I worked at the University of South Florida with Sami Amin Al-Arian when he was indicted under the USAPATRIOT ACT after 9/11. The faculty union (voluntary because FL is a RTW state) supported his right to speak out. Many union leaders were Jewish. At that time there was much solidarity about Al-Arian's civil rights - and no discussion of Zionism or anti-Zionism.
Post-9/11 considerations of Israel in American politics are interesting and I don't think I have the historical knowledge to really understand it. I think key to such understanding though would be to recognize just how dramatically Israel's internal politics have lurched to the right in the past 20 years.
Tampa is the location of CENTCOM, so all the ME actions planned there and many people from ME have migrated there. At that time Dr. Al-Arian perplexed but his anti-Zionism--(leading "Death to Israel" rallies) did not stop the union from working for his due process rights, academic freedom & tenure rights. I am not sure with the advent of BDS that that support would be there today in the same way. Florida requires holocaust studies in the h.s. curricula. Here is the United Faculty of Florida history of support for Dr. Al-Arian. http://web.usf.edu/uff/AlArian/). I think you are taking on this issue at a very good time (20 year anniversary of 9/11). The Tablet post about your Atlantic article was (of course) pre-GF so might bear updating.
Nah, the main core to post-9/11 considerations of Israel in American politics are the projection of Bush's wars onto Israel. "Israel" in America is a symbol for whether you support or oppose other symbols like "Islam" and "PoCs" and "imperialism". There's basically no real grappling with the issues in the ground.
For instance, the lurch to the Right began with the Second Intifada and solidified after the world's Left activists took the 2006 war with Lebanon (ie: a country from which we'd fully withdrawn our occupation, as verified by the UN) as a Brave Anti-Imperialist Struggle (again, by a clerical fascist quasi-statelet firing over legal international borders, to destroy a UN member state and commit genocide, yes they said so, really).
I am often astounded both by the parochialism and historical illiteracy of the American Left generally and in relation to anti-Israel sentiment.
A basic understanding of the history of Israel negates most current Left wing anti-Israel rhetoric. In 1947 Israel supported the UN proposal for the establishment of a Palestinian state and got a civil war. The effects of which included many Sephardic Jews being exiled from communities thousands of years old in other countries. Israel has been invaded by neighbors successively with the stated goal of destroying the country. During the succession of Oslo and the Camp David accords everything was offered except right of return and a pass on future litigation. This was rejected.
Losing wars of aggression and rejecting reasonable peace offers has consequences.
If Israel laid down its arms, Israelis would be massacred. If the Palestinians did so, there would be peace. Hamas in Gaza has the founding purpose of the destruction of Israel. Hezbollah is not much better.
The apocryphal, '“Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us,” holds true.
This is not to say Israel is 'good' and the Palestinians are 'bad.' It is to provide a general outline that explains 1) why the Israeli left has been decimated, 2) that there is no peace partner, and 3) why a large proportion of the Arab world including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others have moved on ('The Palestinians are idiots,' is what the Arabs are saying in 2021).
With no peace partner, no opportunity for peace, no option of a two state solution, and acknowledgment of these facts by the former disaffected Israeli left and the big Arab players, what is the American (and European) left arguing for exactly? How would you like Israel to 'be better'?
Anti-Zionism is a vanity project for the American Left that is inconsequential, uninformed, and out of touch.
Also, the idea that US pressure could be used to affect Israel's behavior to a greater degree than other countries is laughable and a dodge from admitting that to some degree this is about the Jews. What policy-wise do you imagine Israel could be made to do? I agree that the US doesn't have much leverage over Saudi Arabia. But, you don't think the US has significant power of Egypt and other allies in South and East Asia and South America? Why always Israel?
My cynical take is that the new anti-Zionism of the American left is similar to a lot of other performative leftism. That it offers very little other than social status points for the performer.
I am middle aged but old enough to have seen the great arc from, 'Why did the Jews not defend themselves?' to 'Why do the Jews defend themselves?' and I don't see much about it to commend.
One final gripe: The founding and building of the state of Israel was in due large part to socialist and national, as opposed to theocratic ideals, and Israel is certainly not a theocracy.
Absolutely every single thing you say here is tendentious and deeply disputed by many people from across the spectrum, and the fact that you represent it as simple history is not helpful in any sense. I listen to any defense of Israel that's proffered to me, save one - the idea that the situation is simple. It demonstrably is not.
For the record: Israel has been the aggressor in all but one or two of its major conflicts in its history. The claim that it keeps getting attacked unprovoked is just not true.
You are truly delusional. Isreal is not perfect but Arabs can live within it, while Jews in Arab states are slaughtered. Countless peace deals were met with bombs. Hamas has stated they want a genocide and nothing short of this. Isreal states they want to be left alone. Everything Avenge destroyer has said it true and you refute non of it. There literally isn't a genocidal cult you don't support other than the Nazi's, whom you won't even admit were socialist.
You realize that going to this extreme proves the point, right? That Israel's defenders are incapable of prosecuting that defense in normal terms, that they're clearly so motivated by emotionalism that they can't debate the topic like they debate anything else? There were, conservatively speaking, 700,000 Palestinians living in Palestine prior to 1947. A vast number of their descendants now live in a state of permanent dispossession and vulnerability, under the thumb of a country that is increasingly ruled by far-right extremists and a growing ultra-Orthodox theocratic movement that the secular forces in Israel refuse to counter. That is a moral challenge to you and to all of Israel's other defenders, no matter how many names you call me. And even if the propagandized history you're selling here were true, and it isn't, it would have nothing to say about why a Palestinian 11 year old should be impoverished, oppressed, or killed by an IDF smart bomb.
I urge you to meet a Palestinian someday. You might find that the desire to be left alone is not as rare you seem to think. In the meantime, I suggest you ask yourself why you can debate anything but this topic without using this kind of register.
I just told you. Remove Palestinians in the territories from their status as non-citizens in an occupied non-country. Preferably through the creation of one secular state founded on equality. If not, through the withdrawn of Israeli forces so that the Palestinians can form their own state - an actual state, with control of their own borders, airspace, and waterways. Either one achieves the most basic requirement of liberal democracy, which is self-determination and equality across ethnic and religious lines.
This completely ruins your credibility (on this subject, I am a subscriber here after all).
#1 is fully delusional unless you enjoy civil war.
#2 does not contradict Zionism! At all! This relates to my original comment on this post: you wrote about Zionism without defining the term. And that sloppiness leads to much broader confusion throughout the post.
Delusional is exactly the type of register that I feel is appropriate. As for your support of genocidal groups, you expresessed this yourself. It's fair. As for meeting a Palestinian I just about fell out of my chair laughing. My husband is Palastinian / Syrian. I know many Palastinians. I call them family.
I don't think Israel was a theocracy. I think Israel has a religious character that is contrary to their self-defined liberal principles. And I have no love, at all, for Hamas.
Palestinians cannot live within Israel, they literally are not allowed to. Your are either disingenuous or woefully misinformed. Israel does not want to be "left alone" they are busy colonizing and terrorizing the mostly defenseless 4M Palestinian population.
They do live in Isreal, and they are defending themselves against Palastinian attacks. They could easily wipe Palastine off the face of the map, but they don't. They are not the colonizers!
"Arab citizens of Israel,[3] or Arab Israelis, are Israeli citizens who are Arab. Many Arab citizens of Israel self-identify as Palestinian and commonly self-designate themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel or Israeli Palestinians.[4][5] "
Palestinians that are not living in Israel do not live in Israel and are not allowed to move there. There are 4M of them under the control of the Israeli government and they do not have citizenship rights.
I think that Settlers are colonizers we just have to agree to disagree. I can point you to many people supporting my point of view but it is probably pointless. It is undeniable that some Settlers engage in acts of terrorism, just as it is undeniable that some Palestinians do so as well. But the Settlers are backed by the power of the State of Israel and have undeniably much greater military power.
1) Are you arguing that Israel didn't support the 1947 UN resolution?
2) Are you arguing that the Six-Day War was an act of Israeli aggression?
