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?
Israel is allowed to kill babies because of stuff that happened 75 years ago? go fuck yourself, Kevin.
That's not what Kevin said. Work on your reading comprehension.
Please don't feed this troll.
OK, Kevin says if you know the history... I would love to hear how this John Judis article gets the history wrong
https://newrepublic.com/article/177306/israel-colonialist-state-history-today
I'm about Kevin's age. I was pro-Israel 20 years ago. Yes, 20 years of illegal settlements foreclosing peace wore that down. So I get that part.
But the history. The more I read the more I realize my earlier pro-Israeli feelings relied on Israeli origin myths that were not true.
A challenge to Kevin or anyone who agrees with him: Be specific. Explain this history young people don't know about that puts the last 20 years in context and explains the difference in feeling between young and old.
Ninja'd! I'd bookmarked this one a few days ago for the determinedly ahistorical illtiterates here because it covers the broad sweep of events (I'd have made a nod to Nakba myself, but you can't have everything). But you beat me to it. What are the odds the usual dishonest pieces of shite are going to ignore it?
Ding ding ding!
I'm closer to the youngster camp than Kevin is, but I came of age in the late 90s and I was one of those kids who read the international news sections of the paper. I remember reading about bus and other suicide bombings in Israel/Palestine and other acts of terror in Northern Ireland as part of my middle childhood.
It made me ask "why are they doing this?" And even as a damn child, the simple answer of "because they're being/were forced from their homes and effectively imprisoned in the desert" stood out. Children have better bullshit detectors than they're given credit for, and yes we hold it against our parents' generation for falling victim to pro-Zionist zealotry and associated myths.
As an adult, it looks increasingly like the right-wing/militarist factions in Israel are simply committing upon others what was committed upon their kin in the Holocaust and using that unconscionable, unspeakably vast trauma a shield to justify their own atrocities.
Even if one presupposes that the state of Israel had a right to exist where it does, it does not even begin to excuse its treatment of Palestinians as subhumans from the instant of its creation.
That's not to say that the logical conclusion was that terrorists were right to commit acts of terror because they had been oppressed, but more that since Israel clearly had all the real power and professed to want the terrorism to stop, that maybe they should've stopped oppressing Palestinians. If you actually wanted a subset of the people you're oppressing to stop lashing out at you with terror attacks, maybe you should stop oppressing them. Even as a child I understood that you couldn't do that overnight, but you could at least take steps towards it.
"Fortunately" (ugh), the current Israeli government says that quiet part out loud. They didn't actually want Hamas to stop committing acts of terror. They wanted Hamas to continue to do so, so that they could use it as an excuse to continue ethnically "cleansing" the West Bank.
As it happens, I've done this here:
https://jabberwocking.com/a-beginners-guide-to-the-creation-of-israel/
and here:
https://jabberwocking.com/the-man-who-wrecked-the-middle-east/
Nickel summary: Arabs have started a lot of wars and lost them all. There's a price for that.
You didn't address the the linked article, which was what you were asked to do. So again: What does this article get wrong? Specifically.
I think I found one problem with Judis' article:
"In 1947, on the eve of the United Nations decision to partition the country, Jews still made up only 32 percent of the population."
The UN Partition was only a plan, a proposal, a recommendation. Not a "decision". Not something backed by the force of international law.
And it could not be otherwise, the UN Charter demands self-determination by the locals. The UN did not have authority to make decide the issue.
Check it out. melancholydonkey made this point and it stands up to scrutiny. I had some difficulty letting go of this particular myth.
BTW this does not help Kevin's basic argument that a knowledge of history leads to sympathy for Israel.
"Nickel summary: Arabs have started a lot of wars and lost them all. There's a price for that."
States start wars. The Palestinians biggest problem is that they are stateless.
Yeah, I read those. Since they explain your sympathies I read them again. And I still can't see it your way.
My nickel summary: Palestinians & Arabs were overmatched from the start. They were fighting rich educated people. Of course they lose. And, because they are being pushed off their land, of course they fight. Like the Native Americans, it sucks to be them.
A bit more detail now. Rich educated connected westerners come in to start a Jewish state. In 1947 high up people in faraway lands declare a partition giving the newly arrived Jews (32% of the population) 55% of the land, and the better land at that. The Arabs say no way, but Israel is stronger and they lose.
And they lost a couple more times since. And each time they lose they are in a worse position than before. Again, sounds a lot like Native Americans. Getting crushed sucks.
Nothing in this history should cause us to sympathize with the Israelis. We sure didn't sympathize with White South Africans. We sympathize with Israelis because of persecution, pogroms, and finally the holocaust, good reasons all.
A just solution would be a Jewish state in a nice big chunk of Germany, but even after WW2 we weren't going to make the guilty pay the price. Not when there were weak backward locals who could be pushed aside.
"Nickel summary: Arabs have started a lot of wars and lost them all. There's a price for that." Isn't this uncomfortably close to might makes right?
Stalin gave Jews the Jewish Autonomous Oblast; considering the history of pogroms in Russia, it was the least he could do. Most of the JAO’s Jews have left Russia; many emigrated to Israel.
Sigh.
1) Transjordan was never a part of the Palestinian Mandate. When the Mandate was created at the Conference of San Remo, in April, 1920, no territory east of the Jordan River was mentioned at all. The British unilaterally added Transjordan to the Mandate at the Cairo Conference in March, 1921, as a legal fig leaf to justify keeping control of the area in their possession. That unification lasted less than a week, as they created an Emirate of Transjordan, to be headed by a Hashemite monarch, before the Cairo Conference was over.
Transjordan was never, and was never intended to be, a part of the Palestinian Mandate. This continued claim is pure propaganda meant to justify the exclusion of the Palestinians from having a state.
2) The Arabs did not start the war in 1948. The Partition of Palestine violated both the Palestinian Mandate and the U.N. Charter. The U.S. and European countries deciding, on their own and without consulting the local population, to dismember Palestine was the act of war that precipitated the conflict.
3) I'm not saying that the Arabs didn't start the 1967 war, though you are incorrect to say that they "declared" war, as the state of war between them and Israel had never ended. But Israel needs to be careful with these claims, though, because the specific act that started the 1967 war was Egypt closing the Straits of Tiran, creating a naval blockade of Israel's Red Sea access. If this is considered to have created a state of war, then Israel's claims that Hamas started the current fighting on October 7th is blown to hell, as the Israelis have maintained a far stricter blockade of Gaza for 18 years.
A very good summary, but here is a little more context:
Jordan was recognized as a State in 1922, the mandate went into effect in 1923. Unless they have a time machine, Jordan could not have been part of the mandate.
2) the war was started on 25 April 1948 when Israel invaded Jaffa.
3) In 1967 Israel fired first. Therefore they started the war. The closing of Tiran was not sufficient justification, as even the US State Department said at the time.
