You dare contradict the Mighty Moulitsas? Your days as a liberal blogger are numbered!!!!!!!!!!

Well sure, but nuclear war in the Middle East is one thing - gay marriage and flag burning, on the other hand, are serious issues.

Great, another Kos link for me to not click on . . .

And if you read Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine, you'll learn that US intelligence forces assisted the Israelis in locating Palestinian faction leaders for "targeted killings" (there are specifics on who and when). So the US helped with more than just money.

At the risk of being unfairly called an anti-semite, I would like for the United States to develop its own foreign policy. I am really tired of our foreign policy changing at the whim of the Isreali electorate. There must be a way for the United States to assert its superpower status and tell the isrealis how we want them to act intead of waiting for them to tell us where we need to stand. The next time some Isreali politican tells our secretary of state to "back off" I want our secretary of state to say "set down, shut up and listen. This is what you are going to do about this situation."

There are pawns and kings. Those who can't tell the difference between the two will never understand the way the world works. Very few of you show the insight, and it is quite apparent the Bush Administration doesn't either- if it did, we would have never invaded Iraq, which is just a lowly tool.

Ron, I don't think our state department is even THAT responsive to the situation over there. They like to be in on the targeted killings, because it's a sexy, video-game thing they can actually do. After that, they lose interest and drift back to whatever's holding our attention for the next five minutes.

Yes, congress is afraid of the Israel (note sp.) lobby, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are even paying attention from one day to the next.

Kevin:

Good post. I agree, and the quote from Yglesias was well-taken.

You also show an admirable degree of self-insight and a willingness to criticize the inadequacies of your own perspective. May more pundits partake of such humility.

I think Kos suffers cognitive dissonance glut on I / P because addressing it's not a net gainer for Democrats -- we're strongly split on the issue, especially in our traditional Jewish base.

And I find that kind of blunt Machiavellianism distasteful -- and it's a main reason I don't read Kos.

Bob

Excellent insight. It doesn't take forward anything positive to state that "they've always been fighting, they'll always be fighting."

Such thinking keeps the status quo going. You'll know it's real leadership when someone is talking about ending this, somehow, once and for all.

Or, at least, taking the steps that lead in that direction.

John Podhoretz exposes the anti-Semitism and anti-Israel attitude of the left exposed in this Daily Kos post.

Link

"his is to give some perspective on one of the players in the current conflict -- Israel. This is just a smattering of highlights of news stories that don't seem to get much play here in the US. Its just 6 months in the life of Israel. I think it is important to remember that after Israel killed a family on a beach in Gaza their first reaction was to deny it. Then they tried to pin it on Hamas. After the shrapnel evidence revealed that they were indeed behind it, they reluctantly admitted guilt. I believe that fits the pattern of how they operate and speaks to their character. The current Gaza situtation was not started by a soldier being captured. They are not a country that, in my opinion, represents our values but rather one we generally oppose."

I agree with Kevin. Although there is probably no optimal time for demanding peace (it's probably past time, really, considering our dependence on tighter and tighter oil supplies), we have a clear interest in preventing the situation from spiraling out of control, as do ME power brokers. At that point, we stand to lose a lot. I would also say that Israel and Israel supporters need to understand that unqualified popular support of Israel in the U.S. is likely to decline if the costs associated with it get a lot higher. Truly, the U.S. plays both ends (Saudi authoritarianism, Israeli occupation of the West Bank) against the middle because it satisfies two strong patrons: Oil, Aipac. Whose interests will get jettisoned first if a choice is demanded?

The role of a leader is to prevent a situation in which we are forced to make ugly choices because we did not act responsibly sooner. And FWIW, I support Israel. But the Palestinians aren't going anywhere. Sooner or later, that has to penetrate the thinking not only of Israel but the whole ME.

I don't think what Markos said was at all different from this:

The fight between Israel and the Palestinians is over half a century old and seems intractable. It follows the same rhythms decade after decade, full of hypocrisy and posturing from both camps, and there seems little to say about it that doesn't eventually boil down to, "Both sides need to ratchet down the rhetoric and rein in their own extremists." Aside from being pointless, there are only just so many ways you can say this.

(NB: This may be a plausible excuse for inaction coming from a pundit or a blogger, but it's worth pointing out that it's not a plausible excuse for a president of the United States. Are you listening, George?)

K. Drum

Markos's position is identical, I think. I wish Kevin was defending Commandant Markos, instead of implicitly criticizing him.

As far as the parties and the relative responsibility for starting this, this might be of help. Also Michael Oren has a column out suggesting that Israel will never get a break until they go directly after Assad and Syria, which has been the instigator in the last three wars, including this one. He is opposed to what is going on in Lebanon right now and I heard him interviewed where he said he was not in favor of the Gaza operation either. I wondered why and now he explains it.

Excellent Post Kevin. The US clearly carries a huge share of the responsibility in the Middle East. From a long way back.

The US agreed with the Versailles treaty that artificially divided the Middle East.

The US overthrew Mossaed (sp?) and put in the Shah in the 50s.

The US oil companies obviously have had a large influence over the years.

The US overthrew Saddam with no plan in place to re-establish a functioning national state.

The US hands over billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, Egypt and a few other players.

The US has massive military bases and other forces in the Region.

etc.

We've broken more than a few eggs and now we, as a society, bear some responsibility to fix our mistakes.

That of course does not mean we bear all the responsibility, nor that all US actions were mistaken, evil and wrong. But it does mean we do bear part of the burden of fixing the mess.

However, I think that biggest goal is simply making sure that we don't let the extremists in the Middle East get either a nuclear war or a world war get started.

And I find that kind of blunt Machiavellianism distasteful -- and it's a main reason I don't read Kos.

Posted by: rmck1 on July 17, 2006 at 5:39 PM

Bob:

Kos and his hearty band of Kossacks are too stupid to be engaged in Machiavellianism. They are more akin to enraged bulls that are unable to resist the waiving of the Madator's red cape and thus, are easily killed by the sword that the Madator keeps hidden behind it. If Lieberman wins the primary, look for Kos's 15 minutes of fame to be over.

Chicounsel:

Of course, I find gratuitous ad hominem attacks on whole groups of people even *more* distasteful -- but maybe that's just me :)

Or maybe it's you. Take your pick.

Bob

Kenji

Thanks for reminding me how to spell "Israel."
Thanks for the rest of your comments as well. Well put. I am just sick to death of the Israel tail wagging the American dog.

As long as Israel continues to raze olive grooves, deplete aquafiers located in the Palestinina lands and kill civilians, any hope of a peaceful settlement is non-existent.

It has been suggested elsewhere that this is all a ploy for Israel to get Lebanese water. Any thoughts?

They have centuries of grudges to resolve, and will continue fighting until they can get over them. And considering that they obviously have no interest in "getting over them", we're stuck with a war that will not end in any forseable future.

The issue is not "grudges". The issue is the existence of Israel. Enemies of Israel have attempted one way and another to destroy it ever since its creation, and Hamas, Hizbullah, and Fatah are dedicated to destroying it. Egypt and Jordan accepted, with american help, that they could not destroy Israel and it wasn't worth their effort to try. Syria and Iran have not accepted that. within Lebanon, some have accepted the existence of Israel, and some (most notably Hizbullah) have not.

Golda Meir put it best. "There will be peace when they love their children more than they hate us."

It isn't necessarily "self-evident" that Israel has a right to exist and defend itself, nor is it necessarily self-evident that the people who wish to destroy Israel are wrong. But the existence of Israel is the fundamental issue: not the borders of Israel, its government, its treatment of minorities, whether the prime minister is leftist or rightist, or "grudges" -- all of those details presume the existence of Israel.

What you think about all of those details (I think it was a major mistake for Israel to move its political capital from the secular city of Tel Aviv to the capital of the Jewish religion) doesn't matter until you have decided whether you do or do not fundamentally support the right of Israel to exist.

If Israel has the right to exist, then it has the right to disarm the Hizbullah, as demanded by the UN, if no one else will. If Hizbullah stores in weapons in homes and other civilian structures, as it reportedly does, then Israel has the right to bomb those structures, and the responsibility for the civilian casualties, under the Geneva conventions, falls on the Hizbullah leadership.

If peace will only come when one side decides to stop fighting, then peace will only occur when Israel ceases to exist, as long as anyone persists in the goal of destroying Israel.

Of course, I find gratuitous ad hominem attacks on whole groups of people even *more* distasteful -- but maybe that's just me :)
Jeez Bob, where did that come from? If you were referring to chicounsel’s previous post as such, I just don’t see it.

Often the dkos site resembles a middle school cafeteria food fight. Hell, a bull fight would be a step up. Its entertaining, but I got bored with it years ago.

And after I heard Kos say on an interview (paraphrase) that he wasn’t interested in policy, he was interested in winning, I lost interest in him. We have enough of that crap going on here. We don’t need more.

Chicounsel was not incorrect in any form.

Sorry Bob, I forgot the 'tags'. I'll do better next time.

Every U.S. president since Truman has diddled with the Israel-Arab problem- and most of them have won re-election. As a result, 60 years on, Israel is controlling our policy in the mideast and driving oil towards $100/bbl.

And yet, the commentator who grew up in a civil war that killed 30,000 people is regarded as "machaevellian" for a resigned attitude, and his critics, hoping against all expectations that Bush can "do something", see themselves as plain speakers telling what needs to be told.

I just don't buy it. I'm with Kos, let everybody who wants to fight about it or tinker with it, do their thing, but don't expect me to cheer for anyone.

Sure, present your peace plans, and while you're at it, finish off that perpetual motion machine you've been working on and figure out how to grow carrots and corn with saltwater. One of those projects ought to bring peace in the region, and one is just about as likely as the other to work.

Kevin, I'll agree with you. It's not hopeless.

However, the dynamis is that everytime the more moderate and sensible leaders on both sides (not each - it has to be both simultaneously) get close to some kind of agreement to stop the bllodshed, the extremists of one side or the other sabotague the agreement. At the moment that is usually on the Palestinian side, but the IDF extremists also have little patience with permitting the idiots on the other side to run amuck.

It doesn't help that anytime Peace threatens to break out, someone from the outside like Iran eggs the extremists on and arms them.

There is also the problem that the withdrawal of troops from Gaza and Southern Lebanon by the Israelis has been interpreted by the Islamic extremists as symptoms of weakness. If they demonstrate even greater ability to attack Israel, who knows how far the Israelis will withdraw? The extremists are encouraged. This is the group that the IDF is right now trying to impress.

