Longtime readers know that I have little sympathy for either side in the never-ending conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. For decades both sides have acted abominably—and still do—and trying to decide which side has acted more abominably no longer has enough moral valence to interest me.
But I will say one thing: these periodic outbreaks of violence always end the same way. They end up with lots of dead people, most of them Palestinians, and with Israel in a stronger position than ever. This is just a fact, and it doesn't depend on which side you happen to support. Fighting Israel, regardless of "who started it," always turns out to be bad for Palestinians. Always.
This seems so obviously to have been stirred up by Netanyahu to create enough chaos to prevent the other guy from being able to form a government I think he should be indicted for war crimes on this alone.
But, it's good for Hamas, which is why they foster it. Whenever their support is waning, they're more than happy to oblige Bibi.
This is the war that will never end because the far-right groups amongst the Israelis and Palestinians want war, and they're the ones who hold power.
Yup, that's exactly right. Basically, the sane people in Israel and the Occupied areas need to wait until both the Palestinians and Israelis aren't under the sway of extremist nutcases.
The peace process of the 1990s was supposed to give the Israelis confidence that the Palestinians could govern without allowing free reign to extremists. Instead, Arafat started a second Intifada, and the Israelis said "fuck it, we'll just isolate you guys, and steal your remaining land incrementally."
But the Palestinians are still there, and have incrementally less investment in a peaceful solution. And the Israelis aren't going to leave. So, this ends either with a self-governing state (or state-lite) for the Palestinians, or with the Palestinians getting the vote in Israel. Neither outcome looks remotely plausible at this time, since both sides are currently led by awful people, so Punxatawny Phil sees 240 more months of winter.
Not for quite a while. Biden may not be cheering like Trump would be but he has no interest in actually exercising influence over our supposed ally. Israel is the senior partner in the relationship.
But change will come. Younger non-white democrats tend to agree with the rest of the planet on this.
I just wish it was possible to have a conversation about this that didn't insult everyone's intelligence. If you support Israel's right to seize a country and then defend it that's perfectly fine... that's how the U.S. (and pretty much every civilization in human history) established our country, and none of us are lining up to return our houses to Native Americans.
But do we really have to pretend that the Israelis didn't grab themselves a country from other people who are mostly still there in prison camps? And do we have to pretend that these two sides are equals?
"A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains - let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!"
- Leon Trotsky
"If you support Israel's right to seize a country and then defend it that's perfectly fine... that's how the U.S. (and pretty much every civilization in human history) established our country, and none of us are lining up to return our houses to Native Americans. "
If that were the entire story, at 70+ years we could argue that the people who took over the Palestinians' land are almost all dead, as are most of the Palestinians who were ejected. Time to face facts and move on.
But that's not the entire story. Since 1967, Israel has been grabbing more and more land from the Palestinians, maintains an increasingly harsh occupation over what Palestinian and they have not yet annexed, and typically "retaliates" to Palestinian violence in a 10-fold disproportionate way. The Israeli aggression continues, and creates new victims as time goes on.
Particularly ominous in the current round is the street-level fighting in Israeli cities. These attacks on Arabs who live legally in Israel by extremist Israeli gangs are yet another escalation, and badly reminiscent of some things that happened in Europe in the 1930's that one might hope the Israelis would be cognizant of.
There is no moral equivalence here. Israel's actions are indefensible. I have no love for Hamas or the PLO and wish the Palestinians had better leadership, but it is abundantly clear who is the primary aggressor and who the primary victim in this conflict.
It is disgusting and shameful that the United States supports Israel in these actions.
Yes. I think the Right of Return is ridiculous. That's what happens when you lose a war and the Arabs lost it, badly.
But as you said, a lot of things have happened since 1967, most of which have resulted in Israeli Jews oppressing more and more people.
Remember that the Jews lost decisively to the Romans. Right to return???
"Israel's actions are indefensible."
As far as I can tell Hamas started shooting hundreds of rockets at Israeli cities. Israel always strikes back 10x harder, and Hamas knew that would happen.
You can't tell very far, can you? In fact, I'm 90% sure this is just you trolling. Don't you have better things to do with your life, son?