3) Are you arguing that the Yom Kippur War was an act of Israelis aggression?
Sorry, but these claims are not supported by 'many people from across the spectrum' or deeply disputed. They're just agitprop.
There are other scenarios that are more ambiguous (e.g. Suez Crisis).
But there's no historical ambiguity (except to ideologues and the historically illiterate) that 1) Israel has been repeatedly subject to aggression, and 2) there is no peace partner.
Again, what policy would you like like the US to pressure Israel into? Who is the 'peace partner'? What do you see as being the practical consequences of your position beyond moral posturing?
I already told you: the integration of Israel and the Palestinian territories into a secular state that extends equality to all of its citizens. Equal recognition under the law regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity is not radical. Not to me.
Who holds the power in this relationship? Can you really pretend that it's Palestinians that hold the upper hand over Israel?
Do the Palestinian people deserve rights and equality under the law? Do the generations of young Palestinians who have never known anything resembling self-determination have the right to experience that most basic of democratic goods? Do all people deserve equality under the law? These are not idealistic questions; they stem from the most basic principles of liberalism, which you yourself say Israel protects.
People said the same thing about the Native Americans, you know - that they could not be integrated into American society, that they would always want to kill the white man, that their integration would destroy the country. The human consequences of this attitude were immense. And so too did people say that apartheid had to reign forever, because integrating Black South Africans into the country's political system and economy as equals would inevitably result in a genocide of the white Afrikaaner population. It did not.
Liberalism is not normative but a lucky and fragile experiment that is possible culturally and institutionally currently for only a small portion of humanity.
Most of the world, including where Israel happens to be located, is sectarian, identitarian, and tribalistic.
Israel employs liberalism as a basis ordering society and politics. But Israel does not protect liberalism, nor can it grant it.
I feel badly for the Palestinians; it is hard not to.
However, I don't think that any reasonable reading of history, the region, or facts on the ground supports that this problem can be solved by Israel alone. Just as important is the role of other powers in the region not limited to the Saudis, Iran, and the other adjoining countries.
Most important is what the Palestinians themselves want.
Your comparison to other historical scenarios is extraordinarily selective and naive. The Palestinians elected a nihilistic death cult in Gaza (Hamas). They've repeatedly chosen war and death over peace. The facile moral utopianism and 'no, things will be ok' schtick associated with advocacy of a single state is not compelling to anyone who is historically literate. It is not a project anyone could reasonably expect Israelis (or anyone else in a similar position to willingly embark on).
There are not good solutions awaiting to unfold if only Israel was less _____ (racist, Zionist, nationist, theocratic, imperial, etc.). Israel has a role in the solution to a complicated problem but so do Iran, the other Arab nations, and the Palestinians themselves.
You want Israel to integrate all the Palestinian territories into Israel, the effect of which will be the effective destruction of a Jewish state?
Your answer is the destruction of Israel?
This is preposterous and naive and again illustrates the parochialism of American utopian leftism coddled by post-WWII prosperity.
There is no basis for a unified state because neither the Jews nor the Palestinians want a unified state and there would be no institutions for managing it. It would be a chaotic blood bath.
Since the end of WWI everyone has agreed there should be an Arab state and a Jewish state.
In the real world, people have to make decisions with tradeoffs and accept consequences. No one in their right mind would accept the consequences of your utopian fantasy.
Again, this is no-cost moral preening for the American Left akin to 'defund the police' except the ill effects would occur far away in a distant land.
Do you know that the position that Israel should give equal rights to the Palestinians is supported by almost every nation on earth, except for the United States?
Palastinians DO have equal rights, as do all Arabs, in Isreal. Jews outside of Isreal have no rights. Nobody here is saying Palastinian people should not have equal rights, just that they don't have the right to commit genocide.
the Human Rights Watch 214 page report documents the take over of Palestinian lands in 1948, when Jews only owned 6% of the land at the time.
the “Big Lie” of the 21st Century is…
Israel has a Right to Exist.
Helen Thomas became a White House correspondent for UPI in January 1961 and became the first woman chief White House correspondent. Thomas became known as the "First Lady of the Press."
When asked about Israel, she said "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. These people are occupied and it's their land. It's not German, it's not Poland."
I believe the post Tablet refused to link to was titled The Basic Logic of Bigotry, yes? I think that was one of the first pieces I ever read by you. I think I found a saved copy a while back. I will see if I can find where I saved it and share here.
Zionism probably would have wilted away had Israel been accepted by its neighbors. There are hundreds of millions of refugees and descendants of refugees living all over the world. Many of us here in the US are examples. Yet, where else are there still camps a half-century after the fact and who benefits from this lack of resettlement and assimilation? The answers obvious. And its not the Israelis.
There were 700,000 Palestinians living in the area when the UN decided to install another state on top of their heads. Despite the revisionist history, untold thousands of them were forcibly uprooted from their homes. Many of them left for good. Many of them stayed. Since 1967, thanks to a war that was not started by Palestinians, those in the territories have been in a state of occupation, forced to endure a quasi-state with a quasi-government while being constantly encroached upon by a hostile government that has absolute and utter military dominance over them. Their condition is neither sustainable nor defensible.
The question is, what to do about it? The settlers, and an increasing number of Israelis writ large, would like for them to be ethnically cleansed from the country. The old guard of the international community still pushes for a two-state solution they know the Israeli government will never accept. The new generation of Palestinian advocates calls for one state, a state of equal rights and shared prosperity. I think that represents the most humane, righteous, and fair way forward, and I think it could exist tomorrow if people decided they wanted it. I could be wrong. But I don't think I'm crazy.
My point was not to refute your account, rewrite history, nor justify it, merely to point out this the forced immigration and displacement is in no way unique. The world is literally littered with examples of conquest and imposition. Only the camps are exceptional. (and perhaps our Indian reservation system).
The plight of the Palestinians has been used for years as an excuse to divert attention from the absolute dismal governance in much of the Middle East, including Gaza and the East Bank. Blame it all on Israel, and its all suddenly excusable.
Yes. That is all true. The governments of the major Arab countries are not now and never have been friends to the Palestinian people. The trouble is that this fact is often used to justify collective guilty - oh, well, the Palestinians wouldn't be in this shape if not for the Six Days War! But what does a Palestinian living in 2021 have to do with the Egyptian military leadership in 1967?
Don't mistake my comments. I give absolution to no one in this sorry affair.
Israel could end the occupation and so could the Palestinians. Somewhere between "Greater" Israel and "From river to sea" lies the solution, where nobody gets everything everybody gets something.
Sadly there are too many powerful actors who stand in the way. The mistake is in thinking they are all on the side of Israel.
... no we couldn't. Instant war, leading to yet another occupation. Do you really think if we retreat behind the Green Line they'll just leave us alone? We tried that in Gaza and got war. The dispute is existential, over the 48 lands, not the 67 lands.
A world where a one state solution could exist is a world where a one state solution wouldn't need to exist. 'What if everyone just got along?' is not a solution to the problem of everyone not getting along.
I think you generally are willing to call out disingenuousness on this blog, and are generally good at seeing the world for what it is - and you're really not doing that here. There will be no one state solution in the next century, anyone with even a cursory understanding of the situation knows that deep down. The Israeli political winds and demographic situation has shifted towards this being *more* of an impossibility not less of one. Proposing a one state solution is thus not proposing something that could genuinely help anyone ever, it's essentially making a political statement. It is the 'defund the police' of Israel/Palestine. If the people in the Palestinian territories are living a better life in 50 years, it will be in a Palestinian state, and if we really care about their welfare then we should be working towards that.
And I think you and the other commenters are guilty of the emotionalism and arationalism here that you frequently see in others. I think you see Israel with other eyes than you see any other issue, which is precisely my point. Never do I have to fight for the basic principles of equality and democracy as fundamental political goods, except with Israel.
Maybe, just maybe, because Israel is the only modern liberal democracy with an elected, armed death cult devoted to its destruction living within/next to its borders?
