Gaza is back in the political news thanks to protests at the DNC, which mostly seem to have fizzled out. I guess Killer Kamala doesn't have quite the same ring as Genocide Joe.
But I remain puzzled not by opposition to the Gaza War per se, but by the seemingly relentless, intransigent opposition to Israel having responded to October 7 at all. Where does this unquestioning sympathy for Israel's enemies come from?
For more than 70 years Arabs (and Iran) have been relentlessly dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Over the decades this has taken the form of conventional wars, guerilla wars, blockades, terrorist attacks, organic uprisings, suicide bombers, and rockets from neighboring territories. When Arab nations effectively gave up, the PLO took over the killing. When the PLO gave up, Hamas and Hezbollah took over. No matter what Israel did or didn't do, someone remained fanatically devoted to killing Jews.
If you're one of the lunatics who thinks Israel is an illegal colonial settler on Palestinian land and it's therefore righteous to seek its destruction, go block a freeway or set up a bunch of tents or do something else stupid and pointless.
On the other hand, if you're someone who thinks the West Bank settlements are wrong and Israel has a lot to answer for—well, I agree. If you think Benjamin Netanyahu is an odious piece of shit, preach it. If you think Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, abused Palestinian prisoners, cavalierly bombed civilians, killed aid workers, and turned the entire region into a wasteland, you'll get no argument. If, in general, you think Israel could have done a whole lot of things better and more humanely over the years, you're right.
And yet, all that stuff didn't pop up out of nowhere. It happened because no matter how many wars they won or how many peace settlements they agreed to, their enemies single-mindedly kept trying to annihilate them. So what do you expect them to do? Is there a less brutal course that would ever get Israel's enemies to stop?
Maybe there is. But what? What precisely is it that Palestinian protesters want?
BTW the US has occupied Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, Nicaragua, and Haiti. One could argue that it's also occupied parts of Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan.
Puerto Ricans are US citizens. The others are not occupied by Israel. If Israel either made the Palestinians citizens or ended its occupation it would not be criticized for keeping millions of people stateless, because it would not be keeping millions of people stateless.
These attempts to defend Israel by arguing that other people have done evil things is depressing and should be an embarrassment to Israel. The fact that in the face fo the current actions in Gaza the attempts to find equivalent evil by other states tends to fail is even worse.
There is no equivalent in world history because there is no other example where three religions beliefs intersected on a sliver of land, and where one group (the Jews) are believed to be in theological error (Muslims) or have killed a savior and need to see the light (Christians). Add in the millennia of genocide against Jews and you have a country that rightly believes that hundreds of millions of people in the world probably want them dead. Most other historic conquest was a straight up land grab, but I think it is simplistic to see the Israeli-Palestinian issues as that. Beyond this, IDK how it ends or what should be done. It is beyond depressing to think about the people living this nightmare.
Don't forget to complete the Trifecta: The Jews see themselves as the Chosen people and those of the other two faiths are not. I'd say the Abrahamic faiths really don't have a lot to offer anyone on the strength of being Abrahamic. Stone age tribalism and magical thinking.
Your comment is astute if the goal is to avoid peace and to justify Israeli's disgusting behavior. But the reality is that every conflict has some unique features. And the features you point to are not the impediments to Israel and the Palestinians reaching peace. The reason that the Palestinians and Israelis have not reached peace, while the Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants with their histories have, is that peace is currently predicated on the idea that the Jewish minority should get 78% of the territory and the Palestinian majority should get 22% and this is considered unfair, by the Israelis who want more.
If you want a deeper understanding of why Israel would take such a ludicrous position, part of it is that so much of the West buys into Drum's kindergarten version of the conflict and so does not see how unreasonable Israel is. But more importantly, at least up until 10/7 Israel had good reason to believe that it could thrive more by controlling the whole territory as an apartheid state than settling for 78% of the territory as a normal democracy. And the US has taken the position that Israel should feel safe regardless of what it does. So there has been no push on Israel to move to peace other than utter awfulness of apartheid, and that apparently is no push at all.
If Israel thought it would be better off with peace, there would be peace. That is why we are talking about peace after 10/7 and were not talking about it before. Because 10/7 was the first event in more than a decade suggesting that Israel might be better off with peace. Of course the Palestinians would be better off with peace, which is why they have put more effort into trying to get to peace. I have no illusions that it is because they are better people than the Israelis.
To get to peace both sides have to think they are better off with peace. Currently only one side believes that. And unfortunately US policy has been designed to confirm them in that belief.
Cogent!
"up until 10/7 Israel had good reason to believe that it could thrive more by controlling the whole territory as an apartheid state than settling for 78% of the territory as a normal democracy"
10/7 aside, that calculation works until it doesn't. S. Africa felt it could thrive more as an apartheid state when racism was more accepted. International tolerance for racism dropped and the cost of apartheid rose until the calculation no longer held. The international and psychological toll became unsustainable.