If you support Israel's right to seize a country and then defend it that's perfectly fine... that's how the U.S. (and pretty much every civilization in human history) established our country...
There's a difference in international law between the "establishment" phase of Israel's existence and its post '67 phase. You can certainly make an argument that the Palestinians got screwed in 1948. The settlement that had solidified once all was said and done split the land, what 65-35 in favor of the Jewish state? But that border (1948-1967) as far as I know is now largely agreed upon by the international community, and, although there may be voices questioning Israel's legality as a sovereign state, they're an extremist fringe. Anyway, I don't disagree this early phase is at least partly akin to the conquest era that established the sovereignty and border of most countries on earth, including the US. But that ship has sailed. (Rightly so in my opinion given the reality of the Holocaust, and the fact that lots of "peoples" have a sovereign state homeland: I mean, what's Norway if not a national homeland for Norwegians; what's Japan if not a homeland for the Japanese, and so on).
The problem now is Israel's conquest/colonization of territory and subjugation of a a people after its emergence as a sovereign state (1967). And here the comparison between Israel and other countries tends to break down. Russia gave up Lithuania. The US gave up the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone. Britain gave up nearly all its conquests. And so on.
International law says sovereign states don't have a right to go out and conquer new lands via military force even if, as in the case of Israel in 1967, the initial military action might have been justified (America's war with Germany and Japan was justified, too, but we'd be in the wrong if we had annexed those two countries and denied Germans and Japanese the vote).
The U.S. was founded in 1776. How many decades after that did we spend expanding westward, eventually bulldozing Native Americans into the Pacific Ocean? Had there been “international law” back then, is there any doubt we would have disregarded it until we felt that we had fully manifested our destiny or whatever?
Clearly Israel is still in its “conquest phase” and could care less about international law. Its just sucks because it’s happening during the television era and they’re using our missiles to do it, and so makes for silly conversations where supporters have to do a song and dance about how mean Hamas is and how Israel is the real victim here.
Not getting your point. I think there’s very little doubt that Americans long utilized a “might makes right approach” in building their nation at the expense of other peoples. That approach clearly is no longer tenable in the modern era, which is at the heart of why Israel won’t realize normality in foreign affairs on its current expansionist/colonial track.
I do think countries in the modern era happily break international law all the time if it serves their interests, so I doubt Israel cares much about that, as long as they have U.S. support. Their long-term goal is a viable Jewish homeland, and they'll probably keep bulldozing until they get it, assuming once the dust settles their neighbors will just accept them and that will be that. In that regard they are just like us and everyone else.
Why on Earth the U.S. loves ethnically homogenous countries elsewhere (Israel, the Kurds, most of post WW2 Europe and elsewhere), yet we're repulsed by the idea for ourselves, is one of the great mysteries, though. You'd think our wokest citizens would be regularly screaming about "Japanese supremacists" in Japan, etc, but nope.
Their long-term goal is a viable Jewish homeland
It would be plenty viable confined to its 1967 borders (perhaps with adjustments made via land swaps). Israel is high income country with a highly sophisticated tech sector and a powerful, nuclear-armed military.
>This is about colonialist expansionism, pure and simple.
I do think countries in the modern era happily break international law all the time if it serves their interests, so I doubt Israel cares much about that.
Pretty obviously the current Israeli government and large swaths of the country's political class indeed don't care about being in violation of international law. Still, countries don't "happily break international law all the time" in terms of conquest and annexation of neighbors. Maybe there are one or two arguable post-war examples besides Israel (Russia/Crimea?), but this certainly doesn't happen "all the time." If they want normality and peace, they'll have to make a deal eventually. Of course, its possible -- maybe probable -- that not enough Israelis want these things enough to force change, and so the status quo will continue indefinitely. The problem, though, is that as time goes by, Israel will sink ever-deeper into the black whole of an apartheid system: already the country's government rules more Arabs than Jews.
Israel's establishment phase isn't analogous to conquest but to the establishment of national borders of independent states following the dissolution of an empire, the Ottoman Empire, of which the Jews of Palestine were citizens, exactly like the Arabs.
