Menachem Klein - Perspectives on the 40th Anniversary of the Six Day War

[richards1052]

DR. MENACHEM KLEIN is a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. In 2000, Dr. Klein served as adviser for Jerusalem affairs and final status talks to Israel's Foreign Minister. He later joined prominent Israeli and Palestinian figures in signing the Geneva Initiative—a detailed proposal for a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. His book, A Possible Peace an Insiders' Account of the Geneva Initiative, is forthcoming in September by Columbia University Press. He is active in Peace Now.

http://www.peacenow.org/briefs.asp?rid=&cid=3673

ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 5 1967, I WAS ON THE BUS TO THE HIGH-SCHOOL YESHIVA in which I studied. I had no idea that at that moment the Six-Day war started. From the heights of Jerusalem's Bayit VaGan neighborhood, near Mount Herzl, the war looked distant.

That changed when on my way back home that afternoon, hitching two rides to the center of town, I saw a burning bus, hit by Jordanian fire, and heard the shells and bullets reverberating downtown. Through backstreets, not visible from the Old City walls, I walked to meet my mother at Heikhal Shlomo, where she worked. From there we went home, a block away.When I entered my room, I realized that the war had paid me a visit. Luckily, I wasn't there to meet it. My bed was covered with shrapnel from an artillery shell. There were also some stray bullets, which I still have in my possession.

On Wednesday, when Israel Radio announced the occupation of the Old City, I got out of the bomb shelter to see a city that was rapidly changing. It wasn't too long before the walls that separated Arab East Jerusalem from the western, Jewish part were torn down and Arabs from the former Jordanian Jerusalem, visibly confused, came to observe the Jaffa-King George junction, the only place in town with traffic lights. Residents of the western part of the city treated them humanly and forgivingly, attitudes that have become rare in today's impatient and nervous Jerusalem.

We, the Jewish teenagers of 1967, were also wonder-stricken by the new sights.We used to dodge school to again and again experience the marvels of the Old City's bazaar and buy cheap Chinese-made souvenirs of the kind that Israelis have not seen before.The open, united Jerusalem was a personal experience for me...

*************

This is an especially important essay because Dr. Klein grew up Orthodox and a supporter of the settler enterprise, later breaking with that ideology and becoming a supporter of Peace Now. Also, ironically he teaches at Israel's religious university, Bar Ilan, also known as its most conservative.

[pelsar]

1. why is it ironic?

This is an especially important essay because Dr. Klein grew up Orthodox and a supporter of the settler enterprise, later breaking with that ideology and becoming a supporter of Peace Now. Also, ironically he teaches at Israel's religious university, Bar Ilan, also known as its most conservative.

its very typical of israel.....conservatives in liberal places...liberal in conservatives...religious in secular environements and visa versa...i hate to break it to you, but theres nothing special or unique about his growing up, changing religious and political view points....

its a cornerstone of israeli democracy that when people do change their viewpoints/religious affiliation the society still accepts them.

perhaps an essay on jerusalems intolerance for gays might be more appropriate in order to show the israeli societies ills, or about the uneducated or the lack of a economic social net for its poor.....

an article about israeli tolerance?...normally considered a good thing.

[bemildred]

2. It is ironic.

Whether or not it is typical has nothing to do with whether it is ironic. I'm not sure that irony is the word that I would use, but it is not wrong, and he is not implying what you seem to think he is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony ::

Irony is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is a gap or incongruity between what a speaker or a writer says and what is generally understood (either at the time, or in the later context of history). Irony may also arise from a discordance between acts and results, especially if it is striking, and seen by an outside audience. Irony is understood as an aesthetic valuation by an audience, which relies on a sharp discordance between the real and the ideal, and which is variously applied to texts, speech, events, acts, and even fashion. All the different senses of irony revolve around the perceived notion of an incongruity, or a gap, between an understanding of reality, or expectation of a reality, and what actually happens.

That a man with conservative roots teaching at a conservative university should over time become a leftist and peace advocate has plenty of irony in it.

There are different kinds of irony. For example:

* Tragic (or dramatic) irony occurs when a character on stage or in a story is ignorant, but the audience watching knows his or her eventual fate, as in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet.
* Socratic irony takes place when someone (classically a teacher) pretends to be foolish or ignorant, to expose the ignorance of another (and the teaching-audience, but not the student-victim, realizes the teacher's plot).
* Cosmic irony is when a higher being or force interferes in a character's life, creating ironic settings.

H. W. Fowler, in Modern English Usage, had this to say of irony:

Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear & shall not understand, & another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware both of that more & of the outsiders’ incomprehension.<1>

Fowler in particular nails it, as usual.

[pelsar]

4. i'll "buy" that its ironic..

but then since i believe the implication is that its "rare and special and significant" i would then say one must look at another Ironic switch:

uri zohar:

"Uri Zohar was once celebrated as "the top comedian, television and radio talk-show host, social satirist, actor, and film producer on the Israeli scene." More interestingly, though, in a process that began some twenty-five years ago, he set out to investigate, with the purpose of impeaching, the veracity of the claim that the Torah is divine in origin and thus relevant to contemporary Jews' lives rather than a mere cultural artifact.

