There was a piece on campus divisions related to the Israel vs. Hamas war in one of the major dailies a while back. (Can’t remember which one, but there were lots, and it was typical of the genre.) As expected for their demographic, most students interviewed harshly criticized Israel for the wholesale destruction in Gaza. I sympathized with most of the views expressed, though Israel’s critics lose me when they downplay the 10/7 atrocities or frame the discussion in simplistic colonialist vs. oppressed terms.
I also sympathized with much of what Israel’s defenders in that article said too, i.e., that antisemitism is a growing scourge that has always animated the worst fucking people on earth, and the Hamas fighters who attacked civilians on 10/7 were terrorists and war criminals whose actions demanded a response. But I related most to the views of a foreign student (Italian, I think) who didn’t take a clear side when asked what he thought about the situation. He said (paraphrasing), “My opinion is it’s tragic.”
Josh Marshall published a piece today that addresses how we got here and what the implications are for the Biden administration. Marshall notes that the folks staffing the admin are mostly veterans of the Obama White House who know exactly who Netanyahu is. And thanks to Netanyahu’s lock on power, American public opinion has shifted permanently too.
It was galling to many American Jews to see Netanyahu plotting against a President they supported, not to mention the offense of any foreign leader so brazenly meddle in domestic US politics. I’ve mentioned a number of times since October 7th, that it is hard to over-estimate the damage caused by having a generation of Americans learn about Israel through the prism of a long-serving Israeli Prime Minister plotting against a US President they not only supported but viewed as central to their aspirations about America’s future. But beyond the anger over Netanyahu’s open alliance with the US Republican party was an additional point: do you not realize the folly of staking the US-Israel alliance on the most rapidly declining political demographic in American society? How does that work out exactly?
Of course, from the perspective of 2024 it’s not like it’s Democratic majorities as far as the eye can see. But the same gist still applies. At the most basic level many of us predicted in 2014 precisely the dynamic of of the politics of 2024 – young voters, especially progressive voters and people of color, seeing Israel through a much different and less forgiving prism than their parents generation. You’re sowing the seeds of your own undoing and what’s worse you’re going to come crying to us for help when you reap this harvest and we’re not going to be able to provide much. And here we are.
I agree when he (Marshall) says, “It’s time for Biden to make publicly clear that his support for Israel is not support for Netanyahu and that the latter is not only an obstacle to US interests but Israeli ones as well.” From what I can tell from reading their press, most Israelis would agree, and accurately naming Netanyahu as an obstacle might mollify Biden supporters who are outraged at the seemingly unlimited support Biden has provided to Israel as it has smashed Gaza to pieces.
The most interesting question to me is what comes next. Valued commenter Geminid shared remarks* on that topic by Ami Ayalon, ex-chief of Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security agency) in the wee hours starting here. Ayalon recognizes the failure of the Netanyahu model and proposes two potential scenarios that could emerge in the aftermath of the current war. It’s all worth reading, but here’s an excerpt:
On the way to the day after, we have reached a three-way juncture. There are only two ways out, and for now we are refusing to reach a decision and because of the disputes tearing our country apart, we also refuse to understand that not making a decision is also a decision.
One way, which I believe in, leads to a Jewish and democratic Israel in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, a state with a Jewish majority. It will be a long process, with ups and downs, that will last perhaps 40 years and require us to make internal concessions and reach understandings among ourselves.
If Israel takes this road, the Arab countries that have ratified the Arab Peace Initiative, like the western democracies, will be on our side. I believe that this road leads us to a safe, Jewish, and democratic Israel.
The other road is the one pursued by those who mistakenly believe that the occupation is a security asset and others who believe we have no right to give up land in the land of Israel, even if this means endless war. In my view, this is a messianistic perspective that does not recognize the limitations of reality.
That road leads to a single state, in the area currently occupied by seven million Jews and seven million Arabs.. it is a violent reality in which Israel will lose its Jewish and democratic identity. This reality leads us to the Great Arab Revolt of the 1930s, to a religious conflict drawing in the most radical and violent groups on both sides.
He’s probably right about that. Geminid notes a further detail in Ayalon’s plan: a deal to get back Israeli hostages with an exchange that releases Marwan Barghouti, a former member of the Palestinian Legislative Council who is currently doing five life sentences in Israel for allegedly directing terrorist activities during the 2nd Intifada. The idea is that Barghouti, who is not affiliated with Hamas, has the credibility with Palestinians to become a potential leader of a separate state.
According to the Wiki article, Israelis have balked at releasing Barghouti before, but the current war may change that. As Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin noted, “You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.” Rabin, a brave statesman, was murdered by a right-wing Israeli extremist whose beliefs are similar to the hard-right blocs currently keeping the terrible Netanyahu government in power.
Nothing changes until that does. But is change possible under the current circumstances? That’s the conundrum from hell, and like it or not, the U.S. has a role to play.
Open thread.
*Link to paywalled article in Haaretz, which Geminid laboriously transcribed for us — thanks man!
UncleEbeneezer
Not sure if this has been written about here yet, but the Toronto Sun reports that some of the most extreme protestors in Canada and the US, are being paid to do so.
Wouldn’t surprise me at all, and I suspect that Russia/GRU is stoking a lot of the division on this issue. Unfortunately, the tensions have gotten so high and there is so much toxicity by people on both sides of this that I think a lot of people are wisely staying silent. It’s one of the only political issues that I look at am like “nope. Not getting into this discussion” because there is so little allowance for nuanced, good-faith disagreement that acknowledges the complexity of the situation and the fact that neither side has clean hands.
MomSense
The polling on this issue is pretty much 50/50 with a little over half the population supporting Israel and Biden’s handling of this situation.
Here’s the problem. Politicians are not looking at overall opinion polling. They are looking at polling of likely voters. These are the voters that show up reliably every election. They skew older, whiter and more conservative. My guess is that polling of this group shows overwhelming support for Israel.
I keep seeing mostly young people talking about not voting for Biden if he doesn’t go their way on this issue (and others). It’s exactly the wrong approach. The voters with the most sway or power are the ones who vote every damned time. No politician is going to go out on a limb for voters who may not show up in the next election.
Martin
So, one reason why we don’t silence students speakers is that demanding a nuanced geopolitical takes out of 18 year olds or we will shut you down simply results in them never being able to express an opinion about anything ever. So universities give them a space where they can express these opinions, flaws and all, provided they aren’t harmful to others, and the administration listens to these views and quite often educates students on those views back through the classroom. Now that will only reach some students, but it often works pretty well. In some cases the institution will completely stop and address them more directly.
It says a lot about how solid an argument is that you feel that silencing 18 year olds is necessary to win it.
Chetan Murthy
Thank you for this, BC. You write for a lot of your readers, including me.
Baud
Timely post (warning Axios)
HumboldtBlue
We need to petition the powers that be in this website to set aside Sundays for lighter fare, we discuss the heaviest issues every day of the week, we need a day when it’s funny shit, and cool videos and stuff like that.
Although, for many folks around the country, even the weather is heavy talk today.
The Northeast is getting pummeled.
Geminid
I would note that when Ami Ayalon speaks of a period of “40 years,” he’s not talking about the urgent questions of ending this war and resuming the peace process. He’s talking about a neccesary evolution of the Israeli people, and I think that 40-year time period references another one long ago.
Betty Cracker
@HumboldtBlue: The day someone starts paying me to write on this blog is the day I’ll start entertaining content suggestions. ;-)
HumboldtBlue
@Betty Cracker:
Sheeeeiiiittt, I’ll send ya $10, you know I’m good for it!
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: Damn straight.
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue: We only have an inch or two on the ground in Chicago but it’s -3 outside. Whee! Sweatshirts anyone? – for inside.
ETA – crazy, shirtless nutters in Kansas City last night!
WaterGirl
@Baud: Stopped clock and all that.
Martin
@MomSense: More notably, the polling I’ve seen shows a HUGE generational split, where older voters are more sympathetic to the goal and perceived necessity of creating a jewish ethnic state, and younger viewers struggle to understand how that won’t lead to an apartheid state. And that tracks with a broader trend of greater acceptance of colonial actions among older people than among younger ones. See the gap between Bernie and Bernie supporters. It’s one place where they are pretty far apart.
Warblewarble
Patience with Nethanyahu was never a good policy choice.
Betty Cracker
@Martin: I haven’t noted that young people’s opinions are dumber or more naive than those of other generations. I hear as much appalling shit on this topic from my redneck elders as I do from leftist yoots.
I struggle to understand that too. 🤔
Starfish
@UncleEbeneezer: That sounds like all the accusations of liberals receiving Soros bucks in an attempt to delegitimize a movement. There are cities that have leftist mutual aid organizations, and those groups overlap with the pro-Palestine groups. It makes sense for people to carry some bail money when attending a protest.
Starfish
@Betty Cracker: Are you saving your fancy foil sculptures for your art patrons now?
Suzanne
@Martin:
This is where I struggle. The idea of a state for one people — that’s democratic only as long as they can keep other people as a minority — is a thing I’m really not comfortable with. I do not see how it’s sustainable in a modern age. It also just feels incredibly backward. The most successful democracies of the last century are multinational.
I am only interested in how to create a lasting peace and prosperity. I don’t know that I believe that a Jewish-majority state is a necessary condition of that.
laura
Tragedy really is the essence of this waking nightmare. I have no sympathy for terrorists or for war crimes that punish civilian populations. Bearing witness to suffering is hard and there is so much opportunity for bad actors in that liminal space. I’m grateful that we have a president who has the experience of American foreign policy and harbors no illusions about Netanyahu and the current Israeli government, Hamas and the metastasizing settlement movement.
schrodingers_cat
@UncleEbeneezer: On X, handles with watermelons/inverted red triangles and hammer and sickles in their nym are now simping for Houthis. I do smell a Russian rat in how this issue is being used to create a global anti-American sentiment.
satby
@HumboldtBlue: no, we don’t. We have too much fluffy shit now and it’s showing in the reduced comments on a lot of threads.
As we’ve been told so often, scroll on by what you don’t like.
satby
@Betty Cracker: 👍👏👏
UncleEbeneezer
@Starfish: Totally. I’m not outraged by the “paid protestor” thing and I’m skeptical for the same reasons, just wanted to share the reporting. That said, it’s been well documented that Russia uses causes like this (BLM protests for one example) to try to stoke division in our Dem coalition. I believe right after 10/7 there was a flood of Russian bot activity so I don’t think it’s some crazy conspiracy theory to suspect they are significant factor in creating such a toxic online environment on this issue.
satby
@Suzanne: Biden has made it clear that he and his administration support a two state solution with a separate state for the Palestinian people. There almost was a deal once, but Bibi and Hamas both worked to scuttle it. And here we are. Both need to go.
