Palestine, Israel, and U.N. Resolution 181

When tempers are high people tend, even more than normal, to discard any evidence that anything is wrong with the side they have chosen. They rally around the flag.

Add that to the tendency for history to be treated as propaganda, rather than a true record of the past, and it is not surprising that many people are confused by the history of Palestine as told by its partisans, which appears have very little in common with the history of the modern nation of Israel, as told by its partisans. Voices in the middle tend to get drowned out.

Here I want to take a look at the myth that the United Nations (U. N.) sanctioned the creation of the nation of Israel, and that the non-Judaic Palestinians were opposing a fair and just plan to create that nation. To do that I will be referring to the original 1947 document, available from Yale University at this link:

• United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 "for the consideration of the question of the future Government of Palestine"

I highly recommend you read the document first, and think about it, before I walk you through how I see it. You may not agree with my analysis.

The key word to look at, in distinguishing historical propaganda from what actually happened, is the word "state." The document uses the word "state" frequently. It is a word that can mean "nation" or a government. But as we know from our own United States, the word "state" can mean a level of government different from (usually subordinate to) a national government.

Everyone agrees that a majority of non-Judaic citizens in the British Mandate of Palestine, possibly a majority of all citizens, rejected the U.N. resolution. They preferred the better-established international standard for transitions from imperial dominance to local freedom: national self-determination. Under that system all the voting-age citizens would elect representatives, mainly by geographic units, and those representatives would then write a Constitution for the nation, then have another election, and start writing the laws of the nation.

The Zionist Palestinians and their foreign supporters (but not all Judaic Palestinians) preferred a Jewish-majority, explicitly theocratic and ethnically defined Nation of Israel. They did not want to have a merely Jewish-majority "state" within a Palestinian nation.

How do we know that the U.N. did not intend to set up a sovereign Nation of Israel through Resolution 181?

In propaganda Resolution 181 is usually called the "United Nation Partition Plan for Palestine" which implies a two-nation solution. You can see that it is actually an attempt at a a one-nation solution from the text in the very first paragraph, which bears repeating: "for the consideration of the question of the future Government of Palestine."

The word Partition comes from the phrase "plan of partition with economic union" which first occurs in paragraph 6. Some relevant U.S. history is the partition of the various areas taken from Native American Indians and partitioned into a variety of states. Partition does not, in itself, imply nation. If historians focussed on the word "union" and minimized the word "partition," people would think about the events of 1948 dfferently.

The words "Jewish State" first appear (Part I, A., para. 3) in the context of withdrawal of British troops. After that the terms Jewish State, Arab State, and City of Jerusalem are used frequently, and they are described as "independent."

But Palestine is not really granted independence. Instead a U.N. commission is to take over the power formerly exercised from the British. The commission is empowered to make the final lines of demarcation of the Jewish, Arab and Jerusalem sectors.

Rather than holding elections, the commission is to appoint Provisional Councils for each of the "states". Among other responsibilities, each Provisional Council is to recruit an "armed militia." Even then "general political and military control, including the choice of the militia's High Command, shall be exercised by the Commission."

Then there are to be elections, and illegal immigrants (who would be mostly European Jews) can vote simply if they "have signed a notice of intention to become citizens of such State."

Neither elected government is supposed to discriminate based on religion or ethnic origin. There is to be freedom of transit, and you can see that a peculiar lapse in language consistency by a referral to "the other State in Palestine, " where elsewhere the term Arab State is used.

The three States are to establish "the Economic Union and Joint Economic Board." Recall that the original call in the United States to go beyond the Articles of Confederation was for an economic union between the 13 states, to be planned at the Annapolis Convention.

Resolution 181 even provides for Arabs living in the Jewish State and Jews living in the Arab state to have the option to vote instead for representatives in the state they are ethnically aligned with, and to be considered citizens of the State which they have opted to vote for. (Section C., Chapter 3)

You can see both the ambiguity of the word "state" and that the Resolution did not intend to create a Nation of Israel most clearly in Section C. Chapter 3, Subsections 2 and 3 where the overall state is again called "Palestine." The phrasing, "These obligations shall be fulfilled through participation in the Joint Economic Board in respect of those obligations applicable to Palestine as a whole, and individually in respect of those applicable to, and fairly apportionable between, the States" is particularly telling.