Today, Uri Zohar is perhaps Israel's foremost ba'al teshuvah, or returnee to traditional Jewish observance. He has long since exchanged his performer's hat for the mantle of a latter-day prophet of sorts. He cajoles, he pleads, he entertains, he instructs; but beneath the tools of his trade, one hears the thunder of the conviction that animates his life: for a Jew, the Torah is not only past, but present, and future no less. Cling to it and, spiritually, live. Abandon it and dissolve the identity that generations of Jews fought and died for."

Zohar probably has more influence most others......including Dr. Klein, whom i've never heard of.....

[breakaleg]

5. finding religion is ironic?

[richards1052]

7. Now, that takes the cake...

You've never heard of Menachem Klein, one of Israel's foremost academic experts on Palestinian nationalism & internationally known in his field. Yet you seem to dismiss him w. a flip of the wrist as insignificant compared to a washed up former entertainer. Uri Zohar is entitled to his views & I wish him well in life. But just because you betray your unfamiliarity w. academic figures who are experts in their field & who propound views you dislike doesn't make them insignificant.

You too are entitled to yr views of the conflict. But I'd urge you to become more familiar w. both Israeli & Palestinian figures who might represent views at odds w. yr own, but who nevertheless are an important part of this debate.

[pelsar]

10. never said i "dismiss him'...

my comment was on the fact that its supposed to be "ironic" that he teaches at bar ilan......its not special or surprising or ironic.

[richards1052]

6. Pls. refer me to other Bar Ilan faculty who are dovish

"Why is it ironic"

I said it was ironic that a dove teaches at a religiously conservative university. That's all. And you tried to turn that into a universal statement about Israeli society, which isn't at all what I was claiming. If this specific fact isn't ironic, pls. refer me to any other dovish faculty members you know of at Bar Ilan.

[pelsar]

8. the reason its not "ironic"...

is because its prevalent in israeli society......a dove teaches at a conservative school....a right wing teachs at Haifa university.....a non religious lectures at a seminar, a religious personal teaches at a secular school....perhaps they are Ironic...but they are also rather standard events.

just walking around Haifa Univ and one sees religious people in a rather left wing university....walking around Bar Ilan and you see non religious.....its like saying "there is a black person teaching at Alabama U.

as far examples: history professor Ariel Toaf, Miriam Shlesinger


as far as me not having read anything that i can remember of him....`middle east experts" come pretty cheaply here....most of them dont have any special knowledge that most israelis and palestenains dont already know...it comes with the territory.

I commented because i come across incredible amounts of mis information about israeli society....and that being an example of one of them.....i freely admit that if this was an "israeli forum" with israelis and someone commented about the irony of it, i doubt i would have even commented, but here its a different envronment and i have trouble not commenting when i see what is either disinformation or borderline info that reminds me of so many other comments about israel being a theorcratic state, etc.

[richards1052]

11. Menachem Klein doesn't "come pretty cheaply"

"`middle east experts" come pretty cheaply here....most of them dont have any special knowledge that most israelis and palestenains dont already know...it comes with the territory."

This is an incredibly anti-intellectual attitude. I assure you Menachem Klein doesn't "come pretty cheaply" to anyone who knows his scholarship and articulateness. He is widely published in the major Israeli press. I'm surprised you haven't heard of him.

"history professor Ariel Toaf, Miriam Shlesinger"

You are claiming that these faculty hold dovish views of the I-P conflict? Can you confirm this w. any evidence of their views?

[pelsar]

12. an incredibly anti-intellectual attitude

i admit i am not impressed with people with degrees or who have pretensions of "intellectuality"....its not that i nor my family dont have them (degrees and intellects...we've got them coming out of our ears, including me.....i just dont get impressed by it. besides some of the smartest people i've met not only do they not have any pretension of intellectualiy they dont even have a single degree....and many an "elitist intellectual" wouldnt have the right to shine their shoes.

if the man has been published widely in the press then no doubt i've read his stuff (i'm not so big on checking out the writers...i have to be really really really impressed by his writing and doings for that, so its a fair assumption that i've read him (btw rubenstein is one of the very few israeli politicians/writers who has impressed me).


Miriam Shlesinger: chair of the Israel Section of Amnesty International

Ariel Toaf
'Toaff’s “courageous” book argues that some Christian children, or “perhaps even many,” were killed by fundamentalist Ashkenazic Jews between 1100 and 1500. Furthermore, Luzzatto has Toaff describing unleavened bread baked with dried blood possibly taken from murdered Christian children.'

this kind of research and other stuff i 've read by him puts him on the 'left side of the line"....

[bemildred]

3. "Kook rabbis"?

Now there is irony.

[richards1052]

9. Rav Kook

Bemildred is referring to this sentence fr. the original story:

"Real, down-to-earth history and politics were not welcome unless they validated the theological postulations of the Kook rabbis (Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, following in the footsteps of his father—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rav_Kook">Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook—was the spiritual leader of the settlement movement Gush Emunim)."

I should add that while I heartily disagree w. the theological views of the elder Rav Kook as they inspired Gush Emunim, he was chief rabbi of Israel in the earlier part of the century. Though I'm not terribly familiar w. his theological views in general, he was an important figure influenced heavily by Jewish mysticism & I understand that he made worthwhile contributions in other areas of Jewish thought. He was the type of rich historical thinker whose ideas were used for good in some areas & for bad in others.