That's not how morality works, and that "death cult" is objectively vastly less powerful than Israel and has suffered at least ten casualties for every one Israel has. No one disputes that fact, certainly not the IDF.
Where exactly is the emotionalism? I don't actually have particularly strong views on Zionism or on Israel. I don't think it's too hard to construct a good 'ethnonationalism is bad' argument. My strong view is "don't propose things that aren't remotely viable and tell me that they are with a straight face."
A parallel here is reparations - maybe reparations are morally correct. But if someone genuinely believes we should move forward with them, they should come up with a viable proposal for how exactly we would distribute reparations. How much money? Who counts as black? Do we have to do DNA testing? Do you have to prove you have a slave ancestor? How do we deal with the right-wing blowback from going forward with the least popular idea in American politics?
So sure, maybe a one state solution is the one true morally correct option, everything else is a betrayal of our principles. Fine, don't just toss around an empty phrase. How do we get there? Come up with a path to that solution in a world where the ethnonationalist state that doesn't even have a left-wing anymore is going to decide to join hands with people who've been shooting rockets at them for decades. (People who incidentally also have very minimal interest in a one-state solution.) All of this while demographic trends will make the problems worse not better, in a world where nationalism is spiking everywhere, in an era when rich European countries like Spain and the UK are struggling to stay in one piece.
If you see a path here, you must be looking at the world through some 20 dimensional glasses. I do not see a path, the vast majority of people don't see a path. "One state solution" is a motto that lets someone highlight their belief that ethnonationalism is bad, it lets someone frame themselves as a member of team the-most-left-wing. But it is not...something that is gonna happen.
Haha, well, the end game is the heat death of the universe. And before that at some point, probably centuries from now, humanity will have evolved past our current conceptions of nationalism and border lines won't matter that much at all. That's mostly just to say, if you extend the time frames long enough, clearly something's gonna happen.
But within our lifetimes? If I had to guess what 50 years from now will look like in Israel, it would be either 'a fragile, ugly 2 state solution' or 'pretty much what it looks like right now'. If I were forced to bet on it I'd probably bet on #2. That #1 is within the realm of possibilities means that it's something people should work towards in they're interested in the welfare of the populations involved.
I think you're crazy. Civil war is humane now? If you prefer civil war to a two state solution, on the grounds that "Israel will never accept a two state solution", well, wait til you hear how likely Israel is to accept civil war.
But the real reason you're crazy is that Israel has offered and in fact unilaterally tried to create the foundation for a two-state solution many times. No, this isn't some pro-Israel tendentious reading of the history - even the pro-Palestinian readings of Camp David 2001 and Kerry-Obama 2014 agree that the Palestinian representatives walked away, with no counteroffer, from a fully-baked two state solution.
And, by the way, this is where things start getting extremely slippery, because the *reasons* that they claim that those offers were unacceptable were that a) the Palestinians would have to give up on the "Right of Return" and more importantly b) the Palestinians would have to cede sovereignty over Jerusalem. Aren't you the "I'm opposed to ethno-nationalism and theocracy" guy? If so you shouldn't care much whether Palestinians have to give up on this ethnic/religious symbolism to get democracy, right? Or do you think that the unique Palestinian suffering is worth continuing over that? (My guess is you will say something to the effect of "I oppose those deals because the Palestinians don't get an army [in the short term]", but that's completely irrelevant to the question of what scuttled them.)
In fact that reading of Camp David - and more importantly Taba - is very much disputable and disputed, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out for many years. The "fully baked solutions" weren't, and of course included stipulations like Israel's continuing control over Palestinian borders, air space, and waterways, which in other words means that they were not offers of states at all. And in any event, Israel has permitted the settlements - has in fact enabled the settlements - that make any two-state solutions impossible today. If Israel wanted two states, they would have stop the settlements. But they didn't. Because the country has a large, powerful, deeply frightening ethnofascist movement within it that is explicitly supremacist in its ambitions for the region. And even committed defenders of the current Israeli state should be very worried about that movement, about the thousands of extremists who take to the streets to chant "death to Arabs!" on a regular basis.
- I pre-empted you on these "stipulations", can you respond to what I actually criticized you for?
- "If Israel wanted two states, they would have stop the settlements." ... no? I can want to buy a house, believe that I will never convince a bank to lend me money, and therefore not bother to save for one? This is just incoherent.
- Worried? Sure I'm worried (though I don't regard myself a "committed defender of the current Israeli state"). But not much. Your unfamiliarity with Israel+the surrounding region is leading you to overrate the size and importance of this "frightening ethnofascist movement".
- If you think Chomsky's dispute is legitimate, then you are required to legitimize Israeli claims to be non-aggressors in 1967. They're the same thing. Note that you have no response to Kerry-Obama in 2014.
Look - I'm really not interested in debating someone who can't keep engaging in histrionics about what I'm better than, or what I'm making myself look like. There are many committed defenders of Israel who will gladly admit that at no time, not at Camp David or in 2014 or at any other time, did Israel ever offer a Palestinian state with genuine control of its own borders, its own military, its own ability to form strategic alliances - a state like any other. And since we're apparently in the business of saying what other people are better than here, YOU are well aware that there was never a time when Israel was willing to allow Palestinians a state with the same rights and power as Jordan or any other neighbor. Which means it's not a real state. And you are also well aware that Israel has aggressively enabled the settler movement that has now rendered a two state solution quite literally dead.
I already said - I agree that Israel has never offered that level of control! I'm waiting for you to address what sunk the two state solutions on offer: Palestinian refusal of any arrangement that doesn't split Jerusalem.
I am not aware that the two state solution is quite literally dead. If it's dead, how is a one state solution alive?
Your history of Camp David is not correct. Palestinians asked for a Palestinian state with full control of its borders and were rejected. There was a lot of back and forth, some of this is documented here:
So there was a counter offer and there was a lot of negotiation back and forth and Israel refused both the two state solution and the right of return. If we agree on that, then we are in agreement.
One of Deveraux’s themes is that the early republic and empire were ethnically diverse, specifically because Romans pragmatically opened up citizenship to conquered people instead of insulating themselves from their holdings.
To an extent, Israel has done the same- Israeli Arabs can worship Allah and vote and go shopping and so on. But in the conquered province, there is no integration (you can mail me me “Biggest Understatement of the Year” award later).
It means that one day, Israel will find itself weak. Economic collapse, plague, demographic crisis, sectarian civil war, natural disasters, I dunno, take your pick. Might be next year (doubtful), might be 2050, might be 2060. It’s a question of when, not if, because it happens to everybody eventually. The ability to suppress Palestinian nationalism will go away.
When this happened to Rome, the far flung provinces that had once been (long, long ago) under the Roman jackboot got stuck in and tried their damndest to save the empire they were a part of. That’s why we study Rome and go, “Wow, a 2,000 year run of it, and once it went away all the fragments that formed small new kingdoms and nations daydreamed for a 1,000 years about bringing it back.”
When disaster strikes Israel, Palestine will not mourn and try to keep Zionism intact (maybe I should get two awards).
This is the problem with building nations based on ethnic solidarity. Nobody fucking wants you there. Right, wrong, whatever; you’re building a house with crappy materials that won’t handle the storm. There’s a line in the Old Testament about what happens to houses that are divided against themselves.
I think the underlying problem is that criticism of Israel has become another political football, another marker for the wider cultural conflict. My sense is that criticism can only produce reform when everyone approaches an issue in a spirit of honesty and open minded inquiry. When you have to be reflexively anti-Israel because you also sympathize with BLM that is tribalism at work.
To clarify I am not asserting that all criticism of Israel is knee jerk tribalism; I am discounting the possibility of actual change as a result of that criticism now that it has been subsumed into the wider cultural conflict.
Every article about Zionism - anti- or otherwise - should define the term. How are you defining the term?
To me, the simplest definition is "Zionism = the belief that the state of Israel should exist". (Note that it's pretty trivial to be a Zionist these days.)
Do you oppose this idea? That seems a bit unhinged, to say the least, and "I don't believe in ethnonationalism or theocracy" is not going to cut it as a justification.
