Some Responses to the Israeli Election

Shorter Yousef: “You gotta hit rock bottom before you admit you have a problem”

I fear this could be very damaging for the cause of liberalism in the US. The issue of whether we should continue the special relationship could split the left, and unite the right. Generally outside of academic circles, a strong plurality is pro Israel no matter what.

Way to heighten the contradictions, Bibi.

I think it will play out differently in rhetorical terms, but with a similar effect. The effect of the last month has been to align the Republicans with Likud. Since Likud will dominate the Israeli government, Democrats are effectively being forced into the position of enemies of the current Israeli government. They can do that without rhetorically abandoning Israel. Indeed, this is pretty much the standard rhetorical position in cases of this kind – bad government, good people led astray.

I’m curious how widespread is the sentiment articulated by Fleischacker.

I think the bigger picture is that there’s been a steady drift towards anti-Israeli positions over the last few years, and this result means that the drift isn’t going to stop any time soon. So Fleischacker’s move from “liberal Zionist” to “no longer a Zionist” sounds huge, but it’s part of the same process as somebody moving from “critical of Israel but not in favour of BDS” to “qualified supporter of BDS”, and somebody else moving from “BDS but not for academics” to “BDS across the board”. And my impression is that that broader shift is very widespread indeed.

As for the White House, this is interesting reading. “Given our own history we have a unique perspective on the idea that minorities’ voting is not something to be condemned or feared,” said one administration official. In other words, Obama to Netanyahu: Dude, you just said you don’t want the brown people to vote. You actually said that.

Well Brett, the Pan African Congress once had a saying, “One settler, one bullet.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Settler,_One_Bullet

What happened? Turns out that when you stop oppressing people, they stop thinking up ridiculous slogans. But even Hamas has never said anything approaching that level.

Gosh, tell me more about this Hamas charter Brett. I’ve never heard anybody mention it before in this type of discussion, you are obviously a fascinating and truly original thinker. But, unless it’s your habit to judge a political leadership on the basis of the positions of an entirely different set of people 30 years earlier, maybe you could provide some more recent evidence of Hamas’s genocidal ambitions – something similar to the Israeli foreign minister’s recent threat to behead Palestinians who are Israeli citizens would suffice.

“Those who are against us, there’s nothing to be done – we need to pick up an ax and cut off his head,” [Avigdor] Lieberman said [on the 8th of March 2015]. “Otherwise we won’t survive here.”

Just in case anyone else was boggling.

Riiiight, Israel created Hamas. Supply them with rockets to launch into Israeli neighborhoods, too?

This is the sort of thing Israel has to deal with. It’s looking more like 1939 every day.

“and neighbouring Arab countries don’t have the capability.”

Good God. Have you even looked at a map? It’s not like the Gaza strip is internal to Israel. It’s got a freaking border with Egypt.

I don’t know. Is it your intention to run through the entire litany of tired blood libels?

Israel created Hamas, Hamas isn’t genocidal despite explicitly stating that in their charter, Israel can unilaterally starve areas that have borders with other nations. And, I guess, we’re supposed to ignore anti-semitic attacks being on the rise throughout Europe, too.

I think what pisses me off about this is that it isn’t even thought necessary to make this garbage plausible.

“I think what pisses me off about this is that it isn’t even thought necessary to make this garbage plausible”.
Yes, well why don’t you make some “painful sacrifices” (hey, there’s one you haven’t used yet!) and piss off someplace where your level or erudition might be more appreciated.

Either one is full of statements that sound genocidal. For instance:

“Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. “

an informed debate, rather than unproductive but self-satisfying sarcasm?

I see you don’t know Brett.

This is the policy. Hamas is the latest pretense for it.
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“Israel can unilaterally starve areas that have borders with other nations.”

This one is easy. Israel can starve other areas with the cooperation of whatever dictatorship is running Egypt, which is heavily dependent on good will from the US, and the US itself has been supportive of most of Israel’s war crimes. The fact is that many Americans, including some who call themselves liberal, are perfectly fine with brutal sanctions that impoverish people, so long as the people are Muslim.

The bedrock question of all politics is “What’s in it for me?” As a practical matter, the US-Israeli relationship offers the American public nothing except trouble and for some of us, psychic satisfaction, which pays no bills. I don’t see Americans repudiating Israel anytime soon, but I certainly could see a drift towards apathy and a reluctance to pull its chestnuts out of the Mideast fire.

I second Rich P’s proposal that we ignore Brett in this thread, though I’ll defend my own response since it wasn’t about the charter, but about the sanctions that Western nations use to impoverish innocent people as a means of pressure. It’s amazing how something comparatively trivial like BDS (whose impact would be mainly symbolic) gives rise to cries of antisemitism, when much harsher measures are taken for granted when used against Gaza.

@Rich Puchalsky #28

“When was it ever not?”

Have some tolerance. Not everyone is as smart as you.

“Israel created Hamas” = “blood libel”

In the 1970s, as a way of splitting the Palestinian national liberation movement, the Israel’s Likud government of the day decided to give financial aid to conservative religious elements within Palestinian society. One part of the policy was to support “village elders” – that didn’t pan out. The other was to fund the Islamic Association of Ahmed Yassin, a local offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood (the organisation also favoured by various Cold War opponents of Nasser). The Israelis were specifically warned about the dangers of doing this by the PLO, but probably thought that was just concern trolling. In due course Yassin’s fundie group spawned Hamas, and the Israelis eventually took out Yassin with an air to wheelchair missile. This story is not news, and is well documented.

Here’s hoping that version of the relevant history is sufficiently nuanced for you, Brett, thus obviating any compulsion you might have to play the Protocols card again.

(I don’t ignore people, but I will be retiring for the remainder of the evening.)

Corey @ 36, I love this attitude. Onward!

R Cottrell 34

The election result lights up the little three letter word beginning with w and ending with r. A US engagement against Iran with the complicity of NATO – and Israel – now seems inevitable. … [A]n attack on Iran, for whatever reason, would be the likely prelude to WWIII.

This is delusional. News reports as of yesterday (3/19) indicate that there are real prospects for an agreement in the current nuclear talks w Iran. Even if there is no agreement by the deadline, the talks cd be extended to work out remaining details if the sides are close.

An attack on Iran is pretty clearly not something Obama favors, despite the public formulation of ‘keeping all options on the table’. It wd be an extremely stupid and regrettable move were it to occur. (It wd not however be “the likely prelude to WWIII.” That is hyperbole.) I don’t see that Netanyahu’s victory much affects the position of the P-5 on Iran one way or the other. Netanyahu further alienated Obama — their relations were already rather frosty — w N’s speech to Congress. The idea that Obama will now respond to Netanyahu’s election win by attacking Iran lacks any plausibility, istm.

Also, R Cottrell: read the section of the OP on WHouse reaction to N’s statements on his position on I/P (now that he’s won the election, he’s reversed course rhetorically, which makes look even worse, if anything). And what Phil quotes @7.

All right.

Conflicts like this do tend to reveal — often in a very embarrassing way to the well-meaning — the limits of the secular imagination, and conversely, the intractability of tribal instincts. Politicians temporize, select a bit of what seems politically possible here, another bit there, do a little stapling and glueing, and hope that it’ll all turn out all right in the end. When, instead, their temporizing leads them and their constituents into the kind of apocalyptic dead end that’s facing Israel today, one wonders how long those trapped in it can stand the strain. If the vote for Netanyahu confirms anything, it’s that even the Israelis who’s hoped for better prefer apocalypse, if it comes, to endless uncertainty and fear.