Chetan Murthy
@Betty Cracker:
Perhaps it’s b/c both groups assume as given that Israel is not going to give up the Occupied Territories. If one takes that as a bedrock assumption, then sure, I can see why Da Yoots would simply decide that a Jewish ethnostate is wrong on first principles. And on current course and speed, I can’t see where they’re wrong. Honestly. Honestly.
But if we move to a position where Israel *does* give up (all! ALL!) the Occupied Territories, then things are very different: Israel can remain a Jewish ethnostate, and the Palestinians get statehood.
No, I’m not smoking anything. Nor have I taken mushrooms. I also recognize that the likelihood of the latter happening (short of a decades-long campaign of boycotts and embargoes, worldwide) is vanishingly small.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: Same. I try to be mindful that my perspective is shaped by my experience as a U.S. citizen and also keep in mind the unique and tragic circumstances of Israel’s founding.
New Deal democrat
There is a saying in scientific theoretical circles that “progress is made, one funeral at a time.”
A similar saying about social attitudes would be “change is made, one funeral at a time.” Since people tend to form their political ideologies in their late teens or twenties, as the group whose viewpoint about Israel was formed based on the 1967 and 1974 wars dies out, there will come a point – probably no later than 2040 but possibly much sooner – where a decisive majority of US voters no longer support Israel.
At that point, it is unlikely that US financial and military support of Israel survives. And then, without a superpower patron, what will Israel do? The current terms of discussion may very well be moot.
Baud
Aren’t most countries ethnostates?
Suzanne
@satby: I know. But the settlements make that seem incredibly unlikely any time soon.
@Chetan Murthy: Agree with you here 100%.
I don’t see how Israel stays Jewish. This is an era of international flights and guest workers and urbanization and de-religionizing and intermarriage/interrelationship.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: The fact that people with first hand memories of WWII, Nazis, the Holocaust are disappearing is have effect across a wide range of political and social situations.
UncleEbeneezer
@Suzanne:
This is a sticking point for me too. The very notion that any State should prioritize having any one ethnicity, religion, race etc., be a majority seems extremely undemocratic to me, no matter how you slice it.
satby
@Suzanne: The plan called for vacating some settlements, and retaining others that act as a security buffer for Israel. With a jointly controlled pathway to connect Gaza to the West Bank. I wish I could remember where I read this, but it seemed workable. As long as Hamas and Bibi’s hardliners were dealt with.
Chetan Murthy
@Suzanne: I feel like, on the one hand, as long as Israel gives up the Occupied Territories and doesn’t fuck with Palestinians’ rights to create a functioning state, what Israel does within its internationally-recognized borders is its own business. I’d prefer for them to be a democracy, but …. I guess it’s their business.
BUT OTOH …. Israel is apparently bringing in large numbers of guest workers from India, just as they did from Thailand. Hell, Russia is bringing in guest workers from Kenya (IIRC). Yeah: to your last point, all these international flows of workers pretty much make it impossible to remain ethnostates, unless (like Russia and more and more Israel) you decide not to be democracies.
Delk
The youths have grown up with social media and are watching this conflict through nonstop unfiltered posting. When I was a college freshman the same conflict was happening but honestly it was just something happening on the other side of the world. I may have seen a minute of video on the news or a picture in the paper but nothing remotely close to what kids are seeing now.
Chetan Murthy
@satby: every plan I’ve seen from Israel has had them retaining enough settlements and land/corridors to render any Palestinian state as just a collection of bantustans. Israel needs to give back *all* the land they occupied in 1967. All of it. With all the settlements, in working condition. They can think of it as a fine for their crimes.
Eyeroller
It is my somewhat-informed opinion that the aftermath of WWII dominated the world for decades. The structure of the UN, particularly the Security Council, is part of that. Russian territorial ambitions seem to be to try to recreate the situation after WWII. Israel in the form it took in 1947 is part of that world order. That has all been breaking down in the past decade or so. The Greatest Generation that actually fought the war (and could clearly remember the preceding Depression) is mostly gone, but they were the parents of older Boomers and even some of us second-half Boomers, and older Silents remember WWII reasonably well and many are still alive. But it is fading from living memory.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
It’s not for us to dictate the terms of a peace deal.
Starfish
@UncleEbeneezer: I think that there is a lot of weird online behavior, and it is right to be skeptical of it. Since I left X a year or more ago, I just assume most of it is bots, crypto bros, and Nazis now. The mainstream people who needed it for self-promotion are starting to step away from it because their content is not really getting seen there.
How that translates to real life behavior varies. I know some actual Canadians including some actual leftist Canadians.
Canada has been easier for members of my family to emigrate to. There are large middle eastern populations in parts of Canada, so I think that there legitimately is more support for the Palestinians than there is in the US.
In the US, we have these fringy weird Christian cults that believe that Israel needs to be around for the end times, and they are pro-Israel so far as it serves their particular needs. Though the groups that believe this stuff may be small, they have an amplified voice with our political leaders.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Chetan Murthy: If the chance of Israel giving up its occupied territories is “vanishingly small,” then that means it’s not going to happen. Israel is the size that it is, the only question is whether it’s going to be a democracy or a fascist ethnostate.
The generational split, to my mind, is like a 1974 poll of writers’ opinions on America’s participation in the Vietnam War that I once read about. The split turned out to be entirely generational: all writers, whatever their politics, who were old enough to remember the years leading up to WWII thought American had to stay fighting the communists, and all writers, whatever their politics, who were born after 1935 thought America should get out of Vietnam without stopping to pack.
turns out the young’uns were right.
I think there are two issues on which, in couple of decades, everyone is going to say, “Who could possibly have supported that?” One of them is our institutional support for fossil fuels and the other is the idea that Israel (or any other country, for that matter) needs a majority of its population to be of a certain ethnic group.
Suzanne
@Baud: That’s an interesting question. I think the answer is no. Political boundaries of countries are mostly broader than nations, but often one group has control.
This is part of why I struggle. Like, the Kurds don’t have a country and the Rohingya don’t and China has basically eaten Tibet and Armenians were driven out of Nagorno-Karabakh, etc etc etc. I keep questioning why, if Israel wants the land those settlements are on, why they don’t also get as citizens the Palestinian people who live there. And if they don’t want those people as citizens, they’re welcome to retreat.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: To be blunt, we do so already, by our unstinting military and economic support of Israel. That is the same as telling Bibi “your BATNA is ‘keep everything'”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: What’s the use of being a global hegemon if we can’t dictate terms to other nations?
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
So if Israel and the Palestinians agree to a peace deal that doesn’t meet your conditions, you’re going to oppose it?
Chetan Murthy
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
It will remain a fascist ethnostate until it loses enough friends and allies that the Israelis decide to give up. There will be a massive emigration of Israeli Jews to other countries, and then Israel as we know it will cease to exist. And Bibi is making this really, really, REALLY bad timeline a certainty with his shit.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: They *won’t* agree to a peace deal. That’s my point. The Palestinians have made it clear over and over that if they don’t get their land back, if they’re confined to a bunch of bantustans, they aren’t going to accept it.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
Fine. Then there’s no point having this discussion. The future is written.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Yes, I’m losing the thread here.
I think the real problem is that the ethnicity is also a religion.
Starfish
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: You are treating the size of Israel as static here. Israel is attempting to grow by creating more settlements.
Suzanne
@Baud: If we’re going to play a role and flex our hegemonic muscle, we could push for the position that @Chetan Murthy: takes. The compromise is that Israel gets to stay Jewish for a while longer.
Baud
@Suzanne:
If we’re in a position to help negotiate peace deals, I think we’re going to decide what is doable based on where things are at the time.
Chetan Murthy
@Suzanne: @Baud: There’s a thing I read on Twitter a few months ago: somebody pointed out that Hamas had managed to convince the West’s youth that murder, rape, kidnapping, even of infants, were legitimate acts of resistance. I feel like not enough people of my generation and older understand just how profound this is.
That’s what Israel is up against, and it’s because for the past three decades, Israel has been The Bad Guys. Until and unless that changes, inexorably the terms of the negotiation will change until Israel loses everything. I want Israel to remain as a Jewish ethnostate: I’m old and I remember WWII and the things that came before it, and the worldwide rise of antisemitism only further convince me of this. But the path Israel is on will end with that option being foreclosed.
Tony Jay
Kind of on this general topic, the FTF Guardian is front paging a story this evening (so no comments, of course) about invertebrate weather-vane and pastry-skinned Lego figure Keir Starmer (Nu-New Labour’s obedient puppet leader) giving a politically moronic tongue bath to the pro-Israeli lobby group The Jewish Labour Movement to announce that he’s handing a senior post in Labour to Luciana Berger, ex-Labour MP and one of the scumbag twatwaffles who spent 2017/19 feeding the anti-Corbyn press juicy made-up stories about antisemitism and bullying before leaving the Party, standing as a candidate for the ‘moderate-centrist’ Change UK astroturf Party and getting roundly rejected by voters who saw through her bullshit with 1000% more acuity than the corporate media ever cared to.
I mention this, not because Starmer openly rewarding another of the lying fucks who brazenly sabotaged Corbyn’s Labour is a surprise – it’s not, he’s been doing it since he lied his way into power. And not because Starmer kowtowing to the extremist pro-Israel lobby at a time when most of ‘his’ Party would much rather distance themselves from the nutters is out of character – it’s not, he owes his job to the likes of the JLM, and never misses an opportunity to lick their boots.
No, I mention it because the FTF Guardian’s ‘Story’ about Berger’s return from the cold is such a collection of myths, lies and innuendos that it represents in miniature everything that is wrong with modern Media coverage of ‘Anything Jew-ish’. The kind of coverage that tells you nothing you didn’t expect, but distorts the truth in ways that convince millions to just tune the MSM out and look for ‘news’ elsewhere – with not always sexy results.
Frex – It implies Berger’s life was threatened by a Corbyn supporter who was sent to jail for it (lie – it was actually a Neo-Nazi, but that’s never, ever mentioned) and had to have Police protection at the Party conference (lie – she requested the Police protection any shadow minister could ask for and then called the Press for a photo op) and then suggests that the campaign to deselect her as a Labour MP was orchestrated by anti-Semites (lie – her constituency party wanted her out because of her constant backstabbing and smearing of the party leadership).
There’s basically not a word of truth in the entire story. Just a regurgitation of old hatchet-jobs to cover the backs of the journalists who carried Berger’s water during the antisemitism hoax.