Do you oppose some other idea? I suspect that this is the case, since you reference "the Zionist project" - implying that there's still one ongoing. If so, what is it? And what definition allows you to escape the trap of "this is trivial, everyone relevant opposes this" or "this is trivial, the people opposing this are in fact raving Jew-haters"?
Ah, the "Israel isn't really a Jewish state" dodge. Not a very popular opinion within Israel. I am opposed to states that have a fundamental ethnic or religious character. If Israel is such a state, I'm opposed to it. If it's not, somebody should tell the people and government of Israel; they'd be very surprised.
There is no other country which would produce this kind of motivated reasoning.
"Israel isn't really a Jewish state" - I never said such a thing? I certainly don't believe such a thing? What are you talking about.
"I am opposed to states that have a fundamental ethnic or religious character." - so you're opposed to the existence of a lot of states then? Or are you trying to load meaning on "fundamental"?
But we can skip all this if you just define the term Zionism.
1) Israel accepts that Palestinians are human beings with equal rights, admits them as citizens and becomes a pluralistic society. The one-state solution. This is what happens next door in Lebanon.
2) Create a two state solution where Palestine and Israel are separate countries. With the tacit and explicit support of the settlers over the last two decades, this is not really a tenable solution anymore. Is Israel really going to root out 300,000 settlers? There is no viable state left for Palestine.
3) Massive ethnic cleansing where the Palestinians are forcibly removed.
Supporters of Israel have to ask themselves which solution do they prefer. Is #2 really still on the table? I do not think so.
I support the State of Israel, I cannot hate it the way the author does, but I do not support the Jewish State of Israel. Netanyahu, with his pro-settler (and let's be honest here, pro-terrorist) policies has made the two state solution impossible. This was done with the support of the majority of Isrealis. Israel has made its own bed, now it must lie in it.
I honestly don't know, how is it? How was life like for the Jews of Lebanon pre-1967? I thought it was pretty good, better than life for the Palestinians today. A state with a large Jewish percentage would be quite different than one with a tiny number.
Please correct me if I am wrong, I am not very informed in this. I have heard that life for Jews in the Ottoman Empire was pretty good.
I guess I should offer another option, that historically seems probable:
4) The utter and complete destruction of Israel and the third Diaspora of the Jewish people.
This is probably the most likely eventually. It seems improbably that a small homogeneous population can hold out forever against a much larger and generally hostile foe. See the history of the Crusades and the various Holy Lands which were created there.
I don't want this to happen but given the players and their history, it seems likely to me.
That is part of why I consider some kind of agreement important: In the absence of 1 or 2, I think eventually Israel may wind up destroyed. Especially since a good deal of Israel’s defense relies on the US being both willing and able to support them, and the US has a long history of isolationism that could eventually cause them to withdraw. That’s also combined with the decline of evangelicals in America, who are one of the main, most fervent domestic interest groups pushing to support Israel.
1 and 2 are both made tricky by the general geopolitics of the ME, however, as unfortunately the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become yet another one of the region’s proxy wars. Maybe if enough Palestinians and Israelis wanted an agreement, Iran+etc. could be overruled, but I doubt Iran, at least, will let that happen without a fight.
For what it's worth, I find the posts about Israel interesting and valuable -- including the rebuttals to hostile comments. Sorry it's such a headache, though.
Freddie, I wish the post of yours that inspired Pagano's piece in Tablet was still around; I wonder, did you respond to him? I would observe, as I did in an earlier comment questioning how you hoped to supplant the "animal spirits" that drive capitalism, that your Marxist materialism sometimes leads you to underestimate the role of the irrational in the economic and political phenomena that trouble you. Any world in which the Canaan you (and many others) devoutly wish for comes about will necessarily be one that has moved past humans' tribal need to hate some "other" in seeking explanation and/or solace for the pains of life. Sadly, the fruits of this attribute of human psychology show no signs of abating. In fact, as many have noted, they seem to be on the rise worldwide. It has, of course, been the calamitous fate of the Jews to play this role for many other peoples through the centuries. Do you really believe that anti-Semitism--or even anti-Zionism--in the Middle East and elsewhere would fade away if the Israeli government decided tomorrow to concede the civil "equality" you call for in Palestine?
I'm forever pessimistic about Israel, because too many people, on both sides, are mobilized against any solution. Their raison d'etre is the continuation of conflict, insecurity, and grievance, and nothing will satisfy. I feel for the children caught in this crossfire.
My pessimism primarily comes from having spent my childhood exposed to views on one side of this issue, the side that synonymizes Israel with Satan, that casually tells children about the hopeful, joyous eventual destruction of Israel in the same way Christians tell their children about the glorious second coming of Christ. The side where children are marinated from birth in colloquialisms such as "he went Israel on my ass" or "it hit her like Israel" when describing a particularly aggressive and ruthless boss, or someone dying of a sudden horrific illness. This animosity towards Israel (and inevitably, towards Jewish people), an animosity couched as self-defense against a powerful and fundamentally evil and *alien* force, is passed down from to children as though it's part of the culture and proud heritage. I'm describing good people. Not demons, not destructive or vengeful fanatics, not religious fundamentalists, but good people, minding their own business, working hard to provide for their family and maintain a loving community. But Israel-villainizing is second-nature, like it's embedded in the DNA. Multiply what I observed growing up by hundreds of millions. It takes a lot to overcome that kind of pessimism, and I haven't seen anything in my lifetime to make even the smallest dent in it. The arguments in this thread only fuel that pessimism. People here are generally in agreement, or mild disagreement, and aren't even living life on the ground over there. And yet views on Israel/Palestine are pretty polarized and strained. If that's what we're like over here, in the good old US of A, how much more deeply are the trenches dug over there.
I too would like the solution Freddie describes. I just don't think it's realistic, though neither do I have a better or more viable alternative.
I really like this point: "it suggests to those impressionable youth the right-wing Zionists would like to recruit that Israel’s reality cannot be defended in normal terms. It looks like Israel’s defenders are cheating, that Israel has something to hide."
I think it applies to a lot of issues today. Many activists prefer to shut down debate rather than win the argument -- and they seem to be succeeding in spaces like journalism and academia. I'm curious to see if it will work in the long term, or if the backlash will eventually reverse some of these trends. (Deliberately not mentioning specific issues to avoid kicking off another shitstorm in the comments)
I will say, coming back to this: I'm on the opposite side of the issue from you, but I absolutely agree that it's very, very bad for this subject to be a constant third-rail hot-button and the "red line" between liberalism and leftism.
Of course, I say that from the point of view that the Left should let Labor Zionists be, you know, leftists, because our cause is a Left cause and always has been. You probably completely disagree. But oh well.
I worked at the University of South Florida with Sami Amin Al-Arian when he was indicted under the USAPATRIOT ACT after 9/11. The faculty union (voluntary because FL is a RTW state) supported his right to speak out. Many union leaders were Jewish. At that time there was much solidarity about Al-Arian's civil rights - and no discussion of Zionism or anti-Zionism.
Post-9/11 considerations of Israel in American politics are interesting and I don't think I have the historical knowledge to really understand it. I think key to such understanding though would be to recognize just how dramatically Israel's internal politics have lurched to the right in the past 20 years.
Tampa is the location of CENTCOM, so all the ME actions planned there and many people from ME have migrated there. At that time Dr. Al-Arian perplexed but his anti-Zionism--(leading "Death to Israel" rallies) did not stop the union from working for his due process rights, academic freedom & tenure rights. I am not sure with the advent of BDS that that support would be there today in the same way. Florida requires holocaust studies in the h.s. curricula. Here is the United Faculty of Florida history of support for Dr. Al-Arian. http://web.usf.edu/uff/AlArian/). I think you are taking on this issue at a very good time (20 year anniversary of 9/11). The Tablet post about your Atlantic article was (of course) pre-GF so might bear updating.