This, it seems to me, is the very definition of tragedy. Historically speaking, the Israelis have chosen their bed, and now, like it or not, they’re going to have to lie in it. As someone who’s done his best to avoid the influence of tribalism in his own life, and who believes that looking beyond it is the only way, in the long run, to have peace, I’d prefer not to lie in it with them. While I realize that being able to express such preferences is, and has always been, something of a luxury, I may as well take advantage of that luxury while I can, even though it’s unlikely to have any influence on the mistaken choices my own government seems determined to continue making.

Tribalism can exert an extraordinarily powerful pull, which is, in part, why it’s hard for some of us to be as smart as Rich.

Brett’s advice is excellent. You will find some very nasty characters standing next to you. A lot of people will attempt to make a false equivalence. If your response is to always pooh pah the notion that the people standing next to you are evil f####s you will be well on your way to making that equivalence partly true.

So is Corey’s. If at every turn you insist that everyone accept your Apartheid ethno cleansers narrative of Isreal and morph from two state too it must be one state while pooh pahing Hamas and other nasty anti Semites you are not going to make much head way changing entrenched US public opinion.

I would also add do to feel the need to always beatify Palestinian society.

For the longest time the argument was that Palestinians did want peace that they rejected peace in favor of terror. It was very justifiable opinion. In regards to the West Bank this now completely false. Now Isreal has peace with the West Bank and they are rejecting a Palestinians] State. Perhaps at the margins we should rethink about US support for Isreal.

@Phil and @Gator90:

Thanks for the responses. Phil’s point about the “bigger picture” strikes me as true as well.

Israel demolishes homes, barns in Negev area

BEERSHEBA (Ma’an) — Israeli bulldozers escorted by police demolished homes and animal barns in Bedouin villages across the Negev late Thursday.
…
In May 2013, an Israeli government committee approved a draft bill setting a framework to implement the evacuation of “unrecognized” Bedouin villages in the Negev, most of which existed before the state of Israel.

Bedouins in Israel live in 45 unrecognized villages scattered primarily in the region between Beersheba and Arad.

They are the remnants of the Bedouin population that lived across the Negev Desert until 1948, when 90 percent were expelled by Israel and the remainder confined to a closed reservation.
——
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Anon raises a valid point. I didn’t really buy any Israeli products even when I was a Zionist. Perhaps I should start buying Israeli wines, so I can make a point of stopping. (Drinking the wines would be part of my penance for my years of Zionism.)

“Evangelical support for the State of Israel is strong, but Evangelical opinion is awfully fickle.”

I’ll just mention that Evangelical “support” is premised on the religious belief that soon the End Times will come and Jews will mostly convert to Christianity, and those who don’t will be killed. I’ve never been able to distinguish this support from formalized, religious anti-Semitism.

A two-state settlement is not going to happen unless the U.S. starts exerting some real leverage on Israel, something the U.S. in recent decades has not done (although the Bush 41, i.e. Bush père, admin made a weak effort in that direction). There’s no chance such leverage will be exerted until it becomes possible, politically, for leading U.S. politicians to advocate it. It might only take one prominent op-ed by a couple of leading Dem. Senators to break this ‘third rail’ taboo, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem likely to happen. S. Fleischacker’s ‘one person one vote from the river to the sea’ doesn’t seem likely to happen either, at least not soon. I suppose one could take the long view and say ‘well, it will happen in 25 or 30 or 40 years’, which I gather is the (spoken or unspoken) view of the BDS movement.

At this point I actually have some question about whether exerting US leverage — i.e., cutting the flow of aid from $3 billion annually to zero — would even work. But it seems the only chance for getting a 2-state settlement. Without such pressure it’s fairly clear Israeli govts (esp the ones likely to get elected) will not sign a final-status agreement. Otherwise it wd have already happened.

I’ve never been able to distinguish this support from formalized, religious anti-Semitism.

There is a long history of non-Jewish Zionism, and a lot of it’s not very pretty. The argument that “Jews should go and set up their own country” is the opposite of “we don’t want Jews in our country” has always seemed a bit odd to me.

“It doesn’t actually seem to call for the complete extermination of the Jewish race, provided they up and leave…”

As I read it, it’s more a case of, “If you leave, it may be a while before we get around to hunting you down.”

“But why would we want to? If no walking, talking present-day representative of Hamas is saying anything remotely genocide-y*, what purpose does it serve to refer back to a 27-year-old document and say “A-ha, that’s what you guys really think!” ”

Because it’s still their charter, and the conspicuously refuse to amend it so as to remove that language.

Big Bank’s Analyst Worries That Iran Deal Could Depress Weapons Sales

File this story under “What it’s all about” and “With allies like Israel, who need enemies?”
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This is a huge blow to people, such as myself, who support the two state solution. I have no idea where we go from here but I suspect it is nowhere good.

phenomenal cat: “Evangelical support for Israel is more or less unequivocal and that support could only be characterized as “anti-Semitic” in some weird Athusserian ideological contortion that doesn’t effectively mean much, if anything. “

So your statement is: their belief that Jews are destined to be converted or wiped out, and their political support to hasten and secure this end, is only anti-Semitic as “some weird Althusserian ideological contortion”.

I took what Corey wrote seriously because he understands my values. Are you also a prospective BDS supporter? Oh never mind.

@ Rich #57 (& Phil 63)

There’s that for the millanarian crowd, but Evangelicals also feel a personal connection to the covenants defined in the Old Testament. There’s continuity to present-day churches. I suppose the theological position of the Jews would be that Christians are at best apostates, I suppose.

Evangelical support for Israel is more or less unequivocal and that support could only be characterized as “anti-Semitic” in some weird Athusserian ideological contortion that doesn’t effectively mean much, if anything.

Evangelicals say that support for Israel now will lead to the destruction of Judaism later.

This belief is not, on its face, ridiculous. The suppression of Palestine really could lead to a conflict that wipes out Israel. This isn’t ISIS predicting the global caliphate. The Christian Right has a plan.

Ben @70 – you haven’t answered the question. (A singular occurrence in online debates about Israel between complete strangers, I think we’ll all agree.) I meant it literally: why would (do) you want to hold Hamas to the letter of their charter? What purpose does it serve to do so? I mean, I can tell you precisely why I think it’s a good idea to politely ignore the charter – because that way there’s at least a chance of peace and co-operation. Does calling Hamas genocidal – despite the lack of present-day evidence – offer a better route to peace? If not, why do it? Where does it get us?

And what if the state restricted his movement, and controlled his access to resources until he “repudiated” his statement. That would be ok, also?

MPA Victoria @69
This is a huge blow to people, such as myself, who support the two state solution.

The really huge blow to the two-state solution is the fact that the US govt has, for decades now, refused to exert any real leverage on its ally Israel. Until that happens, there will be no real prospect of a 2-state settlement. On the futility and/or unhelpfulness of US diplomatic efforts to date, see Nathan Thrall in NY Rev Bks last fall (Oct. 9, 2014).