I hope Kevin is checking your critique. He took it on to make a history, it is on him to study critiques and revise as appropriate.
melancholydonkey: As far as the partition, to my (not super deep) reading it was adopted as a "plan" which slides around the UN Charter by not being a dictate. And, had both the Arabs and the Israelis accepted the plan, all would be fine.
But the Arabs did not accept the plan, and the Israelis did. Ever since the partition, which could not be more than advisory, has been presented as authorizing Israel in international law. (That was my belief until recently).
The UN's original sin was proposing a plan developed by the major powers rather than brokering a negotiation between the two sides. I realize this was politically unlikely: Israel was deeply connected to western powers, Palestinians weren't. (Judis' article covers this on the US side).
Where this doesn't work is that the vote for the Partition Plan provided the Israelis with a lot of cover, both diplomatically and militarily. Being able to cast the Arabs as the aggressor made it easier for European countries to arm the Israelis. British military units in Palestine turned a lot of equipment over to them as they withdrew. Czechoslovakia sold a lot of surplus ordnance left over from the war to the Israelis, including the beginnings of an Israeli air force. The French used Czechoslovakia as a conduit for shipping arms.
Without the Partition Plan being approved, Israel would have had a much harder time getting diplomatic recognition by countries around the world.
In short, the distinction between a "plan" and an "authorization" was so small that it was almost nonexistent.
I'm with you on this. It was legalistic sleight of hand that worked really well. The tell is the word "plan". So vague, yet so suggestive.
The Arabs called it out but they did not have a lot of influence in the western press.
The Israelis accepted Partition?
Not really:
Partition: “after the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine “
— Ben Gurion,
Sure there’s a price but the Israeli government is foolish to think that Palestinian boy born in 2005, say, is going to blame Nasser for his troubles rather than the people who are denying him an education, a job, and any kind of decent future.
Is that kid really going to say to himself “well, I could join Hamas and fight but it’s pointless because in 1967 a guy with some cultural relationship to me made some dumb decisions, so the only answer is to accept my fate”?
I would say additionally that, from what I observe, the problem at the heart of this is not something having to do with British and international diplomacy from 1920 to 1950 or so. The problem is that the Palestinians were living there 100 years ago, and the Jews claim they were living there 3000 years ago. You can talk all you want about the Balfour declaration and such, but the heart of the conflict, as I understand it, is two different groups with deeply emotional ties to the same piece of territory. And what matters in practice is which side has the better organization and weaponry.
That's really why, again, as I understand it, young people sympathize with one side or the other. The young people are doing the traditional young people thing of siding with the underdog.
Do young people tend to side with the underdog? Tell me about this.
As I pointed out before, you have your history substantially wrong.
The mandate for Palestine did not include Jordan, as that State was recognized by the League of Nations the year before the Mandate went into effect.
Balfour did not call for a Jewish "Homeland" but rather a "national center for Jews" as they clarified later. Irregardless, under the League of Nations, nobody had the right to a homeland there except for the native population.
Likewise, the UN did not create Israel: it had no legal right to. Instead, they suggested a poor division: giving the majority, indigenous population a minority of the land.
Israel was not satisfied with the 55% of the land for 33% of the population, and in April 1948 invaded the Palestinian partition. They invaded again on May 13, which triggered an Arab League intervention to save the rest of Palestine.
Israel was the one that attacked in 1967, even her Prime Minister acknowledged that eventually.
You ignore the fact that Netanyahu boasted of destroying Oslo, and the factors - including that- which led to the second Intifada. You also ignore Israel's culpability in rejecting peace: walking out in 2001 and 2008 and in 2014.
Somehow you ignore the ethnic cleansing that Israel has been doing since 1948 and continues today.
My generation grew up when Isreal was lead by people like David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin. The younger generation grew up when Isreal was lead by people like Manachem Begin, Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu. Is any other explanation necessary?
I would love to hear how this John Judis article gets the history wrong...
I don't know the history well enough to say if a few details are right or wrong, but I suspect Judis is right about this:
I was born long before 1990 and distinctly recall many people objecting to the policies of Israel well before the cartoonishly evil current regime. Pointing out that Palestinians have also done bad things is not persuasive. We don't support Hamas; we support Netanyahu with massive amounts of money, military hardware, and diplomatic support and are therefore partly responsible for what he does.
I feel the same way. We are complicit.
Read this deeply reported NYT guest essay from yesterday
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/09/opinion/palestine-west-bank-war.html
The NYT actually printed something from the Palestinian perspective? How did that sneak by their editors?
Except they put it in their Opinion section even though it's a fact-based piece of journalism.
Yes.
I had to write "deeply reported NYT guest essay"
A weird sentence.
Still, the NYT published it. That's important.
Same. I was born in 1969. This isn't an "age issue" as Kevin tries to frame it. It's an education issue.
...a case of a country tormenting its powerless occupied subjects just because they can.
I don't think many people are sufficiently ignorant to hold this view, which implies Israel engages in its massive persecution of Palestinians just for kicks.
They're doing it to conquer and ethnically cleanse Palestinian lands in violation of international law.
Yes, and?
Why does stuff that happened more than 20 years ago matter more than stuff that didn't? Actually I'd say that since 1988 (the year the PLO accepted the 1967 borders) is the dividing line, it's increasingly harder to justify Israeli conduct since then.
The Oslo accords only happened because of Saddam Hussein. He offered to withdraw from Kuwait in 1990 only if Israel also withdrew from Palestine - both had Security Council resolutions ordering them to. To Americans, this seemed like a ridiculous demand, but not to America's Arab allies. So Oslo happened. Yet even during Oslo, Israel continued to build settlements, and it continued to maintain its system of checkpoints and economic isolation. These are not the actions of a state committed to peace.
Indeed, if you spend time in pro-Israeli forums, what's striking is how often they bring up events of the 1920s and 30s as if that justifies their repression of Palestine today.
Yep, and their knowledge of the actual events of the 1920's and 30's is most often just so much more foundational mythollogy: No, the Balfour declaration did not say anything about setting aside lands for a Jewish state. In fact, it was at pains to _not_ do so. Yadda Yadda and so on and so forth.
The Palestinians are filth. That they are now a new generation of filth un-responsible for the evil of their forebears is hardly relevant when that history is what they move forward from as if it were virtue.
How do you address such a condition rationally?
Their apologists would ask me how can I think that rational, when yet they stand on the position that Black September or the attempt to seize Lebanon were somehow not their own fault.
I’ve seen a thousand comments like this in the last two months. I’ve not seen one in the reverse direction.
Good point. I haven't either.
+11
Do you read these comment threads?
Drink more slowly.
And with more anti-freeze.
This is an almost unbelievably bigoted comment.
(Am I feeding the troll?)
On other topics, cld is reasonable. On this issue, cld is an unhinged, appallingly bigoted lunatic.
Mores the pity. But it makes you wonder how much of cld's positions are the result of tribal identification rather than judicious scholarship.
If you don't care for American social conservatives, why would you care for Arab social conservatives?
