Matt Yglesias had a long rumination about Israel and Zionism yesterday that matches a lot of my thinking. My shorter version is more or less this:
Zionism was solely a movement of the first half of the 20th century. In 1948, when the UN created Israel, Zionism won—and thereby wrote itself out of existence. There is now nothing more to Zionism than the belief that Israel was legitimately created and has a right to exist. Arabs initially refused to accept this and declared war on Israel, but they lost in 1949 and that was that—or should have been. Instead they kept on starting wars and losing even more territory to Israel every time they were defeated. That's hardly exceptional: Gaining territory by war is mankind's oldest way of creating states, and peace treaties after losing a war are a close second—from the Congress of Vienna to Versailles to Yalta to Camp David and beyond.
Even the PLO finally accepted this in the '90s. Ditto for Jordan and Egypt. On the other hand, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, a bunch of dead-ender Arab states—and, apparently, a lot of US college students—still don't accept Israel's right to exist. It's kind of ridiculous, like not accepting the right of the US to exist even though, obviously, it does and has no intention of stopping.
The short version of all this is that the question "Are you a Zionist" is no more sensible than "Do you support independence for the United States?"¹ It's a question that made sense once upon a time, but no longer. All that's left is whether you refuse to accept something that even the PLO has accepted for more than three decades.
¹A country created by war from 1776-1781 and confirmed by peace treaty in Paris in 1783.
I think for some "zionism" can now mean an expanded and permanent Jewish state in all the occupied territories too, that is, a zionism that condones the terrorism carried out by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. (Obviously this is indefensible.)
Yeah that's not true. Zionism was all about CREATING a Jewish state. That was accomplished in 1947 and basically zionism is dead. Very similar to Pro Pal peeps crying genocide. Nope it's brutal occupation. Words and definitions matter and I believe one of the reason s why the Pro Pal pees are failing is because they aren't engaging in good faith discussions. My .02 cents
The Israeli settler movement has been aggressively destroying peace since the 1967 war.
If it's not true, why are their groups that carry out terrorism against Palestinians and create settlements in the occupied territories than accept this label?
because....wait for it....they don't know their ass from their elbow
I think Kevin's argument is one of those too-clever-by-half reasonings that overly brainy people sometimes engage in. All those Zionists who founded Israel did not die on the day of its final establishment. Many are still alive today and they will still tell you that they are Zionists.
Or: The movement that managed to legislate prohibition in the US did not die when alcohol was outlawed and resurrect when prohibition ended. It stayed alive throughout.
It's not "genocide" -- at least not yet; we'll see in the next few weeks -- but it is DEFINITELY "ethnic cleansing", a close cousin. Israel wants the West Bank for farms and settlements and Gaza for more beachfront and the shared gas field. The Palestinians are inconveniently in the way, so they have to go.
I'm confident that Israelis hope and intend that few Palestinians other than Hamas members will die. They're not barbarians. But they want an easily defensible, contiguous state for followers of Judaism. Full stop.
I agree. The old Zionism was about creating Israel. But the word now is more elastic, and it may mean a greater Israel to some. But then opposing this Zionism can be misunderstood to be against the existence of Israel. When words are confusing, speak more clearly.
"and, apparently, a lot of US college students"
lol
reactionary centrists like Drum and Yglesias just can't help themselves with this stuff
Have you not watched the news? Or are you just bitter that Kevin mentioned the college students?
You mean those same college students who are not advocating for the destruction of Israel (despite the cherrypicking of the ever-present radical dolts you're remembering), but for the protection of Palestinian lives?
Not talking about the moderate, reasonable protestors. I'm talking about the extreme anti-Semitic ones.
The ones whom you cannot name or even show images of?
Not only have you advocated for the death of women, trans people, and last week, pedestrians on their way to an event a gunman disagreed with, we're supposed to believe you now?
She's probably the only one.
https://nypost.com/2024/04/18/us-news/columbia-university-protester-yells-were-all-hamas-video/
The ones who comment on this site and suggest that European Jews who came to the region more than a century ago need to pack up and go back.
I gotta say, I hear a lot of talk and see a lot of concerned talking heads about all this anti-Semitism and hate, but I have yet to see more than one or two outlier examples of it. Whenever I ask for examples, I don't see it.
Because for the most part these kids are not protesting Israel's brutal attacks on Gaza (and no matter how supportive you are, these are brutal), but America's role in those attacks. They're no anti-Semitic or Israel-haters, but don't want to be complicit as Americans in the brutal attacks. In short, they're protesting the US, not Israel.
This disconnect is why so many supporters of the Gaza war think the students are anti-Semitic -- they don't understand what the students are actually protesting. But the fact that the students aren't protesting about Haiti, Africa, Iran, Ukraine, China, etc. indicates that it's not violence or race or religion that drives them, but personal/national culpability.
When you own the frame it's easy to force the frame on everyone. And if one only looks at that one frame...
How about you also spend some time contemplating the extreme anti-Palestinian settlers in Israel?
Fuck you, troll.
There were approximately zero college protests against Israel in September 2023, and approximately zero in any month you choose for the last decade or more prior to October 2023. Almost as if students were largely indifferent to Israel existing until Israel started bombing Gaza. You know, the same way that a hundred million or more of the general American population who don't personally know anybody living in either Israel or Gaza also were indifferent to Israel's existence in the decade-plus leading up to October 2023. All of this strongly indicates that any opposition to Israel today is based on Israel's recent behavior and not some longstanding "Israel has no right to exist" belief.