The extremists will never be convinced that they can't win. Somehow, the moderates have to be convinced that it's not worth the battle, so that they take over their respective organizations. It also has to happen on both sides simultaneously - which is why it will require some outside agency (like a ~competent~ U.S. - Bush need not apply.)

There will not be peace in the ME before Bush is gone, and after that is only becomes somewhat possible, not certain.

With Bush as President Peace in the ME is a practical impossibility. The requirements are simply too complicated for the Bush decision process.

"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with the indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."
--Stanley Kubrick

Keith G:

Well, my response to Chicounsel might have been a little heavyhanded -- but I don't think it's quite fair to call Kos posters, as a group, "stupid."

They might well *act* immature given the environment and the kind of tone Kos sets -- but that's not quite the same thing.

I didn't find your criticism of Kos unfounded or badly stated; in fact, I think we both agree that a winning-is-everything focus is paradoxically bad for long-term party-building.

I also don't like the idea of reader-rated diaries, as I believe it works to enforce groupthink much more thoroughly than any moderator could, no matter how heavy handed.

But calling the Kossacks "too dumb to be Machiavellian" I read as a slur -- and perhaps too quickly.

It may not be a slur per se; but I still think it's neither an accurate nor fair characterization.

Bob

Every rocket that is launched at civilians and every bomb that does not explode has "Made in the USA" written on it. Every kid that sees that grows up hating Israel, but hating Americans as well.

This war-by-proxy stuff goes both ways.
.

"I think Kos suffers cognitive dissonance glut on I / P because addressing it's not a net gainer for Democrats..."

This is spot-on, and is a significant reason why, in general, the left blogosphere is silent on Israel and Palestine. It is so because, in general, the left blogosphere has, unfortunately, assumed the role of the Democratic Party's unofficial mouthpiece (more specifically, the young, hip, just-a-litte-rebellious-but-not-too-much mouthpiece... witness DKos's ban on the promotion of any single candidate who doesn't happen to have a [D] after his/her name). The Democratic Party has absolutely nothing to say about Israel/Palestine. This silence is, in effect, an endorsement of the status quo U.S. policy on this issue, which, clearly, is heavily tilted in favor of Israel and against the indiginous community living under occupation. Sometimes the Dems's silent endorsement comes with expressed regret at the resulting violence; usually, though, it's just a fully turned eye and a finger in the ear. In any event, the Democratic Party's status-quo stance on Israel/Palestine does not differ one iota from the Republican Party's stance on Israel/Palestine. And since Kos' entire raison d'etre is, and always has, lied in demonstrating the ways in which the Dems are good and the Repubs are evil, and ensuring that the Democratic Party not lose the upcoming most-vital-election-ever-in-our-nation's-history, which is coming up in [INSERT NEXT ELECTION DATE HERE], the issue of Israel/Palestine is useless to him.

The same is true of Atrios, and it appears to be the same of JMM, and, sorry Kevin, but to you as well. In my experience, regardless of the issue (and with very limited exception), if the Democratic Party does not lead, the above-mentioned "liberal" superbloggers (and many others like them) will not follow. And what we then get, on vital but politically-inert issues like Israel/Palestine, is silence. Broken only by the occaisional public curiosity as to the reasons for the silence, and then some shoulder shrugging, and then some more silence.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

'republicrat' posted:

"Enemies of Israel have attempted one way and another to destroy it ever since its creation, and Hamas, Hizbullah, and Fatah are dedicated to destroying it."

Because the Israeli RightWing wants to push the Palestinians into the sea.

Turnabout is fair play.

Oh, and, not to mention the decades of illegal military occupation.

.

"If Israel has the right to exist, then it has the right to disarm the Hizbullah"

Then Hezbollah has the right to disarm Israel. Makes as much sense.
.

I think Hoerst Pruchnow said it best in one of Billy Wilder's movies: the situation is hopeless but not serious.

Patrick is right but doesn't really explain why. Truth is that American jews are a key constituency of the Democratic party. The Democrats cannot afford to alienate zionistic jews of the New Republic ilk even if our unfettered support for this reckless outlaw country (with its own dysfunctional democracy) seriously jeopardizes our national security. If the Republicans don't stand up to Israel (and Condi Rice obviously isn't the man for the job), no one will. So here is an important foreign policy issue on which our entire country is silent. For Shame, For Shame.

Markos' statement is dead wrong.

"I grew up in a war zone. And there was one clear lesson I learned — there will never be peace unless both sides get tired of the fighting and start seeking an alternative."

If you read the Koran, you learn several facts about the history of what is now Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Yemen. One is that there was always a lot of conflict in the area. The other is that there were Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and all sorts of other folks in the area.

Now there is peace. And there are no Christians, Jews, or Zoroastrians. None at all. And to be safe, there are laws against them in those three countries. So... peace is also achievable if you wipe out the other side completely.

And wiping out Israel has been the goal of most of the ME countries since Israel was founded.

The Israeli PM is now talking up a "cease fire", although he's backed off a number of his prior conditions.

As Mr. Rogers would say, Can you spell backpedal boys and girls ? I knew you could.
.

Patrick Meighan, This silence is, in effect, an endorsement of the status quo U.S. policy on this issue, which, clearly, is heavily tilted in favor of Israel and against the indiginous community living under occupation.

This is exactly as if you were to say we should attack the Irish in Boston because we were here first. To the degree the Democrats are silent about this reflects the degree to which so many seem grossly confused about this topic.

There was nothing illegal about the Jewish settlements in Palestine.

cld:

There was plenty immoral about pushing people off their land.

Bob

bob,

Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds.

An updated edition might have a chapter on this phenomena.

cld:

That's not remotely an argument addressing my point and you know it.

Bob

"This is exactly as if you were to say we should attack the Irish in Boston because we were here first."

I'm not saying, nor do I believe, that anybody should attack anybody. I'm saying, only, that the indiginous Palestinians living in the occupied territories live under the thumb of an occupying force.

Take issue with what I write, not what you imagine I might write. I'll try and do likewise with you, okay?

"There was nothing illegal about the Jewish settlements in Palestine."

There are currently thousands and thousands of Israeli colonies in the West Bank which are considered illegal by the UN and by the entire international community.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

There are thousands, if not millions of people living in communities once occupied by Sudetan Germans and East Prussians. The former owners started a war of aggression and lost. They had to leave. World history is full of such stories. The Arabs could have accepted the UN mandate in 1948. They didn't and chose war. They lost. Tough.

As someone else has written, there are no Jewish suicide bombers in Germany. There is something wrong with Islam.

"Patrick is right but doesn't really explain why. Truth is that American jews are a key constituency of the Democratic party..."

Unlike Badger, I don't really know why the Democratic Party endorses the U.S.'s current policy toward the region (which heavily favors Israel over the indiginous Palestinians). As such, I don't endorse his comments.

If I were *forced* to guess the reason for the Democratic Party's pro-occupier bias, I'd guess it's largely a result of the large campaign contributions the party's candidates receive from defense contractors and subcontractors, and the fact that such a policy is very financially beneficial to said contractors.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

Its difficult to keep track of all of the moves in the Israel/Palestinian conflict, but one thing is sort of clear.

In 1953, Max Hoffman was importing Mercedez Benz gullwings into the U.S.

That was about six or seven years after the end of WWII, during which Germany and America each killed or wounded millions of the other's citizens.

Europe has a tradition which allows surrender, and with surrender, terms. Those terms allow citizens of countries to declare wars "over." Once a war is officially over, people get back to living their lives.

Its becoming kind of obvious that no such culture or general agreement exists in the middle east. Instead, there is a tribal, sectarian culture which sees no problem in carrying on feuds for hundreds of years. If no side is willing to admit defeat, no side can win. If no side can win, you never get anything like peace.

The U.S. keeps approaching this problem as if we were re-examining the terms of the Verseilles treaty or something.

I'm not sure if the solution is to give up, but its seems like one huge problem is that quite a few folks over there see no need to stop fighting.

I meant the original 19th and early 20th century settlements that were the core of the original state of Israel.

"Thousands and thousands of Israeli colonies"?, that's a trifle overstating it. Most of the crackpot orthodox settlers have been resettled where they can do the least harm, which is why the Israelis have been building a defense wall around the West Bank.

You'd think the Palestinians would appreciate this since the wall works both ways, protecting them from the Orthodox frootloops just as effectively.

If it weren't for continual Palestinian assaults, the Israelis would have no reason to be driving tanks around the West Bank and Gaza.

cld:

And if Israelis didn't take Arab land with the sickeningly smug certitude that God gave it to Moses first, there wouldn't have been any problem to begin with.

Hertzl was right. They should have been given New Zealand.

Or frickin' Montana.

The Montanans could all move to Nebraska, problem solved.

Bob

It hasn't mattered since Israel attacked the Liberty and Kennedy died what anyone says so why should it matter now?

A very interesting thesis was that in Africa for example, western attempts to mitigate the violence have only made it worse. It contrasted what happens in Africa now with the in-fighting that occured in Europe that gave rise to the modern nations about 1000 years ago. Now sure if it's right but it's worth taking a look at.

A few things got left out of the thread above.

First, the Jews were pretty good at terrorism- when they were fighting the British. The British, quite reasonably, eventually gave the Jews the land- why not? It's not like it was British land they were giving away.

Second, the hand of peace that's missing is the Turkish hand. The Turks pretty much stayed out of religion, and kept it out of their own government by having selected and trained Christians run their government for them.

"There are thousands, if not millions of people living in communities once occupied by Sudetan Germans and East Prussians. The former owners started a war of aggression and lost. They had to leave. World history is full of such stories. The Arabs could have accepted the UN mandate in 1948. They didn't and chose war. They lost. Tough."

Thank you for your spirited defense of ethnic cleansing.

"As someone else has written, there are no Jewish suicide bombers in Germany. There is something wrong with Islam."

There were, in fact, plenty of Jewish terrorist organizations in the 1930s and '40s, such as the Stern Gang and the Irgun, which specifically targeted civilians in Palestine, and brutally murdered them, frequently with bombs. These barbaric acts occurred not because there was something wrong with Judaism (because there wasn't, and there isn't). They occurred because the Jewish citizenry at the time was disempowered (in fact, living under a military occupation), and lacking any other opportunity to fight for its rights. By that same token, the barbaric acts perpetrated today by Arab suicide bombers occur not because there is something wrong with Islam. There isn't. They occur because the Arab citizenry at this time is disempowered (in fact, living under a military occupation) and lacking any other opportunity to fight for its rights.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

Patrick:

Nicely done.