Don’t mean to pick on you, MPAV, because I think your reaction is understandable, but the fact is that negotiations, unaccompanied by leverage, have been going on in fits and starts for a long time now, with no final status agreement of the sort the Oslo accords were intended (weren’t they?) to lead to. Both sides need to be nudged, and I don’t mean gently tapped on the shoulder. Otherwise there will never be a 2-state agreement, the situation will deteriorate further, there will be more rounds of war betw Israel and Hamas (and Hezbollah, prob.), and Corey and his colleagues in the BDS mvt will dig in for the long haul, which effectively writes off the prospect for I/P peace for another generation.

How do we get the US and others to exert real leverage on the parties? Not sure, but I’m pretty sure of one thing: arguing about largely irrelevant side pts like the Hamas charter is not going to do it. If a 2-state settlement were reached and the PA cd back to its constituency and sell it w some reasonable degree of plausibility, the Hamas charter wd not make a fucking bit of difference b.c Hamas wd have lost a lot of its cred.

That’s actually not that uncommon if somebody credibly threatens to attack somebody else, now, is it? Especially if the back up the threat with multiple attacks. Missiles are STILL being launched into Israel from Hamas controlled territory.

If they hadn’t ever done anything to act on that threat in their charter, you might have a point about dismissing it after all these years. But you tend to take threats seriously when somebody keeps acting on them.

I thought that, as a libertarian, you’d be a bit more of a free speech advocate. But, ok, one can shift the discussion to actions instead, where I am perfectly prepared to accept that Palestinian and Hamas behaviour is worthy of condemnation, according to standards to decency whereby one doesn’t attack, provoke, or harm one’s neighbours. I seriously don’t see how one can see an essentially one-sided conflict like this, however, and conclude that the side with all the power, all the agency and all the might are the ones who escape criticism on these grounds.

“Self defence” is the usual explanation, I guess. Although it is quite hard to imagine more domestic situations where “self defence” by a powerful body which is capable of, and enacts, restriction of movement, access to resources and so on is accepted as reasonable. The state, I suppose, is a good example. Again, I am struck by how often libertarians end up on this side of the argument.

Sebastian H
It isn’t even clear who a hypothetical peacenik PM would be negotiating with. There is no one in charge who even seems interested. Abbas? Really?

If Abbas has no interest in a settlement, why did Abbas let Fayyad, when the latter was prime minister of the PA, begin to build up (w some limited Israeli cooperation) the infrastructure of a future state?

Some serious disagreements in evidence over how to characterize the politics – from Israel the bully to Israel under siege.

I find it a bit worrisome to see so much commentary on how the voters of Israel let the side down. Was there widespread violence, fraud, or intimidation during the elections? If not, I’d hope the registered opinions of millions of people whose lives could actually depend on the decisions made by a new government might get a bit more respect… or is that only due to people with the right opinions?

“I’d hope the registered opinions of millions of people whose lives could actually depend on the decisions made by a new government might get a bit more respect… or is that only due to people with the right opinions?”

Excellent concern trolling. What about the opinions of people who live under Israeli rule and can’t vote in their elections?

Incidentally, I think white South Africans had to live with whatever decision they made regarding the politicians they voted for and they were scared too.

“and conclude that the side with all the power, all the agency and all the might are the ones who escape criticism on these grounds.”

I can see “all the power”, or “all the might”. Not remotely true, or else there wouldn’t be missiles raining down on Israel as a regular thing, but I can see it.

But, “all the agency”? Really? You’re saying the Palestinians are just volitionless puppets? I grant, that would absolve them of guilt for their actions, but it’s a darned insulting way to declare somebody innocent.

jgtheok @89
I’d hope the registered opinions of millions of people whose lives could actually depend on the decisions made by a new government might get a bit more respect… or is that only due to people with the right opinions?

The following, while not perhaps *exactly* on point, seems not wholly inapt here:

I take it as proved that those who consider universal suffrage as a guarantee of the excellence of the resulting choice suffer under a complete delusion. Universal suffrage has other advantages, but not that one.

— Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol.1, pt.2, ch.5 (quoted from the George Lawrence translation)

One small bit of good news from the election:
Voter turnout in the Arab community increased by nearly 10 percentage points over the 2013 election — and the number of Knesset members representing the Israeli Arab population increased from 11 Knesset members for three parties running separately to 14 Joint List MKs (with 99 percent of the votes counted).

(from an article in Ha’aretz)

Of course it does say that it is incumbent on Islam to destroy the state of Israel, to reclaim all of the land it currently occupies for Islam, killing as many Jews as needed for that goal, and identifies Hamas as being the true Islam.

Walk me through it. Point to the article and blockquote the text. I’m trying to understand, and, as I wanted to say and tried to say earlier,

I’ve a counter offer. Why don’t _you_ produce a footnoted exegesis of the damned thing, and then I’ll tell _you_ if you got anything wrong?

I think we can, usefully, distinguish groups which are “committed to the long-term destruction of the Jews” by means of killing Jews wherever they find them, from groups which are “committed to the long-term destruction of the Jews” by means of persuading them to accept that Jesus was the son of God, not just a prophet, and by virtue of that they cease to be “Jews”.

We don’t normally confuse inspiring somebody to change their religion with killing them.

“I’m Jewish btw. And yes, it’s in theory everyone, but Evangelicals don’t say to each other “We have to support the existence of a Hindu state, because without a Hindu state that can be destroyed by its neighboring enemies, our religious prophecies can’t come true.” Rich@100

No, they don’t b/c a Hindu state has, again, fuck-all to do with evangelical Christian eschatology; but they do spend millions and millions every year trying to convert Hindus through missionary efforts, so there is that. Look, if you think most evangelicals are really anti-Semites that’s fine. There is some precedent for sure, but I think it’s a mis-characterization of the evangelical relationship to the state of Israel to say it’s mostly confined to anti-Antisemitism; starting with the fact that evangelicals genuinely believe that Jews, esp Israelis, are God’s chosen people. They take the covenant seriously.

I also wouldn’t equate the evangelical belief in the rapture (and all that is entailed in it) with an anti-Semitic desire to see Israel destroyed. Those are very different things. As for the whole relationship being one of mutual political convenience where each side thinks the other foolish–I don’t know, but I doubt it. Perhaps Israelis who deal with the thousands of evangelicals pilgrimaging to the Holy Land every year think so; perhaps agents of Aipac or the Israeli state or whoever think their evangelical “allies” are fools–again I don’t know. But the evangelical relationship to Israel is far more complex, nuanced, and generally approving than you are crediting.

I’ll grant anyone that it is a strange relationship where each side may well not fully apprehend the motives of the other, but evangelicals are by and large staunch supporters of Israel no matter what it does.

P.S. and FYI: evangelicals don’t actually believe Israel is to be destroyed by its “neighboring enemies;” i.e. the Arabs. For the most part they believe some hazy mixture of Russia, maybe China, and Europe will spell the destruction of Israel with Arab states perhaps acting as some kind of vanguard, but the real force will come from Russia, Europe, and China or the East–the whole world in a sense.

But really, let’s get down to it. The point of my original post was that evangelicals and large swathes of the right in the U.S. now agree 100 percent full-stop with Netanyahu’s fever dreams about the imminent threats and fragility of the Israeli state and that Israel is well within its rights to do whatever it damn well pleases to shore itself up against these putative threats. I suppose that could be construed as anti-Antisemitism, but you’ve got to admit its a very novel and weird strain the likes of which the world hasn’t seen before.

