I know this is hardly a brilliant insight, but I continue to be sort of stunned by how absolutist Americans are—or seem to be, anyway—on the subject of Israel and its enemies. It hardly requires a scholar's dedication to nuance to understand that both sides have acted horrifically at various times over the past century. There are no heroes in this story and no clean hands.
I get that tribalism accounts for much of this, but the sins of both sides are so numerous and so appalling that it's hard to see how anybody can be a die-hard supporter of either one. The best I can bring myself to believe is that perhaps one side is slightly less repellent than the other.¹
¹In my view, Israel is the less horrible. But it's hardly a slam dunk.
UPDATE: Judging from a couple of the comments, I think there's a real problem of ahistoricity working here. If you start the clock in 2001, you can make a good case that Israel has been the more ruthless actor. This isn't a slam dunk either, but it's entirely defensible.
But if you start the clock in 1948—and you have to for any of this to make sense—it becomes way, way harder to make this case (unless you're a die-hard who continues to believe that Israel never had a right to exist in the first place). Over the whole history of Israel's existence, the record of Arab wars, blockades, terrorism, and crude antisemitism just overwhelms Israel's sometimes harsh and indefensible actions.
I've never been able to understand why lots of Americans get so emotionally involved in arguments about these conflicts in what are objectively small countries on the other side of the world with no major implications for US interests. Most discussions of wars in Ukraine, Myanmar or Sub-Saharan Africa are largely rational, with arguments based on some kind of evidentiary justification, but rationality is thrown out the window when it comes to the Middle East in general and the Israel/Palestine conflict in particular. I suppose some of it reflects bitter hatred of Muslims which is the legacy of 9/11, but it's not a completely satisfactory explanation.
And now that the conflict has been configured to be one more front in the never-ending slanging match between progressives and Christianists, the hysteria is being amplified even more.
Because our historical unwavering support means all the atrocities Israel does are directly our fault. Compared to even other historically monstrous allies like Iraq our support is an order of magnitude greater
"I've never been able to understand why lots of Americans get so emotionally involved in arguments about these conflicts " the holy land and god's chosen people. need one say more?
Because it’s the Holy Lands. The vast, vast majority of our country is Christian (or Jewish).
Many if not most American Jews have some family ties either to the Holocaust or to Israel. Many may dislike the current right-wing government, disagree strongly with the occupation of the West Bank, and Israeli treatment of Palestinians, but are also concerned with Israel's right to exist.
So there are strong emotions all around, based in part on family history.
The original motivation for 'American Evangelicals' to support israel was a literal interpretation of the book of revelations that the 2nd coming would be presaged by the defeat and destruction of israel (by the soviet union in their original interpretation.) i.e. they supported israel because they wanted to see it annihilated by people outside the middle east.
"In my view, Israel is the less horrible"
My view is just the opposite. Gaza was and is an open-air prison, and its inhabitants are treated as less than human. I'm not into statistics, but would wager that far more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis.
And to top it off, it was Palestinians who were forced to leave the lands that they were settled on.
Gaza is a city with security checkpoints to prevent terrorists from entering Israel to attack others. Calling it a prison is propagandistic and histrionic. Hamas has built tunnels to illegally enter Egypt from Gaza. If Palestinians were hard-working peace-loving people, why would Egypt have closed its border too?
The Israelis determine who is allowed in and out of Gaza, including through Egypt. The Israelis determine what is and is not allowed to be imported or exported into Gaza, including a ban on all construction materials. The Israelis declared a third of the arable land in Gaza to be off limits, and that they would shoot Gazans who entered it.
They call it an open air prison, because it is.
If Palestinians were hard-working peace-loving people, why would Egypt have closed its border too?
Are you sure that you want to base your argument upon the assumption that Egypt is a peace loving democracy that wouldn't participate in oppression if it weren't justified?
Someone who calls such entry restrictions a prison has never actually seen what prison is like. Histrionic exaggeration is a hallmark of propaganda. Israel enforces checkpoints on Israelis too, in order to prevent terrorism, which is an everydY occurrence all over Israel.
Just give it up. Nobody with the intellect of your average 5 year old is going to fall for lies as mind boggling stupid as you are spewing. You truly are a completely morally bankrupt and utterly evil monster.
Israel maintains security barriers and checkpoints around Gaza to keep terrorists from entering Israel. What would you do if you ran Israel? Just leave the border wide open and assume everything will be fine? Well, it wouldn’t be fine.
Whether or not Israel should do something differently, they manifestly are controlling who is allowed to enter and leave Gaza, not just across their shared border, but also through Egypt and through waters that they signed agreements to the effect that they belonged to Gaza. The same is true of all goods being imported to or exported from Gaza, again including through Egypt or Gazan waters.
If you exercise total control over everything and everyone going in or out of a territory, and use that power to keep the vast majority of the population confined there without a functioning economy, you're using it as a prison.
As I asked, what would you do with the Gaza border if you ran Israel?
"If Palestinians were hard-working peace-loving people"
How many Palestinians do you know, you racist POS?
And you skipped "okay, I was wrong it is a prison" when you jumped straight to "what else should Isreal do?"
I’ve seen enough of them in America with their antisemitism. We need to make sure no more are allowed to immigrate here.
It is fundamentally evil to use the word anti-semitism, which literally means anti arab and jew, to describe arabs who have a rational hatred of jews.
"If Palestinians were hard-working peace-loving people"
I wasn't the person who said that.
Sincere apologies. That was "perry"'s odius statement.
"What would you do with the Gaza border if you ran Israel"
I'll answer:
1. Formulate and execute removal of West Bank Israeli settlements back to 2000 status.
2. Re-start the peace process in good faith, accepting the end goal is a Palestinian state with full (not partial) sovereignty.
Fully controlling access and trade to Gaza can only be justified within a larger context where Israel is seeking peace in good faith. If the threat remains Israel should continue controlling access and shipping. If the situation improves Israel can safely relax control.
It is pretty basic. Military occupations can be justified only as long as the occupying power is seeking a just solution. A sustained military occupation at some point morphs into something else, something darker, something we should not militarily support..
That's what Israel should do.
+1
Not obvious that 2000 is a good baseline. I would go much earlier.
"Fully controlling access and trade to Gaza can only be justified within a larger context where Israel is seeking peace in good faith."
Hamas has ruled Gaza as an authoritarian regime while also planning a huge terrorist attack against Israel. How do you seek peace with them?
Regarding the West Bank, yes it is wrong of Israel to be building more and more settlements. But also Fatah won't hold elections. The Palestinian Authority is an authoritarian regime that has not held elections in over 15 years. It has been criticized for human rights abuses, including cracking down on journalists, human rights activists, and dissent against its rule. So they are hard to seek peace with too. How are they legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people as a whole?
So how do you seek peace with groups of people who operate completely dysfunctionally? I have wondered if an outside body, like the UN, could impose a democratic government on the West Bank and Gaza until they can rule themselves, and then the peace process can restart. But that sounds pie in the sky. Thus, I see no solution until the Palestinians get their act together.
Hamas has ruled Gaza as an authoritarian regime while also planning a huge terrorist attack against Israel.
It's important to understand that Israel imposed its blockade on Gaza as soon as they withdrew the settlements in 2005. What happened after Hamas took power was that they made it official that the blockade was permanent, as opposed to its previous claims that the blockade was temporary and intermittent.
How are they legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people as a whole?
Because the U.S. and Israel declared that they are. That's pretty much what it amounts to. The Israelis have worked hard to keep Fatah in place. Saying that Fatah's place is justification for not negotiating is essentially saying that Israel's own actions justify it not negotiating.
So how do you seek peace with groups of people who operate completely dysfunctionally?
Maybe the Israelis should have asked themselves this question before they spent 56 years doing their best to ensure that Palestinian leadership is dysfunctional.
"Because the U.S. and Israel declared that they are."
I suppose, but it seems pretty weak for unelected Palestinian persons to be negotiating the future outcomes for millions of Palestinians. BTW, in the last election the Palestinian people picked Hamas to represent them. That is why Fatah won't hold any more elections. It is odd to let the U.S. and Israel pick who they will negotiate with.
"Maybe the Israelis should have asked themselves this question before they spent 56 years doing their best to ensure that Palestinian leadership is dysfunctional."
Whatever Israel has done, in the end Palestinians themselves have to take responsibility for how they organize themselves and interact with the government of Israel. Otherwise it is all hopeless, and there is no path to a two-state solution.
It is odd to let the U.S. and Israel pick who they will negotiate with.
It isn't a question of "letting" them. They hold the power, and they have made it clear who they will talk to.
Palestinians themselves have to take responsibility for how they organize themselves and interact with the government of Israel.
Again, the Israelis hold all of the power. Palestinians can't take responsibility for how they organize themselves and interact with Israelis. This is like saying that the Poles had the responsibility for how they organized themselves and interacted with the Soviets in 1960.
Otherwise it is all hopeless, and there is no path to a two-state solution.
Congratulations. You've figured out the problem with the Israelis' refusal to construct an actual strategy.
"So how do you seek peace with groups of people who operate completely dysfunctionally?
Maybe the Israelis should have asked themselves this question before they spent 56 years doing their best to ensure that Palestinian leadership is dysfunctional."
Right on.
On what historical basis would we expect a quisling government to be a beacon of hope and light? Name one that wasn't corrupt.
"Hamas has ruled Gaza as an authoritarian regime while also planning a huge terrorist attack against Israel. How do you seek peace with them?"
Your framing tilts the table. This is a dysfunctional system. Israel makes clear they are not looking for peace (go ahead, make the case the Netanyahu govt tries to make peace. In response the relatively powerless Palestinians radicalize. Rinse and repeat and you get where we are now.
Israel can make peace. Stop settling in the West Bank and start to undo settlements, Open negotiations with the PA.
That stops the cycle.
Your complaint that there is no one to negotiate is true the other way. The Netanyahu gov't is not interested in working out a solution either.
People who expect the highest standard of behavior from people who are being dispossessed in slow motion is either a profound lack of empathy or inability to understand human psychology.
It is a dug-in mess now. Both sides contributed to where we are now. Israel is far the stronger , they have more options and more room to initiate change. Yet they keep up the settlements.
Insistence that Palestinian radicalism as the sole issue is deflection. It is the status quo. It was always a moral failure, on 10/7 it failed as a matter of policy.
"Hamas has ruled Gaza as an authoritarian regime while also planning a huge terrorist attack against Israel. How do you seek peace with them?" Israel invented modern terrorism. They employed wide spread rape of palestinian women to force the gazans off the vast majority of the land now called israel, Hamas was democratically elected and has the support of the majority of gazans (And citizens of the west bank.)
Offer than a reasonable peace settlement.
Given that Israel has made it clear that they have no intention of ever relinquishing control of any of the occupied territories, they should formally annex those territories and give their inhabitants Israeli citizenship.
They did relinquish control of Gaza in 2005.
They did NOTIONALLY relinquish control of Gaza in 2005.
They did in fact entirely withdraw from Gaza. Thanks to Hamas, what followed has not been great. If anything, the past month has shown
that Israel needed more not less stringent control at the border. The "open air prison" rhetoric is an absurdity that shows the speaker is not worth listening to, much less engaging with.
They did in fact entirely withdraw from Gaza.
No, they did not. They imposed an economic blockade designed to destroy Gaza's economy. They did so as soon was they withdrew the settlements. What happened in 2007, after Hamas took over, was that they made it official that the blockade was permanent. Israel declared that a third of the arable land in Gaza was off limits to its population and that they would shoot anyone that entered it. After signing agreements that Gaza's territorial waters extended 20 miles from shore, they limited fishing to well less than that (ranging from 3 to 12 miles through frequent, arbitrary changes) and patrol those waters. They retained the right to enter Gaza with military forces at their own discretion.
That does not constitute a full withdrawal.
You are correct. Removing your people while maintaining a blockage is not a withdrawing. Withdrawing means getting out a letting people be.
Maybe you think Israel can't do that for security reasons. Fine. Make that argument.
Except that's a lie. They still maintained complete and total control of all entry and egress from the territory, all imports and exports, control of the airspace and sea space of the territory.
That's a bald face lie. They continued to control the air space and sea space of gaza. Enforced complete and utter control of all entry of people and goods into the territory. That's maintianing sovereignty over gaza.
Here is a really terrific post from Josh Marshall that covers the one-state / two-state question.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/one-more-one-two-state-discussion-before-thanksgiving/sharetoken/09oNsudEiW73
Your comment is not logically sound. Given that Israel will never do what they should do (relinquish control of occupied territories) they should do something they else they have made clear they will never do (give all Palestinians equal civil and legal rights within greater Israel. It is a pressure tactic, not a serious proposal, and one that is too transparent to work.
I think the US and the international community should unite with a clear stance: Either one-state with equal civil and legal rights or two negotiated states with full Palestinian sovereignty. Exert enough pressure so Israel eventually chooses between the only humane options.
