Britain may well be charged by a group of South African attorneys.  Finally, the President of Israel, Herzog, has just been accused of war crimes in the international criminal court.  This was just announced a few hours ago and there are no details about who filed the complaint, but he is now in Switzerland and could possibly be detained or arrested.  You will probably know more by the time you read this.  

For those interested, I have a talk delivered to a class  during a unit focusing mostly on the Armenian and Rwanda genocides.   I also have two earlier podcasts on the Attacks of October 7.  One was posted three days after the attacks, one three weeks later.  

Note:  There is a section in the document that discusses Israeli policy on the West Bank.  It discusses these policies as "apartheid."   Note that I have a podcast on this topic. 

This is a complex podcast.   If you find it painful, then you are not alone. 

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The Israeli election of November, 2022 brought into the Knesset some of the most extreme individuals in that country's history.  To bring himself back into office,  Netanyahu brought them into his cabinet.  (Smotrich and Bin Gvir get the most attention, but there are others).   These were people who had been brought up in the shadow  of Rabbi Meir Kahane.  Kahane had been banned from office and Netanyahu's new allies had also seen their party banned.  But they had reconstituted themselves into a new configuration and evaded the ban.  

With the horrendous attacks of October 7 and the brutal Gaza war that followed,   suddenly the thinking of those religio-nationalists has moved closer to the center of the political system.  (Note:  1200 Israelis and Israeli-linked workers were  killed on October 7.   22,000 Palestinians are dead as of early January, 2024,  70% being women and children). 

This is a reposting of an earlier podcast outlining the ideology of Rabbi Kahane.  Kahane was born in Brooklyn but moved to Israel and was elected to the Knesset.  He was later assassinated.  At the time, his views were considered shockingly extreme.  He was widely renounced by American Jews and by Israelis.   (Note that someone of his thinking had conducted the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre in Hebron in February, 1994.  29 Muslims had been killed on the first day of Ramadan, plus ten more sot by Israeli soldiers in the aftermath).  And someone of this mind-set also assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin).  

I heard Kahane speak twice in the Detroit area in the early 1980s.  I also read two of his books, Time to Go Home [a call for Americans Jews to escape to Israel before the American holocaust] and They Must Go!  [ A call to expel all Palestinians so that Israel can become a Jews-only state].  Those books were chilling  I also read quite a few essays by him, and one biography.    As far as I can tell, those who today embrace his name and his ideas are not fundamentally different from what I heard in the 1980s.   

Kahane believed that anything is justified to bring the new age and to save the Jews.  I thought of the accusations by radical Iraqi Jews that the 1952 bombings of synagogues were done by Zionist commandos in an effort to panic them into fleeing to Israel.  I have no way to know if those accusations are correct but such a thing would surely be justified by Kahane.  He was filled with hatred of Arabs, Americans and secular Jews.  He believed in his cause and would do anything to achieve it.  He had a definite support base in the American Jewish community, although certainly not nearly as big as the vast proportion who were hostile to him.  I don’t want to be inflammatory but I wrote in my notes back in the 1980s that I felt I was in a Munich beer hall in 1924 listening to Hitler polish up a speech.  I have never heard anyone quite like him. 

Note that in the Knesset, there are religious parties connected to the rabbis.  Two are United Torah Judaism (Ashkenazi) and Shas (Sephardic).  These are NOT Kahanist. 

If you are interested in how  a similar logic works out in American culture you might listen to my podcast on the Replacement Wars. 

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To destroy "in whole or in part" the ability of a people to function.  

I delivered this talk in 2020  for a unit on Armenia.  It was well before the fall of 2023 and the horrible Gaza War.  As I am writing (December 2023) 20,000 Palestinians have been killed.  The Israelis say the number of Hamas combatants killed is around 1700+  Gaza is no longer functioning.  There have been several scholarly essays and discussions of whether this meets the standard for genocide.   Here is my  original introduction: 

On April 24, 2021 President Biden used the word “genocide” to describe what happened to the Armenians of Turkey. The use of this word had been a matter of debate since the 1970s.  In 1915 the Ottoman government, fearing that the Armenians in eastern Turkey would align with the Russians, decided to evacuate the whole Armenian population of Eastern Turkey by marching them across the desert to the Arab provinces of Lebanon and Syria.  They also massacred large numbers of Armenians.  Many young women were forced to marry Turks, and there were many forced conversions.  

