Great piece, Ross. It's difficult to consider (and put voice to) the possibility that there truly are no good answers here, but it certainly seems to be true. This really resonated with me.
There are absolutely good answers. Freeing the Palestinian people from the terrorists who treat them as cannon fodder in an effort to kill as many Jews as possible is a nice start.
Wes: There is a site formerly known as Twitter that would welcome your contributions. I'm sure you would find the kind of reactions you're looking for if you posted there.
One angle that hasn’t been analyzed is the effect of demographic change in the US and EU on the current “blank check” support these entities provide Israel.
I wouldn’t be so quick to say the US and Western Europe will blindly support Israel forever.
Demographic trends as currently on pace suggests by 2100 there will be a very different electorate that will affect policy across a whole host of domains.
Christian Zionism as a political force in the States isn’t going anywhere. American Evangelicals will continue to take a line to the right of Likud on the Arab-Israeli conflict. True, the Republican Party’s fortunes may ebb a bit by 2100, but that edifying idea is merely speculative and not really borne out by any empirical data. 70 years is functionally the Triassic Period in US politics.
>Israel is a contradiction. At some point, you can no longer be an ethno-state and a democracy.
Except for all the Arabs who serve in Parliament, and the non-Jews throughout Israel who have full legal and voting rights, you might be on to something here.
> Like George W. Bush after 9/11, Benjamin Netanyahu will be bathed in the glow of a new holy war, one that will slaughter many more civilians on the other side. ... When he loses power or dies, there will be no Golda Meir presiding over this land of the Jews. It will be the muscular Jews, the ultrareligious and bloodthirsty, who will get all that they want.
Except for the part where Netanyahu is already being pilloried for letting this happen, and the fact that Likud is at an all-time low in the polls, and the party that's surged as its replacement is the centrist, competency-based coalition of Gantz and Sa'ar, you might be on to something here.
>Two-state solution, one-state solution, no solution. Israel possesses, thanks to the United States, one of the world’s great militaries.
Except for the part about how Israel began its existence by defending against an invasion from six different Arab countries, you might be on to something here.
>The most idealistic solution, the one most popular with American leftists, is the single, multinational state, a democracy where everyone has an equal vote, an equal say. This, in a just world, would be one outcome, but it will not happen. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever.
Except for the part where Gaza is ruled by an international terrorist organization dedicated only to the slaughter of Jews, and the West Bank is ruled by a purported "moderate" who maintains a "Martyrs Fund" for the families of dead Palestinians who die killing a Jew (and where the payouts scale with the number of Jews they kill), you might be on to something here.
> A multinational state is not a Jewish state, just as it’s not written into the Constitution that America is for the white Protestants and no one else. The Jews might get outvoted, just like Catholics (and even a Black man) became president here. Bibi and his allies won’t allow that to happen. Nor will the United States. The bombardment of Gaza makes that clear.
Yes, the Jewish Homeland should not come to be ruled by Arabs who would ethnically cleanse all Jews from it if given the opportunity, just like they've done in every other Arab country.
You really thought you were saying something here, weren't you? Just because you're Jewish doesn't make you any less of a traitor to your people.
I love how you give away the game by starting off bragging about the rights of non-Jews in Israel and then end by claiming that the Jewish homeland will not be overruled by Arabs.
There will always be ethnic minorities in any state. The Arab minority in Israel is freer than the Arab majority anywhere else in the Midlde East. It is not incompatible to note that (1) Israel must remain a majority-Israeli state in order to safeguard the safety of the Jewish people; and (2) that does not preclude it from being a pluralistic liberal society.
A yet-another [K]Hasbara. I would have bothered to do point-by-point with your AI-generated synthesis with my manual labour but unless you make some irrevocable commitments, it simply ain't worth engaging with somebody who froths at mouth <i>pro bono</i> so there's simply no incentive in having this endless cycle of the very same Talking Points (TPs) since people like you are better off left behind in your echo-chambers ("alt-facts" multiverse).
I think our host has the better of the argument on most of your rebuttals, but you do make some excellent points. Gaza is indeed ruled by an international terrorist org, and Arab citizens of Israel can vote (although Netanyahu is increasingly trying to keep them from the polls. Still, Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank can’t vote in Israeli elections, and they are functional stateless individuals, with zero civil liberties. So, Israel isn’t an apartheid state. It’s only partly an apartheid state state in Gaza and the West Bank. To point to a current slump in the polls for Likud as evidence for ongoing political diversity in Israel is either highly naive or deeply disingenuous. Sa’ar, lifelong Likudnik with an axe to grind, and the pallucidly centrist Gantz are a million miles politically for old-school Labor Zionism. In the unlikely event they eventually defeat the electorally indomitable Bibi, the political climate of Israel will barely change at all. As for the “traitor to his people” claim, that cliched nonsense essentially impeached everything reasonable you stated earlier. Nice try, but try harder.
