by Andrew
It seems so futile to even bother writing about this war, given there seems to be little hope of it being resolved in our lifetimes. With what appear to be punitive strikes in the mix of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, they are likely to stir up desires for revenge among the people of Lebanon just as the Hezbollah strikes are stirring up hatred in Israel.
"This is taking us back 20 years to the Lebanon war," said Rachel Ronen, 54, whose accounting firm was left a shambles by the morning rockets that hit 15 minutes before her secretary was due for work. Asked what Israel should do in return, Ronen, her eyes red from weeping, said, "Hit them."
I certainly can sympathize with Ms. Ronen’s anger and frustration; I would doubtless feel the same way under similar circumstances. But I’m sure that the Lebanese who are enduring Israeli strikes that are eliciting similar reactions.
I’m a military guy[see below]. I believe in finding solutions. This isn’t one. Israel wants its soldiers back, and support them in that desire. But this operation strikes me as poorly designed at best. To retrieve their soldiers militarily requires one of two things. Either Israel has to lay down an effective cordon around the area the soldiers could possibly be held in and then search that area house by house, or they have to threaten Hezbollah so seriously that they’ll agree to give up the soldiers in exchange for a truce. Option A is logistically almost impossible: the cordon the Israelis have laid down around Lebanon has not been tight enough to prevent Hezbollah from getting the soldiers out of Lebanon if they so choose (and if Syria will permit it). So there’s no guarantee that the soldiers are anywhere Israel can now search. Then consider the idea of trying to search every nook and cranny in Lebanon where one might hide two soldiers. Houses, caves, businesses…the list isn’t infinite, but it’s large enough that the soldiers may be dead of natural causes before Israel troops can complete the sweep. (Not to mention the fact such sweeps would have to be conducted among a hostile population, a situation that will almost certainly lead to massive bloodletting.) So from a military perspective, option A seems to have very poor odds of success. Option B is to place pressure on Hezbollah sufficient to make returning the soldiers worth the political costs of giving them up. That means killing members of Hezbollah in wholesale lots. Since I’m not aware of any way to distinguish between a member of Hezbollah and a Lebanese civilian, this will once again lead to major bloodshed, and we already have reports of 161 dead Lebanese, most of whom are claimed to be civilians. (Granted, Hezbollah will try to maximize the number of civilian deaths, but given the Israelis are using airstrikes, even if they’re engaging known Hezbollah targets, the odds are good the majority of the casualties with be civilians.) Perhaps Israel can kill enough Hezbollah and Lebanese to convince Hezbollah of the need to return the soldiers, but how many would it take? Ten days of fighting at the current pace is 1,600 dead. Even the United States is not going to be able to stand beside Israel for long with casualties mounting at that rate. How long can the Israeli government hold power with Palestinians, Israelis, and Lebanese all immiserated for weeks at a time? From a military perspective, option B is worse than option A, because it requires a strength of will that no modern democracies appear to have and because it is ultimately little more than inflicting semi-random deaths in the hopes that killing enough of the other side will force capitulation. That does not fall into my definition of a military solution.
So what is to be done? If I knew that…well, I don’t know what I’d do, actually. But, as Gary noted earlier, there are no good solutions. I will note, however, that Hezbollah and Hamas obviously want something in exchange for these soldiers, or they would simply have murdered them. Israel has a history of giving up quite a bit in exchange for her soldiers. If they want to change that policy, that’s probably a wise move, but the flip side to that is that Israel will have to accept that when her soldiers are captured, they’re effectively dead. Striking out in an attempt to achieve capitulation through pressure is unlikely to work. Massive bombing failed to break either the Germans’ or the Japanese’s will in World War II. Rolling Thunder didn’t break North Vietnam’s will. Israel’s current course of action, while understandable from an emotional perspective, seems unlikely to achieve its goals. I hope they’re not willing to go much further down this road to try and get their soldiers back. Which means their only other options are to negotiate or to cut their losses. Harsh? Perhaps, but Israel has already lost more lives in this operation than the three soldiers it hopes to save, and those numbers will only grow from here.
Update: I should note that my intent wasn’t to suggest that nonmilitary personnel don’t seek solutions. As a soldier, however, I’m trained to visualize the end state of an operation before beginning, something that I’m still not convinced Israel has done.
Yeah, a big problem is “them.” One always wants to hit “them,” but knowing exactly who “they” are is a bit of a problem. There is no monolithic “The Palestinians” any more than there is a “The Jews,” “The Left,” “The Blacks,” “The Democrats.” The Muslims. The Humans.
Israeli policy is these matter so often looks like an embrace of the ‘themness’ of the other, and that this attitude ends up favoring those of “them” who say that deals with Israel should never be done seems always to get lost in the tragedy.
“But this operation strikes me as poorly designed at best. To retrieve their soldiers militarily requires one of two things….”
I think you’re missing part of the point; Israel knows that directly finding the soldiers is impossible, as you acknowledged; but much more is involved than “Option B is to place pressure on Hezbollah sufficient to make returning the soldiers worth the political costs of giving them up.”
The goal at this point is clearly to seek to destroy as much Hezbollah infrastructure as possible, while placing as much pressure as possible on the Lebanese government to finally live up to Security Council Resolution 1559, and move the Lebanese Army south to the border, and take control away from Hezbollah. They’re banking on splitting Hezbollah off from its position of grudging acceptance within Lebanon.
I’m certainly not optimistic that either part of this, the attempted destruction of much of Hezbollah’s capability, and the attempt to force the hand of the Lebanese government, will particularly work well, and I’m fearful of Israel getting stuck to whatever degree in Lebanon again, but these are clearly the notions in play.
“Since I’m not aware of any way to distinguish between a member of Hezbollah and a Lebanese civilian….”
Location, pretty much. And, yeah, there will certainly be plenty of “collateral damage.” War sucks.
“I will note, however, that Hezbollah and Hamas obviously want something in exchange for these soldiers….”
Credit in the Arab world, domestic political strength in their respective spheres, prisoners returned, and damage and pain to Israel, are the four goals. (My formulation; not quoting anyone.)
“I hope they’re not willing to go much further down this road to try and get their soldiers back.”
Oh, I think they’re willing to go a very long way down this road. It doesn’t help any impulses otherwise that Peretz, the Defense Minister, is a civilian and a politician from the Labor Party who has consistently been in the peace camp for his entire career, always calling for restraint, and a less violent way, and for other options to be found, and that he’s been consistently criticized in Israel until a week ago for not responding strongly enough to Hamas/Islamic Jihad/etc. attacks (and is the first civilian Defense Minister with no military background in many years), while Olmert is the accidental P. M. filling the shoes of the hero Sharon, just elected, who has to prove that he is capable of defending Israel and has the strength and will to do it.
Neither does the Israeli public mood, after withrawing from Lebanon, and painfully withdrawing from Gaza, with Israeli fighting Israeli over that, and even more painfully declaring that it would withdraw from most of the West Bank, a decision that will lead to even more bitter fighting, some physical, and in which Israel is then rewarded with nothing but missile attacks, and raids, from the south, and now a completely unprovoked major attack, escalated into all-out war, from North, inclined all that much to piss about and twiddle thumbs while missiles rain down.
“Perhaps, but Israel has already lost more lives in this operation than the three soldiers it hopes to save, and those numbers will only grow from here.”
Israel has never been about saving lives for the sake of doing nothing. The attitude is that lives will be lost, so best that they be sacrificed to strike the enemy and accomplish a necessary mission, rather than just be victims.
And Israel would take 300 dead, or more, to try to retrieve 3 people. Nobody gets left behind. Nobody.
This may be, perhaps, dumb and futile.
But it is what it is.
This sort of response is part of what Israel is looking for.
Great, Gary, a new Lebanese civil war. I guess there’s fiolks who find that preferable to what H&H are trying the prevent: the prisoners plan from gaining broad acceptance in Palestinian society.
Gary,
Actually, I respect Israel’s willingness to take casualties to get back their own. I’m just uncertain how likely this is to succeed on either count.
That article is interesting. I hope that things can work out in that direction. I’m just somewhat skeptical, given the success of such campaigns in the past.
On the other hand, perhaps this war has a better cognate in the Kosovo war.
“Since I’m not aware of any way to distinguish between a member of Hezbollah and a Lebanese civilian….”
Cue discussion about why the laws of war pertaining to the dress and location of soldiers actually matters.
I agree with Gary’s assessment. The ideal result would be: for Hezbollah’s infrastructure to be destroyed, the Lebanese government forced to recognize that it has to do something about Hezbollah, the Lebanese population (at least the non-Shi’ite parts) furious at Hezbollah for making its very own foreign policy that gets everyone else hurt, and then the prisoners returned.
Of course, only the first of these can actually be achieved by military force; the attacks are likely to create hostility to Israel and the (completely false) sense of Hezbollah as victims to be rallied to; and the Lebanese government (except for its Hezbollah ministers) probably already knows it needs to assert a monopoly of force, but can’t. Plus, there’s the risk that if it did, it would return Lebanon to a state of civil war.
Andrew: the demoralization part of the Kosovo war might be analogous, I guess, but there are crucial differences. First: demoralize the central government and you weaken the people you need to strengthen. (Demoralizing Hezbollah I think is so far out in fantasy-land that I’m going to leave it aside. They thrive on Israeli aggression.) It’s entirely unlike demoralizing Milosevic in this respect. Second, there was something we wanted Milosevic to do that he was capable of doing, namely pulling out of Kosovo; and if we could get him to do this, it would be tough slogging ahead, but the situation would be vastly improved. In this situation it’s not at all clear who the Israelis are trying to pressure, or what they are be trying to pressure them to do, or that the result of their doing it would be a remotely manageable situation, as Milosevic pulling out of Kosovo was. (Again, I don’t mean to suggest that post- pullout Kosovo was easy; just that it was a lot more tractable than anything that’s likely to result from this case.)
It is interesting to me that the Israelis seem to have struck Hezbollah targets, targets connected to Hezbollah’s supply lines (e.g., airports, the Damascus highway), and to a lesser extent targets with some symbolic value. Not the Lebanese government or those of its assets that do not fall under one of the first two headings.
Cue discussion about why the laws of war pertaining to the dress and location of soldiers actually matters.