= = = I also wouldn’t equate the evangelical belief in the rapture (and all that is entailed in it) with an […] desire to see Israel destroyed. = = =

Given your level of knowledge I am sure you are aware that some sects of the millenarian cults believe that they are called on to actively ferment an apocalyptic war in the Middle East in order to bring about the end of days. Several people of that persuasion served in George W. Bush’s administration. I don’t know if you’d call that active prejudice against the people who would be killed en mass to bring about the event, but it doesn’t seem very brotherly.

None,

I don’t know, but maybe that is where Rich’s point re: the nature of the relationship gains some purchase. One could extrapolate that some strata of Israeli society or the state finds the relationship strategically useful while still thinking the whole story of jesus being the messiah (and the rapture/end of the world) is nonsense. The two are not mutually excluding.
And, in any case, this cannot be emphasized enough: when the tribulation hits the whole world goes to hell; everyone everywhere “left behind” is up shit creek without a paddle. Israel (and the greater middle east) being God’s home away from home is just the central site of these world events. Also, just as important in this eschatology, the reason all the evil world powers invade Israel is because it is the home of God’s people–its inherent sacrality is offensive to evil.

I would like to hear Israeli opinion on all this myself, to be honest.

Cranky,

Nietzsche made quite a bit of hay out of noting just how un-brotherly various vintages of Christian “love” could be. Genealogy of Morals is still a good psychological place to begin to understand these contradictions.

It is amazing how many people judge one side with one set of rules and the other side with another set of rules.

At this point it is absolutely clear that the leaders of the Palestinians and the leaders of the Israelis both want war. Pretending that either side doesn’t want war and acting as if your non-preferred side is the one *really* causing the problem is silly. Both want war.

Phil @63: “There is a long history of non-Jewish Zionism, and a lot of it’s not very pretty. The argument that “Jews should go and set up their own country” is the opposite of “we don’t want Jews in our country” has always seemed a bit odd to me.”

This comment seems to me really insightful. (To the list of Bibi’s recent outrageous statements, add his/his government’s encouraging European Jews to move to Israel. How would Americans be reacting if American Jews were so overtly invited?) Maybe a Jewish future lies (at this moment) more in the diaspora than in Israel? (The familiar nomadic wilderness/settled agricultural city dialectic….)

“Next year in Jerusalem.” Is Jerusalem nothing more than a site on the surveyors’ map?

“If my neighbor threatened to kill me, publicly and loudly, and later asked to be invited to my 4th of July BBQ, I wouldn’t be “Holding him to his threat” if I insisted that he repudiate the promise before entering my backyard, and kept him clear of me and mine until he did so.”

Of course you wouldn’t, having long since shelled his property, sent in the tanks, killed him and his family, bulldozed his house, and built your pool cabana on what was his property.

“@111: the Palestinian “leaders” I’ve heard on NPR over the last week clearly do not want war.”

Who are you talking about? And what do you mean by ‘war’. Are you under the misapprehension that Israel and Palestine are not at war right now? Because it is the Palestinians are in a guerrilla war against Israel right this very moment. And Israel takes warlike acts against the Palestinians on a regular basis. They are at war right now, and both sides would rather continue the war than make serious concessions to the other side. Both sides are hoping that the international community will ‘force’ the other side to give in, but it is a fantasy.

“They want the Israeli government to step so far out of line with respect to international norms (whatever that means) that the US and the EU slap them down hard.”

What does this sentence mean? They *want* Israel to do something (more I presume?) so that what exactly happens?

All this talk of leverage is mystifying. It is straight out of green lanternism. The US doesn’t HAVE the leverage to get Israel to agree that it is ok to let the rockets fly into their cities. The US doesn’t HAVE the leverage to get Palenstinians to agree that it is ok to let Israel keep growing settlements. We can punish one side or the other for not doing what we want. But that isn’t ‘leverage’ in the normal sense of ‘applying pressure with the expectation of changing things’.

Neither of those things are tolerable to the other side. And I mean “not tolerable” in the real sense of ‘absolutely cannot allow it to continue’, not in the sense we experience it in our day to day lives where Aunt Cynthia says she “just can’t tolerate beets”.

No country with any serious military might at all would stop making war on their neighbor if their neighbor kept sending explosives into their cities on a regular basis. That sentence is totally agnostic to which party counts as which neighbor in the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Those who observe that one can ignore Brett should take the next logical step, and realize they can in turn ignore those who don’t ignore Brett.

Paul: “To whatever extent we can absolve individual Israelis of the sins of their government, I’m willing to extend exactly the same absolution of individual Palestinians.”

But, that’s not at all what Armando, who I was responding to, said. He said, to quote him again,

“I seriously don’t see how one can see an essentially one-sided conflict like this, however, and conclude that the side with all the power, all the agency and all the might are the ones who escape criticism on these grounds.”

I’m fine with absolving individual Israelis of the sins of their government, to the extent they don’t support it. I’ll extend that level of absolution, and maybe even a little bit more, to individual Palestinians, because THEIR government is rather more totalitarian in nature, and less tolerant of political opposition from the citizenry. Palestinians are not as free as Israelis to oppose their government.

But they do occasionally hold elections in the Palestinian teritories, and the people who win them are pretty murderous, and the missiles keep coming. So I’m gonna have to assume the charter didn’t get repudiated because they still intend genocide. And I flatly reject the idea that Palestinians don’t have agency. They do, and they regularly exercise it by chosing to be ruled by the likes of Hamas.

“This is unadulterated nonsense. You observe that one country is conducting the military occupation, repression, and annexation of another; that the other not only fails to negotiate the terms of their own destruction, but actively resists it through; and that both are therefore equally desirous of war. Then you offer that as an unbiased, ‘agnostic’ view.”

Yeah, one country is conducting a military occupation. The other is continuing it’s attacks to the extent it can while under military occupation. Takes two to keep a war going this long, and I’m not terribly keen on the idea of automatically assigning guilt to which ever side turned out to be stronger. Sometimes the weaker side is the agressor, and ends up occupied because they’re just too stupid/malevolent to give up attacking.

“and if they stop resisting, the occupation continues regardless.”

I don’t think that’s true. I think, if they stop attacking, the occupation will continue a while, because they have a history of pausing in attacks and resuming. And then it will tentatively be relaxed, tentatively, because they have a history of using relaxations to stock up on weaponry. And then, when that doesn’t happen, they’ll relax it a bit more. And eventually, when a number of years have gone by without suicide bombers blowing up in daycares, invasion tunnels being dug, missiles being launched, eventually Israel will conclude that the Palestinians are serious about wanting peace, and end the occupation.

But you don’t let somebody out of a occupation while they’re still trying to kill you. And the demand that you do is rightfully recognized as a demand to commit suicide.

Congratulations. Brett has you hook line and sinker. Is the Hamas Charter explicitly genocidal. After a quick drunk read last night I say no. Is it implicitly genocidal? I say no. It walks right up to the edge and says look at the refreshing crystal clear water feel that hot sun without jumping in.