Nah, the main core to post-9/11 considerations of Israel in American politics are the projection of Bush's wars onto Israel. "Israel" in America is a symbol for whether you support or oppose other symbols like "Islam" and "PoCs" and "imperialism". There's basically no real grappling with the issues in the ground.
For instance, the lurch to the Right began with the Second Intifada and solidified after the world's Left activists took the 2006 war with Lebanon (ie: a country from which we'd fully withdrawn our occupation, as verified by the UN) as a Brave Anti-Imperialist Struggle (again, by a clerical fascist quasi-statelet firing over legal international borders, to destroy a UN member state and commit genocide, yes they said so, really).
I am often astounded both by the parochialism and historical illiteracy of the American Left generally and in relation to anti-Israel sentiment.
A basic understanding of the history of Israel negates most current Left wing anti-Israel rhetoric. In 1947 Israel supported the UN proposal for the establishment of a Palestinian state and got a civil war. The effects of which included many Sephardic Jews being exiled from communities thousands of years old in other countries. Israel has been invaded by neighbors successively with the stated goal of destroying the country. During the succession of Oslo and the Camp David accords everything was offered except right of return and a pass on future litigation. This was rejected.
Losing wars of aggression and rejecting reasonable peace offers has consequences.
If Israel laid down its arms, Israelis would be massacred. If the Palestinians did so, there would be peace. Hamas in Gaza has the founding purpose of the destruction of Israel. Hezbollah is not much better.
The apocryphal, '“Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us,” holds true.
This is not to say Israel is 'good' and the Palestinians are 'bad.' It is to provide a general outline that explains 1) why the Israeli left has been decimated, 2) that there is no peace partner, and 3) why a large proportion of the Arab world including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others have moved on ('The Palestinians are idiots,' is what the Arabs are saying in 2021).
With no peace partner, no opportunity for peace, no option of a two state solution, and acknowledgment of these facts by the former disaffected Israeli left and the big Arab players, what is the American (and European) left arguing for exactly? How would you like Israel to 'be better'?
Anti-Zionism is a vanity project for the American Left that is inconsequential, uninformed, and out of touch.
Also, the idea that US pressure could be used to affect Israel's behavior to a greater degree than other countries is laughable and a dodge from admitting that to some degree this is about the Jews. What policy-wise do you imagine Israel could be made to do? I agree that the US doesn't have much leverage over Saudi Arabia. But, you don't think the US has significant power of Egypt and other allies in South and East Asia and South America? Why always Israel?
My cynical take is that the new anti-Zionism of the American left is similar to a lot of other performative leftism. That it offers very little other than social status points for the performer.
I am middle aged but old enough to have seen the great arc from, 'Why did the Jews not defend themselves?' to 'Why do the Jews defend themselves?' and I don't see much about it to commend.
One final gripe: The founding and building of the state of Israel was in due large part to socialist and national, as opposed to theocratic ideals, and Israel is certainly not a theocracy.
Absolutely every single thing you say here is tendentious and deeply disputed by many people from across the spectrum, and the fact that you represent it as simple history is not helpful in any sense. I listen to any defense of Israel that's proffered to me, save one - the idea that the situation is simple. It demonstrably is not.
For the record: Israel has been the aggressor in all but one or two of its major conflicts in its history. The claim that it keeps getting attacked unprovoked is just not true.
You are truly delusional. Isreal is not perfect but Arabs can live within it, while Jews in Arab states are slaughtered. Countless peace deals were met with bombs. Hamas has stated they want a genocide and nothing short of this. Isreal states they want to be left alone. Everything Avenge destroyer has said it true and you refute non of it. There literally isn't a genocidal cult you don't support other than the Nazi's, whom you won't even admit were socialist.
You realize that going to this extreme proves the point, right? That Israel's defenders are incapable of prosecuting that defense in normal terms, that they're clearly so motivated by emotionalism that they can't debate the topic like they debate anything else? There were, conservatively speaking, 700,000 Palestinians living in Palestine prior to 1947. A vast number of their descendants now live in a state of permanent dispossession and vulnerability, under the thumb of a country that is increasingly ruled by far-right extremists and a growing ultra-Orthodox theocratic movement that the secular forces in Israel refuse to counter. That is a moral challenge to you and to all of Israel's other defenders, no matter how many names you call me. And even if the propagandized history you're selling here were true, and it isn't, it would have nothing to say about why a Palestinian 11 year old should be impoverished, oppressed, or killed by an IDF smart bomb.
I urge you to meet a Palestinian someday. You might find that the desire to be left alone is not as rare you seem to think. In the meantime, I suggest you ask yourself why you can debate anything but this topic without using this kind of register.
Do you have anything to offer beyond opprobrium? What's your policy proposal that we should push Israel towards?
I just told you. Remove Palestinians in the territories from their status as non-citizens in an occupied non-country. Preferably through the creation of one secular state founded on equality. If not, through the withdrawn of Israeli forces so that the Palestinians can form their own state - an actual state, with control of their own borders, airspace, and waterways. Either one achieves the most basic requirement of liberal democracy, which is self-determination and equality across ethnic and religious lines.
For your option #2:
What happens when Iran uses the West Bank as a proxy to attack Israel?
Like Gaza but much larger, in a much more vulnerable position for Israel, and much closer to Israeli population centers?
Again, who is the peace partner?
This completely ruins your credibility (on this subject, I am a subscriber here after all).
#1 is fully delusional unless you enjoy civil war.
#2 does not contradict Zionism! At all! This relates to my original comment on this post: you wrote about Zionism without defining the term. And that sloppiness leads to much broader confusion throughout the post.
Delusional is exactly the type of register that I feel is appropriate. As for your support of genocidal groups, you expresessed this yourself. It's fair. As for meeting a Palestinian I just about fell out of my chair laughing. My husband is Palastinian / Syrian. I know many Palastinians. I call them family.
I also just love how you think Isreal is a "theocracy" while Hamas is not. Wow!! I need your meds. Really.
I must have missed where Freddie said that Hamas was not a theocracy. Can you point it out to me?
I don't think Israel was a theocracy. I think Israel has a religious character that is contrary to their self-defined liberal principles. And I have no love, at all, for Hamas.
>I need your meds. Really.
This is out of bounds and in my opinion ban-worthy.
Palestinians cannot live within Israel, they literally are not allowed to. Your are either disingenuous or woefully misinformed. Israel does not want to be "left alone" they are busy colonizing and terrorizing the mostly defenseless 4M Palestinian population.
They do live in Isreal, and they are defending themselves against Palastinian attacks. They could easily wipe Palastine off the face of the map, but they don't. They are not the colonizers!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel
"Arab citizens of Israel,[3] or Arab Israelis, are Israeli citizens who are Arab. Many Arab citizens of Israel self-identify as Palestinian and commonly self-designate themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel or Israeli Palestinians.[4][5] "
Palestinians that are not living in Israel do not live in Israel and are not allowed to move there. There are 4M of them under the control of the Israeli government and they do not have citizenship rights.
I think that Settlers are colonizers we just have to agree to disagree. I can point you to many people supporting my point of view but it is probably pointless. It is undeniable that some Settlers engage in acts of terrorism, just as it is undeniable that some Palestinians do so as well. But the Settlers are backed by the power of the State of Israel and have undeniably much greater military power.
I think this is an easy dodge for you.
What are you arguing specifically?
1) Are you arguing that Israel didn't support the 1947 UN resolution?
2) Are you arguing that the Six-Day War was an act of Israeli aggression?
3) Are you arguing that the Yom Kippur War was an act of Israelis aggression?
Sorry, but these claims are not supported by 'many people from across the spectrum' or deeply disputed. They're just agitprop.
There are other scenarios that are more ambiguous (e.g. Suez Crisis).
But there's no historical ambiguity (except to ideologues and the historically illiterate) that 1) Israel has been repeatedly subject to aggression, and 2) there is no peace partner.
Again, what policy would you like like the US to pressure Israel into? Who is the 'peace partner'? What do you see as being the practical consequences of your position beyond moral posturing?
I already told you: the integration of Israel and the Palestinian territories into a secular state that extends equality to all of its citizens. Equal recognition under the law regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity is not radical. Not to me.
