Works Cited, Tolerance Is a Wasteland

Here is how Benny Morris himself works through this conundrum, albeit at an earlier historical moment than the one addressed by Lieberman today: faced with the overwhelming Palestinian presence in Palestine in the early twentieth century, the Zionist movement, Morris says, could have pursued four paths toward the establishment of a Jewish state in a country that started the twentieth century with a population that was 93 percent non-Jewish. The first option, Morris says, was further Jewish immigration; but this would not have worked because the indigenous Palestinians would have gone on outnumbering the immigrant European Jews. A second option was apartheid—a Jewish minority lording it over a Palestinian majority; but this would have been bad for public relations with the West. A third option was partition; but there was no way to partition Palestine without leaving too many Palestinians behind in the territory of the putative Jewish state.5 “The last, and let me say obvious and most logical solution to the Zionists’ demographic problem lay the way of transfer,” Morris concludes, using the euphemism that Zionists have used since the 1920s to signify the forcible expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland. “You could create a homogeneous Jewish state, or at least a state with an overwhelming Jewish majority, by moving or transferring all or most of the Arabs out of its prospective territory. And this is in fact what happened in 1948.”

Makdisi, Saree. Tolerance Is a Wasteland (pp. 3-4). University of California Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

It is impossible not to place a certain share of the responsibility for what followed upon Largo Caballero. On the first of May he had led a huge procession through the streets of Madrid. More than 10,000 workmen, saluting with clenched fist, bore banners declaring: ‘We want a Workers’ Government. Long live the Red Army!’ Intoxicated by the enthusiasm of his followers, entirely confident of success, he shut his eyes to the dangers of the course he was following. He was sixty-eight, an age when one must hurry if one wishes to see the Promised Land. Proud and stubborn by nature, not easily influenced by others, he had spent all his life within the framework of a trade union. He therefore lacked a wide political vision. Otherwise he would have seen that the disposition of forces in Europe – to consider nothing else – would never tolerate the creation of a dictatorship of the working classes in Spain. As it was, the only effect of the Socialist policy of undermining the Republican Government instead of collaborating with it was to render it too weak, morally and materially, to resist the blow that was about to fall upon it. It was the mistake which the exaltados had made in 1823 and the last Cortes of the First Republic in 1874. One may call it the national mistake, Spanish history being made up in large part of the ruins left by such acts of inebriation and over-confidence.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 511-512). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

But was the predestinarian frame of mind which the dialectic of materialism bestows upon its devotees altogether of advantage to them? It seems more likely that, in this case at least, it only served to put them to sleep and to blind them to the dangers of their situation. Spaniards are by nature all too prone to an easy optimism which encourages them in their desire to put off immediate action. They are inveterate procrastinators with sudden bouts of impatience. For whilst the Socialists were drawing up plans of what they would do when power fell into their hands, the Army officers and the Falangists were, almost publicly, preparing a rising and negotiating with Mussolini and Hitler for assistance. Mucho sabe el rato, más el gato is a Spanish proverb. The rat knows a lot, but the cat knows more. Had Caballero been indeed the Spanish Lenin, that is, a man with a sure instinct for power, he would have made terms with Azaña and allowed the Socialists to enter the Government. It was because he was at heart a social democrat playing at revolution that he did not.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 499-500). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Sword and the Stone

“If I were to be made a knight,” said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, “I should insist on doing my vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.”

“That would be extremely presumptuous of you,” said Merlyn, “and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it.”

“I shouldn’t mind.”

“Wouldn’t you? Wait till it happens and see.”

“Why do people not think, when they are grown up, as I do when I am young?”

“Oh dear,” said Merlyn. “You are making me feel confused. Suppose you wait till you are grown up and know the reason?”

“I don’t think that is an answer at all,” replied the Wart, justly.

Merlyn wrung his hands. “Well, anyway,” he said, “suppose they did not let you stand against all the evil in the world?”

“I could ask,” said the Wart.

“You could ask,” repeated Merlyn. He thrust the end of his beard into his mouth, stared tragically at the fire, and began to munch it fiercely.

White, T. H.. The Once and Future King (pp. 174-175). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.  

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

There, however, the analogy ends: discipline was lax, for there was no real bond of union. They had no military feats to their credit, for the Army and the Carlists did all the fighting and the Old Shirts, who alone could have given it some cohesion, had been swamped by the new arrivals. There was not even a real führer, for Franco was merely one general among many who had come to power through an accident and who was singularly lacking in all führer-like qualities. Their own leader, José Antonio, had met his death in a Republican firing squad. Thus the Falange never succeeded in becoming a coherent Fascist party, but remained an amorphous flock of job hunters united to a disreputable but vociferous Iron Guard. But it had no rivals, for the Army, divided as it was between pro-Falangists and Monarchists, pro-Germans and those who were jealous of the foreigners, and taken up with the waging of the war, tended to withdraw from politics.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 539-540). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Sword in the Stone

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn—pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics—why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.”

White, T. H.. The Once and Future King (pp. 176-177). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.  

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

The great difference in the degree of humanity shown on the two sides may be judged from the fact that from the beginning of the Civil War to the end not a single protest appeared on the Nationalist radio or in its press or in the books published at Burgos and Salamanca against the atrocities that were taking place. The British Fascists and neo-Catholics visiting Franco denied that there had been any irregular executions, yet in private conversations the Falangists never concealed what was happening and during the first months bodies were exposed to view everywhere. On the Government side, on the other hand, the radio almost every night during August and September contained strong denunciations of the executions that were going on: not only the Government authorities but members of the U.G.T., F.A.I. and Communist party spoke in this sense. Posters were put up ordering the summary execution of the gangsters who were engaged in these murders. How far the rank and file of the U.G.T., C.N.T. and F.A.I. supported these protests may be doubted: for a time humane opinion among them was silenced and it was dangerous for anyone to protest too much, but the leaders of the Left parties often protected people who were in danger and facilitated their escape. The Communists, who to annoy the Anarchists had adopted a protective attitude towards the Church, took on themselves the task of sheltering priests. And there were some outstanding exceptions to the general acceptance of the terror. Juan Peiró, the well-known Anarchist and editor of Llibertat, denounced almost every day in his paper the crimes of certain elements of the C.N.T. He did not stint his language. They were ‘modem vampires’, ‘fascists in a latent state’, ‘thieves and assassins, guilty of a crime against the honour of revolutionaries’. His paper was not suppressed and he was not interfered with. Can one imagine even a tenth part of this outspokenness being possible on Franco’s side?

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (p. 540). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

However it is characteristic of Spaniards to be satisfied with gestures and with petty acts of defiance and courage and to neglect the real heart of the matter. The Arabs conquered the whole of Spain in two years. It took the Spaniards eight centuries to get rid of them.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (p. 444). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.