Yes, they now feel comfortable publicly displaying their anti-Semitism.
Noted, you haven't shown any anti-semitism.
Much like last week, when you supported the right of a motorist to threaten to run pedestrians over, and then shoot and kill those pedestrians.
The thing is, these students aren't protesting Israel. They're protesting America's financial and materiel support of the attacks on Gaza.
They aren't protesting any other violence in the world, and as you noted they were indifferent prior to these attacks.
The ones I talk to recognize that there are no "good guys" in this fight, and are pissed off that they are being forced to be a part of picking a side and the pain and death it's causing. They just want the US out of it.
I too haven't heard that there was a major amount of antisemitism. Still, I heard an interview on the New Yorker Radio Hour (https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/israel-gaza-and-the-turmoil-at-one-american-university) with a person who was supplied as a representative of the protest movement (I think at Columbia). She refused to place any blame on Hamas blaming 1948 and the Nakba for the entire thing. That seems beyond protesting United States support for Israel in this particular war effort.
There are 330 million people in this country, so even at tiny fractions of a percent, you can find a lot of nutty opinions. Because KD thinks about things quantitatively, so do most of us who comment. Mindless, blanket stereotyping seems to be a hallmark of Atticus, Leo, and a few others.
Reactionary centrist is a great term for this. They really can't help themselves.
"The short version of all this is that the question 'Are you a Zionist' is no more sensible than 'Do you support independence for the United States?'"
Except that Zionist is a belief that a Jewish state based on religious identity should exist, not whether a country with the current borders of Israel should exist with the name "Israel". Many who support Israel's right to exist believe that it would be better served as a secular state made up primarily of Jews.
"Are you a Zionist" is more like asking "Do you think the United States should be run by land-owning White men only."
I think Iran would be better served as a secular state.
+1
Iran was a secular state until the CIA overthrew the democratic government in 1953 and installed a king (Shah Pahlavi).
Me. too, but that's not the topic at hand.
The Wikipedia entry for the PLO says this: "On 29 October 2018, the PLO Central Council suspended the Palestinian recognition of Israel, and subsequently halted all forms of security and economic cooperation with Israeli authorities until Israel recognizes a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders."
There you go again, with all those, you know, facts. Thank you.
The PLO, who in 2018, had been dispossessed by settlers and Israel refused to allow to assist in extracting the settlers or stopping their terrorism of the occupied territories?
I was pondering if Zionism was a kind of ethnic cleansing of Europe. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
I read that Balfour was an antisemite.
in what sense does the US or Israel have a "right to exist"? Israel's "right to exist" seems to only get invoked by its government against the people subject to its governance, which is not the way rights work.
Yeah. I think that humans have a right to exist, and that they also have a right to self-determination, such that they can create nations, if they choose, to govern the regions in which said humans live.
It’s like Southerners saying the “war between the states” was about “states’ rights.” The only right the Southern states went to war to keep was … the right to keep human chattel slavery legal.
Israel’s “right” is the right to make sure non-Jewish inhabitants in areas claimed by conquest have no right to ever become citizens, live under civilian legal systems, etc. Those who were initially citizens can be the equivalent of the freed slaves in the antebellum South.
Ever notice that, no matter how many times it's pointed out that the 'right to exist' is nonsense because nation-states have no rights, willfully ignorant supporters of Israel as an ethno-religious state just bull right along? Wonder why that is 😉
Existence of any sort is a pretty contingent right. People, and nations, exist until they die. Did Sumer, or Ur of the Chaldees, or the Aztec Empire have a "right" to exist? If they did, when and how did they lose that right? Did Ronald Reagan have a right to exist? If so, how and when did he lose that right?
Speaking of "a right to exist" seems to me to be stretching the meaning of "right" awfully hard.
"All that's left is whether you refuse to accept something that even the PLO has accepted for more than three decades."
No, there's also the question of whether my country should be using my tax dollars to subsidize it. I can and do recognize that Israel isn't going to go away voluntarily any more than the United States will, but the question of whether I want to support it is quite separate. That's obviously what the students are talking about despite your feigned lack of understanding.
No, some of the protestors very clearly do not want Israel to exist. Not all of them are that extreme, but it’s obvious many of them are by the news coverage.
Troll, troll, troll away
Fuck you with a chainsaw, troll.
What would an article in Kevin's blog on the Middle East be without some virulent personal attacks by the usual suspects on people that they disagree with...
Tango: The facts don't support the troll, this time.
Those few who do have no more power to reach that goal than do the extremists on the other side who want to ethnically cleanse all of Palestine.
What they do hope to achieve is to change US policy toward Israel. This is a legitimate goal regardless of whether you share it or whether you consider it realistic.
None of them are on news coverage, but here you are, supporting the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian children.
Much like you did last week, supporting the right of a motorist to threaten some pedestrians and then kill them.
Yes, and some of the pro-Gaza war people don't want the protesters to exist.
But if you take the worst of any group and pain them all with that, all groups suck ass.
"some of the protestors" -- as in "at least one and if you give me enough time I will find him"?