Likud may be social conservatives, but virtually all Arabs are a thousand times more so.
Cuz all human being have inalienable rights?
Murder is perfectly fine with you because people have a right to murder?
It is nice to see that you have mastered the use of the false dichotomy.
Are you just...unaware that calling all Palestinians "filth" is just breathtakingly racist? Are you engaging in the obvious, and appalling, historical parallel--this language of "vermin"--on purpose?
Did cld just jump the shark or did cld just jump the shark? God has been kind and blessed me with ridiculous opponents.
Defend trying to seize Lebanon or Jordan.
“The Palestinians are filth.”
Jeez. Insert almost any other group on earth in place of “The Palestinians,” and you’d automatically be called a bigot. About half of “The Palestinians” are legally children under 18 who never have known a world without Hamas ruling over them. I guess they’re all filth too though, even the infants, toddlers and kindergarteners?
I wonder what cld thinks of North Korean children? By all accounts they too want to commit genocide towards their enemies and wipe South Korea and America off the map… they just don’t have the power to do so.
No, the children are their victims.
To be fair it seems that cld is automatically being called a bigot. So we are not so far gone that the Palestinians are different in this regard. I am not sure why he made a post that said nothing but that he is a bigot on this topic. I get the sense that he is having fun playing at bigotry.
Thanks for outing yourself, creep.
Shorter cld: Don't accuse today's youth or history's sins, unless they are Palistinian.
Where do they disavow what they've done? At what point have they tried to move forward from anything but violence to anything but violence?
They can never have a country of their own until they actually have a country of their own in a location of their own, show me where that is where it isn't someone else's country.
Their aspiration is 100% exclusionary because the only place they want is Israel. Or at least that's what they say.
You're use of "they"--also racist.
Having trouble believing that anyone (except a troll) on a modern lefty political blog could be this squarely, perfectly, unapologetically racist. I mean, it's jaw-dropping. Take the most reflexively pro-Israel person in the world and I'd still have trouble believing they'd go straight for the Godwin to such an obvious degree. You're a troll, right?
Yes, it's a troll. It leaves its droppings to get attention. Please don't feed the troll.
As far as rationales go, I think at some points you'd have to presuppose that all people are created equal.
If you don't, your comment doesn't, then you can go about emotionally and polemically equating classes of people with filth, vermin; you don't have to stretch your brain to justify erasure of children for the greater good if you don't grant them full class humanity in the first place.
I blame England. Yes, England. They did two things in the 1940's that are still causing enormous damage today:
1) The partition of India; and
2) The formation of modern Israel.
Two separate divisions of land along religious lines. We can now conclude that trying to make political divisions match religious divisions is a really, really bad idea.
The start of England's Palestine mess started during WW1 with the Balfour Declaration.
The partition of Ireland likewise led to more than a bit of violence. Nice people, those British imperialists.
Hey, it was an election year! And those upstate New York votes were very important!
Yet with all their brexiting, the English still insist that they deserve even more say in world affairs, and hated having to compromise with the EU over anything. It’s clear the English still don’t see that much of what they touch, they fck up.
"1) The partition of India;"
You really think that not partitioning India would have been a better solution?
Sounds to me like an absurd. Instead of few wars between India and Pakistan, you would have had a continuous civil war.
Question your assumptions.
Google "The Economy of Gaza City"
Also search for the OCHA map of the West Bank.
Hamas is an atrocity.
Gaza City is an atrocity.
The atrocity suits the politics of all concerned.
I am confused: how was it different in the past? This has been going on since the Nakba and there has never been a point where Palestinians were offered justice or anything less than ten-eyes-for-an-eye reprisals.
My problem is Hamas and has been since 2006 when Israel forceably removed Settlers from Gaza...carried them out at gun point in some instances.
And we got Hamas and Hamas in Gaza, Hamas as Gaza.
To the Pro-Palestinian camp:
1. This ceasefire in Gaza would happen tomorrow if the Hostages were returned
2. The Palestinians have agency in this matter...no Gazians are coming forward and saying the hostages are here, or here, and Hamas is not our ruler...but they obviously are and the Palestinians are complicit in this political marriage they have entered into.
3. There are surprisingly no calls for Hamas to lay down their arms....there is fierce gun battles occurring right in this moment in Gaza.
4. Israel has in real effect lost 30% of their already small country....no one wants to live along any border area.
5. The establishment of a cordon sanitaire, a dead zone on Gazian land 1 km deep all along the border is also untenable.
6. The bombing of Gaza to smithereens has the salutary effect of reminding everyone that they do not want to go through what Lebanon went through in the destruction of Beirut and that country in 2006. And so the northern border remains relatively quiet.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The question of the West Bank is entirely different....Settlers must be removed, but not to the 1967 Borders. We are still talking about forcible removing probably 100,000 Israeli's....which may destroy Israel....but there you have it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I have no sympathy for Hamas, like Nazism it should be buried in a deep grave. I favor a 3 state solution.
Good luck to everyone. Traveller
Israel has in real effect lost 30% of their already small country....no one wants to live along any border area.
Israel has lost zero percent of its territory. The changes to Israel's effective territory over the years only go in the opposite direction: toward aggrandizement. (You have heard of the West Bank, right?).
"1. This ceasefire in Gaza would happen tomorrow if the Hostages were returned"
Source?
"The question of the West Bank is entirely different....Settlers must be removed, but not to the 1967 Borders."
Why not?
1. This ceasefire in Gaza would happen tomorrow if the Hostages were returned
Jesus Fucking Christ! You're actually trusting Israel to keep it's word after everything else that's happened? But then again, you don't exactly have skin in the game, do you?
The release of the remaining hostages would be a great gesture...and would turn many heads, even mine, to maybe saying Hamas....are not all criminal psychopaths.
You personally cannot be in favor of holding hostages....can you? I am not sure you understand what you are saying.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
As to the 67` borders, land swaps was sort of agreed upon as a necessity...when I accidentally, (somewhat accidentally) found myself in Israel, I was amazed at the 21st century build up all along Highway 1 north of Jerusalem and is just to well established to ever be surrendered.
Further East certainly....settlers can be removed, though probably not without Israeli's killing Israeli's, though just leaving them in place in a Palestinian state....is another solution not requiring removal.
How about Israel releasing all of the 10,000 prisoners (including hundreds of children and thousands not even charged) and then we will see what happens.
Especially since Netanyahu has explicitly denied that releasing all of the hostages would lead to a cease fire.
Exactly! He's basically said that his war on Gaza would continue until Hamas has been totally destroyed, down to the last man. Implicit in this is, if Israel has to kill every last Palestinian to do so, that's just fine
Well yes, of course. I was just operating within the (fictional) parameters: even if there was an explicit guarantee of a cease fire, there is no reason -- none at all, to believe that Israel woud honor that guarantee.
Taking hostages is an ordinary crime (kidnapping) and a war crime. They need to be released and the perpetrators punished regardless of what the Israeli government does or does not do.