Also, who, pray tell, would the author be betraying? Israel isn’t “his people.” He’s not Israeli. Do all Jews owe loyalty to Israel? No more than all Muslims owe fealty to the PLO or Hamas. The author is an American, so that’s where his loyalties lie. And I’d imagine his loyalties there are fairly strong, much stronger than those who tried to overthrow the republic on January 6th.
And yet-another problem, you self-defeatingly continuing to play by their framing as this being about "Jews vs Muslims" when it's materially about the oppressor vs the oppressed.
*Partly RETYPED FROM SCRATCH:* While I see sense in the second-half of your reply, at least the first-half of it is so woefully-malinformed, it might as well be a conciliatory libzio reply for the irreconcilable. (_Vide_ my parent reply to them here.)
>Still, Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank can’t vote in Israeli elections
That makes sense, considering they are not Isaelis. Wonder why they can't vote in Palestinian elections, though. Could have something to do with Gaza being ruled by a totalitarian terrorist organization, and the West Bank being ruled by Abbas, in the 18th year of a four-year term, who won't allow elections because he'd probably lose to Hamas.
>So, Israel isn’t an apartheid state. It’s only partly an apartheid state state in Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel's actions towards the settlements in the West Bank are atrocious, but it cannot be considered "apartheid" to impose restrictions on those outside of your state.
>To point to a current slump in the polls for Likud as evidence for ongoing political diversity in Israel is either highly naive or deeply disingenuous. Sa’ar, lifelong Likudnik with an axe to grind, and the pallucidly centrist Gantz are a million miles politically for old-school Labor Zionism. In the unlikely event they eventually defeat the electorally indomitable Bibi, the political climate of Israel will barely change at all.
Yair Lapid was literally Prime Minister a year ago.
>As for the “traitor to his people” claim, that cliched nonsense essentially impeached everything reasonable you stated earlier. Nice try, but try harder.
The Jewish people are entitled to a homeland, safety, and security. Any Jew who would deny them that is functionally a kapo.
And Lapid being PM changed the political culture of Israel not at all. There will only be two kinds of Israeli governments henceforth: center-right and far-right. For better and for worse, Zionist social democracy is literally dead.
In part, but more significantly the old secular left was outbred by the Orthodox. Demographics are political destiny in Israel, and when the social democratic Ashkenazi old guard don’t have a replacement level of children, their power was bound to dissipate, then disappear. And of course you have a welfare system which encourages Haredi men to forego both conscription and gainful employment.
Hey, c'mon.. Quite a lot of Haredim are also Ashkenazim. Don't try to launder white supremacy of culture chauvinism/supremacy here, especially if just like the author, you also believe that the term "Antisemitic" and/or its derivatives can objectively apply to Indigenous people dubbed Palestinians (I'll only say that it's a ludicrously-farcical notion Thanks to the galling double-standards [so far]).
The "Israeli" “Left” (your way of saying ‘Zionist so-called Left’) was discredited by the time of Oslo I itself as Late Prof Edward Saïed contemporaneously pointed-out, nevermind some kind of “Left” which is obsessed with elusive "national security" in a controversial society with State of Emergency since Day 0 of its creation and its predicated inability to halt the expansion of existing and even construction of new illegal settlements — all of which preceded the Second Uprising which became armed only-&-only after the brutally violent crackdown by the occupation authorities against their protests. So.. "Aww, shucks!" for such a “Left”, I guess? (Wanna guess how many of those “leftists” were part of those "just following their orders" for the mercilessly atrocious crackdown?)
If that sounds radical, mind you that I haven't taken your apathetically privileged comment to its horseshoe, natural conclusion and blamed the undergoing-extermination in Indigenous people dubbed Palestinians for that violent, illegal-as-always aggression by the occupiers since they didn't learn from the First Intifada that peaceful protests are nothing but hokey since what its advocates/proponents don't tell you is the fine-print that they work only-&-only if the party being protested against has enough of conventional-morality left in them to not respond disproportionately against the reaction to their prior actions, you can't reason with those who replace morality with self-victimisation — and hence "they had it coming" for repeating the very same playbook the Second time (echoes of the [Great] March of Return specifically in the occupied Gaza Strip for 3rd during a host of persecution by the occupiers bubbled upto the permanent diplomatic mission move which your country has already decided in the early 90s as a precursor to Oslo through Clinton (no honorific!) and kept on freeze till Trump came to Power) before unjust barbarism caused them to escalate their direct action to armed resistance. No wonder that Oslo was nothing but "CoIn" (so-called counterinsurgency).
>I'm not sure "we have to seize their land and drive them out because of we don't they will drive us out" is a very solid argument.
What land has Israel seized in Gaza? You're aware that it unilaterally disengaged, withdrew all settlements, and that no Israeli civilian has set foot in Gaza in decades, right?
