To a lot of oldsters like me, the depth and extremity of campus support for the Palestinian cause—and its attendant hatred of Israel—can be inexplicable. But it's not that hard to understand. If you were born after 1990 or so, your experience of Israel and the Palestinians is not 75 years old, with everything that implies. Rather, it's been molded exclusively over the past two decades—a period that's seen very little Palestinian aggression. That means young people have experienced what, from their view, looks like a fathomless, unprompted, and wanton persecution of Palestinians by a powerful and ruthless Israeli state that is allowed by the US to treat an oppressed minority however it wants.
Here's what they see:
A West Bank under rigid military rule that administers one justice system for Israelis and a different, far harsher one, for Palestinians. Roadblocks, travel restrictions, segregation, checkpoints, Israeli-only roads, and countless other indignities of daily life. Censorship and long lists of banned books. Restrictions on visitors. Military tribunals that imprison thousands of Palestinians on specious grounds, including hundreds held in "administrative detention" without even the charade of a trial. Construction of a 400-mile prison wall manned by military guards who shoot anyone (on the Palestinian side) who gets too close.
Steady carving up of the West Bank that splinters Palestinian territory into Swiss cheese and makes a mockery of any future Palestinian state. Military raids against Palestinian towns. Extremist outposts that are tacitly supported even though they're illegal even under Israeli law. Settler violence against Palestinians that's rarely punished. Routine land seizures from Palestinian enclaves.
Demolition of homes and eviction of Arabs living in East Jerusalem. A blockade of Gaza that restricts water, fuel, food, and medicine from its residents. Deliberate policies that keep Palestinians in grinding poverty.
And in Benjamin Netanyahu, a leader who treated Barack Obama with open contempt and is actively opposed to any kind of two-state solution. Then, following October 7, prosecution of a ruthless war that has indiscriminately killed at least ten times more Gazans than Israelis. And a barbarous squeezing of the Gaza blockade to make life all but impossible for the survivors.
This is very far from comprehensive, and it's unconscionable even if you have a good understanding of the decades of history that prompted it. If you don't, it's unconscionable and gratuitous, a case of a country tormenting its powerless occupied subjects just because it can. Even the modest amount of Palestinian violence during this era is easy to interpret as nothing more than the righteous flailing of a brutally oppressed people.
This view, in my opinion, is ahistorical. There are reasons things have turned out this way, many of them the responsibility of Arab nations and the Palestinians themselves. But even that doesn't justify Israel's actions over the past two decades—and if you're familiar only with those two decades it merely looks like brutality for its own sake. Is it any wonder that young people feel the way they do about Israel and Palestine?
You can find:
Statistics here (including a kill ratio, 2000-2020, of 21 Palestinians killed for every Israeli) on a website curated by leftie Israelis
https://www.btselem.org/statistics
The written/spoken words of Israeli/Zionist thinkers/proponents/public figures of their own goal of 'the river to the sea' from before Israel's founding to the present:
https://www.academia.edu/4689202/_P_a_g_e_THE_INCONVENIENT_TRUTH_ABOUT_ISRAEL_BY_ISRAELIS_AND_ZIONISMS_FOUNDING_PATRONS
Just the facts.
The college students protesting are mostly just Muslims from other countries. International students. They brought their religious fanaticism with them.
Having a distorted view of the world may comfort you but it is not the reality. Many of protest Israel's brutal policies against the Palestinans are ordinary people both in the US and in Israel itself.
That's not even remotely true. There are orders of magnitude more college students protesting than the number of Muslim international students on those campuses.
Whether the protestors should be protesting, whether they accurately understand what they are protesting, whether they are protesting the right thing... those are all at least debatable. But the idea that there are somehow tens of thousands of Muslim international students showing up at college protests all across the country is laughable.
here’s my log on the fire of all your hatred.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/09/opinion/palestine-west-bank-war.html
“You left,” the settler yelled again, stepping close to Mr. Til. “Where did you sleep?” His two friends circled restlessly behind him.
“This is our land,” Mr. Til said.