BTW for reasons Josh Marshall goes into Israel would almost certainly prefer two-states if actually forced to choose. So far Israel has not needed to choose.
The Rafah crossing is Gaza's only gateway to the rest of the world that's not directly controlled by Israel. It is under the control of Egypt as part of an agreement with Israel and the European Union. The blockade of Gaza was/is as much the action of Israel as Egypt.
It's important to note that the agreements between Egypt and Israel specify that the Israelis provide the Egyptians a list of who is allowed to cross the border at Rafah, and a list of goods that are allowed to cross the border, though the Rafah crossing is not designed for efficient passage of good. (This is one of the many problems with trying to get humanitarian aid into Gaza during the current conflict.) This applies to travel in both directions.
The United States provides billions of dollars of aid to Egypt each year, conditioned upon them following these agreements .
You're ignoring that as a result of the 1976 camp david agreement, Egypt gets a 2 billion dollar a year bribe from the US contingent on Egypt doing what israel wants at that crossing. (That, combined with the fact that Hamas represents the political parties that got about 65% of the vote in Egypt's only fair elections keeps the fascist government of eygpt terrified of Hamas.)
An American is asking why a country would close its borders to refugees? Too funny. Egypt is already home to about 400,000 refugees. For fairly obvious reasons of self-interest, it doesn't want to join countries like Turkey, Iran, Jordan and Pakistan in having to look after millions of them.
That may be true now, but the other Arab nations have historically been unwilling to accept Palestinians despite having encouraged them to flee ahead of the 1948 war (promising to give them back their homes after Israel’s defeat, which didn’t happen because Israel won).
Other Arab countries have exactly the same obligation to take in Palestinians that the United States has to take in Haitians.
Muslim / Arab is one nation of one people. The national borders are fictional.
Christian/European is one nation of one people. The national borders are fictional.
That makes as much sense.
Arabic is a language common to many countries in the region. Unlike in Europe where there are many different languages. So I’m going to stick with my original thought. The Arab world could easily absorb other Arabs… if they weren’t already so fucked up.
Arabic is a common written language in many countries in the region. Spoken Arabic is almost unintelligible to people in different parts of the Middle East and North Africa.
Aside from that, there is more that goes into culture than just language. Is it your contention that all of Latin America is just one nation?
There is almost no commonality between Iran and the Arab world.
You need to read some more current Israeli history since Benny Morris got access to the Israeli archives in the 1980's and wrote his landmark history.
His work and work by other Israeli historians such as Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappé and Simha Flapan explode the myth exemplified in your comment.
The actual history is complex and multi-sided. Some Palestinians doubtless did flee expecting the Arab side to win and believing their promises. Others were forced out at gunpoint, Others were rational war refugees, fearing for their lives and uncertain who would win. Others were massacred.
Both the Israelis and the Palestinians have comforting foundation myths that put all blame on the other side. Those do not deserve repeating.
No other commenter mentions what Arab and Palestinian leaders themselves say: The Palestinians have a right to return, and to assimilate them into neighboring states effectively does Israel's work for it, it completes an ethnic cleansing.
I am not putting this forth as what I believe, I just know it is their stated position and deserves a mention.
Where did you hear that arab countries encouraged Palestinians to flee in 1948? Even Israel admitted in the 1980s that the majority of palestinians fled because the jewish forces tried to kill them or because the jewish forces expelled them at the ends of the barrels of their guns.
"An American is asking why a country would close its borders to refugees?"
Over 3.5 million refugees have legally entered the US since 1975. In 2022, 25,465 refugees legally arrived in the US. US borders aren't closed to refugees. Also, on average approximately 400,000 migrants enter the US undetected over the US southern border each year. And this repeats each year. In 2023, over 1 million will move to the US after arriving undetected over the southern border. 5% of the US workforce is undocumented immigrants.
The countries that take in large surges of refugees are close to war-torn areas like Afghanistan, Syria, Myanmar, and Ukraine. Thus, most refugees live in places immediately bordering their home country. The countries hosting these refugees had little choice. Refugees flooded in, and sending them back is not really possible.
So less than 1% of the population over 50 years. Compare that to order of magnitude higher level of palestinaian refugees (only 1 type of the refugees most arab countries host) in many arab countries.
Because the refugees are useless illiterates?
Or because Egypt is such a shit show it can’t even manage to take care of those living there already?
Or both?
Palestinians are traditionally highly educated. The saudi oil industry is heavily reliant on palestinian engineers.
Sorry, but you are lying scum.
Forced?
Yes, forced. There is extensive documentation of the Israeli efforts to drive Palestinians out during the 1947-48 war.
No one allows enemy combatants to roam free in the midst of a war. Palestinians voluntarily sided with Arab nations attacking Israel.
Again, you run into the problem that the Israelis extensively documented their efforts to expel Palestinian civilians.
A supporter of Israel should be very careful about declaring that an entire civilian population should be treated as combatants during a war.
What’s wrong with expelling them?
Beyond the fact that permanently expelling civilians is a war crime under post-WWII international law?
Benny Morris himself justifies the expulsion, but it is, at minimum, a serious moral predicament.
Contrary to your bald face lies, the Palestinians mostly wanted to live in the land and home that there ancestors had lived in for more than a millennia. About 25,000 jews lived in Palestine in 1880, the majority speaking a dialect of spanish.
Check out New Historians on wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Historians
Israel opened their archives in the 1980's and Benny Morris wrote some carefully documented landmark books that exploded Israeli foundation myths.
Yeah, after they lost a war fought to exterminate the Jews in 1948. They could have accepted the UN partition but they didn't.
That said Israel absolutely is a colonial state. There was no reason it should exist. But it's there now and has a right to keep existing.
Labeling Israel as colonial is ridiculous. Israel is not the possession of some European or other power, not a colony, nor does it own colonies. It has a lot of immigrants, but so do many countries because people have been migrating for hundreds of thousands of years, more as means of transportation have developed. This is more propagandistic language. But the idea of national purity is inimical to pluralistic values. Germany tried that, which is why Jews had nowhere to live at the end of WWII.
Palestinians are in Gaza because they have shown themselves to be an ongoing danger to Israel as a whole. When they stop attacking, Israel eases up on the retrictions. But the Palestinian extremists always start attacking again.
This very aggressive pro-Palestinian propaganda barrage is another form of attack on Israel, attempting to weaken support and shut off funding of Israel by the US.
Your ignorance is outstanding.
I have friends who are Palestinian. I have visited Gaza as well as the "West Bank". I have visited towns that are actually owned by Palestinians, yet none can reside there because the "settlers" took their property.
Please educate yourself, otherwise you are stupid.
That actually is not a response to any part of the comment that you are condemning. Are you unable to set forth and counter any supposed falsehoods in the comment you are responding to? Then maybe you need, at a minimum, a different tone. (And this is NOT a defense of the "settlers" movement on the West Bank; they are objectively appalling)
Why does Israel need US funding:? They are rich. They have nukes.
Why not make aid conditional on no settlements?
"Labeling Israel as colonial is ridiculous. " Only to pathological liars. About 25,000 jews lived in palestine in 1880, the majority speaking a dialect of spanish. they were the equivalent to today's armenian population amongst the palestinians that israeli settlers are constantly terrorizing and trying to murder.
Let's not forget who had agency. "they" were surrounding Arab states, not the civilians themselves.
War refugees are definitionally powerless.
". . . forced to leave the lands they were settled on"? Haven't the Jews been "forced to leave the lands they were settled on" over and over again for millennia?
Yes, indeed. Including my own grandfather when he was 12 or so, whose family was violently harrassed out of Odessa during the Pograms, which was Russia at the time.
It was wrong when Russians did that to Jews then. Why isn't it wrong when Jewish settlers do it to Palestinians today or when it was done 75 years ago?
And that justifies them being as evil and doing it to the palestinians? Also, they were generally expelled from land they were not settled on since they had arrived from somewhere else they had been expelled from.
There is a naivity in Drum's comment on this subject that does not appear in many other subjects that he writes on. It begins with his rather slanted accounts of "the facts" of the situation. Is there any other situation in which he would mention that one side agreed to the division of territory and the other didn't without mentioning the terms of the division, which shockingly favored the side that accepted them at the expense of the other, and then later repeatedly accuses the Palestinians as starting wars without acknowledging that for the Palestinians the war never ended since they not only lived under perpetual occupation but watched under occupation as the Israelis turned their land into settlements.
With such a one-sided view of the conflict it is not surprising that he thinks the Palestinians have been worse since most of the worst things Israel has done don't even make it into his description of the situation, while the bad things the Palestinians do tend to get elevated beyond recognition. Would the kind of expression of anger that was the First intifada count as starting a war in any other situation?
But then he expresses surprise here that people strongly side with one side or the other (although in practice his posts strongly slant in one direction). And he seems to have no "tribal" attachment in the issue, he just grew up at a time when the conflict was reported entirely from the Israeli perspective and so sees it from the Israeli perspective.
But being surprised requires missing that this is a struggle over religious sites that are important to most religiously identifying people in this country. It also requires missing that Israel is the largest recipient of aid, despite not being a poor country, and that that aid consists largely of weapons, making the US complicit in what happens there. It also misses the degree to which the conflict at least echoes Western colonialism with an indigenous people being expected to make way for a more European people, to make up for what was done to them by Europeans, something that is only possible because the territory was under British control at the relevant time allowing for population shifts.
Put all that together and it would be surprising if people did not take sides on the conflict. What is interesting is that while evangelical Christians seem united in being on team Israel, American Jews seem more split between those who support Israel, right or wrong, those who are horrified by what Israel is doing in the name of the Jewish state.
Personally I have no difficulty picking which side has been more wrong. Over the last 30 years, when peace seemed easier to achieve than peace in Northern Ireland to today, one side has used the fact that it is doing fine with occupation to steadily and consistently work to make peace more difficult. The other has not. The other has acted like a people living under occupation while watching its occupiers make peace less possible. I suspect in any other conflict that would be pretty determinative for most liberals, Drum included. The mystery to me is why it is not in this one case. Is there another case where liberals just throw up their hands and say both sides are bad so I won't look too deeply at who is doing what?
In the category of “Proving Kevin Right”, we have Lon Becker! Congrats! That was a thousand words of progressive babble, spouted with deep seriousness.
Well, "deep seriousness" is entirely absent in your reply.
Minus 10.
I would answer the content of your critique if you had remembered to give any.
It was not 1000 words of progressive babble, as Total says.
The core of the progressive argument is:
1. Israel is a colonial power, decolonization is good.
2. the conflict is fundamentally racist. The Israelis are white and the Palestinians are oppressed people of color and the poser differential follows from racism.
I do not subscribe to either argument! But if you are going to call something progressive babble why pick on 1000 words that are best described as center left in the US context and mainstream in the international context? Maybe because you cannot intellectually engage and mis-characterizing an argument is easier..
As others noted he makes no substantive argument.
That is not in any way the progressive argument. Most disagree somewhat with the original partition, but are willing to come to terms with it (Zionists had purchased much of the land in the original partition area before 1947).
What I disagree with is the consequence of the 1948 war and the subsequent 75 years. The degree of native Palestinian participation in the war is debatable, but most of the individuals herded into Gaza were civilians that fled before Israeli tanks. And is should be remembered that the pre-partition Zionists had a reputation for terror and violence. Look up the number of village massacres on both sides from before this period.
Second, modern warfare rarely permanently displaces the indigenous population. Israel occupied the land and farms of the Gazans and then calls them terrorists because they wanted to come back to their farms. It keeps them behind fences and shoots them if they get to close. The Gaza strip cannot grow enough food to support its population, it can't fish its own waters, and it can't control its own trade.
I also note that whenever the violence is low, Israel ramps up its settlements and takeover, only to plead Palestinians are terrorists if they complain and fight against the occupation.
I'm not sure about racism since it begs a lot of questions. Who are descendants of the ancient Hebrews? Palestinians probably have more ancient Hebrew DNA than European Jews. They descended from the ones Jesus and his followers converted, who intermarried and later converted to Islam. The Israelis (or Likud at least) has said it wants sovereignty from the sea to the Jordan in its party platform and asserted a Palestinian state would endanger Israel. Then for the next 50 years has sought expulsion of the Palestinian population.
Not sure, but at least Likud and many other conservative parties sound racist and they are clearly not seeking a 2-state solution nor a single state with equality.
Finally, if you look at the number of killed and injured on each side, Israel is winning by killing more than ten times as many Palestinians. Is state terror different than non-state? It seems like a pretty big collateral damage claim or somewhat like the Jim Crow laws of the South such that unequal application and punishment have extended consequences
You are right. I wish I could edit my post. Lon Baker's comment was not babble, and neither is yours.
I gave examples of what could be considered progressive babble, but I unfortunately used the word "position"
The point I was trying to make is that the comments thread, Lon Baker's comment included, is quite free of progressive babble.
You put forth the progressive position quite well, and it is close to my position.
