SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: bentway who wrote (162787)5/21/2005 9:27:59 PM
From: neolib  Respond to of 281500
 
Thanks for the link, although I had just run across it with Google already!

I would say the Mr. Jabotinski was insightful & honest in that writing. He was perhaps mildly behind the times, but given the moral views in Europe at the time, not badly. When stacked up against fascism & communism, the following does not look so bad.

All this does not mean that any kind of agreement is impossible, only a voluntary agreement is impossible. As long as there is a spark of hope that they can get rid of us, they will not sell these hopes, not for any kind of sweet words or tasty morsels, because they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left. Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups. Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions. And only then will moderates offer suggestions for compromise on practical questions like a guarantee against expulsion, or equality and national autonomy.

Regarding the bold highlight, I think he may be factually incorrect.

Part of the problem of course is that fascism & communism are mostly on the dust heap of history.

I found this part rather wanting however:

Two brief remarks: In the first place, if anyone objects that this point of view is immoral, I answer: It is not true; either Zionism is moral and just or it is immoral and unjust. But that is a question that we should have settled before we became Zionists. Actually we have settled that question, and in the affirmative.

We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.

There is no other morality.


It reminds me of one of the philosophical arguments for the existence of God (I believe advocated by C.S. Lewis) that goes something like this:

1) The bible is a book of very high morals.
2) If God does not exist, then the bible is a lie.
3) Therefore since we know the bible is moral, God must exist.

Bit odd, that...