Making their release contingent on what the Israeli government does makes you complicit in this crime.
Stay on topic and don't attempt to derail.
How is release of hostages not on topic? Didn’t you respond by indicating the hostages shouldn’t be released because the Israeli government couldn’t be trusted? I think my response that the taking of hostages is a crime and that they should be released regardless of what the Israeli government does or does not do is completely on topic.
What part of that didn’t you like and why?
This is the topic, shit-for-brains:
That's literally the very first sentence that started this subthread. Now if you have something to say that is actaully on topic, speak. Otherwise, stick to the main thread.
Let's try to keep it civil. You are right on the merits, IMHO personal insults undermine your effectiveness.
ScentOfViolets is incapable of civility.
Who died and made you monitor? You make comments and people respond to your comments. That's the way comment boards work. That's why the commenting system allows people to respond to specific comments made by others, rather than forcing them to only respond the initial blog post.
I was responding to a specific comment made by you. I get it that you like being an asshole, but if you make a comment, people have a right to respond to that specific comment.
You have yet to state, what specifically was wrong with my response to your comment, other than its not a response to Kevin's post.
If I wanted to respond to Kevin's post, I would not have responded to your specific comment. I would have written a comment to Kevin's post instead of directly to you.
Of course, if you are not smart enough to figure out commenting works, I doubt you can explain your objection rationally.
Stealing land is an ordinary crime (theft) and a war crime. It needs to be returned and the perpetrators punished, regardless of what Hamas does or does not do.
Making its return contingent on what Hamas does makes you complicit in this crime.
This is every bit as true as what you wrote, and shows the folly of trying to think about these actions as ordinary crimes.
Nice
If you like bad analogies
It isn't an analogy. He is duplicating the logical structure of your argument.
I understood his analogy was mimicking me. Doesn’t change the fact his analogy does not work.
Bad analogy. For one thing the facts underlying your analogy are in dispute. Then there is your understanding of theft. Theft is the modern version of common law larceny. Larceny is the taking and carrying away of the personal property of another with the intent to permanently deprive, Land by definition is not personal property and you can’t carry it away. You can fraudulently obtain land, but your analogy really falls apart if you try to force fit the facts into that legal argument.
There is no factual or legal dispute that Israeli citizens were kidnapped taken to Gaza against their will nor is there any dispute that hostage taking is a war crime.
There is no moral argument that can be made for refusing to release the hostages.
The Israeli’s have a valid argument for the right of the nation of Israel to exist. You may not like that fact, but you should at least recognize it. I recognize Palestinians have a valid argument for statehood (and I have no problem with it).
But these two points don’t change the fact there is no moral or legal argument for retaining the hostages.
Hopefully you now understand the folly of your analogy.
2. The Palestinians have agency in this matter...no Gazians are coming forward and saying the hostages are here, or here, and Hamas is not our ruler...but they obviously are and the Palestinians are complicit in this political marriage they have entered into.
Right. The Palestinians were asked exactly one time 17 years ago who they wanted to be their ruler, chose Hamas, and even though about half of them now were born after that election, they’re all collectively responsible for it forever. 50 years from now, the Travellers of the world are going to be arguing “yeah but the Palestinians chose this path for themselves back in 2006. They have no right to bitch about how it’s turned out for them…”
Also, I’m unaware of how many people under a typical dictatorship or authoritarian government ever speak up and say “hey fuck the government, here are all of their secrets including where they’re keeping their hostages” and live to see another year of life. I would guess it’s not very high. (Not surprisingly, it’s also the same reason why the US government struggles to get communities victimized by gangs or the mafia to turn state’s witness against them too…)
Ah, yes. Collective guilt and collective punishment. Like Nazism. Like Stalinism. Like Francoism. Like Putinism. Like the Old Testament.
Feh.
What a weird example of how people believe what they want to believe. Israel has never claimed the invasion would happen if the hostages were returned. Not surprisingly the family of the hostages are not crazy about this assault since it appears that the only hostages to die have died from the bombings.
Israel's state purpose in invading Gaza is to wipe out Hamas, not to secure the return of the hostages. One can approve of that goal. But here the commentator seems to have substituted a goal he approves of more for the actual goal. And some responders seem to have taken seriously the idea that returning the hostages would end this incursion.
And fortunately for Israel it is an almost endless supply of Palestinians in its jails that have never been tried for any crime that it can trade for hostages. And it can always pick up more such people whenever it wants.
I feel like you're talking primarily about all of the suicide bombings on buses and everywhere across Tel Aviv and Israel between the 80s and 90s. If the US had as many suicide attacks as Israel during that period, I know without a doubt that this country would have veered sharply right, too. If these were done by an identifiable minority group, we'd see an explosion of vigilantism targeting that group, regardless of culpability.
Luckily, we only have thousands of shootings all the time in the US, and not hundreds of suicide attacks… otherwise we too might’ve “veered sharply right.”
And we don’t need vigilantes in America (although we have those too). We have professional police forces to exact our vengeance against certain minority groups, “regardless of culpability.”
We veered sharply right anyway.
So, you see my point: Societies are all the same in the end. Nations cannot resist responding in a similar way to similar stimuli.
There are few people within societies who can/willl always either see things objectively or try to; we almost all fall in line with our biases most of the time.
This analogy is stupid. The United States is not subjecting millions of people to military law, arbitrary detention, and denial of citizenship, while illegally seizing their land. (We were doing much of that in Iraq and Afghanistan before we withdrew, but it's not quite the same thing as a 56 year occupation.)
Any attempt to justify Israel's actions that doesn't recognize the full scope of their actions is pointless.
It's not an analogy; it's a proposal of a parallel counterfactual.
We don't even have to go very far back in history to see how the US was willing to ship Japanese to inland concentration camps, living in facilities covered with nothing more than building tar paper.
It's not a justification of Israel's actions; as I've repeatedly written, I'm explaining why -- in this case Israel -- acts the way it does.
Israel faced 14+ suicide bombings in about a decade.
It is said that the abused become the abusers. The Jews were prosecuted during WW2 and became horrific abusers of the Palestinians. Now Israel is not understanding why Hammas et al hate them. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out and I have been around for 80 plus years.
I believe Joe just blew his chance at the presidency and gave it to t-Rump on a silver platter with his sending munitions to Israel. Readers on WaPo are feeling as angry as I and you couldn’t even get on the comments section as most were saying the same. What have we become?
Joe never had much of a chance at at a second term. I was hoping that he was bright enough to realize this and would bow out in a blaze of glory. But I agree. Gaza-Israel and making his UN delegate vote against a cease-fire is the coup-de-grace.
Maybe senility is catching up with him?
Heh. The Zionists supported Adoplh Fucking Hitler until 1941 or thereabouts.
Most people have no idea that happened. I constantly ask, if 20 million civilians died in Hitler's camps, we only talk about 6 million Jews. What about the rest?
As humans, we have a great opportunity to address problems. Instead, we lump everyone into whatever bucket we want so as to maximize response.