With a News Media like this, lying and distorting and gaslighting 24/7, is it any surprise that opinions over Israel/Palestine are all over the show and dominated by the loudest nuts crying out to be picked? If there’s no general, agreed on, mainstream version of reality being put out there for everyone to form an opinion on, the whole mess is going to go balls-up and dipped in hot sauce sooner or later.
And no, I don’t have an answer. It looks to me like we’re headed downhill with broken skis and the only thing that will stop us heading off the cliff edge is a facesplat into a tree. And I don’t even know what that would look like.
Bleaugh. Back to your chirpier commentary, I’m just bringing the gloom.
Baud
Two other things based on my limited understanding
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: And why does Israel feel the need to remain Jewish? And why do so many Jewish people throughout the world believe that there is a need for a Jewish state? Those of us who aren’t Jewish tend to find it easy to forget these questions.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m fully aware that many Jewish people believe that Israel must remain majority-Jewish. Then they can retreat to borders within which they’re a majority. The current situation with settlements and essentially stateless citizens is not defensible and I’m not going to both-sides it.
Hidalgo de Arizona
This just goes to show that even the liberal elements of Israeli society are too thoroughly married to the concept of a Jewish ethnostate to actually forge a lasting peace. As @Suzanne pointed out, an explicit ethnostate isn’t very compatible with being democratic, particularly when you’re dealing with Judaism, which has both ethnic and religious components. It invites discrimination on ambiguous terms; “well, you’re Jewish, but you’re not *Jewish* Jewish,” which is a problem that constantly faces both the Arab and Ethiopian Jews in Israel.
Outside how democratic an ethnostate can actually be, there’s the larger question of how an explicitly Jewish state can live in peace with its neighbors, particularly when many of the people living in those neighbors were kicked off their land when the state of Israel was formed. On that, I’m pessimistic, particularly because Israel has made it clear that the only security conditions that are acceptable to it are ones under which the Palestinians are forced to live in deprivation.
At this point, the only way I can see there being an actual lasting peace is for there to be a single, secular, multicultural state that has equal rights for everyone, regardless of religion, with some kind of reparations for people who lost their land. It ain’t happening anytime soon, both because the hard-right in Israel is *the majority* but also because, as I mentioned, even the Israeli left isn’t close to accepting a pluralistic state.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
I’ve long since run out of patience with Israel. But at the same time, many centuries of pogroms, topped by the Final Solution, all speak to me of the need for a state where Jews can be sure of being welcomed if and when the countries they’ve been living in become too hostile for them. The recent rise of anti-Semitism here in the United States, a place I never thought would pose any dangers for my Jewish kin, emphasizes that to me.
I don’t see that we’re in a world where anything less than a Jewish-run state can guarantee that. The fact is, most nations have a dominant nationality or ethnicity, and things usually get awkward when that dominance seems to be threatened. Not that we Americans would know anything about that. ;-)
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay:
Truth.
Chetan Murthy
@Hidalgo de Arizona:
The first part of Tony Judt’s _Postwar_ is about the many ethnic cleansings that happened immediately after WWII, as states worked to “simplify” their populations, getting rid of the ethnic diversity that they felt had been some part of the cause of the war. Lotta people got pushed off their land. But somehow, 75 years later, Western and Central Europe are at peace, because all the countries (esp. the *big* countries) decided to behave decently to each other, and to eschew violence.
Your last sentence is of course accurate, and is why we won’t get an EU-like (or even EC-like, or European Coal and Steel Community-like) outcome. Israel needs to see the prosperity and happiness of Palestinians *in their own state* as necessary conditions for its own security. Like the Western victors of WWII did, once towards Germany.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
OTOH, there are still plenty of us around who remember Gamal Abdel Nasser threatening to push Israel into the sea, shortly before the Six-Day War.
Ohio Mom
@Hidalgo de Arizona: I go back and forth between believing the two-state solution is what should be aimed for and that a one-state pluralistic should be the goal. I can see arguments both ways, for and against each possibility.
Then I remind myself that what I think does not matter, my thoughts influence nothing. And I remember my pre-October 7th policy, which was, I already belong to one screwed up nation-state, I’m not claiming Israel too, even if i’m Jewish.
Jay
@UncleEbeneezer:
Warren Kinsella and the Toronto Sun are not reliable sources.
sab
@HumboldtBlue: No.
marklar
Here’s another wrinkle, further complicating things. The history of Judaism over the last couple of millennia might make Israelis/Jews a bit nervous about their rights to self-determination in a non-Jewish majority state. Even here in the United States, should the Republican Party complete the transformation of this country into a Christian-nationalist state, Jews will lose their religious right to have pregnancies terminate if it poses risk (including emotional) to the pregnant person.
Israelis/Jews might feel a little more comfortable with a non-ethno-state if there was a history in the Arab world of a pluralistic democracy that protects the rights of all groups. There is no such history for Jews (at least since 635 to 1099 AD, when it was held by the Islamic empire…kind of ironic that that golden age of Judaism was ended by the Christian crusades).
The Biden administration’s focus on a 2-State solution is a pragmatic way of 1- acknowledging the concerns of Jewish Israelis, who won’t put their trust in others to protect their self-determination, and who have not had a reliable ‘peace partner’ (in part their own fault over the last 30 years) to assuage their concerns, and 2- promote the legitimate desire for autonomy and statehood of the Palestinians. Since both Netanyahu and Hamas are obstacles to such a solution, he needs to start using America’s leverage to remove both. For starters, I’d tell Israel that every dollar spent in the occupied territories will result in 5 dollars cut from US aid– let Israel know that we support their right to exist as a Jewish State, but we will not support their erasure of what will eventually become a Palestinian state, to be run the way Palestinians choose.
My critique of the Biden administration isn’t with their ultimate goal, but with their dragging their feet in bringing sufficient pressure to bear on Netanyahu
ETA: I notice that lowtechcyclist made a similar point regarding a place for Jewish self-determination at #57
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: I would be more inclined to agree, if not for two things. One is that, as I noted above, I don’t know how Israel (or any country) avoids demographic change. The other is that more stable and prosperous places tend to become more open over time, not less. Which is never to say that it is a sure thing.
I will point out that there are more Jewish people in New York City than in Israel. And while the recent rise of anti-Semitism is real and incredibly concerning, I do think this fact demonstrates that a Jewish state is not the only environment for success for Jewish people.
Kay
@Delk:
The youths believe Israel is a Right wing country – they see it as just another country that took a hard Right authoritarian turn. They believe that because that’s been their entire adult experience. In fact, they think older people who look back at what Israel was intended to be or was in the past as a basis for decision making are overly sentimental and not looking at reality. Telling them “Hamas are terrorists” is almost a non sequitur. True, but not responsive to their objection.
I just hope Netanyahu doesn’t screw Biden too badly. I’m quite confident he will, he’s probably working with Trump right now to beat Biden. That pisses me off.
sab
@Baud: That is a very big if.
SW
A point that Marshall didn’t mention in this piece is that it is crazy for Israel to tie its fortunes to the Republican Party not just because they represent a declining fraction of the U.S. electorate but also because the right’s support of Israel is based on the notion that they are facilitating the end times at which point all of the Jews will either be converted or wiped out.
Hidalgo de Arizona
@Chetan Murthy: the problem is that the Israelis probably are never going to get to the point of embracing Palestinian prosperity for their own security, for two reasons:
1. There is a significant polity in Israel that wants the land the Palestinians are on – sans the Palestinians – and that polity is in power right now.
2. Security concerns will always undermine any efforts to encourage Palestinian prosperity, because of the tiny geographical area involved. In the context of the US and Germany, post-wwii, the US could rebuild Germany without too much in the way of security concerns (over objections from multiple people at the time who were pointing out “hey, these dudes have fought two world wars in the last three decades”) because Germany was on the opposite side of the ocean, and because the security threat of the Soviets was a “bigger bad” than West Germany ever could be. There’s currently no outside threat that could induce Israel to treat the Palestinians better, and the geographic closeness means that the Palestinians will always be able to do some damage to the Israelis with incredibly primarily weapons, and the more Israel clamps down, the more motivated they’ll be to do so.
marklar
@Suzanne: Alas, “The other is that more stable and prosperous places tend to become more open over time, not less” assumes facts not in evidence.
Does that include the United States, Hungary, Russia, post-Brexit England, Le Pen’s France, Italy, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Brazil, Venezuela, China, etc. etc. etc.? Heck, even good old stable, prosperous Canada is in danger should Poilievre win the next election.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne:
Sorry, no, The population of Israel is over 9M. The Jewish portion of that is over 7M. The population of NYC is about 8.5M.
lowtechcyclist
@Chetan Murthy:
This. Israel needs to GTFO of the West Bank. The notion that they need to maintain some sort of Maginot Line at the Jordan River is bullshit. Who’s going to invade? Jordan doesn’t even want the West Bank back. Iraq’s a mess. Most of the Arab countries have recognized Israel or all but done so. Iran would have to send its troops across both Iraq and Jordan to get there.
I want Israel to be secure within its pre-1967 borders, modulo some territory swaps along the border. But it will not be secure until it gives Palestinians the freedom to form their own independent nation in the West Bank and Gaza.
Kay
Israelis had opportunity after opportunity to get rid of their corrupt Right wing authoritarian leader and they kept him in power. That’s tragic, but I don’t think the United States has any obligation to go down with that fucking ship. We have our own Right wing authoritarians to beat and since Israel’s Right wing is aligned with the US Right wing and opposed to our liberal wing (Biden) I don’t see them as allies in the US democracy project we’re currently engaged in.
Suzanne
@Gin & Tonic: You’re right, I was unclear. Here’s what I was referring to (and messed up).
From Wiki:
Hidalgo de Arizona
@Gin & Tonic: the Jewish population of the US is 7.6M in total – so there are more Jews living in the US than in Israel.
taumaturgo
Zionist in a rampage with no end insight, echos of 1948.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/14/netanyahu-insists-on-fight-until-total-victory-as-israel-marks-100-days-of-war
Yarrow
@satby: Completely agree. If anything we need more politics focused posts.
@HumboldtBlue: No we don’t. Sundays start with a garden post and always have the “Medium Cool” culture post. Very often they include other things like an author post. Sunday is already the least political post day here.
There’s a whole world of other stuff out there. Go watch a movie or read a book or learn a language or something if you don’t like the selection of content here.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@lowtechcyclist: So how come the Romani never qualified for a state? The Nazis tried to exterminate them too.
Baud
BTW, do we know that the Palestinians wouldn’t prefer an ethnostate?