So it can be with Israel, already well advanced on the path to international opprobrium. The generation gap in the US is vast. Young Jews and gentiles alike are far less tolerant of Israeli myths and BS. Right only antipathy to Trump is preventing schism among Democrats.
With about half of the world's jewry the coming shift in the US will have vast consequences. I can't predict the future, but even if Israel maintains physical security the calculation that apartheid is better than two states seems unsustainable.
"If Israel thought it would be better off with peace, there would be peace." So the idea here is that if Israel returned the territory it has captured, and gave the Palestinians the opportunity to develop a state, then there would be peace in our time because all of that other stuff like religion and vengeance really doesn't matter to the people who live there. All we, the US, needs to do is stop blindly supporting Israel so that they are forced to negotiate with a Palestinian leadership that places the well-being of their people above religion, vengeance, and personal gain so that a durable peace (no endless terrorist attacks) can take hold. I made this sort of point to an Israeli friend in 2000 and his last words were to me were that 'you don't understand, they want to kill all of us' and we never spoke as friends again. This sounds snarky and I don't like that about my comment but I'm doubtful it is as simple as "If Israel thought it would be better off with peace, there would be peace. "
So you believed this, No evidence was given against it. And now you think this shows you were wrong?
The Palestinians have not traditionally been a very religious people. Their first attempts to get peace were done in nationalist terms. Hamas sprang up only as a counterbalance to this nationalism and it has gained strength because the nationalist approach has failed.
Issues of religion do not go away. Serious peace talks have always concerned how to protect the Old City and the religiously significant places there. But one should not make the mistake of thinking that simply because religion is involved people are not mostly motivated to live a good life and to provide a safe place for their children.
For that reason it does not make sense to take something like Barak's offer which left the Palestinians under occupation as a peace offer. the Palestinians could not thrive there. That also is why I have said in some comments that the worst aspect of the Abbas offer was that it might not have given the Palestinians enough land to have a viable state. A failed state would not support peace.
But it sounds like your initial view in 2000 was right. The fact that Israel did not offer peace at that time is not evidence that it could not have achieved peace if it offered it.
I believe I was simplistic and naive in my thinking. That I was ignoring fundamental aspects of the human psyche so that I could feel hope and that I was being 'righteous'. Look, if you were a dark haired person living as a minority in a community of blond haired people where 10% of that population would occasionally just kill you, your child, or run around chanting all dark haired people should die because God said it was ok, then how would you respond to that? Since I have kids, I know exactly how I would respond to it. Fight or run, and I would not try that I hard to discern who was good and who was bad.
The selfish reason I hate this topic is that it makes me feel old and cynical but that comes with age I guess. Lon, I hope you never lose hope and keep pushing for a better world. I do that but where I think that I can actually influence the outcome. Really, I hope you are right and I am wrong.
Unfortunately it seems that your current view is the simplistic one. You buy into the nonsense that the Palestinian hatred of Israel is that they are Muslims, and not that they have been abused for 50 years by Israel. As I noted in my last message, the Palestinians have not traditionally been a religious people. They have had Christians in their government and in powerful positions in the movement. Do you think their God is ordering them to hate Jews? (Actually Islam is not by its nature hateful of Jews, that is another myth to hide that actions have consequences).
I am probably more cynical now than I was decades ago. But it is evidence based. In the 90s I believed that Israel would accept peace if it was offered. Now it is hard to miss that all of the evidence opposes that, even the evidence that was available in the 90s.
What I am noting is that your cynicism is not based on evidence It is based on the ridiculous idea that Israel should have been able to keep Palestinians stateless for decades with no blowback. And the fact that there has been blowback shows that the Palestinians are religious zealots unmoored by reason.
Note that in my example I never said who was who. Depending on the scale of the area, the "killers" could be Palestinian or Jews.
The point has nothing to do with what either side is doing. The point is that it doesn't take many people condoning or making threats of violence to make peace untenable for everyone. Throw in religious zealotry for some minority and it becomes even less likely.
I am making the point that the situation is hopeless because of the way humans are wired. You are making the point that there is hope because all Israel needs to do is act differently. I wish they would but they won't do it so keep screaming at the hurricane, it won't matter.
As I noted in my initial comment, in the 90s the Israeli conflict seemed no more intractable than the one in Northern Ireland. Is your view that the Irish are not wired like human beings?
Yours is not an evidence based cynicism. And in the real world it becomes an excuse to ignore Israel abusing a captive population. That makes it both evidence free and harmful. Not noting that it is the Israelis that are both doing most of the killing and most of the alleging that Palestinians are killers by nature does not hide the fact that that is how it works out.