There were a lot of sideshows that wanted a piece of it which protracted the entire sequence of events decades longer than it otherwise would have taken, but it is just that.
+1
Again, can we please stop the nonsense? You're suggesting that just prior to the rise of Zionism in the late 1800s the Jewish population of Palestine wasn't around 2%?
Somehow between then and 1948 the Jewish population increased drastically. You really want to pretend this was just "redrawing Ottoman borders" and not a global effort to relocate the world's Jewish population? Okey doke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)
Not this time. Israel flatly started it. Their funding should be cut. That would end things quickly.
I agree with this unreservedly.
Congressman who was going to send a letter to Biden about reexaming aide got a talking to by the administration and now he won't send the letter. That says how it's gonna go.
The "funding should be cut" even if Israel were the most democratic and peaceful country on earth. Its per capita GDP exceeds that of the European Union. You'll notice the United States doesn't send $20 billion/year to France.
Anti-Semite ! I'm siccing the ADL on you!
> Fighting Israel, regardless of "who started it," always turns out to be bad for Palestinians.
As does not fighting Israel.
Yep.
You mean Jared Kushner didn't fix this?
There's a strong argument that in the absence of resistance, Israel would by now have annexed all the occupied territories outright and implemented a blatant system of apartheid. Americans are notoriously focused on the short term. It took the Irish 400 years to regain independence for most of their country.
In terms of Body count, the British Empire was the greatest homicidal maniacs in modern history, which only followed by Genghis 's regime. Only then do you get into Soviets, Nazis and The great leap forward in terms of %%%%%. The Catholic church genocide of Celtic/Germanic people during the religious wars of 335-810 was impressive kill total.
Googled these maps. They tell the story: https://www.google.com/search?q=map+of+west+bank+and+gaza&sxsrf=ALeKk01a9Y_8ik-C6E1-56KZCSFm6s8SYw:1621383939796&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=w2iJnkqZCgsLZM%252CRlVGLXiO4JuZbM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kTKHkYnH-us2YjxQX2_qXOERvqlnQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjG9ZnuvdTwAhXLHbkGHYw3BH0Q9QF6BAgKEAE&biw=1997&bih=1148#imgrc=Z7UWj4a-ZtuQXM
Drum's post ignores the moral issues for the political consequential one. It is worth answering in those terms.
It is certainly true that if one measures the winner by which side kills more people Israel always wins. But Drum here seems to measure it by the conflict ending"with Israel in a stronger position than ever". There is no hint as to what the basis for this claim is. Was Israel in a weak position before this? Are they destroying the weapons that would eventually have freed the Palestinians?
Of course not. If the Palestinians are ever to get a state, or a better existence within the Israeli state then it will either be because Israel chooses to grant them these things, or because outside influences give them little choice to. Unfortunately there is no evidence that things improve between these incidents. In fact they often make what little improvement they do when all eyes are turned towards Israel after these flareups. That is Gaza may be a little less crushed after this ends when it becomes harder for Israel to deny humanitarian aid. Israel also may be less likely to throw Palestinians out of their homes or expand settlements when eyes are on the region.
The other issue is whether the West is more likely to put pressure on Israel because this escalation happened than it would have been had it not happened. Given that the West showed no intention of putting pressure on Israel before, and there has been a (somewhat) higher percentage of criticism of Israel now than in previous escalations, it is far from an established fact that Israel will come out of this stronger.
When there are huge imbalances of power, as there is in the case of most occupations, and protest movements, it will always seem to be the case that the more powerful group is in a strong position until it turns out they aren't.
' Fighting Israel, regardless of "who started it," always turns out to be bad for Palestinians. "
Yes, but....
People are beginning to see through Israel's hasbara> and seeing Israel less as a shining beacon of democracy and more as a bunch of jackbooted thugs bent on a slow motion genocide.
Dead kids. By fencing. By rocket. By airstrike. By small arms. Dead kids.
Dead kids. By rocket. By fencing. By small arms. By air strike. Dead kids.
Mr. Drum knows which side his bread is buttered on.