“This is Jewish land for more than 3,000 years,” the young man said.
Mr. Til sat on a boulder and lit a cigarette. The three settlers formed a triangle before him. One of them hocked theatrically and then spat.
You can’t reason with people who think that god gave them land 3000 years ago. And you can’t reason with Muslim religious fanatics either. They hate each other. They will never coexist. To hell with all of them. They deserve each other. And really, maybe you all should start attacking each other too!
On the other hand, the question I’d ask all you haters is this: if you had to live in either Tel Aviv or Cairo (or any city in an Arab country) which would you choose? Even I would choose Tel Aviv.
So would most Palestinians, but that option isn't open to them.
For good reason. There are plenty of Muslim dominated societies. Over the years, the Arab nations have chosen war and lost every time. That's too bad for the Palestinians but they made choices. Many bad ones. They keep wanting a do over but the world doesn't work that way.
I wish there was a way to have the Israelis move en masse to a new land far away from the ME. I'm sure what they left behind would quickly turn into a hell hole similar to Gaza. And the Palestinians would somehow find a way to blame the Jews.
Because they know all the Arab cities are shit holes. But the point is more about you as an American. Where would you go? Tel Aviv, hands down.
Dubai, Abu Dabi, Doha, Kuwait City, Riyadh are "shit holes"? Your comments are totally discredited by such ridiculous nonsense.
I think you missed the point.
So just promoting racist claims. OK, we know what you are.
In P.W. Botha's South Africa, would you have preferred Cape Town or Soweto?
Justin asked about Cairo via Tel Aviv. Neither of these can be comapred to Soweto.
Do you think the point, or answer, would be different if he said Harare instead?
The point is that Arab society is a miserable failure outside of the oil money. And even that hasn’t led to a decent and open society. So while both sides are contemptible, it’s clear we’d all feel much better in Tel Aviv than any other place. Take all the Jews out of Palestine and you end up with a Syrian level of violence.
No, he asked about Tel Aviv vs Cairo Cairo (or any city in an Arab country). That would be like asking about living in apartheid Cape Town vs any other African capital.
I'd probably choose Istanbul (yes, I know it's not an Arab city, just a Muslim one). There's basically only a small handful of aspects in which Tel Aviv is superior.
Justin, I understand the prism of 'all those religious fanatics', but consider:
Was Palestine in 1900 full of religious fanatics? In the main wasn't religious millenarianism introduced by the influx of Jews who desired a Jewish homeland? Many (but not all) were working to establish a Jewish Sate. Many (but not all) claimed biblical authority.
Mightn't a big part of what you decry be a predictable Muslim counter-millenarianism? A backlash?
You say to hell with all of them, but isn't that letting ourselves off the hook? I suggest we (the British, the UN, the US) shouldn't have supported the establishment of a theocracy of any flavor, and a lot of the strife loops back to us.
I’m an atheist and had no hand in the creation of the state of Israel. They could have lived in peace, but chose to hate and fight each other. That’s on them.
It is much simpler. Young people know abuse when they see it, and their impulse is not to defend the abuser.
They aren’t young people, they are Muslim young people. So of course they support other Muslims.
I like the way "Jewish Voices for Peach" is actually a secret Moslem front group. Very clever!
Maybe too clever.
And no one is complaining about their behavior on campus.
Well Columbia suspended the group from campus. Does that count as criticizing them?
Well there you go. Those Jews are anti-Semitic.
I think young people also recognize that what happened to Jewish Germans (etc) way back in WWII is no justification for today's Israelis to behave like their former Nazi oppressors did.
A permanent aggrieved condition is typical of the extreme MAGA cult
What is it about religious belief that fosters profound hatred? It’s been goin on since the crusades. It happens everywhere wherever and whenever so called “believers” gain control. We are watching it in slow motion here in the states.
Religion is primarily a manifestation of group instinct. It consists of rituals which solidify intra-group bonds. Religion is a matter of people getting together and submerging their identity in the group, not individually receiving messages from gods. Groups in all social animals are inherently competitive and aggressive (not just defensive). The genes of the groups which win are those of the species and those genes determine the group behavior. Religion appears to be an integral part of this inevitable inter-group aggression.