Bob

Bob,

I've known a number of Israelis over the years. Most of them have stories of having been born in Egypt or Iraq or Tunisia where their families lived for generations, and then one day being kicked out of the country with just the clothes on their back. Many of them are dead now, but their kids are Israeli. Where would you suggest they go?

Also keep in mind... these same Israelis then were threatened with extinction in their new home. There would have been no post-1967 occupied territories if it weren't for this minor detail. The old "push the Jews into the sea" was for real. (Just about every Middle Eastern country purged its own Jewish population at the time.)

Yes, I know, two wrongs don't make a right. But again, where would you suggest they go? And what would you have suggested they do in 1967?

And as to giving the land back - to Jordan and Egypt? The division of Palestine basically involved giving land to Jordan, to the Jewish homeland, and to Egypt. It was done no differently than the split up of India and Pakistan.

Finally, I keep hearing about Israelis committing genocide. If the Saudis were capable of ethnically cleansing their land, are the Israelis not capable of doing it? About 20% of the population of Israel itself is Muslim. So clearly it isn't something they've even been trying to do. And though, as the Koran teaches, in the time of Mohammad, what is now the Middle East had plenty of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and whatnot, the infidels have pretty much been eliminated from the region except for a few token pockets.

cactus:

I'd suggest that they go to Western Europe or America. What we didn't know at the time, sadly enough, was that Hitler was a one-shot deal, and that kind of systematic, mechanized, bureacratized anti-semitism leading to the Final Solution was never going to happen in that part of the world again.

Instead, the Jews settled Palestine and that kind of systematic kill-all-the-Jews anti-semitism came to *them*.

It's redolent of nothing so much as Freud's return of the repressed ...

Bob

"Taken Arab land with a sickening smug certitude"? And you complain of ad hominem attacks.

After two thousand years of being Europe's punching bag the Jewish people had managed enough organization to evacuate to a place they thought they might be safe. The British offered them Uganda or Argentina, (though I have no idea why the British thought they could offer them Argentina), but the Eastern European contingent would go for nothing but Palestine, so Palestine it had to be. But they bought the land.

Your vivid imagination of Israeli attitudes of a hundred years ago speaks more to an internalized anti-semitism than any real interest in the subject.

""Thousands and thousands of Israeli colonies"?, that's a trifle overstating it."

You're absolutely right. I mean to type the word "colonists", and I typed the wrong word. My bad.

"Most of the crackpot orthodox settlers have been resettled where they can do the least harm, which is why the Israelis have been building a defense wall around the West Bank. You'd think the Palestinians would appreciate this since the wall works both ways, protecting them from the Orthodox frootloops just as effectively."

Yeah, if I were a Palestinian, I'd probably love that, unless my home in the West Bank was one of the homes they bulldozed to make room for the new colonies they were putting in. Then I'd be pretty pissed.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

cld:

As everyone on PA who's seen me tangle with "karen" and "tj" can attest -- I am the very last thing from an anti-semite, consciously or otherwise.

That was base, cld. I'd suggest you apologize.

Bob

Bob,

"I'd suggest that they go to Western Europe or America."

With all due respect, this sounds like a joke. I knew a guy who was an Israeli war hero. His family had been thrown out of Iraq when he was just a boy, and they were thrown out of the country literally with what they were able to carry when they were chased out of their house in the middle of the night. Now, how would they have gotten to America or Western Europe? And if they had, would they had been allowed in? Name the country that would have taken destitute semi-educated refugees, and Jewish ones at that.

cld:

"They bought the land."

When the government plows over your house, they give you fair market value for it according to eminent domain laws (it's also in the constitution).

That still doesn't mean you aren't *evicted*.

Bob

cactus:

Destitute, semi-educated refugees migrate to Europe all the time.

It's not really all that far from the Levant.

Bob

bob,

I think we're talking at cross purposes. I've been referring to the original settlement, not the settlers on the West Bank.

And I think cactus was referring to the 900,000 Jews who forced out of their homes in Muslim countries in the late 1940s.

In that period what other country would have taken such a large number?

cactus makes several excellent points about ethnic cleansing (past and present) around the world, including in Arab nations. All well met. Thing is, speaking only for myself, the only thing I hate more than ethnic cleansing is ethnic cleansing done on my dime, abetted by my government, and thus in my name.

The apartheid that cactus cites in Saudia Arabia was not not funded by the United States of America.

The apartheid in Egypt was/is, on the whole, not funded by the United States of America.

The current apartheid in Palestine is, in fact, funded by the United States of America. This gives US citizens a special duty to act on this issue, or, at the very least, to publicly debate the issue and arrive at a fully-informed and reasoned conclusion on this issue. We Americans have failed at this duty.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

"Destitute, semi-educated refugees migrate to Europe all the time."

And Europe does its best to stop them and deport them. And I note... this particular batch didn't speak any European language. Suggesting Europe or the US wasn't a realistic option.

But, let me ask a hypothetical question. Let us say my friend's kids who are now adults wanted to move to Iraq. Do you think Iraq should be required to let them return?

"When the government plows over your house, they give you fair market value for it according to eminent domain laws (it's also in the constitution).

That still doesn't mean you aren't *evicted*."

Bob - that's exactly what happened to many of the people who are now Israelis. When they are kicked out, without even the benefit of eminent domain laws, your suggestion is go to Europe or America (that won't take them). But when others are treated marginally less poorly, you have sympathy. How is this not a double standard?

cld:

I'm talking precisely about the original settlers.

The creation of Israel made the surrounding Arab countries go batshit and evict their Jews. Had Israel somehow not been available to emigrate, had some other reason motivated the Arabs to do that -- they doubtless could have and would have settled as a dispora all around the world.

900k is really not that many people when you spread over three or so continents.

I'm not saying that I agree with or find that decision by the Arab countries morally justified (two wrongs don't make a right) -- but I *can* understand it. Jews were evicting Arabs out of Palestine in droves.

Bob

"The current apartheid in Palestine is, in fact, funded by the United States of America."

Let me ask you the question I asked Bob. I know several Israelis whose families fled from Arab countries. Let us leave aside those who fled from places like Libya that do not get support from us, and look at those who fled from places that do get a lot from the US, such as Iraq and Egypt. Do you feel the Iraq and Egypt should let those Israelis back into the country should they or their children wish to return? Do you believe that Iraq and Egypt should pay those people any compensation for their losses, economic and otherwise? Otherwise, is it a double standard?

Bob,

"The creation of Israel made the surrounding Arab countries go batshit and evict their Jews. Had Israel somehow not been available to emigrate, had some other reason motivated the Arabs to do that -- they doubtless could have and would have settled as a dispora all around the world."

Again, what I heard from people who had been evicted from Muslim ME countries was that life there was definitely not pretty as a minority. Ask the Copts in Egypt that are still "tolerated" today.

Also, bear in mind, not all that many of the Muslim ME countries tolerated/tolerate infidels. Many of them had been ethnically cleansed already, some going back a thousand years. The creation of the State of Israel can't possibly have that kind of a retroactive effect.

cactus:

Let's not talk moral equivalencies here. Patrick draws a line in the sand against ethnic cleansing wherever it happens, and I agree with him there.

My main point is that what happened in Palestine was inevitable and foreseeable, given the experiences of the Jews in Palestine under the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the rising anti-Jewish sentiment as settlement increased througout the fascist prelude to WW2.

My point is that they should have shouted down their East Europeans and taken a different place.

Then displacing the prexisting settlers could have happened in a more civilized and humane manner without being underwritten by a fiercely-held religious and historical imprimitur.

It would have made settling Palestine to make it the modern state of Israel less *exciting* and *romentic* -- but one helluva lot less *deadly*, too.

Bob

"Do you feel the Iraq and Egypt should let those Israelis back into the country should they or their children wish to return? Do you believe that Iraq and Egypt should pay those people any compensation for their losses, economic and otherwise?"

cactus, yes, both of those sound just to me.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

Bob,

"My point is that they should have shouted down their East Europeans and taken a different place."

Two problems with this:
1. What about the Jews that lived in the area for hundreds of years? Would they have to leave too?
2. If you moved Israel to Argentina or whatever, we might today have people like you, who are well intentioned and trying to find a solution to the problem, stating today: "Well, if they had just settled in Palestine where there were already Jews living, there wouldn't be all these wars with their neighbors today."

bob,

If you're talking about the original settlement, they bought that property. And I think the bulldozer was yet to be invented.

My point is that they should have shouted down their East Europeans and taken a different place.

Honestly, what other place do you think that could have been? Land of the free and the KKK?

Then displacing the prexisting settlers could have happened in a more civilized and humane manner without being underwritten by a fiercely-held religious and historical imprimitur.

Israel was really the most socialist place on Earth until the 1970s. When doubt set in. It wasn't religious maniacs who built Israel, but it certainly might be religious maniacs who destroy it, as they destroy any other society they achieve power in.

Patrick Meighan,

I think it would be best if Israel could wean itself from Arab labor for the very point you have made, that it can look, if you don't look too deeply, like apartheid.

But if they did, what would happen then? The Palestinians fall into even worse poverty, and the Israelis import guest-workers from further abroad, as do the Saudis?

But it isn't apartheid because the Palestinians have an alternative, they could declare their own state. If they did that, declared peace and enforced it, really enforced it, they could count on a huge amount of external development assistance. But at this point it would take an awful lot for them to prove they were serious.

cactus:

That was the big fear -- yes -- that lent Israel its global support in the aftermath of WW2. And I realize I'm only arguing counterfactuals -- which, in purely historical terms, are meaningless. We had no way of knowing at the time that Hitler's brand of anti-semitism wasn't unique to that particular set of historical circumstances, and that no other outbreaks of it would occur on lands settled by Europeans.

So it was perfectly natural for the Jews, fresh from the Holocaust -- to want a homeland reasonably isolated from Europe and the anti-semitic poisons coursing through Christian veins.

But settling in Palestine -- amid a culture that was supreme a millienium ago but which had slid into backwardness under Ottoman tutelage and isolation from the rest of the world -- was a grave mistake.