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
One other element of that FTF Guardian shitshow that I didn’t realise until a friend pointed it out. The job Berger has been given is head honcho of Nu-New Labour’s mental health campaign. Because as a ‘victim of racist bullying’ she totally gets it.
That portfolio used to be held by Rosena Allin-Khan, before she stepped down last September citing Shadow-Health Minister Wes ‘’Utter Scum’ Streeting’s policy of more NHS privatisation and Starmer’s obvious dislike of taking advice on mental health from a left-winger who just happened to be a practicing doctor.
That’s just shitty trolling. It’s what Starmer does. No wonder the FTF Guardian didn’t want to mention it.
Baud
@Kay:
Agree.
Yarrow
@Suzanne: I generally agree with this. I’m uncomfortable with any country that’s supposedly for one people. It doesn’t seem right. Nor does it seem sustainable.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, this. And it seems like both-sides just want more voilance.
Starfish
@Chetan Murthy: I don’t think that is true. Both sides have convinced themselves that only their losses were real, and the other side is fabricating their losses.
It didn’t help when rumors spread of babies being beheaded that were parroted by Biden and then had to be walked back.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Kay: word
Kay
Josh Marshall is a treasure. His wife is Israeli, and yet he has a clear eyed and hard headed view of the political risk for Biden and the Democratic Party (so, democracy) and he doesn’t lash out at Democratic voters for dissenting on this. Just so glad he’s on our side. A cool head.
Suzanne
@marklar: The United States has become considerably more prosperous and productive since 1965, when national origin preferences favoring Europeans were dropped. (And there was just a thread on this very here blog asserting that on almost every measure, the country is doing considerably better than it was in the 50s all the way through to recent years). Europe as a whole has had fewer wars since the creation of the EU and free movement.
Ohio Mom
@Hidalgo de Arizona: You write: “Outside how democratic an ethnostate can actually be, there’s the larger question of how an explicitly Jewish state can live in peace with its neighbors, *particularly when many of the people living in those neighbors were kicked off their land when the state of Israel was formed.”* (emphasis added)
in one of those “buts” that make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so hard to untangle — because it seems there is always a legitimate counterpoint to muddy everything — it’s worth remembering that hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Arabic lands were expelled in 1948.
They arrived in Israel as refugees. They had to leave behind everything as they started their lives over.
As an example, from the Wall Street Journal, “Many Israelis are Refugees From Arab Lands”, Nov 3, 2023:
”By 1948 an estimated 135,000 Jews lived in Baghdad, comprising one-third of the city’s population—more Jews by proportion than Warsaw or New York at the time. Iraqi Jews were active in government, launched businesses and held prominent positions…”
So it is not just European Jews who carry memories of being turned on in their place of birth.
Elizabelle
@Yarrow: Agreed. Some weekends it’s just a desert in here, if you came with an interest in politics. I have appreciated the meaty posts today.
Matt McIrvin
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
And it’ll be because there were things about the past they don’t understand any more.
In the case of fossil fuels, it’ll be that at one time, they were the only way to sustain an advanced machine civilization apart from nuclear power, which some terrifying high-profile accidents had made people scared of (rightly or wrongly).
And the other is the shadow of the Holocaust. That in the wake of that genocide, in the mid-20th century, it was reasonable to conclude that the reason Jews were so horrifyingly persecuted and nearly wiped from the Earth was that, unlike many peoples, they didn’t have a national homeland of their own. That a Jewish ethnic state seemed like a matter of survival.
Now, I come from an at least nominally democratic state that pointedly advertises itself as not ethnically based, so this has always seemed a little weird to me. But at the same time, I’ve become acutely aware that a whole lot of my own fellow Americans don’t seem to see it that way and do think of the US as some kind of ethnic homeland or think it should be. So it seems to be a difficult mental frame to get away from.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Agreed. Israelis needed to clean house.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: Thanks for clarifying. There are plenty of these types: “more Jews in NYC than in Jerusalem”, “more Puerto Ricans in NYC than in San Juan.” My weakness is that the first 20 years of my gainfully employed life were as a statistician. I actually used to purchase, every year, when it was available as hard copy, The Statistical Abstract of the United States.
Yeah, I’m a lot of fun at parties, too.
eclare
@Suzanne:
Do you have a cite for your assertion that there are more Jewish people in NYC than in Israel? I just googled the Jewish population in both, and the numbers were very different.
Elizabelle
@Gin & Tonic: Anything new on the Wildberries conflagration?
Yarrow
@Elizabelle: Yep. Also, I used to see newsworthy happenings here quickly. Now they might be mentioned in comments but are less likely to get a front page post. I know front pagers aren’t paid and people use social media more, etc, etc. But it’s a noticeable change to me. And not one I think is good. Again, blog is free, people aren’t paid. I get it. Not complaining. More just noticing the change. Wish it wasn’t so.
Martin
@Suzanne: Yeah, I knew a woman who worked on setting up the Israeli state when she worked for the UN. She died a few years ago. She concluded starting in the 80s that they failed their original goal and questioned whether that was even the right idea to begin with. She stood by the need to give jewish people safety and agency, but seemed to regret that they didn’t work harder on pushing western governments to provide Jews with more legal protections and dealing with their internal antisemitism – something they could have built on for other minority groups. In the end, they didn’t fix the problem in western nations and she was concerned about the growing support for settlements within Israel which she felt all by itself showed a failure of the original idea.
She never questioned Israels democracy, but I don’t know how you have a democratic ethnic state. You can control that to some degree through immigration policies (something else younger generations are less supportive of) but you can’t control it completely.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
Too late now. Now he leaves “when the war ends”. So, you know, never.
As one citizen who lives under the threat of a Right wing authoritarian takeover to another, I would suggest they hold an election soon, or they aren’t going to have any more elections. Tick tock.
Baud
@Yarrow: Eh, blogs stopped being a place for breaking news with the rise of social media years ago. Maybe DK is different because of its size.
Chetan Murthy
@Starfish: Israel has been building settlements on stolen land since 1967. I don’t know about the Rabin administration, but they were built under Barak, at the same time he was negotiating with Arafat. And of course, ever since. Israel rules Gaza and the West Bank with an iron fist, and it’s apparent to everybody with eyes to see. And that’s what the world’s young are doing: *seeing*.
Yes, what happened on October 7 was an abomination, and I fully supported Israel’s military action to get back its hostages. But that’s not what’s happening: instead, Israel is clearly trying to force out Gaza’s population so they can take over the land. And they’re not even being coy about it: you can hear such words from Bibi, from his right-wing cronies.
Look: what you and I think about this doesn’t matter. That I *want* for Israel to remain a Jewish ethnostate doesn’t *matter*. What matters is that Israel’s actions toward Palestinians over *decades* have convinced the world that they’re The Bad Guys. You’ve gotta do some amazing levels of evil shit, to convince the world that when your people are murdered, *raped*, *kidnapped*, *infants kidnapped*, that it’s just “legitimate resistance”. I’ll say that again: Israel has done so much evil shit to the Palestinians for so long, that even Hamas’ *mass rapes* and kidnapping of *infants* doesn’t dissuade people from taking the Palestinian side, and even taking the side of Hamas.
Yarrow
@Kay:
Wasn’t this what people in Israel wanted to happen? I seem to remember something about that when things first happened. It seemed like a really bad idea at the time. It’s set up so he’ll never end the war because to do so means he leaves office.
Yarrow
@Baud: I didn’t say breaking news.
eclare
@eclare:
Never mind, I see (too late) that it has been addressed.
Elizabelle
@Baud: You get so many hot takes and wrong takes with tweets and social media. I prefer blogs because they go into more depth.
I’ve really appreciated the links and ideas people put up here.
I am not a fan of having BJuice transition into such a heavily scheduled blog. We are not a television network. I understand Adam’s Ukraine posts occurring every evening, but would like to see more spontaneity elsewhere.
Hidalgo de Arizona
@Ohio Mom: part of that was an expulsion, but a lot of that was an explicit Israeli-lead evacuation with the explicit intent of increasing the Jewish population of their new state. You’ll note that almost all of the Muslim states in the middle east still have a Jewish population – including explicitly theocratic Muslim states like Iran – so it’s not like it was a consolidated “Judaism is illegal now” effort by any stretch of the imagination, unlike the current Israeli efforts (which aren’t state-lead, but *definitely* are state-complicit) to remove Palestinians from the West Bank.
Suzanne
@eclare: See my comment above….. the religious Jewish community of NYC is larger than that of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem combined but there are not more Jews in NYC than in Israel. I was hasty in commenting and misstated the statistic.
I have read reports that say that there are more Jewish people in the US than in Israel, but that it also depends on how one defines Jewish…. as in a core Jewish population vs. a connected Jewish population.
My point, tho, is that we have evidence of Jewish people living outside of Israel in relative safety and prosperity — though anti-Semitism is indeed real and I understand why Jewish people feel threatened. But, as we have seen, Israel isn’t always a safe place, either.
The whole situation is just so fucking sad.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
OT but the principal of Perry High School in Iowa, where the recent school shooting happened, has died of injuries he received putting himself in harm’s way to protect students…
marklar
@Suzanne: From your keyboard to God’s ears. I am more pessimistic. Overpopulation and climate change (factors that weren’t driving geopolitical forces back then) have created migrations putting different groups into contact/conflict exponentially compared to the 50’s and 60’s. Human nature is extremely tribal– prioritizing the ingroup, and demonizing the outgroup. I fear that we are heading towards a more insular future (hence the rise of ethno-fascist political power, in all the countries I listed above…I could add Denmark, Sweden (trending in that direction), Hamas, and Netanyahu’s Israel).
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle:
So does the US. Let’s start with the House of Representatives.
Martin
@Baud: No. An ethnostate doesn’t speak to the country’s demographics, but to its *intended* demographics. The US may be majority white, but there’s no policy or part of our charter that says it *ought* to or *must* be majority white. That’s sort of a fundamental disagreement between left and right now.
Israel is different – it must be Jewish led.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: The fact that Balloon Juice is still running in any form after 20 years is quite something.
Ohio Mom
@Yarrow: And yet the world is full of countries that could be described as for one people. Think of Catholic countries, or until pretty recently, Japan. No matter how many generations a Korean family lived in Japan, they were foreigners.
That’s one of Biden’s schticks (don’t get me wrong, love the guy): “Every other nation is based on ethnicity, geography. In America, we’re based on an idea — literally, not figuratively — an idea. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [women and] men are created equal…endowed by the[ir] Creator…”
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy:
Speaking as a citizen of a country whose majority has heartily approved of doing all of these things to its minorities for centuries, I don’t actually agree with that. It’s not necessarily for a good reason; they *could* just all be bigoted against you. And there’s ample precedent for people hating Jews for no good reason everywhere. That’s one of the things that makes all this so hard to talk about–the difficulty in distinguishing between that background hate, and responses to actual atrocities.