Who holds the power in this relationship? Can you really pretend that it's Palestinians that hold the upper hand over Israel?
Do the Palestinian people deserve rights and equality under the law? Do the generations of young Palestinians who have never known anything resembling self-determination have the right to experience that most basic of democratic goods? Do all people deserve equality under the law? These are not idealistic questions; they stem from the most basic principles of liberalism, which you yourself say Israel protects.
People said the same thing about the Native Americans, you know - that they could not be integrated into American society, that they would always want to kill the white man, that their integration would destroy the country. The human consequences of this attitude were immense. And so too did people say that apartheid had to reign forever, because integrating Black South Africans into the country's political system and economy as equals would inevitably result in a genocide of the white Afrikaaner population. It did not.
Liberalism is not normative but a lucky and fragile experiment that is possible culturally and institutionally currently for only a small portion of humanity.
Most of the world, including where Israel happens to be located, is sectarian, identitarian, and tribalistic.
Israel employs liberalism as a basis ordering society and politics. But Israel does not protect liberalism, nor can it grant it.
I feel badly for the Palestinians; it is hard not to.
However, I don't think that any reasonable reading of history, the region, or facts on the ground supports that this problem can be solved by Israel alone. Just as important is the role of other powers in the region not limited to the Saudis, Iran, and the other adjoining countries.
Most important is what the Palestinians themselves want.
Your comparison to other historical scenarios is extraordinarily selective and naive. The Palestinians elected a nihilistic death cult in Gaza (Hamas). They've repeatedly chosen war and death over peace. The facile moral utopianism and 'no, things will be ok' schtick associated with advocacy of a single state is not compelling to anyone who is historically literate. It is not a project anyone could reasonably expect Israelis (or anyone else in a similar position to willingly embark on).
There are not good solutions awaiting to unfold if only Israel was less _____ (racist, Zionist, nationist, theocratic, imperial, etc.). Israel has a role in the solution to a complicated problem but so do Iran, the other Arab nations, and the Palestinians themselves.
To me this astounding.
You want Israel to integrate all the Palestinian territories into Israel, the effect of which will be the effective destruction of a Jewish state?
Your answer is the destruction of Israel?
This is preposterous and naive and again illustrates the parochialism of American utopian leftism coddled by post-WWII prosperity.
There is no basis for a unified state because neither the Jews nor the Palestinians want a unified state and there would be no institutions for managing it. It would be a chaotic blood bath.
Since the end of WWI everyone has agreed there should be an Arab state and a Jewish state.
In the real world, people have to make decisions with tradeoffs and accept consequences. No one in their right mind would accept the consequences of your utopian fantasy.
Again, this is no-cost moral preening for the American Left akin to 'defund the police' except the ill effects would occur far away in a distant land.
Do you know that the position that Israel should give equal rights to the Palestinians is supported by almost every nation on earth, except for the United States?
Is astonishes me that you are astonished.
Importantly except Israel who do not want a Jewish state destroyed.
Palastinians DO have equal rights, as do all Arabs, in Isreal. Jews outside of Isreal have no rights. Nobody here is saying Palastinian people should not have equal rights, just that they don't have the right to commit genocide.
the Human Rights Watch 214 page report documents the take over of Palestinian lands in 1948, when Jews only owned 6% of the land at the time.
the “Big Lie” of the 21st Century is…
Israel has a Right to Exist.
Helen Thomas became a White House correspondent for UPI in January 1961 and became the first woman chief White House correspondent. Thomas became known as the "First Lady of the Press."
When asked about Israel, she said "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. These people are occupied and it's their land. It's not German, it's not Poland."
https://youtu.be/TVlg01QMN3k
I believe the post Tablet refused to link to was titled The Basic Logic of Bigotry, yes? I think that was one of the first pieces I ever read by you. I think I found a saved copy a while back. I will see if I can find where I saved it and share here.
Found the piece from within an old rss archive
https://deboer22.rssing.com/chan-29998403/latest-article1.php
Thank you! The only thing missing is the image Freddie embedded partway through the article, so here's that: https://gyazo.com/f9796a9932e5b4ceea9415ff9d6fbb85
I don't think that's the one, based on the link Friedersdorf provides in his update:
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/02/17/snl-the-yankees-and-the-atlantic-insufferable-for-the-same-reason/
Zionism probably would have wilted away had Israel been accepted by its neighbors. There are hundreds of millions of refugees and descendants of refugees living all over the world. Many of us here in the US are examples. Yet, where else are there still camps a half-century after the fact and who benefits from this lack of resettlement and assimilation? The answers obvious. And its not the Israelis.
There were 700,000 Palestinians living in the area when the UN decided to install another state on top of their heads. Despite the revisionist history, untold thousands of them were forcibly uprooted from their homes. Many of them left for good. Many of them stayed. Since 1967, thanks to a war that was not started by Palestinians, those in the territories have been in a state of occupation, forced to endure a quasi-state with a quasi-government while being constantly encroached upon by a hostile government that has absolute and utter military dominance over them. Their condition is neither sustainable nor defensible.
The question is, what to do about it? The settlers, and an increasing number of Israelis writ large, would like for them to be ethnically cleansed from the country. The old guard of the international community still pushes for a two-state solution they know the Israeli government will never accept. The new generation of Palestinian advocates calls for one state, a state of equal rights and shared prosperity. I think that represents the most humane, righteous, and fair way forward, and I think it could exist tomorrow if people decided they wanted it. I could be wrong. But I don't think I'm crazy.
My point was not to refute your account, rewrite history, nor justify it, merely to point out this the forced immigration and displacement is in no way unique. The world is literally littered with examples of conquest and imposition. Only the camps are exceptional. (and perhaps our Indian reservation system).
The plight of the Palestinians has been used for years as an excuse to divert attention from the absolute dismal governance in much of the Middle East, including Gaza and the East Bank. Blame it all on Israel, and its all suddenly excusable.
Yes. That is all true. The governments of the major Arab countries are not now and never have been friends to the Palestinian people. The trouble is that this fact is often used to justify collective guilty - oh, well, the Palestinians wouldn't be in this shape if not for the Six Days War! But what does a Palestinian living in 2021 have to do with the Egyptian military leadership in 1967?
Sadly, his or her political leadership sure seems to be stuck in '67. That's an issue, and given reality on the ground, maybe THE issue.
Israel could end the occupation today. I will not absolve them of their responsibility to act. Sorry.
Don't mistake my comments. I give absolution to no one in this sorry affair.
Israel could end the occupation and so could the Palestinians. Somewhere between "Greater" Israel and "From river to sea" lies the solution, where nobody gets everything everybody gets something.
Sadly there are too many powerful actors who stand in the way. The mistake is in thinking they are all on the side of Israel.
... no we couldn't. Instant war, leading to yet another occupation. Do you really think if we retreat behind the Green Line they'll just leave us alone? We tried that in Gaza and got war. The dispute is existential, over the 48 lands, not the 67 lands.
But what does a Palestinian living in 2021 have to do with the 2000 Camp David Summit and the elevation of Hamas in 2007 in Gaza?
Then what do you mean by unique in "those conditions have created the unique misery, the unique tragedy, of Israel and Palestine"?
A world where a one state solution could exist is a world where a one state solution wouldn't need to exist. 'What if everyone just got along?' is not a solution to the problem of everyone not getting along.
I think you generally are willing to call out disingenuousness on this blog, and are generally good at seeing the world for what it is - and you're really not doing that here. There will be no one state solution in the next century, anyone with even a cursory understanding of the situation knows that deep down. The Israeli political winds and demographic situation has shifted towards this being *more* of an impossibility not less of one. Proposing a one state solution is thus not proposing something that could genuinely help anyone ever, it's essentially making a political statement. It is the 'defund the police' of Israel/Palestine. If the people in the Palestinian territories are living a better life in 50 years, it will be in a Palestinian state, and if we really care about their welfare then we should be working towards that.