"Not sure, but at least Likud and many other conservative parties sound racist " In all fairness, Likud is a party that at its heart, represents the jews who came to israel after being expelled from other middle eastern countries. It is the left and labor who traditionally were composed of european jews and the people who invented modern terrorism in the 1920s.
Both points 1 and 2 are indisputably true.
"I do not subscribe to either argument! " thank you for admitting you are a dishonorable liar.
More than half of Israelis are indigenous to the Middle East.
Egyptian or Iranian Jews had no more claim on Palestine than European or Russian Jews…which in both cases was zero.
Twenty to thirty percent were indigenous. Many of the Jews who lived in other parts of the Middle East were, historically from Palestine but were forced out. Many Middle Eastern Jews who went to Israel did so because they were fleeing from pograms. Many were forced to move to Israel from their country of origin.
Where do you think they should have gone?
Do you live on occupied Turtle Island? Are you an indigenous person?If not, why don’t you leave?
The Middle East is a big place. The word indigenous is pretty strained here.
The Jewish diaspora radiated from Palestine, are we supposed to distinguish between Jews who have been in Morocco for centuries vs. Jews who have been in Spain for centuries?
In this comment thread I haven't noticed people claiming Jews should not have a homeland in historical Palestine.
“ It also misses the degree to which the conflict at least echoes Western colonialism with an indigenous people being expected to make way for a more European people…”
It seemed to me that the OP was saying that Israel is a white colonial power and at least suggesting racism. The population of Israel is approximately 20% non Jewish Arabs. Between them and Jews who were already there and Jews who came from the Middle East, the majority of the Israeli population is just as non-white as Palestinians.
It also seems to me that the OP was arguing that Jews should not have a homeland in historical Palestine.
So? Most illegal aliens are indigenous to North America. That's not going to make the Trumptards any more sympathetic to them and it doesn't make the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine happy theyy moved there and stole their land.
Sorry, over the last 30 years, still both sides have been horrible.
Israel never stopped building settlements, effectively ensuring that the Palestinian Authority never actually had any credibility with its own population. On the other side, the Palestinians actually launched the 2nd Intifada, a wave of suicide bombings killing ~1000 Israeli civilians over about 6 years, from 2000-2006, destroying the credibility of the left in Israel.
On top of that, the Palestinian's leadership has never recognized Israel as a Jewish state -- they've never stopped demanding a full return to Israel proper millions of Palestinians and their descendants. In essence, the Palestinian idea of a 2 state solution is a Palestine state in the West Bank now, and another Palestinian state in Israel after 4-6 million more Palestinians settle there.
Both sides think they can make each other miserable enough to leave. Both are wrong, but they do keep trying.
Your closing paragraph sums it up accurately. +1!
Don't Israeli settlements make a negotiated settlement virtually impossible? The land swaps possible in 2000 are no longer possible.
The settlements do far more than ensure the Palestinian Authority has no credibility, they effect a slow-motion defacto one-state where most Palestinians have severely limited civil and legal rights.
It is a mistake to apportion blame by trying to sum brutality. Widespread oppression vs. discrete acts of terrorism. Who is able to make such a calculation?
The land swaps in 2000 were complete crap land for the palestinains and the best land for the israelis. I don't believe the Israeli's offered any land for the Jordan valley land or the road land separating the arab west bank land into three bantustans or anything for the palestinians giving up actual sovereignty.
"they've never stopped demanding a full return ... of Palestinians" Why shoudn't they? They were residents in 1947 and mostly fled before the tanks came through. Israel gladly herded them into refugee camps and into Gaza.
This enforced expulsion is illegal. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3236 "reaffirms also the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return"
"On top of that, the Palestinian's leadership has never recognized Israel as a Jewish state" Arafat and Abbas both recognized Israel as a Jewish state. Then Rabin died and Israel responded by crushing Palestinian dreams of a two sovereign states with the sh_t sandwidch Camp david offer of 2000.
Seriously?
Slow-motion genocide over 70+ years is much more palatable for almost everyone, Kevin. Well, except the people it's being waged against, but they're also bad, so, it's a wash or whatever.
How can there have been “genocide” when 4 million Palestinians live in Gaza?
A lot of Israeli policy is premised upon the idea that there isn't really any such thing as a Palestinian. They're just Arabs who happen to live in Palestine. That's genocide.
There is no difference in culture or ethnicity or any of the things that define a distinct people. It is not genocide to say so — it is anthropology. This is more propaganda. It sounds especially silly compared to actual genocide, like the Armenians or the American Indian tribes, because this a matter of language not death, and no one has stopped calling Palestinians Palestinian. If would be farcical if there weren’t actual genocides being trivialized by this Palestinian claim.
So, it seems like your argument in support of the Israeli State is that they were not as successful in their attempts at genocide as the other examples you quote.
Maybe. Maybe not. But it's a pretty close call, and it's not over yet.
How about ethnic cleansing? Would that be more accurate for you?
It's pretty clear that you don't know what genocide is.
Apparently the concept of slow motion is too difficult for someone of your intellect to understand.
Dude! In 1997, the population of the Palestinian Territories was 2.7 million. In 2023, it’s over 5 million. That’s some incompetent genocide, that is.
It's a common misconception to think that "genocide" means "mass extermination". In fact the word is of fairly recent origin, and is defined as follows:
It's arguable that Israeli policy towards the Palestinians meets criteria b and c, the objective being to destroy the idea that "Palestine" is a meaningful concept. I see this frequently on American right-wing websites, with furious claims that "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PALESTINIANS THEY'RE ARABS!!!"
It is arguable that none of those very serious criteria have been met.
Pretty sure that Israel's goal to get them relocated as refugees in other countries through infliction of the 2nd clause in the definition qualifies as genocide.
You can also find this at Wikipedia.
To argue that Israel meets criteria b. and c., and is therefore guilty of genocide, you need to prove Israel has committed acts "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Do you believe there's proof that Israel is acting with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, Palestinians as a people? If that was the intent of Israel, it seems to me they'd have done things far differently. Is it more likely Israel is hellbent on destroying the terrorist group Hamas and is acting in reckless disregard of Palestinian lives?
I think the latter. People can disagree, but if you want to convince me (or others) that we're witnessing genocide, you need to make a good-faith effort to prove the case. I'm getting a little tired of people using the word and not understanding it.
I realize there have been a few quotes from Israeli leaders that are troublesome. But the overall actions of Israeli, as objectionable as they may be, don't amount to genocide. They are more comparable to actions taken in many other wars, ones that rarely get called out with that term.
And if quotes are enough to "prove" genocide, then the Palestinian side needs to be held to the same standard. It's far easier to see the stated objectives of Hamas as leading to genocide, for what it's worth.
FTR, if you want to cite the 1948 convention for the definition of genocide, it's worth noting that only three times in our history since has a genocide been officially recognized.
Check out the West Bank map that "shocked Barack Obama"
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-map-of-israeli-settlements-that-shocked-barack-obama
Compare to similar maps circa 2000 and the land swaps that were then still possible. And consider current maps are more extreme than what shocked Obama.
I find it hard to look at these maps without seeing a slow-motion destruction of any hope for a state. But the definition of genocide is about the destruction of a group, not a state. I get it when kenalovell says Israel arguably complies with b. and c. but the argument ultimately fails. Genocide is the wrong word.
A better word is apartheid, and it too has a definition in international law. Here is that argument:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/19/israeli-apartheid-threshold-crossed
I'm not convinced apartheid is the right word either, but it is a better fit than genocide.
Aside from picking the right word (which is important) I think it is important to keep the maps in mind and accept this is no longer a military occupation. Greater Israel is in reality one state. The two-state solution has been foreclosed by the sheer extent of the Israeli settlements.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/israel-palestine-one-state-solution
I think it is now best to stop talking about a specific solution
The current Israeli one-state denies civil and legal rights to most Palestinians, the international community (including the US) should declare that unacceptable and demand Israel solve the problem. Yes, no more US aid, yes ongoing international pressure until Israel relents.
If the international pressure is great enough Israel actually can resolve the situation. They can give full civil and legal rights to all Palestinians in Greater Israel, or they can reverse the settlements built since 2000 as part of a negotiated land swap giving Palestine full sovereignty in a Palestinian state. And no, the Palestinians will not accept something that looks like the craziest gerrymander run through a shredder.
Even though this s the right thing to do it is impossible in the Israeli political context. Religious maximalists (it isn't just the Palestinians who want one people from the river to the sea) are too powerful, and pulling out of the settlements would be really hard.
One state with equal rights for all would end Israel as a Jewish nation (population would be roughly 50/50). If united international pressure were brought to bear I think Israel would eventually take the bitter pill and negotiate two-states.
I would be more sympathetic with Israel except for settlements. They were a choice. They made the problem virtually insoluble.
""with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."" That's indisputably true. " Do you believe there's proof that Israel is acting with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, Palestinians as a people? " Likud in the present (And Ben Gurion at the origin of israel) were both quite open that there goal was to expel all the palestinians.
Didn't Israel agree to a two-state settlement twice since the end of WWII? And wasn't it rejected by Palestinian leaders both times?
Interestingly put. If I "agree" to buy your house for less than you think it is worth and you reject this "settlement" it is on you? Can't we just say a negotiation failed?
The best way I know to get familiar with the peace process as it played out is this terrific NYT panel discussion from last week. Three Israeli and three Palestinian experts, moderated by Emily Bazelon.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/20/magazine/israel-gaza-oslo-accords.html
It is clear that both sides really wanted peace. My read is that in the end neither side could politically do what was necessary to clinch a deal. Neither were strong enough among their own. (Yitzhak Rabin may have had the trust within Israel, but he was assassinated by a Jewish maximalist so this is my own counterfactual speculation).
Israel accepted a two state solution in 1948 and then with the oslo accords in 1995. But the palestinians also accepted the two state solution at Oslo. And then Israel effectively renounced the two state solution in 2000 when they refused to allow any Palestinian sovereignty in the camp david offer. And why should the paletinains have agreed to give up half their land to foreign invaders in 1948?
Okay, fine. So by your logic, the Jews have NEVER experienced "genocide", because look how many of them there are now!
Genocude is what ha happened to the Jews in Arab countries. Look up Jewish populations in Middle East countries over the past 70 years.
More like ethnic cleansing, but yes.
Yeah - they all suck. Religious fanatics. Whatcha gonna do? Their sufferings are well and truly deserved.
A characteristically "deeply serious" comment of the type we have come to expect from Justin. How could this website function without you?!
People seeking nuance in barbarism and mass murder are looking to justify it. In this case, there isn’t a credible rationalization available. I’m agreeing with Mr. drum.
“the sins of both sides are so numerous and so appalling that it's hard to see how anybody can be a die-hard supporter of either one.”
Well, he's on a par with the spammers, so ... better?
(Of course, I should talk...)
Given that that about 10% of palestinians are christians who have been persecuted and murdered by israeli's with equal zeal, I'm not sure that labeling palestinians as religious zealots has any validity.
Even if you start in 1920, Jews who emigrated to the Palestine Mandate did so legally, with permission of its administrators. In 1948, Palestine was offered a teo-state solution with their own Palestinian territory. Instead, they joined the Arab nations attacking Israel. They call that being driven out. Alestinians have several times since rejected two-state plans. The current state is the result of relentless terrorist and military attacks on Israel, including firing rockets into Israel.
There is a barrage of pro-Palestinian, one-sided propaganda at every blog discussing the current situation. Commenters are not interested in discussion but only want to spread their talking points.
Even if you start in 1920, Jews who emigrated to the Palestine Mandate did so legally, with permission of its administrators.
Except that, from the Palestinian perspective, the administrators should never have been allowed to permit the large scale immigration of people committed to the creation of a state that definitionally excluded the Palestinians from full citizenship. Indeed, the British had to violate the already deeply immoral Mandate to allow it. Article 7 makes it clear that they were only to permit immigration in the context of Jews accepting citizenship in a unitary state of Palestine.
In 1948, Palestine was offered a teo-state solution with their own Palestinian territory.
The United States and European countries declared, without consulting the local population, to illegally dismember Palestine, awarding 52% of its territory to 30% of the population.
Instead, they joined the Arab nations attacking Israel.
The Partition was itself an act of war.
They call that being driven out.
Because that's what it was.
Alestinians have several times since rejected two-state plans.
The Israelis never offered the Palestinians a two-state plan. They offered them a bantustan.
More propagandistic language — Bantustan. The rejection of two-state solutions brokered at peace negotiations by the US and UN shows that the goal is not Palestinian land but the extermination of Israel for religious reasons. So does the unremitting terrorism against innocent Israelis. Nothing historical justifies what happened on 10/7, the latest of many unprovoked attacks.