No wonder space aliens don't want to associate with humans. (sorta /s)
Yes, obviously supporting Trump over Biden is the way to stop the US from arming Israel. Flawless logic.
Hopefully President Trump can mash that Lower Prices Now button on his desk harder than Biden too.
I mean... Trump might actually have one of those installed and think it does something.
The problem, I think, with Kevin's idea here is that only people who are hyper-aware of world affairs (people like Kevin and his blog's readers) have any clear sense of any kind of specific list of things like this. And even less sense of the deeper history. Actually knowing all those would perhaps actually help people respond less emotionally to the whole thing.
There are two other elements that are influencing this generational divide:
1) Palestinians are extreme underdogs in this situation, which makes them more appealing to root for.
2) The establishment in this country (really from both parties) more heavily supports Israel, which fits into the narrative of "corrupt older generation supporting injustice."
Add those to all the factors you named, it's a recipe for a huge campus cause.
So the youngsters are shallow. Got it.
Or maybe the oldsters bought into Israeli myths because that was all that was reported, and most people don't change their minds when confronted with new evidence.
We're ALL shallow. Just in different ways. Yes, the oldsters see Israel as an ally because that's the label they had all their lives and they're going to stick to it no matter what atrocity Israel commits. They'll convince themselves it needed to be done for safety! Some will be happy about a slaughter because, in their racial prejudices, Jew slightly edges out Arab or Muslim (it's more European in their eyes), and some support Israel because of absurd interpretations of weirder religious prophesies.
And yes, some people care about the well-being of the Palestinians on the ground, or the Israelis, or at least feel like they need to be the kind of person who cares about Palestinians, or Israelis.
And we all like to talk like we're experts about regions and people we only have (for the most part) passing familiarity. And mostly as some kind of hobby, because let's face it, hardly and of us will actually do anything that has any tangible affect on the I-P crisis or the people in it at all.
Do I think for some college students it's just another cause like "Free Tibet!" that, while possibly worthy, they just latch onto to have something to feel passionate about? Absolutely. Do I think a lot of older folks look for excuses to defend Israel's government because they refuse to complicate their worldview or abandon old busses? Oh yeah.
Do I think we're accomplishing anything here? Not really. I should probably find a new thread.
Yes, exactly this. I teach these kids in high school. It's a vague "cause" whichever side they are on, and it's an emotive response to an atrocity they saw or heard about on social media. TBC, most adults are the same way, unless they are hyper-aware about geopolitics like the people commenting at Kev's place. Almost no one has more than a vague idea about more than one or two of the specific things on Kevin's list.
Sorry to see you go. Good reply to my comment, by the way.
You forgot 3) The intertubes have made it harder and harder to curate Israel's public image. Sounds like the olds really did buy into their jello pudding pops.
From the Guardian today:
Biden administration to sell 14,000 tank shells to Israel without congressional review
The Joe Biden administration has used an emergency authority to sell around 14,000 tank shells to Israel without congressional review.
Reuters reports:
The state department on Friday used an Arms Export Control Act emergency declaration for the tank rounds worth $106.5m for immediate delivery to Israel, the Pentagon said in a statement.
The shells are part of a bigger sale that was first reported by Reuters on Friday that the Biden administration is asking the US Congress to approve. The larger package is worth more than $500m and includes 45,000 shells for Israel’s Merkava tanks, regularly deployed in its offensive in Gaza, which has killed thousands of civilians.
As the war intensified, how and where exactly the American weapons are used in the conflict has come under more scrutiny, even though US officials say there are no plans to put conditions on military aid to Israel or to consider withholding some of it.
Rights advocates expressed concern over the sale, saying it doesn’t align with Washington’s effort to press Israel to minimize civilian casualties.
A state department official said on Saturday that Washington continues to be clear with the Israeli government that it must comply with international humanitarian law and take every feasible step to avoid harm to civilians.
I've no idea (obviously) how typical my history is. I remember as a teenager an Israeli speaking at a meeting of our church youth fellowship, endorsed by the minister. He told an inspiring story of a country simultaneously ancient and very new, surrounded by tens of millions of hostile Arabs - and when the Arabs attacked, they were beaten! What 13 year-old would not be on the side of the Jews?
Later I read Leon Uris - 'Exodus' and 'QBVII' and 'Mila 18'. I read Michener's 'The Source' and 'The Drifters'. I read Shirer and Bullock and Toland. I read Morris West's 'The Tower of Babel'. The consensus was plain: Jews had been subjected to indescribable brutality by the Nazis; Israel's Jews were the good and heroic survivors of the Holocaust; some Arab individuals were decent people but their leaders were murderous anti-Semitic maniacs. But the brave Jews kept beating them even though they were hopelessly outnumbered! I should add that many Australians felt considerable disdain for Arabs at the time, owing to the experiences they or their relatives had had in the Middle East in two world wars. And the bastards kept hijacking planes and terrorising Olympic Games!
It was only much later, reading history more widely, that I began to grasp the complexity of the issues involved in the history of Israel. I expect that many Australians over 60 never had occasion to change their instinctive support for Israel in any conflict with its neighbors, while those born after 1980 have an entirely different perspective.
Later I read Leon Uris - 'Exodus' and 'QBVII' and 'Mila 18'. I read Michener's 'The Source' and 'The Drifters'. I read Shirer and Bullock and Toland. I read Morris West's 'The Tower of Babel'.
Would it surprise you in the slightest if I said that I, like you, read those same authors? Uris and Michener were notable back in the day for writing big fat (for the time) tomes that quickly made the bestsellers list; certainly they were in heavy rotation at my local public libray (This would have been mid- to late-70's). The Source was my particular favorite, at least implicitly purporting to be semi-based on fact (the more recent narratives, that is, not that bit about the stone), and I think a lot of the public made the same assumption.
Long story short, though they won't admit it, that's where a lot of Israel supporters of a, shall we say, certain age, that got their 'facts' on historical events. And there they stopped. I am given to understand that few people read non-fiction as pure entertainment, and when opinions were asked, those opinions were firmly given ... based upon dimly remembered novels and current uncritically reported 'news' in the popular media. Being informed is hard work, but hey, why, waste an opportunity to vent in public, especially when they think the alternative, "I don't know enough to have an opinion" makes them look weak - precisely the opposite of reality.
And of course, based on the same dynamic, they double down when confronted with the facts, and justify their behaviour by telling themselves they're being chivvied.
Look what's happened here: When given the facts, actual, verifiable facts with cites, none of our pro-Israel commenters have explicitly addressed those corrections of their misapprehensions, never mind admitting they were wrong.
Well, accept for dear old cld. A few of Kevin's posts back, he outright admitted that the facts on the ground were 'weeds' those critical of Israel's behaviour were hiding in. Instead of dealing in 'realities' like his brave old self was. He and his buddy Kissinger. In fact, I much prefer cld's finally letting it all hang out to those trying to weasel Israel's actions as those of a good faith actor. He just straight-up says what they don't want to admit in public.