Such rules were written for wars between evenly matched nation states, where abiding by them was not a guarantee that you were going to be slaughtered wholesale. Given the overwhelming military superiority of the United States (or Isreal in the Middle East), if the insurgents in Iraq (or Hezbollah) were to abide by them they would dispatched in short order (someone, maybe on a thread here, commented that complaints about the insurgents not abiding by the conventions amounted to a complaint that “they were not lining up properly to be shot.”)
Of course, the insurgents/Hezbollah know this and so they are faced with either not fighting or fighting dirty. They chose the latter option, and would likely do so no matter what we do. So better to live up to our ideals because not doing so only harms us.
Tick, tick, tick…
Israeli military sources say they believe the longer-range missiles fired yesterday at Haifa, Israel, were made in Iran.
“Such rules were written for wars between evenly matched nation states, where abiding by them was not a guarantee that you were going to be slaughtered wholesale.”
Nope. Completely untrue. The laws of war were not written under the misaprehension that they would make Belgium more or less able to stand up to a future German army. Armies are almost never equal, and often aren’t in the same league when they meet in battle. They were not designed to be about who wins, but rather how to avoid massive civilian damage while the winner wins. The fact that Hezbollah is not likely to succeed against the Israeli army is no excuse whatsoever.
The Geneva Conventions and the other laws of war were designed with the understanding that soldiers fight back against people who attack them. That is why if a guerilla attacks from a holy site and return fire destroys the site, the war crime accrues to the guerilla fighting from the site.
One disturbing theory comes from Brit writer Johann Hari. He argues that Israel opted for total war in Gaza precisely because it feared that Hamas was on the verge of publicly accepting Israel’s right to exist. Or at least a faction of Hamas. The extremist organization was coming under intense pressure from the more moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to do make the historic concession. Doing so would have foiled Israel’s great strategy, one based on the notion that there is no “partner for peace.”
Far-fetched? Not really. Remember that it was Ariel Sharon and his allies that originally encouraged Hamas in order to undermine the more moderate Yasser Arafat. It would not be totally inconsistent with Israeli history to decide to wipe out the same organization at the precise moment in which outside circumstances might have forced it to come to the table.
From Marc Cooper’s bLog:
http://marccooper.com/more-war/
“Israeli military sources say they believe the longer-range missiles fired yesterday at Haifa, Israel, were made in Iran.”
This is neither news or a mystery. Here is what they’re using. Hezbollah loudly says so. They announced the installation of the Raad/Thunder missiles months ago, and have been endlessly bragging about how they will rain them down on Israel, yadda yadda, ever since.
Close-mouthed is not a trait of Hezbollah. And Lebanon doesn’t have a native missile industry. (Now, it would be news if Hezbollah had gotten some Shahab-3 missiles into Lebanon, but, really, that would be over-kill for range, and thus fairly unlikely.)
But it’s not as if the Iran-Hezbollah connection is a secret; their neighborhoods are lined with huge portraits of Khamenei, and they dance around them and proclaim their devotion, swear their allegiance, declare him their savior, and so on and so forth. Khamenei is the Hezbollah Big Daddy. (Though Syria and Assad is the local sponsor, and still has hundreds, if not thousands, of operatives in Lebanon, working with Hezbollah, and giving support and instruction.)
ugh,
You seem to justify Hezbollah’s not abiding the rules as the only way for them to avoid “lining up to be shot.”
But then doesn’t it follow that if Israel doesn’t respond in order to avoid attacking civilians that it is simply standing there “waiting to be shot?”
Your argument seems to give Hezbollah a free pass to attack without being subject to reprisals.
What do peole here make of the latest reports, that Palestinians blew a hole in the border wall between Gaza and Egypt, and are pouring through it by the thousands?
I’d heard things in Gaza were awful, but it’s amazing to me that they opted to escape into Egypt – a choice between Israel and Egypt, if you’re a poor Palestinian, strikes me as Hobbs-ish. (Mubarak’s government doesn’t strike me as the succoring type.)
I also wonder how much the escape was driven by actual conditions and how much by a somewhat apocalyptic sense of “anything goes!” brought on by the military action in Lebanon.
hilzoy,
I think the Kosovo comparison is still apt. Israel is apparently seeking to either force Hezbollah to return the soldiers by making it too costly for them to hold them, or to induce the Lebanese government to act against Hezbollah. Both actions are ones Israel cannot force: barring a miracle, they’re not going to find the soldiers just through intelligence work and searching, so they’ve got to influence opinions within the affected groups enough to induce them to adopt Israel’s preferred end state. This is analagous to what we sought in Kosovo: utilizing air strikes to induce Milosevic to withdraw his forces, something we were not in a position to do through the application of direct military force.
My concern is that, as with Kosovo, success depends on one side outlasting the other. Because of the makeup of Israel’s government, I think they are at a disadvantage relative to their opponents. That doesn’t mean they can’t win, but it does mean that they’re fighting from a position of disadvantage.
I probably should note this further regional analysis in this thread, as well as the other I mentioned it in.
“He argues that Israel opted for total war in Gaza….”
Which is utter nonsense. Israel has been tiptoeing in Gaza, striving mightily to minimize civilian casualties. “Total war” is carpet bombing London, Dresden, Coventry, Tokyo. Nothing remotely of the kind is going on in Gaza.
But, then, you’re the “Israelis are Nazis” guy, SomeOtherDude, so whaddya expect?
And, to be sure, Hamas dug its kilometer-long tunnel from Gaza over months, and attacked an Israeli outpost, killing Israeli soldiers, because the Jews made them do it.
The Jews are so fiendishly clever in their plots. (I assume y’all know that Jews are running the Iraqi insurgents.)
“What do peole here make of the latest reports, that Palestinians blew a hole in the border wall between Gaza and Egypt, and are pouring through it by the thousands?”
I haven’t seen such latest reports yet; link?
Anyway, Palestinians blew a hole in the fence a couple of weeks ago, and PA security forces flooded it with bodies to prevent anyone from getting through.
There’s always been a lot of intercourse over that border, including, of course, the constantly dug tunnels to smuggle weapons into Gaza. But smugglers for profit are always busy, too. And more legitimate traders, and families that want to visit, etc.
Andrew: “Both actions are ones Israel cannot force….”
Bottom line is that even if neither method succeeds, the more Hezbollah’s infrastructure is damaged, the more they’ll be hurt, or punished, in the eyes of Israel, and thus the lesson given that, regardless of long-term effectiveness, you can’t do this without payment being exacted.
This may be ultimately futile, or at least of very limited usefulness, but it’s the Israeli way, however much it is often, in fact, not carried out.
There’s an overwhelming underlying Israeli ethic that Jews have tried all the only-peaceful-and-alternative methods for a couple of thousand years, and that that never worked out very well, so we’re done with never responding by fighting back. (But I’ll repeat again that, in fact, Israel has a zillion times responded to many attacks and provocations by negotiating, biding time, and so on; a prominent example would be, of course, doing nothing in response to Saddam Hussein’s rain of missiles in 1991.)
Because of such frequent examples of not responding with more than rhetoric, Israel feels compelled to, now and again, actually follow through on its rhetoric. This is one of those times.
(And, of cours, Israel can also do overkill; 1982 was one of the most horrible examples of that, a plan gross in its stupidity and arrogance; thanks, Arik!)
This ethic of “hurt me, and we will hurt you back, you will have reason to regret it” is, of course, criticizable, and debatable, but it’s not going away any time soon.
You seem to justify Hezbollah’s not abiding the rules as the only way for them to avoid “lining up to be shot.”
I’m not justifying it, I’m just saying that we shouldn’t expect them to when the only that it will get them is dead.
And I didn’t say Israel shouldn’t respond, though I think its gone overboard, I was thinking more along the lines of how we treat guerillas (or insurgents, etc.) when we capture them.
Sebastian – that sentence was more forceful than it should have been, I was merely pointing out that the rules work better, or at least both sides are more likely to abide by them, when there’s not such a huge power disparity.
“Which is utter nonsense.”
You know, I’m getting much better at predicting which statements I object to that Gary will also object to, only more eloquently and with more facts at hand. Case in point.
This is interesting:
Huh. Not that it’s surprising to see Saudi Arabia, Sunni arch enemy of Shi’ite Iran, smacking Iran and its creature, but, still, strange bedfellows.
This from June 28th is also very interesting foreshadowing.
Here is some more reasoning for you, Andrew. Feel free to argue; I’m not saying I agree with it; I’m just looking to answer some of your questions as to what Israeli leaders may be thinking.
David Ignatius counterpoints.
Option B is to place pressure on Hezbollah sufficient to make returning the soldiers worth the political costs of giving them up.
The Israeli strategy is simple, and its of the nature of collective punishment to get one’s way. Lay waste to the innocents in Gaza and Lebanon to hopefully force the Arabs of those regions to rein in Hamas or Hezbollah. To the extremist Israelis who control its policies, none of the Arabs are innocents. The Israelis also justify this punitive terrorism because they were allegedly attacked first (they clearly were in this particular instance, but this basic question has become a “chicken-egg, which came first” discussion).
Pro-Israelis have come to accept the alleged legitimacy of this form of Israeli terrorism because it is allegedly “forced” on Israel by Arabs. Bull — its just another aspect of Israel’s subjegation of Arabs.
The Israeli response is just as much a part of the overall problem as the initial provocations, and represents more of the same by both sides. This is a conflict dominated by extremists on both sides, and tactics by both designed to reinforce the positions of the extremists.
Just as US policy correctly condemns Hamas, Hezzbollah and its enablers, US policy should be to condemn the excess Israeli violence in response — not reaffirm it as an alleged act of self-defense.
Gary Farber:
This ethic of “hurt me, and we will hurt you back, you will have reason to regret it” is, of course, criticizable, and debatable, but it’s not going away any time soon.
Except that the ethic is “hurt me and I’ll hurt the innocents in your family” in order to get back at you.
Plus the Israelis have a long history of committing violence against Arabs to get what they want — this behavior has been disguised as allegedly just a response to Arab violence and extremism, but it ignores that Jewish violence against Arabs is the foundation upon which Israel was built.
There’s an overwhelming underlying Israeli ethic that Jews have tried all the only-peaceful-and-alternative methods for a couple of thousand years, and that that never worked out very well, so we’re done with never responding by fighting back.
