Saturday, November 30, 2013

Ari Shavit on My Promised Land.

Ari Shavit on Charlie Rose (11/18/13). Video. Charlie Rose, November 19, 2013. YouTube. Complete episode of Charlie Rose with Shavit, Jeffrey Goldberg, and David Remnick. Bloomberg, November 19, 2013.

In Israel, a Dream Made Real. By Ari Shavit. Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2013.

American Jews are “endangered,” says Ari Shavit. By Philip Weiss. Mondoweiss, November 20, 2013.

Ari Shavit: Apocalypse now, apocalypse forever. By False Prophet Blog. +972, November 21, 2013.

Shavit called Gideon Levy an “enemy of the Jewish people” for wanting secular, democratic state. By Ira Glunts. Mondoweiss, November 22, 2013. Video at YouTube.




Video transcript:

Dan Margalit (host): If two peoples seriously intend to live in peace, the Palestinians shouldn’t have a problem with Ofra or Ariel staying where they are. Let’s say that we stole the land. Let’s say that we’ll pay for the land. We’re a people that pays for land – ever since the days of the Cave of Machpelah [i.e. the time of Abraham -trans.]…. That’s not the point. The point is your rejection of the very idea – not yours, maybe, Abu Mazen’s, Yasser Arafat’s – of the very idea that a Jewish community [Heb. “yishuv”] can exist in the heart of Palestine.
 
Gideon Levy: Why? Would you allow the Arabs of Nablus to live in Tel Aviv?
 
Margalit: What’s the connection?
 
Levy: Ah, suddenly. What’s the connection?
 
Shavit: You’re a total demagogue. They don’t recognise the state of the Jewish people. They don’t recognize the Jewish people and its right. That’s the issue. That’s what you’re ignoring. You always take this extreme part.
 
Levy: You are the extreme right. I have nothing to discuss with you. You are a spokesman of the extreme right, masquerading.
 
Shavit: Gideon, You want a secular, democratic state. You’re worse than the extremists among the Palestinians.
 
Levy: Terrific. OK. Perfect. Anti-Semite.
 
Shavit: And this is a kind of anti-Semitism, an unwillingness to recognize the right of the Jewish people to self-determination.
 
Levy: [Just] say Nazi.
 
Shavit: No, this is an extreme anti-Israeli approach that you spread like poison around the world. And then you call it demagoguery. This is demagoguery of the worst kind, your demagoguery.
 
Levy: I’m a little tired of Ari Shavit. Who tries to have it all. It is . . . I want to refresh people’s memory, once and for all. We came to a country inhabited by another people.
 
Margalit: Oh, delegitimizing of Israel. We understand.
 
Shavit: Then let’s leave. That’s why you’re not worried about Iran, because you agree with Ahmedinejad. You think we should go back to Austria. That’s what you’re saying.
 
Levy: [Just say] Adolf Hitler.
 
Shavit: When you talk like this, when you don’t recognize the right of the Jewish people, when you don’t want a national home for the Jewish people, you are a partner of the enemies of Israel [also “the Jewish people” - trans.].


“We’ve Lost Our Narrative”: Ari Shavit hopes his new book will revive an honest, painful, conversation on Israel. By Gary Rosenblatt. The Jewish Week, November 27, 2013.







Ari Shavit, My Promised Land. Video. Politics and Prose, November 22, 2013. YouTube.




The State of Israel: Past, Present, and Future. Video with Ari Shavit. Council on Foreign Relations, November 20, 2013. YouTube.



How Israel Won the Arab Spring. By Danny Danon.

Rider on the Storm. By Danny Danon. Foreign Policy, November 27, 2013. Also here.

How Israel won the Arab Spring, and why a dangerous new instability threatens the entire region’s geopolitical landscape.

Politics Is Not a Soap Opera. By Andrew C. McCarthy.

Politics Is Not a Soap Opera. By Andrew C. McCarthy. National Review Online, November 30, 2013.