Ha! I'm pleasantly surprised they didn't attempt a yet-another [K]Hasbara comeback to this one. Guess they must've failed to program an AI to successfully synthesise more frothing-at-mouth TPs over how that prima facie makes sense for better part of 7+ decades (before somebody brings-up junta-ruled Egypt in their petty desperation of that ecosystem, just know that "Israelis" used to raid aka invade that supposed "Egyptian territory" time after time again till 1967, most likely 'cus they must've felt a sense-of-ownership towards it, given there was no such thing as "Gaza [Strip]" before 1949, only Gaza City* with that name).
*'Lah...! I wonder what that makes the whole of “Gaza”, then?
We are speaking after more than fifty years of mutual outrage, perceived outrage, recrimination, and resentment - and yet as you say, it would not seem wise at this point to put more power in the hands of present Palestinian leadership.
It is true that, regardless of initial conditions or justifications, one cannot expect a people to tolerate subjection (or even perceived subjection) in peace - and yet knowing this does not help anything, when one already has the tiger by the tail.
Thus there is no answer - at least for people who consider the people presently confined to Gaza & the West Bank to have a right to self-determination & self-governance. Personally, however, I don't particularly care which people feel attached to which land.
If it were in my power to end this awful business by transplanting all the Palestinians to depopulated Detroit tomorrow, I would order it done, and worry about the "injustice" later - or never - but the only reason I say Palestinians, rather than Israelis, is because they are fewer & less well armed.
The only answer left, it seems to me, is vae victis, and once we all acknowledge the clear fait accompli, we can move on with helping the Palestinians find some new land of their own to call home - and leave to the victor Israelis those thin strips of desert which are to them so mysteriously precious.
What a Bizarro World grade of "solutions" you got! And what do you mean by “less well armed”? What on Earth does that have to do with displacement? And you do realise thar neither it's just “50 years” but more than ‘75 years’ and also includes what the malinforming OP here calls “aYrUbS” ('48 Palestinians). Exactly what is that pernicious implicit bias which prohibits you to not just picture the same solution for Jews when even a widely-popular Murican sitcom on a "broadcast network" with very RW viewership can get away with presenting as "a joke" for a whole single scheme, but even your failure to challenge this OP on any of their falsehoods and instead, trying to launder the thorough illegality of self-marketed "Jewish and Democratic State" by hiding behind Latin (the one-&-only objectively sound argument in its favour)? And it's not true that it's so “mysteriously” precious, quit trying to give them the orientalism treatment of exotica. Did you even know how many of them have a citizenship of at least one other country? Why would they continue to hold dual citizenships, if “those thin strips of desert” is genuinely so “precious” to them as you believe?
Your very first para[graph] starts off with an ubiquitous-but-nevertheless a lie that '48 Palestinians (whom, you, true to the form, call “aYrUbS” here to convey the level of mainstreamed extremism) have “full voting and legal rights” when several dozens of laws (60+) ensure that's anything but remotely true within the Green Line.
Nevermind other horse fertilizer like “iNvAsIoN” over an illegally self-declared polity made of the ruling classes/elites of European immigrants, both legal and mostly illegal.
This whole rant is peak [K]Hasbara compilation galore one after another. And it speaks volumes that you're making this as a reply to what's nothing more than a libzio apologia.
The amazing thing to me about the Israel-Palestinian conflict is that, contra Ross, "the answer" is actually obvious:
- Israel pulls back from the West Bank except for a few settlements close to the border and swaps other lands in exchange for the settlement lands they are keeping.
- Palestine gains recognition as a country and full self-government but agrees to full demilitarization (perhaps indefinitely or maybe for a set period of years) and gives up all claims on lands within Israel.
- Demilitarization is enforced by a huge international military presence in the West Bank and Gaza.
- Big fences for the foreseeable future.
The tragedy, of course, is that neither side today is willing to agree to this obvious answer (which, I get, is what Ross really means when he writes there is “no answer”). But I'm more optimistic than he is that an American led international effort could still force this answer into existence. It will likely require the U.S threatening to cut off aid and even the threat of sanctions against Israel; but in the end the Israelis will agree. The reality is that the crazy settlers committed to making “Judea and Samaria” part of Israel are still a significant minority and most Israelis would trade land for a credible peace.
So it’s ultimately a question of whether the Palestinians will accept this, and I think they ultimately do so, if only because they would have no real options otherwise.
But I also think that the right messaging would help. And for that messaging,I would amend Ross’ “no answer” formulation slightly to instead be “no justice.”
Because we should acknowledge that the answer above means there will ultimately be no justice for the Palestinian families that lost land to an influx of Jewish immigrants fleeing from Europe and other Middle Eastern countries. We should acknowledge that these Palestinian families have legitimate grievances about how they have been treated by history.