I'm figuring that is about as much information as anyone can be expected to absorb in one blog post.

I conclude that while Resolution 181 is somewhat ambiguous on the question of whether it authorized a Jewish nation in Palestine, the ambiguity results from the complicated political balance it seeks to impose. The most reasonable reading is that the intention is that a Nation of Palestine is to have three subordinate States, and that each state is to guarantee the usual generally accepted freedoms to all of its inhabitants. It is an attempt to guarantee some protection for minorities, in particular the Jewish minority, rather than to set up two or more racially supremacist or theocratic nations.

My own opinion is that the United Nations had no right to impose a solution on Palestine. The people of Palestine should have been allowed to go through the usual national self-determination process without United Nations (or any other outside) interference.

Although it begins a more complex topic (the history of the conflict), I would also add that the evidence is that a majority of Palestinians would have rejected the dictation from the U.N. had they been allowed to vote on it. However, the actual armies that opposed the creation of the Nation of Israel in 1948 were not Palestinian. The Palestinians had no army. The opposing armies were from other, pre-established Arab nations. In addition, the State of Israel, really a new nation, was declared on May 15, 1948, well before the August 1, 1948 expiration of the British occupation.

Hitler and the problems of National Self-determination

"The most believing Protestant could stand in the ranks of our movement next to the most believing Catholic, without ever having to come into the slightest conflict of conscience to his religious obligations." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The idea of national self-determination is closely linked to American President Woodrow Wilson and the post-World War I peace settlements. Nations are conceived of along ethnic, linguistic, racial and cultural lines. National self-determination provides that each group of people who constitute a definable nation has the right to their own national government.

The Democratic Party lauds Woodrow Wilson as a great President, a man of progressive (liberal) ideals who was also a man of peace and yet led the U.S. to its first great international war victory. A closer examination reveals a more complex picture, in which Wilson, a college professor turned politician, was a conservative racist who turned against his own idea of national self-determination as soon as he saw its global consequences, which did not sit well with his Aryan, racist agenda.

[Who's lying to you Litmus Test: if Woodrow Wilson was not a racist, why did racism remain legal in the U.S. after he had two terms as President?]

As I write this, ethnic and religious conflicts continue to escalate. Israel is bombing parts of Palestine it made into reservations for the natives when it got tired of its ethnic cleansing chore. Kurds are asserting their rights to recognition as a nation. The lines drawn by Wilson's colonial-era pals of the British, French, Dutch, and Belgian empires are still not working, largely due to their failure to correspond to natural national boundaries.

But there is another important consideration: the negative consequences of stressing ethnic cultures, religion, and nationalism.

After World War I Poland was created from former parts of Germany (and a bit of Russia). There was a substantial German-speaking population within the new Poland. The new Austria was German speaking, Roman Catholic, and highly anti-semitic.

Meanwhile, a lot of other cultural nations thought they should have the same rights as the Poles. Famously, Ho Chi Minh demanded independence for Vietnam, but he represented just one of hundreds of nations seeking self-determination. The Brits and French gave the right to self-determination to exactly one nation within their empires between World War I and World War II (the Republic of Ireland, but Britain kept Northern Ireland). The lesson was clear: only losers in wars might get dismembered into smaller nations with borders drawn on ethnic lines.

It should not be surprising that Hitler's Germany had strange allies in World War II (some in hostile neutrality, like Ireland). In almost every colony of the British, French, Belgian, and Dutch empires there were groups hoping Hitler would win, and in many cases fighting against the British or French.

While Britain won the war (and the French empire was re-instated), the cost was so high it was unable to maintain much of its empire afterwards. National revolutions, often led by Communists, lined up much more of the world along lines of national self-determination.