That might be true if the Palestinians were ever offered an actual state in those negotiations. But they weren't. It is historically inaccurate to think that Barak's offer would have given the Palestinians a state. Even at the time the US view was that if the Palestinians were to give up the right of return that Israel would be so happy they would then offer peace. The Palestinians seem to have believed that the reason that Israel kept building settlements was that it wanted settlements. The US position was that the reason that Israel kept building settlements was a mystery, but couldn't be because they wanted to keep settlements in the territory they occupied because Israel is the good guys and so must want peace.
The better offer from Olmert would have left the Palestinians with less control over the West Bank then they currently have over Gaza, which as we see is not that much. Actually all of the evidence is that Abbas would have accepted the level of control of the West Bank that Palestinians have in Gaza, at least temporarily to assuage Israel's security concerns. But Olmert didn't even offer that since he insisted on keeping a settlement block that cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank.
The fact that the Palestinians were never actually offered a state rather undercuts the significance of their not accepting an offer of peace.
"The Palestinians seem to have believed that the reason that Israel kept building settlements was that it wanted settlements. The US position was that the reason that Israel kept building settlements was a mystery, but couldn't be because they wanted to keep settlements in the territory they occupied because Israel is the good guys and so must want peace."
Nicely put. The US has ducked the settlement issue because it is domestically a third rail. The foreign policy people knew settlements made everything worse, the political people knew that making US aid conditional was politically toxic. So we lied to ourselves.
Look what happened to Obama when he abstained from a Security Council vote on settlements.
Young people, exposed to Netanyahu all these years, not under the thrall of the discredited Israeli creation myth, see reality more clearly.
Nothing either side has done since 1923 has been unprovoked.
I'm not defending everything in TheMelancholyDonkey's reply, but missing from all offered "two-state" solutions was full Palestinian sovereignty.
I sympathize with both sides in the 2000 negotiation. Political support in Israel did not allow clearly offering full sovereignty, and Arafat had no choice but to let it be fudged if he wanted a peace process.
But really, two-states were not offered. States are not partially sovereign.
If you;re referring to the 2000 Camp David plan, that offered zero sovereignty to the Palestinians. If you are referring to the 1995 Oslo accords, then both sides accepted the two state solution. But Rabin's assassination caused the isareli's to abandon that position for fear for their lives from their terrorist population. Which given that israel's founding involved the invention of modern terrorism applied by the jews against the british, this is presumably not a surprise.
But they lost a war. They lost every war. You don't get what you want when you lose a war but like Arabs throughout history, they preferred pride even if it fucked them.over worse.
Yes, I realize that supporters of Israel have a tendency to argue that raw power is the only thing that matters. I just think that's an evil approach to the world.
Some principle. By that logic, US courts should throw out every lawsuit brought by Native Americans trying to enforce treaties that the Federal Government has failed to abide by.
That is in fact the law of the land. The supreme court long since ruled that courts have no authority to enforce treaties, be they with native americans or foreign nations.
First, cut the racism.
Second, they lost a war but they are still a people with rights. The most they ever had a chance of getting was 22% of Palestine even though they were more than half the people.
Losing a war doesn't mean the winner takes all unless you want to go back to pre WW1 standards. And even before WW1 driving civilians off their lands was not OK.
This is the best pro israeli comment I've seen. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Sorry, but the existence of Israel is a fact, and it's a fact that it is not going away. In hindsight you may think Zionism, and its enablers, were all wrong. But if you dwell on that mindset rather that deal with the cards to be played in today's world, the logical conclusion is that Israel has no right to exist today and it should be abolished. Just go to a one-state solution with a Muslim majority. Hamas might become a leading political party in the new state's politics. What a country it would be. Perhaps expel most of the Jews.
Yes, the existence of Israel is a fact that won't change. But, if they want peace, Israelis are going to have to acknowledge how their country came to be. Much like the expansion of the United States was an ongoing crime, so was the creation of Israel. Neither country will, or should, be eliminated because of it, but pretending that it's not true poisons everything.
The Arabs do not want peace. That is the problem. They want to slaughter every Jew in Israel. Israel cannot exist in peace because it needs to continually defend itself just to exist.
Ah, I presume then that you’ve spoken to a half-billion human beings to ascertain their sentiments?
Please take your bigotry elsewhere.
Please take your naïveté and willful ignorance elsewhere.
Atticus, can you point me to a single comment of yours that contains an actual argument, i.e. a statement supported by facts or evidence?
The palestinians agreed to the two state solution in the oslo accords. It was the israeli's that broke that accord at camp david in 2000.
"Israelis are going to have to acknowledge how their country came to be."
Okay, that's a valid point, but I'm not sure I agree that approach is feasible. The final push to get a country for Israel was the fact that millions of Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Jews faced persecution for centuries, and the Holocaust was the last straw. So the case can be made even today that the founding of Israel was morally justified, even if it was wrong for Israel to be created such that Jewish control was assured. Note that 1.32 million non-Jews lived in Israel/Palestine land area in 1947 and 2.61 million live their today, 1.72 million of which are Muslims. These 2.61 million people can vote and have their rights protected. So it's not like Israel is a land meant for Jews only and all Muslims are barred from living there.
Also, if Israel declared themselves guilty of a wrongful founding, this implies Israel should stop restricting immigration to Jews only. And it suggests a one-state solution is appropriate that includes Israel, Gaza, and the West bank. And the right of return of displaced Palestinians would make sense too. Jews become a minority, and Muslims become a majority. Given how poorly Muslims have done at ruling Middle East countries, Israelis would never agree to admit Israel’s founding was illegitimate.
So the case can be made even today that the founding of Israel was morally justified . . .
You elide the distinction between "the founding of Israel was morally justified" and "the founding of Israel where and how it came into creation was morally justified." The truth of the former in no way establishes the latter. What is relevant here is what actually happened, not some theoretical set of events that could have, but did not, happen.
Also, if Israel declared themselves guilty of a wrongful founding, this implies Israel should stop restricting immigration to Jews only.
It does not necessarily do so. The existence of Israel now is a fact, and they can set their own laws.
That said, the right of all Jews to immigrate is deeply problematic. It makes clear that your assertion that non-Jewish citizens of Israel have their rights protected is not accurate. Jews have significantly more rights. In addition to the ability to bring family members into the country to join them, this includes the fact that about 80% of the land in Israel is owned by three quasi-governmental bodies, one of which explicitly refuses to lease land to non-Jews, while the other two just make it difficult. There are other flaws to your contention.
And it suggests a one-state solution is appropriate that includes Israel, Gaza, and the West bank.
There are problems that arise when you try to set up a state that defines full citizenship in ways that exclude a large part of the population. There are various solutions to this problem. The only one the Israelis seem interested in is to simply deny citizenship to about half of the total population of the territories that they control.
One issue is that, contrary to what a lot of people assert, Jews do not have a right to their own state. No one does. The Serbs do not have such a right. Anglophone Canadians do not have such a right, and neither do the Francophones. Indonesians did not have such a right when they tried to expel those citizens of Chinese descent in the 1960s. Neither Hungarians nor Romanians have such a right.
It has worked out that there are a few places on the globe that are almost ethnically homogeneous. In them, the population does have their own state. Everywhere else, the people that live there do not have a right to define their state in a way that provides advantages to a dominant ethnic group over other citizens. Yes, this makes trying to work out the conflict in Israel/Palestine extremely difficult, but this is why the Balfour Declaration, and everything that flowed from it, was such a terrible idea. (At least as implemented; as written, it, and the Palestinian Mandate envisioned a single, multiethnic state rather than a separate Jewish state. But the British never bothered to fulfill their obligations in that regard.)
Regarding only Jews being allowed to immigrate to Israel, you contradicted yourself. You wrote:
"The existence of Israel now is a fact, and they can set their own laws."
But you also wrote:
"One issue is that, contrary to what a lot of people assert, Jews do not have a right to their own state."
Seems you accepted they can do this, but not really. This is actually a fundamental point. Either Jews can have a state where they are the majority, or they cannot. Also, note this is really only a theoretical discussion because Israel would not consider ending Jewish dominant immigration, and the US would never demand that they do so. So it’s really not part of the discussion.
Israelis have a legal right to set up whatever immigration laws they can pass through the legislature. The laws that they have passed are deeply problematic from a moral perspective.
Like it or not, and, in many cases, I don't like it, sovereign states have the legal authority to pass all sorts of immoral laws. The comment that Jews are not entitled to have their own state, defined by their own ethnicity, was intended as a statement of what rights people (both singular and collective) have for being human. Apartheid era South Africa was able to pass laws disenfranchising Blacks and coloreds, despite the fact that Blacks and coloreds had a right, derived from being human, to the franchise.
Also, note this is really only a theoretical discussion because Israel would not consider ending Jewish dominant immigration, and the US would never demand that they do so. So it’s really not part of the discussion.
I agree that, as a practical matter, this is true. However, it explains why the entire concept of a Zionist state in Palestine has created problems that are intractable without Israeli concessions. If they actually want peace, and their policy choices lead to skepticism on this, than they must compromise on some of the assumptions that underlie their state. The only available options are compromise, complete ethnic cleansing, or perpetual conflict. They need to choose which they want, and live with the consequences.
Thanks for clarifying your thinking about Israeli immigration laws. That is all consistent and I see your reasoning.
"If they actually want peace, and their policy choices lead to skepticism on this, than they must compromise on some of the assumptions that underlie their state. The only available options are compromise, complete ethnic cleansing, or perpetual conflict. They need to choose which they want, and live with the consequences."
If a two-state solution is negotiated and achieved, it seems Israel could remain nearly as they are today. Not sure if they need to compromise much on how Israel is run. I suppose they could agree to some limited right of return for Palestinian descendants. But eliminating Jewish dominant immigration or declaring the founding of Israel was a mistake? I think there is no chance for that.
BTW, even if a two-state peace agreement is signed, I’m not sure that the terrorist threat to Israel coming from Gaza and the West Bank will decline much. Israel may need to maintain the draconian security borders it has today. And if the new state of Palestine is authoritarian, I’m not sure what overall has really been achieved. In fact, the new state of Palestine might fracture into two mini states, one in Gaza and one in the West Bank. It starts looking a lot like today except that Israel has retreated from the West Bank.
The whole set of problems in this conflict sometimes seem unsolvable.
"The only available options are compromise, complete ethnic cleansing, or perpetual conflict. They need to choose which they want, and live with the consequences."
Perpetual conflict is the revealed preference.
The british did in fact ban jewish immigration to palestine in 1939 to ensure a substantial indigenous majority. The jews responded by inventing modern terrorism.
ProgressOne, I see you struggling to give up the Israeli foundation myth, mostly because it entails giving up more than you want to give up.
"Also, if Israel declared themselves guilty of a wrongful founding, this implies Israel should stop restricting immigration to Jews only."
Actually an Israeli ethno-nationalist state can be justified by accepting there is no humane option. The bitterness and hatred between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs is too deep for a single state with equal rights for all to work. Its populating would be roughly 50/50. it would evolve into war.
If Israel gave up their foundation myth, and controlled the maximalists who find biblical justification in Jewish supremacy in all of Palestine they could do the one thing that would work: Undo the settlements and negotiate a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
"The final push to get a country for Israel was the fact that millions of Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Jews faced persecution for centuries, and the Holocaust was the last straw." the claim that more than a millennia of persecution of jews by europeans should be compensated by giving a piece of asia to the jews without regard to the wishes of the people living there is pure racism. "So the case can be made even today that the founding of Israel was morally justified, " That is pure unadulterated evil. "These 2.61 million people can vote and have their rights protected." It is no more true that israeli arabs have their rights protected today then american blacks had their rights protected in the jim crow south.
If the land was turned over to the paelstinians as international law requires, then hamas would go away.
Thank you The Melancholy Donkey. These are the same points that I have been trying to make, else where for some time. It appears folks have their blind sides. I appreciate what you have to say.
“ Even if you start in 1920, Jews who emigrated to the Palestine Mandate did so legally, with permission of its administrators. In 1948, Palestine was offered a teo-state solution with their own Palestinian territory”
Wow, you massive douche. That’s an impressive level of handwaving about the imperial situation there.
That's certainly not the Jewish understanding of immigration under the British mandate. See https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/british-restrictions-on-jewish-immigration-to-palestine
That goes completely off the rails as soon as it claims, "Churchill severed nearly four-fifths of Palestine—some 35,000 square miles—to create a brand new Arab emirate, Transjordan."
That is entirely untrue. Transjordan was never, and it was never intended to be, conjoined with Palestine. It was subject to a separate mandate establishing a British protectorate over a Hashemite kingdom.
It is equally dishonest when it says, "(Article 6) that stated “the Administration of Palestine...shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency...close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes.” Those elisions are meaningful. What Article 6 actually says is:
"The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes."
It's entire discussion of the issue of immigration is entirely premised upon the idea that the population of Palestine should have been denied all say in who was allowed to immigrate. A starker expression of imperialism is hard to imagine.
"In 1948, Palestine was offered a teo-state solution with their own Palestinian territory"
In 1948 there was no Palestinian state, Palestine was part of the British mandate. It was impossible to "offer" "Palestine" anything.