I only wish that more clairvoyant minds had forseen this and taken New Zealand.

And that hope is, of course, entirely vain. The State of Israel is a fact and no sane liberal wants to see it cease to exist.

Bob

cld:

If somebody throws you some cash and take your property -- they still take your property.

It's only a sale if the seller is willing to sell.

Israelis took Arab land against the will of the occupants. That is a fundamental fact that you've been dancing around this entire debate.

Bulldozers, shumuldozers.

Bob

"it isn't apartheid because the Palestinians have an alternative, they could declare their own state."

It's very difficult to declare a state when your land is broken up into multiple non-contiguous portions accessible only by roads riddled with checkpoints manned by soldiers from an occupying nation, and broken up by colonies placed by that same foreign nation, and without the right to control your own borders.

In South Africa such imaginary, non-contiguous zones of bogus self-determination were called bantustans, and were a large part of the policy we then referred to as "Apartheid." It's still Apartheid now, even though it's no longer in South Africa.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

To Patrick Meighan and Bob,

I'm very appreciative to you both for your excellent posts. Most Americans blindly support Israel without knowing anything about the unjust and immoral treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis. I've been reading Israeli liberals, Uri Averny and Jeff Halper, during the past couple days. They make SENSE! Jeff Halper was actually nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Tikkun and the American Friends Service Committee in 2006. I also read in the Turkish press today that 2000 Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the current attack on Lebanon. The American left needs to be in closer contact with the Israeli left. I'm horrified at American ignorance of what's going on. But then, that's almost always the case.

I haven't been dancing around anything. Who was unwilling to sell?

Who had money forced upon them unwillingly?

Name someone.

Patrick Meighan,

The bantustans were entirely surrounded by South Africa, the West Bank borders Jordan, Gaza borders Syria. No one was willing to invest in the bantustans, but I think it would be fairly telling if the Arab states were unwilling to invest in a peaceful Palestine.

It isn't apartheid at all.

And the UN plan they so famously rejected did not have non-contiguous zones,

http://www.mideastweb.org/unpartition.htm

Patrick,

"It's very difficult to declare a state when your land is broken up into multiple non-contiguous portions accessible only by roads riddled with checkpoints manned by soldiers from an occupying nation, and broken up by colonies placed by that same foreign nation, and without the right to control your own borders."

I've never been to Israel, but I've been told its a very small country and that in some places its extremely narrow, making it easy for the country to be bisected, and making it difficult to defend.

Let us say that Israel went back to 1967 borders or something similar. Let us also say that within three months, rockets were being fired into the country from the new Palestine. What would constitute a disproportionate retaliation in that case? Should there be any penalty for those attacks?

Let us take it a step further. Let us say that shortly thereafter, there was an invasion by, say, five Arab countries, and that Israel is almost wiped out. Would you suggest they should go back to the same undefensible lines? Should there be any penalty imposed on those who perform the attack? If not, what stops them from doing it again and again, until they succeed at their stated goal? Throwing the Jews into the sea was not just a slogan, and the only reason there is peace with some of the neighboring countries (Egypt, Jordan) was because the cost of trying became too expensive.

Bear in mind... Egypt lost the Sinai, and Jordan lost the West Bank and half of Jerusalem.

Patrick>"It's still Apartheid now, even though it's no longer in South Africa."

There's nothing wrong with your reasoning. The problem is, that the SA's Apartheid system was removed only after the white population felt assured the blacks wouldn't exterminate them in revenge. There was a mutual understanding reached, of forgiveness in exchange for power and wealth sharing, being able to move forward without fear, at least on the level of the general populace.

The Israelis have no such assurance. On the contrary, the leadership of the Palestinians repeatedly declares its intention to "push them into the sea". Sickeningly racist media is abundant, not to say there isn't racism on both sides, but its of a different order. A "war of the womb" is ongoing. Children are taught to hate, there and in surrounding countries. I've met young people from Egypt that made quite an impression.

Of course, Israel keeps provoking in return, and they make horrific mistakes, mostly out of fear. But still. The response of the Palestinians to the occupation has been far more vicious in thought and act than was the SA opposition as a whole.

When the Palestinians have leaders that preach forgiveness and reconciliation, I would expect their equals in Israel will quickly rise to power, the conflict to end, and individuals to prosper. Israel is right now justifiably afraid that a second holocaust would result within decades of true power sharing. I cringe when people on the left support the Palestinians as they are now. The hard truth is they are not presently deserving of the trust implied in equality.

"If Israel has the right to exist, then it has the right to disarm the Hizbullah"
...
Then Hezbollah has the right to disarm Israel. Makes as much sense.

There are some asymmetries: Israel is a nation recognized by the US and by the UN. Hizbollah is an organization that the US considers a group of terrorists and that the UN has ordered to disarm.

You could argue that the U.S. and U.N. are mistaken to address the two parties asymmetrically, but you didn't. Do you want to?

Israel could have built a wall that made a large step toward peace. It would have largely followed the green line, but could have scooped up the largest jewish settlements (which are on the green line). It would have increased security for Israeli civillians. It would have allowed greater freedom of movement in the west bank because checkpoints in palastinian territory would not have been needed as much. That wall could have eventually become a permenant and peaceful border.

Unfortuantely Israel is building another wall. Only about 20% of the wall they are building is on the green line. Absolutely none of it is on the Israeli Side. It wiggles all over the place scooping up settlments, farmland, roads, water sources, encircling palastinian towns and cities, cutting parts of the west bank off from each other, etc.

The primary function of the wall they are building is to stop palastinian resistors and terrorists from getting to Israelis (whether in Israel or in the occupied territories, whether civilian or military), but its secondary purpose is not to define a reasonable border and support a future where a palastinian state lives in peace alongside israel. It's secondary purposes are to put as much territory on the Israeli side as possible and to keep the Israeli boot on the Palastinian neck both militarily and economically with greater efficiency.

Wikipedia has a map of Israel's west bank wall, more detailed maps are easily searchable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier

"Good fences make good neighbors" as the old saying goes. What about bad fences?

cld:

Name one Arab who *did* sell their land willingly.

Two can play this silly and rhetorically unedifying game, sheesh.

nepeta:

Thanks for the props. You're absolutely right about the Israeli left -- we lose sight of the fact that Israel is a parliamentary system with proportional representation which empowers tiny parties which can walk out of ruling coalitions and so must be appeased, lest they collapse a government. A few of them are ultra-religious and are superempowered, relative to an American-type system.

The vast bulk of Israelis are neither fanatically religious nor filled with hatred against their neighbors -- and the Israeli left is large, vocal and at least as progressive on foreign policy as some of us are here. Ha'aertz (sp?) is an excellent, left-leaning Israeli newspaper.

Bob

Mein Kampf Sales Soar in Turkey,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/turkey/story/0,,1447209,00.html

The Charter of Hamas, article 32,

http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm

Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it will be one country or another. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.

bob,

You brought it up, the burden is on you to prove it.

I'm hesitant to jump in here, but it does sort of feel like the two sides here (Patrick and Bob, on the one hand and cld and cactus on the other) are talking past each other a bit. I wouldn't even get involved except that this conversation is about the most civil on the topic of Israel/Palestine that I've seen on a left-leaning blog.

First, I thing all four of you should really be commended for not (for the most part) sliding into the traditional and increadibly banal attacks that I usually see (ie "you're an anti-semite," or "Zionism is racism and Jews control American foreign policy," etc.) when this topic is babdied about.

Second, I want to through in my own understanding of some of the "facts." When Jewish settlers first began arriving in significant numbers (around the turn of the century), the vast marjority of them purchased tracts of land from absentee landlords who mainly lived in Egypt and what would later become Turkey. These landlords were mostly Muslim aristocrats who had lawful ownership of land in Ottoman Palestine but who did not live there and, for many, never even saw this land that they owned. The inhabitants of these lands, indigenous Arabs who we would now call Palestinians, were indeed evicted from lands that they believed they owned, but under Ottoman law, actually belonged to these wealthy landowners. The wealthy landowners, many of whom were Arabs, were only too hapy to sell the land for a good price, and the Jewish newcomers (at first) did not realize they were buying land our from under anyone. This continued for several decades, and in fact, by 1920 the purchase of land from Arab landholders became a major issue within the Palestinian Arab community.

Now, it seems to me that this issue of land ownership is far more complicated than either side would have us believe. Arabs complain that they were illegaly pushed off their land. Jews maintain that they paid a fair price for the land from the legal owners, and it's not their fault if Arabs had sellers' remorse. In truth, I think the whole situation is much more morally ambiguous. Yes, the Jewish immigrants bought the land legally, but they had to realize (indeed many did) that they were pushing people off of land that they had lived on for generations. And yes, the indigenous Arabs have a legitimate gripe that the land was sold out from under them, but who else could the Jewish immigrants purchase the land from if not its legal owners?

After all that, it seems to me that lengthy digressions into the past (like this one) don't actually do much to solve the present problems.

cld:

There you go, down the MEMRI hole ...

There is no "burden" in these debates unless one of us chooses to accept it..

I choose not to accept this one.

Since *you* can't name an Arab who willingly sold out to the Israelis in '48, then this line of argument is officially at stalemate.

According to me, naturally. And, to be sure, the lurkers, too :)

Bob

No, you brought it up, the burden actually is upon you to prove it.

And I was referring to the original settlement. You speak as if 100,00 Jews suddenly turned up in 1882 with bulldozers.

Well? Prove it.

MiddleMichael:

Thanks for that excellent backgrounder. I had read a little of that history over a decade ago and promptly forgot most of it.

But yes, the problem was the legal and residence ambiguities created by absentee ownership. I can see both sides thinking that they were in the right ...

Bob

In any discussion of land ownership and the sales of land in Israel it is interesting to note that a large fraction of the land in Israel is owned by quasi-governmental foundations who issue long term leases to individuals.

A cheery article about it:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/land.html
Yea, the article says it is 75% of the land in Israel.

This system was explicitly designed to control demographic patterns for political ends.

Until an Israeli supreme court decision in... 2000? 2002? about that time these orginizations openly discriminated against muslims refusing to lease them land in designated jewish-only areas.

Israel is kind of a funny ally for the american right. National healthcare and 75% of the land owned by quasi-governmental corporations.

"The bantustans were entirely surrounded by South Africa, the West Bank borders Jordan, Gaza borders Syria... It isn't apartheid at all."