No one is certain how many people were lost.  Most scholars say  a million or 1.5 million.   

The Biden announcement had a softening provision, but two provocations.  Biden referred to events during Ottoman times, the previous, discredited regime.   This seems to spare the Turkish Republic of direct responsibility.  But a State Department press release referred to the capital of Turkey as Constantinople, a Christian name not used since 1453.  The State Department also used the highest estimate of fatalities, a million and a half.  

One controversy over the the word genocide has to do with the official definition.  It requires intent.  The Turks insist that while there were massive losses among the Armenians, there was no “intent” to exterminate the Armenians as a people or to commit mass murder.  They also say the word draws a comparison with the Holocaust.  The Armenian deaths were a by-product of war, they insist, a war in which Turks and others also died.  

Two points about the Armenian genocide.  First, after the war, the Turks put several officials on trial for war crimes.  (The word genocide did not exist at the time).  Many observers wonder why the current leaders do not say, “we disagree with the word genocide but agree that some of those leaders committed crimes against some of our people, as we showed by putting them on trial and finding them guilty.” But those trials  were carried out by the old regime, not seen as legitimate today.  Second, the national hero of Turkey, Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, was fighting the British at the time and was not involved in these events.    

My lecture was  recorded on my computer, not with a fancy microphone,  and shared with students.  

I wish I could provide you with the written definitions of genocide made available to students.   please listen carefully as I read definitions or as I discuss the model to predict future genocides. 

Three points.  First, the statement that 90% of the Kosovo Albanians were displaced was an inflammatory over-statement   by some world leaders.  Second, Leo Kuper in his  book Genocide uses the term “genocidal massacre” to describe targeted killings short of a full genocide.  An example might be killing a whole village or perhaps widespread massacres to intimidate a targeted population. Third, regarding  “war crimes,” there is a concept of “disproportionate response.”   It consists of “extensive destruction not justified by military necessity.” .  

Welcome to class. 

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In December, 2023  House Republicans summoned the Presidents of Harvard, MIT and University of Pennsylvania to a hearing about Anti-Semitism on their campuses.  They were asked if calling for Genocide against Jews would be an offense.  Knowing that Republicans consider the word “intifada” (“shaking off”) and the phrase “from the river to the sea” to be genocidal, not to mention that Israel should be a state for all its people rather than a “Jewish” state, there was no way to win with that question.  Nor can you expel students for saying stupid things.  Plus that hearing was really about trolling for votes and donations.  And the Presidents fell into the trap.  The President of Pennsylvania was told that a billionaire donor was cancelling a $100 million donation.  She had to resign.  

This  was a class lecture in November, 2020. It is not an easy topic.  It focuses upon how difficult it is to engage in serious discussion of the conflict and of how there are organized efforts to disrupt or silence debate.  

One issue is that there are groups trying to define the word anti-Semitism in a way to weaponize it forpolitical use.  That will require a different podcast. However, if you are interested, see an article by Nathan Thrall in the NY Times, March 28, 2019, “How the Battle over Israel and anti-Semitism is Fracturing American Politics.” 

I wrote three articles in Middle East Policy on the Presbyterian debates on whether to sell their shares in five companies that cooperated with the Israeli occupation.  Those can be found in the University of Michigan virtual archive called Deep Blue.   

I mentioned a Task Force that wrote a policy on faculty being required to write letters that raised moral issues.  Here is that policy:  Point I.   Faculty Obligation to Support Students: Faculty should endeavor to support their students in the pursuit of their aspirations.  This includes writing letters of recommendation whenever possible.  Point II.   The Case of a Faculty Member Declining to Write a Letter of Support.  Given the right to acts of conscience as a part of academic freedom, faculty members are not obligated to write letters of recommendation for participation in programs if they judge that doing so would compromise their moral principles.  Point III.  Working with the Student:  In the event that a faculty member declines to write a letter covered by this policy, the faculty member should consider meeting with the student to discuss the reasons for that decision.  Such a discussion can be beneficial and educational for those students who may not understand the issues involved.  Point IV.   Due Process in the Event of a Formal Complaint: If there is a complaint  under this policy  against a faculty member, that matter should be referred to the department grievance committee.  In such an event, there should be an initial assumption that the faculty member behaved appropriately.  There should be strict adherence to due process for the faculty member, including a right to appeal an adverse finding.  In the event of an adverse finding, the matter should be referred to the appropriate  promotion and tenure or other review committee for consideration during their assessment of the individual’s performance of duties.   There should be no sanction beyond whatever comment the committee chooses to include in their review letter. Point V.  Letters for Undeserving Students: This policy affirms the established right of faculty to refuse a letter for an individual  student who is academically or otherwise undeserving. 