There was a UN partition. The Jewish portion of Palestine accepted the partition, the Arab portion did not accept the partition. Palestinian civilians had no agency in any of this.
Really, it is possible to accept Israel as a country without buying into ridiculous foundation myths.
In 1948 there was no Palestinian state . . .
This is false. The Palestinian Mandate is clear that it is creating a Palestinian state. This is how Article 7 can speak of facilitating the acquisition by Jewish immigrants of "Palestinian citizenship." If there's no state, there's no citizenship.
The underlying premise of the Palestinian Mandate is that there is a Palestinian state, and the British are administering it until such time as the local population is prepared to take it over. As such, the British were explicitly tasked, in multiple articles, with protecting the interests of that local population.
The British never took these obligations seriously, on multiple axes, but that was what they were tasked to do.
There was a UN partition.
Which violated both the Palestinian Mandate and the U.N. Charter.
"Even if you start in 1920, Jews who emigrated to the Palestine Mandate did so legally" That's not true. Most jewish immigration post may 1939 was illegal.
But if you start the clock in 1948—and you have to for any of this to make sense . . .
No. You have to start in 1917 for any of this to make sense. I'll give a pass to the Ottoman era.
In the Ottoman era, the area was controlled by Ottoman Turks not Palestinians who are undifferentiable from other Arabs by ethnicity. This self-labeling as “indigenous” is more propaganda. The British were victors in WWI and agreed to administer the Palestine Mandate for the League of Nations. In 1948, at the end of WWII, which the British and allies won, several Arab nations were formed from the Palestine Mandate, including Jordan, Syria , Israel, and a Palestinian territory. The Arab Nations immediately attacked Israel because they did not want a Jewish homeland to exist in the Middle East. They lost that war snd every war since then (also the 1936-39 Arab uprising inthe Mandate). This is what they call a genocide and theft of “their” land, land they have never held.
In the Ottoman era, the area was controlled by Ottoman Turks not Palestinians who are undifferentiable from other Arabs by ethnicity.
Whether you want to admit it or not, Palestinians are a real nationality. There was no such thing as "American" until it was a political necessity, either.
The British were victors in WWI and agreed to administer the Palestine Mandate for the League of Nations.
Which in no way justifies the admission of a large group of people dedicated to the creation of a state the definitionally excluded the local population from full citizenship.
In 1948, at the end of WWII, which the British and allies won, several Arab nations were formed from the Palestine Mandate, including Jordan, Syria , Israel, and a Palestinian territory.
This is categorically false. The Palestinian Mandate included what is now Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. Nothing else. Syria was administered by the French, not the British. What is now Jordan had never been a part of the same territory as what is now Israel/Palestine. Under the Ottomans, they were parts of entirely different provinces. The same process that produced the Palestinian Mandate also made Transjordan a British protectorate, but they were never envisioned as being combined. Indeed, Transjordan was explicitly given a Hashemite monarch.
The Arab Nations immediately attacked Israel because they did not want a Jewish homeland to exist in the Middle East.
Or, they objected to the idea that outsiders had the authority to award large parts of Palestine to other outsiders. Indeed, the partition violated both the Mandate and the U.N. Charter.
They lost that war snd every war since then (also the 1936-39 Arab uprising inthe Mandate).
Is your argument a raw call to might makes right? Because, otherwise, this isn't relevant.
This is what they call a genocide and theft of “their” land, land they have never held.
Yeah, it's clear that raw power is the only thing that matters in your argument.
I was talking about the resolution of the mandate with the formation of various Arab nations. I realize they weren’t all part of the mandate itself. This was done by the United Nations. Israel was established as a Jewish homeland because of the refugee problem in Europe and because a people without a nation (as Jews were) has no protection against people like Hitler.
Your claim that Palestinians populated the Mandate before Jews arrived is incorrect. Jews were allowed to settle there because it was sparsely populated. Palestinians emigrated along with Jews. Pretending Palestinians were happily ensconced there as a nation until rudely thrown out is a self-serving fantasy concocted by propagandists.
There were about 700,000 residents in Palestine at the end of WWI, about 80/10/10 Muslim/Jewish/Christian.
The Muslim majority had every right and reason to control immigration, just as Israel does now. The British deliberately took this right from them.
Right on! 👍🏽
Melancholy Donkey, I'm with you most of the way but
"Indeed, the partition violated both the Mandate and the U.N. Charter."
The 1947 partition was adopted by the UN General Assembly.
Just as a matter of politics renouncing the UN seems like a bad idea if you are sympathetic to Palestinian claims.
From Article 2 of the U.N. Charter:
"7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll."
Under the Palestinian Mandate, Palestine was a state. Stepping in and decreeing that this state be split in two violates that prohibition. Just because the General Assembly passed the resolution doesn't mean that it was legal. Further, the only conceivable ways that, under the Charter, that the U.N. could have stepped in would have required action by the Security Council under Chapter VII, not just the General Assembly.
That's critically important, since the Israelis have denied since 1967 that General Assembly resolutions have no force. If there's a side that should not be renouncing the U.N. General Assembly, based upon its history, it's Israel, since the entire existence of the country flows only from the GA. And yet, its refusal to accept GA resolutions is the basis of their entire policy.
You clearly know the details better than me.
For the most part I hear Palestinians and their friends appealing to international law and UN resolutions. As a political matter it seems calling the 1947 resolution illegitimate undermines some of the better pro-Palestinian arguments.
From Wikipedia (I know not the ultimate source)
"The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, both of which had been conceded by the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I in 1918."
I have to squint hard to call that a state. One definition of a state under international law is
"(a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations."
Who had the power over Palestine's relations, Britain or Palestine?
If you want to understand the Palestinian Mandate, I suggest actually reading it:
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp
As a political matter it seems calling the 1947 resolution illegitimate undermines some of the better pro-Palestinian arguments.
This argument essentially boils down to saying that the Palestinians need to accept the legitimacy of UN GA resolutions, while the Israelis remain very selective about which ones they consider legitimate.
"(a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations."
I will repeat: the Palestinian Mandate set up a state of Palestine, to be administered by the British until such time as the local population was deemed able to govern itself. Aside from the raw racism of that, it means that the answer to your question:
Who had the power over Palestine's relations, Britain or Palestine?
is, "Yes." You are trying to draw a distinction that did not exist. Britain was the temporary governing authority of the state of Palestine.
"This argument essentially boils down to saying that the Palestinians need to accept the legitimacy of UN GA resolutions, while the Israelis remain very selective about which ones they consider legitimate."
Exactly. Accepting the authority of the UN while your opponent refuses seems like a smart political approach. Especially if you are militarily weaker.
And in fact that has been the approach of the Palestinians for decades now.
Roughly speaking, this is exactly what the Palestinians did in the negotiations in 2000. They accepted the existence of Israel, thus accepting the validity of UN GA Resolution 181.
I don't purport to say what the Palestinians should do. I am laying out the actual history. Whether or not the Palestinians accept 181 or not, that resolution clearly violated the U.N. Charter.
OK. Your argument is quite disciplined.
There aren't ethnicities within the Arab world?
Egypt and Syria said being Arab was what counted and formed the United Arab Republic for a while.
It failed. It turns out there are ethnicities within the Arab world.
"Palestinians who are undifferentiable from other Arabs by ethnicity. " that's 100% false. There has never been a time in history where the bedouins were not clearly a distinct ethnicity. Now while it would be reasonable to say the palestinians were closely related to the syrians, the syrians have never had a difficulty in distinguishing the lebanese from the people of damascas from the Alawites from the assyrians and the chalcedonians.
All this over a blood feud. And how does one conclude such a feud? With blood. Voila !
Who is less terrible does depend on the point in time you're observing. Aside from Iran and maybe a couple of autocrats in the region, everyone's tired of this war and the deaths that have come from it.
Whatever you think of the tribalism of Americans, it is human nature not a strictly American trait. And it's the same tribalism that drives both Israel and Palestine away from pursuing the 2-state solution despite or out of spite of all the deaths.
Either there's a 2-state solution or there are the constant threats of chaos, death, and suffering that comes with a never-ending war. IOW, choose wisely: Choose peace.
Tell that to Hamas.
If you've read my past comments, I've said:
1. I know Israel's response will be to pursue the goal of eliminating Hamas.
2. It is not a pointless endeavor.
3. You cannot convince Israelis otherwise; 10/7 reveled how vulnerable they were.
4. Hamas is not a unitary group; it's made up of factions, some of which do not share the existential goal of eliminating Israel.
5. The only solution is the 2-state solution.
6. Like the IRA/Sinn Fein, at some point, Hamas has to be given the opportunity to reject violence and the goal to eliminate Israel in exchange for a seat in the political table to determine the fate of Palestine.
Thoughts?
I disagree with #2. So long as Israel has no strategy for how to convert a successful operation in Gaza into meaningful progress towards peace, it is a pointless endeavor. That they have no strategy is clear from the fact that they cannot articulate any plan for what happens in Gaza when this is done. They won't occupy it. They won't allow the PA to take control (not that the PA would be likely to oblige them if asked). Beyond that . . . crickets. They have no idea what they are doing. That's a recipe for having killed tens of thousands of civilians in order to accomplish nothing.
Hamas deserves to be destroyed. But Israel doesn't have the capability to actually do so, and the way they are going about it won't make the existing problems any more tractable.
Hasn't the past 20 years shown us that Israel is not into a peaceful solution, but instead wants to "manage" the occupation indefinitely while changing facts on the ground to make a two-state solution impossible?
"mow the lawn" "control the height of the flames" Expanding settlements. The Labor Party barely exists anymore.
A strategy in Gaza requires a deeper change in Israeli society.
BTW I am agreeing with you that trying to eliminate Hamas is a pointless endeavor. Israel is trying to do something that cannot work in the long run. Periodic horrific eruptions will occur unless they decide to pursue peace, Hamas or no Hamas.
Israel cannot ‘eliminate’ Hamas militarily without creating the conditions that will produce the next generation of militant rejectionists. Israelis need to think really hard thoughts, and develop a strategy to undermine Hamas, to remove the conditions on which it feeds. I don’t see how this can be anything less than a land-for-peace deal, perhaps with a graduated path to full sovereignty. I think only an outside party could have enough credibility with the belligerents to get talks restarted and oversee compliance. Somehow the US, Qatar and Egypt apparently worked out the hostage release/exchange. Maybe they can continue in a wider role.
Inherently, producing the next generation of militants means they have to start from nothing or barely anything left, and build up again.
Israel's actions, therefore, buys time. Hence, not a pointless endeavor.
The alternative is, as you note, to undermine Hamas, but that also is generational change. I don't think most people have the patience to endure that kind of timeline. See: climate change.
If Israel manages to follow the path I suggest, it'll be faster to meet the prerequisites for Palestinians and Israelis to talk 2-state solution. If they try to undermine Hamas in other ways, it'll take a while before the 2-state solution comes up again.
The problem is that this excuses Israel for having spent the 56 years of the occupation without coming up with a strategy. You say that this is a generational problem. Well, Israel has already had two generations to work on it. They have manifestly failed to do so.
How long do you plan to give them to come up with a strategy?
‘Buying time’ means dooming your children and grandchildren, and their descendants to being perpetrators or victims of violence. The people on both sides who are perpetuating this conflict are sick.
I don't think the hangup is the lack of a credible party to negotiate. The hangup is that Israel's revealed preference is perpetual conflict.
I don't see why Palestinians would or should accept less than full sovereignty. That point was fudged in Oslo, but it cannot be fudged.
Palestinians feared later would never arrive if a deal leaves full sovereignty for later.
Tell that to the israelis with their complete rejection of the two state solution after Rabin's assassination by a right wing jewish terrorist. Israeli seems to be so proud of their invention of modern terrorism that they refuse to do anything about the jewish terrorists in their midst.
Israel has agreed to a two state solution five times in the past. Arab countries rejected it each time because it meant Israel would exist.
Not true.
Sorry, but you are a liar. The palestinians accepted the two state solution at Oslo. Further, Israel has resolutely rejected the two state solution ever since Rabin was assassinated.
Now, it is true that I don't read every column offered by the estimable Kevin Drum. But I have never seen commenters "Perry" and "Total" before, and here they make up the lion's share of comments.
Just sayin'
What are you "just sayin."?
I think that Perry's comments by and large provided well-stated objections to the anti-Israeli sentiments of many of the usual crowd in a civil manner. I welcome them.
You haven’t been paying attention. I have been around from time to time, for years. I comment mostly on stats and scientific methods, when Drum gets something wrong, such as his discussion of the MS NAEP score improvements and the effect of retention.