Many of the new nations had sub-nations within them. Vietnam had Roman Catholics and Buddhists who did not like communism or each other. India had many sub-nations that had be be invaded by Mahatma Gandhi's tanks to persuade them that they were not to be allowed to exercise their own rights to self-determination. Most African nations had multiple rival tribal or clan groups arbitrarily thrown together.

And a whole bunch of European Jews who survived the Holocaust decided they needed a land of their own, the land their ancestors had abandoned almost two thousand years earlier. They invaded Palestine, kicked out most other Palestinians, and set up a racist state they call Israel.

The United States of America, for all of its legendary past faults (genocide, racism, etc.), meanwhile has developed a new model. I just call it the Modern state. It is not based on race or religion, though there is nationalism. It is based on ideals tempered with pragmatism: liberty of conscience, a semblance of equality under the law, and pragmatic good government: good roads, fair schools, and not too much air pollution, even a bit of a social safety net, as long as taxes are not too high.

But this modern America had advantages in developing. Not just a lot of resources that were easily stolen from the natives, but a population (excepting black slaves) who came here more or less voluntarily at an exceptional time in history. At a time when people were questioning revealed religions like Christianity and Islam. At a time when Republics were a reality and were moving in the direction of becoming Democracies. And when agricultural and industrial revolutions were getting underway that would raise the standards of living for almost everyone.

I believe people have a right to self-determination, but I believe they should be cautious with that right. The Nazis determined that no Jews, atheists, or communists would be allowed to live in Germany. Then they decided to greatly enlarge Germany. That is not the example I am hoping other nations will follow.

When a people has been deprived of their own nation for a long time, and has been treated poorly by the nation(s) they inhabit, I think they might benefit from setting up as a nation-state. Thus I favor Kurdish and Palestinian states, among others. But ... I hope they are modern states, or turn into modern states. I hope the people choose to join the modern world, with modern values: equality and justice for all. Not states based on religious or ethnic tests.

When there is equality and justice for all, it does not matter which government rules us, nor which ethnic group we descend from or identify with.

It is sad that America's leaders after World War II (mirroring the equally culpable leaders of the U.S.S.R.) sought to create a new commercial-imperial global system run from Washington D.C. America's making enemies so readily, and imposing our will when possible with bombs, assassinations, rigged elections and embargoes, marred our international image and robbed our modern system of moral authority (as did discrimination in the U.S. against non-whites, until around 1970).

Adolf Hitler was not a self-made man. Germany, Austria and Turkey surrendered at the end of World War I, after Woodrow Wilson and his allies had promised a just peace. Instead the defeated Central Powers  were treated to dismemberment and economic pillage. Hitler blamed this "stab in the back" on Jews and communists, and an angry nation elevated him to power. Nor were the Zionists who fought to create Israel in Palestine self-made: they were Hitler's creation. Hamas, in turn, was created by the Israeli Zionists.

We need the opposite chain-reaction. Self-determination based on nationalism or religion is not necessarily bad, but it is just as dangerous as imperialism. I hope when people assert their right to self-determination, they determine that they want equality and justice for all humans, not a new round of sectarian conflict.

ISIS Surprise, Dynamics of

ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) looks like it took the U.S. intelligence community by surprise. You would think the CIA and other intelligence services would have seen this coming. But, looking at past failures of intelligence and analysis, I don't think the CIA is much at fault (purely on intelligence gathering and analysis. The ethics of imperialism are another matter, which I write about frequently, but not in this particular story).

The historical analogy that leaps to mind is the rapid collapse of the Chiang Kai-shek regime in China during the years following the end of World War II. In retrospect everyone, including Chiang, should have seen it coming. So why was it (the rapidity) such a surprise (even, to a large extent, to the Chinese Communist Party, which expected a much longer civil war to be required to take power)?

In both cases, the rising power was stronger than appearances led people to believe. More important, the existing power was weaker, to the point of being a sham.

ISIS does not have the long history that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had by 1946. Nor did it have, in say 2012, the base areas that the CCP had. But there are some similar characteristics.