This is a very accurate observation of the mindset, except that the founding of Israel has nothing to do with trying “only-peaceful-and-alternative methods,” so the mindset represents one of those dangerous fictions that then justifies extremist violence.
I used to believe that Israel occupied some moral high-ground vis-a-vis its Arab adversaries, but no longer. It occupies a higher rung, but its still down in the pit of despicable behavior.
Here is one possible solution to this problem:
Israelis emigrate to countries that will have them and become upstanding responsible citizens of their adapted homelands.
The country of Israel becomes a historical footnote to the end of WWII.
Or, there’s the same for Palestinians.
“To the extremist Israelis who control its policies, none of the Arabs are innocents.”
You are clearly unfamiliar with the histories of the Israelis who make up the cabinet. I’m quite sure that if I asked you to name them, without checking Google or a reference, you wouldn’t be able to, absent the Prime Minister, and conceivably the defense minister. Ditto if I asked you to name the parties in the government, and their history of stances.
This is the sort of ignorant stuff I have no patience with debating or responding to. Sorry.
Amir Peretz, “extremist.” Right. He’s the fricking George McGovern of Israel.
And in case you didn’t notice, Likud is so thoroughly creshed and out of power that it has gone from a high of 48 seats in the Knesset down to 12. (The Knesset has 120 members; yeah, the “extremists” are really in charge.)
If having a member of Peace Now, the leader of the Labor Party, the primary “dove” in Israeli politics as the Defense Minister, in a government that crushed the Likud and is dedicated to withdrawal from Palestinian territories is “extemism” in Israeli politics, than what would satisfy this sort of thinking beyond every Jew in Israel killing themselves, I have no idea.
I think we’re just hearing a little ditty ’bout Moshe Dayan.
I don’t really mean anything by that, but I’ve bene dying to work it in somehow.
Ugh: “…someone, maybe on a thread here, commented that complaints about the insurgents not abiding by the conventions amounted to a complaint that ‘they were not lining up properly to be shot.'”
Chris Bertram. Jim Henley comments on this and Jane Galt, as well.
“Israelis emigrate to countries that will have them and become upstanding responsible citizens of their adapted homelands.”
Excellent idea. That’s worked out perfectly in the past. What could go wrong?
Gary,
That is another perspective. Maybe it will work; I don’t know. I hope so. But if Israel could eliminate the terrorist leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah, wouldn’t they have done so years ago? They might be able to get Hamas, since they’re primarily restricted to the West Bank and Gaza, but hunting down Hezbollah strikes me as a huge military operation for Israel, and one far from assured of success.
On the other hand, I’m not sure what else they can try, either. Which is what led to my first post on the subject.
Ken, forcing people out of the country they call home is how Israel got into this mess, six decades ago. Trying to do it again in reverse is not even an “and a pony!” idea.
The country of Israel becomes a historical footnote to the end of WWII.
The country of Israel with an artificial Jewish majority will someday inevitably become a historical footnote to the end of WWII: either that, or the country itself will be destroyed. I hope for the former: Jewish Israelis cannot go on expecting to maintain their majority forever, and the longer they try, the worse the situation gets.
A huge military operation fraught with the same difficulties these things have always entailed: how to avoid killing the otherwise uninvolved. They could go back to assassinations, I suppose, but I’m not sure how well that was working.
Gary,
Most right-wing German nationalists were not NAZI’s, but they certainly allowed the minority of NAZIs to dictate the conditions of the “facts on the ground” in other words; they sure gave the NAZIs a wide space to operate from.
I do not equate Israel with the NAZIs, however I do equate elements within the Jewish state of Israel with the Christian state of Germany, (say, between 1901-1932) before it became the Aryan Christian state of Germany.
Israel’s treatment of “undesirables” and their land and property, can be equated with the rise of many right-wing nationalist movements that started out “proud and patriotic” slid into “avenging the past” and then “we need a final and complete solution or OUR PEOPLE will cease to exist.”
Andrew: “if Israel could eliminate the terrorist leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah, wouldn’t they have done so years ago?”
Exactly. See Labanon, invasion of, 1982.
Lebanon. Lebanon.
jes, I would not advocate forcing anyone out but after 60 years of conflict thinking there is any solution to this problem short of removing its cause is a fantacy. That said it is important to realize that the solution is not in our hands.
Each and every Israeli however should be free to make a choice to leave and over time I can see that if enough Israelis making that choice the problem would take care of itself.
Israel is apparently vowing to continue until Hezbollah is “disarmed.” Gonna be awhile.
“The country of Israel with an artificial Jewish majority will someday inevitably become a historical footnote to the end of WWII….”
“Artificial.” Because most countries have “natural” majorities.
Like all the myriad countries of the former Soviet Union. No population transfers took place between them; it was all “natural.”
Like the movements of populations in Europe following WWII, and WII. All quite natural. Ask any German or Pole.
Like the “artificial” majority in Pakistan. When Pakistan and India became independent countries in, hey, 1947, it was all natural, non-violent, and, of course, the world has been focused ever since on righting the wrongs committed, on establishing the Right Of Return, and on enforcing it.
Similarly as regards umpty dozen conflicts in Africa in the past 80 years.
And the Chinese: they never shift populations around.
Heck, the British sheepherders in the Falkland Islands have been there for time eternal, just as everyone presently living in Britain is descended only from Celts and Angles. Good thing Britain never used force anywhere in the world; if they had, I’m sure they’d move everyone back where they belonged. Heck, the Irish alone love the British for the long long English ethic of “hand’s off! No artificial moving of populations!”
Yes, indeed, this theory of “natural” majorities works splendidly, wherever we look around the world, and throughout history. And thank goodness the world is consistent in its attitude towards the notion.
Andrew: “But if Israel could eliminate the terrorist leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah, wouldn’t they have done so years ago?”
Well, they’ve been pretty successful against the Hamas leadership, decimating the organization, and forcing, until the pre-election period when Israel mostly let up, the succeeding leadership to go into strict hiding and secrecy.
Hezbollah, not so much, but that’s because it’s immensely harder to act in Lebanon without doing what they’re doing right now.
Which is why they’re doing what they’re doing in Lebanon, right now.
And Mohammed Deif was reportedly hit Wednesday. And Israel is aiming for Nasrallah.
Nasrallah, incidentally, emphasized this at his press conference:
“Each and every Israeli however should be free to make a choice to leave”
I think they already have that choice, and I don’t see any self-correction going on here.
“just as everyone presently living in Britain is descended only from Celts and Angles”
Who, of course, sprang directly from the native rock and bog.
Slarti: exactly!
That should be: Like the movements of populations in Europe following WWII, and WWI. All quite natural. Ask any German or Pole.
Like the “natural” majority in Pakistan.
Now I’m going to have to reread the first several chapters of my book on the Celts, and wonder for the nth time why “Celtics” is mispronounced (when applied to a certain US basketball team, at least).
Slarti: better and better: ‘Iron Age “Bog Man” Used Imported Hair Gel’
(actual headline from National Geographic.)
I personally think that the Australian aborigines would be much happier if all the “artificial” population that dropped by recently would bugger off.
Perhaps we should have a march.
And I’m sure I need not cliche about what the descendents of the inhabitants of North America in the 15th century might suggest as regards the “artificial” majorities that are rude enough to be hanging about.
If only they’d all leave, the problem would be solved.
And SomeOtherDude could call it a “final solution.”
“Each and every Israeli however should be free to make a choice to leave and over time I can see that if enough Israelis making that choice the problem would take care of itself.”
Yes, the Jewish Problem is an old one.
Good to see it’s still being given the same old thoughtful consideration.
I would not advocate forcing anyone out but after 60 years of conflict thinking there is any solution to this problem short of removing its cause is a fantacy.
Good thinking. Remove the ONE CAUSE — Israel’s existence. Not the fact that a bunch of the people surrounding it hate Jews. Nope, not a cause at all.
Gary, what is the Jewish Problem you are referring to?
“http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/738632.html”>Fun with rockets.
ken: jes, I would not advocate forcing anyone out but after 60 years of conflict thinking there is any solution to this problem short of removing its cause is a fantasy.
Agreed. But “removing its cause” doesn’t have to entail Jewish Israelis leaving: it can equally entail Israel dropping the prohibition against allowing Palestinians to return. The “artificial majority” was originally created by forcibly expelling the Arab Palestinians, and has been maintained by violence ever since.
That said it is important to realize that the solution is not in our hands.
Well, yeah. On the other hand: nor is the solution to Iraq, and we talk about that often enough.
Slarti: Now I’m going to have to reread the first several chapters of my book on the Celts, and wonder for the nth time why “Celtics” is mispronounced (when applied to a certain US basketball team, at least).
And as applied to a Scottish football team. No one knows why.
Oops. Fun with rockets.
“Gary, what is the Jewish Problem you are referring to?”
Try googling the phrase.
Then I recommend doing some research reading on the history before, perhaps, again making suggestions on the topic.
Actually, I recommend doing a lot of reading; but that’s up to you, of course.
Here is a helpful link to get you started. Here is some other discussion of the famous Jewish Problem, which was so discussed in the first half of the 20th century, and in the 19th. I’m unsurprised that you’d make the suggestion you made, and be utterly unfamiliar with The Jewish Problem.
“…it can equally entail Israel dropping the prohibition against allowing Palestinians to return.”
Yes, the polite way to eliminate Israel. Flood Israel with Palestinians, presumably not create an apartheid state, and then let those folks currently active in Gaza, and Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, and the Tanzim, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, have free reign.
Return matters to those splendid days of 1920 and 1921, and 1929, when, because there was no occupation, and no Israel, all was sweetness and love and peace!
All would surely be well. And, of course, thank goodness Palestinian nationalism will finally be fulfilled.
Jewish nationalism? A Jewish homeland? Jewish right to self-determination? The right of Jews to finally protect themselves in their own nation? Never again? But nationalism is bad!
Hurrah for Palestinian nationalism!
And consistency! Three cheers!
And one more cheer for the idea that the only grievance is that Israel isn’t behind the 1967 borders! Clearly if Israel would only do that, there would be no more demands or anger, and there would be nothing but peace! Hurrah!
“have free reign”
Think you want “rein” there – I mention it because I see this mistake a lot lately.
More on Israeli aims.
On the positive side:
There’s more there, and of course at many other articles at Haaretz.
“Think you want ‘rein’ there – “I mention it because I see this mistake a lot lately.”