You owe everyone here an apology for your nasty and abusive behaviour. You are apparently constitutionally incapable of playing nicely with others and respect them not at all.
Boo ya! Well said.
Afganistan, Yemen, Egypt, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan - all receive US aid. For some reason they are not singled out for any questionable policies (including the disenfranchisement of half of their populations). What is different about Israel (who gives full rights to the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Arab muslim)?
(queue up 'being anti-zionist isn't the same as anti-semitic' line)
What is, "Israel, unlike the others, is officially an apartheid state, and all of our aid to it supports suppressing Palestinian rights?"
I'll take "TOP AIPAC RECIPIENTS" for $1200, Alex.
Oh, are we calling indiscriminate bombing of civilians "questionable policies" now?
Anyway, the per capita amount of support is not comparable.
Seth Abramson did a lengthy piece on this months ago. Good read on Substack
Once a war is won, that conflict is settled forever? If only someone had sent that memo to Europe a thousand years ago. We could have avoided a lot of nonsense over the years.
+1
What I’ve never understood is why the Roman conquest of Judea doesn’t seem to count. According to Roman law at the time, and for the next couple of millennia, the Jewish state was extinguished as thoroughly as Carthage. Nobody now thinks Carthage has a right to exist.
The people of Carthage did not have a unique ancestors and religion as Jews did. Carthaginians were an absorbed into other nations. Jews have been a distinct tribe of people for thousands of years.
So those people have the right to kill their neighbors whom they share the land with, and have always shared that land with?
This from the guy who last week was supporting a motorist's right to threaten and kill protesters.
I've never quite understood the idea of a monolithic Judaism, either. There are the African Jews, the Middle Eastern Jews, the European Jews, etc. Genetically, ethnically, even religiously there are great differences.
Heck, just here in New Jersey there are many different types of Jewish faith, practice, culture, and nation/geographic region of origin.
The Tribe and the Muslims are very similar.
Both have rule by religious scholars.
Both have administrations with legislature and ministers.
Both want folks of the "other" religions to be second class citizens.
Our Founding Fathers, no mothers, decided otherwise. Slavery excepted.
How nice: Being antisemitic and islamophobic in one single paragraph. Congratulations!
I'm neither anti-semitic nor Islamophobic. I'm pro-truth, which means anti-religion, any religion. I agree with dilbert dogbert.
Jews believe that they are "God's chosen people" and non-Jews are not. Muslims believe that non-Muslims are misinformed and need to be re-educated, if necessary at the point of a sword. Both are ways of seeing everybody not of their religion as second class.
Muslims believe that non-Muslims are misinformed and need to be re-educated, if necessary at the point of a sword.
This is how you make it clear that you don't actually know many Muslims.
Atticus: You really need to read your historical texts, especially the torah.
Carthage did, in fact, have its own unique religion.
"and, apparently, a lot of US college students"
It seems like jumping from "Thousands of innocent civilians shouldn't be attacked, starved, and murdered, and we shouldn't be financially supporting it" all the way to "Israel shouldn't exist" is an awfully big leap of logic. I'm sure there are some anti-semitic college kids out there, and the protesting may or may not be counter-productive, but my sense is that that's not what most of the protesting is about.
I think Kevin is referring to the students who chant “from the river to the sea” and “we are Hamas”. These are words that clearly demonstrate they do not want Israel to exist.
Fuck you from the river to the sea, troll. Zionists used this phrase way the fuck back in the 1940s. Likud and Netanyahu was using it to justify settlements in the last decade.
We're supposed to believe that a Zionist slogan 'from the river to the sea' is anti-semitic, because the guy who said a motorist should have the right to threaten pedestrians and kill them, said it?
Can you find any video of students chanting that? I have tried, and I can't find it. I have friends who have tried, and they can't find it.
I hear people talk about it a lot on the comment threads and see the talking heads bring it up on the TV, but somehow there are never links for video to back it up.
"Settling Judea and Samaria" is, on the other hand, perfectly acceptable, despite meaning the exact same thing.
This is all obviously correct for anybody broadly in the center or right.
But hasn’t Kevin noticed that the Left rejects the UNITED STATES’ right to exist? After all, it is standard jargon on the Left to claim that the US is on “stolen land”. So-called “land acknowledgements” go into great detail about how land was wrongfully taken from native Americans. It’s really no different than what the Palestinians and other Arabs are saying, except that they are taking action by through a program of mass murder, systematic rape and torture, and similar means to get the land back. But the fundamental underlying thoughts are the same.
Non sequitur.
If it weren't for non sequuntur*†, would blog comment threads even have comments?
* Hey, Latin! My dad would be proud.
† Like this one.
Wow, impressed by that plural form!
The left doesn't deny the US's right to exist. We note that the US has committed some pretty serious wrongs that have lasted the majority of our time as a nation, and if we want to live up to our ideals should be making those things right.
It's only right wing nutjobs who interpret that as wanting to get rid of the US.
Bobby: Well said.
The left doesn't deny the US's right to exist.
The left is not monolithic. It's pretty unlikely that the number of leftists who believe the existence of the United States is illegitimate is zero.
"It's kind of ridiculous, like not accepting the right of the US to exist..."