Where does one go when you and your antagonist and entwined, his dagger in your flank and your club smashing head, neck, shoulder, face, and whatever else it can reach?
See it's not a matter of perspective, it's a matter of existence. Whatever got the two to this point doesn't (does) matter, and it won't stop until ...
The hostages are released? Hah. The West Bank is given back over? Hah. The dead made alive? Hah. The memories made easy and pleasant? Hah. I only see one way forward and it's a horrible, bloody path. Stop pretending otherwise.
The perpetrators of the Munich Olympics massacre, the October 7 massacre and more than 75 suicide bombings against civilians are heroes in current Palestinian culture.
I do not claim Israel is blameless, but some commenters seem to think Palestinians are absolutely innocent.
Context matters
Balance matters.
'Some commenters', eh? Why don't you name them?
I don't think that Palestinians are innocent. No entire population is innocent, and none is guilty. These are concepts that adhere to individuals, not populations.
There are most definitely individual Palestinians who are deeply guilty of crimes and atrocities. And some of that guilt transfers to other Palestinians who have supported them.
Comments like yours tend to elide the very important distinction between explaining something and excusing it. Without excusing Hamas's massacre or other actions, it ought to be pretty clear why such actions are all but inevitable given the choices that Israeli governments have made since 1967. That's what happens in guerilla warfare. October 7th may stand out as conspicuously brutal, but killing civilians and, yes, even rape, is standard fare for paramilitary militias engaged in an insurgency. That's true even of guerilla armies that we generally support, including the French Resistance during WWII, which spent a lot more time policing collaborators within the French ranks than they did attacking the Germans themselves.
So, yes, context matters. It's just a lot broader than most people want to grasp.
"Comments like yours tend to elide the very important distinction between explaining something and excusing it."
Yes.
Understanding bleeds into excusing in the human psyche. It takes positive effort to resist. It is why we often resist understanding - we fear sympathy will follow.
What a fun thread this is.
/S
Isn't it though?
One thing to keep in mind is that it's not a question of today's Palestinians being responsible for stuff done 75 years ago. It's that history is contingent. Things happened in 1948, then 1956, then 1967, then 1973, etc. At each point along the way these wars affected things that were still recent history. String 'em together and only then do you get 75 years.
It is better now. cld threw some bombs but later some really good posts.
I miss melancholydonkey, the last two I/P threads I feel he kept things on track. Factual, careful, civil.
Thanks. It was Border Battle weekend (Minnesota/Wisconsin women's hockey), so I've been busy.
My memory of terrible incidents caused by both some Israelis & by several Palestinian groups is longer than Kevin Drum''s, & I have been shown photos of the homes of friends' parents that were lost uring the Nakba. And while I despise Binyamin Netanyahu & the extremists in his coalition, as well as Hamas, since their constitution includes the vow to kill the all the Jews, I cannot support one side's rights and not the other.
But just as during the decades when Israelis o ALL religions- & tourists- were killed in blown-up buses, markets, &:restaurants (school kids were also targeted), the October 7 attack included victims other than those intended. That citizens of other countries, who were working in Israel, were killed & taken hostage has been reported, but the Bedouin community has received little attention.
For part of that story, please see below. Israel needs to honor them, especially because some of them were attempting to protect Israeli Jews.
https://www.972mag.com/bedouin-citizens-negev-october-7/
I think it would be a lot easier for Israel to claim the moral high ground in the world’s eyes if (1) they stopped building settlements in the West Bank instead of encouraging them and (2) they actually prosecuted crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians instead of turning a blind eye to them. Like, nothing in “we need security for our homeland” required the bad parts of (1) or (2) to occur… so lots of people just conclude that the Israelis choose the morally bad choice in (1) and (2) for fun. I’ve been to Israel and they’re not out of empty land so (1) really has no justification at all. And (2) is something the world now condemns whenever it’s happened elsewhere, eg the US or South Africa letting white people do whatever they wanted to the people already living in those lands, including committing violent crimes against them without repercussion. Not sure why Israel thinks it’s immune from that condemnation.
Yes!
All Israel has to do is negotiate and Osloish 78%/ 22%, compact and contiguous West Bank with full sovereignty.
It would piss off the fanatic settlers big time, but Israel would still be a rich and powerful country.
And the world would embrace them. And there would be peace.
Most young people today have been raised in an environment where collective punishment of civilians is viewed as a moral wrong, regardless of the historical antecedents. And a belief that war must be fought with a view to the peace afterwards. Even the neocons managed that (however delusional that view may have been.)
There is no focus on the post-war period in this war, not even an unrealistic one. It just looks like gruesome revenge with no care for the future.
"The more I read the more I realize my earlier pro-Israeli feelings relied on Israeli origin myths that were not true."
I have seen/heard this sentiment elsewhere, but I'm not sure what it means.
Israel's creation was reported on by the international press at the time.
That there was a Palestinian state created at the same time was reported by the international press at the time.
The fact that Palestinians turned it down as they were promised the entire country after the Arab World destroyed Israel in that first war (1948) was reported on by the international press at the time.
Arab vows to destroy Israel in each of the wars of 1948, 1956, and 1967 were all reported on by the international press at the time.
What are the myths?
Myth: The UN partition was fair and just and in their perversity the Arabs would not accept it. Reality: Powerful rich nations decided 32% of the population of Palestine, newcomers all, should get 55% of the land, and the better land at that. The locals were not consulted. The myth was internationally reported.
"The fact that Palestinians turned it down as they were promised the entire country after the Arab World destroyed Israel in that first war (1948)"
This is a myth. There was no systematic public opinion research determining how many Palestinians believed that promise vs. how many were scared shitless and fled to live another day vs. how many had no idea who would win but opposed being displaced. The myth was internationally reported.
Myth. Scrappy David beats Goliath. Israel had the better military in all the wars. The myth was internationally reported.
Myth: No Palestinians were forced off their land. Actually, many were. And there were massacres, so people rationally feared for their lives.
The myth was internationally reported.
Myth: Israel offered a great deal for a Palestinian State and Arafat walked away. Actually full sovereignty was never offered.
Myth: Israel is the great democracy in the Middle East. Actually Israel is a democracy that rigs the vote. The Palestinians were not allowed to return home because if they voted a Jewish state might not win at the ballot box.
The myth was internationally reported.
"Israel offered a great deal for a Palestinian State and Arafat walked away. Actually full sovereignty was never offered."
Was the offer better than what they have now? No? Then they were foolish to turn it down.
This is a rather weird non seqitur response.
It's not a non sequitur. It's pointing out the irony that the Arabs' ideological and religious-based refusal to concede any amount of land is not helping their cause, and has in fact resulted in the loss of more land and the suffering of more people.
Ideological purity is the enemy. If the Arabs and the Jews did not believe that they have a religious obligation to possess this land, peace would have been achieved a long time ago.