At the same time, we should also acknowledge that there was also no justice for the Jewish families who fled to Israel from the lands of their birthplaces, in most cases leaving everything they had ever known behind.
And while one could perhaps argue that it’s all Europe’s fault because of the anti-semitism that led to Zionism, and that they should ultimately fund reparations to both Israelis and Palestinians to make things right, that would hardly be just to the Europeans of today, who were neither the perpetrators of the sins of their ancestors and whose ancestors themselves suffered horribly because of World Wars I and II.
The reality is that expecting justice from history is a false hope that is almost always a practical impossibility. Whether one is Jewish, Palestinian, Cherokee, African American, Rwandan, Ukrainian, Indonesian, Cuban, etc. holding out for “justice” is a mistake if it prevents you from making the most of the present.
So the message to the Palestinians should be to acknowledge their past suffering and to admit that the solution being offered above is not justice. But it also should be to make clear that it’s the best solution they are likely to get and that it’s time to move forward, even though it means moving forward without justice.
And.. Your zest to launder Oslo as something ingenious that you've just cooked up here, which itself dates back to about a century old Euro imperialist (specifically, British) endeavour to carve up historic Palestine. So while your radical honesty (isn't that quite emblematic of how cyclical and mostly-unilaterally dishonest the discourse over this whole topic area is?) is quite appreciated. Gotta say, quite liberal of ye!
So, no Thanks: No peace without justice. No peace before justice.
You're certainly right this is nothing new. In essence, it's just calling for the proposals of Taba/Olmert2008/Olmert-AlKidwas2024.
And, of course, the Palestinians could certainly hold out for justice and continue to fight. But as should have been obvious two years ago and is even more clear today, that is unlikely to end well.
Best case if Hamas continues to hold power is that the Gaza war continues, Palestinians there continue to die in large numbers, the Settlers continue to colonize more of the West Bank, and Palestinians continue to live under an increasingly oppressive occupation.
Worst case, folks like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir win full power over foreign policy and there is a second Nakba driving the Palestinians completely out the West Bank and Gaza.
If understanding this, you still believe "no peace without justice; no peace before justice," then we'll just have to agree to disagree. But in the famous words of Dr. Krakower to Carmela Soprano: "one thing you can never say, is that you haven't been told."
You've got this 🍑 backwards, because they'd in fact challenge American anti-genocide/pro-justice types to do so* per the good ol' roadblock bull of "go solve the mysteries of the universe before you carry the chutzpah to deal with Israel" failing which is allegedly an "Antisemitic double-standard". But apart from the crystal-clear legality which doesn't favour their supposedly precious settler-colony but does favour Murica, it's also true that Ashkenazim are not Indigenous to historic Palestine, unlike the Indigenous nations are to the Turtle Island (North America).
*I know it because even when I was a Labour zionazi so woefully-ignorant, or I'm not a Brit which means a ‘non-zionazi’, I always pictured myself offering up this "gotcha'!" as as impenetrable/infallible defense of what I've come to now acknowledge as a functionally-genocidal ideology à la Manifest Destiny (itself rooted in mercantilism, the predecessor to capitalism and Enlightenment™ ideals of classical liberalism and republicanism). Simply put, I'm talking from very first-hand experience, amongst others.
Challenging, insightful piece. Groups like Standing Together and other peace activists comprised of Jews and Palestinians give me a great deal of hope, even though they are incredibly marginal in their society. But if the last few years of global politics, especially, have taught us nothing else, today's margin can be tomorrow's mainstream. A better future for all parties involved only dissolves if we decide it isn't worth fighting for.
You are quite Pollyanna about the design of astroturfed collectives like Omdim Beyachad, then. (Not to gossip but go ask allegedly why its "Jewish", as defined under "Israeli" citizenship laws where "Israeli" doesn't exist as a demonym, co-founder left the Hadash coalition.) That's all.
I'll share what I wrote on Wednesday, which is not political but is how I, a Reform Jew living in NYC, feel. A sense of tribal identity and gratitude that there exists a Jewish homeland.
Great piece, Ross. It's difficult to consider (and put voice to) the possibility that there truly are no good answers here, but it certainly seems to be true. This really resonated with me.
There are absolutely good answers. Freeing the Palestinian people from the terrorists who treat them as cannon fodder in an effort to kill as many Jews as possible is a nice start.
Wes: There is a site formerly known as Twitter that would welcome your contributions. I'm sure you would find the kind of reactions you're looking for if you posted there.
One angle that hasn’t been analyzed is the effect of demographic change in the US and EU on the current “blank check” support these entities provide Israel.
I wouldn’t be so quick to say the US and Western Europe will blindly support Israel forever.
Demographic trends as currently on pace suggests by 2100 there will be a very different electorate that will affect policy across a whole host of domains.