This conflict goes back to the late 1800s, when primarily British Zionists and their gentile allies decided to attempt to create a Jewish state in Palestine. The early outreaches to the Ottomans and Palestinian leaders were good-faith but terribly naive inquiries as to whether Israel could effectively be purchased. This got hard NOs all around. The Ottomans were rather tolerant of Jews, and more or less let them migrate into Israel over the decades prior to WWI, in several waves related to various pogroms, usually in Russia. The Jewish population percentage approximately doubled to around ten percent during this era. This fairly rapid rise did start to cause some pushback from the Palestinians, and the Ottomans began tightening land ownership rules, but WWI made this all moot. Up to this point, there was no significant conflict nor any significant wrongs inflicted one way or the other.
What happened after WWI is entirely different: Zionists colonized Palestine under the British flag. The British openly declared it wanted to set up a Jewish state, and Jews began flooding in at rates no people would ever accept immigrants. The Jewish population increased 12x during the three decades of the Mandate, vs a doubling for Muslims, who objected vehemently to the British the entire time. Violence grew, and eventually the British left for both sides to fight it out in the late 40s. Britain and the US strong-armed the fledgling UN into creating Israel over the objections of the Arabs, who had been saying since the early outreaches mentioned above that this would mean war. The creation of Israel was not well-intentioned with respect to the Muslim population of the region, offering neither meaningful protection nor compensation. Of course they rejected the plan. The newborn Israel then proceeded to drive out non-Jews so that Jews would be numerically dominant in the new state, and the fleeing Palestinians enraged the “street” beyond the point where cooler heads could restrain it. Thus the neighboring nations attacked. Insofar as the question of casus belli, both the colonization process and the Nakba easily qualify. You can criticize their decision from a practical ground, but from a moral one, their cause was far more just than many the US has cited as cause for war.
The British openly declared it wanted to set up a Jewish state . . .
Except that they didn't. Both the Balfour Declaration and the Palestinian use the phrase "Jewish National Home." The absence of the word "state" was deliberate. If you read the text of the Palestinian Mandate, it's clear that it envisions Jewish immigrants joining a unitary and multiethnic state. Article 7 explicitly says that the governing authority (the British) are to ensure that Jewish immigrants gain "Palestinian citizenship." (This is, by the way, one of the ways in which those who claim that there has never been a Palestinian state are wrong. Mandatory Palestine was intended to be a state, otherwise there wouldn't have been anything for immigrants to be citizens of.)
Of course, the British never took any of the obligations the Mandate put on them seriously.
TheMelancholyDonkey I appreciate your presence in this comments thread. You clearly have a point of view, but your comments remain calm and factual and as far as I can judge learned.
Ogemaniac, I'm curious. What would you consider a just solution now?
The problem is that there really isn't a just solution at this point.
OK, least unjust.
That's not really for me to say. It would involve choosing what the Palestinians and the Israelis think are most important. I try to restrict myself to what is possible, without stating what is desirable. The involved parties will have to decide what things among those that are possible they think justice requires.
This is, for what it's worth, one reason why I spend the vast majority of my time on these threads looking at Israeli policy. Because they hold a disproportionate amount of the power, they have a disproportionate ability to set the boundaries of what is possible. My fuller views are that both sides are hopelessly intransigent and neither are prepared to make the concessions necessary for peace.
The other reason is that I think the Palestinians have a better understanding of the history of this conflict than do the Israelis. As I've said, that doesn't mean that I think Israel should be destroyed, but it does mean that the Israelis have a lot farther to go in understanding the grievances that motivate the Palestinians than the other way around.
"Because they (Israel) hold a disproportionate amount of the power, they have a disproportionate ability to set the boundaries of what is possible."
Plus on that.
"The Ottomans were rather tolerant of Jews, and more or less let them migrate into Israel over the decades prior to WWI, in several waves related to various pogroms, usually in Russia." Actually it was always illegal under the Ottomans for zionists to emigrate to palestine. The ottomans were notroiously bad at enforcing their laws. (And note it wasn;t til 1885 that americans even though immigration law could exist. And they justified it originally by the foreign trade clause of the constitution and thus only applied to immigration from the old world..
Since the early 80’s Israeli policy has been to remove Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. They arbitrarily have seized land for “settlers” (colonists); walled in Gaza and have ruled the Palestinians with a form of apartheid with periodic incursions, killings and incarcerations.
On the other side Hamas, with Iranian support, have refused to accept Israel’s existence and periodically most recently, last month, have committed atrocities of their own.
Our evangelicals could care less about Jews except to fulfill their strange biblical prophesies (straight from some ancient source) hoping that the Jews presence in Israel will assure their assent to someplace when the world ends. And yes this ridiculous fairy tale is the belief of our Speaker of the House and apparently millions of Trump supporting evangelicals.
And so we have the yet another religious based war with both side claiming righteousness as they kill one another. Neither one is on the side of the angels. It’s both Ironic and stupid.
Not sure that 70CE really qualifies as ancient. The alleged prophesy is that the 2nd coming will be proceeded by the destruction of israel by what they assumed was the soviet union and the annihilation of the jewish race.
When a democratic country that respects the freedom and rights of its citizens (Jews, Christians, Muslims, and non-religious) is warring with groups that are consistently led by authoritarians and accompanied by terrorist attacks – the choice for who to support is easy for me. My view is consistent with the policies of the US federal government for many decades. And it’s been bi-partisan and still is. The implication of this is that Israel is the less bad one of the two groups.
There are no democracies in Muslim countries in the Middle East. Maybe there will be some day, but so far the cultures of these countries have not found a path to real elections or respecting even basic human rights. So far Palestinians have also shown themselves to be not capable of maintaining a democracy and the protection of rights that comes with this. There was some hope after elections starting in 1996 and in the early 2000s, but then Palestinians foolishly voted for Hamas to rule them and poisoned hope for democracy. And they greatly harmed the prospects for peace with Israel.
If the civilian/military leaders of the Palestinian territories, and the Palestinian people, had shown themselves to be democratically-minded and peace loving, instead of authoritarian-minded and tolerant of terrorism, then things could be different. They would likely have a two-state solution by now. We admire MLK for how he led a nonviolent movement to seek political goals. Unfortunately, way too often the Palestinian approach is the opposite.
I’ll just add that the comments above don’t excuse things that Israel has done wrong such as expanding settlements in the West Bank.
But you are excusing Israel for the deliberate policies it adopted to block a two-state solution. Netanyahu and Likud incentivized the extremist Hamas by withdrawing settlements and troops from Gaza; and they undermined the moderating Fatah/PLO by continuing settlement in the West Bank, conducting raids there, and annexing East Jerusalem. The intent was to divide Palestinians so they could claim that there was no one to negotiate with, who could speak for all Palestinians. By rewarding extremism and punishing moderation, they got more extremism. No psychologist is surprised. Israel has not ‘done wrong things’ simply as error, but as policy to avoid the only real path to peace.
As much as I loathe Netanyahu and his coalition, they mostly just made explicit what has been Israeli policy since 1967.
"No psychologist is surprised"
Nicely put.
I’m a psychologist. 🙂
I guess I don't buy that the Palestinian failure to continue with real elections, and maintaining a real democracy, was due mainly to nefarious actions by the Israeli government. Starting with the elections in 1996 things were going okay on the path to democracy, until Palestinians voted for Hamas to rule them and poisoned hopes for further development of democracy and the rule of law. It was Fatah that then refused to let Hamas take power in the West Bank and Gaza. There was then a bit of a violent war between Hamas and Fatah which resulted in Hamas taking over Gaza. Fatah then refused to hold elections again in the West Bank out of fear Hamas might again win. Thus, both Gaza and the West Bank became authoritarian.
Perhaps a lot of what you say for Israeli actions has harmed the thinking of Palestinians. Even if that is true, in the end Palestinians themselves have to take responsibility for how they organize themselves and interact with the government of Israel. They have to overcome whatever cultural harm Israel may have caused them. Otherwise it is all hopeless, and there is no path to a two-state solution.
The Israelis actively assisted Fatah in the coup to prevent Hamas from taking power, with both intelligence and logistical support. Since then, they have provided the subsidies that they are required to send to the PA (or, at least some of them) exclusively to Fatah. They share intelligence with Fatah about Fatah's political opponents. They refuse to negotiate with anyone but Fatah. They ensure that no one but Fatah has the resources and organization that would be needed to hold elections.
Your persistence in proclaiming the lack of elections to be a failure of the Palestinian populace betrays a lack of understanding about who has the power in the occupied territories.
Israelis assisted Fatah in keeping Hamas from coming to power because Hamas seeks the destruction of Israel. Regardless of this though, Fatah agreed to block Hamas from taking power. I don't get it that so many people make out Palestinians and their leaders to be completely powerless. It was the Palestinian people who voted for Hamas. It was Hamas who has for decades declared its goal to destroy Israel. It was Fatah that wanted to block Hamas from taking power (even if Israel helped them). It is Fatah today who refuses to hold elections. These people have agency. They are not robots under Israeli control.
There has been a Palestinian Nonviolent Movement, which could be incredibly powerful, but Palestinian-associated terrorism completely overshadows these efforts. It's not that there aren't smart and wise Palestinians who want to do the right things. It is just that there are so many others who don't want that.
MLK led a nonviolent movement in the US, and the moral authority of that has been ringing through history. They managed to organize themselves and stick to principles in the face of aggressive oppression. MLK also smartly proclaimed the moral high ground by making the case clearly that his side was the one that abided by the proclaimed core principles of the US as a nation. Palestinians should be doing the same in the Israel/Palestine context.
It was the Palestinian people who voted for Hamas.
An explanation for why a plurality of Palestinians voted for Hamas is long. It didn't really have to do with Hamas's position on Israel. Talking to Palestinians, and polling them, prior to the 2006 elections, made it clear that a significant majority of Palestinians, including those who voted for Hamas, disagreed with Hamas's position on the destruction of Israel. They wanted whoever they elected to negotiate with the Israelis, and accepted Israel's existence.
The reason more Palestinians voted for Hamas was almost entirely that they really hated Fatah, for good reasons. Fatah was corrupt, stealing the money and resources that were supposed to fund the state. (In this regard, Hamas is corrupt, but has never been as corrupt as Fatah.) They considered Fatah to be complicit in the occupation, acting as Israel's enforcers in the Occupied Territories. They considered Fatah to be authoritarian and guilty of crushing dissent.
The fact that the Americans and the Israelis made it clear before the election that Hamas was unacceptable helped Hamas at the polls. Like it or not, Palestinians have considered that they are at war with the Israelis for a long time. As such, the Israelis saying that the Palestinians should vote for Fatah was a kiss of death. You'll have to decide for yourself whether or not Israel did this deliberately to weaken Fatah and avoid the election of a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people that they might have to negotiate with seriously.
It is Fatah today who refuses to hold elections. These people have agency. They are not robots under Israeli control.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. Are you saying that Fatah has agency? If so, sure. They just aren't agents of anything useful.
There has been a Palestinian Nonviolent Movement, which could be incredibly powerful, but Palestinian-associated terrorism completely overshadows these efforts.
I am skeptical that they could be all that powerful. Perhaps, if the Israelis hadn't refused to negotiate a peace with those who lived in Gaza and the West Bank starting in 1967, this would be so. But they didn't, and so that opportunity was missed.
Your last paragraph is hopelessly incomplete. Martin Luther King was successful in a very specific environment. For one, there was also a wing of Black resistance that eschewed nonviolence and provided a counterpoint to what might happen if those in power ignored King. It also depended upon the fact that what we generally think of as the civil rights movement targeted a specific region of the United States and could generate support from other parts of the country that thought of the South as backwards and appalling. The movement became far less effective when it started protesting racism in northern states.
Palestinians have never benefitted from popular support in Israel in anything like the numbers that the civil rights movement did in America. It's important to remember that there was no LBJ of Israel. Every Israeli government since 1967 has annexed territory and subjected Palestinians to military law. The Israeli government was as complicit in marginalizing Palestinian moderates as was the PLO.
ProgressOne
The PA structure only makes sense as an interim arrangement while a peace process negotiates a solution. Take away the peace process and you get a quisling government. Quisling governments are never respected and always corrupt.
So you support the side that is keeping millions of people stateless, because they are nicer to the people, mostly people like themselves, that they do not keep stateless?
I don't know if you consider yourself a liberal. But seriously can anyone imagine liberals today taking this view about any other country than Israel?
"So you support the side that is keeping millions of people stateless, because they are nicer to the people, mostly people like themselves, that they do not keep stateless?"
Good response.
I hate arguments that deny human rights to whole groups (in this case apparently all Arabs) because those groups 'just can't govern themselves decently'. It smacks of the 19th century 'white man's burden' thinking that justified colonization.
Trump might get elected. Democracy in America is in peril. I hate to think that if that happens by some transitive property I lose human rights. Self-government is hard, some countries pull it off better than others.
Enforcing religious and ethnic homogeneity makes decent self-government easier, I accept Israel is and will remain an ethno-nationalist state.
But a decent state, a "democratic" state, is 100% responsible for ensuring civil and legal rights for all people who reside within territory they control.