Some fraction of those college students would, I'm sure, be delighted to revert the USA to Indigenous sovereignty. And while I appreciate the sentiment, it ain't gonna happen.
"and, apparently, a lot of US college students—still don't accept Israel's right to exist."
What. The. Fuck. Kevin.
Until October 2023, there were approximately zero protests on college campuses about Israel at all. This highly suggests that the college students are protesting Israel's recent actions towards Gazans... and not "Israel's right to exist." Get your head out of your tanned Californian asshole, stop regurgitating all the bullshit your "decent right-leaning" friends tell you over lunches, and don't be a fucking dick about this. You can oppose the students' protests - I personally don't think they're effective or super sincere, since very few students expressed any concern about Palestinians either in September 2023 or before - but libeling US college students as being anti-zionist just because they don't like seeing news account of tens of thousands of civilians including kids and babies being killed by IDF strikes is just totally disgusting coming from you, a supposed self-described "liberal" data-driven intellectual.
So when college students are chanting "we are Hamas", what do you think their opinion is on Israel's right to exist? Why would they align themselves with a terrorist group who has stated they want to destroy Israel and kill Jews?
God I hope there is a hell for assholes like you.
How did you celebrate on 10/7?
Austin sounds just like the warring factions in the Middle East. Well, I guess we know where their hatred comes from. He would fit right in.
I was trying to be civilized and make rational points. Not sure why Austin is flying off the handle.
It’s their shtick.
Also, it's worth noting that the event that sprung up the protests was not anything Israel did. It was October 7. Literally within a couple of days after the 7th, before Israel did ANYTHING, we had campus protests including the infamous one where the professor said she was exhilarated by the Hamas attack and we had the protesters adopting the paraglider as a symbol on their posters, which did not come from Israel-- that was the method of attack used by Hamas. And we got the tweet saying "What did y'all think decolonization meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers?". And we had people talking about resistance and "our martyrs".
Now, to be clear, that doesn't mean there aren't lots of people who joined the protest movement because they were aghast at damage and destruction caused by Israel. That clearly happened and is why the protests got as big as they did.
But the protests were organized and started by people who thought Hamas killing and raping Israelis was just great (on the theory that any Israeli civilian is a legitimate military target) and that Israel should be destroyed as a Jewish state and replaced with an Arab one. Those beliefs are fairly common on the American and international Left and have been for over 50 years since the PLO first allied with international Leftist groups.
+1
Mostly those initial protests were organized by foreign students or students whose parents were from the region. Not really leftists at all.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive of each other.
In this case, I think they are.
No, even when I was in college, long ago, there was enormous overlap between the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim student body and Leftist causes. You also saw this at protest marches against the Iraq War, at least where I was. Organizers would get up and say some very anti-Israel stuff at the marches.
And it certainly appears like this is still the case. Students for Justice in Palestine is hooked up to all the International and domestic Lefty groups. Palestine is a lefty cause and the expression of that cause is that Israel is a settler colonialist, illegitimate country that has to end its occupation of Arab land.
Again-- to be clear, I don't think that remotely describes all the marchers and campers. The movement gained strength as people upset with Israel's campaign of massive destruction in Gaza joined up. But the organizers are definitely lefties and the notion that Israel shouldn't exist as a Jewish state resides very comfortably within the issue set of the international Left.
Same here and I was in college in the late 70s.
"But the protests were organized and started by people who thought Hamas killing and raping Israelis was just great (on the theory that any Israeli civilian is a legitimate military target) and that Israel should be destroyed as a Jewish state and replaced with an Arab one."
I visited two campuses while the protests were happening and I never heard any such. Your "opinions" are lies. Everyone I talked with thought what Hamas did was horrible. Don't forget, Israel ignored their own people for a year warning about problems at the border, using hang gliders, etc.
What I did hear were anti-protestors mouthing something similar to what you are asserting the protestors said. I left one place when the anti-protestors started hitting protestors.
It's obviously your and Crissa"s party line to say these are lies, but you will notice others here are +1'ing me because they've seen the same stuff I have.
And SJP's platforms are publicly available along with videos of people saying stuff about how Israel is a Zionist settler colonialist ethnostate that should not exist.
Going into comments threads and telling whoppers to excuse people's open support for terrorism is a strange way to spend one's time.
...or you could lie about what the professor said and then lie about what Israel did?
Also, by the end of the 8th, the IDF had killed twice the number of Palestinians as Israelis had been killed or captured on the 7th.
That seems like 'something' instead of your 'not ANYTHING'.
It seems like you're just a liar, and everything you say should be suspect.
You are seriously an evil person. Get help.
But the protests were organized and started by people who thought Hamas killing and raping Israelis was just great...
It's really a challenge to tell if some of these comments are trolling or just genuinely stupid.
Because I rather distinctly remember being told that everyone who protested our war on Iraq was “objectively pro-Saddam Hussein.”
Incidentally, there are no actual examples of students chanting “we are Hamas,” just as those of us protesting Cheney’s war on Iraq didn’t actually support Hussein. But that didn’t matter then, anymore than facts matter now.
Citation not included.
Chanting "we are Hamas" simply asserts that Palestinians should not be slaughtered indiscriminately.
Probably about the same as Otzma Yehudit voters feel about Palestinians.