It’s debatable. “Reigns of power” is clearly and obviously wrong. But a sovereign has “reign,” and we speak of “reigns of terror,” and so using “free reign” is a logical and defensible usage. It doesn’t particularly fall under the usual homophone error of merely substituting “reign” for “rein.” (See eggcorn discussion.)
But it’s a fair point.
“What do peole here make of the latest reports, that Palestinians blew a hole in the border wall between Gaza and Egypt, and are pouring through it by the thousands?”
Found what you were talking about here and here. Short version:
Because it’s better to die than to undergo a security check.
And the masked militants shot an Eqyptian soldier.
Jewish violence against Arabs is the foundation upon which Israel was built.
Yes. A lot of Jews just decided one day, for no particular reason, to conquer a part of the Middle East.
forcing people out of the country they call home is how Israel got into this mess, six decades ago.
That takes a rather narrow and short-term view of the sources of the “mess.”
Jewish Israelis cannot go on expecting to maintain their majority forever, and the longer they try, the worse the situation gets.
It is hard for me to believe that a majority-Arab state would be anything other than a disaster for the Jews of Israel. Being an unpopular religious minority hasn’t exactly worked out great. And it’s not as if we don’t have some specific history to go by. Relations between Arabs and Jewish settlers were hardly peaceful before the establishment of Israel.
RE: Hard Choices
Apparently our choices with respect to Iran are war or capitulation.
The comments are quite a read.
Well Gary, you sure do know how to make a not so subtle claim to moral superiority.
I know all the history Gary, as well or better than you do.
And before you go off an some wacky rant trying to prove me wrong or calling me a Nazi I just want to ask you not to bother. I couldn’t care less what you think about me.
But here is a bit of perspective about where I am coming from. I have jewish family members. I also have a remote relative in Israel. He and his family are jewish by race but Israeli by nationality.
He is welcome here in America as a jew. They all are welcome as far as I am concerned.
I think that my families well being is more important than obeisance to the noble but misguided Zionist dream of forcibly creating a separate Jewish nation in an area already occupied by others.
Israel Continues the Fight with Lebanon
Isreal destroyed the home and office of Hezbollah’s leader Friday. They also dropped bombs on roads as well as the Beirut international airport.
“He and his family are jewish by race”
I’m sure.
There’s a jewish race? Who knew?
Gary, that was the most meaning I’ve ever seen put into two words.
Take as a compliment, even considering I’m not all that well-read.
About the law of return: I have always favored the idea of doing two things. First, establishing a date after which no one will have the right of return. This date should be far off but set in stone — say, ten years off, so that Jews the world over can think at their leisure about whether or not they want to exercise their right to move to Israel before then. Second, the argument against this has always been “what if there’s another holocaust?” And this should of course be accommodated. So it should be written into the same law that if at any time Jews face anything remotely resembling genocide, all the Jews from the affected country or region automatically have the right to immigrate.
That would end this:
“There’s a jewish race? Who knew?”
You may never have had the experience of getting a genetic screen for a set of defects only found in group X, and turning out to have one. It tends to make one think that group X is not just a bunch of people who like e.g. bagels and lachs and the NYT Sunday crossword puzzle. Maybe “race” is a useless word at this point – what’s a better one?
“Good thinking. Remove the ONE CAUSE — Israel’s existence. Not the fact that a bunch of the people surrounding it hate Jews. Nope, not a cause at all.”
Phil,
I look at it like this:
We have a lot of Americans who hate Mexicans and Mexican immigration but not to the point of wanting to kill them. Why? Well the Mexicans are not trying to take away our land, are they? They are not bombing us, razing our homes, penning us up, fencing us off or otherwise doing us much of any physical harm.
Now if these Mexican immigrants, even if they acted with the help of the entire rest of the world, seized a piece of our territory and drove the dissidents out I could see where that hatred could rise to the level of violence. Couldn’t you?
And if the violence continued for 6o years what then? I would say the same thing I say about Israel. It ain’t gonna stop. History proves that. So remove the cause. Or accept that violence will continue, probably forever.
Gary:
Which alleged peacenik faction currently in control of Israeli policy is responsible for the Lebanon bombing campaign and the destruction of the Gaza power plant?
Your right — I can’t recite the histories of the current leadership as cogently as you — I just see current Israeli actions which are completely incompatible with your description of the alleged proclivities of the current leadership.
The best speculation that I have heard as to what is going on is that the new leadership is over-reacting to prove its mettle. Other speculations are that the Israelis have adopted a more warlike posture in response to Hamas, Iran and other rising threats in the Middle East — a sort of “they are going to hit me so I am going to hit back first” mentality. I don’t know if that is true, but the idea that the current policies are not “extremist” because the composition of the government is allegedly not extremist — well, their actions speak louder than their pedigrees.
Also, glad to see you seem to agree that just as the white man wiped out the Indians, the Israelis wiped out Arabs to create Israel. My own personal feeling about this is that what’s done is done — what I find annoying is the Israeli pretense about its creation, or that Arab anger somehow sprang from some irrational hatred of Jews. Nothing is more annoying than Israelis pretending that their barbarism is just somehow forced on them by the lesser creatures that are squatting on their holy land.
Who wiped out/enslaved the Israelis to create Palestine?
“So remove the cause.”
Umm, how? Move all Israelis to Belgium after moving the French Belges to France and the Flemish ones to Holland? (The monks can stay.)
It might have been a fine thing for all concerned if the US had given say Arizona to the world’s Jews after WWII, but it’s a bit late now.
“the destruction of the Gaza power plant?”
I think you want “temporary disabling” above.
Those arguing for a second diaspora are aware that there were actually many Jews living in Israel before it received its UN mandate, right? And that the Jewish minorities in many Arab nations were…encouraged…to emigrate to the Jewish state?
I personally would be thrilled to live in a world where a Jewish state isn’t necessary. But until people stop blaming their troubles on the Jews, it appears that won’t happen. I’ve never understood the logic that motivates anti-Semitism, but it seems to be disturbingly prevalent the world over. Telling the citizens of Israel to go become upstanding members of other nations is asking them to be remarkably blase towards their own fates.
“Gary, that was the most meaning I’ve ever seen put into two words.”
Thank you. I’m nothing if not about the wacky rants.
In future, though, I ask that everyone please direct any queries about Israel/Palestine, and Jewish history and perspective, to Ken, because he “know[s] all the history Gary, as well or better than you do.”
I’ve never met anyone before who “knows all the history,” so I anticipate learning a great deal, myself.
Hilzoy: “First, establishing a date after which no one will have the right of return.”
I’m afraid I can’t agree. The purpose of Israel is to be the Jewish State, the homeland available forever for all the Jews who desire it. It can’t be that if is no longer available.
Neither can I figure out how a Jew born in twenty years would be able to make aliyah if your rule were put into place, absent time travel.
“…he began to understand over time that his Government ”cannot and will not grant me equal social and political rights.””
Why can it not? It hasn’t done an adequate job yet, absolutely, but neither has America or anywhere else yet rid itself of racism and its effects. Yet Israel has made strides, though still grossly inadequate, in recent years, and we know that America made major strides over the last 50 years, though still imperfectly.
Why Israel cannot continue to improve and continue to strive for justice for all its citizens, I have no idea. And how would it be just to deny Jews the right to move to their own state?
And, since Israel is already practically the 51st state (just ask Billmon), their own state is already there! Plus, we can hit them up for taxes.
ken,
At what point is it not acceptable to go back in time in order to establish a basis for a grievance?
Is 60 years okay with you? That seems to be okay with you because of your perspective on the Israeli/Arab conflict.
Is 200 years okay with you? That seems to be acceptable to many black Americans who want to be reimbursed for slavery. Do you find their desire unreasonable?
Is 600 years okay? That works well for Osama bin Laden and many other Moslems.
Is 2000 years okay? After all don’t we all agree that Israel was the home of the Jews back then.
a war with iran thread could be v. interesting here, as opposed to redstate or WoC. the comments that the democrats and the press are sapping our vital fluids / national will are … intriguing.
Francis: the Democrats are not sapping our vital bodily fluids. I am — with my army of invisible fluid-sapping nanomosquitoes.
dmbeaster: “…a sort of ‘they are going to hit me so I am going to hit back first’ mentality….”
Darn the Jews for responding to the attacks from Gaza that have been going on for months, and the last attack that killed two soldiers and in which Gilad Shalit was kidnapped, and for responding to the missiling from Lebanon that took place weeks ago, and the attack this week that killed several Israeli soldiers and in which two were taken captive, by traveling back in time to strike first!
Thank you for bringing this little-known sequence of events to my attention.
“Nothing is more annoying than Israelis pretending that their barbarism is just somehow forced on them by the lesser creatures that are squatting on their holy land.”
Indeed; it’s far worse than having someone wander into your shop in a daze, covered with speckles of human flesh after a bomb goes off in a pedestrian mall. Annoying Israelis: the worst plague on the planet.
This sort of rhetoric and debate is terribly educational and useful. Most substantive. It’s why I love to talk about Israel/Palestine with people who are so well-educated on the topic.
“Wiped out” is too strong a phrase. !948 was ethnic cleansing, not genocide.
As for solutions, ken, my own favorite “solution” is to let both Israelis and Palestinians emigrate to the US. To a large extent the US helped cause the problem, or at least the post 67 version of it. But seriously, your solution and my solution are both absurd. At this point many Israelis are second, third or maybe fourth generation. And even if they were first generation settlers Israel is their home. If they all want to move to the US then I’d vote to let them all come, but I don’t think they’re asking.
My own ideal solution would be one secular state with a right of return for both Jews and Palestinians, but this would depend on the overwhelming majority of both sides wanting to live in such a country. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Most likely my “ideal” solution would lead to a Lebanon/Iraq style civil war. So we’re stuck back in the real world.
So my actual solution would be for the US to exert every bit of leverage at its disposal to impose something like the Geneva Accords (a pseudo-agreement between two unofficial groups of Palestinians and Israelis) on both sides. A two state solution where the Palestinians have 22 percent of their original homeland. Of course this would depend on having a President who was genuinely even-handed and so my “actual solution” is also a fantasy and might remain so even if we didn’t have the boy-king in the White House.