Or did God direct his chosen people to wipe out competing groups, as described in the Old Testament? Either hypothesis explains the observations, although it might be necessary to assume different gods for different groups.
P.S. I was not referring specifically to Jews by citing the Old Testament. Muslims and Christians both claim to believe in versions of it.
By citing the "Old Testament" you are referring to Christians, who came up with a "New Testament" that is better! The Old Testament is revered for its poetry, as well as for its sexy parts, hip and thigh slaughter, magic tricks, and superior marksmanship with a sling.
Since the Crusades?
This is not a conflict of religious beliefs, it is a conflict over land. The Palestinians, Christians and Muslims, want part of their land back. The Zionists want the whole of the land.
Pingback: Stevenson’s army, December 10 - peacefare.net
The best movie depicting the terror society the occupiers of Palestine have created is The Pianist. The ahistorical blind spot for disinterested liberal observers of the lived horror of Palestinians is not recognizing the ascension of Likud and its ideology of ethnic nationalist supremacy. An ideology justifying the dehumanization of Palestinians, the stealing of their land, and forcible removal either through imprisonment, exile, or extermination. Likud made Zionists Nazis and America finances and arms this fascist regime.
It's also the lies. Those of Israel, since those of Hamas are not amplified by Western media. Latest screamer, dutifully passed on even by such a critical newspaper as the Guardian: Israel estimates that 61% of Palestinian victims are civilians. That sounds like a noble admission except if you remember that 70% of the dead are women and children. Thus, according to Israel, 130% of its adult male victims were Hamas fighters.
On the same day, the claim that "250 terror targets" were struck in 24 hours, in a context where targets are mostly"generated" - not determined, generated - by AI.
Dear Kevin,
This was a very interesting post. The good thing about ahistorical is that it is a reset of the clock, forgetting grievances that are older than 20 years old. Maybe not a completely unhealthy attitude after all. Otherwise, where to start to justifies one's opinion? In 1920? 1948? 1967? Or maybe 3,000 years ago?
I would had some nuances to the claim that the past two decades have had very little Palestinian aggression. There was a fairly steady stream of rockets launched from Gaza and some campaign of suicide bombers from the West Bank, which really strengthened Netanyahu and prompted more walls and check points. More recently, the grotesque butchery of October 7 reached a new level of depravity not seen since the murder of the Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972 and Leon Klinghoffer who was killed and thrown overboard from the Achille Lauro in 1985.
This "resistance" (!?) through violence is really counterproductive and serves only to provide arguments to those like Netanyahu who reject any political solution. Boy, would it help the Palestinians if they had some good leaders. But Israel is the more powerful entity in the region and it is largely their responsibility to find a solution.
Personally, I think that the time will unavoidably come where there will be huge pressure in the world to impose sanctions on Israel for its behavior. Israel is the more powerful entity militarily, but it also relies on a lot of good will from the western world. There is no an infinite amount of this stuff remaining right at this point.
This "resistance" (!?) through violence is really counterproductive and serves only to provide arguments to those like Netanyahu who reject any political solution.
The reverse is also true. This occupation through violence is really counterproductive and serves only to provide arguments to those like Hamas who reject any political solution.
This conflict began on November 2nd, 1917, when British Foreign Secretary Balfour made his infamous declaration that it was British policy to create a Jewish “homeland” in Palestine. This is a clear declaration of war.
Wow ... this must be a comments record ... in numbers and other ways.
Here's my sweeping but valid generalization:
We can't eliminate ignorance, but we can eliminate unconstrained ignorance by not supporting or standing idle in the face of ignorance.
Wisdom is not ignorance, and vice versa. Wisdom is the idea that we must treat each other the way we would want to be treated, which demands that we understand ourselves, each other, and human nature. Ignorance is the idea that it's okay to say in word or in deed, "Do as I say and not as I do."
That unconstrained ignorance will be bad is highly predictable. How bad is highly unpredictable.