Many of the bantustans were *not* entirely surrounded by South Africa, but, rather, bordered Swaziland, Mozambiqe, Botswana and Lesotho. Regardless, none of that changes the fact that the bantustans of South Africa's past--like the Palestinian territories of Israel's present--were broken up into multiple, economically-unsustainable, non-contiguous portions accessible only by roads riddled with checkpoints manned by soldiers from an occupying nation, and divided by colonies placed by that same foreign nation, and lacked the right to control their own borders.

It is, in fact, Apartheid, which is why Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela have identified it as such.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

On Apartheid:

I generally shy away from calling Israel an apartheid state. While many aspects of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and, until recently, the Gaza Strip do indeed resemble strongly the old South African regime, it bears mentioning that inside the Green Line (the 1967 borders) Arab citizens of Israel are treated nothing like the Blacks of old South Africa. Arab Israelis (or Israeli Palestinians) are full citizens and have all the same rights and responsibilities as Jewish citizens (and, by the way, Christian and Druze citizens). There are about 1 million of the them, and they make up fully 1/6 of Israel's population. That this ethnic and religious minority is not persecuted belies the notion that Israel persecutes anyone based on nationality or religion. However, the treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories is far worse (though, in some respects, still better than the treatment of most Arabs in Arab countries). It is in these territories, where I think it is appropriate to criticize some Israeli policies as Apratheid-like.

Hmm this is an interesting passage from that article I linked to above and quite relevant to the main discussion going on in this thread:

"The third source of national land pertains to the remaining 12 percent, the most politically sensitive type of national land. A statutory body established in 1950, the Development Authority, received its holdings from the Custodian of Absentee Property, a governmental body that took charge of land owned mostly by Arab residents who left or were expelled from their place of residence during the 1948-9 war. Most of these lands have been leased or sold."

MiddleMichael:

I'd agree with that as well.

What's your take on the West Bank and Gaza?

Bob

Patrick Meighan,

And, additionally, it is not apartheid because the South Africans were not being used as a catspaw by external powers in a way that dates back thousands of years.

The region of Israel, greater Palestine and Lebanon has been the field of proxy conflict since time immemorial and that is exactly the way the Palestinians are being used today, as these populations have always been used, by larger external powers.

Syria has no oil, no money, all they have to trade is conflict. They're like a feudal warlord in a castle in the wilderness sending his armed thugs into the town to beat up the merchants.

Does no one remember where this series of events started? Just a few short weeks ago Hamas and whatever remains of the PLO were trading gunfire with each inside their own parliament. The 'Israel made me do it' line was wearing thin even for Arabs and some genius, calculating the Israeli over-reaction perfectly, kidnapped an Israeli soldier to take everyone's mind off it.

The bantustan borders with other equally impoverished African nations are meaningless. The point with Palestinian borders is that the populations are ethnically contiguous and, they say, have a serious interest in Palesinian welfare.

My apologies for not taking the time right now to read all comments. But one thing is obvious to me: there are plenty of people in Israel and Palestine who are very tired of “the conflict” and want it to end ASAP. But it’s the same old crazy thing. On the Israeli side, where the power is, there are just a very few more people who want to keep the land than there are folks who realize that keeping the land is not in Israel’s interest.

There are too many American who do not realize this. Although two UN resolutions were passed decades ago saying that Israel could not keep the occupied territory, a good number of Israelis want to keep it and therein lies the problem. They have built hundreds of settlements on land that is not theirs. What’s moderate about that? What could be more aggressive than that? What could be more guaranteed to radicalize Palestinians and other Arabs and keep them radicalized?

This is not to excuse Arab terrorists. But don’t reasonable people know a provocative act when they see one? And how has Israel been able to pull off this defiant act all these years. With the aid of the United States. And every Arab knows this.

People who will not acknowledge these simple facts are being willfully stubborn and/or ignorant. The consensus of the international community, which after all created Israel in the first place, was that Israel was not entitled to that land. But they want the land. That’s the problem.

MiddleMichael:

Israeli society is decidedly not built on fundamentally racist assumptions, as the South African society was, or certainly like Nazi Germany. To this extent, "Zionism = racism" has always been an egregious misnomer.

But there are *elements* of Israeli society that are quite viciously racist, often with quasi-religious justifications attatched to it. Meir Kahane is a perhaps the best example of this tendency, and the yeshiva student (and Kahane disciple) who assassinated Yitzak Rabin yet another ...

Some of the settlers are simply awful people, from what I've seen of them.

Bob

I think Kos is fundamentally correct, as usual. He makes his point schematically, but his underlying thinking is sound. The solution to conflicts in the middle east depend on evolution of the cultures there; evolution that will take a long time. It's surely too simple to say the less we do the better; but like Kevin says, it would be better for the US do less than Bu$hCo doing whatever fuckall they're going to start selling after Labor Day.

I think the most impressive aspect of Mr. Drum's "sheepish" forays into the "Israel issue" is not anything Mr. Drum has said himself (on this count he's really said nothing at all, unless you consture statements like "We can't run away from this stuff" as a piece of brilliant foreign policy acumen.) No, what impresses me is the fact that so many posters have laid out in the simplest terms the brutal realities of the Israeli occupation and have eloquently expounded the manifold problems the occupation creates, not just in Palestine, but throughout the Middle East and sadly in our own backyard as well.

Yet while journalists like Kevin Drum and large chuncks of the mainstream news apparatus glide trepidly over the sordid and deplorable conditions that define the everyday life of the Palestinian people -- a life where land is stolen, homes are demolished, lives are taken, families torn apart, electriciy removed, medical treatment denied, and where political expression is ultimately forbidden -- it's comforting to know that millions of my fellow citizens refuse to buy into the big lie (Palestinian state = the DESTRUCTION of Israel) and seek rather to uncover the actual truth unfolding on the ground every single fucking day, namely, that Israel is doing everything in its power to actually destroy Palestinian life, that it has been engaged in this process since its inception, and that it will never rest until Palestinians are themselves in fact driven into the sea, or at least into Jordan and beyond.

I will close with the following statement from Ehud Olmert in a recent speech he delivered before the U.S. Congress:

"Should we realize that the bilateral track with the Palestinians is of no consequence, should the Palestinians ignore our outstretched hand for peace, Israel will seek other alternatives to promote our future and the prospects of hope in the Middle East. At that juncture, the time for realignment will occur."

"Realignment would be a process to allow Israel to build its future without being held hostage to Palestinian terrorist activities. Realignment would significantly reduce the friction between Israelis and Palestinians and prevent much of the conflict between our two battered nations."

"The goal is to break the chains that have tangled our two peoples in unrelenting violence for far too many generations. With our FUTURES UNBOUND peace and stability might finally find its way to the doorsteps of this troubled region."

Bob,

What a question! In short, I'd say that Palestinians have as much a right to experience the joys and sorrows of legitimate nation and statehood as Jews do. Indeed, I'd say that both have a right to their own states, if that is what each decides. As such, if I had my way, Israel would withdraw to borders that approximate the lines of 1967. There may be some land transfers here and there, but essentially the 1967 lines. Further, I'd have the Israeli government pay significant reparations to the new Palestinian state. Illegally occupied or not (I tend to think the occupation itself is not "illegal," simply unwise and often immoral), Israel does owe the ihabitants a chance at a normal life.

In that vein, Palestinians, I think, owe Israelis a chance at normalcy as well. It is also unfair to ask the Israelis to live with yet another state who seeks its destruction. I don't have many answers here, at least not any that I can write in a few minutes, but I do think that the vitriol that swrils around this topic only serves to prolong it.

"I've never been to Israel, but I've been told its a very small country and that in some places its extremely narrow, making it easy for the country to be bisected, and making it difficult to defend."

None of that justifies the oppression of millions of indiginous human beings.

"Let us say that Israel went back to 1967 borders or something similar. Let us also say that within three months, rockets were being fired into the country from the new Palestine. What would constitute a disproportionate retaliation in that case? Should there be any penalty for those attacks?

Israel should punish those personally responsible for said attacks, not an entire populace, via the illegal technique of "collective punishment". If, in your hypothetical, it's the government of the nation of Palestine that's launching said rockets, then yes, Israel has a right to disarm said government.

Let us take it a step further. Let us say that shortly thereafter, there was an invasion by, say, five Arab countries, and that Israel is almost wiped out. Would you suggest they should go back to the same undefensible lines?

I find it very difficult to imagine that, say, Jordan and Egypt would participate in a full-on invasion in 2006, knowing that to do so would be to guarantee that Amman and Cairo would be, literally, nuked.

Today, in 2006, I find Israel's nuclear capability a far greater defense against a foreign state incursion than any border placement could hope to be.

Bear in mind... Egypt lost the Sinai, and Jordan lost the West Bank and half of Jerusalem.

I don't care one whit about the rights of Egypt or Jordan, as nations, nor, for that matter, do I much care about Palestine as a nation, nor for Israel, as a nation. I do care for the rights of all people (Israeli and Palestinian, Jew and Arab... all of us, really) to live in self-determination, out from under the thumb of foreign occupiers. And when my own home nation (the US) is an active and vital participant in the perpetuation of said occupation, I feel I have a duty to at least speak out against it.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

The orthodox settlers are the Tom deLays of Israel, and Israel has treated them far to gently. They've managed even to exempt themselves from military service.

Bob,

Your point is well taken. There are indeed racist elements in Israeli society, but I would venture to say that there are racist elements in every society. Unfortunately, as another poster pointed out, Israel's parlimentary system gives a disproportionate amount of power to fringe groups, which can magnify the influence of such groups. I should mention, however, that Kahane's political party was outlawed in Israel several decades ago precisely because it advocated racist solutions (the other political party to have been banned was an Arab party that advocated the destruction of Israel...incidentally, there are currently three predominantly Arab political parties in Israel, all three of which accept Israel's existence).

Kevin Drum, Live!,

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/special/roundtable

cld,

I'm jumping in on the 'settlement' question. I'm not sure what time period you're discussing, but it really doesn't matter much, since there has been Palestinian opposition to Jewish settlement since the 19th C. I post these quotes only to show that the settlement of Israel and subjugation of the Palestinians was not a simple land deal, as you would seem to portray it.