Indeed, my take on the student’s protest is not rejecting Israel as a country (with the exception of a few provocateurs): really a misreading of the whole situation. First of all, the number of students protesting is relatively insignificant but the situation was exaggerated by administrations, the press and others, and while the rhetoric can get heated (a perfectly normal human reaction given the circumstances) by and large the protests are against the mass slaughter of innocent people by the state of Israel.
Ask them!
See what they say when you ask if Israel has a right to exist. See what they say when you ask if they are anti-Zionist.
They'll tell you flat out.
You said:
And what Roosevelt did with the Atlantic Charter was intended to delegitimize that very thing. The "right of self determination of peoples" was a big, big deal, and the armed occupation of Israel ran entirely counter to everything else that was happening, namely decolonization.
This is directly contrary to right of conquest, which had been a thing for a very long time, as you point out.
If we endorsed right of conquest, they we would give up on the Ukraine, and say that and independent country is theirs if they can keep it. (There are other strategic interests in play, yes)
And yes, Hamas is not very representative of the Palestinians, either. As best I can tell, they engaged in deliberate provocation in order to solidify themselves politically among a population that was fairly indifferent to exactly who was in charge.
So, the issue here is that resolving the political questions works neither in the favor of Netanyahu OR in the favor of the leadership of Hamas. And they are bound and determined to make people suffer in order to enhance their own careers.
I endorse no political actor in this conflict. It's a mess of the highest order.
It's worth noting the Atlantic Charter was kind of phony. Roosevelt and Churchill made agreements later, despite the statements in the Charter, that moved borders and effectively drove various national groups into exile just like what happened when Israel was formed.
Well, it's not as if decolonization didn't happen, though. And the right of self-determination also shows up in Wilson's Principles. It was a extraordinary development, and one I do not want to cede ground on.
However, I do not think it appropriate to apply it to a time (say, 1776) when nobody thought anything about it at all.
Frankly, most of the native residents of NA recognize the right of conquest. It's the breaking of the agreements made with them that's truly the terrible part in my book.
The ideas may have been out there, but the WW2 realm that created Israel was a time when we were still redrawing lots of borders, in Europe, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, etc. And the only major groups are that are still supporting terrorism or violence to redraw those borders are the Israeli right, Hamas, and Hamas' supporters in the world.
Oh, you left out a few, Russia (occupying parts of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova), Pakistan/India (flare-ups over Kashmir), China/India, China/Taiwan (not strictly fighting over a border, since both agree China is one nation; still conflict over sovereignty), Venezuela/Guyana …
Wasn't Netanyahu responsible for the rise of Hamas?
He he has certainly played a major role, flowing from his desire to meddle in internal Palestinian politics.
Kevin, I know that you know better than this. Asking whether someone is a Zionist is a meaningless question. Here are some more meaningful ones:
1 Does Israel have a right to exist within the pre-67 borders?
2 Does Israel have a right to control the West Bank and Gaza forever?
3 Does Israel have a right to force the approximately 5 million non-citizen Palestinians to live under Israeli military rule?
4 Does Israel have a right to prevent perhaps 10 million descendants of the Palestinians who left in 1948 from returning to pre-67 Israel?
The PA has never given up on #4, the right of return to Israel proper, which would turn Israel itself into a Palestinian state. There's no way that Jewish Israelis are going to vote to allow something that would mean the end of Jewish control of Israel.
OTOH, the current Israeli government, and probably a majority of its citizens, seem to feel that items 2 and 3 are valid positions, and there's no way that Palestinians can accept that.
1 Does Israel have a right to exist in any borders? And is there a Palestinian leader who will state so?
2 Does Israel have a right to prevent terrorists from using land to destroy Israel and kill Israelis?
3 Does Israel have a right to protect itself? Should Israel be forced to empower a people seeking to ensure the destruction of Israel?
4 Yes. There has never been any other people where refugee status is inherited. There has never been any other people who receive refugee status by simply being the male descendant of a refugee regardless of their current citizenship (look up Mohamed Hadid, Bella's dad, who is still a refugee along with his sons). Israel is literally a nation of refugees (but for some reason they are not extended this special status).
For all other people who were refugees (Indian partition, German relocations after WW2, Korea, go on and on) there is no right of return. And when you find a home, you get new citizenship and you move on with your life.
And while I'm on a rant, why are Palestinians the only people who live in refugee camps in their own homeland? Why are there Palestinian refugee camps in West Bank and (prior to oct 7) Gaza unless the plan is to destroy Israel and move back into Great Granpa's old house (post-genocide)?
The answer to your first question is of course yes and several have. If you switch the sides and try to find Israeli leaders who recognize the right to a Palestinian state the answer would be no. In 2008 the Palestinians were offering a full state for Israel on 78% of the land that is considered a homeland by both people even though Israel would have the smaller population. By contrast, Israel was offering the Palestinians an occupation on 22% of the territory with no control of borders and with Israeli troops between the Palestinian capital and its main territory. And this is the best offer Israel has made in my lifetime.
I get that you feel the need to defend Israel's behavior even though it has been morally disgusting. But the fact that you have to start with such a distortion of reality should be revealing.
No country in the world denies that Israel should be able to defend itself. All of them are rightly disgusted by the massive slaughter that Israel has undertaken to maintain its ability to keep millions of Palestinians stateless. Even the US, which refuses to openly criticize Israel has had to find ways to illustrate its disgust.