There have been plenty of seemingly intractable situations that stopped being intractable when the sides decided it was in their interest for it to be. Your friends view that Palestinians are incapable of making peace used to be alleged about Arabs in general until Egypt and Jordan made peace with Israel. The Saudis, far more religious that the Palestinians, are desperate to make peace with Israel if Israel can manage to not be evil long enough to get a peace treaty signed. The UAE and Morocco have already signed such deals.
The point is that there are concrete difficulties to reaching a peace, with by far the largest being that Israel has abused its occupation to settle half a million people on the 22% of the territory that would go to the Palestinians. And there are racist beliefs that some people are incapable of making peace. That people are actually hardwired so they can't make peace is not one of the problems.
It isn't so long again that it would have seemed fanciful to suggest that the French and Germans, or French and British could make peace.
I was making this argument long before 10/7. Nothing that has happened since has changed my view. We ar in agreement here.
Puerto Ricans are US citizens. The others are not occupied by Israel.
Puerto Ricans can also have an independent state of their own any time they choose, if the majority wills it.
I'd guess the Puerto Ricans would just as soon Puerto Rico were an actual state, as in one of the United States. Right now they're stuck in the taxation-without-representation phase.
A pose they chose by referendum, many times.
Only the most recent one supported statehood.
BTW the US has occupied Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, Nicaragua, and Haiti. One could argue that it's also occupied parts of Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan.
Other than Puerto Rico, where, as Lon Becker points out, the inhabitants are American citizens, all of the rest were temporary, and even in Haiti, lasted for less time than the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank have.
Yeah, and we pushed native americans off their land, violated treaties, and fire-bombed cities.
Your point is what?
The German Nazi occupation of Poland is a better analogy for Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Except it was shorter, and they didn't revoke the ability to vote, or do extended bombing campaigns against civilian targets.
The Nazi plan for Occupied Poland and Eastern Europe was to displace the native populations with German 'settlers.'
I could just as easily ask supporters of Israel what they expcted Palestinians to do? After all, Israel has been invading their territory, stealing their land, building "settlements" there for decades. At some point there has to be some sort of consequence for relentless aggrssion against a neighboring people?
Correct.
Hey Kevin! Longtime reader, first time commenter at your new home... Thank you for all the commentary through the years!
People who somehow defend Hamas and its terror attack dont really have a leg to stand on. There's simply a wide gulf between those who think that the wilful murder of innocent people, not as collateral damage but as targets, is ever justified.
Having said that, it's unreasonable to paint all palestinians with the same brush and it's unreasonable to assert that all Arabs are consistently trying to wipe out Israel. Israel has had numerous opportunities to negotiate in earnest with PLO, the PA etc through the years. There has been multiple opportunities for peace and until Israel truly pulls the trigger for real at least one time they equally have no legs to stand on in asserting that a peace deal isnt possible because the Palestinians cannot be trusted.
In the meantime they have ruled over millions of people while depriving them of citizenship and the civil rights we take for granted. That has been going for 50 years now. There's obviously no excuse for that.
Furthermore I'd like to make the point that while seeking the destruction of Israel or expulsion of Jews from Israel is an untenable position and one that is both hostile and an obstacle to peace, it is unfair to make Palestinians or Arabs out to be monsters if they have mixed feelings about the establishment of the Israeli state and the continued fact of Israel. You would too if, say, Russia decided to give half of Orange County, your half, to Indonesia. We should acknowledge that there are ample amount of grey areas here and a truly messy history that led up to where we are.
Final point: assuming that Palestinians and Arabs are ethnically and genetically the same is, I think, wrong, although the science in this area is kind of an ideological war zone. Instead it's rather the case that Lebanese, Israeli jews and Palestinians all have substantial heritage from the same ancestors i.e. the Phonecians and Canaanites, mixed with european and arab ancestry. Ben Gurion and other early zionists knew this to be the case as is documented in their writings, that they considered the Palestinians to be simply the Jews who stayed and converted. Which most likely is what they are. It was only later in the ultra-politicized environment that arose with time that Israel started promoting a history where the Palestinians were all "arab" immigrants.
I do enjoy Mr. Drum's posts on this topic. He rightly skewers all the factions and the commenters illustrate the intractable nature of their conflict. The idea of peaceful coexistence was never workable, and still isn't. It's a blood feud and a 10 way gang war where victory by one group is impossible. They will never let go of their hatred for each other because they are ruled by the most hateful among them. What do I expect them to do? I expect them to continue to terrorize each other for many years to come. It's tiresome and tragic, but that's religious fanatics for you.
I expect my government to stop sending weapons to Israel and to stop devoting our diplomats to defending Israel. What Israel does then isn't really my business--they've been making stupid decisions for over 75 years, so I assume they'll keep doing that.