In the case of Israel that means either give citizenship and full rights to all people in greater Israel, or negotiate a two-state solution giving full sovereignty to a separate state.
Note: This is in practice impossible unless Israel abandons West Bank settlements. Settlements they should not have taken in the first place.
But a decent state, a "democratic" state, is 100% responsible for ensuring civil and legal rights for all people who reside within territory they control.
This is, perhaps, a more important point than you realize. When one asks whether or not Gaza is a state, the answer is generally whatever is more convenient for Israel in the moment.
If Gaza is a state, then actions against it are clearly of the character of a war between states. That comes with a number of legal obligations that Israel does not observe. Gaza, or the Palestinian entity as a whole, should have full representation in the United Nations, rather than the non-voting observer that they actually have.
On the other hand, if Gaza is not a state, then its inhabitants remain subjects of Israel. This would mean that the state of Israel has the same legal obligation to protect its Palestinian subjects in Gaza as it does to protect its citizens in Tel Aviv. They are manifestly not fulfilling such an obligation. If Gaza is not a state, then the Israel operation in Gaza isn't much different than Bashar al-Assad's campaign against Syrian rebels.
I don't think Gaza is state under any reasonable definition.
It was occupied territory until the occupier left refused to hand over the keys.
I'm not sure what word to use but "state" isn't one of them.
HRW calls it an open air prison. That seems not quite right, yet I have trouble doing better.
I agree with you on this. I think that it is clear that Gaza does not meet the standards of being a state. Neither does the West Bank, nor the two together. Aside from not controlling its own borders, Israel declared when it withdrew the settlements in 2005 that a significant chunk of Gaza, including a third of the arable land, was off limits to the population and that they would shoot anyone who entered it. Despite signed agreements that Gaza's territorial waters extend 20 miles from its coast, the Israeli navy prevents Gazans from fishing in much of that space; over the last 18 years, that limit has varied from 3 miles to 12 miles, effectively destroying the Gazan fishing industry.
So, I share the feeling that Gaza remains under Israeli sovereignty. The Israelis fail in their legal obligations to their subjects.
Did the British succeed in their legal obligations to their subjects in mandatory Palestine?
No, they did not. Not even close.
"just can't govern themselves decently"
What I wrote is that "so far the cultures of these countries have not found a path to real elections or respecting even basic human rights". I didn't say it could never happen, just that so far they have not found a way. I'll note that Indonesia is majority Muslim and democratic.
"In the case of Israel that means either give citizenship and full rights to all people in greater Israel, or negotiate a two-state solution giving full sovereignty to a separate state."
Okay, but who does Israel negotiate with? Hamas since they were the rulers of Gaza? Fatah who has refused to hold elections for 15 years? Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank have ruled as authoritarians who deny rights to their people. There are no legitimate leaders of the Palestinian people. So how does the peace process even start?
Israel is negotiating with Saudi Arabia. Who elected MBS?
“You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.”
― Yitzhak Rabin
Ideally, to negotiate peace and a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians you need to have Palestinian leaders with the backing of Palestinian voters. If you say that is not needed, and negotiating with authoritarian leaders among Palestinians is adequate, then what kind of state can be expected for the new state of Palestine? Authoritarian states have no checks and balances, no transparency, and are filled with corruption. How could such a state be expected to be at peace with Israel and for terrorism to fade away? It seems the same draconian border barriers Israel has in place today would remain.
But I'll concede that it's possible that Israel could negotiate with the leaders of Fatah, and the Palestinian people may accept the outcome. But this still leaves the problem that the new state of Palestine may be authoritarian, hostile to Israel, and remain a breeding ground for terrorism. Consider that for years Muslim children between the first and ninth grades sometimes get schoolbooks saying to kill Israelis, and sacrifice themselves as martyrs to drive the Jews out of the country, is noble. Any new state of Palestine would likely need decades to undo this kind of thinking.
Ideally, to negotiate peace and a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians you need to have Palestinian leaders with the backing of Palestinian voters.
This is it. After this, I'm done pointing out that it is the Israelis who have chosen to negotiate with people who do not have the backing of the Palestinian population. They are the ones who have used financial and material resources to maintain Fatah in power. They do not do this despite Fatah not holding elections; they do so because Fatah doesn't hold elections. If Israel wanted to negotiate with genuine representatives of the Palestinian population, they have had 56 years to create the conditions to do so. They have categorically refused such options.
You keep responding with the exact same arguments, without any recognition of the replies you have received. I have reached the point of concluding that you just aren't arguing in good faith. You're just a troll.
Ideally, fine, but political reality in the region is far from ideal. Israel has concluded peace agreements with Egypt (hardly a model democracy) and Jordan (a monarchy). The Palestinian people must accede to the terms negotiated, but that could take many different forms.
I support a two-state solution. I just don't see a path to it any time soon.
Hamas has ruled Gaza as an authoritarian regime while also planning a huge terrorist attack against Israel. How does Israel seek peace with them?
Regarding the West Bank, yes it is wrong of Israel to be building more and more settlements. But also Fatah won't hold elections. The Palestinian Authority is an authoritarian regime that has not held elections in over 15 years. It has been criticized for human rights abuses, including cracking down on journalists, human rights activists, and dissent against its rule. So they are hard to seek peace with too. How are they legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people as a whole?
So how do you seek peace with groups of people who operate completely dysfunctionally? I have wondered if an outside body, like the UN, could impose a democratic government on the West Bank and Gaza until they can rule themselves, and then the peace process can restart. But that sounds pie in the sky. Thus, sadly, I see no solution until the Palestinians get their act together.
The true block to a two -state solution is an Israel uninterested in peace and continually expanding settlements.
"When a democratic country that respects the freedom and rights of its citizens"
There is the rub. Enshrined in Israeli law is a worldwide right of return for Jews, who are eligible for citizenship.
At the same time Paestinian Arabs have no right to return, even if they can prove they lived within Israel for generations.
They carefully deny citizenship to some and offer it to others with a far more distant claim to the land.
Israel respects the freedom and right of its citizens. Bu it does discriminate against non-Jews who want to immigrate. Right or wrong, this is a core concept from the founding of Israel to assure it remains a Jewish-controlled state. It is Zionism.
Bu it does discriminate against non-Jews who want to immigrate.
This is not the only way in which Israel discriminates, either de facto or de jure against non-Jews. About 80% of the land in Israel is owned by three quasi-governmental organizations, one of which explicitly refuses to lease land to non-Jews, and the other two make it difficult. Arab citizens of Israel have a much harder time getting construction and business permits. Government subsidies are handed out according to formulas that consistently leave Arab communities receiving less money than Jewish communities; this is especially true when one considers the subsidies lavished upon the haredim.
This is why having a state defined by ethnicity, including Zionism, is inherently problematic.
Yes. And small cities have a veto before an Israeli Arab can move in.
Careful but unconvincing wording. War refugees are not immigrants. They are displaced civilians wanting to go back to where they came from.
"When a democratic country that respects the freedom and rights of its citizens (Jews, Christians, Muslims, and non-religious) " sorry, but you are an evil liar.
"There are no democracies in Muslim countries in the Middle East." Every time one has been set up the US government has assisted in it's overthrow. See Iran in the 50s and Egypt just a few years ago.
The instincts of humans involved in objective judgement are very weak. Tribal instincts are very strong - they cause people to sacrifice their lives for the tribe, nation or other group when strongly activated. Tribal loyalty overrides judgement for most people. And even if there are no major distinctions within a large group of people, they tend to form rival sub-tribes often on trivial matters. This has been shown by experiment. How many people at football or other games aren't rooting for one team or another?
In other words, taking sides is more natural than thinking. And when there are obvious perceived differences of "race" and religion most people are just going to take sides no matter what the facts.
How about starting the clock in 750 BCE, when a place called "Israel" first appeared in the historical record. Doesn't that make Jews the "indigenous people" of the Levant? And weren't they the first to be "colonized"?
I strongly advocate that we cut diplomatic ties and impose the harshest economic sanctions on the Roman Empire for their policy of ethnic cleansing.
Canaan existed before Israel.
No that makes the samaritans (who still exist and are the actual descendants of the kingdom of israel, the indigenous people.
Ugh. The comments here do tend to prove Kevin’s point. As someone whose adult life started not long before 2001, I can say that Israel has certainly seemed like a very bad regional citizen at best, retreating into disingenuous victimhood* whenever they’ve been under political pressure. My glib take has always been that Israel looked into the abyss and eventually the abyss looked back. My sincere moralistic take is that a more powerful state, or at least one that claims to be advanced, should always employ restraint and precision in their conflicts.
Whatever one thinks of Palestine— and I’m as subject to distaste for Arab social/political culture as most westerners— the current situation is untenable and cannot ever be resolved on the terms Israel demands without genocide. And while young adults in my own family are much more pro-Palestine than I am, it’s because we taught them (correctly) that bullying is wrong. Two states at constant war would be preferable to ongoing subjugation and terrorist pushback.
*my mom was an army brat whose father did three postwar tours of Germany during her childhood, and I knew about her visit to Dachau before most peers knew about the war. She also undermined local southern Baptist prejudices about Judaism as far back as I can remember. If you’re going to see victims as fully human, you have to allow that they’re subject to all common human failings.
latts---You weren't kidding about glib.
"Disingenuous victimhood whenever they've been under political pressure"?----Political pressure? Ignore the missiles and the stream of suicide bombings? Restraint is a charming concept... from across an ocean.
"Bullying is wrong?" Dig deeper. And "two states at constant war is preferable..." In what way?
Okay, try “live by the sword, die by the sword.” Less glib? It still means that people become what they hate after enough time.
Israel, in the eyes of plenty of younger people, is enthusiastically pounding the crap out of a weaker people to assert their dominance. The strong abusing the weak is bullying, even if the weak are deeply unpleasant themselves.
In any case, you don’t beat terrorism out of a culture; you undermine and outmaneuver it. Every pile of rubble full of civilian bodies is a recruitment center for Hamas, because that’s how humans operate. Hamas is deeply shitty, but until last month they gave Likud less real trouble than the PA, I suppose.
Is Israel pounding the crap out of weaker people to assert their dominance?
They are dominant. They are oppressing the Palestinians because they can. Israel is nice (I've been there) and occupied Palestine is not so nice (I've been there too).
Israelis aren't dominating for psychic reward, they are domination because they want the land.
In Israeli the attitude I got from (educated, secular) Israelis is that they are "so done" with Palestinians. They just don't want to deal with them. They are tired of discussing of human rights. They just don't care anymore.
As far as Gazan terrorism goes an aphorism from a friend comes to mind:
Absolute powerlessness corrupts, and absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely.
"WASHINGTON — In a stunning departure from its policy over the last eight years, the Obama administration abstained from voting on a United Nations Security Council resolution Friday that demands an immediate halt to all Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, enabling the measure to pass."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/choosing-not-to-veto-obama-lets-anti-settlement-resolution-pass-at-un-security-council/#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20%E2%80%94%20In%20a%20stunning%20departure,enabling%20the%20measure%20to%20pass.
Retreating into disingenuous victimhood well describes Israel's response. Obama, shocked by the emerging geographic impossibility of any two-state solution, abstains, and all hell broke loose. Netanyahu announces new settlements while Biden was in Israel as vice president. Obama never touched that electrified rail again.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-map-of-israeli-settlements-that-shocked-barack-obama
And yet. And yet. Ongoing West Bank settlements are wrong. Not just as population displacement but because they make a humane solution impossible.
There are a lot of pro-Israel commenters here. None that I have seen actually defend the settlements, there is a lot of deflection going on.
Well, two states at constant war should mean that more of the casualties would be wearing uniforms, relatively fewer would be civilians. States will find that other nations and the UN expect them to allow Red Cross/Red Crescent access, observe the Geneva Conventions, and generally behave better.
"In what way" It doesn;t dehumanize both peoples. Israel is clearly on the path to genocide at the moment.
latts. I appreciate your thoughts. I'm not sure about the ugh, a lot of good comments here, yours included.
I should note that when I decided to say something there were only about sixty comments, most of which were angrily citing some perfidy on one side or the other. Hence the “ugh.”
The addendum shows the same blind spot as the original post. In 1948 the 1/3 of the population that was Jewish was given 60% of the land by a colonial power that had enabled them to get up to that 1/3 of the population. Even then they could only become a Jewish democracy by ethnically cleaning some 700,000 Palestinians from that 60%. If you start with the fact that Israel was entitled to be created as a Jewish state on territory on which Jews were the not the majority, then of course the Arabs look like the bad guys (although the switch from Palestinians to Arabs is more of that Israeli version of events). Would a liberal do that with any other situation?
But seriously can one actually take the period from 1993, or 2001, and say its a close call whether the endless occupation, usurping of land under occupation, crippling blockades, working to end the possibility of peace is worse than the terrorism in response to those things? Seriously.