Gary mentioned nationalism. Nationalism sucks. Well, it doesn’t absolutely have to, I suppose, but in practice it generally does. Lefties sometimes support nationalist movements, but this is only justifiable, IMO, when it is part of some anti-colonial struggle to achieve freedom and dignity for some oppressed group and even then it’s likely to go sour in the long run.. It’s just a dumb idea, but one firmly held by a lot of people and so we have to live with it. If Israelis and Palestinians don’t want to live together in genuine peace and equality, we’re not going to be able to make them do it.
what I find annoying is the Israeli pretense about its creation, or that Arab anger somehow sprang from some irrational hatred of Jews.
dmb,
There has in fact been a lot of irrational hatred of Jews by Arabs, going back well before 1948. Not to say that many Palestinians don’t have legitimate grievances, but as long as we are facing hard facts let’s face them all, shall we?
tunnel, 6o years of nonstop effort to remove Israel is pretty convincing to me that Israel is not wanted.
Thirty years ago I thought that the arabs would settle down, accept Israel, make peace with them and get on with their lives.
I no longer believe that Israel will ever be accepted.
It was a great idea. To establish a Jewish state in the middle east where jewish people could find haven from the rest of the world. But this idea never took into account the people who already lived there.
I have no special love for the arabs but I say let them have it all back. If it were me I would get out of Israel and move to America and start my life in a place where I could live and prosper in peace.
This really has gone on long enough.
This thread is disintegrating. Time to initiate emergency evacuation procedures. You are directed to go to the nearest open thread and await further instructions.
Ken, if every single Israeli felt about the situation the way you think they should, then we could start planning real estate developments to handle the influx of Israeli emigrants. They don’t.
End of story. And if we’re daydreaming about the way people should behave and think, well, I’ve got a long list of things that people over there should feel differently about.
Okay, that’s it for me. The laundry room awaits.
This thread is disintegrating.
Seconded.
“At this point many Israelis are second, third or maybe fourth generation.”
Or fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth. And in some cases far longer. It’s not as if the land there, whatever you want to call it, was ever made Judenrein. Neither is it as if Jerusalem and plenty of other places in that land were founded by Arabs, and without connection to Jews throughout recorded history, or as if Jews were only there in ancient, mythical, disregardable, types. (That last one is particularly hard for Americans to grasp, since a couple of thousand years or more seems rather imaginary on the American scale, though not on the scale of most of the world, be it Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Chinese, Persian, Roman, Japanese, or whathaveyou.)
“…Lefties sometimes support nationalist movements, but this is only justifiable, IMO, when it is part of some anti-colonial struggle to achieve freedom and dignity for some oppressed group….”
Which was the case for Israel, as regards the century or so that Zionism was a major leftist cause.
Not to mention that Israel was a socialist country, founded by secular Jews as a secular cause, against the fervent wishes of religious Jews, a member of the Socialist International, whose key organization structure upon its founding, and for many decades before, was the kibbutz. Israel only slid away from being a major leftist cause when it slid away from being a helpless victim.
Francis: the Democrats are not sapping our vital bodily fluids. I am — with my army of invisible fluid-sapping nanomosquitoes.
I knew it!
My favorite comment on that thread is the one that advocates (seriously, apparently) that the south secede from the Union. Noting, “Who would stop the South? Most of the military is here. The North-east and west coast offer very little, just a lot of debt, socialism, hatred, and deviants.”
“The North-east and west coast offer very little, just a lot of debt, socialism, hatred, and deviants.”
Sounds like DougJ to me. (For non-Balloon Juice readers, he’s a liberal troll.)
‘The purpose of Israel is to be the Jewish State…’
This is not a bad idea, except to the extent that it affects others.
“tunnel, 6o years of nonstop effort to remove Israel is pretty convincing to me that Israel is not wanted.”
A few thousand years of nonstop effort to remove Jews is pretty convincing to me that Jews are not wanted.
“I no longer believe that Israel will ever be accepted.”
That’s interesting that you repudiate the Egyptian and Jordanian treaties, the list of all the other Arab countries that now have relations with Israel, and the stated policy of Saudi Arabia and yet other Arab states that if Israel only withdraws to the 1967 borders and a few other details, all will be peaceful and well between Israel and the other Arab states and people.
“If it were me I would get out of Israel and move to America and start my life in a place where I could live and prosper in peace.”
Well, that’s clearly the way to go, then. You really do “know all the history.” We should follow the wisdom of Ken!
What would be really ugly would be if someone was writing this stuff about how the Arabs in Israel, the entire historic land of Israel, should just recognize that Israelis are never going to make peace with them, and so the Arabs should just give up and leave, and go to America and other Arab countries. Problem solved! Ethnic cleansing is the way to go!
But when some guy writes it about the Jews, hey, it’s just another moderate debating POV.
Not to mention that Israel was a socialist country, founded by secular Jews as a secular cause, against the fervent wishes of religious Jews, a member of the Socialist International, whose key organization structure upon its founding, and for many decades before, was the kibbutz. Israel only slid away from being a major leftist cause when it slid away from being a helpless victim.
Many of us (in LA, anyway) were radicalized by Zionist Leftists and shared the romantic vision of a social democratic island in the Middle East. European Zionists were good Leftists.
Howevr, in my dreamy radical haze Arabs were non-persons. They did not exist. They were just minor road blocks on the road to socialism. But that was a younger self.
An even younger self was taught that Jews had to go and prepare Greater Israel for the Second-Coming of Christ, and ggod Jews went to the Holy Land, while bad Jews stayed in the US to corrupt the minds of good Christian children with Commie Atheistic views.
In all these visions, the Arabs were invisible.
Hey, if we’re gonna be wishing on the moon here, wouldn’t it be great if the leaders of the Arab states in the Mid-East stopped using Palestinians as pawns, stopped bankrolling Hamas, Hezbollah, and all the other refusenik terrorist groups, so that the next peace initiative actually had a chance to work without some splinter group of nihilist dimwits deciding to bomb another restaurant/deli/nightclub/bus/residential neighborhood?
Back from the laundry.
Gary wrote–
” Israel only slid away from being a major leftist cause when it slid away from being a helpless victim.”
I’m assuming you know it’s more complicated than that–lots of lefties became critical of Israel when they found out that the Leon Uris / James Michener romanticized version of the history was a lie. That’s what happened with me. I admired Israel when I thought they were the tough soulful warriors who only fought because they had no choice and fought with purity of arms, except for rare atrocities like Deir Yassin. Now some people, when they become disillusioned, just go to the other extreme and so maybe those are the people you have in mind here.
Gary also wrote–
“What would be really ugly would be if someone was writing this stuff about how the Arabs in Israel, the entire historic land of Israel, should just recognize that Israelis are never going to make peace with them, and so the Arabs should just give up and leave, and go to America and other Arab countries. Problem solved! Ethnic cleansing is the way to go!
But when some guy writes it about the Jews, hey, it’s just another moderate debating POV. ”
I’m thinking maybe you’re thinking I should be more outraged by Ken’s remarks. I think Ken is just well-intentioned and saying things that don’t make any sense. People do that. I’ve also got Christian Zionist friends who’ve said exactly what Ken says, except about Palestinians and the advice is that they should settle in Arab countries since there are so many. I get annoyed and roll my eyes, but this doesn’t mean my friends are evil people.
BTW, I know Jews have been there all along–they weren’t all driven out by the Romans or all killed in the First Crusade or whatever. But they were a small minority until the Zionist movement. Not that this has any relevance to what should be their undeniable right to be there–one generation or a hundred is all the same, IMO.
Okay, now I am gone
Those with funds to spare might consider finding a favorite charity which could stand a donation.
“A few thousand years of nonstop effort to remove Jews is pretty convincing to me that Jews are not wanted. ”
Obviously you have never read Washington’s letter to the Hebrew Congregation.
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=21
“I’m assuming you know it’s more complicated than that….”
Of course. As I always say, it’s impossible to sensibly discuss much about Israeli and/or Palestinian history in under book length, which is why blog threads that touch on the history and the Blame Game and related issues tend to be so pointless, futile, unhelpful, and aggravating.
“I’m thinking maybe you’re thinking I should be more outraged by Ken’s remarks.”
No. I’m just long weary of the Kens inevitably showing up.
I’m 47, I’ve been actively following I/P affairs since at least June, 1967, I’ve often been very involved in organizations, as I said, such as the American incarnation of Peace Now, and other groups, I’ve always been the same politics/history/news junkie/activist that I am, as involved in these sorts of debates, both oral and written, all this time (including when I first became involved in written debate of this sort via sf fanzines and amateur press associations, circa 1971), so, y’know, kinda not full of the infinite patience any more.
“I’m 47, I’ve been actively following I/P affairs since at least June, 1967, I’ve often been very involved in organizations, as I said, such as the American incarnation of Peace Now, and other groups, I’ve always been the same politics/history/news junkie/activist that I am, as involved in these sorts of debates, both oral and written, all this time (including when I first became involved in written debate of this sort via sf fanzines and amateur press associations, circa 1971)…”
Well that certainly makes you the expert.
Except, for all that dedication toward study, your commentary shows a decided lack of your ever having learned a single new thing.
Education usually broadens ones mind. In your case it appears to have failed.
You should get your money back.
Who is this Ken person, and why is he so unpleasant?
Donald Johnson: This thread is disintegrating. Time to initiate emergency evacuation procedures. You are directed to go to the nearest open thread and await further instructions.
Thirded. *bails*
We have a lot of Americans who hate Mexicans and Mexican immigration but not to the point of wanting to kill them.
Remind me to introduce you to Mr. Neiwert at the earliest possible opportunity. You might find the experience educational.
And if the violence continued for 6o years what then? I would say the same thing I say about Israel. It ain’t gonna stop. History proves that. So remove the cause. Or accept that violence will continue, probably forever.
When all else fails, punish the Jews, right?
Hey Gary, If I could take back my previous comment I would. Sorry for the personal attack.
But you know Gary the history about all this stuff is not exactly esoteric knowledge limited to people who only agree with you.
And people who disagree with you are not all anti semitic. Like I said I have jewish relatives.
Anyway I really don’t care to discuss this with you any more.
Phil, yes Nazis do exist in America. But most of the people who rant and rave about Mexicans taking over our country are not Nazis nor are they going to rise to the level of doing any violence.
But if these Mexican immigrants where to carve out part of our territory, even with the consent of the rest of the world, for their own Aztlan homeland, I could see a lot of Americans fighting back. Couldn’t you?