Baud
@Martin: As I recently learned, Israel doesn’t have a written constitution. So I’m not sure what they do if the Arab voting citizenry of Israel gets close to having a majority. But that seems to me a different issue than the question of how to give the Palestinians their own state.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: For sure!! ETA: I think we will, too. ETA2: At least, in places that are not deep dark blood red.
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Saw that. I hope some of the GOP caucus goers feel shame for voting for all guns all the time. It kills nice people like Principal Dan Marburger. Another dead hero. Latest in a long line.
SW
@Yarrow: I am old enough to understand the motivation but far enough removed from the fact to recognize it as a tragic if well meaning mistake
Baud
@Elizabelle: All of the regular front pagers already do a ton of work. Cole will need to get some more volunteers to change things.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Maybe we can get another Freddie DeBoer.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
There is only one Freddie DeBoer.
Roberto el oso
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: You’re joking, right? Whether one agrees with it or not, Jews have a claim on the land that is now Israel that goes back some thousands of years. There is nothing equivalent for the Romani people. Where would you suggest this state be located?
Yarrow
@Ohio Mom: Yes, I’m aware. And I’m generally against it.
From someone I know in a mixed Japanese and American marriage it doesn’t sound like it’s a lot better in Japan now. Their daughter is very stressed because she has to decide if she’s Japanese or American. The Japanese grandmother is putting a huge amount of stress on her to choose to be Japanese. Dual citizenship doesn’t sound like an option. It sounds awful. I’m getting all this second hand so I’m not totally sure I’m right, however.
Starfish
@Elizabelle: Same.
The ease of availability of Twitter content made everything more superficial and less thoughtful.
There are still some great blogs out there, but they are much more rare than they used to be.
Heather Cox Richardson is focusing on the news of the day, but she is doing it in a deeper way. It looks like she wrote about the mom and children who died in the Rio Grande today, after Greg Abbott wouldn’t let the Border Patrol save them.
HumboldtBlue
Who’da thunk?
Elizabelle
@Starfish: Yes, she is phenomenal, and her daily posts are a public service.
Today has felt like a reversion to the older blog, and I have enjoyed the longer threads. Maybe we are all inside because the weather is so ferocious in so much of the country?
I feel like a lot of us are sort of in suspended animation until we see what happens with the Iowa caucuses, too.
Geminid
Ami Ayalon’s statement was originally published January 10 by Haaretz. I found it through Turkish journalist Ragip Soylu. When I reread the parts I repeated here this morning, it occurs to me that 1) this was written first and foremost for an Israeli audience, and 2) There may be introductory material that Soylu skipped. Soylu’s version begins:
Martin
Yeah, the actions of Israel would a lot easier to criticize if western nations had ever gotten their shit together on this. Europe hasn’t fared much better.
Starfish
@Elizabelle: For sure. I have just updated my blog for the first time since early September because the temperatures are in the single digits, and my son caught a cold last weekend from the kids in his karate class and shared it with all of us.
Hidalgo de Arizona
@Suzanne: this is the point that I wish got brought up more often; so many people say that Israel needs to exist because otherwise Jews will never be safe, but the fact is that Jews *are* comparatively safe here in the United States and in other explicitly pluralistic societies. Sure, antisemitism is still a problem, and one which we need to continue fighting against, but it has that in common with all other negative prejudices against ethnic minorities. Hell, here in the US, I would say that antisemitism is less of a problem than Islamophobia, let alone plain, old-fashion anti-black racism.
The solution isn’t to make sure every minority has an ethnostate that they can migrate to; the solution is continuing the work to build a more inclusive pluralistic society. It benefits everyone, regardless of their background, it doesn’t require people to emigrate to have rights, and it also prevents people living on the site of “Future Ethnostate For X Historically Oppressed Minority Group” from being ethnically cleansed from their homes.
Pluralism is hard, it takes constant, unrelenting effort to grow, but it is still the best way to organize a society. It has that in common with democracy.
Martin
@Baud: Yes, those are different. But it does speak directly to why a one-state solution is a nonstarter.
Elizabelle
@Starfish: That’s cool. (The blog, not the generosity with the respiratory illness.)
I like winter. Releases some of us from the “tyranny of beautiful weather”, in which you feel like you should be outside. This week? The high winds? Nope.
Baud
@Martin:
I agree. I’m not even sure the Palestinians want to share a single state with Jewish Israelis. My hope is that this clusterfuck is the final clusterfuck. I’m just not sure other countries, including Arab countries, have patience for continued fighting. But that could change.
Kay
@HumboldtBlue:
They still have him at Right wing events. There’s no standards at all- you can do anything – anything – on the Right and still remain on the payroll.
Lori Vallow Daybell, the insane child killer, is a rabid Righty. Her fundie Mormon cult was anti government and far Right – just biolerplate far Right stuff. If she wasn’t in prison she’d probably be appearing at GOP events.
Elizabelle
What is going on in Israel and Gaza is a problem from hell. I am relieved we have President Biden at the helm. I wish more people understood that we often live in a world of bad choices, and how hard it is to work to improve the situation.
For one thing, you have to properly define the problem. Accurately. Good way to learn if you are dealing with a pack of bad actors.
Are we a world of adolescents? Is that why so many are turning to authoritarians? The world was NEVER easy. It has always had challenges.
I am laughing, sadly, that The Economist and the WaPost and even the Fuck the Fucking NY Times have been running stories in the past 10 days: why don’t Americans appreciate the US’s strong economy?
Those writers and editors must not show up in mirrors, no?
Baud
@Elizabelle:
We’re in a world of cults. The reason fascism is making a comeback isn’t because they’re a majority, but because they’re one of the biggest cults.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hidalgo de Arizona: I agree with much of what you say. OTOH I don’t have a hundred generations of persecution in my family background. I think that changes a person’s perceptions. Honestly, I have been shocked how quickly a lot of people have gone from condemning Israel’s actions to blatant anti-semitism. If it really is lurking as close under the surface as it seems to be, Jews have every reason to worry about their acceptance as real citizens of whatever country they live in.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
Just for a little perspective, one of the reasons I stopped posting was it starts to feel like work. The graphic of Tunch with “feed” is what it starts to feel like- that you have to shove content into a hungry maw.
Elizabelle
@Baud: I think you are right. And all the social media disinformation has put it on steroids.
A broken record here, but we should not allow Fox News and that ilk. They exist to destroy democracy, to make a shared sense of common good impossible. (Unless you’re trying to gin up a war.)
It has taken too long for people to see the poison fruit from King Rupert’s tree, and Limbaugh, and all of those malefactors.
Baud
@Kay:
Hungry ungrateful maws.
Elizabelle
@Kay: No doubt.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
Tjhere’s context and history and other countries are also bad but deliberately bombing hospitals is not something the United States should be supporting. I’m all for context but we also can’t let “context” become burying what’s happening here. Some things can’t be put into context. They just are what they are.
Soprano2
@mrmoshpotato: I have a friend who went to that game, but wasn’t shirtless. Evidently they had warming stations, and everyone takes cardboard to stand on as insulation for the feet.
HumboldtBlue
@Kay:
Just look at the GOP’s top man.
Suzanne
@Hidalgo de Arizona:
I agree with this.
Elizabelle
@Suzanne: I read “democracy” as “decency” on a quick look at your comment.
And that works, too.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Yes. And the rightwing here using the opportunity to shut down those who protest such atrocities.
Suzanne
It’s 18 degrees outside, and I’m trying to decide if it’s okay to take the puppy for a walk. It was waaaay too snowy and windy earlier. She needs exercise. There’s no Peloton for dogs!
Kay
@Elizabelle:
Goes double for Betty C., who is a professional writer- she gets paid to write.
Viva BrisVegas
When speaking of threats to the existence of Israel, it may be worth recalling that Israel has enough nuclear weapons on hand to depopulate a significant proportion of the region, and the means to deliver those weapons.
It’s hard to see how Israel is subject to any external existential threat. Hamas is not a threat to the state of Israel. It is a collection of scumbag terrorists who threaten individual Israelis who live near the southern border.
That threat opportunistically manifested itself because Bibi and his ilk took their eyes off that border so that they could concentrate on terrorising West Bank Palestinians. Various Israeli governments playing footsie with Hamas for the past 30 years in order to keep Gaza free from Fatah has some blowback. Who knew?
Sally
Thank you everyone, for this wonderful, intelligent, informed, nuanced conversation. Only BJ could do this!
Kay
@Suzanne:
I went out. It’s – 3 here. I had to cut it short. The skin under my eyes – the only exposed skin- started to hurt. Chase her around the house.
Soprano2
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s true of abortion, too. As people who remembered what it was like when abortion was illegal in most states died, keeping abortion legal seemed to be less urgent to a lot of people. They didn’t understand it would impact all pregnant people, not just young women who got pregnant because they had sex “wrong”.
Dangerman
That’s not a tornado warning; that is Jerry Jones, who will lose his shit if Dallas doesn’t come back.
Brachiator
This is so true and it makes commenting on the situation in Gaza difficult because the bigots inevitably crawl out of the sewer to spew hatred. This includes a variety of right wingers who ostensibly support Israel, but still hate Jews, and a strange group of leftists who want to see Israel and its people vanish as though that nation somehow violates Marxist principles.
The problem is that Netanyahu is using a response to the attack as an excuse to push all the Palestinians out of Gaza. Israeli government PR in the US is often softer and nuanced, but in the UK, Israeli government officials openly call for the total destruction of Gaza and reject the two state solution.
Students in the US protest underscores the reality that although the reasonable position of the need to defend Israel has always been represented, the views of Palestinians often are not heard or listened to.
HumboldtBlue
And seeing as though this joint has become an official Swiftie club, silly little men on Twitter complaining about how often broadcasters show her during Chiefs games get their comeuppance.
Jackie
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I saw that. I grieve for his family and loved ones. Sigh
Omnes Omnibus
@Dangerman: I am truly enjoying this game.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy:
Relatedly, (warning) Amnesty.org:
The Jordan River is drying up. Israel controls water wells in the occupied territories. They’re using lack of water to try to force people out (it’s kinda hard to farm or even live without access to enough water). And, of course, now in Gaza they’re destroying much of the infrastructure to try to make people leave.
The Israeli governments actions over the last few decades are clear – they want everyone else out of the occupied territories so that Greater Israel can move into the spaces.