Note:  I was Faculty Ombudsman for 17 years.  Free expression is important to me.

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Are you getting frustrated with argumentation?  Does it irritate you that so many people just seem to repeat tired old arguments that any reasonable person can see are not true?  Well, maybe you need to listen to this podcast.  Each of us carries around a narrative of logical and irrefutable arguments on this topic.  Except for the fact that people outside of our group have trouble accepting it.  

I like this podcast.  My students also liked it.  I would pass it out at the beginnig of the semester.  It helped them put themselves into a tradition. 

Here is what I wrote when I first posted this podcast: 

"It is often helpful to understand how we think before we approach new material.  In American discourse, there are three dominant narratives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the Jewish Narrative, the Arab Narrative, and the Evangelical Narrative.   Each of these has a way of integrating and interpreting material that creates a coherent explanation of the nature of the conflict and how the various parties interact.    Many people deny they have a pre-existing narrative.  Their perspectives are objective and rooted in facts.  So they say. "  

Happy listening. 

 

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For those of you watching the mass killings in Gaza (nearly 14,000 dead in seven weeks, over 2/3 of them women and children) you might find it helpful to think back to an earlier time when Israel was once again implicated in a mass killing.  This was what happened in September, 1982 during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.  The Israelis are quick to point out that they did not themseslves do the killing, but neither were they free of  responsibility.  This podcast has two purposes:  to describe what happened in those terrible three days, and to tell you what the Israeli Kahan Commission subsequently concluded.  

It is very clear that there will be a post-war commission to study why the Israeli security system failed to detect the extensive planning for this attack.  What is less clear is whether there will be an Israeli commission to study the response.  We can be certain that international bodies will conduct such investigations. 

Notice:  This is not easy listening.  (Below is my original introduction) 

In September, 1982, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon,  the Israeli army took control  of West Beirut and the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatillah.  Bashir Gemayel, the leader of the Phalangist movement (Kataeb in Arabic), had just been assassinated.  He had supported the Israelis in their invasion, hoping to free his land of the PLO and of Syrian domination.  The individual convicted of the assassination was a Christian.  He claimed he had acted because of Gemayel’s support of Israel.  Many people think Syria was behind the attack. 

Gemayel’s followers were bent on revenge.  The visible target was the Palestinian refugee camps.  The PLO forces had been evacuated to Tunis by an American-brokered agreement.  Part of that agreement was that the U. S. agreed to protect the Palestinian civilians who would be left without security.  President Reagan’s personal representative, Ambassador Phillip Habib, had negotiated the withdrawal of Palestinian forces and had guaranteed the security of the civilian refugees left behind in the camps.  

But there was extremely bad blood between the Phalangists and the PLO and this was an opportunity to get revenge for past offenses.  The Israelis controlled access to those camps and allowed military units to enter.  The killing went on for three days.   There was a story in the Jerusalem Post as the massacres were going on.  The sun was setting and a  military rabbi was leading an outdoor religious service.  There were sounds of shooting and screams in the distance.  The Jerusalem Post said this will go down in history as the “Rosh Hashana of Shame.” 

Under domestic and international (i.e., U.S.) pressure, the Israelis set up a three-person commission headed by a very respected member of their high court, Justice Kahan.  This is the story of that report. 

There are two award-winning films that might be of interest.  One is an Israeli film called Waltz With Bashir, a graphic-novel type film.  An officer is having nightmares of wild dogs.  He starts talking to others in his unit.  They are also having nightmares.  It turns out they were all present during the massacres but they have suppressed what happened on their watch.  The other film is The Insult, a Lebanese film.  It starts with a simple confrontation between two men in which one calls the other a name. This happens many times every day without consequence so why does this incident escalate?  It turns out the two parties are connected personally to these massacres. Even though this is decades later, the wounds are still there.  

People:  Bashir Gemayel, Amin Gemayel, Raphael Eitan, Shimon Peres, Menachem Begin