That wisdom will be good is highly predictable. How good is highly unpredictable.
How do I know? Many reasons. For example, it's in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian (New Testament) Bible, and in the Quran. That, given that it covers 50%+ of 8 billion people, is a good start.
Well, this is progress for Kevin, who now admits that the last two decades have been rife with Israeli oppression. But the period before that has not been much different. Plenty of displaced Palestinians who were torn from the land that they lived on. Palestinians are human beings also, and Zionist Israelis have never really accepted that view.
While feeling very badly for the Gazans who are decimated daily, I am more interested in the political effect it is having here in the States. If young people see the reality of cruelty and injustice towards Palestinians who were already living a difficult life before the present indiscriminate slaughtering, then Biden will lose.
The young demographic have never voted at a high rate (sometimes less than 30%). One of the key elements of Democratic strategy was to increase that rate. Given Biden's unwavering and stupid support for Netanyahu, that is quite a pipe dream. I am an old-timer and will vote Democratic, even for Biden as he persists in his doomed attempt at a second term, but many of the younger folk will just stay home.
Israel/Palestine tends to split the Democrats and unite the Republicans, for sure. I doubt young people will find it that salient next November.
I'm not loving it that Biden at 82 is the nominee, but it is too early to call him doomed.
Perhaps, but polls say otherwise. The RCP average has Trump up by 2.2%.
1. Consider that 4 years ago, Biden led by at least 5 points the entire year before the election (he won by 4.5%of the popular vote).
2. Consider that the Democrat must lead by 3 to 5 points in order to overcome their electoral college disadvantage.
3. Consider that in both 2016 and 2020, Trump overperformed his polls.
I'm walking past the graveyard, but I'm not whistling.
"If young people see the reality of cruelty and injustice .. then Biden will lose."
... to Trump.
You really think that young people are stupid enough not to realize that this will increase cruelty and injsutice all over the world, including Palestine and the US?
Short answer: Yes, I think some of them are and will be.
Longer answer: The question is not so much stupidity, but emotion. If you are emotionally upset enough about something, rationality goes out the window.
Even longer answer: One of the great myths that liberals believe is that elections are decided by rational stances on the issues. Actually, matters of appearance are perhaps more important. Why is it a disadvantage to be a short person running against a taller person (is is true that DeSantis has taken to wearing high heeled shoes?)?. As an old-timer, I remember that Kennedy beat Nixon because Nixon looked lousy on TV.
Even if a majority decide their vote rationally, a large enough minority voting emotionally or on the basis of appearance, can swing elections
It's great to see so many moral purists stand fast against Biden.
I'm sure Trump will ring in an era of international peace, starting with withdrawing all aid to Israel, Ukraine and NATO.
What a wonderful peaceful world it will be when Israel, Ukraine and NATO are gone. I can't wait.
And I think it would be even better if the people standing on principle to not vote for Biden should be happy and proud to own the result - after all, it will not have happened without them.
"I'm sure Trump will ring in an era of international peace..."
...and rejuvenate democratic values and civil society.
Everything you listed about Isarel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is true. But it's up to the U.S. to condition its aid to Israel to mitigate or even stop this so that there can be a two-state solution which is the only workable way out of this mess. Israel's ability to destroy Hamas even with its awful civilian casualties must be leverage the U.S uses. to change Israeli behavior, otherwise there will be no peace.
And this can only be done with the current government in Israel removed from power and a more responsible administration restored,
Absolutely US aid must be conditioned on withdrawing from illegal settlements. But we are very late in the game, stopping US aid is nowhere near enough pressure. Israel is rich, high tech, and can absolutely afford to lose US aid.
I believe the only (faint) hope for two states is the South Africa model. Make the case that Israel is a pariah state practicing apartheid. Stop trade. Stop travel. Stop university exchanges. Apply sanctions. Only this, sustained over decades, could apply enough pressure so Israel decides it is in their interest to pack up the illegal settlements and make a reasonable deal.
The irony is that Israel could do this tomorrow and they would still rich and powerful. Israel does not need the settlements.