And it is not true that Jews are synonymous with Israel any more than Mexicans are symonymous with Aztlan.
Search the blog I linked for “Minutemen,” kiddo.
“Who is this Ken person, and why is he so unpleasant?”
I guess I am just someone with a differing opinion. Why you should find that unpleasant is my question.
And done play this “Israeli-doesn’t-mean-Jewish” game with me, either. When you refer to “solving the problem” by having all the Israelis leave, I think we all know you aren’t referring to Israeli Arabs or Palestinian Christians.
Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad:
The population of Jerusalem is composed of Moslems, Jews, Greeks, Latins,Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Abyssinians, Greek Catholics, and a handful of Protestants. One hundred of the latter sect are all that dwell now in this birthplace of Christianity. The nice shades of nationality comprised in the above list, and the languages spoken by them, are altogether too numerous to mention. It seems to me that all the races and colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among the fourteen thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem. Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound. Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they know but one word of but one language apparently–the eternal “bucksheesh.” To see the numbers of maimed, malformed and diseased humanity that throng the holy places and obstruct the gates, one might suppose that the ancient days had come again, and that the angel of the Lord was expected to descend at any moment to stir the waters of Bethesda. Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here.
I think that by “Moslem rule”, he means the Ottoman Empire, not Arab rule. Not flattering in any case, and not so many people around in the region at that time.
You know, variations of the ‘some of my best friends are…’ defense tend to set off shiny neon warning signals for us minority types.
So you have ‘jewish relatives’ – how exactly does this predispose you from being prejudiced, Ken?
Your analogy re: the brown invasion doesn’t exactly bolster my confidence in your egalitarian leanings…
I guess I am just someone with a differing opinion. Why you should find that unpleasant is my question.
I have no problem with differing opinions, and certainly have opinions myself that diverge from Gary’s in this instance. The unpleasantness must be something else then. Your tone, possibly? Or the ‘tude?
Phil, I scrolled down and found a story about Nazis. If that is not what you were referring to you could have made clear what to look for.
But even the existence of Minutemen does not void my point that most people who hate Mexican immigrants generally limit themselves to ranting, writing letters to the editor, marching in protests, calling talk radio and things like that.
But if they were to seize our territory then I could see a lot of Americans joining militias and such to fight them. And from my American point of view I would probably support them.
“And done play this “Israeli-doesn’t-mean-Jewish” game with me, either.”
It is not a game. It is a distinction that makes rational discussion possible.
“When you refer to “solving the problem” by having all the Israelis leave, I think we all know you aren’t referring to Israeli Arabs or Palestinian Christians.”
Obviously. I said before I really have no interest in the arabs. I have jewish relatives. I know, love and respect the jewish faith.
But Israel is a nation, an artifice, a place carved out of another place. I have no love for nor hatred toward Israel. But others do. I don’t think that hatred is ever going to end.
So I would get out. And I would welcome any Israeli who wants to come to America and start a life here.
I know that most Israelis will not follow my advice. But it the only solution I see for them to have a good life.
Israel was create by thousands of people making individual decisions to immigrate to Palestine and join together to seize land from the inhabitants and form their own country. They had the blessing of the western world to do this.
But the problem never anticipated was that the people there might not ever, ever, accept this new nation.
For me, I am convinced they will never have peace. So I see no point in trying to live there.
‘So you have ‘jewish relatives’ – how exactly does this predispose you from being prejudiced, Ken?’
Well, in and of itself I guess it doesn’t.
But you know what. In conversations like this it is common to have to defend not being anti-semitic. Granted this is not a good defense but then for many people nothing short of all out embrace of Zionism would suffice.
I am not anti-jewish. Will that suffice?
“In conversations like this it is common to have to defend not being anti-semitic.”
ken, you ought to get familiar with the conversation here first – it’s something of an insult to the decorum here to come in preemptively defending oneself against slander. And note that you’ll often get a doth-protest-too-much reaction with such statements.
“ken, you ought to get familiar with the conversation here first – it’s something of an insult to the decorum here to come in presumptively defending oneself against sander.”
Well I didn’t think it was so subtle that others did not catch the references Gary was making about me somehow embracing the ‘final solution’ to the ‘Jewish Problem’
My defense was made AFTER his comments.
And FYI it is also pretty insulting to be lectured by someone about this who gets it completely wrong. Perhaps you did not read his comments before you decided to teach me about the ‘decorum’ here?
To pick just one nit from the mass: Most countries are “artifices,” in that they’re carved from another place, and often at the cost of dispossessing (or killing outright) whatever aboriginals were there first. Even the very old nations, like Britain: how many Pryddn or Picts are still around these days?
That modern-day Israelis are mostly immigrants isn’t a slam-dunk indictment of Israel. (Just to be snarky, I don’t remember hearing about very many anti-Zionists offering to give their homes and land to the Native Americans the property was taken from.)
Israel is a fact of life. That Arabs refuse to accept this is a tragedy. It’s also a self-inflicted one.
That some people (who are themselves safely ensconced on what used to be someone else’s land) feel free to imagine the benefits, or at least the inevitability, of Israel ceasing to exist is something worse than a tragedy. I really don’t have the right word to describe it.
I have a lot of quarels with Israeli politics, but I’m reluctant to voice them. Mostly, because I don’t live there. I cannot even imagine what it’s like to live in a country that has been under more or less ceaseless attack for its entire modern existence – not just militarily, but politically, socially, and economically.
The country I live in had a collective nervous breakdown after one day of terrorist attacks. The country I live in let itself be taken over by a regime of corrupt madmen; let itself be fooled into mounting a war on a country that had done nothing to it, war that’s resulted in chaos, despair, murder and civil war; let itself degenerate into a political culture of polarization, the viciousness of which is equalled only by its sheer meaninglessness. All that, after one day of terrorist attacks.
That Israel is in any way a functioning society – that its politics are vituperative but still meaningful; that Israelis, after everything, are still hoping to someday make peace with their neighbors – is a miracle.
The horrific and dreary stasis of “the Palestinian issue” is primarily the Arab nations’ fault and responsibility. They could have not sponsored and supported Hamas, Hezbollah, and the other militant/terrorist groups. They could have joined in a good faith effort to make any one of a myriad peace initiatives work. They could, in fact, have repatriated the Palestinians into their own countries (particularly Jordan, which is a Palestinian nation). They didn’t do any of the above – and not, trust me, out of any particular sympathy for the Palestinians, but because it was too convenient and expedient to use Israel as a diversion for popular anger at their own misrule.
Bernard Yomtov:
There has in fact been a lot of irrational hatred of Jews by Arabs, going back well before 1948. Not to say that many Palestinians don’t have legitimate grievances, but as long as we are facing hard facts let’s face them all, shall we?
I completely agree — there has been a great deal of irrational Arab hatred toward the Jews. There is a xenophobic quality to Muslim culture that goes beyond anger about past Western imperialism, and the geatest focus of that anger has been Israel. This has contributed greatly to the conflict.
My major concern is how US policy ends up skewed because of the false meme of Israel as victim and the Arabs as perpetrators. I don’t take the reverse view advocated by Palestinian apologists. The current crisis reflects a decision by Israel to greatly escalate the conflict in response to a minor attack on its military — and yet so much of the news depicts Israel as acting in self-defense. Bombing the Beirut airport and the Gaza power plant were not acts of self-defense, and I believe will not help find peace.
I am still looking for some good analysis explaining the Israeli motivations in this matter.
Well, I guess it is official. Andrew sucks and is ruining the site…
(I’m assuming Andrew knows the story behind that line, if you don’t, just ask, no insult is intended)
Dude, setting aside that you believe that the morally just, and historically correct, act is for the Jews to all leave Israel, and forget about any silly notion of needing their own nation, whereas the Palestinians simply must have their own nation, and all the land, and there’s no no debating that, it’s so obvious — setting that aside, you believe that the Jews should “get out of Israel and move to America.”
This doesn’t demonstrate significant contact with reality. It ain’t gonna happen.
You’d have more luck explaining to the Chinese that they should pack up and leave Tibet, and that Quebecois should all go back to France, the Normans should all do the same, and the Europeans should all pack up from America and go back to Europe.
This is fantasyland politics and discussion, and what you think is the benefit of that kind of self-gratification, I don’t know.
“Well I didn’t think it was so subtle that others did not catch the references Gary was making about me somehow embracing the ‘final solution’ to the ‘Jewish Problem'”
You’re the guy who brought up the “problem” of the Jews: “…over time I can see that if enough Israelis making that choice the problem would take care of itself.”
Then you asked: “Gary, what is the Jewish Problem you are referring to?”
“…the references Gary was making about me somehow embracing the ‘final solution’ to the ‘Jewish Problem'[.]”
And yet I said no such thing. Not even close. Feel free to quote what I said, and prove me wrong.
Okay, I’m out of here now; if I show up later in the evening, I’ll have been drinking, so ignore anything I say.
ken, your unfamiliarity with Gary‘s edge is a case in point.
And note that you’re proposing something either vague and possibly radical or something scary, from out of the blue. The better part of valor would be to show the community that you’re a reasonable person before approaching possibly dangerous territory.
lj,
I’m afraid I’m not in the know on that reference. Sounds interesting, though.
Andrew: I wasn’t either, and so when basically everyone started writing “Bird Dog sucks and is ruining the site!” as soon as Charles Bird showed up here, I thought that all our previously nice commenters had had some sort of meltdown in unison.
Apparently, though, people used to say that to him on Tacitus, and it got to be a standing joke.
Gary, dude.
I was referring to the problem of violence against jews living in the middle east. But in some twisted warped way you read into that the ‘Jewish Problem’, as defined by Adolf Hitler, ie their very existence.
That is why I asked you what you meant. I couldn’t believe anyone could seriously think I was advocating or referring to the ‘final solution’ or anything close to that.
I guess the lesson is that I should never underestimate the vileness potential of a seemingly intellegent person.
hilzoy,
Thank you for the explanation. I saw some of that in the comments to his last post and wondered about that.
But Israel is a nation, an artifice, a place carved out of another place.
As opposed to . . . ? I mean, which, precisely, countries are you offering as counterexamples here?
phil, I am not offering any contrast between countries.