ISIS is driven by radical Islam, which apparently is quite the motivator of men. The CCP was driven by a Chinese version of Marxism, later called Maoism, which also was very motivational.

External factors helped both groups. China had been invaded by Japan, but had been in chaos long before the Japanese decided to risk their lives to try to "restore order." Similarly Iraq had been invaded by the United States (USA), also allegedly to create a democratic, peaceful order there.

The government as run by Chiang Kai-shek was incompetent and corrupt, in many cases amounting to little more than the rule of warlords. Most Chinese felt oppressed by the "Nationalist" government, and had heard the CCP governed base areas were far better off. While the government of Iraq has support in some sectors, particularly among the Shia sects, among the Sunni sects there has long been a belief that the government is an enemy.

In the most obvious parallel, the United States armed and financed Chiang Kai-shek, as it still arms and finances the Iraq government.

The Chiang regime might have gone on ruling China incompetently had it not been for the emergence of the CCP, with its high levels of skill at both governance and war.

Apparently ISIS also has a great deal of competence at governance and war. ISIS leaders may be ultra-conservative Sunni Islam, until recently affiliated with Al Qaeda, but about two years ago they began to prioritize finances and governance. Ascetics themselves, they gained popular support by redistributing wealth to the common people, much like the CCP and the New Deal Democrats in the USA. They also used their taxing power to build up a well-trained army, and apparently to bribe both tribal leaders and many members of the Iraq army.

It is said, perhaps with some exaggeration, that Chiang's troops were defeated with the very U.S. weapons that were supposed to solidify his regime. The troops did not like the way they were treated, so they just went over the the Red Army, taking Chiang's shiny new U.S. manufactured weapons with them.

I doubt ISIS can take over all of Iraq, and I doubt they want to. By unifying the Sunni portions of Iraq and Syria they might create a new, viable state. If the lines had been drawn that way when the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I, a lot of trouble might have been saved. Instead the French, British and American empires drew lines in the sand for their own convenience, creating the modern states (not really nations) of Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Iraq.

Perhaps the Kurds will finally get their own nation. Given Woodrow Wilson's pious, if hypocritical, yammering about national self-determination after World War I, again a lot of trouble could have been saved by just doing it then.

But of course the imperialist powers, the U.S. more so than Britain and France, do not want rational borders in the Middle East. They want a weak Middle East, and that requires lumping together Shiites and Sunnis, so that they will fight each other and be U.S. puppets, rather than gaining true independence and equality within the world community

The current version of Iraq is not yet done. A democratic and united Iraq could still emerge, but it will be a lot harder now. The government of Iraq has more popular support than the Nationalist Chinese government ever did (Chiang never risked having an election, for instance). Also, ISIS may alienate the very people who welcome them today. It would not be the first time in history that has happened.

Self-determination in the Modern World

It never seems to end. There is fighting in the Ukraine. Israel continues its ethnic cleansing campaign. Having separated from Sudan, now the peoples of South Sudan are fighting among themselves. Iraq, Somalia, Thailand ... the list seems almost endless.

On the other hand, a lot of people with different ethnic heritages, religions, and customs get along just fine, almost all the time. America has its famous melting pot, if you are willing to overlook the earlier genocide against Native American Indians and discrimination against non-Europeans (and Irish, Jews, Italians ...). Partly that is because we have created a new nationalist identity, itself dangerous to other nations of the world. America has a high-proportion of modern people, who see religion as mythology and ethnic identities as old-fashioned. In a way "modern" people are globalists. A modern person can find people with similar outlooks almost anywhere in the world.

Individuals often hold modern and old-fashioned contradictions within themselves. Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States from 1913 until 1921, was a racist, in fact one of the key intellectual architects of 20th century racial segregation. Perhaps because of his racism, rather than in spite of it, he proposed to the peace conference after World War I that people should have the right to "self-determination." National borders would be drawn by the people themselves, so that an ethnic group might choose to have its own nation, or to combine freely with other ethnic groups into a larger nation.