+1
2 Does Israel have a right to prevent terrorists from using land to destroy Israel and kill Israelis?
Do Palestinians have a right to prevent terrorists from using land to destroy Palestine and kill Palestinians?
That's an important question, because the Israeli government condones, and even encourages, terrorism against Palestinians.
This is such a tone-deaf/willful misunderstanding of what Zionism means in a modern context. Just because a word meant something when it was originally used doesn't mean it means the same thing today.
Likewise, you wouldn't claim the swastika was never permanently tainted by the Nazis, would you?
For fuck's sake, man. Have you been hanging out with Atticus? Is he one of your "decent" right-leaning friends? JFC.
Are you saying I’m not?
The entire Arab / Muslim / Israeli Middle East is a dead end for humanity. It amazes me that so many Americans are invested in the outcome of this long running conflict. Meanwhile, the Arabs are having their way with Sudan and waging their own tribal war. And no one really cares all that much. It’s not fun to criticize the UAE like it is Israel. I can’t take any of these comments seriously.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/24/uae-sudan-war-peace-emirates-uk-us-officials
“Sudan is key to the UAE’s strategy in Africa and the Middle East, aimed at achieving political and economic hegemony while curbing democratic aspirations.”
The Israelis could pick up and leave tomorrow and the Palestinians would find themselves oppressed by their so called Arab brothers the day after. What a shit show.
I would like to offer up Rick Perlstein's recent article on ZIonism and the argument that there are two different flavors of Zionism: Revisionist and Labor.
https://prospect.org/world/2024-02-21-neglected-history-state-of-israel/
"YOU MIGHT IMAGINE, IF YOU HAD a typical American education like mine, this doctrine could never get far among Jews, of all people, who introduced the world to those ideals. “Western civilization,” as my high school world history teacher said, “walks on two legs: Jerusalem and Athens.” Dancing in circles, kibbutzim, wars only because hostile neighbors forced them on us: That was what the typical American Jewish education taught us Israel was all about."
The Revisionists, on the other hand, were self-identified Fascists. Check the link!
Perlstein continues:
"Only if you were more sophisticated in such matters would you know that in 1977, the very same young Revisionist who praised killing “in the name of life’s instinct, in the name of truth” became Israel’s prime minister. As a commander in Israel’s War of Independence, Menachem Begin wrote a telegram to his forces who had just massacred over a hundred Arabs before razing their village: “Continue thus until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, thou has chosen us for conquest.” In 1946, an underground militia Begin led set a bomb in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, in an attempt to chase the British out of the country, that murdered 91 civilians."
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the King David Hotel bombing was one of the first acts of terrorism.
To be abundantly clear, Israel has a right to exist (as does Palestine).
Thanks for the link; I second the recommendation to read Perlstein.
An interesting post. For all the news reports that mention Zionism, there seems to be a real lack of context, though I suppose a political reporter who shows no signs of remembering 2000 (or 2016, or 1/6/2021, for that matter) can't be expected to care about the history of the movement. Then again, I don't see Kevin delving deeply into that here.
Given that the World Zionist Organization, first founded in 1897, continues to exist, it's a bit bold of Kevin to independently declare that Zionism is over. And that organization declares goals which include, but are not limited, to Israel's existence and the immigration of the Jewish people to that nation. It also turns out that David Ben-Gurion, first PM of Israel, wanted the WZO disbanded, partly on the grounds that Israel now existed (ie. Kevin's grounds) but partly because the WZO advocated more moderate approaches than he advocated.
And of course, even among declared Zionists in American before 1948, there were strong disagreements about Israel as a state. And of course, in 1947, the WZO endorsed a plan to partition territory into two states, one for Jews and one for Arabs, a proposal passed by the UN and rejected by the Palestinians and the Arab League. Now, of course, the WZO is a very different organization, and it's the state of Israel that opposes a two state solution.
But I'll stop there; I am pretty ignorant about all of this and only had about 15 minutes to conduct research. I do wonder why so many people are willing to opine on this topic without apparently having any knowledge or doing any research at all.
For Kevin specifically: Zionism supports not just the creation of a Jewish state, but a unified Jewish people. Should all Jews be forced to immigrate to Israel from their current nations? Is Jewish identity necessarily something that all Jews should accept as unifying them, outside or apart from things like national boundaries or personal beliefs? Might there be disagreement amongst Jewish people about Zionism's goals and the methods governments and organizations employ to achieve or preserve them? Is a Jew who thinks the state of Israel should be disbanded and returned to the Palestinians just being unrealistic, or are they anti-Zionist?
And most importantly, what does anyone (much less a non-Jewish someone) get out of declaring Zionism to be over?
Well, I've never heard of Zionism having a goal of creating a "unified Jewish people;" that seems well beyond the abilities of any mortal.
Yes it does, except apparently in the mind of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, as related in Perlstein’s essay.
Just because a goal cannot be achieved does not mean that nobody has that goal. Some people will spend their lives chasing the impossible.
Kevin's "history" is error-filled, from beginning to end. It's hardly even a basis for discussion. I'm disappointed, but assume it's just jet lag. Either that, or "comment bait".
Bring on the kitties.