Is it incredibly, insanely anti semitic, and gleefully, religiously, and explicitly violent in addition to being insanely anti semitic? Yes it is. These guys are like, look a gharqad tree, get the chain saws.

The West Bank poses no threat to Israel. Why can’t it be a State? The only possible answer I can see is that we colonized the heck out of it. We colonized the heck out of it is not a good answer. Also Krauthammer’s hmmmpfff you know Palestinians, Abbas is a wussy, and the Middles is dangerous scary place does not cut it.

The Congress of the United States would not allow the government to exercise “leverage” on Israel if Israel bombed Charlotte, North Carolina. It would instead pass a bipartisan resolution of support. Support for Israel come what may is now the only Republican foreign policy of note. Fear of losing support from a reliable constituency keeps Democrats in thrall to Israel as well.
The only way that could possibly change is war with Iran. That predictable catastrophe might provoke a sea change in political attitudes here, but it’s far too high a price to pay for that.

Sebastian, I don’t know how much influence the U.S. could have in any given direction–I do know that the U.S. regularly condemns rocket fire in the harshest terms and says Israel has the right to defend itself, while never acknowledging the regular acts of often murdeous violence that Israel directs at innocent Palestinians. And when Israel uses both indiscriminate fire in Gaza and also very discriminating fire aimed at people’s homes, we hear no condemnation except once from Kerry when he thought the microphone was off. And during all this we continue to arm Israel and up to this point, act as their lawyer in the UN. I think we have had a tremendous amount of influence, mostly in the wrong direction, by allowing Israel to kill thousands of civilians and claiming it is self defense, while never acknowledging anything like a Palestinian right to defend themselves. Most of the Israeli dead in last summer’s war were IDF and most of the Palestinian dead were civilian, including 500 children.

I suspect that we probably do have some effect in a positive direction–if it weren’t for concern that even US indulgence has its limits, Israel might well have taken all the remaining land and simply expelled the Palestinians, finishing the process begun in 1948.

Brett continues to argue in bad faith. In some alternate universe where the only atrocities were committed by Palestinians and the Israelis were only defending themselves, you wouldn’t see settlements on the WB. Only crazy people would build homes in areas surrounded by people as evil as Brett believes the Palestinians to be, yet Brett and the Israeli right never acknowledge the contradiction.

I guess I don’t see ‘influence’ as the same as leverage. Leverage has a right to expect a result. I think it is almost impossible that a country which has the ability to use military force would accept explosions in their cities caused by neighbors unless they were unless they decided that responding would cause them to be utterly destroyed or scattered so they give in (see for example Tibet and Ukraine).

The US isn’t capable of putting Israel in that position (unless you are advocating the US going to war against Israel). So they continue to make war against the Palestinians.

The Palestinians are in a similar but much weaker position. However, they are certain that Israel that Israel either will not or cannot utterly destroy or scatter them (unlike the neighbors who have already done so) so they continue to make war on the Israelis.

The fact that the Palestinians are weaker than the Israelis doesn’t mean they are failing to make war against Israel. The Palestinians are making war against Israel, they are just making war in a way they probably can’t win. They are hoping that if they hold out long enough, someone who can win will join the war (maybe Iran, or in the past Lebanon and Egypt). They are engaging in war with Israel. It is just a particularly badly positioned war.

They aren’t in the position of Tibet–where they just have to accept that the Chinese are willing to employ genocide. They aren’t in the position of Ukraine–where the force and the will applied is overwhelming enough to make the need to give up the Crimea clear.

So when Palestinian cities get bombed they continue to make war on their neighbor.

The path to ‘peace’ while neither side gives up AND the weaker side continues bombing its neighbor isn’t clear and doesn’t seem to have much historical basis. Peace can come when a distant power decides it isn’t worth it (numerous examples since WWII) or when when the weaker side just gives in (most recently Ukraine over Crimea see also France until saved by other powers but note that this involved the utter destruction and giving in of Germany), or when the weaker side de-escalates to avoid violence (Tibet though arguably they belong in the gives in category). Sometimes given equal or near equal sides, there is peace through exhaustion (arguably WWI, though that shouldn’t really be encouraging) or through wariness (Pakistan/India though frankly I wouldn’t bet against that war being put off forever if Islam in Pakistan continues as it is).

Now Israel might be induced to give up if we armed the Palestinians enough that they actually could threaten Israel with utter destruction. But you’d have to be willing to risk that if given that power the Palestinians might use it. Or you’d have to not care if they used it. That hasn’t turned out well in the last 5 or 6 attempts in the Middle East. If you advocate that you are essentially a neo-con for the other side.

The last time there was a chance for peace was when Arafat (a bona fide leader of the other side). demonstrated that he could actually stop the violence against Israel AND DID SO. But that was decades ago at this point.

I think we can, usefully, distinguish groups which are “committed to the long-term destruction of the Jews” by means of killing Jews wherever they find them, from groups which are “committed to the long-term destruction of the Jews” by means of persuading them to accept that Jesus was the son of God, not just a prophet, and by virtue of that they cease to be “Jews”.

We can, sure. But they both share the conviction that this would be a better world if it didn’t have any Jews in it.

Sebastian H 129

You write:
I guess I don’t see ‘influence’ as the same as leverage. Leverage has a right to expect a result. I think it is almost impossible that a country which has the ability to use military force would accept explosions in their cities caused by neighbors unless …they decided that responding would cause them to be utterly destroyed or scattered so they give in (see for example Tibet and Ukraine).

The particular example here is irrelevant, because no one is suggesting that Israel be pressured to accept Palestinian rocket attacks on its cities. The suggestion, rather, is that Israel be pressured to modify certain of its positions — say, on Jerusalem or the precise amount of land swaps or water resources or a symbolic apology for 1948 expulsions (the last wd be symbolic, but might be quite important) — as a way of moving toward or reaching a settlement, which wd in turn vastly diminish the importance or the salience of the issue of rocket attacks. Because after a final status deal acceptable to the PA were signed, Hamas’s popularity wd likely decline to the pt where instead of 10 rockets fired every month into Israel, or whatever the current figure is, it might be ten rockets every three years. In other words, sign an agreement and the rocket-attack issue becomes manageable or even goes away. W/o an agreement, it’s one more reason for continuation of the status quo.

Your comment presupposes this sort of circularity or catch-22 without explicitly recognizing it. Of course there’s no path to peace while, in yr words, “neither side gives up AND the weaker side continues bombing its neighbor”. But the whole point of a negotiated agreement is precisely that neither side gives up. That is what a negotiated agreement in this context means. The sides make mutual concessions wherein each gains something and each loses something — neither “gives up” in the sense of saying “you win, I surrender”.

The sides in the I/P conflict are not engaged in all-out war such as the Syrian civil war, a context in which negotiation is effectively impossible. Rather, the sides in the I/P conflict are engaged in sporadic (and unequal) violence, something one can label ‘war’, but in which negotiation is not completely impossible. The issue is that the status quo of continuing ‘war’ is more acceptable, or less unacceptable, to much of the elite on both sides (and at least a good deal of the Israeli pop., apparently) than a negotiated peace, looked at prospectively, seems to be. One approach to this is to raise the costs of the status quo, not by killing more people, but by making it less comfortable for the Israeli govt and for portions of the Palestinian leadership to continue it (by reducing or cutting off the flows of official money). The problem w this prescription is: (a) it’s not guaranteed to work (nothing is guaranteed to work) and, more importantly, (b) it is politically unfeasible rt now in the US, as is obvious.