Christian Zionism as a political force in the States isn’t going anywhere. American Evangelicals will continue to take a line to the right of Likud on the Arab-Israeli conflict. True, the Republican Party’s fortunes may ebb a bit by 2100, but that edifying idea is merely speculative and not really borne out by any empirical data. 70 years is functionally the Triassic Period in US politics.
>Israel is a contradiction. At some point, you can no longer be an ethno-state and a democracy.
Except for all the Arabs who serve in Parliament, and the non-Jews throughout Israel who have full legal and voting rights, you might be on to something here.
> Like George W. Bush after 9/11, Benjamin Netanyahu will be bathed in the glow of a new holy war, one that will slaughter many more civilians on the other side. ... When he loses power or dies, there will be no Golda Meir presiding over this land of the Jews. It will be the muscular Jews, the ultrareligious and bloodthirsty, who will get all that they want.
Except for the part where Netanyahu is already being pilloried for letting this happen, and the fact that Likud is at an all-time low in the polls, and the party that's surged as its replacement is the centrist, competency-based coalition of Gantz and Sa'ar, you might be on to something here.
>Two-state solution, one-state solution, no solution. Israel possesses, thanks to the United States, one of the world’s great militaries.
Except for the part about how Israel began its existence by defending against an invasion from six different Arab countries, you might be on to something here.
>The most idealistic solution, the one most popular with American leftists, is the single, multinational state, a democracy where everyone has an equal vote, an equal say. This, in a just world, would be one outcome, but it will not happen. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever.
Except for the part where Gaza is ruled by an international terrorist organization dedicated only to the slaughter of Jews, and the West Bank is ruled by a purported "moderate" who maintains a "Martyrs Fund" for the families of dead Palestinians who die killing a Jew (and where the payouts scale with the number of Jews they kill), you might be on to something here.
> A multinational state is not a Jewish state, just as it’s not written into the Constitution that America is for the white Protestants and no one else. The Jews might get outvoted, just like Catholics (and even a Black man) became president here. Bibi and his allies won’t allow that to happen. Nor will the United States. The bombardment of Gaza makes that clear.
Yes, the Jewish Homeland should not come to be ruled by Arabs who would ethnically cleanse all Jews from it if given the opportunity, just like they've done in every other Arab country.
You really thought you were saying something here, weren't you? Just because you're Jewish doesn't make you any less of a traitor to your people.
I love how you give away the game by starting off bragging about the rights of non-Jews in Israel and then end by claiming that the Jewish homeland will not be overruled by Arabs.
A “bragging” that's based in a bald-faced lie to anybody capable to think critically while living in the imperial core, mind you.
There will always be ethnic minorities in any state. The Arab minority in Israel is freer than the Arab majority anywhere else in the Midlde East. It is not incompatible to note that (1) Israel must remain a majority-Israeli state in order to safeguard the safety of the Jewish people; and (2) that does not preclude it from being a pluralistic liberal society.
A yet-another [K]Hasbara. I would have bothered to do point-by-point with your AI-generated synthesis with my manual labour but unless you make some irrevocable commitments, it simply ain't worth engaging with somebody who froths at mouth <i>pro bono</i> so there's simply no incentive in having this endless cycle of the very same Talking Points (TPs) since people like you are better off left behind in your echo-chambers ("alt-facts" multiverse).
I think our host has the better of the argument on most of your rebuttals, but you do make some excellent points. Gaza is indeed ruled by an international terrorist org, and Arab citizens of Israel can vote (although Netanyahu is increasingly trying to keep them from the polls. Still, Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank can’t vote in Israeli elections, and they are functional stateless individuals, with zero civil liberties. So, Israel isn’t an apartheid state. It’s only partly an apartheid state state in Gaza and the West Bank. To point to a current slump in the polls for Likud as evidence for ongoing political diversity in Israel is either highly naive or deeply disingenuous. Sa’ar, lifelong Likudnik with an axe to grind, and the pallucidly centrist Gantz are a million miles politically for old-school Labor Zionism. In the unlikely event they eventually defeat the electorally indomitable Bibi, the political climate of Israel will barely change at all. As for the “traitor to his people” claim, that cliched nonsense essentially impeached everything reasonable you stated earlier. Nice try, but try harder.
Also, who, pray tell, would the author be betraying? Israel isn’t “his people.” He’s not Israeli. Do all Jews owe loyalty to Israel? No more than all Muslims owe fealty to the PLO or Hamas. The author is an American, so that’s where his loyalties lie. And I’d imagine his loyalties there are fairly strong, much stronger than those who tried to overthrow the republic on January 6th.
And yet-another problem, you self-defeatingly continuing to play by their framing as this being about "Jews vs Muslims" when it's materially about the oppressor vs the oppressed.
>Also, who, pray tell, would the author be betraying? Israel isn’t “his people.” He’s not Israeli. Do all Jews owe loyalty to Israel?
