Above all, the Arabs don't want the Jews to have a state....

Finally, a leading Israeli politician tells it as it is.

The Arab street, and elites,  may or may not wish the Palestinians to have a state.  But their main preoccupation, now as much as at any time, is to get rid of Israel.  This, more or less, is the gist of a remarkable interview with left-of-center Knesset member Einat Wilf, published in the Jewish Week of September 16. To read the whole interview, click here.

And here is an excerpt:

... the last decade, with the failure of Camp David, the intifada, the disengagement, the repeated failures of the Palestinian leadership to take advantage of opportunities to have a state has made me very skeptical. I began to question whether the Palestinians want a state more than they want the Jews not to have a state. They may want a state, but it’s second or third priority after making sure the Jews don’t have their state … I’ve become increasingly convinced that the conflict is not about simple territorial claims that can be resolved by finding where exactly the border should go. At the core, the entire Palestinian identity is wrapped in the battle against Zionism. It emerged as a separate identity only through this battle, and for them justice was always more important than statehood. … Given the opportunity to have a state but not perfect justice they’ve always tried to pursue their version of justice and given up on having a state…

 Einat Wilf

I felt the self-flagellation that has become a mark of the left — we don’t have peace because Israel didn’t do enough, in Camp David Barak should have been nicer to Arafat, should have let him go first through the door — it was getting to the point of just being ridiculous...
I’m still in the left in the sense that if by some miracle tomorrow there were an agreement with the Palestinians and it came to a vote in Knesset and we had to get out of the West Bank, I’d vote for it. I don’t have an emotional problem or attachment or messianic views that would make that difficult for me … But I’ve become skeptical that this is what the conflict is about and that it is possible to reach an agreement …

RIP: Eugene Nida, 1914-2011

He was not literally my teacher.  I never met him, and I certainly never sat in a class that he taught.  But I have learned from colleagues who had learned from him.  Two of his great books are on my shelf and I still refer to them from time to time:  God's Word in Man's Language (1952), and Bible Translating (1961).  Despite the fact that I have never had a direct interest in Bible translating, these books had a lot to teach me and indeed all social scientists.  Nida, together with a few others, was a giant in the social science of linguistics.  (Those were the days when linguistics was still a social science and not the speculative game it became later). Now he died, aged 96.

Here is a rare video of Nida as an old man, still teaching:



and here, a bit of comic relief, is an attack on Nida's scholarly approach to translation by a fundamentalist who thinks that the Bible needs to be translated one word at a time:



Of course the Chomskyans, who do not believe that language should be studied empirically any more than this misguided religious fundamentalist, could no doubt make an equally ludicrous anti-Nida video.  Maybe they already have.

Not to be missed:  the fine obit in the NYT by Margalit Fox.