The distiction that I am making is the distiction between Jews and the State of Israel – just like one would make a distiction between Frenchmen and France, Germans and Germany, etc.
The Myth of Lebanon
I really wasn’t going to coment cause I am getting bored and snarky, but Phil set me up.
The underlying point of the link above is that Lebanon really can’t reign in Hezbollah and still be Lebanon.
I used “reign” on purpose, hoping to make someone very irate. Really.
So, it’s just peachy if there’s a spot on the map called “Israel,” as long as it’s Judenrein? That will solve everything? OK.
BTW, you might want to look into French politics and culture before you start making “distiction[s] between Frenchmen and France.”
Still, I’m curious as to which nations aren’t “an artifice, a place carved out of another place.”
bob: “I used ‘reign’ on purpose, hoping to make someone very irate. Really.”
I actually have a t-shirt with this character on it.
And yes, lack of sleep does seem to have a bad effect on me.
FYI, DKOS has a great discussion going on over there about this issue in one of the recommended diaries.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/14/142433/998
From reading the comments it looks like close to a hundred different people are engaged, enraged, thrilled, saddened, enlightened or being misled – all at the same time, all by the same post, all by each other.
Folks, freedom of speech doesn’t get any better than this.
I recommend you look for the Carl Nyberg comments. Among them you will find some real wisdom.
How to link: see here.
“Find” or search to “Link Something.”
I think that Israel’s response to Hezbollah to this point has been correct and within the bounds of my loose understanding of proportionality.
The only reason I think that Israel should consider stopping now is that for (so far as I can tell) the very first time, even reflexive defenders of Hezbollah in Saudi Arabia and Europe seem to have thought that Hezbollah went too far this time. If, and only if, such people can be convinced to take action against Hezbollah (cutting off funding, having the UN put real pressure on Syria) Israel should consider backing down because what they will be getting from the international community is worth it.
But considering the history, I wouldn’t blame them for thinking that the international community isn’t really going to bother.
The unpleasantness must be something else then. Your tone, possibly? Or the ‘tude?
oh gimme a break, his counterpart in this thread exhibits quite an unpleasant tone and ‘tude himself – is this a ‘regulars vs newbies thing’?
“oh gimme a break, his counterpart in this thread exhibits quite an unpleasant tone and ‘tude himself”
At times, yes, and often I regret it.
Other times, not.
I thought you’d made quite a number of excellent points of late, nonetheless.
“They could, in fact, have repatriated the Palestinians into their own countries (particularly Jordan, which is a Palestinian nation)”
Following the earlier suggestion that Israeli Jews move to the US, I feel like some sort of karmic balance has been restored. I’ve seen this idea proposed countless times before, from Likudniks and Christian Zionists, but let’s not let its lack of originality prejudice our minds against it. I’d like to supplement these wonderful ideas with some thoughts of my own–both suggestions could be followed, with Israeli Jews moving to the US and Palestinians going to Jordan. The land without a people would remain that way, and could be run by the Disney Corporation as a religious theme park.
There, I just solved the whole damn problem.
Of course, if people listened to me this thread would have been doused with lighter fluid and burnt to the ground.
Donald, even though it’s my comment you’re criticizing, I gotta tell you, your idea of Israel as a vast, de-populated Disney Kingdom made me laugh.
And now I’m conjuring all sorts of amazingly, totally un-PC rides, theme hotels, and amenities for the place.
Like, “Tower of Real Terror,” and “Bomber Bumper Cars,” and “Horsemen of the Apocalypse Buffet,” and…
Oh, dear. Somebody stop me.
“I feel like some sort of karmic balance has been restored.”
Note some serious nonparallelism.
No offense ken, but it’s obvious that Gary has thought about this I/P situation extraordinarily deeply.
You are not his “counterpart.”
I’d like to thank you and Obsedien Wings for this analysis. If the MSM has anything close to this expertise, detail and even-handedness, I’ve yet to see it. Again, Thanks.
Andrew sucks and is ruining the site…
Maj. Reeves, you’ll know that your suckitude and ruination are truly appreciated when a satellite site arises. Cf. Hating on Charles Bird, listed under ‘Regulars,’ of which LJ is a member.
No offense ken, but it’s obvious that Gary has thought about this I/P situation extraordinarily deeply.
But not objectively or evenhanded, which is why his facts are trustworthy (as usual) but his analysis isn’t.
“But not objectively or evenhanded, which is why his facts are trustworthy (as usual) but his analysis isn’t.”
Dutch, I’m certainly not objective, I agree, but I do try to be fair. I’ve spent all the decades I’ve engaged with Israel/Palestine as a peacenik, striving for a fair and just outcome. I’ve had a number of Palestinian friends, and I’ve worked closely at times with them. I belive utterly in the right to a Palestinian state, and passionately in the rights of Israeli Arabs to complete justice and equality.
You’ve read a tiny smattering of words from me as to what I think about the relevant issues, and I love you to death, but you can’t possibly be very familiar with most of my stances, opinions, and judgements. Just as I am not with yours.
And, as I said, I love you to death, but elsewhere you did that thing people who aren’t very clueful do in calling Israel a “theocracy.” That wasn’t precisely an accurate analysis, either.
I trust very much in your good will; I don’t trust, I’m afraid, and I would wish you not to take it personally, in your strong familiarity with the facts.
I’m sorry, incidentally, that I was harsh with you Over There. As I said, I’m kinda low on the patience with people whose knowledge is such that they claim Israel is a theocracy, and so forth. I do, as I said, trust in your good will, and I know that’s what motivates you, no matter that it would be helpful if you, like most people, read a few dozen more books. (And, yeah, no matter how much I know, more reading never hurts, myself.)
I wish I had something wise to say in conclusion about Israel and Palestine, but instead I, like many, merely feel anguish.
Well, as usual, HoCB is there, if belatedly. Mention my name, you’ll get a good seat.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best currrent resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
Thanks, Casey. And yeah, I think there are real possibilities with this theme park notion of mine, if current claims to the real estate could be resolved in my favor. (Yes, I have decided to stake my own claim to the property and edge Disney out.) We can be partners–I’ll handle the Biblical themes (Davidland, containing attractions for all ages– a section with Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite for the adults which could be as X-rated for violence and sex as you like, another area where kids test their ability with a sling at hitting someone in the forehead with a rock) and you can take care of the more up-to-date history.
I read your link, Rilkefan. I’m not sure of its relevance–if the Palestinians don’t want to move to Jordan it doesn’t matter whether someone says Jordan is the Palestinian state. Jordan apparently has no interest in taking back the West Bank, assuming that Israel would hand it over. “Jordan is Palestine” was a favorite mantra of Bill Safire, I believe, but Safire was not the person I’d go to if I wanted a Palestinian perspective.
Hard Choices or Time to Act?
Sorry but I have to call out the idea that striking out never leads to outright success. While the massive bombardment of Germany and Japan did not cause them to surrender it certainly wasn’t irrelevant. And it is worth noting that both did indee ……
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best currrent resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
I don’t get the idea that because the Palestinians have a perspective, it must therefore be honored. Or similarly, because both sides “feel” the same way about revenge means that they are on equal footing. If either were the case, then there would never be any moral judgements, as people always feel resentful when they don’t get what they think they deserve, and people have a rationalization for any behavior no matter how indefensible.
When I put it this starkly, I doubt that there is mush disagreement. Of course there are some things wrong and some things right. In this world the two are often mixed, and it may be difficult to separate out. But that does not give credence to the idea that any perspective must have some validity.
If the Palestinians ever had a moral case, they have long since forfeited it. They have been willingly used by other states in the region as a beachhead into Israel. Their claim to the land is founded more on their fantasies of how prosperous they used to be on it than it is on any territorial claim that they put forward. There are always disputes about territory, everywhere in the world. Learning to live with that, going on, raising children, building a culture, has been the lot of every tribe on earth at one time or another.
Nearly every boundary in Europe is disputed by someone.
All attempts to adjudicate the conflict have failed, because the Palestinians, with the encouragement of surrounding tribes, will accept no solution but one. No person, no family, no tribe, no nation ever gets that. Their “feeling” that they have a just cause is irrelevant. Everyone, sane or insane, criminal or law-abiding, has the feeling that they have a just cause.
There is an iron law of tribal interactions, fair or unfair. If you keep siding with the people who lose wars, you are going to lose territory. If your friends won’t take you in, you have no friends. If you have notheing to sell, no one will buy from you.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best currrent resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
Here’s the crazy-making thing: anything a country does is critizable.
Israel is a country. It has done some horrible things. There is complete freedom to say so.
But many countries, almost all countries, have done horrible things.
Israel remains the only country — the only country in the entire world — where the beginning of the discussion is its entire right to exist.
It starts and should stop there.
The U.S., Britain, China, Russia, India, you name it, have all committed atrocities, and all exist over the bodies of previous peoples.
But no one demands they disband and evacuate.
Only in the case of the Jews does that continue to be the topic brought up in every single discussion, at every moment, at the drop of the hat.
Criticise Israel all you want. Criticism is a virtue; it has healing powers; it’s a good.
I’ve never had a week in my adult life in which I’ve not criticized Israel.
And oftimes I’ve vituperatively lashed at its leaders, particularly Ariel Sharon, whom I spent decades calling a war criminal, a horror, an evil piece of work.
But I’ve done similarly for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and in recent years, I’ve had similarly unkind words for President George W. Bush.
But for all the utterly justifiable words of attack upon G. W. Bush, few indeed say that, because of his and similar acts of history of the U.S., that everyone not of American Indian anscestory should evacuate North America, and return to where “they came from.”
Few declare that because of the immense, and true and genuine, evil of the European attack and overwhelming assault upon South America, that it should all be returned to those whose ancestors lived there.
Etc., etc., etc., all around the world.
Only upon Israel is this assault made.
Only upon Israel is this logic unloaded.
I’m all for, as I’ve said a jillion times, just criticism of Israel whenever it fails to do justice, and to do right, in its mission to be a light unto the nations.
But I must and do start from the position that the right of the Jews to have a nation is no less, nor more, than that of the Palestinians, or any other people on the planet.
That is my start and that is my finish.
I could only wish it would be so for everyone else.
But it will never be so.
And thus the fight.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best currrent resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
I agree with everything that you just said, Gary. What pollutes debate from the other side is that often the first response to criticism is to defend Israel’s right to exist predicated on the assumption that any such criticism is formed as an attack on that right.