And they wonder why they can’t get anyone to negotiate in good faith with them…
My J was at the DC protest yesterday. She nearly froze because of the wind chill downtown.
Here’s hoping that Biden and Blinken find a way to start cutting the Gordian Knot.
Peace and comfort to the innocents.
Cheers,
Scott.
Dangerman
@Omnes Omnibus: I hear rumours of a game. This isn’t a game.
I can’t recall the last time I saw something this ugly, 12-5 vs. 9-8. Holy hell.
ETA: And to potentially get donuted? Good grief.
lowtechcyclist
@Hidalgo de Arizona:
You are confusing the solution for the society as a whole with the solution for a particular group within the society.
Besides, the world is full of places where it’s safe to be black, or safe to be Muslim, because practically everyone there is black, or is Muslim, and that’s the way it’s been for centuries. American blacks can presumably emigrate to sub-Saharan Africa; there just seems to be little interest among most blacks in doing so. Presumably American Muslims could emigrate to Muslim countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. For nearly 1900 years, Jews didn’t have any place to emigrate back to, just from one country to another when the problems in the first country were blamed on the Jews, and it was necessary to become ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ yet again.
Jackie
@Elizabelle: I’m in a state of suspension waiting to find out if the present president can take out the former president w/o any negative repercussions. 🤷🏼♀️
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Roberto el oso: I’m not saying give the Romanis an ethnostate, I’m pointed out that the Israelis are the only ethnic group which claims to need an ethnostate for protection, even when it comes to protection from the Holocaust.
@Baud: “So I’m not sure what they do if the Arab voting citizenry of Israel gets close to having a majority. But that seems to me a different issue than the question of how to give the Palestinians their own state”
Actually I think it’s the same issue. Once the Arab population under the control of Israel (counting not just the Arab-Israelis, but everyone in the West Bank and everyone in Gaza) has a numerical majority, then all they have to do is ask for ‘one man, one vote.’ And then Israel really is identical to apartheid South Africa.
dmsilev
@Suzanne:
I’ve talked to people who have had good results training their dogs to run on treadmills, so it can be done. Bikes, yeah no.
Baud
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
That assumes one state. Is that what the Palestinians want?
Geminid
@Brachiator: Regarding Netanyahu pushing Palestinians out of Gaza: there is credible reporting that in the first days of the war, Netanyahu asked Biden, Sunak and Macron to pressure the Egyptians into allowing Gazans to flee to Egypt and the response was: No way. President al Sissi won’t stand for that and neither will we.
But the Egyptians are taking no chances. They’ve put up a formidable barrier at their border with Gaza of a kind Trump could only dream of. They are letting very few Gazans past it, mainly the injured who are treated in field hospitals brought in by Turkiye and the UAE.
Hidalgo de Arizona
@lowtechcyclist:
Except this isn’t unique to the Jews; the Romani people have been dealing with the exact same problem for basically just as long, but no one is talking about the need to “form a Romani state for the Romani.” There are many stateless minorities in the world; the solution isn’t to allow every one of them to have a majoritarian state where they can oppress other people, the solution is to expand pluralism within the states they are already living in.
It’s also worth noting that Israel isn’t the first “homeland” that was created for a minority of oppressed peoples within a different state – basically every time this has been tried it’s been a humanitarian disaster. Just go look at the history of Liberia if you want a great example.
Elizabelle
@Jackie: Yes. Whoever thought that would get argued in a court?
Elizabelle
@Hidalgo de Arizona: Liberia and Haiti are among history’s tragedies.
Brachiator
@Hidalgo de Arizona:
And yet there are democratic ethno states all over the world. The assertion that this is somehow unacceptable is very recent, and often focused solely on Israel.
zhena gogolia
@Brachiator: Look at the former Yugoslavia.
Hidalgo de Arizona
@Elizabelle: in the case of Haiti, France’s demands for reparations doomed the state from the start – without that, it could’ve been a wonderful democratic state. Liberia was more of a colonialist disaster where people decided that they were going to have a homeland, the existing peoples living there be damned – when they weren’t being enslaved.
brantl
Brachiator
@Geminid:
Why should Gazans have to flee to Egypt?
What guarantees would they have that they would be able to return to Gaza? Who is going to rebuild Gaza after it has been demolished?
anitamargarita
@Suzanne: yes, thank you. This is it.
Jay
https://thewire.in/world/ghosts-will-always-haunt-stolen-land
Suzanne
@Kay: I took her out. She was doing really well, happy, bounding…. until we got about two blocks away and she freaked out and started whining and shivering. So I carried her back, by myself, in the snow. The things we do for our pups.
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic:
[ secret-handshake ]
I think I only bought 2 paperback copies over the years, but I could spend hours thumbing through it. Wonderful book.
They stopped publishing it in 2011. :-(
But they’re all online now.
Cheers,
Scott.
brantl
@Brachiator: It’s unacceptable because the Palestinians were shoved off their land, and Israel continues to shove them off even more land. Please stop pretending this isn’t the case. If those other “democracies” dispossessed the original residents, then, baldly put, they’re shitsticks, too.
Suzanne
@dmsilev:
I had a Siberian Husky who I trained to run on a treadmill. It was great. She could get her exercise when the Phoenix sidewalks were scorching.
Geminid
@Brachiator: You have just described the reasons that al Sissi, Biden, Macron and Sunak gave Netanyahu the stiff arm when he asked for this back in October.
As for who will finance rebuilding Gaza , the Gulf Arab states say they will, but not if Israel is in control, snd not if Hamas is either.
Kay
@Suzanne:
Lol. I was pretty frisky too until my eyes started to hurt.
Hidalgo de Arizona
@Brachiator:
No… Not really. Almost every state that is a healthy democracy is pretty darned pluralistic, and has actually done a pretty good job integrating different peoples over time. To take a common example that gets offered, England isn’t an Anglo Ethnostate; it’s sufficiently pluralistic that they have a Prime Minister who doesn’t have a drop of Anglo blood or follow an Anglo religion, and yet no one denies his claim to being English. It is extremely rare – and honestly borderline impossible – to have a health democracy in a state that is focused on maintaining some form of ethnic purity, particularly when that state has a large minority population it wants to exclude. See Jim Crow America for a spectacular example of how poorly that works.
mrmoshpotato
@Dangerman:
LOL!
Ohio Mom
@Geminid: All the biblical references that include the number 40 — in the Noah story, it rained for 40 days, the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years, Jesus fasted for 40 days — puzzled me until an uncomfortably pregnant acquaintance complained that “Why do they say you’re pregnant for three months, it’s 40 weeks, there’s four weeks in a month, that’s 10 months!”
Oh — that number 40. The number that symbolizes that something new and different is about to be “born.”
lowtechcyclist
@Hidalgo de Arizona:
Where do the Romani stand on this? I’ve been aware of them for eons, but I’d never heard that any of them were arguing for such a state.
If that’s the case, then they’re choosing differently from the Jews. That’s fine.
This was a white people’s solution to the problems raised by slavery. Of course it was a disaster. A comparison to Israel is laughable.
RSA
I don’t have any useful thoughts about the current conflict in the Middle East. I’ll bring a couple of numbers to the conversation, though:
0.2%. Among global religions, this is roughly how much of the population Judaism accounts for. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc., are orders of magnitude greater.
40%. This is the roughly percentage of the Jewish population killed during the Holocaust, within the memories of many people living today.
Imagine being a member of such a tiny minority, in which everyone of a certain age knows someone who was murdered because of that membership. It’s understandable if Jews want to see specific measures put in place to preserve themselves and their culture, beyond trusting in pluralistic democracies. There are other comparable groups with comparable concerns; our governments tend to be dismissive, which is not necessarily right.
lowtechcyclist
@Hidalgo de Arizona:
That ‘particularly’ is the rare part. States with large enough populations of minorities to be a threat to majority control are infrequent.
We’re about as well set up to grapple with that problem as any country that has had that situation has been. And we’re doing such a swell job of it.
Omnes Omnibus
@RSA: That’s the point I have been trying to make here.
VFX Lurker
To clarify, does this refer to the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion on October 17th? The Associated Press reported that a misfired rocket from Gaza likely caused that explosion. It was not deliberate.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: And judging by the rise in antisemitic attacks and Israel being held to a different standard than other countries I can’t really say that they are wrong.
I mean many countries even democratic ones have absolutely terrible leadership but no one seriously says that they should cease to exist because of that.
No one defaces local Chinese restaurants because they disagree with mainland China’s position on Taiwan.
Brachiator
@Hidalgo de Arizona:
I will admit that the problem is mainly with the unhealthy democracies, but even some of the healthy ones could do better.
anitamargarita
@Kay:
@Ohio Mom: I have a memory of Justin Trudeau saying, in effect, “there are Canadians all over the world, they just haven’t come home yet.” I think this was after trump attempted to ban Muslims from the US.
Suzanne
To be abundantly clear, no one here is saying that “Israel should cease to exist”. There is a valid question if it must maintain a Jewish-majority population, if it should be a secular multinational state, or if it should go back to its 1967 borders (and abandon the settlements) to allow the formation of Palestine.
Crazy people on Xhitter say a lot of shit, but that’s not the discussion here, or in the halls of power.
Hidalgo de Arizona
@lowtechcyclist:
They petitioned the UN for a state in 1950 and were rejected.
…and the Balfour declaration wasn’t a “white people’s solution to antisemitism”? Both states were created by the declarations of white people on the land of non-white people with the expectation that those non-white people would just “deal with it.” Both times it proved to be a disaster for the people who were displaced, but the crimes they suffered weren’t those of the white people who said “yeah, you can colonize those lands so you’re out of our hair” but rather the crimes of the people doing the colonizing.
schrodingers_cat
Palestinians have had more than one opportunity before the current hard right turn Israel took (which started W’s admin IIRC) to form their own state. I distinctly remember the last one when Bill Clinton was the President and Ehud Barak was the PM and Arafat represented the Palestinian Authority.
Russians are using the current Israel-Hamas war to spread animosity toward the US and in particular the Democratic Party and Joe Biden. I see this among my left-of-center Twitter mutuals from India, for example
ETA: The slogan often seen in the pro-Hamas protests everywhere is
Rashida Tlaib has said this too.
Hidalgo de Arizona
@Brachiator: no doubt at all – my point really is that there’s a spectrum for both democracy and pluralism, and it’s not helpful if we imagine that they’re just binary settings.
Jay
@lowtechcyclist:
anitamargarita
@Viva BrisVegas: this is all true
karen marie
@Betty Cracker: I’m not sure reminding people of the founding of Israel helps. The US State Department simply yada-yada‘s the details.