When Wilson and the American delegation got to Versailles they found there were a lot of people interested in self-determination. People in the British, French, German, Dutch, Belgian, Italian, and former Ottoman empires, for instance. Ho Chi Minh was there (think of all the trouble that could have been prevented had the conference granted Vietnam independence from France.) But none of the empires had any interest in granting freedom to their conquests, and Japan, France and the British Empire actually grabbed more territory. Being on the winning side trumped universal ideas of justice. Nor did it ever occur to Wilson to free Puerto Rico or the Philippines.

The Japanese asked that all Asian peoples be granted self-determination and freedom from (European) colonial domination. They also asked for a general provision against racism, which Woodrow Wilson personally nixed. The only new nations to emerge were carved out of the losers, Germany, Turkey, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Many of today's problems trace directly to the triumph of power and racism over justice at Versailles. Iraq, rather than being part of a larger pan-Arab nation, or being divided into Shiite, Kurd, and Sunni majority smaller nations, was created for British oil extraction. Palestine was divided off from Syria (which was given to the French) so that Britain could keep its promise to the Jews for their help in World War I. The nation now known as Jordan was given as a consolation prize to a pal of Lawrence of Arabia.

We cannot redraw the past, but modern people might well try to not repeat its obvious mistakes. I understand when ethnic groups and other minorities are, or feel they are, oppressed. That pushes them towards a desire for autonomy and independence. But nationalism, ethnic identification and racism are closely related. I think people do better when they trascend all that.

Adjusting borders in Africa, South America, and Asia that were drawn by European imperial powers makes some sense. This would have to be done on the principle of self-determination: let people draw their own lines. But many issues have no geographic solutions. Some minority groups have no majority areas. Many areas have complex mixtures of groups.

The better answer is to encourage the trend to a modern, friendly mindset based on the following principles:

Legal and economic justice for all.
Freedom of religion and expression.
Classic good governance: no corruption or favoritism of any kind.
Emphasizing our common humanity, not our cultural or physical differences.
Universal education in the generally accepted principles of ethics.

Human nature being what it is, setting things right will be a long, slow process. There have been several historical attempts to globalize an ethical system, usually a religion. I believe Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam all attempted to be universal religions, with a universal system of ethics for all people. Each failed, or at least has failed so far. Marxism (or more broadly, socialism including anarchism) also sought to be a universal cure for humanity. I think it is worth looking at each of the histories of these movements to see what they achieved and why they failed.

I believe the key is being universal, but not authoritarian. Universal tolerance and diversity can work as long as we share (and act on) core ethical values. Modern people do this. Modern people can treat anyone as an individual. Modern people do not oppress others. Modern people communicate and educate. Modern people show mercy. Modern people resort to self-defense only as a last resort, and never act as or facilitate aggressors.

There just are not enough of us, yet. But we can be found just about everywhere and anywhere. We just need to keep making more friends, and avoid corruption.

National Self-determination, Crimea, and Ukraine

What ever happened to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's principle of national self-determination? Shouldn't President Obama being standing up for this right for the people of Crimea and the eastern Ukraine?

Geopolitics is complicated. Ethnic (and religious & other) minorities within a nation are often majorities within a smaller region, and often aspire to have their own nation-states. Right now the Scots are getting ready to vote on independence from Great Britain, the Palestinians want independence from Israel ... the list is quite long.

Who gets a nation, and who does not? The strong get nations; the weak do not. But often the strongest nations, like the United States, do a lot of the decision making. Right now Russia looks like it is determined to help do some decision making in parts of the Ukraine, particularly in Crimea. To have a fair position on this specific application of the principle of national self-determination, it helps to have a historic perspective. Tweets from 3 microseconds ago are hard to interpret if you don't know the history of the past hundred years or so.

After making sure the British Empire won World War I (thereby protecting U.S. banking loans to London and Paris), Woodrow Wilson went to Europe with a lot of big ideas about permanent world peace. Best known for advocating the creation of the League of Nations, President Wilson proposed the principle of national self-determination. His specific territorial recommendations made in his Fourteen Points were supposed to derive from this principle.