One problem is that Israel doesn't have the capacity to eliminate Hamas. The number of guerilla paramilitaries that have ever been destroyed through conventional military can be counted on one hand. This is before you consider that much of Hamas's leadership isn't in Gaza. They are in Qatar, Lebanon and Turkey.
This is compounded by the problem that Israel has no strategy for how to convert even a successful operation in Gaza into something useful. They plainly have no plan for what to do with Gaza when this is over. They say that they don't want to occupy Gaza, though they also say that they will be in charge of security there for an extended time, and have made no attempt to reconcile these contradictory statements. They have said that they will not let the PA take control of Gaza, though that's mitigated by the fact that Fatah has no intention of accepting that responsibility on any terms that Israel would agree to. Beyond that . . . crickets.
Given what Israel has declared is unacceptable and the lack of interest on the part of anyone else to solve this problem for them, I see only two likely outcomes. The first is that Israel does, in fact, end up occupying Gaza, though perhaps without admitting it by just never declaring the operation over. They just sink into the quagmire of a never ending insurgency.
The other is that they do what they always do and withdraw back to the border, declare an even larger swath of Gazan territory off limits and kill any Palestinian that enters it, and leave a power vacuum inside Gaza itself. This vacuum gets filled either by a reconstituted Hamas, or by some other group equally hostile to Israel. The Israelis will have killed tens of thousands of civilians in order to accomplish nothing but setting Hamas back by a few years.
In both instances, the chances that the Israelis would ease the economic blockade of Gaza is zero. Since that blockade prevents, among other things, the importation of all construction materials, there won't be any way to rebuild and make Gaza habitable. The Israeli goal would be to make life in Gaza impossible, so that eventually, the Palestinians leave for somewhere else. Sort of indirect ethnic cleansing.
As for the necessity of removing the current Israeli government, sure. That would be nice. Now tell me what possible coalition could emerge in the Knesset that would be meaningfully better. The Jewish left is dead, and this won't resurrect it. It will be politically impossible for a government to form that is reliant upon the Arab members. Benny Gantz has never shown interest in actually doing anything to achieve peace. Within the Knesset, Likud, the haredi parties, and the extreme right wing hold a clear majority of seats, though this is obscured a bit since Yisrael Beiteinu refuses to join a government that includes Netanyahu or the ultra-Orthodox.
New elections aren't likely to help. Like it or not, the government's refusal to engage in a peace process is an accurate reflection of the electorate's desires. Don't be confused by Netanyahu's unpopularity, because that is not driven by his refusal to negotiate with the Palestinians. That's overwhelmingly what Jewish Israelis wanted even before Oct 7th.
"This is compounded by the problem that Israel has no strategy for how to convert even a successful operation in Gaza into something useful. They plainly have no plan for what to do with Gaza when this is over."
If that's true then the war is already lost even before they dropping their bombs but not surprising given who runs the government whose failure led to the conflict in the first place.
There are two what might be called stories for kindergarten surrounding the conflict. The one that Drum seems to have grown up with runs as follows, The Jews have been eternally repressed. They fled from Eastern Europe to the US until the US closed its doors. They then fled to the only place that would take them, fortuitously their historic homeland. When the British got tired of Empire the Jews accepted that they would not get all of their historic homeland but the Arabs could not accept Jews living among them, and so have had to fight for their lives ever since. (That this is a kindergarten story can be sensed from the fact that it is so close to the story US kids used to be told about the founding of the US and those savage Indians. But I hope we have outgrown that).
The other story is, of course, about the long occupied Palestinians, first by the Turks and then by the British. While the British were occupying them, they brought in a large number of Europeans, and when the British got tired of Empire they gave most of the Palestinian homeland to the creation of the European state, even though it required making more than 700,000 Palestinians into refugees and left the Palestinians with two indefensible bits of territory that were quickly gobbled up by other Arab states. Since then the European state in the Middle East has extended to the entirety of the Palestinian homeland with Palestinians being asked to accept various forms of Apartheid, and when they don't accept having it forced on them.