This is hilarious. It’s our fault! Or rather, our hateful racist parents and grandparents fault.
“Who Created the Israel-Palestine Conflict? It wasn’t really Jews or Palestinians. It was the U.S. Congress, which closed American borders 100 years ago this month.”
https://prospect.org/world/2024-05-06-who-created-israel-palestine-conflict/
We really should have let all these Jewish folks into the country back then, but like today, most people really don’t like immigrants from foreign lands with alien cultures and religions. And given the vitriol over this conflict, who can blame them?
A few thoughts.
a. The founding of the state of Israel in 1948 is problematical or unjust in some ways. Likewise, the founding of every nation-state in the world is problematical or unjust in some ways. You cannot create a nation without creating some injustice for someone. That fact doesn't excuse injustice but it does recognize we live in a messy world. In a perfect world, perhaps there'd be no countries, with nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. That's a great song but not a realistic political objective. In the case against the existence of Israel, there needs to be more than Injustice A was unjust to People X and therefore needs to be undone, but what was uniquely unjust that requires the dismantling of a predominantly recognized state, though not others. (You could argue against the idea of, and the existence of, all nation-states, but that's not an argument I hear.)
b. The failure to recognize the "rightful" winners of past conflicts is not unique to the Middle East. Putin, for example, refuses to accept the loss of empire that happened in the break-up of the Soviet Union. Closer to home, GOP politics today is fueled in large part by the idea that the Union was not the rightful winner of the Civil War.
c. Whatever the short-term outcome of the Israel-Hamas war, the longer-term impact will be wider support for a state of Palestine. Most countries recognize Palestine today. Ireland, Norway, and Spain joined the list this week. It may take years (or generations) but the US will do the same.
d. Israel is going nowhere. (Borders and other disputed issues TBD.)
Well, at least Kevin is admitting that the Zionist / British / League of Nations / United Nations smash-and-grab happened. But then he weirdly devolves into might makes right, and justifies ForeverWar as Muslims clearly can return the favor, if they can.
Yes, Kevin, there have been endless land-grabs and wars since the beginning of time, but this one was the only one which the world’s modern international institutions assisted to a significant degree rather than opposed.
but this one was the only one which the world’s modern international institutions assisted to a significant degree rather than opposed.
If you're referring to the UN, that's because it didn't exist before the 1940s. There was no truly global authority to adjudicate and certify the existence of nations prior to this (save that briefly extant and entirely ineffectual outfit called the League of Nations).
I think most people who objectively looks at the situation acknowledge that (1) a substantial degree of injustice was meted out to the Palestinians; (2) their own intransigence and ineptitude contributed to the Nakba; (3) most states—as Kevin points out—were built via conquest (the fact that Israel's territorial flowing from its war of independence were promptly recognized by the UN makes its post 1948 borders more, not less, legitimate.
(4) And yes, Israel's post 1967 conquests are illegal precisely because they didn't receive the imprimatur of the "international organizations" you cite.
Israel's post-1967 conquests are also illegal because they postdate the signing (and Israeli ratification) of the 4th Geneva Convention.
The 4th GC's signing in 1949 provides a convenient break point between whether we accept a conquest as being permanent or not.
At some level Drum just can't get past the kindergarten version of the conflict he learned in school and get to thinking about the issue like a liberal.
When I was in school the Apartheid Republic of South Africa existed and so did the USSR. Neither of those countries exist today . Does that mean some right was violated? Outside of the kindergarten discussion of Israel the answer is, of course not. Apartheid states don't have a right to exist, at least not in the sense that people should not sensible fight for them not continuing to exist, at least as apartheid states.
Israel is currently an apartheid state. It likely has a minority Jewish population in the territory that it has promised not to give back. And that excludes millions of refugees who by international law should have a right to return. So is Drum affirming the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish run minority Jewish population state? Presumably not. I would guess if he thought about the subject beyond the kindergarten level and said what he was arguing for is that Israel as non-Israelis think of it has a right to exist. But, of course, that country doesn't exist, and it doesn't exist because Israel worked assiduously to make sure it would not exist, because it wants all of the territory and is fine with being an apartheid state.
We actually should all agree that the college students are right, Israel as currently configured has no right to exist. It is a Jewish apartheid state. The real question is what should take its place. One answer is two states, one called Israel, but very different from the current Israel, next to a Palestinian state that at least eventually would be an actual state, and not a Jewish controlled Bantustan. Another moral possibility would a state on the territory which Israel has built, but with all of the human beings who live there getting the rights of citizenship. I don't know if that would still be Israel. But no rights would be violated in getting to such a state.
There are other possibilities, but they are mostly ones that liberals should recognize as deeply immoral. And for that reason liberals should not support them. Israel as it is currently configured is one clear example of a deeply immoral state that no liberal should support.
The rest of the discussion is obfuscation and a retreat to a kindergarten level of discussion to avoid describing what Israel has become honestly.
Back in the 60s in NY, there was a British comedy TV show called This was the week that was, or TW3. They once had a skit of a BBC type announcer announcing the Prime Minister's Address to the US on the 4th of July.
Then an upper class English stereotype appears and says, "Hello Traitors."
I always us it as an example of historical presentism.
4 Does Israel have a right to prevent perhaps 10 million descendants of the Palestinians who left in 1948 from returning to pre-67 Israel?