Benny Morris:

In his book of 1988; The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, on the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem, Morris argues that the approximately 700,000 Palestinians who fled from their homes in 1947 left mostly due to Israeli actions or fear of Israeli actions, but not as the result of a preexisting expulsion plan. This was at the time a controversial position, as the official position in Israel had been that the Palestinians left voluntarily or after pressure/encouragement from Palestinian or outside Arab leaders.

At the same time Morris documented atrocities on the part of the Israeli armed forces, including cases of rape, torture, and ethnic cleansing.

In the beginning of the book Morris shows a map over empty Palestinian villages, and explains why the villagers left. 228 villages were evacuated due to attack from Jewish forces. In 41 villages the inhabitants were expelled by military forces. In 90 villages the inhabitants were stricken with panic due to attack on other villages, and fled. In only 6 villages the inhabitants left because the local Palestinian authorities told them. He was not able to find out why another 46 villages were emptied.

-----------------

By 1923, in his Iron Wall article, Jabotinsky had answered his own question. He argued that agreement with the Arabs was not possible, because they:

...look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie. To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile.

Michael:

This is true. I get a terrible vibe from the settlers, though ... and I am wondering how much thoughts of religious or quasi-religious manifest destiny course through their minds ...

There's such incredibly racist things said about Arabs just on blogs here ... if equivalent things are said about Jews, there'd be an instant (and justified) outcry of anti-semitism. People poorly appreciate the role of culture in forming character.

And this is also why I hold Israelis to a higher moral standard than I do the Arabs in the surrounding countries.

Is this racist? No. It's just trying to have an integrated appreciation for context and culture. The Jews who established Israel's culture were the cream of European civilization.

Bob

"Israel should punish those personally responsible for said attacks, not an entire populace, via the illegal technique of "collective punishment". "

The problem is, what happens when most of the populace supports those attacks? Hamas is a legitimately elected government.

I concur with nepeta. nepeta has accurately described Morris' argument in his book, "The Birth of The Palestinian Refugee Problem." The only caveat that I would make is that Morris book also repudiated the popular notion among many Palestinians that the Haganah (the pre-state Jewish military) had always been planning to push Palestinians out of the land. Rather, Morris argues that most of the dispersion was caused, as nepeta says, by the fear that stems from living in the middle of war.

Everybody is an indiginous human being, Patrick.

An interesting question that I don't know the answer to: were the Jewish settlers in the Ottoman era Ottoman citizens?

The Israelis have no such assurance. … Bruce the Canuck

The peace plan, endorsed by the 2002 Beirut Summit, calls for an Israeli withdrawal to 1967 Arab borders, establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.
The initiative offers Israel peace and normal relations with Arab countries in return for withdrawal to the borders as they stood on the eve of the Middle East War of 1967. Jordan had tried to simplify the offer, known in the Arab world as the Beirut Initiative, to send a message of peaceful intentions to Israelis and world public opinion.

Bear in mind... Egypt lost the Sinai, and Jordan lost the West Bank and half of Jerusalem. cactus 9:38 PM

Newly declassified documents reveal that the United States of America had worked feverishly behind the scenes attempting to "hold the Israeli tiger" in the days leading up to war. The Johnson Administration received guarantees from Egypt that it would not strike first and arranged a diplomatic visit from Egyptian envoy Zakaria Mohieddin who was scheduled to depart on June 6, 1967. The diplomatic cable stated "we hope it will be possible for him to come without delay" and there were high hopes in the Johnson Administration that the visit would lead to the end of the crisis.

There was nothing illegal about the Jewish settlements in Palestine. cld 7:35 PM

The Arabs could have accepted the UN mandate in 1948….Mike K 7:56 PM

so

cld,

In response to your question regarding the citizenship status of Jewish immigrants in the Ottoman empire. The Ottoman empire did not really have a notion of "citizenship." They were "subjects" to the Sultan as were all who lived in Ottoman controlled lands.

While Al, jay and the other right-wing Israel apologists on this blog chirp endlessly (and mindlessly, I might add) about liberals being anti-Semitic and "Bush haters", they simply are ignorant of the facts.

Since George W. Bush has been president, the U.S. has vetoed seven UN Security Council resolutions condemning Israel's actions, including:
- A call for a UN observer force in the occupied territories to quell the violence.
- Expression of concern over Israel's killing of UN employees and destruction of a UN World Food program warehouse.
- Condemnation of the building of the Separation Barrier cutting off residents of the West Bank from fresh water supplies.
- Israel's targeted assassination of quadriplegic Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and 6 innocent bystanders.

These facts are not widely publicized in the American media, but the rest of the world pays attention to them. The Arab media also notes pointedly that the U.S. allows Israel to proliferate WMDs without restriction or inspection, while we invade Iraq, an Arab country, on the supposition they may have one nuke. Israel has hundreds.

This hypocrisy is not sustainable and does not and will not lead to peace in this region . EVER.

Bob,

One response in this post, then another to come soon...

Many of the settlers do indeed hold dreams of Jewish dominance from the Mediteranean to the Jordan River (and some hold out hope for the EAST bank too). But , actually, most of the settlers are low-middle income Israelis who moved to the huge settlement blocks like Ariel and Ma'ale Adumnim because the Israeli government offered plenty of economic incentives to do so. That, combined with the a very normal dispersion to the suburbs (and that is what some of the settlements really are, suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv) means that many of the "settlers" are economically motivated, not religiously. This, of course, brings up the part that the Israeli government played in inducing growth in the settlements, but that's for another time.

nepeta,

It isn't heartless here to say, so what?

What of the decades of bloodshed that led up to 1947? The characterization of the author in 1923, in the rhetoric of his era, was correct, and who has denied that was Palestinian view? But that brings me back to my earlier statement, should we attack the Irish in Boston because we were here first?

"And, additionally, it is not apartheid because the South Africans were not being used as a catspaw by external powers in a way that dates back thousands of years."

And thus your argument changes. The above sentence is *not* a refutation of the existence of Apartheid in the occupied territories. The above sentence is an attempted justification for Apartheid in the occupied territories. Put simple, you've gone from saying the indiginous Arabs are being treated well by their foreign occupiers to acknowledging that the indiginous Arabs are being treated poorly by their foreign occupiers, but explaining the necessity of such treatment.

"The bantustan borders with other equally impoverished African nations are meaningless. The point with Palestinian borders is that the populations are ethnically contiguous and, they say, have a serious interest in Palesinian welfare."

Likewise, the bantustans that bordered Swaziland, Mozambiqe, Botswana and Lesotho were ethnically contiguous, and, likewise, those nations had a theoretical interest in the welfare of the indiginous South Africans. But it was still Apartheid, wasn't it? And those bantustans were still a shoddy substitute for self-determination for the indiginous South Africans, weren't they?

Precisely like the indiginous South Africans consigned to bantustans in South Africa, the indiginous Palestinians in the occupied territories live in multiple, economically-unsustainable, non-contiguous portions accessible only by roads riddled with checkpoints manned by soldiers from an occupying nation, and divided by colonies placed by that same foreign nation, and lacking the right to control their own borders. This very obviously precludes the establishment of a single Palestinian state, and preserves occupier control over an indiginous populace, while providing the illusion of indiginous self-determination. That was the intent and design of the bantustans in South Africa (which was called Apartheid by us all), and it is the intent and design of the colony-riddled and checkpoint-riddled hodgepodge in the occupied territories (which is called Apartheid by those who know Apartheid when they see it).

Whether or not you consider this particular Apartheid justified (i.e., whether or not the Palestinians are "being used as a catspaw by external powers") does not change the fact that it is Apartheid.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

mike, That is not true. There are more UN resolutions against Israel than against any other nation.

Not in 1909 there weren't, which is the era I was talking about.

It greatly disappoints me liberals cannot recognize US aid, especially military aid, to Israel is the engine that drives Israel's inability to negotiate a return to its 1956 borders and the ability to use state of the art weapons overwhelmingly on a week subject population. Please ask your representative to stop all US aid to Israel and end our involvement with this conflict.

Middle Michael,

That description of the Benny Morris book wasn't mine but copied from a web site. Sorry, I should have made that clear (and provided the link).

Bob,

On bigotry and hatred as it relates to this discussion:

I agree that I have seen and heard some incredibly nasty things directed from Israel-supporters at everyone else (including some overtly racist things). But I do have to disagree with what I perceived to be an implicit contention that anti-semitic things are not said or written (I may have misread your post, if so, please disregard). I agree that what many call "anti-semitism" is not even a shadow of it, but there are some anti-semitics things said (I simply choose to ignore such bigots). In fact, my own perception is that on left wing blogs there is far more bigotry (subtle and otherwise) directed at Israelis than at Arabs.

NBC News reporting that Israel is bombing hospitals in Lebanon. Yep, gotta watch out for those rocket launchers at the hospitals.
.

Sorry about the lateness of this post.

Keith G:

Thanks for your kind words in my defense. It is because of the interesting discussion and good natured and respective way you guys deal with each other, even with the occasional sharp worded barb, that makes it so much fun to join in. I certainly hope that my posts have added to debate, and pleased that they are noticed.

Bob:

Perhaps I should have said that the Kossacks, as a group, are too immature and unsophisticated as political analysts or strategists to engage in Machiavellian thinking. Their blind hatred of Bush, the GOP and all things conservative renders them incapable of viewing their political opponents dispassionately to engage in such subtle nuanced thinking that the term suggests. As Michael Corleone said in Godfather III, "Never hate your enemy, it clouds your judgment."

They and those at Democratic Underground go on and on about being forced to respond to GOP "talking points" or how to properly “frame the debate” to enhance their electability. But, they fail to understand that "talking points" are that precisely because they are effective arguments that they are seemly unable to respond to. Rather than objectively analyze their opponents’ ideas to find a response to counter these talking points, they flail around with growing rage at the “sheeple,” the American voters’ inability to see past the GOP’s veil of lies. I almost feel sorry for them if the Dems don’t take one of the Houses of Congress this fall, which I don’t think will happen.

I should have said in my original post that Kos’s 15 minutes of fame will be over if Lieberman easily wins the primary. Obviously, if it’s close or Lamont wins, then perhaps Kos does represent a potent new force in Democrat party politics.

If my calling them "stupid" offended you or anyone else, then I apologize for the poor choice of words.

"The problem is, what happens when most of the populace supports those attacks? Hamas is a legitimately elected government."