Anyway
@Geminid:
Palestinians with good reason are wary of leaving their homes. Israeli govts going back to 1967 and 1948 have a history of not letting them back – their homes are generally seized and taken over by Israelis.
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
More broadly, a world of echo chambers, that actively defend/are actively defended against outside information.
Anyway
Most jackals seem to focus on Netanyahu as THE bad guy. Yes he is but I’m not convinced that Netanyahu getting ousted will change things much. Most of the center-right Israeli establishment is against a 2-state solution and are ok with Israeli settlers terrorizing west bank P residents. Random bloggers without much power seem to be the only ones supporting a 2-state solution. I do think Biden genuinely believed in it but not sure he has a partner in Israel that will work towards it.
Hidalgo de Arizona
@lowtechcyclist:
Lol, no they aren’t; consider the Scots and Welsh in the UK, literally anyone but white Protestants in the US, or Germany, where even after unification people primarily identified with their federal state rather than the nation as a whole; basically anyone who wasn’t Prussian was a minority. The reason you don’t think of these is that all of these states successfully merged the identity of these minorities into part of the state’s identity *because* they embraced pluralism, so a Scotsman and a Welshman were just as British as an Englishman, a Bavarian and a Hamburger were just as German as a Berliner, etc. Almost every large country on earth has formed by embracing multiple national identities of minorities within it – some are better at this than others, but it’s still a prerequisite to having a country rather than having an empire with provinces, which is more like what’s happened in Russia and China, where minorities are integrated by forcibly replacing their culture rather than incorporating it into the identity of the country.
brantl
You’re dead right, bud. And when do I get my atheist state? They’ve been persecuting Atheists for hundreds of years, too! On the money it should say “In gods We don’t trust. Ever.”.
Ohio Mom
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank you.
planetjanet
@HumboldtBlue: Just skip to the next post. Takes a microsecond.
Bill Arnold
@lowtechcyclist:
FWIW, this is a good paper on the general subject of Nazi genocide of Roma, with some focus on Porrajmos denialists:
ROMANIES AND THE HOLOCAUST: A REEVALUATION AND AN OVERVIEW (Ian Hancock, 2004)
brantl
@Baud: Not of only one ethnicity, no.
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: @satby: Thirded I too agree we need more politics focused posts not fewer.
brantl
@Suzanne: Many Israelis, as foam-at-the-mouth Orthodox Jews, believe that they were guaranteed those lands that the Palestinians occupy by God, even though they hadn’t lived on that land in at least hundreds of years. Which is why they feel perfectly justified in driving them off that land, by any means available, including killing them, or stealing their land. It’s hard to make sense apply to bat-shit nuts people.
brantl
By carving it out of Gaza and the West Bank.
Ohio Mom
@anitamargarita: All I can say is, if Trudeau wants “all Canadians to come home,” he’s going to have to loosen the immigration requirements. I took a look at them during the GW years and meeting them is challenging.
I did a quick tally of what would be Ohio Family’s points toward acceptance and I’m surprised they even let us visit.
Brachiator
@Anyway:
I simply hope that somehow the various parties can work something out and live in peace. How that happens may be something different than what is on the table now.
However I note that the Palestinian ambassador to the UK recently emphasized acceptance of the two state solution. Seems to me that this has to be a starting point.
ETA. Even with this I note that the separation of Palestinian areas into non-contiguous areas, Gaza and the West Bank, complicates things.
Geminid
@Jay: Your comment reminded me of a story I read a couole months ago, on the Kurdistan24 news site (kurdistan24.net):
This festival was an occasion for Iraqi Kurdistan’s Gypsies to celebrate their crafts and history. The Governor of Duhok, in the Kurdish Region of Iraq, opened the festival with a speech giving tribute to the “martyred” Dom soldiers who fell fighting ISIS alongside the Pesh Merga.
The reporter said there are an estimated 46,000 Dom people in the Kurdish Region, and that they want people to stop calling them by the derogatory name “Qarashi” and use Dom instead.
It occurred to me when I read this story that there probably are not many places in the larger region where such a celebration could be held safely. I remembered the article because I read a lot about events in the region and good stories are few and far between.
gwangung
@UncleEbeneezer: I wonder why that’s not a factor that’s well considered by analysts (madd media and otherwise). It’s an obvious tactic to use, it’s very cheap to do and it can have big payoffs.
RSA
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, your comment @54 might have been what prompted me to write.
lowtechcyclist
@Hidalgo de Arizona:
Wait, the English just accepted the Scots? I recall there being a bit of military history in there.
Similarly, Bismarck united Germany by conquest.
I can’t recall having seen your nym before, but every point you make, there’s a big assumption that has a big hole in it. I’m tired of this game. To pastry with you.
Another Scott
@gwangung: +1
And we know that he has invested in a troll farm.
To be clear, I would guess that the vast majority of participants (and even the leadership) in the protests have nothing to do with whatever VVP and similar monsters are trying to do. But it would be malpractice for VVP and the rest not to try to push division and dissent in their adversaries given the potential payoffs for them. And we should all recognize that even while we have our vigorous debates.
Cheers,
Scott.
brantl
Thank Fucking Christ.
brantl
@Roberto el oso: Who gets to keep a claim on land that they haven’t inhabited in hundreds of years?
Seriously, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve read in many years.
Geminid
@Anyway: Former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon, who wrote the piece featured in the post is not some random blogger, and there are plenty other Jewish Israelis like him who want to see a Palestinian state.
Many of these, like retired general Amos Yadlin and former MK Einat Wilf are very cautious, though. Yadlin says a Palestinian state must not be armed; “We’ve seen what they want to do to us,” he said in an interview with Politico 10 days after the October 7 attack.
This group may not be a majority at this time, but I believe it’s not nearly as marginal as you assert.
Einat Wilf served on Prime Minister Rabin’s team that negotiated the Oslo Accords and has written extensively on this question and has been speaking a lot about it lately as well. She is a good source for those interested in the problem, and in attitudes of Jewish Israelis towards it.
brantl
@Ohio Mom: Months are, mostly 30 or 31 days, not 28 days ( 2 X 9 = 18, 3 X 9 = 27! nearly a whole month, by your reckoning).
Uncle Cosmo
Come sit by me & we’ll trade horror stories from that noble profession where error is normal, deviation is standard, and data is a four-letter word… ;^D
brantl
Nothing entitles a shit-upon people to knowingly, deliberately shit on another people (the ‘another people’ NOT BEING the ones who did the shitting-on of the shit-upon people), under any conditions. That’s ridiculous horseshit, and it always was.
This eye-of-an-innocent-for-the-eye-that-was-taken-from-me/you leads to a world full of blind people as it cycles around the fucking PLANET. The common sense of that sentence overwhelms me; I hope it overwhelms YOU.
Most of Palestine is innocent of these crimes, and either the Israelis are hopelessly incompetent at war, or they are trying to eliminate massive numbers of Palestinians.
Alison Rose
@brantl: Yes, because they all chose to just pack up and move one day.
Geminid
@brantl: “…even though they haven’t lived on that land in hundreds of years”?!!.
I’m sorry, Jews have lived in what is now the state of Israel for the last 3 millennia. The Romans did not remove them all, and communities survived in Galilee. Much of the Talmud was composed in Tiberias during the 8th and 9th centuries.
When Spain expelled its Sephardic Jews in the 16th century the Ottoman Sultan gave them refuge and encouraged them to settle in Palestine alongside its surviving Jewish population. Some estimates are that there were as many as 40,000 Jews living in this area as of 1880, under Ottoman rule.
Roberto el oso
@brantl: In my comment I noted that this claim exists “whether one agrees or not”. You are, at the least, aware of this specific claim regarding Jews and Israel, aren’t you?
Uncle Cosmo
There seems to me essentially three levels of religiosity, which for lack of obvious alternatives I call the dogmatic, the social, and the cultural:
I left OHCAC (the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church) six weeks after my “Goyische Bar Mitzvah” and never looked back, but I count myself as LC (Lapsed Catholic) or RFC (Recovering From Catholicism) – my brother occasionally wonders why the family atheist seems to know more about their faith than they do. (“Know your enemy,” I usually reply with a smile.)
(FWIW I broached this notion once to a lady I met late in life whom I came to think of as My Favorite Mormon, and it puzzled her. In time I realized that the only way to qualify as a “cultural Latter-Day Saint” was to leave the church entirely.)
Timill
@Geminid:
And they won’t accept that, because they know what Israel wants to do to them.
Roberto el oso
@Uncle Cosmo: I have long described myself as a “devout Ex-Catholic”. I try not to give offense on the subject of religious belief but when various attempts were made (college days and later) to interest me in this or that Protestant or interdenominational group I always responded (politely) that, having left the One True Church of my own accord, why in the world would I want to settle for something less than that.
Being an apostate can sometimes feel like a fulltime calling.
wjca
I realize that this is a nearly dead thread. But one point needs to be made.
Forget, for a moment, the Palestinians and who gets the West Bank. Israel, as it currently exists, cannot survive. Why not? Consider:
The effective control of the government rests with the ultra-Orthodox. That will only increase, as their birth rate is substantial higher than other Jews in israel. And their kids are far less likely to leave their community than, for example, US evangelicals.
But they contribute nothing to the economy, or to the military (without which Israel is toast). Instead, they have a deal where their kids are exempt from military service. Instead, they are subsidized by the rest of the country so they can study their religion. Which study, more precisely the lack of any other study, makes them unfit to participate in a modern economy. So they then get more subsidies (albeit less explicit ones).
As a result, everybody else has the choice of getting taxed ever more heavily to support those parasites, or leaving. They probably don’t want to leave, but the economics are getting unsupportable. And without the modern economy they create and support, there’s nothing left but an indefensible shell.
Geminid
@Timill: What if that’s the choice presented them? What if Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE, the EU , the US, the permanent Security Council members all approve a settlement that creates a Palestinian state but provides that it not be allowed weapons heavier than those required for police work? Will the Palestinians reject it? I don’t think so.
Citizen Alan
@SW: That is meaningless to Israel since it is, obviously, delusional nonsense. It is to the benefit of Israel’s national goals to cultivate the blind, unwavering support of the millennialist Christian Identity death cult that calls itself the GOP.
Geminid
@wjca: I think you have overstated the problem here. The two Haredi parties won approximately 15% of the Knesset members in the last electjon. It would have been less if Meretz and Balad had not missed the 3.25% threshold, effectively stranding the votes of 6% of electorate. The Haredi parties weren’t even in the last government that sat from June 2021 through December, 2022. This is far from a dominant bloc.