The PA has never given up on #4, the right of return to Israel proper, which would turn Israel itself into a Palestinian state. There's no way that Jewish Israelis are going to vote to allow something that would mean the end of Jewish control of Israel.
And aforementioned i why there is no peace because Palestinian leaders who should know such an outcome will never happen keep on insisting on this "right-to-return" as some sort of red line at least for Palestinian leadership cannot be crossed.
Apparently in Palestinian families keys to old homes back from 1948 are passed down from generation to generation as family heirlooms. Until reality hits them in the face, there will be no peace.
And how do you propose to have "reality hit them in the face", an advertising campaign? It seems like this is an issue for both sides.
What you are describing here is the US take on the failure of negotiations between Barak, and Arafat. But that description took for granted that even though Israel was not offering the Palestinians a state, they would if the Palestinians first gave up the right of return. Your view here has not held up well.
The reason is that in the negotiations between Olmert and Abbas they were able to work out a solution to the right of return that was favorable to Israel. The negotiations failed because Israel was still not willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state on 22% of the territory that the two populations consider a homeland, and that was for the larger Palestinian population.
Does the fact that your argument is based on a claim that is provably false affect who you blame? Most people who blame the Palestinians do not seem to care whether the basis for their blame is true or not. It would be nice if you are an exception to this rule.
And aforementioned i why there is no peace because Palestinian leaders who should know such an outcome will never happen keep on insisting on this "right-to-return" as some sort of red line at least for Palestinian leadership cannot be crossed.
Or, as they have hinted at on multiple occasions, their legal right to return to their land is something that they would be willing to bargain with in exchange for something else. The Israeli (and American position) has consistently been that the Palestinians must renounce things to which they are legally entitled, and then the negotiations for peace can take place.
And how many keys have passed through how many generations in a Zionist's mind? Seriously, what a lopsided take.
And we are not talking "generation to generation", there are plenty of Palestinians alive today still holding such keys. Martin Luther King said 'True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.' You seem to be of the opinion that peace comes from the acceptance of injustice.
Considering that the Zionism experiment is now 76 years old and has resulted in an apartheid state that believes itself to be constantly fighting an existential war for survival (regardless of whether this is true or not), I think we can say that the experiment's results have been Not Positive.
Also, if you find yourself reading a Matthew Yglesias piece and agreeing with it, that should be a sign that your life has gone astray.
Zionism alive? Dead? Does it matter? I suppose it does to determine the severity and duration of the Occupation when it starts. But even if it is or is not, there are several decades, if not a century, of misery ahead.
In American legal philosophy, there is no such thing as the rights of a state:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
If you want to claim that Israel is a legitimate state, according to American legal philosophy you have to claim that the people who formed it had the right to be in the territory they claimed for it and that they (generally) had not violated the rights of anyone else in doing so.
I have never seen a compelling argument to that effect.
This is a weird argument in that the United States does not come out as legitimate according to what you are calling American legal philosophy, since the colonies were settled through the abuse of the native population.
I am pretty clear in my comments that I think Israel is in the wrong in its conflict with the Palestinians. But this is the one argument that really doesn't hold up well. The problem with Israel is not that its founding was worse than that of other countries, many countries were founded in similarly awful ways. The problem is that it continues to exist as a Jewish state only by keeping millions of non-Jews stateless.
The argument you are making here is the one that Drum is mocking. And it really is the only one that deserves to be mocked.
You are conflating late 18th through mid 19th century actions (America's founding and westward expansion) with mid 20th century actions (Israel's founding).
If you allow that, should Americans never argue that contemporary slavery is wrong -- ?
There are, even outside of in which century they occurred, serious differences between Israel's founding and America's founding. The main one, I think, is that America displaced non-agricultural societies that (a) supported a much lower population density than the agricultural society that replaced them, and (b) did not include a strong notion of land ownership and sovereignty.
Israel, on the other hand, displaced agricultural people whose economies supported roughly the same population density as that of the Israelis who replaced them, and who had fairly modern notions of property ownership.
Good Lord. Kevin makes a simple assertion that Zionism is dead as a movement, and many commenters go berserk because he didn't cover every topic regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and note how bad Israel is.
Sticking just to Kevin's point, I'd say that Zionism is still alive in a sense. People can't immigrate to Israel unless they are Jewish or have clear Jewish family ties. This is done in part today because Israelis want to maintain a Jewish majority among those who can vote. Not saying I fault Israelis for this thinking – I'm just making the point that this can be seen as a continuation of Zionism. Zionism means the forming of a Jewish state, but it follows that Zionism also means the sustaining a Jewish state.
It was not actually a simple assertion. It was more of a hot take that ignores how words are actually used in order to say something that would rile things up. It is likely Drum's point was to make people go berzerk. I doubt he would have said something so silly otherwise.
If you believe that Israel needs to extend the vote to all Palestinians in the WB and Gaza, allow immigration regardless of ethnic background for all who apply including Muslims, and implement a right of return for persons displaced and their descendants - doesn't this mean you don't believe in Israel’s right to exist? Once there is a Muslim majority, Israel becomes a Palestinian state.
Or, they could assist in the creation of a Palestinian state, which would solve that problem.
But you do love a false dichotomy.