I do believe one's within one's moral rights to defend oneself against an actual attacker. I don't believe in the moral rightness of making a populace suffer and/or die for thought crimes like sympathizing with an attacker, or even voting for the attacker.

For example, the whole world (including, yes, even the United States) condemns the Israeli policy of seizing Palestinian land (on, say, the West Bank), bulldozing Palestinian homes, and building illegal colonies upon said land. And I condemn it too. But I don't believe that the Israeli populace should be made to suffer for Israel's above-mentioned illegal policy, a policy which, let's face it, is a form of ethnic cleansing... even though the Israeli populace supports that policy (at least by your own standard for "support": the legitimate election of a government which executes illegal acts).

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

In response to your question regarding the citizenship status of Jewish immigrants in the Ottoman empire. The Ottoman empire did not really have a notion of "citizenship." They were "subjects" to the Sultan as were all who lived in Ottoman controlled lands.

Technically then, the Jewish immigrants and Palestinian Arabs were on equal legal footing, except that anyone who isn't a Muslim is a second class citizen?

Patrick Meighan,

It's certainly not Israel's fault that the Palestinians, by hook and by crook, have gotten themselves into this fix. The area of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank is 20% of the Ottoman region of Palestine.

My argument doesn't change, it improves. Comment posting is more a work in progress than deep thought, as my spelling and grammar so often make painfully clear.

The sentence, "it is not apartheid becuase the South Africans were not being used as a catspaw by external powers in a way that dates back thousands of years" does explain why it is not apartheid, because the Israelis are acting in self-defense, against a pre-existing circumstance of the long history of proxy conflicts (which I admit they should have been aware of ahead of time, but apparently, blinded by romanticism and need, were not), whereas the Boers were acting, quite intentionally, to conquer, destroy and enslave.

If the Palestinians ever made a serious effort at peace it would be fantastically welcomed. Where is the Palestinian Desmond Tutu? Where is the Arab Ghandi?

What peace have they ever offered but the peace of the graveyard?

"The Arabs could have accepted the UN mandate in 1948. They didn't and chose war. They lost. Tough."

Thank you for your spirited defense of ethnic cleansing.

"As someone else has written, there are no Jewish suicide bombers in Germany. There is something wrong with Islam."

There were, in fact, plenty of Jewish terrorist organizations in the 1930s and '40s, such as the Stern Gang and the Irgun, which specifically targeted civilians in Palestine, and brutally murdered them, frequently with bombs. These barbaric acts occurred not because there was something wrong with Judaism (because there wasn't, and there isn't). They occurred because the Jewish citizenry at the time was disempowered (in fact, living under a military occupation), and lacking any other opportunity to fight for its rights. By that same token, the barbaric acts perpetrated today by Arab suicide bombers occur not because there is something wrong with Islam. There isn't. They occur because the Arab citizenry at this time is disempowered (in fact, living under a military occupation) and lacking any other opportunity to fight for its rights.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA"

Interesting point of view. When does the cross burning start ?

I assume you are in favor of Indian suicide bombers knocking on your door.

MiddleMichael:

Well this is a very interesting question. You seem to be new here, and unless you've lurked on some of the earlier I/P threads, you haven't seen my scourging of a tag team crew of sock puppet trolls (all by the same rl person, I am certain) by the names of "karen," "tj," "clarissa," "Bob," "Joe" and others on other threads.

This person is a skinhead, neo-naziod, Protocols-style anti-semite and I do my level best to drive this odious creature off the thread.

I try to keep up on hate groups and fully realize that anti-semitism is a virulent mental disease that has been greatly reduced but hardly eradicated in the postwar era.

As for your observation about more subtle forms of anti-Israeli racism ... well, first I'd more properly call it prejudice, and I think it's the sort that liberals tend to direct at, e.g. socially irresponsible wealthy people. Because Israel clearly holds the power in the situation -- and because Israelis are culturally European -- I think all of us tend to hold them to a high moral standard and we feel more violated when they don't meet it than we would, say, Arabs raised in the squalor of Gaza.

Never, though, do I see truly frothing, racial-consipracy anti-semitism directed at Israelis by otherwise sane liberal bloggers.

That sort of anti-semitism is the exclusive property of a single disturbed individual and his many aliases on this blog, in my experience.

Bob

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Chicounsel:

I understand what you're saying and, as a veteran Howard Dean blogger experienced with Kossacks and their navel-gazing ways, tend to agree.

Sorry to have had my button so easily pushed -- and thanks for your fuller explanation.

Bob

'But that brings me back to my earlier statement, should we attack the Irish in Boston because we were here first?'

cld, I don't see this as being an apt analogy at all. A much better analogy would have to do with the treatment of Native Americans by American colonists and the young American nation (the effects of which are still painfully visible). But even that isn't a true analogy. Israel is a case unto itself. As far as I know, no other nation has come into being in the way that Israel has. It's a pity really, given the idealistic dream that was early Zionism, that more care wasn't given to prevent an Arab backlash. Given human nature, perhaps that was impossible.

nepeta:

How very true -- and this is why I like to dream, vainly, of an alternate reality where the Jews were given New Zealand -- or Montana -- instead.

Bob

nepeta,

If the analogy to Native Americans were more correct, because they were here earlier, then you'd have to say Israel is certainly the aggrieved party in all this because they were there millenia before the Arabs, and have always had a presence in the land.

But I think attacking the Irish in Boston is the better precept as they have overrun so many of our ancestral sacred places. They have stolen Paul Revere's workshop!

Bob,

I think, on this matter, you and I basically agree. I was careful to write "bigotry" when describing what the relatively common attacks on Israeli character, rather than racism. I agree that this new anti-Israelism is not the same as the old style anti-semitism which remains, to this day, almost exclusively on the far right. However, I do often feel that this "higher standard" you observe (an astute observation, I think) stems from or is related to a kind of anti-semitism wherein those who feel this way take some actual pleasure in pointing out that Jews, too, can behave "badly" (perhaps we can call it schadenfreude anti-semitism). Many who suffer from SAS (as I have now dubbed it), I think, see this conflict very much in terms of color. Israelis are the "whites" and the Arabs are the "non-whites." Through this lense, the conflict becomes so much more understandable and much simpler to demagogue.

The question I also come back to, when faced with SAS, is, "Why Israel?" There are so many intractable conflicts raging in the world, with far more clear and constant "villains." Why this obsession with Israel? Some will say it is because the US is so closely aligned with Israel. A fair point, but it does not explain the same obsession in Europe, and it does not explain why there isn't nearly the same focus on China (an increasingly close trade partner of ours) or Russia, or even Uzbekistan (not to mention Pakistan), the list goes on. This is not to excuse or justify or even to distract from the real and true disaster that Israeli occupation policy has been. It is only to say that there remains a serious question, "Why Israel?"

(Well, isn't that special)

US Ambassador and all-around asshole, John Bolton, said when asked about the deaths of eight Canadians in Lebanon as a result of Israel's bombing, replied that civilian deaths in Lebanon were not morally the same as that of victims in Israel.

Where there you have it folks.
.

"The sentence, "it is not apartheid becuase the South Africans were not being used as a catspaw by external powers in a way that dates back thousands of years" does explain why it is not apartheid, because the Israelis are acting in self-defense, against a pre-existing circumstance of the long history of proxy conflicts (which I admit they should have been aware of ahead of time, but apparently, blinded by romanticism and need, were not), whereas the Boers were acting, quite intentionally, to conquer, destroy and enslave."

cld, you and I keep talking past each other, somehow. I'm explaining that the occupied territories are precisely like the bantustans in design and effect, and that the bantustans were an essential element of what we called Apartheid in South Africa, which is why Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, today, refer to the occupied territories as Apartheid states. You've ceased denying that the occupied territories are precisely like the bantustans in design and effect, and have, instead, retreated to the argument that they're different solely because the Boers created bantustans for evil reasons and that the Israelis created bantustans for good, self-defense reasons. Fine. I understand that you believe that (even if I don't necessarily agree). But I just wish you could see that yours is NOT an argument that Israel doesn't engage in Apartheid. What yours is is an argument that Israel engages in justified apartheid... apartheid for a good reason. That's what you're arguing. Just see it plain, man.

"If the Palestinians ever made a serious effort at peace it would be fantastically welcomed. Where is the Palestinian Desmond Tutu? Where is the Arab Ghandi? What peace have they ever offered but the peace of the graveyard?"

I agree 8,000% that the Palestinians are in great need of many many Tutus, Gandhis, Mandelas... hell, a Dennis Kucinich or two. To tell the truth, I don't know Palestinian history well enough to know if, or whether, there's ever been such a thing as a Palestinian movement of non-violence. Assuming there hasn't, that's a moral crime, and it's politically and tactically stupid as well. I don't absolve the Palestinians their crimes (as you, apparently, absolve the Israelis).

But if Israel is, indeed, eager to someday see a Palestinian Gandhi, it does our imaginary future hero no favors by maintaining (and even expanding) illegal settlements on the West Bank, and thumbing its nose at international law, and effecting policies of collective punishment and extrajudicial kidnappings and executions, and maintaining humiliating roadblocks on Palestinian land which emasculate the indiginous citizenry and keep civilians from reaching family, schools, jobs and hospitals. The more desperate Israel makes the Palestinian populace, the less likely the Palestinian populace is to turn to our Gandhi in waiting (wherever he is), and the more likely it is to turn to Hamas.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

Where is the Palestinian Desmond Tutu? Where is the Arab Ghandi?

Ask Mossad's assasins. Ask the PLO's assasins.

if equivalent things are said about Jews, there'd be an instant (and justified) outcry of anti-semitism.

Imagine if a stronger power was doing to Israel what Israel is now doing to Gaza or Lebanon. Many would be calling for nuclear war.

assassins. assassins.

MiddleMarch:

"Why Israel"? I think, primarily, because Israel is the stepchild of the world powers after WW2 -- the first (and, I think, only) nation created by the brand-new UN. The world has always had exceedingly high hopes for it for this reason.

Also, because Israelis are cultural stepchildren of Europe. Even though Jews from all around the world helped settle it at all stages of its existence, the Western European Ashkenaz set the template, and these postwar settlers were extremely well-educated and cultured, often driven from places of high economic and social position by the anti-semitic fevers of the Nazi/Fascist era. These were extremely talented people, whose talent was spurned by their countries of origin.

Because we held these early Israelis in such high regard, that also, of course, increases the potential Schadenfreude factor. Human dramas bring the high low.