I don't have a good answer for Kevin, but I'll throw out a hypothetical. Had Israel worked with the PA by pulling settlements out of the West Bank in return for the PA's having prevented terrorist attacks from there, there might be a credible Palestinian government in the WB that could act as a seed for a Palestinian state.
Instead, Israel kept building settlements and humiliating the PA, with the result that the PA is not respected by the Palestinians, who've seen no benefit to cooperating with the Israelis.
Note that Israel could have done this even in the absence of a signed deal with the Palestinian leadership. They could start doing this *today* for that matter, and create a de facto disarmed Palestinian state.
When someone (Israel, in this case) shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
Late to this party, but Israel has always had an option: Negotiate with and support the PLO and the PA.
The PLO acknowledged Israel's right to exist in the 1990's. They are the non-violent party in this conflict.
It is weird that Kevin and others go on and on about Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah ignoring the sole responsible party, the PLO.
Do KD commenters know that Israel supported Hamas? They escorted Qataris carrying suitcases of cash into Gaza to keep Hamas running? That the simplest explanation for this is that Israel prefers divide and conquer over actually working with the PLO.
How do reflexive pro-Israel people digest the fact that Israel propped up Hamas, (committed to Israel's destruction), over the PA, (committed to a 2-state solution)?
Is it any wonder there is no progress when the sole party committed to peaceful coexistence is systematically undermined and ignored? Did you know the Knesset recently passed a resolution rejecting the 2-state solution?
gift link if you are skeptical
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ek4.AHfB.l3CWOv9nqlpc&smid=url-share
My answer to Kevin is simple: Israel can stop making things worse and take up the peace process. That is what they can do.
Yes. Israel has let fear and mistrust direct policy, without achieving safety or security for its citizens.
Agreed.
Pretty simple: Israel's response to Oct 7 was out of scale (going on having killed almost 30x the Palestinians) with no attempts at saving the captives for months, no prisoner exchanges offered, no path to 'winning' because Israel will not accept a Palestine that has sovereignty.
Respond? No one said they shouldn't respond.
Both sides in this conflict believe the land from the river to the sea is theirs. Israel has been seizing land and colonizing the West Bank for 40 or 50 years and created a ghetto in Gaza which it is now trying to destroy. In this period there have been almost continual atrocities and responses by both sides. Until they figure out a way to tolerate each other’s existence this will continue and in the long run Israel will lose. It’s over the top reaction to October 7th hasn’t helped.
The reason no peace deal was made (or may never be made) lies within Palestinian culture itself. Millions of Palestinian families have keys to old homes from 1948 lying within Israel passed down from generation to generation. Yasir Arafat refused to defy this culture and accept the two state deal in 2000 because he knew it may well have ended his life to do so. This "right of return" is at the heart of what "they" want and will not happen and thus the impasse. Unfortunately this mindset is being reinforced by stupid, ridiculous Leftists talking about "settler-colonialism". What they intend to have happen to the current Israeli polity, many of whom are decendents themselves of persons expelled from Arab! lands after 1948 because they are Jewish is incredibly and dangerously unclear. But one thing is clear: if Israel can accept Arabs as citizens in Israel itself, why the Palestinians felt they had to flee to Egypt or Jordan or Lebanon or Syria instead of accepting that citizenship and making the best of it, is an incredible tragedy. They may well have been encouraged to do so, but just remember, Egypt never, NEVER! gave Egyptian citizenship to the Palestinians in Gaza.
Yeah the Palestinians are such savages that they would assassinate a leader who tried to make peace with the Israelis. True the Israelis actually did assassinate a leader who tried to make peace with the Palestinians, but of course that should not be taken as reflecting on Israelis in general. That would be racist.
Of course Arafat did recognize the existence of Israel, and was not assassinated. And Arafat didn't accept the two state offer in 2000 because it didn't actually offer the Palestinians a state. But I guess that is a detail, who do the Palestinians think they are thinking that they should get an actual state rather than an Israeli dominated occupation?
The US has generally made things worse by taking what Israel is saying and pretending it means something else. So Barak did not even vaguely offer the Palestinians a state, and yet the US took for granted that he was implicitly doing so. The Clinton Parameters (clearly not an offer of a state as the name makes clear) was meant to be a step between what Israel said and what Israel secretly meant. Of course Israel has denied that it meant anything of the sort, turned such a deal down when it was offered by the Palestinians and worked consistently for decades to make such a two state solution unworkable. And yet people still pretend that Israel offered the Palestinians a state and there must be some secret reason that Arafat did not accept what wasn't actually offered.
"What precisely is it that Palestinian protesters want?"
Simple. They do not want American taxpayer dollars to support propping up an apartheid state.