In sum, I don’t have the answer but I don’t agree w yr framing. This not a situation in which one side or the other has to be induced to give up. It’s a situation in which the two sides’ leaders have somehow to be induced to realize what is almost certainly true: that they have both have more to gain in the long run from an agreement than they have to lose, even an agreement that does not meet each sides’ desires perfectly. Israel, currently losing support internationally and arguably teetering on the brink of becoming a pariah state, would after signing an agreement regain the international standing and legitimacy it now seems in danger of losing. And the PA wd gain a recognized state, even one that will be small, weak, and subject to various (unusual, in the general scheme of things) restrictions. Luxembourg has the status and prestige that come with being a juridically recognized sovereign state, and no one cares that it has a tiny military that presumably can’t do much of anything. A state of Palestine would enjoy status simply by virtue of being a state, regardless of what the fine print of the agreement will say about what kind of security forces it can maintain.

> Hence their refusal to consider recognizing Israel as a “Jewish” state.

They’ve refused to recognise Israel as a “jewish” state because Israel hasn’t stated exactly what they’ll take “Jewish state” to mean and some of the possible interpretations are not very nice. Fairly standard process-of-negotiation; if someone asks you to sign up to something and refuses to clarify exactly how they see that something working, you say “no”.

[the words are less important than the meanings, and different people can put different interpretations on the same words. Always, the question isn’t “can we live with this” as much as “can we live with how the other guys will see this”. It’s essentially no different to the israeli-jewish refusal to sign up to a single state; they don’t know whether the vision the muslim majority has for a single state includes meaningful civil rights for jews.]

“Because after a final status deal acceptable to the PA were signed, Hamas’s popularity wd likely decline to the pt where instead of 10 rockets fired every month into Israel, or whatever the current figure is, it might be ten rockets every three years.”

Why would you think that Hamas’s popularity would likely decline? If anything Islamist popularity seems to be quite a bit on the upswing. And if Hamas ‘won’ huge concessions from Israel, like a full state, (which is certainly how they would frame it) why wouldn’t it be wildly more popular?

And if Hamas ‘won’ huge concessions from Israel, like a full state, (which is certainly how they would frame it) why wouldn’t it be wildly more popular?

I’d guess LFC’s assuming that it wouldn’t be Hamas that would win the concessions. (LFC can of course correct me on this.)

The Obama administration has been making clear signs that they’re going to stop protecting Israel in the UN: this is something over which Congress has no power, and something that they can do. This is also the sort of thing that can’t be undone once done. I think that this will be a real change, probably formally having the UN endorse a 2-state solution with the 1967 borders as a starting point and territory swaps.

Hamas’s (just) demand during the summer war was that the blockade on Gaza be lifted. They actually did manage to bring some attention to the blockade while the war lasted–the NYT quoted some ordinary Gazans who were desperate to have it lifted. Then the war stopped and the blockade is still in place. There are various lessons here. One is that violence only works for Israel–Hamas’s violence accomplished nothing in the end. Another is that many Americans (like those who write NYT editorials) care little about Palestinians so long as they suffer in silence. Their main concern is for Israel’s safety and reputation. If Hamas fires rockets and Palestinians demand the end of the blockade, they’ll report it. When the rockets stop, the interest level drops back to zero, unless someone like Nicholas Kristof writes a piece warning that Palestinian anger might lead to future wars. Kristof is also careful to point out that some Palestinians were so traumatized they don’t want any more wars, so hey, maybe the Israeli policy of collective punishment works. There are perverse incentives here, but in practice the only side which has received consistent rewards for war crimes are the Israelis and as Westerners are superior beings, this is as it should be. Palestinians are taught that their rights mean nothing, though they might get some attention if they shoot rockets. I think the US can take some credit for this situation.

Kristof’s column

Anyway, it’s the PA which has halfheartedly and ineptly tried to win statehood via the UN, though they have been under pressure from the US not to do this. If the Palestinians achieve a state on the 67 lines via the UN, it would be Abbas who would take credit. Hamas is a would-be Hezbollah that wishes it could win via armed resistance, but it has failed.

Donald, that should be read in relation to the other recent posts. I don’t care about a Hamas ‘win’ in a vacuum. LFC suggested that Hamas would lose power in the even of a two state solution. I suggested that wasn’t obvious if the two state solution looked like a Hamas ‘win’, especially considering the current trajectory of other Islamist parties in the region.

So I’m saying that it would look like a Hamas ‘win’ in that context.

Omega Centauri 03.21.15 at 8:13 pm @ 134:
‘… And the scale of Israeli settlements has clearly crossed the tipping point where a two-state solution hasn’t been viable for some time now. Its just that no statesman has wanted to admit that.’

As Edward Said pointed out in 1999, and as many others have noted, the Settlements have rendered a two-state resolution of the conflict impossible. There remains, then, only the one-state solution. The function of the two-state proposal seems to be to keep things as they are, which is preferable to the Israeli and US leadership for obvious reasons. Its appeal to any Palestinians is obscure, to me, anyway. In any case I would prefer to hear about some other fable now, one which might have more luck.

Brett’s comments are useful, as always, in illustrating the tribalist Repub-Likud position. The sooner Democrats realise that this is now a partisan issue, like nearly everything else, the sooner they can take a reality-based view, rather than being locked into the spurious consensus of the past.

Nathan Thrall had written a longer version of the article that LFC is recommending, here:

https://medium.com/matter/americas-quest-for-israeli-palestinian-peace-db27f99ad9f0

(It’s definitely well worth reading)

Gator90, around a quarter of Israel’s citizens are Arab. That is a far greater percentage, for example, than the Jewish population of the U.S. Nevertheless, I think most American Jews would rightfully object to having the U.S. declared a “Christian State.”

“*I don’t like the idea of saying a Palestinian state can’t have its own armed forces of any size. ”

Can you understand why, “Those people who keep launching rockets into your neighborhoods, and detonating bombs in your daycares? You ought to let them form an armed force, and import munitions. It’s a moral imperative!” isn’t terribly persuasive to the people on the receiving end of the rockets?

Brett Bellmore 03.22.15 at 2:36 pm @ 157 — Well, then, who will protect the Palestinians?

Lee A. Arnold @160,

Pursuant to your comment, I searched for context. I can’t see what I misunderstood.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/News/5163/19/Israel%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98Jewishness%E2%80%99-claim-rejected.aspx

BBellmore 157
Can you understand why, “Those people who keep launching rockets into your neighborhoods, and detonating bombs in your daycares? You ought to let them form an armed force, and import munitions. It’s a moral imperative!” isn’t terribly persuasive to the people on the receiving end of the rockets?

Obvs I don’t think it’s “a moral imperative”; it’s a widely-accepted accoutrement of statehood, one that in this case I don’t think is essential to an agreement. If you’d read anything I’d said in this thread, I think you’d realize that.

Your so-called “arguments” in this thread are absurdly one-sided, in the sense that you don’t see that the very difficulty of the conflict stems from some legitimate claims and concerns on both sides, in addition to displaying a considerable ignorance of what has actually been going on in the region. “Bombs in daycares”: when was the last time that happened? Has it ever happened?