And they were placed in the midst of an alien culture who had as much history with the land as they did. The story of that land and whose hands it passed through is, in fact, at the cornerstone of our literature in the Old Testament.

So it's high drama -- one culture we understand and uneasily coexisted with -- another culture exotic, the Alien Other as Said says, a palimpset upon which to project our own inner demons. When the Alien Other strikes a blow against what we know so well and rejected -- we feel an unconscious guilt which is immediately projected outward and bifurcates into both reflexive defense and reflexive scourging.

Or that's my dimestore Freudian take on it, anyway :)

Bob

No problem bob.

Just glad you scrolled all the way down to see it. :-)

Chicounsel:

This has actually been quite an interesting thread ...

Bob

Bob,

I think your analysis is quite good. I have only one criticism (and it has nothing to do with the jist of your post). You have actually mentioned more than once that Israeli society was made up of the "cream of European scoiety." I don't think is precisely true. In the first three Jewish immigration waves, most of the immigrants were from the Russian Empire. Jews from the Russian Empire were poor, poorly educated, and persecuted. This was hardly the "cream." Now it is true that after the Holocaust, many of the Jewish refugees had been professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc), but many of these upperclass Jews were able to escape the Nazis in the early 1930s. Those who were left were mostly lower class and, again, Eastern European (German Jews actually survived the war in the greatest numbers because they were the first to see the danger, and best able to get out). The end result is that, like our own immigrant society here in the US, Israel was made up of mostly the underbelly of European society, not its cream.

I should, of course, note, that some of these immigrants were supported by wealthy Jewish European philanthropists, but most of the actual immigrants were poor and uneducated.

"Why Israel?", indeed.

The Chinese are no pikers when it comes to abusing Muslims. But who ever heard of Uighurs?

Patrick Meighan,

Yes, I see what you say there, and I can half approach your argument. Some kind of Israeli interest in South African 'influx control' was occurring in the 1970s, about the time liberals around the world began believing their own bad press.
But you're simply saying that a gun fired in self-defense is no different than a gun fired to murder. Apartheid was meant to murder. The Israeli arrangement is meant to just keep them away. I think it's a deeply different thing.

The Palestinians have had massive external support. The South Africans didn't have any except the trivial amount non-governmental agencies could provide.

I don't absolve Israelis of crimes, if that's needed to be said. I don't think in these circumstances people like the ultra-Orthodox settlers should even be allowed in the country. They are the force that fundamentally screws things up.

But what can Israel do when rockets are fired into their territory indiscriminately from the Palestinian side and the Palestinian government does nothing, or says it's not our fault, or pays the families of suicide bombers reward money? Who does Israel arrest? How do they identify just who fired those rockets? Hamas won't help. Hamas thinks the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a true story.

"The question I also come back to, when faced with SAS, is, "Why Israel?" There are so many intractable conflicts raging in the world, with far more clear and constant "villains." Why this obsession with Israel? Some will say it is because the US is so closely aligned with Israel. A fair point, but it does not explain the same obsession in Europe, and it does not explain why there isn't nearly the same focus on China (an increasingly close trade partner of ours) or Russia, or even Uzbekistan (not to mention Pakistan), the list goes on. This is not to excuse or justify or even to distract from the real and true disaster that Israeli occupation policy has been. It is only to say that there remains a serious question, "Why Israel?"

a) It's kind of ironic, you asking the question, "How come we're always talking about Israel?" when the whole point of Kevin's blog posting is "How come we're never talking about Israel?" Which is it: are we *always* talking about this subject? Or are we *never* talking about this subject?

b) Again, speaking for myself, to the extent that I vocalize my special opposition to Israel's policy in the occupied territories, I do so because my home nation, the United States, is the one that makes the policy possible. Israel's occupation of the territories could never have been effected and maintained without my nation's diplomatic support, and my nation's equipment, and especially my nation's money ($3B a year... by far the most we send to any other nation).

c) I'm not a fan of the blind eye we turn to the abuses perpetrated by our other allies and/or trading partners, be they China, Russia, Uzbekistan, or Pakistan (or plenty others you haven't yet named). But none of the above nations need my nation's support in order to execute their crimes. Israel DOES need my nation's support in order to execute its crimes, and it gets it, and this saddles me, as a citizen of this nation, with a moral culpability that far outweighs my culpability when, say, Karimov boils a protester, or Musharraf cancels an election, or King Faud stones a homosexual, or Mubarak tortures an extremist.

d) Truthfully, outside of today's blog thread, I pretty much never talk about Israel. Mostly 'cause it's such an emotional subject with such firmly-entrenched sides and you just know you're never gonna succeed in persuading anyone, so why fucking bother, y'know? (It's why I don't really bother arguing the abortion question, either). Plus, I don't much like being called an anti-semite. And, finally, the conventional wisdom in this nation is so firmly wedded to the pro-Israel side that introducing facts that in any way challenge that conventional wisdom requires a great deal of background work and cite-giving that the whole thing just gets exhausting. So yeah, anyway, I pretty much stay mum on this thing. Today's an exception.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

This has been a very interesting thread, and I want to thank everyone for talking with me today on this subject (especially those with whom I've disagreed). You've given me a great deal to think about.

Have a great evening.

Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA

MiddleMichael:

But didn't many of the great European intellectual Jews emigrate to Israel after WW2? I'm thinking of Martin Buber, but surely there must have been others -- certainly world-class musicians among them.

Also, it didn't take Israeli society to move beyond the kibbutz and work with and develop sophisticated technology, increasingly, of course, with weaponry due to all the serial warfare. But there was also agricultural technology that was well above the means of an East European peasant -- sophisticated irrigation, desalinization plants -- where did this technology come from / how was it managed without an elite of world-class technocrats and engineers?

I've read all too little on the history of Israel so I'm picking your brain, not firing rhetorical questions ... I'm very curious.

Bob

didn't take Israeli society = didn't take Israeli society long

'cld' posted:

"The Chinese are no pikers when it comes to abusing Muslims."

Except they're not utilizing American military hardware when they do it.
.

Patrick,

I do not question your personal "special opposition" to Israel's policies, nor did mean to suggest that opposition to Israel means that people are ignoring human rights abuses elsewhere. I beleive that most on the left (I would include myself in this category) sincerely and simply want to see a just resolution of this conflict for the sake of the millions (Jew, Arab, Christian, and everyone else) who live the area. My point was that there appear to me to be some who make a special case of Israel for no reason other than that they feel some glee at Israel's moral compromises.

As for your point that Israel is the only country that requires American assistance to carry out its "crimes," I would postulate that Israel would almost certainly have carried out the same policies regardless of American support (witness the Suez Crisis wherein the US actively opposed Israel's actions, and 1967, a war that was fought completely without American military hardware...most US support came after the conclusion of the June War). Again, this is not to justify or distract from Israel's failed policies. I only want to underline that, Kevin's post notwithstanding, some on the left often make, what I see as a special case out of Israel.

Bob,

Great questions, and I'll do my best. You are right, that currently, Israel boasts a modern economy with advanced technology. It wasn't always thus. I'm not an expert on the Israeli economy (my areas of interest are mainly political, military and religious), but I think that the development was aided by some immigrant heavyweights (as you've mentioned), as well as by a significant amount of outside help (especially after 1967 when American Jews began to feel a sense of pride and ownership). One other thing, an aspect of Israeli history that is not all that well known: in those first several waves of immigration, only about 50% stayed. Life in Ottoman Palestine was really hard, and a lot of immigrants either returned to the Russian Empire or moved on to America or Western Europe. Now this is purely speculation, but perhaps this served as a kind of natural selection, leaving onl the best, the brightest and the most committed of the immigrants to build the Jewish state. Maybe.

Really interesting debate, all.

MiddleMichael, welcome to the fray and thanks for joining in.

I am off to read the paper and hit the hay.

G'night, all,

Bob

There can't be a leave it alone stance because US federal taxpayers are subsidizing Israel's military ventures. We are paying for this Lebanon offensive.

I recomend Billmon's piece on justifying war crimes by defining oneself as being in a fight for ones very survival.

http://billmon.org/archives/002533.html

Note how so many supporters of Israeli violence and land theft dishonestly redefine their really rather neutral critics as advocating the elimination of Israel, as can be seen in the comments above.

It will never make sense to me how one Israeli civilian death is worth more than 15 brown people deaths. I feel deeply violated that my family's tax money pays for killing justified by this proposition. John Bolton just made this disinction in the UN:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060717/pl_afp/mideastconflictlebanon_060717204728

From the post

Like it or not, we can't run away from this stuff.

Don't be silly. Of course the Americans can.

I would really be interested in knowing how much of "US aid" to Israel and Egypt goes to direct unrestricted payments, versus how much of any payments goes to them with restrictions (i.e., that they be used to purchase goods from United States manufacturers), or are little more than "in-kind" aid (i.e., goods purchased by the US government from domestic manufacturers for shipment to Egypt or Israel). The latter is typical of US foreign aid.

As far as I'm concerned, the US foreign aid given to Egypt and Israel is little or nothing more than welfare given to American corporations. And the longer that Israel can keep up their warfare against their neighbors, the longer that this part of American corporate welfare will continue.

preacher-worshipping

Raj makes a good point. Not only is it the American Israel supporters and the AIPAC/JENSA bribed politicians that drive US support of militant Israeli policies, it is the military industrial complex's need to continue selling their products to a US subsidized Israel that drives US aid, completing the iron triangle of unbreakable self interest that fuels this 'intractable' conflict.

If I said "Israel must pay a price so high that they will decide not to attack Gaza or Lebanon again," what would many of Israel's supporters call me?

But I do not say that. I say stop all us military aid to Israel so they cannot attack Gaza or Lebanon with gifted state of the art weapons. I also do not say, "instead of giving Israel state of the art military hardware, give it to Hamas and Hezbollah so they can do to Israel what Israel does to them." No, the US should not arm either belligerant in this conflict, but should leverage its aid to Israel to encourage Israel to give up its war gains of 1967.

Hostile2:22 PM: No, the US should not arm either belligerant in this conflict…

Kos is pulling for Hezbollah, but knows if he admits that that it'll just make him look like more of a loony leftist than he already does.

Its not something he can fake either by trying to appear neutral, because he would have to lie, and that would be obvious to readers. So his only option is to not say anything at all.

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