Roger Cohen of The New Yorek Times

Submitted by Ludvikus (United States), Dec 29, 2017 at 11:40

Dear Dr. Daniel Pipes,

I respectfully do not give as much weight to your distinction between STRATEGY and ADVOCACY.

The French gave the world at least two things, the French Revolution ("Liberty, Equality, Fraternity") and Deconstruction (very difficult to understand, or deconstruct).

The New York Times Roger Cohen opinions instantiate a genre of narrative (as the French would have it) in which the ruling Jews of Israel are no longer liberal to the interests of the Arab.

In this genre of the narrative Israel's history typically begins with the British Empire's 1917 Balfour Declaration,
reaches its first climax with the non-binding General Assembly's Partition Plan,and allegedly fails and terminates when Israel abandoned the Land for Peace" policy.

The broader narrative I propose requires leaving the Middle East and venturing into the European Continent when the Grand Army of Napoleon Bonaparte facilitates the exodus out of their Ghetto capitals and into the meritocracies of Napoleonic occupied territories. In relatively large numbers Jews in Europe are no longer special subjects, or guests, of their local princes or cities; rather, Jews become citizens of the Empire of the French under Bonaparte.

However, during the Third French Republic in 1894 liberal Austrian Jewish journalist Hertz begins his observation of the disgrace of French Jewish officer Dreyfus falsely accused of treason because he is a Jew.
By this time the Industrial Revolution was well on its way, as was the new phenomena of Nationalism.

Then, as no, and before, not all Jews accepted majority rule, and Zionism was not universally accepted. Is Judaism a Religion, or a Nationality, was an open question (as it remains so in certain circles).

Another momentous omission are the Pogroms in Russia and the Holocaust in Nazi Europe - which effectively created 6,000,000 vacancies for non-Jewish Palestinian Arabs. The latter phase lasts from 1933-1945.

It is generally overlooked that only 2 years later, the nations of the world united in an effective declaration that Jews deserved a homeland of their own, but outside of primarily White Europe, in 1947. Yet this partition of Palestine did not occur as based on United Nations General Assembly legitimacy, but by Civil War, and by resistance against five Arab military external invaders resulting in subsequent Armistice lines.

So, it is War that still determines Victory. However, as that famous strategist observed, War is Diplomacy by other means.

The "other means" involves "advocacy" - or the war of words. Below is the loosing narrative of the "shameful" Jew who in my eyes would have been incapacitated in saving Jews in any real catastrophe. Yet he's deemed worthy to express an opinion in the former liberal respected tabloid, The New York Times:

Opinion | Op-Ed Columnist
"An Israel of Pride and Shame"
by Roger Cohen DEC. 29, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/opinion/israel-jerusalem-ben-gurion-trump.html?

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".