What young people don't understand about the cluelessness of old people on the subject of Israel is that most of them grew up at a time when this country cared so little about Arabs, or Palestinians in particular, that the first story was the story they learned when young, and everything that happened since has been interpreted in its context.
If you say, "The Jews accepted what was offered while the Arabs did not" that makes the Jews seem reasonable and the Arabs unreasonable." If you say the third of the population that was Jewish was given more than 60% of the the territory while the Palestinians wound up with nothing, with close to a million made homeless to make way for the Jewish state, it comes out very differently. So why does Drum say the first and leave out the second when he is talking about the situation? Likely he learned the first while growing up and never was asked to think about the second.
It is good that Drum sees that the Israelis have been awful over the last 20 years. But it remains somewhat of a disappointment that his thinking on it is so shallow that he sees this as a great disconnect from the previous 20 years, when Israel built many of those settlements that then required abusive measures to protect. It is also somewhat amazing that he takes for granted that the inhabitants of the territory should simply accept the right of immigrants to move in and then claim the heart of the territory as their homeland. Would he do this in any other situation?
A more accurate description of the situation is that Israel was created in a time when the West was more openly racist and Europeans could get away with a lot of things without criticism they cannot. Apartheid was not a bad word back then. But today we have Jews and Palestinians living together on a small parcel of land. Neither has anywhere to go back to, and so the question becomes how they could ever live in peace. This is the more accurate story that gets at the situation, but it does not change the fact that Drum describes above that Israel's behavior over the last 20 years has been morally repugnant. Even starting with the Jewish kindergarten story can't really hide that.
Too long, but I read it all. A really really good apolitical history of the creation of Israel. I am a boomer and you are correct, I was taught the first story of the heroic Jewish state. I see it now for what it is, and I'm sick to my stomach.
I have no idea how this ends any way to terribly. What a mess.
Yes. This is absolutely true: Europe gave Jews territory they had no moral right to give in order to assuage their own guilt over the Holocaust at little to no cost to themselves. I do not dispute this.
But I do dispute the idea that Jews, just coming out of an ethnic slaughter which murdered (if I remember correctly) one-third of the total number of Jews in the world, while no one anywhere made it stop even if they had the capability, should - while still counting their dead and searching frantically for the living - themselves have been selfless and pure enough to say "No" to the offer.
Now, the displaced/dispossessed Palestinians were under no moral or ethical obligation to go along with that - but the 75+ year campaign to eradicate Israel has not, shall we say, produced returns anywhere in balance to the costs. Declaring intifada on the heels of Rabin's assassination and dealing a political death blow to the Israeli parties who wanted a two-state solution was also not the very best of all possible plans.
Both sides have agency. Both sides have made deliberate choices that made things so much worse. Both sides are tangled up in nearly a century of ongoing trauma, and I don't see how it gets untangled at all.
Eradicating Israel may be the Left's fantasy (shared, to be sure, with the Neo Nazi Right), but it is just that: a fantasy.
Eradicating Palestinians may be Netanyahu's fantasy (along with his fellow RW fascists) and unfortunately for the Palestinians, that is perhaps less of a fantasy than the Left's dreams of an eradicated Israel.
If Trump is in the White House in 2025, he may in fact *not* pull all US support for Israel, because fundamentalist evangelicals are a crucial part of his political coalition, and evangelicals want Israel to be destroyed on **their** terms - as part of the End Times - not for Palestinian revenge or statehood. Until then, evangelicals will insist on supporting Israel (and, in fact, may very well insist that all US Jews be deported to Israel, also in preparation for the End Times).
As for how Trump feels about Muslims in general... I think we already know that, right?
Refusing to support Biden as punishment for the war in Gaza means Trump takes power. And you'd have to be insane to think that would be better for Gazans in particular or Palestinians in general.
But I don't think the refuseniks really care all that much about the death and misery a second Trump Administration would unleash. What they seem to actually care about is performative moral superiority.
Do commenters on this thread say Israel was wrong to approve the partition plan? I hear people either attacking or defending Palestinian rejection.