Citizen Alan
@Yarrow: It’s just 9/11 all over again. The Bush Administration completely bumbled on the issue of Al-Qaeda terrorism. Al-Quaeda did 9/11. And the Bush Administration declared war against Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan before using it as a pretext to go to war against Iraq, which is what the Bushies loudly said the wanted to do before they ever took office. Similarly, Netanyahu all but invited Hamas to perform a terrorist act, Hamas successfully performed a terrorist act, and Netanyahu promptly said “Excellent! Now I have a pretext for ethnic cleansing!”
Citizen Alan
@Suzanne:
If it ever becomes the Jewish Ethno-state the Israeli right wing wants, it will be an even less safe place for Israeli Jews who don’t meet the standards of Jewishness that the Israeli right wing demands. All right wing governments require an underclass that is the source of all social ills, and when Bibi’s coalition doesn’t have the Palestinians to kick around anymore, they’ll go after liberal Jews.
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: Netanyahu was not hapoy to see the events of October 7. He was deeply shaken, and reports are that he took days to fully function again. Those events ruined his political reputation and will likely end his career as Prime Minister by this May.
Timill
@Geminid: Any Palestinian leader who agrees to “no defence against Israel” has a life expectancy measured in days.
If the guarantors put garrisons in place so that Israel had to go through them rather than round, and thus trigger intervention, then it might be OK.
Otherwise Israel’s grabbing their land in 5-10 years.
Hidalgo de Arizona
@lowtechcyclist:
Scotland was essentially an occupied colonial possession until the acts of Union and things like George IV’s famous visit to Scotland, which solidified the status of Scotland as part of the United Kingdom. Marriage gained the English king the crown of Scotland, but military power was required to hold it until the English and the Scots agreed – through diplomacy – to be one nation, and the cultural identity of that nation became more important to the people living in it than the identity of the constituent nations.
The Northern German coalition was formed before the first war – the Austro-Prussian war – and the war that completed the unification was the Franco-Prussian war. What do those two wars have in common? They were both against foreign powers who ultimately weren’t part of the state that formed; they were both exercises in forming a political consensus within the states that ultimately formed the whole.
As for why you haven’t seen my nym here often, I normally only comment when I hear someone making wildly unsupported claims without pushback; something that the topic of Israel tends to bring out of the woodwork.
Citizen Alan
@schrodingers_cat:
Actually, weren’t there plenty of examples of violence towards American Chinese by right wing morons upset over “the China Virus.”
Geminid
@Timill: You seem to believe that Israel has no constraints on it besides military ones. That is not so. They need trade, acceptance, and diplomatic backing from the EU and Arab Gulf countries, as well as the US, Great Britain and the other English language democracies. They don’t have some sort of racial compulsion to steal land that would override that self-interest.
Citizen Alan
@Ohio Mom: Same here. Back in 2004, when I seriously looked into it, I think I could have barely made it in if I undertook a serious study of French. Now, 20 years older and not significantly richer? Not a chance.
wjca
And the soi-disant “Freedom” caucus is what percentage of the House?
Sheer numbers don’t necessarily tell the whole story. Never more so than in a parliamentary system, in a case where the Prime Minister can’t survive without their votes. Only look at how many, and how significant, the cabinet seats they got.
Citizen Alan
@Geminid: Bush “wasn’t happy” to see 9/11 interrupt his reading of “My Pet Goat,” but that didn’t deter him from using 9/11 to get what he wanted: (a) an invasion of Iraq, (b) a way to demonize Democrats so that he could get a compliant Congress in 2002, and (c) reelection due mainly to the advantages of being a “war-time president.” Similarly, Netanyahu clearly understands that his survival depends on the mystique of being a “war-time PM” and the unwavering support of the Ultraorthodox factions that are perfectly fine at the thought of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinans.
Timill
@Hidalgo de Arizona:
Would you care to expand on that, please?
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: You are talking about aspirations here. But have these people succeeded in ethnically cleansing Gaza? Will they succeed? It does not look like it to me, and their best chances have come and gone already.
Brachiator
@brantl:
Revisiting a dead thread.
A lunar month is 29.5 days. Often this means 28 days, with adjustments.
Manyakitty
@Baud: thank you for saying that more appropriately that I could.
Hidalgo de Arizona
@Timill: it’s a bit of a tale…
So, in 1503, James IV of Scotland married Margaret, daughter of Henry VII (good, old Henry Tudor) of England. Henry VII’s son, Henry VIII of England only had one son (despite his best efforts) whose brief reign produced no issue, leading to the reign of Mary (who also had no children) and then Elizabeth (ditto, ditto…) and once Elizabeth finally died, the last heir to the English throne was… James VI of Scotland who promptly headed South and only ever bothered returning to Scotland once before he died. So, while a Scottish Prince had acquired the English throne, it was rather like Boeing acquiring McDonnell Douglas. Sure, the nameplate says one thing, but the day-to-day management is something else.
Now, the key thing is that this was a personal union of the English and Scottish crowns; not a full political union. It was entirely dependent on the Stuarts holding the throne, which lead to problems when Cromwell came into power (which I’m not going into) and when James II of England/James VII of Scotland was deposed in the Glorious Revolution and William and Mary (James’ daughter) were invited to take the throne. The fact that William and Mary were Presbyterian was problematic in primarily Episcopalian Scotland and lead to many people supporting the successors of James after he was deposed; the pretenders James and Charles. Pretty much immediately you had the first Jacobite rebellion, which was the first of five over the next sixty years. This is the period of time referred to when you hear the joke that twelve men and a bagpipe male a Scottish rebellion.
During this time, however, the Acts of Union passed both the English and Scottish Parliaments, officially welding the two kingdoms together into one single political entity, as the English and Scottish political elites drew closer. Though, this did also drive a lot of support for Jacobite causes from people who felt like they lost power from the political union, and was broadly unpopular among the vast majority of people in Scotland.
As three Jacobite rebellions continued, the UK continued clamping down harder and harder on markers of Scottish identity, ultimately banning even the wearing of the kilt after the final Jacobite uprising. This, and the following highland clearances, lead to emigration and a general decrease in the prominence of Scottish identity, until the repeal of the Act of Proscription of 1746 in 1782. Around this time, you begin to see a revival in Scottish culture, the Scots language, etc, with figures like Robert Burns. However, rather than trying to crush this revival of Scottish culture as they had in 1719 and 1746, the British royalty embraced it, and through things like George IV’s 1820 visit to Scotland where he wore a kilt, Scottish identity became more tightly entwined as a part of the United Kingdom, rather than something completely apart, something that has stood until recently, as England’s increasing conservatism and general paranoia about immigrants has clashed with the more liberal view of most Scots. The most recent referendum for independence can probably be best understood as a response to Brexit, with multiple political entities eager to jettison the dead-enders in England in favor of the European Union.
Timill
@Hidalgo de Arizona: Right – you probably want to note the Darien Scheme as well, but that makes much more sense than your original comment appeared to.
Manyakitty
@Elizabelle: SERIOUSLY.
Manyakitty
@Omnes Omnibus: thanks for this.
Manyakitty
@brantl: ten generations of my family disprove your point, but don’t let facts and reality stop you from foaming at the mouth. Better you gfy.
Hidalgo de Arizona
@Timill: the failure of the Darien scheme was definitely a major factor pushing the Scottish elite towards unionism, but it was just one of many factors; my thought at the end of the day is that they recognized which side their bread was buttered on, and their personal well-being overcame their reticence about losing power and feelings of national pride. The early 18th century wasn’t a great time in Scotland.
Anyways, sorry about my original summary being unclear; that happens when you’re trying to compress ~350 years of history into a sentence to get a point across.
brantl
@Manyakitty: Did your family take land from the Palestinians? If so, why?
Geminid
@wjca: This Prime Minister cannot survive without the votes of the two Ultra-Orthodox parties. That is not a fixed feature of the Israeli electirate, though.
Paul in KY
@Chetan Murthy: I think (if it ever happens) that the Palestinians will not get a state that includes all territory not in Israel pre-67. There will be some territory that they (Israel) keep, because they can.
Paul in KY
@Chetan Murthy: I think your conjecture is overly optimistic (if you dislike Israel). IMO, they ain’t going anywhere.
Paul in KY
@Baud: Any Palestinian State will be Moslem. The inhabitants being Palestinian/Arabs who will be 99.9% (professed) Moslem.
Paul in KY
@Hidalgo de Arizona: Regarding Israel, the cow’s done jumped the fence on that one.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: IMO, Palestine will not get a state from the Israelis until a Palestinian leader emerges who uses Ghandi’s ideas of non-violent resistance to demonstrate that A) He/she has control over the population and is their undisputed representative and B) the population can be relied upon to be non-violent towards their soon-to-be neighbor, Israel.
Manyakitty
@brantl: no, and I resent your general attitude. Maybe shut up now.
Geminid
@Paul in KY: That sure could take a long time! Mr. Ayalon, the former Shin Bet chief quoted in the post, says he thinks Marwan Barghouti can do it. Maybe he’s just impatient, but Ayalon knows this situation well and has thought about it a lot.
One thing I notice in these discussions is that people in the region are trying to bring about solutions that people 5,000 miles away say are impossible. But the people in the region know this problem better than we do because they’ve dealt with its effects all their lives. and they do not have the luxury of blamecasting, cynicism and defeatism.They have to solve it.
According to Ayalon, the elements of a solution are present (see excerpt at #124). Also, the Oslo Accords already provide a political framework that’s as good as it needs to be and more practical than any other that’s proposed.
Each side will have to make sacrifices neither is willing to make right now, but that’s not because the sacrifices are so great. They’re less than those the two peoples make in the state of unending war they live in now. This is a matter of people understanding their real interests, and of political leadership willing to tell them the truth.
So I am not a cynic or a fatalist on this question. I’m just watching Israeli politics as closely as I can, because that is where I think this logjam will begin to start breaking up first.
brantl
@Manyakitty:The ten generations that you speak of, aren’t living on land that they forcibly took from the Palestinians, since that predates when the Palestinians were dispossessed. Logic, how does it work, and when will you learn it?
I am not saying that Jewish people that have bought land that no one was forced from, and didn’t take what wasn’t there have any problem at all.
I think you have a real problem with my argument, and that is that it is true, and fair, or you could come up with an argument that actually meant something. Try again.
brantl
@Manyakitty: Then how did what I said even apply to them, or anyone you’re talking about? Who you’re talking about and who I’m talking about reads as though they can’t be the same group. And you don’t like my “attitude”? Tough.