Here is just one more thing that gets at how disgusting Israel has been in that time. The population that Israel controls is about half Palestinian and half Jewish. The territory that the Palestinians would get if Israel simply abided by international law and gave up the territory it took in war is about 22% of that territory. (Strictly speaking about 20% of the Palestinians would stay in the Israeli side since they are Israeli citizens, but millions of Palestinians currently living in refugee camps since their ancestors were chased from Israel would likely wind up on the Palestinian side, so it is likely that the population in the two states would be about equal).
It is easy to imagine that the problem in the negotiations has been that the Palestinians want more than 22% of the territory for their 50% of the population. In reality the biggest stumbling block in 2000 and the only stumbling block in 2008 is that Israel wants more than 78% for its 50% of the population. It is just taken for granted that the Palestinians should settle for less than a quarter of the territory, which ok given the history. But it is somewhat mindblowing that the problem is that Israel refuses to settle for 78%. Remember at the point that Drum wants to start the clock they had 33% of the population. And they have been unable to achieve peace since because they are not satisfied with 78% of the territory.
Drum's idea of the Israelis as the less blameworthy party really is a simpleminded take on the situation.
It is hard to balance bestial war crimes against slow and steady bureaucratically controlled oppression.
It is clear to you that denying millions basic rights for years, (such as local travel) outweighs murdering and torturing relatively small numbers of people, but on this point people of goodwill differ. I think this is why Kevin Drum is more sympathetic to Israel than you are. Heinous Palestinian acts affect fewer people as severely as people can be wronged, in a manner designed to shock the conscience. Israel grinds millions down over years, content to sustain the oppression indefinitely.
I'm an engineer, numbers matter to me. About one in 2800 Israelis died in 10/7 and the 2nd intifada combined. Would I choose living in a police state for the rest of my life or taking a 1 in 2800 chance of being tortured to death? I personally would take the 1:2800 odds. But I'm a cold fish who within weeks of 9/11 was mostly dreading just how far our over-reaction would go.
BTW about 1:200 Gazans have died since 10/27.
That is a strange argument since, as you seem to acknowledge at the end, the Israelis have killed many more Palestinians than the other way around. And, of course, what is different this time around compared with previous conflicts is that the difference in civilian deaths is on the order of 10-1 instead of 100-1.
In every colonial conflict, the occupied people resort to the only tools available to them, and the colonial power uses this to claim that they are savages, while killing many times more of those "savages" albeit in a civilized way. The situation in Israel is not exactly like a colonial conflict in that the Israelis do not represent a country somewhere else. But its structure is similar. And the chances that Drum would reach the same conclusion in any other similar conflict is about zero.
The other thing that you ignore is that all of the actions that Israel does to prevent a two state solution are not defensive measures. They are measures that put their citizens at greater risk. That is Israel is willing to have a few more of its citizens die if it will help them not give up territory taken in war. Defenders pretend that the abusive actions that Israel has taken come from a need for security. But in reality the safer Israel has been the harder it has worked to make sure that peace is not foisted on it.
There really is no measure, other than caring more about Israelis than Palestinians that makes the post 2001 blame comparable.
The argument is that numbers count, and atrociousness also counts. Decent people differ on how they balance the two.
" taking a 1 in 2800 chance of being tortured to death? " Almost none of your 1/2800 were tortured to death. You also ignore the routine murder and torture of the Palestinians at the hands of Israelis. (And rape by Jews of Palestinian women was extremely common in 1948,)
What’s interesting to me is the extent to which this is destroying the Democratic Party in the US. Many have understood for a while that likud and all the orthodox parties in Israel love trump and all he stands for. They are a true enemy to liberals. But the Palestinians have hamas and hezhollah and any number of other lunatics in their midst. And they would continue to exist even if all the Jews in Israel picked up and moved away. The rise of ISIS, the Syrian civil war, and the collapse of Lebanon all demonstrate the inherent flaws in the Arab / Muslim societies. They are mostly incompetent and corrupt. If it weren’t for the oil, they would be like Sudan and Somalia etc.
So Mr.Drum is right. There is nothing to be gained by advocating for either side. And the US Democratic Party is going to pay a price for doing so. Oh well. It’s good to know where everyone stands.
Good post. In some ways, this is heavily on Netanyahu. He is heavily behind the settler policies that offend so many who were pro-Israel (including myself). And his blatant interventions in US electoral politics (supporting Trump) was offensive and insulting to Dems, turning support for Israel into a partisan issue in the US when previously there had been a fairly bi-partisan pro-Israeli consensus. Dude has a lot to answer for.
Netanyahu certainly left me without any sympathy for Israel too. But there is (or was) a liberal faction there worth supporting. I suspect it’s gone for a bit.
In the US, this is probably bad for Democrats. I wonder if this might finally split off the so called progressives. They really are their own party with their own agenda. Perhaps this coalition will break up now. Lots of people will blame them if they stay home and trump wins. I know I will.
I am not so worried about THIS being the straw that finally splits the Dems. I am confident (or maybe just hopeful?) that as passionate as people feel about this now, it will fall in importance with time and we will be on to some other issue soon enough.
In the longer term I am worried about the fight for control between the progressives and "normie" Dems (like me). As long as Biden and the Congressional establishment like Schumer and Jeffries are in place, the normies should prevail. But still, these guys (esp Biden) won't last forever, and time is not on the normies' side. I fear that if the Progs take control, us Dems will become a semi-permanent minority party at a time when the "normie" GOP is pretty much gone...
"But there is (or was) a liberal faction there worth supporting. I suspect it’s gone for a bit."
Likud has 32 seats in the Knesset. Labor has 4.
The ‘progressives’ who would split from the party are a tiny fraction which would soon sink out of sight. The large majority of progressive Democrats aren’t going anywhere.
It is not a surprise that this is splitting the Democratic party. The principles of the Democratic party do not support the kind of colonialism of declaring the locals savages and using it to justify keeping them under occupation. But an older generation of Democrats grew up with the stories of Israel as a noble endeavor to save the Jews, and so support behavior by Israel that would make any other state a pariah. And so you get a split.
There is no similar split in the Republican party because hating Muslims, supporting Biblical people, and not caring about human rights all leads to support for Israel.
In fairness to oldies (like me). Our attitude to Israel was formed before Benny Morris exploded Israeli foundation myths. Israel was attacked in 1967 and 1973 by bigger neighbors. The oppression is more recent. I ad that 20 years ago you could travel freely between the West Bank and Israel. (It took time for Israel to install the full machinery of oppression). Finally, there was a sincere peace process.
It is hard to let all that go. It was for me. But Netanyahu is really good at dispelling illusions.
You are right, of course, but it just reflects the degree to which we have always gotten the story from the Israeli side. After all even before the Israeli new historians the Palestinians did not accept the idea that they were the bad guys. We just didn't care.
I was raised with the same stories you were.
Yes, we have always gotten the story from the Israeli side.
How about dropping military aid to Israel until they meet international human rights standards? Does that count as taking a side or bowing out?
This discussion in the NY Times Magazine lays out the long attempt at peace of the 1980s - 2000s in the Oslo process, and what went wrong. Very helpful in understanding how difficult it will be to resolve this ongoing crisis.
I think this is a gift link.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/20/magazine/israel-gaza-oslo-accords.html?unlocked_article_code=1.BU0.naEs.ZwI_hYyox8pT&smid=url-share
Yes. Maybe the best single article I have seen for those who need to brush up or weren't there at the time. Terrific.
This is a lively discussion, even if I don't agree with a large chunk of it.
I think that Kevin is right that both sides have behaved horribly (albeit in very different ways). If the past awful action of your opponent justifies your next awful action, then this endless "cycle of violence" never ends. Like many, I feel powerless to influence this tragic situation. Many on both sides (50-60% perhaps) chose the battle rather than trying to seek a peaceful resolution of the conflict. But many on both sides are courageous activists who sincerely work hard toward a peaceful solution. Many on both sides, including children, are innocent victims of terrorist attacks or military actions and suffer terribly from the lack of leadership. It is too easy to think that we should wash our hands of this conflict. To think that this regrettable conflict is none of our business, too bad for them. Well, I don't feel indifferent when humans suffer, wherever this happens on the planet. These people deserve our empathy and our help. If we are to take side, then let's take side for the humans. Even if we were to do this only out of self interest, we should try to do what we can to bring this conflict to a peaceful resolution because it poisons the middle east and is a source of so many bad outcomes.
I agree. The US unfortunately sides with Israel, Israel receives more military aid than any other country.
A simple domestic policy to vote on: No more aid unless West Bank settlements are stopped and reversed. At least then we aren't complicit in making the problem worse.
Obama had the harshest "no settlement" policy during his Presidency, and Bibi was invited by the House Republican to go do a campaign speed in the Capitol.
"Israel receives more military aid than any other country." And the recipient of the traditional 2nd largest recipient, Egypt receives their's solely as a bribe to help Israel.
Some different Islamic flags that might appear mysteriously similar at a glance,
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/12/islamic-isis-flags-black-banners-hamas/
US made fighter jets have never been seen firing missiles at apartment blocks in Tel Aviv or any other Israeli city. US made fighter jets fire missiles into apartment blocks in Gaza, the West Bank, Beirut. The accounting of the dead from US made fighter jets flown by the IDF overwhelms any other metric, as does the amount of weapons the US has provided to Israel.
Kevin's feeling that Palestinians were worse until 2001 and then it was the Israelis is, I think, just a perception issue. Israel for long had a HUGE positive press advantage plus opinion-shaping authors like Leon Uris. The Nakba was hardly noticed in the West compared to the attention it would receive today.
But I think it's also wrong because Israel itself delegitimized the PLO and Fatah and helped make Hamas strong, so it can't blame ONLY the Palestinians for it. Which brings me to my pet peeve: if Israel wanted a negotiating partner it would free Marwan Barghouti.
I don't know about Marwan Barghouti, but Israel shows no sign they want a negotiating partner.
This is interesting…
“Three top Palestinian college students were shot Saturday while walking to a family dinner in Vermont — the victims of a horrific bias attack, according to Palestinian and Arab-American officials.
All three men, including Harvard and Brown University students, were wearing traditional Keffiyeh scarves when they were wounded…”
It’s amazing to me that to many people outside the west, Israel now seems to represent the thinking of Europe and the US. This can’t be good.
I think it somewhat meaningless to re-litigate the past...claims upon that land belong to three religions and many ethnic groups. To whom does the land belong? Is it modern Israel's fault that Great Britain decided to establish a Jewish homeland there? Nobody that did that is even alive now. It is much like re-litigating the horrible behavior of the American settlers in taking the United States from the depopulated native civilizations here. How does it help?
So assuming Israel is not going anywhere: What would the U.S. do in this situation? If Los Angeles was re-settled by Mexicans, and their terrorist leaders were to declare in their charter that the U.S. should be destroyed, what would the U.S. military do in this situation? The ATF or FBI?
I think we all know the answer to that question.
"what would the U.S. military do in this situation? The ATF or FBI?"
Neither, I presume, since neither is under its direction. But let me guess that neither the US Air Force nor the ATF would bomb L.A. to smithereens.
But I agree it's meaningless to re-litigate the past at this stage. The way forward is what counts and to that end Palestinians must be allowed to choose their own leaders because what they got is a mess, "elected" 17 years ago. And not even legit then, which is why Hamas took control of Gaza through violence - against the PLO.
The analogy with Mexico is flawed, because the U.S. has not imposed a military occupation on millions of Mexicans for a half century, denying them citizenship.
I will stipulate that Jewish Israelis are not going to leave voluntarily, if you will stipulate also that Palestinians are not going to leave voluntarily. That means that both must accept either perpetual conflict, or they must accept that they will have to share the land between the river and the sea as one state or two. (I assume that genocide or ethnic cleansing would be unacceptable to the world community.)
I generally refuse to entertain hypotheticals; yours will not be an exception.
"(I assume that genocide or ethnic cleansing would be unacceptable to the world community.)" It is clear that Israel no longer makes that assumption, or if it does, they think they can weather world opinion.
The main difference between the two, from where I sit, is that we heavily bankroll Israel. Israel's misdeeds are our misdeeds.
And -- while it seems to be going out of fashion in many quarters -- I think you should see to your own house before you start criticizing others.
235 comments!
Conspicuously missing from the pro-Israeli posters is a defense of West Bank settlements, or even some argument they don't matter much.
Come on pro-Israeli posters! Let's hear an argument that settlements don't in practice foreclose a two-state solution. We could replace Abbas and Netanyahu with Mandela and Gandhi and it wouldn't matter, there is no longer any deal to be had.
It's utterly ridiculous to start your arab/jewish history in 1948. This allows israel to whitewash from history their invention of modern terrorism. An honest person would begin the clock from some point between 1900 and 1920. This begining point also makes clear that there isn't really an inherent reason to claim israel has a right to exist. The UN is correct in stating that the belief that the solution to more than a millenia of european bigotry/prejudice/mistreatment of jews was to give them a piece of asia without regard to the people already living there was extreme racism.