The "Palestinians" have not been on a 75+ year quest to eliminate Israel. In the 90's the PLO accepted Israel's right to exist as a sovereign state. Note: Israel never reciprocated on this point.
Do both sides have comparable agency? Israel has far more scope of action, Palestinians are mostly limited to reacting to what Israel does.
Does the "left" dream of an eradicated Israel? Maybe a few. The broad left dreams either of two sovereign states or one state with equal rights for all (Tlaib's position BTW, who is more left that her in US politics?). You are right that many Israelis dream of eradicating Palestinians from Palestine, and that has better odds of happening.
All that said you make a number of good points.
The Palestinian negotiators did agree to recognize Israel, but not as a Jewish state. Specifically, they've never abandoned the right of return of all the descendants of Palestinian refugees to Israel proper, which would immediately turn Israel into a second Palestinian state.
On the other side, Israel has been building settlements in the West Bank at a pretty high rate since 1984, belying the claim that Israel supports a two state solution. And in recent years, the occupation of the West Bank has become increasingly brutal.
It certainly is fair to say that the Palestinians have been on a 75 year quest to eliminate Israel, despite Oslo in the mid-90s. After all, the 2nd Intifada started in 2000, and only ended when Israel built all the separation barriers that made life even tougher for Palestinians.
It's also fair to say that since 2001 at a minimum, Israel's attitude towards the Palestinians is indistinguishable from trying to make their lives so miserable that they leave, though I'm not sure what their options are for relocating.
Any peaceful settlement will require trust that both sides have spent the last 25 years destroying. It's hard to imagine that we're less than 25 years away from peace.
The proviso that Israel be recognized as a racist state - a Jewish state, was a barrier that Netanyahu added in 2009 after Olmert came too close to actually reaching a peace agreement.
Note the NO other state or organization is required to recognize Israel as a "Jewish State."
The Arabs in 1948 fought for a unitary state: the Palestinians have recognized the right of Israel on the 1967 borders for decades.
Israel has never recognized the right of Palestinians to have a state, and steadfastly oppose it at every turn.
Oh yeah: the Palestinians have proposed a minimal right of return – some 20,000 per year – for at least the last decade.
The claim that the RoR is a sticking point is completely bogus.
You seem to be attributing to me the view that I called the second kindergarten view. I would have thought that that name made clear that I thought that view was one sided as well. I do not blame the Jews fleeing Eastern Europe for going where they could. I do blame them a bit for believing they were entitled to set up a Jewish state on a territory with a minority Jewish population. The only saving grace to this was that it happened at a time when Colonialism had not been completely discredited, and so a lot of Europeans made the mistake of thinking that locals would be happy to live without political power in European style states.
You also get the history of intifadas wrong. The first intifada started in the 80s following a period of relative peace in which Israel did nothing to work towards ending its occupation and in fact built settlements to make the occupation permanent. There is no reason to believe that without the first intifada Rabin would ever have come to support a peace process.
The second intifada came after the collapse of the peace talks associated with that process. In fact Arafat had gotten resistance so completely under control that in 2000 there were no Israeli deaths associated with its occupation. In fact during the peace process, while Arafat was trying to make the Israelis feel secure to facilitate peace, Israel was accelerating its settlement building to make peace more difficult. And what Barak offered was not peace, and not something that would naturally evolve into peace. (The US was convinced that if the Palestinians made a serious peace offer that Barak would offer peace, but there has never been any evidence to support that).
It is true that in the 90s Hamas launched a serious of terrorist attacks designed to get Netanyahu elected so that he would kill the peace process. They were successful in both goals. But it is hard to see why the Palestinians as a while should be blamed for this. Their representatives, the PA, maintained its focus on security even after Israel dropped its obligations under Oslo. That is to say the PA was not perfect in providing security, but under the circumstances it did a fairly good job. While the Israeli government not only did not "succeed" at stopping the people who would make peace more difficult, it was the group that was acting to make peace more difficult.
The second intifada was launched in early 2000, and ended up with Ariel Sharon not Bibi, being elected.