As I've said before, this is putting words into the mouths of others to justify one's own beliefs. Whether you think the Palestinians would be better off had the accepted any particular deal isn't relevant to anything. How about asking them whether they wish they had accepted a previous offer, rather than playing Great White Pontificator?
Sure, let's ask all the dead ones how they feel about the subject. I'm sure they believe it's all worth it.
If you read the American Indian Wars it was common for a tribe to reject being pushed onto a crappy reservation only to end up on a still crappier one.
Decent people no longer say 'foolish Indians, shoulda taken the first one'.
The logic of the shakedown: 'If you'd just made the payments you'd still have a shop."
I like what John Judis said in his history
https://newrepublic.com/article/177306/israel-colonialist-state-history-today
"Jews still made up only 32 percent of the population. In the partition, which the Arabs rejected, Jews got 55 percent of the land, including the most economically viable areas, and the Arabs only 40 percent, with the rest under U.N control. In retrospect, it could be argued that the Arabs and Palestinians would have been better off now accepting the U.N. plan, but history doesn’t work that way."
No, history doesn't work that way. In history the strong win. As a matter of justice people are not wrong when they fight for their rights.
> As a matter of justice people are not wrong when they fight for their rights.
Sure. Now the Palestinians have to decide: would you rather have justice, or would you rather be alive?
The answer so far has been the former, which has (a) not resulted in any appreciable increase in justice and (b) has resulted in the activation of the suicide cult of Islam.
At some point, you just need to cut your losses.
Easy for you to say
People who make comments like this seem to intend to be defending Israel when they are really suggesting that Israel is such a immoral state that the Palestinians should accept perpetual abuse because it is better than the even worse perpetual abuse that Israel will instead give them.
Of course it is usually part of a two step. "Palestinians were offered peace so it shows they are awful that they didn't accept it." "But the Palestinians weren't offered peace". "Well then the Palestinians should have accepted that they are unworthy of peace then they would be better off than they are now."
How disgusting and yet not uncommon that two step is.
That there was a Palestinian state created at the same time was reported by the international press at the time.
This is false. A Palestinian state was created in 1923, when the Palestinian Mandate came into effect. If you read the text of the Mandate, it is clear and explicit that it is creating one. Further, it is also clear that it was to create a single, multiethnic state, rather than separate states for Jews and Arabs. This state was explicitly described as being for the population, which at the time was 90-92% Arab. The British were made the temporary administrators, obligated to turn the state over to the Palestinians at some future date, when they are condescendingly deemed capable of self-rule.
Article 7 says that Jewish immigrants are to acquire "Palestinian citizenship." Article 28 talks about obligations of the Palestinian state, singular, after the British hand over. In multiple places, the Mandate obligates the British to preserve the rights of the local population.
The British never took those obligations seriously, but they were the law.
The fact that Palestinians turned it down as they were promised the entire country after the Arab World destroyed Israel in that first war (1948) was reported on by the international press at the time.
The Partition of Palestine violated both the Mandate and the U.N. Charter. It was an act of war, to which the Arabs responded.
What are the myths?
Too numerous to mention. Aside from the above, they include:
1) That pre-Zionist Palestine was a largely uninhabited and undeveloped land. ("A land without a people for a people without a land.")
2) That Transjordan was a part of Mandatory Palestine, and its severance from such was the creation of a state for Palestinians.
3) That the Israelis didn't engage in massive ethnic cleansing in 1948.
4) That European powers (and the United States) had any legitimate power to decide who should get what land.
Unfortunately, the Israelis and many others will continue to believe these myths, including creating more. No wonder there is war. It seems those who don't believe or understand facts are the perpetrators. Thank you for your truths of history, as I learned it.
> A Palestinian state was created in 1923, when the Palestinian Mandate came into effect.
It seems like in every thread, you keep on spreading the same BS. As you yourself point out, the Palestinian Mandate was not a Palestinian state in any sense except the name: it was multiethnic, and it was administered by the British.
When Palestinians today ask for a Palestinian state, they are obviously not asking for a return to the Mandate or anything like it: they instead envision an ethno-state by and for Palestinians, either without Jews at all, or with Jews living in the same kind of oppression that Palestinians currently endure.
Saying that the Palestinian Mandate was a Palestinian State is like saying that South Dakota is an Indian state.
No, the Palestinian Mandate did create a state, condescendingly put under British administration.
When Palestinians today ask for a state some ask for one state with equal rights for all. That isn't a return to the mandate, but it is a return to what the Mandate envisioned.
Other Palestinians ask for a separate state, but they cannot duplicate Israel's oppression because such a state would not be a military occupation. As a practical matter it is hard to imagine many Israelis staying long. The settlements are illegal under international law, it is hard to see how they would press ownership claims in court. It just isn't the same thing at all.
Whatever you think of one state with equal rights for all it is the position of many Palestinians and becoming more popular.
What you call melancholydonkey's BS holds up the more I read.
Citation needed. Where does Hamas, Fatah, or the Palestinian Authority ever support a one-state solution with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians?
Read the text of the Mandate: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp
It is explicit that it was establishing a state. I have quoted parts of it that make this clear numerous times. That you argue in sufficiently bad faith that you perpetually ignore this is not my problem.
Proto-Israeli terrorism against the British attempting to provide for a Palestine is why there is not a Palestine.
And that shit just gets glossed right the fuck over. I wonder why that is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_insurgency_in_Mandatory_Palestine
This blog post does not in fact provide a sufficient rationale for what Kevin refers to as a hatred for Israel among young Leftists.
The continued failure of Liberals to just call a spade a spade is really beginning to resemble the Right’s failure to call out Trump.
And Kevin’s a brilliant guy, but his ongoing attempts to justify or ignore the evil nature of, and the threat posed by, illiberal and antisemitic Leftists is really turning into more and more of a discrediting blind spot on his part.
“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.”
Honestly, this may be the very first time I’ve ever felt intellectually insulted by one of Kevin’s blog posts, either here or back at Mother Jones.
This blog post, and the above quote, seems to assert that if you’ve been watching or reading the news for just the last few years, you can be forgiven for chanting “from the river to the sea,” or for posting online images of Hamas terrorists on para-gliders, or for otherwise disrupting the academic environment for whatever sane students still stick it out at our Ivy League madrases.
But this is an embarrassingly asinine assertion. If in fact students were motivated by the actual news that’s readily available about murderous regimes throughout the world, they would be out there right now marching incessantly against Putin. The student protests demanding that Republicans in Congress renew American funding for Ukraine would be so overwhelming that our colleges and universities would simply grind to a halt.
But, of course, none of that happens. Why? Because our young “anti racist” Leftists could not give the slightest shit about the murderous regimes throughout the world. And they sure as F*#k don’t care how many people those regimes conquer, enslave, murder, torture, and rape.
It’s only when Israel is the target of their ire that young Leftists start protesting. Why? Because the Leftists in questions are antisemitic assholes. That’s why. That’s the kind of important point that Kevin bends over backwards to avoid. Shame on him.