And I think you and the other commenters are guilty of the emotionalism and arationalism here that you frequently see in others. I think you see Israel with other eyes than you see any other issue, which is precisely my point. Never do I have to fight for the basic principles of equality and democracy as fundamental political goods, except with Israel.
Maybe, just maybe, because Israel is the only modern liberal democracy with an elected, armed death cult devoted to its destruction living within/next to its borders?
That's not how morality works, and that "death cult" is objectively vastly less powerful than Israel and has suffered at least ten casualties for every one Israel has. No one disputes that fact, certainly not the IDF.
Where exactly is the emotionalism? I don't actually have particularly strong views on Zionism or on Israel. I don't think it's too hard to construct a good 'ethnonationalism is bad' argument. My strong view is "don't propose things that aren't remotely viable and tell me that they are with a straight face."
A parallel here is reparations - maybe reparations are morally correct. But if someone genuinely believes we should move forward with them, they should come up with a viable proposal for how exactly we would distribute reparations. How much money? Who counts as black? Do we have to do DNA testing? Do you have to prove you have a slave ancestor? How do we deal with the right-wing blowback from going forward with the least popular idea in American politics?
So sure, maybe a one state solution is the one true morally correct option, everything else is a betrayal of our principles. Fine, don't just toss around an empty phrase. How do we get there? Come up with a path to that solution in a world where the ethnonationalist state that doesn't even have a left-wing anymore is going to decide to join hands with people who've been shooting rockets at them for decades. (People who incidentally also have very minimal interest in a one-state solution.) All of this while demographic trends will make the problems worse not better, in a world where nationalism is spiking everywhere, in an era when rich European countries like Spain and the UK are struggling to stay in one piece.
If you see a path here, you must be looking at the world through some 20 dimensional glasses. I do not see a path, the vast majority of people don't see a path. "One state solution" is a motto that lets someone highlight their belief that ethnonationalism is bad, it lets someone frame themselves as a member of team the-most-left-wing. But it is not...something that is gonna happen.
What do you think the end game is then?
Haha, well, the end game is the heat death of the universe. And before that at some point, probably centuries from now, humanity will have evolved past our current conceptions of nationalism and border lines won't matter that much at all. That's mostly just to say, if you extend the time frames long enough, clearly something's gonna happen.
But within our lifetimes? If I had to guess what 50 years from now will look like in Israel, it would be either 'a fragile, ugly 2 state solution' or 'pretty much what it looks like right now'. If I were forced to bet on it I'd probably bet on #2. That #1 is within the realm of possibilities means that it's something people should work towards in they're interested in the welfare of the populations involved.
I think you're crazy. Civil war is humane now? If you prefer civil war to a two state solution, on the grounds that "Israel will never accept a two state solution", well, wait til you hear how likely Israel is to accept civil war.
But the real reason you're crazy is that Israel has offered and in fact unilaterally tried to create the foundation for a two-state solution many times. No, this isn't some pro-Israel tendentious reading of the history - even the pro-Palestinian readings of Camp David 2001 and Kerry-Obama 2014 agree that the Palestinian representatives walked away, with no counteroffer, from a fully-baked two state solution.
And, by the way, this is where things start getting extremely slippery, because the *reasons* that they claim that those offers were unacceptable were that a) the Palestinians would have to give up on the "Right of Return" and more importantly b) the Palestinians would have to cede sovereignty over Jerusalem. Aren't you the "I'm opposed to ethno-nationalism and theocracy" guy? If so you shouldn't care much whether Palestinians have to give up on this ethnic/religious symbolism to get democracy, right? Or do you think that the unique Palestinian suffering is worth continuing over that? (My guess is you will say something to the effect of "I oppose those deals because the Palestinians don't get an army [in the short term]", but that's completely irrelevant to the question of what scuttled them.)
In fact that reading of Camp David - and more importantly Taba - is very much disputable and disputed, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out for many years. The "fully baked solutions" weren't, and of course included stipulations like Israel's continuing control over Palestinian borders, air space, and waterways, which in other words means that they were not offers of states at all. And in any event, Israel has permitted the settlements - has in fact enabled the settlements - that make any two-state solutions impossible today. If Israel wanted two states, they would have stop the settlements. But they didn't. Because the country has a large, powerful, deeply frightening ethnofascist movement within it that is explicitly supremacist in its ambitions for the region. And even committed defenders of the current Israeli state should be very worried about that movement, about the thousands of extremists who take to the streets to chant "death to Arabs!" on a regular basis.
Oh come on, this is silly
- I pre-empted you on these "stipulations", can you respond to what I actually criticized you for?
- "If Israel wanted two states, they would have stop the settlements." ... no? I can want to buy a house, believe that I will never convince a bank to lend me money, and therefore not bother to save for one? This is just incoherent.
- Worried? Sure I'm worried (though I don't regard myself a "committed defender of the current Israeli state"). But not much. Your unfamiliarity with Israel+the surrounding region is leading you to overrate the size and importance of this "frightening ethnofascist movement".
- If you think Chomsky's dispute is legitimate, then you are required to legitimize Israeli claims to be non-aggressors in 1967. They're the same thing. Note that you have no response to Kerry-Obama in 2014.
Come on, you're better than this.
Look - I'm really not interested in debating someone who can't keep engaging in histrionics about what I'm better than, or what I'm making myself look like. There are many committed defenders of Israel who will gladly admit that at no time, not at Camp David or in 2014 or at any other time, did Israel ever offer a Palestinian state with genuine control of its own borders, its own military, its own ability to form strategic alliances - a state like any other. And since we're apparently in the business of saying what other people are better than here, YOU are well aware that there was never a time when Israel was willing to allow Palestinians a state with the same rights and power as Jordan or any other neighbor. Which means it's not a real state. And you are also well aware that Israel has aggressively enabled the settler movement that has now rendered a two state solution quite literally dead.
Fair enough, I'll cut it out.
I already said - I agree that Israel has never offered that level of control! I'm waiting for you to address what sunk the two state solutions on offer: Palestinian refusal of any arrangement that doesn't split Jerusalem.
I am not aware that the two state solution is quite literally dead. If it's dead, how is a one state solution alive?
Your history of Camp David is not correct. Palestinians asked for a Palestinian state with full control of its borders and were rejected. There was a lot of back and forth, some of this is documented here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_David_Summit#Negotiations
You should read the later portions of the exact same Wiki article you cited so that you can answer your own questions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_David_Summit#Responsibility_for_failure
So there was a counter offer and there was a lot of negotiation back and forth and Israel refused both the two state solution and the right of return. If we agree on that, then we are in agreement.
We should start by agreeing to read the same document because you seem to be reading something else.
ACOUP had a recent series on Roman diversity- https://acoup.blog/2021/06/11/collections-the-queens-latin-or-who-were-the-romans-part-i-beginnings-and-legends/
One of Deveraux’s themes is that the early republic and empire were ethnically diverse, specifically because Romans pragmatically opened up citizenship to conquered people instead of insulating themselves from their holdings.
To an extent, Israel has done the same- Israeli Arabs can worship Allah and vote and go shopping and so on. But in the conquered province, there is no integration (you can mail me me “Biggest Understatement of the Year” award later).
It means that one day, Israel will find itself weak. Economic collapse, plague, demographic crisis, sectarian civil war, natural disasters, I dunno, take your pick. Might be next year (doubtful), might be 2050, might be 2060. It’s a question of when, not if, because it happens to everybody eventually. The ability to suppress Palestinian nationalism will go away.
When this happened to Rome, the far flung provinces that had once been (long, long ago) under the Roman jackboot got stuck in and tried their damndest to save the empire they were a part of. That’s why we study Rome and go, “Wow, a 2,000 year run of it, and once it went away all the fragments that formed small new kingdoms and nations daydreamed for a 1,000 years about bringing it back.”
When disaster strikes Israel, Palestine will not mourn and try to keep Zionism intact (maybe I should get two awards).
This is the problem with building nations based on ethnic solidarity. Nobody fucking wants you there. Right, wrong, whatever; you’re building a house with crappy materials that won’t handle the storm. There’s a line in the Old Testament about what happens to houses that are divided against themselves.