The talks in 2000 didn't collapse; the Taba negotiations were probably the closest the two sides ever came to an agreement, although there were many issues still remaining. But Arafat (not Hamas) decided to launch the 2nd Intifada to pressure the Israelis more, but they reacted to the resulting wave of suicide bombings by destroying the peace camp (labor) and electing right wingers instead.
+1. I'd add that mass displacements of populations were rather common in Europe (redrawn borders) and Asia (India/Pakistan) in the years just after WW II. And also that today's Israel has embraced the far right far more than at the time.
This is good. I too was taught the kindergarten version. It wasn't easy letting go of it.
My addition: Israel is far the strong party, so its scope of action is far wider. Palestinians are largely limited to reacting to Israel.
Are you suggesting that Israel is doing something wrong by winning these wars that are started by Palestinian and Arab aggression? Escalation of the response can be shown to have increased along with the persistence of the attacks. Provoking atrocities or making it seem that Israel's responses are disproportionate is itself a type of PR warfare against Israel, at the expense of the Palestinian dead. If Hamas or any other terrorists in Palestinian history had cared at all about their own people, they would NOT be using them as martyrs and human shields to make Israel look bad and solicit pressure against Israel as bad guys in a situation that Israel has not started and does not wish to continue.
I don't see many saying Israel was wrong to win wars. They are wrong to do ethnic cleansing and settle conquered territory.
Israel started the wars.
She invaded Palestine on 25 April 1948, leading to the Arab League intervening to save the rest.
She attacked unilaterally in 1967, even though she knew that there was no threat of an attack.
I suspect that the "history" that Drum refers to in calling the attitudes of people who have only seen the last twenty years of the conflict "ahistorical" is itself ahistorical.
I know I grew up having it beaten into me that poor little Israel -- this would have been the early 1970s -- was surrounded by bigger, evil neighbors.
The reality was that even then Israel was far better armed than its neighbors due to Western support, and the Arab nations that Kevin for reasons unstated blames for the current situation have to a large degree been fairly brutal dictatorships that America supports or at least tolerates because democratic governments would be far more anti-Israel.
And the bigger history is that you don't even get to the point of Israel existing unless you accept fairly racist settler colonialism and pretty profound violation of the rights of the Palestinian Arabs by the British Empire and the founders of Israel.
"And the bigger history is that you don't even get to the point of Israel existing unless you accept fairly racist settler colonialism and pretty profound violation of the rights of the Palestinian Arabs by the British Empire and the founders of Israel."
This can be true but what does it mean now? The same can be said for the US. Accepting the historical truth of this must be tempered by humanity in the present. Some wrongs can't be righted without still greater wrong.
For both practical and moral reasons, at this point, the existence of Israel should be taken as a given. However, without an understanding of the actual history, it's all but impossible to understand why the Palestinians have such justified grievances, and thus why Israel has a moral obligation to work towards a just peace.
A note to everyone:
- If you post 500-word short essays in a comment section, few people are going to read all of it. If you're going to do it, it'd better be excellent, original commentary.
- You don't have to respond to every comment with another 500-word short essay.
- [insert ad hominem(s)] + [express righteous indignation] + [insert unoriginal thought] = a waste of time for everyone.
Respectfully, in this thread many of the 500 word essays are at a quality level worth reading.
I disagree. They frequently contain restatements of points made previously. I see it every time KD tackles this subject matter.
I get that everyone wants to chime in to express their opposition to one side or the other. But if you have to resort to 500+ words, just create your own blog and link to it with your treatise.
+1
Pingback: A brief history of modern Palestine – Kevin Drum
There is one thing I remember during the gulf war in 1990-91 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The PLO, under Arafat, supported Iraq which was a big mistake. Saddam Hussein was never going to care about the plight of the Palestinians. Even with that, Bush 41 pushed Israel into negotiations before handing everything to Clinton. US policy in the region was largely the same between the GOP and Democratic parties.
Then everything went to hell: Rabin's assassination, Palestinian intransigence, the rise of Netanyahu, and the rise of the Christian Zionists in the US. Now Israel could do anything it wanted with it's only external support being the GOP.