Young Leftists do not give a flying F*#k about genocide. If they did, they’d have been on our streets nonstop for years demanding an end to China’s treatment of the Uyghurs.
Young Leftists do not care about democracy, free speech, or open inquiry. We have seen this time and time again in the last decade as they have literally, and violently, chased anyone with views they don’t like off campus and contributed to the firing of hundreds of professors who hurt their poor little feelings.
Young Leftists do not care about combatting racism. Rather, they fully support it. They have entirely embraced Ibram Kendi’s “anti racist” doctrine of reverse racism and permanent racial discrimination. And that fundamentalist creed has now morphed inevitably into the most virulent antisemitism (they perceive Jews as “white” and therefore evil) that we’ve seen in generations.
Here’s the only proper response: F*#k Leftists. And stop writing blog posts that make excuses for them. It’s f*#king embarrassing.
Leftists don't have marches chanting "Jews will not replace us".
Leftists don't have self avowed Nazis and White Supremacists as a huge part of their base.
Leftists leaders don't casually invite self avowed nazis and white supremacists for strategy meetings, or lunch. Nor do they go and give speeches in conferences organized by them.
Leftists don't systematically try to stop as many non-whites as possible from voting.
Leftists don't promise to wipe out "vermin" from the population if returned to power.
So please, spare us the ridiculous nonsense that you are peddling. Idiocy like that might fly on Breibart, 4chan, or whatever other cesspool you rightwingers like to spend your time at.
You show real passion here, but it is an depressingly stupid cause. Unfortunately you are someone who is capable of reading the collection of evil that Drum describes and not being bothered, and so thinking that other people should not be bothered either. How depressing for Israel that defense of Israel has reduced to the idea that people should stop complaining about Israel because there are other bad actors in the world, so criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.
If you want to understand why your rant is so misguided, consider the example you give of Ukraine and keep in mind we are talking about protests in the US. Russia invaded Ukraine and was subject to almost universal criticism. The president of the US led a coalition that armed the Ukrainians and enabled them to blunt the invasion, and he has pushed for continuous support for the Ukrainians. Should the colleges be full of protesters saying "way to go Biden"? That isn't exactly how protest works.
By contrast, Israel has just slaughtered an estimated 17,000 Palestinians while creating food shortages for more than 2 million people. This follows a more than decade long blockade of a captive people. This has been done largely with US provided weapons, and the US president is working to get around Congress to provide more weapons for the people slaughtering a captive people. Do you really not see why students in the US would find this worthy of protesting? If you don't it is because you are not being honest with yourself.
Another way to see this is to note that the last situation which got US universities active in this way was Apartheid South Africa. South Africa was not a Jewish issue, so it obviously was not anti-Semitism in that very similar case. Rather the issue was a country with widespread western support abusing a native population while being treated as a nation in good standing.
Or if you still don't get it another way of thinking of it is that Israel is not the only morally repugnant country in the world right now, but it is the only one whose moral repugnant acts are widely defended in this country. If you point out that Putin is evil you are likely to be met with widespread acceptance. If you point out that Netanyahu is evil you are likely to be called an anti-Semite. There is no need for campus protesters to argue that people should believe what they already believe. But when evil gets defended it makes sense for that to be a target of protesters.
If you can find people arguing that we should be providing arms to Russia you would have a point. But the fact that the idea is so absurd shows why you don't.
Kevin, you make good points but I feel you are missing one major element. Younger generations have been educated according to a particular worldview, an ideology, that seems to have exploded onto the scene over the past few years, but which has obviously been building strength for a good twenty or more. You can see this clearly enough in the language typically used: older generations reach for concepts such as human rights and international law, while younger generations speak of oppression, colonialism, and justice. Israel holds an importance for younger people that it never did and never will for their elders, at least for those without a direct connection to the region. The dancing-in-the-streets glee after the recent horrific atrocities should have been proof enough that this was not your father’s weltanschauung.
Maybe you speak for the kids, I don't know, I think this comment thread is mostly oldsters.
Kevin's claim about oldsters is they know the history better and greater sympathy to Israel follows. The commenters arguing accurate history does no such thing are using the language of human rights and international law.
There’s certainly plenty of jockeying over the facts: what actually happened, and which facts matter today? But when it comes to making actuel judgements, I think you will find two ways of looking at the world that do not align.
This is a weird comment in that Israel has thumbed its nose at international law for decades, and doing so has ignored the basic human rights of the Palestinians. If that was the issue older generations would be as critical of Israel as younger generations. Instead people basing their opinions on the kindergarten story that Drum does have argued that Israel shouldn't be held to the standards of international law because it is different.
I admit that talking in terms of oppression rather than international law makes things feel more immediate. And maybe that is the interesting point that when people were just talking about the fact that Israel was violating international law it could be ignored, but when the focus was on the oppression caused by international law it became harder.
god's chosen people can do no wrong.
I withdraw my support of Joe Biden, and will not abide the massacre of civilians and trashing of the United Nations. Joe may as well dissolve the body at this point, the UN, international law, and Geneva Conventions are all effectively meaningless, congratulations and great work! Don't bother talking to me about worse case scenarios, I know none of you have scruples, principles, or a conscience, just more butchers at the table.
Thanks,
Jimm Freelixir
"I withdraw my support of Joe Biden"
And let Trump win, who will do the same but in the US too?
Maybe on the contrary young people have a better understanding than older people about Israel. See https://www.tiktok.com/@middleeastmonitor/video/7304349637719362848
- They see the beginning and creation of Israel as a one among many colonialist projects that the Western world imposed on the rest of the world. It was land theft from the start, and it was considered acceptable because the modern civilized (white) world considered itself superior to everybody else.
- They see the Nakba for what it is : ethnic cleansing.
- They consider that human rights, in particular the right to self-determination, should be enforced by the international community. Therefore the international community should stop enabling Israel in their refusal to recognize the legitimate rights of Palestinians to have their state.
- They don't consider that winning a war gives the country a right to anything. For example, nobody considers that the US can keep land in Afghanistan or Iraq. By definition, either we accept victories by violence as legitimate or we try to enforce self-determination, but both are not compatible.
I watched the video. Impressive, but really I don't think what's going on in Palestine can be called genocide except by strained and legalistic contortions.
I do worry about learning from videos. They are hard to fact check or analyze. You have to somehow pull out text (and she was talking fast) if you want to double-check something. Not conducive to analysis or reflection.
BTW good link. I agree with her more than not but worry about the decline of text.
Let me repeat, I will never abide the slaughter of women and children, ever. Never again. This violence solves nothing, and is actually destroying the post-WWII order, as sketchy and idealistic as that may have been, it was fostered in respect and dignity of the Jewish people who were senselessly slaughtered, just as the Palestinian people today (but obviously different in method too).
The people who think violence solves problems will lose again, and again, and again, we don't have to support it, we must not.