All Jews owe loyalty to the Jewish people, yes. The Holocaust demanded that of us. Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Loyalty to the people precisely means not being loyal to the nation-state.
Are you issuing an appeal-to-emotion addled decree here, oh-so-unpredictably?
*Partly RETYPED FROM SCRATCH:* While I see sense in the second-half of your reply, at least the first-half of it is so woefully-malinformed, it might as well be a conciliatory libzio reply for the irreconcilable. (_Vide_ my parent reply to them here.)
>Still, Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank can’t vote in Israeli elections
That makes sense, considering they are not Isaelis. Wonder why they can't vote in Palestinian elections, though. Could have something to do with Gaza being ruled by a totalitarian terrorist organization, and the West Bank being ruled by Abbas, in the 18th year of a four-year term, who won't allow elections because he'd probably lose to Hamas.
>So, Israel isn’t an apartheid state. It’s only partly an apartheid state state in Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel's actions towards the settlements in the West Bank are atrocious, but it cannot be considered "apartheid" to impose restrictions on those outside of your state.
>To point to a current slump in the polls for Likud as evidence for ongoing political diversity in Israel is either highly naive or deeply disingenuous. Sa’ar, lifelong Likudnik with an axe to grind, and the pallucidly centrist Gantz are a million miles politically for old-school Labor Zionism. In the unlikely event they eventually defeat the electorally indomitable Bibi, the political climate of Israel will barely change at all.
Yair Lapid was literally Prime Minister a year ago.
>As for the “traitor to his people” claim, that cliched nonsense essentially impeached everything reasonable you stated earlier. Nice try, but try harder.
The Jewish people are entitled to a homeland, safety, and security. Any Jew who would deny them that is functionally a kapo.
And Lapid being PM changed the political culture of Israel not at all. There will only be two kinds of Israeli governments henceforth: center-right and far-right. For better and for worse, Zionist social democracy is literally dead.
And who killed that? The Israeli Left was discredited by the Second Intifada.
In part, but more significantly the old secular left was outbred by the Orthodox. Demographics are political destiny in Israel, and when the social democratic Ashkenazi old guard don’t have a replacement level of children, their power was bound to dissipate, then disappear. And of course you have a welfare system which encourages Haredi men to forego both conscription and gainful employment.
Hey, c'mon.. Quite a lot of Haredim are also Ashkenazim. Don't try to launder white supremacy of culture chauvinism/supremacy here, especially if just like the author, you also believe that the term "Antisemitic" and/or its derivatives can objectively apply to Indigenous people dubbed Palestinians (I'll only say that it's a ludicrously-farcical notion Thanks to the galling double-standards [so far]).
The "Israeli" “Left” (your way of saying ‘Zionist so-called Left’) was discredited by the time of Oslo I itself as Late Prof Edward Saïed contemporaneously pointed-out, nevermind some kind of “Left” which is obsessed with elusive "national security" in a controversial society with State of Emergency since Day 0 of its creation and its predicated inability to halt the expansion of existing and even construction of new illegal settlements — all of which preceded the Second Uprising which became armed only-&-only after the brutally violent crackdown by the occupation authorities against their protests. So.. "Aww, shucks!" for such a “Left”, I guess? (Wanna guess how many of those “leftists” were part of those "just following their orders" for the mercilessly atrocious crackdown?)
If that sounds radical, mind you that I haven't taken your apathetically privileged comment to its horseshoe, natural conclusion and blamed the undergoing-extermination in Indigenous people dubbed Palestinians for that violent, illegal-as-always aggression by the occupiers since they didn't learn from the First Intifada that peaceful protests are nothing but hokey since what its advocates/proponents don't tell you is the fine-print that they work only-&-only if the party being protested against has enough of conventional-morality left in them to not respond disproportionately against the reaction to their prior actions, you can't reason with those who replace morality with self-victimisation — and hence "they had it coming" for repeating the very same playbook the Second time (echoes of the [Great] March of Return specifically in the occupied Gaza Strip for 3rd during a host of persecution by the occupiers bubbled upto the permanent diplomatic mission move which your country has already decided in the early 90s as a precursor to Oslo through Clinton (no honorific!) and kept on freeze till Trump came to Power) before unjust barbarism caused them to escalate their direct action to armed resistance. No wonder that Oslo was nothing but "CoIn" (so-called counterinsurgency).
I'm not sure "we have to seize their land and drive them out because if we don't they will drive us out" is a very solid argument.
"The Arab majority totally has equal rights and the government must be controlled by Jews," doesn't make much sense to me either.
>I'm not sure "we have to seize their land and drive them out because of we don't they will drive us out" is a very solid argument.
What land has Israel seized in Gaza? You're aware that it unilaterally disengaged, withdrew all settlements, and that no Israeli civilian has set foot in Gaza in decades, right?