Yeah, I know. When so many arguments are actually framed from that perspective in the first place, it probably shapes many other debates.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best currrent resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best currrent resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best currrent resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best currrent resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best currrent resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
Gary Farber:
As I said, I’m kinda low on the patience with people whose knowledge is such that they claim Israel is a theocracy,
Its not, but there seems to be a lot of forces trying to move it in that direction (as opposed to the more secular view of government by the early Zionists, whose vision of founding a Jewish state was not that of founding a theocracy), and having a some success in doing so. Would be interested in your view on that, and the “Who’s a Jew” controversy that’s been simmering for a while (don’t know its current status, and have not seen any news on it for a while after the blow up a few years ago).
The survivors of the Holocaust (and those who did not live through the Holocaust, but shared the victim’s ethnicity/religion) were alive to demand justice and argue for a state.
The survivors of the creation of Israel (and those who did not live through the creation of the state of Israel, but shared the victims’ ethnicity/religion) are still alive to demand justice and argue for a state.
What complicates the “right to exist” thing is that in the case of Israel, its right to exist is predicated on denying the Palestinians the right to live in what used to be their homes. For pragmatic reasons I think the Palestinians need to swallow this, though there might be face-saving ways to sugarcoat it. The analogy to the US is a complicated one–Native Americans are citizens like everyone else and can live anywhere they want in the US and it would be a tad awkward to say that this is only the case because there are so few of them. The last time the demographical situation was similar to the I/P conflict was sometime around King Phillip’s War.
AVI, lots of people on both sides agree with you. The atrocities of the Palestinians/Israelis have completely negated the claims of the Israelis/Palestinians to the land. The only logical solution, as I have just come to realize, is that they both evacuate forthwith and hand the keys over to me as they all leave.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best currrent resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
“Israel remains the only country — the only country in the entire world — where the beginning of the discussion is its entire right to exist.”
Let’s see if we can do an ABC for Gary of states that have had a hard time winning acceptance of their right to exist.
Aceh, Biafra, Cyprus, Darfur, East Timor….
I’m stuck for an “F”. Formosa would be cheating, obviously. Any suggestions?
In the nature of the case, some states eventually win acceptance and some don’t. I really can’t see that Israel is unique in that respect. Nations win statehood by being indigestible. If their resistance to being swallowed up isn’t strong enough they will cease to be. My advice to any Arab who thinks of the existence of Israel as an injustice would be to contemplate the example of the Chinese, who seem to have a more realistic idea of how to win back lost territory. Start by developing what you have. In time your superpower status will enable you to get what you want, perhaps without a shot being fired.
Fortunately for Israel, no Arab seems to want my advice. Or perhaps unfortunately, since the Taiwanese have a less stressful relationship with those who plan to absorb them.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
I actually have a t-shirt with this character on it.
Me, too. I think I might have three different ones. Plus, I do a passing fair imitation of him.
My talents are mostly of the useless-but-occasionally-amusing variety.
“But no one demands they disband and evacuate.”
Hmmm……it belongs to them; we’ve gotta give it back. Nit, I know. And not sure what Peter Garrett meant by “it”, exactly.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
In all fairness to the Arabs who aren’t taking your advice, Kevin, Israel hasn’t exactly been encouraging Palestinian economic development to superpower status over the last couple decades. In fact they’ve spent a lot of time destroying large swaths of Palestinian infrastructure and generally making the populations of the occupied territories economically dependent on Israel.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
May I share something with you? In the past I believed in “two states for two nations”. I believed that the only solution to the Palestinian problem will be in founding a prospering Palestinian state, probably on the 67` boarders. Now I’m afraid I was wrong.
The Palestinian national movement has been proven as a total failure all over its history. Every time they had to make a decision, they made the wrong one. Even in the last decades they couldn’t bring themselves to found such a state, although they were offered to do it several times. It seems they do not have the positive powers in their national movement, the powers that can found things, and not just destroy the others. Look at the Gaza redrawn: after the redrawn they didn’t try to create a functional economy or culture (they would have gotten any help they want). Compare it to the Zionist’s national movement: Most of the energy during the years was invested in developing agriculture, education and so on. The Palestinian did not even try to found a positive society.
I wonder if the Palestinian national movement will disappear, like other national movements in history that didn’t succeed in their demands. I don’t know where it leaves Israel: Maybe it’s the worst think that can happen to Israel.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
they didn’t try to create a functional economy or culture (they would have gotten any help they want)
Really? Any help they wanted? I seem to recall America and Europe cutting off aid to the PA just a few months ago because they elected the wrong party. I also remember Israel seizing Palestinian tax revenue around the same time. That’s a funny way to help someone. Of course, that’s all just cherries on the sundae; Gaza is dependent on Israel for everything from power to water purification to steady employment, as you’d expect of a region that’s been beggared by occupation and war for three decades. Expecting Gaza to be economically independent a year after the pullout is just crazy.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
Christmas,
I wasn’t thinking of the Palestinians, who of course have very little control over their own destiny, so much as the Arab states who could have pooled their resources into a formidable bloc. They toyed with the idea in such now-forgotten entities as the United Arab Republic, but they never really got their act together. The Arab League is a farce but it didn’t have to be.
Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians was discredited many centuries before it was implemented. Pontius Pilate could have told them it wasn’t going to work. Either you win them over or you sell them as slaves. Forgive me for being flippant, but the subject is too painful to treat seriously.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
The Palestinians do depend on Israel (not entirely, because they have a boarder with Egypt). So, I would expect them to make the right decisions. If you elect a terrorist group to be your government, don’t be surprise the world cutting your aid. If you elected this group, you can’t seriously expect Israel to cooperate with them. If you fire rockets towards Israeli citizens every day since the new government elected, you will have your men killed. That’s what I’m saying: They bring it on themselves. They even don’t need the Israelis to help them.
“Its not, but there seems to be a lot of forces trying to move it in that direction (as opposed to the more secular view of government by the early Zionists, whose vision of founding a Jewish state was not that of founding a theocracy), and having a some success in doing so. Would be interested in your view on that, and the ‘Who’s a Jew’ controversy that’s been simmering for a while (don’t know its current status, and have not seen any news on it for a while after the blow up a few years ago).”
Unsurprisingly, I tend to take the attitude of Shinui, and I think Shas and the NRP are thoroughly corrupt and outrageous. I’ve already said a few times that I was a past longtime supporter of Meretz.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
If you elect a terrorist group to be your government, don’t be surprise the world cutting your aid
Except that Hamas didn’t run on a pro-terrorist, push-Israel-into-the-sea platform; they ran on clean government and the restoration of the local economy. To you and me, Hamas may be little more than a terrorist organizaton, but to Palestinians they’re the ones who often managed to keep hospitals running while Fatah was burning whatever money the Palestinian Authority managed to get. Given that the election was pushed and promoted by America and took place with the sanction of Israel, one might forgive the Palestinians for the mistaken belief that they actually had more than one option when it came time to vote.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
Yes. You’re right. The Palestinians as individuals are very poor and unfortunate. I am sorry for them and I think we ought to help them (as individuals). But I was talking about their national movement. It hasn’t succeeded in growing leaders that wouldn’t be terrorists or corrupts. It seems hopeless.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. News Breaks (blogs and opinion…
“Except that Hamas didn’t run on a pro-terrorist, push-Israel-into-the-sea platform; they ran on clean government and the restoration of the local economy. To you and me, Hamas may be little more than a terrorist organizaton, but to Palestinians they’re the ones who often managed to keep hospitals running while Fatah was burning whatever money the Palestinian Authority managed to get.”
And if that had been more important to them than their terrorist platform, they could have abandoned the terrorist platform when it became clear that they couldn’t have all the EU aid and continue to be about destroying Israel.
We all know which branch of that fork they chose to take.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. Excellent map of the war…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. Excellent map of the war…
There’s a very snarky comment about the platform of, say, the Texas Republican party floating around in my head, but I’ll pass it up just to mention that sometimes, it pays to ignore inflammatory aspects of platforms.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. Excellent map of the war…
Gary: feel free to critisize all I say (except maybe my English, that would get boring in the repetition…). I’m quite used to people disagreeing with me, being both a centralist and a middle child 🙂
But no, you are not objective. For example; you report 120 casualities (a word *currently* used for deaths, not wounded) on Israeli side, but do not mention the almost 200 deaths (I didn’t even count the wounded) on the Palestinian/lebanese side. A small point, but one in a hugh row. I find that in what you report and how you report it is very colored. I actually assume your intent is good and I am quite convinced that your facts are correct, but your analysis is far from impartial.
In our discussin in HOBC I said theocracy. That might be what we, in our little family, refer to as an ‘Wittgenstein’. I mean by theocracy a society where religion defines many/most of the basic rules in society.
I then said that our protestant crownprince (in a country were reformed protestantism is the state religion) married a catholic girl without many problems, whilst in Israel you can only marry if you are both jewish. (I am staying with family, different connection, so I cannot google and quote literally). In your reply you said that marriage was defined by all the religions in Israel and quoted a list of approved religions that could perform marriages. You focussed on the JEWS in my statement.
I however, was more focussed on the BOTH – if you are Jewish (or appearantly any of the other religions) you cannot marry someone who does not belong to your own religion. Not even an atheist Jew. Hence my example of cross religious marriage.
Yes, your basic attitude of “I’ve been studying this for a zillion years so I know more than you and thus my viewpoint is the only correct one” get to me. Many things get to me – I’m not the rolemodel for patience I’m afraid 🙂
Reading through this thread there are so many things I disagree with, that I don’t even know where to start. And frankly I feel that the American bias is so great that it is as futile as telling them that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 in 2003. So I admire the people who still want to try.
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. Excellent map of the war…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. Excellent map of the war…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
[Continued coverage here.] This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. Excellent map…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
[Continued coverage here.] This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. Excellent map…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
[Continued coverage here.] This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. Excellent…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
[Continued coverage here.] This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from Lebanese and Israeli bloggers covering the conflict can be found @ Truth Laid Bear. Excellent…
The Israel-Hezbollah War Part Four
An Israeli flag set on fire by protestors Sunday, July 16, 2006 in Karachi, Pakistan. [Continued coverage here.] This is a developing post; scroll down for more stories July 15, 2006 Note: The best current resource for updates from…
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