People living in what was Yugoslavia certainly found this out.
I think the underlying problem is that criticism of Israel has become another political football, another marker for the wider cultural conflict. My sense is that criticism can only produce reform when everyone approaches an issue in a spirit of honesty and open minded inquiry. When you have to be reflexively anti-Israel because you also sympathize with BLM that is tribalism at work.
To clarify I am not asserting that all criticism of Israel is knee jerk tribalism; I am discounting the possibility of actual change as a result of that criticism now that it has been subsumed into the wider cultural conflict.
Every article about Zionism - anti- or otherwise - should define the term. How are you defining the term?
To me, the simplest definition is "Zionism = the belief that the state of Israel should exist". (Note that it's pretty trivial to be a Zionist these days.)
Do you oppose this idea? That seems a bit unhinged, to say the least, and "I don't believe in ethnonationalism or theocracy" is not going to cut it as a justification.
Do you oppose some other idea? I suspect that this is the case, since you reference "the Zionist project" - implying that there's still one ongoing. If so, what is it? And what definition allows you to escape the trap of "this is trivial, everyone relevant opposes this" or "this is trivial, the people opposing this are in fact raving Jew-haters"?
Ah, the "Israel isn't really a Jewish state" dodge. Not a very popular opinion within Israel. I am opposed to states that have a fundamental ethnic or religious character. If Israel is such a state, I'm opposed to it. If it's not, somebody should tell the people and government of Israel; they'd be very surprised.
There is no other country which would produce this kind of motivated reasoning.
"Israel isn't really a Jewish state" - I never said such a thing? I certainly don't believe such a thing? What are you talking about.
"I am opposed to states that have a fundamental ethnic or religious character." - so you're opposed to the existence of a lot of states then? Or are you trying to load meaning on "fundamental"?
But we can skip all this if you just define the term Zionism.
I see only three possible end games here:
1) Israel accepts that Palestinians are human beings with equal rights, admits them as citizens and becomes a pluralistic society. The one-state solution. This is what happens next door in Lebanon.
2) Create a two state solution where Palestine and Israel are separate countries. With the tacit and explicit support of the settlers over the last two decades, this is not really a tenable solution anymore. Is Israel really going to root out 300,000 settlers? There is no viable state left for Palestine.
3) Massive ethnic cleansing where the Palestinians are forcibly removed.
Supporters of Israel have to ask themselves which solution do they prefer. Is #2 really still on the table? I do not think so.
I support the State of Israel, I cannot hate it the way the author does, but I do not support the Jewish State of Israel. Netanyahu, with his pro-settler (and let's be honest here, pro-terrorist) policies has made the two state solution impossible. This was done with the support of the majority of Isrealis. Israel has made its own bed, now it must lie in it.
I honestly don't know, how is it? How was life like for the Jews of Lebanon pre-1967? I thought it was pretty good, better than life for the Palestinians today. A state with a large Jewish percentage would be quite different than one with a tiny number.
Please correct me if I am wrong, I am not very informed in this. I have heard that life for Jews in the Ottoman Empire was pretty good.
I guess I should offer another option, that historically seems probable:
4) The utter and complete destruction of Israel and the third Diaspora of the Jewish people.
This is probably the most likely eventually. It seems improbably that a small homogeneous population can hold out forever against a much larger and generally hostile foe. See the history of the Crusades and the various Holy Lands which were created there.
I don't want this to happen but given the players and their history, it seems likely to me.
That is part of why I consider some kind of agreement important: In the absence of 1 or 2, I think eventually Israel may wind up destroyed. Especially since a good deal of Israel’s defense relies on the US being both willing and able to support them, and the US has a long history of isolationism that could eventually cause them to withdraw. That’s also combined with the decline of evangelicals in America, who are one of the main, most fervent domestic interest groups pushing to support Israel.
1 and 2 are both made tricky by the general geopolitics of the ME, however, as unfortunately the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become yet another one of the region’s proxy wars. Maybe if enough Palestinians and Israelis wanted an agreement, Iran+etc. could be overruled, but I doubt Iran, at least, will let that happen without a fight.
I don't think we're going to see the utter and complete destruction of a nuclear state anytime soon.
I gotta get to physical therapy so I gotta bow out here. The argument is in the piece.
I knew I should have gone with the Star Wars post today
Can’t wait to read about this on the weekly blog
For what it's worth, I find the posts about Israel interesting and valuable -- including the rebuttals to hostile comments. Sorry it's such a headache, though.
Freddie, I wish the post of yours that inspired Pagano's piece in Tablet was still around; I wonder, did you respond to him? I would observe, as I did in an earlier comment questioning how you hoped to supplant the "animal spirits" that drive capitalism, that your Marxist materialism sometimes leads you to underestimate the role of the irrational in the economic and political phenomena that trouble you. Any world in which the Canaan you (and many others) devoutly wish for comes about will necessarily be one that has moved past humans' tribal need to hate some "other" in seeking explanation and/or solace for the pains of life. Sadly, the fruits of this attribute of human psychology show no signs of abating. In fact, as many have noted, they seem to be on the rise worldwide. It has, of course, been the calamitous fate of the Jews to play this role for many other peoples through the centuries. Do you really believe that anti-Semitism--or even anti-Zionism--in the Middle East and elsewhere would fade away if the Israeli government decided tomorrow to concede the civil "equality" you call for in Palestine?
zdk found it and posted a link to it. https://deboer22.rssing.com/chan-29998403/latest-article1.php
I'm forever pessimistic about Israel, because too many people, on both sides, are mobilized against any solution. Their raison d'etre is the continuation of conflict, insecurity, and grievance, and nothing will satisfy. I feel for the children caught in this crossfire.
My pessimism primarily comes from having spent my childhood exposed to views on one side of this issue, the side that synonymizes Israel with Satan, that casually tells children about the hopeful, joyous eventual destruction of Israel in the same way Christians tell their children about the glorious second coming of Christ. The side where children are marinated from birth in colloquialisms such as "he went Israel on my ass" or "it hit her like Israel" when describing a particularly aggressive and ruthless boss, or someone dying of a sudden horrific illness. This animosity towards Israel (and inevitably, towards Jewish people), an animosity couched as self-defense against a powerful and fundamentally evil and *alien* force, is passed down from to children as though it's part of the culture and proud heritage. I'm describing good people. Not demons, not destructive or vengeful fanatics, not religious fundamentalists, but good people, minding their own business, working hard to provide for their family and maintain a loving community. But Israel-villainizing is second-nature, like it's embedded in the DNA. Multiply what I observed growing up by hundreds of millions. It takes a lot to overcome that kind of pessimism, and I haven't seen anything in my lifetime to make even the smallest dent in it. The arguments in this thread only fuel that pessimism. People here are generally in agreement, or mild disagreement, and aren't even living life on the ground over there. And yet views on Israel/Palestine are pretty polarized and strained. If that's what we're like over here, in the good old US of A, how much more deeply are the trenches dug over there.
I too would like the solution Freddie describes. I just don't think it's realistic, though neither do I have a better or more viable alternative.
Very good point.
I really like this point: "it suggests to those impressionable youth the right-wing Zionists would like to recruit that Israel’s reality cannot be defended in normal terms. It looks like Israel’s defenders are cheating, that Israel has something to hide."
I think it applies to a lot of issues today. Many activists prefer to shut down debate rather than win the argument -- and they seem to be succeeding in spaces like journalism and academia. I'm curious to see if it will work in the long term, or if the backlash will eventually reverse some of these trends. (Deliberately not mentioning specific issues to avoid kicking off another shitstorm in the comments)
I will say, coming back to this: I'm on the opposite side of the issue from you, but I absolutely agree that it's very, very bad for this subject to be a constant third-rail hot-button and the "red line" between liberalism and leftism.
Of course, I say that from the point of view that the Left should let Labor Zionists be, you know, leftists, because our cause is a Left cause and always has been. You probably completely disagree. But oh well.