How did those people wind up in Gaza again?
Ha! I'm pleasantly surprised they didn't attempt a yet-another [K]Hasbara comeback to this one. Guess they must've failed to program an AI to successfully synthesise more frothing-at-mouth TPs over how that prima facie makes sense for better part of 7+ decades (before somebody brings-up junta-ruled Egypt in their petty desperation of that ecosystem, just know that "Israelis" used to raid aka invade that supposed "Egyptian territory" time after time again till 1967, most likely 'cus they must've felt a sense-of-ownership towards it, given there was no such thing as "Gaza [Strip]" before 1949, only Gaza City* with that name).
*'Lah...! I wonder what that makes the whole of “Gaza”, then?
We are speaking after more than fifty years of mutual outrage, perceived outrage, recrimination, and resentment - and yet as you say, it would not seem wise at this point to put more power in the hands of present Palestinian leadership.
It is true that, regardless of initial conditions or justifications, one cannot expect a people to tolerate subjection (or even perceived subjection) in peace - and yet knowing this does not help anything, when one already has the tiger by the tail.
Thus there is no answer - at least for people who consider the people presently confined to Gaza & the West Bank to have a right to self-determination & self-governance. Personally, however, I don't particularly care which people feel attached to which land.
If it were in my power to end this awful business by transplanting all the Palestinians to depopulated Detroit tomorrow, I would order it done, and worry about the "injustice" later - or never - but the only reason I say Palestinians, rather than Israelis, is because they are fewer & less well armed.
The only answer left, it seems to me, is vae victis, and once we all acknowledge the clear fait accompli, we can move on with helping the Palestinians find some new land of their own to call home - and leave to the victor Israelis those thin strips of desert which are to them so mysteriously precious.
What a Bizarro World grade of "solutions" you got! And what do you mean by “less well armed”? What on Earth does that have to do with displacement? And you do realise thar neither it's just “50 years” but more than ‘75 years’ and also includes what the malinforming OP here calls “aYrUbS” ('48 Palestinians). Exactly what is that pernicious implicit bias which prohibits you to not just picture the same solution for Jews when even a widely-popular Murican sitcom on a "broadcast network" with very RW viewership can get away with presenting as "a joke" for a whole single scheme, but even your failure to challenge this OP on any of their falsehoods and instead, trying to launder the thorough illegality of self-marketed "Jewish and Democratic State" by hiding behind Latin (the one-&-only objectively sound argument in its favour)? And it's not true that it's so “mysteriously” precious, quit trying to give them the orientalism treatment of exotica. Did you even know how many of them have a citizenship of at least one other country? Why would they continue to hold dual citizenships, if “those thin strips of desert” is genuinely so “precious” to them as you believe?
Your very first para[graph] starts off with an ubiquitous-but-nevertheless a lie that '48 Palestinians (whom, you, true to the form, call “aYrUbS” here to convey the level of mainstreamed extremism) have “full voting and legal rights” when several dozens of laws (60+) ensure that's anything but remotely true within the Green Line.
Nevermind other horse fertilizer like “iNvAsIoN” over an illegally self-declared polity made of the ruling classes/elites of European immigrants, both legal and mostly illegal.
This whole rant is peak [K]Hasbara compilation galore one after another. And it speaks volumes that you're making this as a reply to what's nothing more than a libzio apologia.
The amazing thing to me about the Israel-Palestinian conflict is that, contra Ross, "the answer" is actually obvious:
- Israel pulls back from the West Bank except for a few settlements close to the border and swaps other lands in exchange for the settlement lands they are keeping.
- Palestine gains recognition as a country and full self-government but agrees to full demilitarization (perhaps indefinitely or maybe for a set period of years) and gives up all claims on lands within Israel.
- Demilitarization is enforced by a huge international military presence in the West Bank and Gaza.
- Big fences for the foreseeable future.
The tragedy, of course, is that neither side today is willing to agree to this obvious answer (which, I get, is what Ross really means when he writes there is “no answer”). But I'm more optimistic than he is that an American led international effort could still force this answer into existence. It will likely require the U.S threatening to cut off aid and even the threat of sanctions against Israel; but in the end the Israelis will agree. The reality is that the crazy settlers committed to making “Judea and Samaria” part of Israel are still a significant minority and most Israelis would trade land for a credible peace.
So it’s ultimately a question of whether the Palestinians will accept this, and I think they ultimately do so, if only because they would have no real options otherwise.
But I also think that the right messaging would help. And for that messaging,I would amend Ross’ “no answer” formulation slightly to instead be “no justice.”
Because we should acknowledge that the answer above means there will ultimately be no justice for the Palestinian families that lost land to an influx of Jewish immigrants fleeing from Europe and other Middle Eastern countries. We should acknowledge that these Palestinian families have legitimate grievances about how they have been treated by history.