“searching for context… what was the context…”

Oh come off it. The “Jewishness” of Israel is the code for a big set of demands, including the 1967 borders, East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, the right of return, the risks of extradition of Arabs already living in Israel, etc. — and the context of Abbas’ remark is the same. None of these will be solved tomorrow, but pretending that recognizing the “Jewishness” of Israel is some separable item, misses the point that was properly stated by Collin Street at #135.

“Oh, come off it.”

Persuasive.

I suppose we ought to be thankful that there’s no “code” needed to understand Hamas’ or Fatah’s “from the river to the sea”.

“Obvs I don’t think it’s “a moral imperative”; it’s a widely-accepted accoutrement of statehood”

So’s getting pounded with artillery if you launch rockets into the next state over.

he insists on the exclusive Arabness and Muslimness of Palestine.

You ought to tell him what the Palestinians in Bethlehem get up to every December.

Gator90, How is that different from what Collin Street wrote, which you objected to?

David,

Israel is already a de facto Jewish state, but — having visited and lectured in I/P — in no way comparable to Iran or the Gulf States (freedom of religion [mosques, churches, synagogues, Bahai temples], a wildly free press, outspoken free speech, gay rights, women’s rights etc.). I see the label more as a manifesto of permanence and legitimacy (the UN’s 1947 resolution called for an “Arab” and a “Jewish” state), not to say a request for Abbas to acknowledge that — contrary to what Fatah or Hamas might declare to Arabic-speaking audiences (I have a bit of Arabic and a bit of Hebrew) — any treaty with Israel would be a permanent settlement, not some sort of time-limited hudnah. But, I think that in the interests of diplomacy that request could be toned down.

@Lee A. Arnold

Collin Street, if I understood #135 correctly, seemed to be saying that Palestinian rejection of a “Jewish” state is a mere negotiating posture adopted because Palestinians are confused as to what “Jewish” means. Perhaps he is right, but I don’t think they’re confused at all. They know it means stuff they will never accept, and that is what Abbas said in no uncertain terms.

Collin Street@176,

“Israel sees….”

Not hard at all.

The UN endorsing a 2 state solution is the UN endorsing majority US opinion, the bipartisan policy of every president, and it would not be a hit on Clinton. The US has just been shielding Israel from any UN resolution that it doesn’t like, and Obama can easily defend just not doing this any more.

The alternative is a non-democratic Israel, and outside of the funhouse mirror that’s not an easy case to make.

I agree with Brett @157. Why should the Palestinians consent to Israel maintaining a military?

@Hal #182:
Something that I don’t think is properly appreciated is that the current situation of israel vis-a-vis its “jewishness” is in part unacceptable and [cf the JNF and the planning framework] illegal. The problems Israel has aren’t entirely a result of the occupation: domestic changes will be necessary. Israel has to articulate a vision for a “jewish state” that is in terms of the effective legal framework less “jewish” than it currently is, even within their ’67 borders.

Hal @175 Israel is already a de facto Jewish state, but — having visited and lectured in I/P — in no way comparable to Iran or the Gulf States (freedom of religion [mosques, churches, synagogues, Bahai temples], a wildly free press, outspoken free speech, gay rights, women’s rights etc.).

It is perfectly comparable in the way that David compared them–these are all states in which one ethno-religious group has a monopoly on political power. Despite the very large Palestinian-Israeli minority, many of whom absolutely do consider themselves to be Israeli, Jewish political parties in Israel have never formed coalition governments with Palestinian parties, even though at least some Palestinian-Israeli parties would potentially participate. This situation could certainly be compared to that of Egyptian Christians and non-Muslims in Iran–regardless of the differences between how these political systems work for the ethno-religious majorities in those countries.

It’s especially strange that you should use Israel’s toleration of the Baha’i temples as evidence of fundamental difference between Israel and Iran. Baha’is are not a significant demographic presence in Israel, their main footprint is their major holy places and administrative centers which are a tourist attraction in Haifa, which is itself not a typical Israeli city, having uncharacteristically integrated Jewish and Palestinian populations. (One wonders how well the highly visible Baha’i holy places would be tolerated in, say, West Jerusalem.) On top of which, Baha’is suffer severe discrimination and even violence in many Muslim countries, so Israel’s toleration of them is not only costless but has similar ideological benefits to their official toleration of LGBTs–it gives people a reason to overlook their treatment of Palestinians.

Fuzzy Dunlop,

It’s especially strange that you should use Israel’s toleration of the Baha’i temples as evidence of fundamental difference between Israel and Iran… Israel’s toleration of them is not only costless but has similar ideological benefits to their official toleration of LGBTs–it gives people a reason to overlook their treatment of Palestinians.

“Especially strange”? Only to people like you. The Bahais’ presence in Acre/Haifa actually dates from the turn of the 20th century, long before Israel was founded. Unlike Iran or the Arab countries,every religion is “tolerated” in Israel, not just Bahai. But, then, I suppose you think Israel is just engaged in “religion-washing”! Along with “pink-washing”, of course. And “feminism-washing”. And its contribution to literature, music, theatre and cinema is just “arts-washing”. And then there’s all that “science-and-technology-washing”! All so that people might “overlook their treatment of Palestinians”. But you aren’t fooled, no siree!

Hal @ 189

You’re so right, but the thing I want to know is: Do they throw parties in Israel that can compare with the fabled fetes of Charleston and Atlanta circa 1855?

Again, I think there’s a difference, in that Israelis, so long as Palestinians are at war with them, reject the Palestinians’ right to have all the ‘accouterments’ of a nation-state, to the extent those can be used to more effectively attack Israel.

While the Palestinians reject the Israelis’ right to have a nation-state, in the sense that they want to kick the Israelis out of that territory, ideally kill them, and take it for their own.

I think people have a difficult time wrapping their heads around situations where the less powerful are the aggressors, because we ordinarily don’t expect people to attack when they know they’re going to lose. So you see some big dude holding this little boy in a full nelson, you don’t want to accept that the big dude is only doing it because every time he lets go, the little boy goes for a gun, and tries to shoot him.

Oh, come on. Thinking people who disagree with you evil is an old, old way to reassure yourself that you’re good. But, what ever happened to all that crap about respecting diversity, and all that?

You don’t think people can disagree with you in good faith? You don’t believe in diversity of opinions?

I think the Israelis are in a horrible position. They’re faced with a mortal foe devoted to their destruction, and limited options. They’ve been at war for decades now, and it’s coarsening them. But I look at what they do, and I look at what the Palestinians do, and I don’t have much difficulty deciding who is worse.

Yeah, I get it. You accept the possiblity of good faith disagreement in theory, it’s just that you never encounter it when it comes to any subject you care about.

The Israelis build greenhouses. The Palestinians riot and destroy them. The Israelis build daycares. The Palestinians send suicide bombers into them. The Israelis let the Palestinians have cement with which to build hospitals, and they use it to build military bunkers and invasion tunnels. The Israelis permit all religions, the Palestinians have tolerance only for their own.

If the Palestinians could ever let go of their hate, they and the Israelis could get along great. But that’s not going to happen, because it wouldn’t be useful to the Arab states in the area, which use the Palestinians to wage proxy war on Israel, having decided doing it themselves was too dangerous.