Self-determination, the right of people to choose their sovereignty and political status, to be "governed only by their own consent," got off to a bad start. Woodrow Wilson himself was the architect of modern racism in the United States and within the Democratic Party. This was reflected in his attitude towards non-white people. He wanted self-determination for Poland, a state that did not exist before World War I, because that would weaken both Germany and Russia. But when the Japanese proposed that national self-determination should mean all the colonies of Britain, France, Belgium, Italy (and presumably the Japanese colony of Korea) should be granted independence if they wanted it, Wilson blocked that proposal in a committee which he chaired.

Putting aside Wilson's personal hypocrisy, consider the problem of trying to apply national self-determination to the real world, with its actual real human beings on the ground. Consider some 20th century examples.

Wilson did not grant independence to the American colonies of Puerto Rico or the Philippines. While Puerto Rico is still a possession of the United States, the Philippines became independent under Japanese tutelage during World War II. Then the U.S. recaptured the Philippines in an exceptionally brutal campaign notable for the massive execution of POWs by U.S. soldiers, a war crime. Only when the Philippines leaders agreed to permanent U.S. military access to the islands did the U.S. grant independence, of sorts, in 1946.

The basic principle the U.S. has operated under is democracy and national self-determination is fine as long as pro-U.S. governments end up in control. If anti-U.S. people want independence, or win an election to control a nation, that is another matter entirely.

Vietnam is perhaps the best example, although it is just one of many. Vietnam was a French colony [actually 3 colonies, collectively French Indochina] starting before World War I. It had an independence movement throughout its colonial history. Japan took over Vietnam during World War II, but the French [who were controlled from fascist France] continued to work with the Japanese. The Vietnamese independence movement fought for national self-determination during World War II, and tried to convince the Allied Powers (notably the U.S.) to support Vietnamese national self-determination.

American policy makers (ultimately President Truman) flirted with the idea of an independent Vietnam. Then they decided keeping France happy was more important. The French re-conquered Vietnam. The Vietnamese fought a bloody war for independence, and won. As part of the peace & independence deal the French and those Vietnamese loyal to them (mainly Roman Catholics) concentrated in southern Vietnam. They then refused to allow for national elections because they knew the Viet Minh, who had fought the French, would win. Instead, with U.S. backing, the French set up a regime in South Vietnam that was universally despised from its inception. The U.S. fought the Vietnamese War to try to keep Vietnam from being united and independent.

Even as President Obama scolds Russia for using military intervention in Crimea rather than diplomacy, the U.S. is paying anti-gay rights nations like Uganda to fight in Somalia. The U.S. has not even withdrawn its troops from Afghanistan. France has troops in several African nations, helping to decide who will rule there.

So why is the Ukraine so special? Well, first of all it is white people. Second of all, it has a large pro-Western following. But the pro-Russian faction won the last election. Why are the people violently protesting the last elections, including many young men who admit to being nationalist thugs, given the Democracy label? Can't Americans just admit that our leaders are not for majority rule democracy, they just want the Ukraine to join the European Union and be allied with the U.S. and NATO? Why can't we just wait for the next round of elections to see if sentiment has shifted and power can be transferred peacefully?

Why are Russian police actions bad, but U.S. and French and Brit police actions good?

Because Americans, the vast majority of them, or us, have a misinformed sense of right and wrong.

Is Vladimir Putin an asshole? Sure. But that is not the issue for Obama and the American corporate security state. The only question they ask is: Is Putin our asshole? As long as he is our asshole, as Saddam Hussein once was, and as Osama bin Laden once was, being an asshole is no problem. In politics Putin can be a friend of the U.S. on one issue, an enemy on another.

Self-determination for the Crimea would mean an election to see if the people of Crimea prefer to be part of the Ukraine or part of Russia. Or maybe even independent. I hope such an election is held so the rest of the world can know what Woodrow Wilson would think.

And how about independence or statehood for the U.S. possession known as Puerto Rico? What about Kurdistan for the Kurds, and ... list almost every ethnic minority that does not have its own nation here. There are literally hundreds of them.