At the same time, we should also acknowledge that there was also no justice for the Jewish families who fled to Israel from the lands of their birthplaces, in most cases leaving everything they had ever known behind.
And while one could perhaps argue that it’s all Europe’s fault because of the anti-semitism that led to Zionism, and that they should ultimately fund reparations to both Israelis and Palestinians to make things right, that would hardly be just to the Europeans of today, who were neither the perpetrators of the sins of their ancestors and whose ancestors themselves suffered horribly because of World Wars I and II.
The reality is that expecting justice from history is a false hope that is almost always a practical impossibility. Whether one is Jewish, Palestinian, Cherokee, African American, Rwandan, Ukrainian, Indonesian, Cuban, etc. holding out for “justice” is a mistake if it prevents you from making the most of the present.
So the message to the Palestinians should be to acknowledge their past suffering and to admit that the solution being offered above is not justice. But it also should be to make clear that it’s the best solution they are likely to get and that it’s time to move forward, even though it means moving forward without justice.
And.. Your zest to launder Oslo as something ingenious that you've just cooked up here, which itself dates back to about a century old Euro imperialist (specifically, British) endeavour to carve up historic Palestine. So while your radical honesty (isn't that quite emblematic of how cyclical and mostly-unilaterally dishonest the discourse over this whole topic area is?) is quite appreciated. Gotta say, quite liberal of ye!
So, no Thanks: No peace without justice. No peace before justice.
You're certainly right this is nothing new. In essence, it's just calling for the proposals of Taba/Olmert2008/Olmert-AlKidwas2024.
And, of course, the Palestinians could certainly hold out for justice and continue to fight. But as should have been obvious two years ago and is even more clear today, that is unlikely to end well.
Best case if Hamas continues to hold power is that the Gaza war continues, Palestinians there continue to die in large numbers, the Settlers continue to colonize more of the West Bank, and Palestinians continue to live under an increasingly oppressive occupation.
Worst case, folks like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir win full power over foreign policy and there is a second Nakba driving the Palestinians completely out the West Bank and Gaza.
If understanding this, you still believe "no peace without justice; no peace before justice," then we'll just have to agree to disagree. But in the famous words of Dr. Krakower to Carmela Soprano: "one thing you can never say, is that you haven't been told."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8O4FgDE85s
Yeah, no need for me to do "might makes right" here.
I'm still waiting for American Zionists to explain to me why they haven't given their land back to the Native Americans.
Seems to me there's a little inconsistency there.
You've got this 🍑 backwards, because they'd in fact challenge American anti-genocide/pro-justice types to do so* per the good ol' roadblock bull of "go solve the mysteries of the universe before you carry the chutzpah to deal with Israel" failing which is allegedly an "Antisemitic double-standard". But apart from the crystal-clear legality which doesn't favour their supposedly precious settler-colony but does favour Murica, it's also true that Ashkenazim are not Indigenous to historic Palestine, unlike the Indigenous nations are to the Turtle Island (North America).
*I know it because even when I was a Labour zionazi so woefully-ignorant, or I'm not a Brit which means a ‘non-zionazi’, I always pictured myself offering up this "gotcha'!" as as impenetrable/infallible defense of what I've come to now acknowledge as a functionally-genocidal ideology à la Manifest Destiny (itself rooted in mercantilism, the predecessor to capitalism and Enlightenment™ ideals of classical liberalism and republicanism). Simply put, I'm talking from very first-hand experience, amongst others.
Thank you for this. I have never gone there and I never will, even though I have relatives there. I’d rather go to Canarsie.
Hehe.. Respect. 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾
But why did you had to end it with an jibe towards poor Canarsie? 😭😭
This comes across like a poor man's version of Mr Sam Kriss' writing. Disappointing, if not that surprising.
Nonsense. Gantz will be the next PM. He’s at least as liberal as Golda.
Challenging, insightful piece. Groups like Standing Together and other peace activists comprised of Jews and Palestinians give me a great deal of hope, even though they are incredibly marginal in their society. But if the last few years of global politics, especially, have taught us nothing else, today's margin can be tomorrow's mainstream. A better future for all parties involved only dissolves if we decide it isn't worth fighting for.
You are quite Pollyanna about the design of astroturfed collectives like Omdim Beyachad, then. (Not to gossip but go ask allegedly why its "Jewish", as defined under "Israeli" citizenship laws where "Israeli" doesn't exist as a demonym, co-founder left the Hadash coalition.) That's all.
I'd say instead, There Is No "Good" Answer
I'll share what I wrote on Wednesday, which is not political but is how I, a Reform Jew living in NYC, feel. A sense of tribal identity and gratitude that there exists a Jewish homeland.
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/pain-that-cannot-forget
Given your plug here, I made the time to go through your piece and have gave my two-cents over there.
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/pain-that-cannot-forget/comment/131876764