It’s a sad, sad situation, which I don’t see ending well. But I don’t see Israel committing suicide as a viable way to end the war.

Brett Bellmore 03.23.15 at 12:19 pm @ 197:
‘Yeah, I get it. You accept the possiblity of good faith disagreement in theory, it’s just that you never encounter it when it comes to any subject you care about.

Well, when you wrote that the Palestinians should not be permitted, as a state, to have military forces, I asked you who was going to protect them. It’s obviously an important, relevant question with regard to any solution in Israel-Palestine, but you didn’t bother to answer it, which does suggest strongly that you’re not arguing in good faith, but just skipping around wising off William F. Buckley-style. It does resonate the persistent subtext that Arabs are not quite human, however, so in a way in undercuts your cause. You might want to deal with it someday.

@197: I can’t recall ever seeing Brett concede a point in many years of seeing him post at Kleiman’s place (reality based community.) He is the definition of a bad-faith debater, with a good sense of how to make internet threads all about himself and a strong talent for derailing threads.

@Hal, thank you for the patient and kind words. They are appreciated.

“It’s perfectly sensible to believe that settlements don’t cause the benefits observed”

Not only sensible, there’s no way settlements cause benefits. You forgot to mention the abuses Palestinians undergo to protect the settlers. And the reason there aren’t more attacks on Israel from the WB is simply that repression works. The Israelis get their way, Palestinians are occasionally killed or beaten up and once in a while a Palestinian will attack an Israeli, but for the most part they aren’t willing (yet) to start Intifada number three because they know that thousands of Palestinian civilians will die. But the presence of Israeli civilians only increases violence, mostly directed at Palestinians by either the settlers or the IDF.

It’s perfectly sensible to believe that settlements don’t cause the benefits observed, but to believe it especially because of the 2005 Gaza withdrawal is inexplicable.

Oh no, I didn’t mean to imply that (in fact I considered not writing this sentence because I was finding it hard to convey the meaning I intended).

Let me try to be clearer: if Israel announces tomorrow that it will abide by the consensus interpretation of international law regarding the West Bank, so that all illegal settlements in the West Bank are to be stopped and dismantled and so that the Palestinians in the West Bank are free to create a state there inside the 1967 borders if they wish to do so, I think this will be seen as a great diplomatic victory for 1) Israel and 2) the Palestinian authority strategy of political but non-violent opposition. If on the other hand, settlements continue as they do now, a time may come where the Palestinian authority will not be strong enough to control the population of the West Bank and rockets might start pouring from there as well.

Or in other words, one side of Palestine at least has demonstrated its willingness to coexist (relatively) peacefully alongside Israel, if you grant this side its rights (no more, no less) then there is a chance that coexistence will remain peaceful. If you keep denying them and violating them on a larger and larger scale, then it’s much more likely that it won’t.

Occupation now, occupation forever!

@208 I understand that you have been careful in not making this argument, Joshua W. Burton but “things could be worse elsewhere” has rarely been a persuasive argument to people victims of injustice. Beside, I’m amazed you would ask your question (“is there any political entity where…”) in apparent good faith: googling Palestinian diaspora suggests that at least 10% of the total number of Palestinian people live in such political entities.

googling Palestinian diaspora

Fair enough. Chile was the big outlier I’d forgotten; los turcos are atypical in that they are overwhelmingly Christian and mostly arrived before 1948, but they are indeed Palestinian.

Hal @189 The term pink-washing is not used for Israel’s virtuous policies themselves, it is used for what you are doing here–using the policies to argue that Israeli oppression of Palestinians should be excused or also understood as virtuous. This is an obvious distinction, I can’t imagine how you would confuse these two things, and I can’t imagine what you would hope to accomplish by pretending this is what pinkwashing means. (And… “contributions to literature…”… Arab countries and Iran don’t do those? Does Arabic literature not count? Does Iran’s film industry excuse its oppression of women? Derp, as the kids say.)

The Bahais’ presence in Acre/Haifa actually dates from the turn of the 20th century, long before Israel was founded. Unlike Iran or the Arab countries,every religion is “tolerated” in Israel, not just Bahai.

(…which, incidentally, is an adjective, or a term adherents–“a Baha’i”, “Baha’is”–but not what adherents use for the religion, that being “Baha’i Faith”) I would have mentioned its c. 1900 roots in Haifa as evidence but omitted this for brevity. Israel does not get a cookie for tolerating a religion that has long roots in the country, yet virtually no demographic presence (despite having millions of adherents elsewhere, many in or from the Middle East). There is simply no motive for them to do otherwise, unlike in many Muslim countries where there is religious animosity against Baha’is that governments self-interestedly accommodate.

The Israeli narrative about the Gaza greenhouses is mostly outright lies. Approximately 50% of the greenhouses were destroyed by the settlers before they were paid off to stop them destroying the rest. Israel deliberately refused to coordinate the handover with the PA so there was a brief interval of chaos between the Israelis leaving and the Palestinian police establishing control during this a certain amount of looting occurred. Most of the items stolen were low cost easily replaced things like plastic sheeting and piping. The only relatively expensive stuff was water pumps. By a mixture of the police retrieving some of the stolen items and foreign aid the fairly trivial damage caused by looting and the much more severe damage caused by the settlers was repaired without much loss of the harvest. The greenhouses were restored to about 60% of capacity within months and the Palestinians were planing to bring that up to about 80%. The harvest produced was good and the Palestinians had orders from Europe for the goods; then it went horribly wrong. Tomatoes and the other crops are all are highly perishable and need to be exported by air. Gaza lacks a functioning airport so they had to go through the Karni border crosspoint to reach an Israeli airport. Israel repeatedly closed the checkpoint it was closed more often than it was open resulting in the crops rotting. Unable to reliably fulfil their orders Palestinian ability to trade was crippled and the greenhouse based agricultural enterprise in Gaza was destroyed. Before anyone claims that they could have exported via Egypt, Israel retained control of all border crossings into Gaza including those with Egypt. Which is one reason why, for the purposes of international law, Israel is still the occupying power in the Gaza strip.

Donald Johnson @214: Ah, now this is clear, thank you (a bit less so for calling me deliberately stupid, I guess). If “settlements” means merely the civilian residents, rather than the whole program, and if the counterfactual of “no settlements” includes ongoing IDF boots on the ground (as in Area B under Oslo II) then there is no contradiction, and yes, as I predicted I agree on all counts, except for the initial stipulation that “repression works” in the WB, which I never conceded and do not believe.

It’s not so often that one reads a comment section where counter points are so readily acknowledged.

Full names and high-value Scrabble letters have durable reputation capital, and that always tends to raise the tone a bit, I find.

This story is getting the standard treatment of “that’s not true but if it were true it would still be OK with me” from conservative lawmakers. Earlier this week crazy-man Rep. Steve King maligned the patriotism of American Jews because they supported the White House over Netanyahu. One wonders if there’s anything Israel could do which would be beyond the pale for the American right?

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/24/israeli-spying-iran-talks-members-congress-unmoved

“Given that many of the settlers and many of their supporters are religious fanatics, that is, people who believe they are above the state and its worldly laws, that might lead to civil war.”

True. But then that means that either Israel has democratically chosen to be an apartheid state in the WB, or alternatively that it is a state that cannot stop its violations of human rights without turning into a failed state.
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