Amongst other things, I noticed that the much-heralded Iraq Study Group’s report recommended direct talks with Palestinians – but only Palestinians who acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.
I hear that phrase a lot – Israel’s right to exist – and to be honest with you, it makes me angry. It’s ridiculous. If you disagree with me, at least hear me out, ok?
To begin with the phrase isn’t referring to the rocks and trees and rivers in Israel and their right to exist, nor any endangered animal species or plant species. The phrase is only used to refer to the political entity of the modern state of Israel and its “right to exist”.
What other country has a right to exist? Does Spain have a right to exist? What does that even mean?
Spain the country it is today was formed by aligning a number of kingdoms in the Middle Ages. But before that, parts of (what is now) Spain was a Roman colony after it was won by defeating the Phoenician (Carthaginian) Empire. Before that, the Phoenicians/Carthaginians had to subdue the local inhabitants (known as Iberians). And before that, the Iberians had been partially settled and conquered by Celtic peoples from northern Europe.
So the Romans held Spain until the western Roman Empire collapsed, then the “Barbarians” moved in and Goths and (lots of) Visigoths and others moved in from the north. Then in the late 8th century, Muslim peoples (referred to now as Moors) crossed over from North Africa. From the 8th century until the 13th century, the Muslim peoples of North Africa ruled what is now Spain – with the exception of Asturias, Navarra and Aragon (now provinces of Spain but they were “kingdoms” during this time).
By the end of the 13th century, the ex-Visigoth ex-Roman ex-Germanic ex-Celtic now Christian states had pushed out the Muslims except for Granada (now in Andalusia, a province of Spain) which was captured in 1492.
Everyone knows that Isabella and Ferdinand were the joint rulers of Spain at that time. But before Isabella and Ferdinand, there was no Spain. Isabella was the Queen of Castille and Leon. Ferdinand was the King of Aragon. They united in wedlock, they united (most of) the peninsula and they financed C.C.’s trip to the New World and then enormous wealth poured in. And that is how the modern nation of Spain was founded.
But does Spain have a right to exist? That’s my question. Here are some more things to consider:
- The only reason Portugal is a separate country is because it never united with Spain. It has some land barriers that separate the two regions and the dialect of Vulgar Latin metamorphed over time and now the two of them speak similar but different languages.
- Andorra, which is an independent tiny kingdom just north of Spain (on the border with France) is independent only because it never chose (or was forced) to unite with Spain
- The remnants of the Celtic people still live in Spain, primarily in the northwest where their province (Galicia) retains the name of their former homeland. And Galician is a separate language from Spain, as Portuguese is.
- The northeast of Spain is the province of Catalonia, which is a kingdom that Ferdinand inherited and was therefore grafted into what became Spain. The language Catalan is similar but distinct from Spanish and there is a large community of Catalan peoples across the border in France.
And of course we can never forget about the Basques. The Basques have always been there and almost definitely predated even the earliest of the first invasions of the peninsula because the Basque language is older than every other tongue spoken on the continent. The Iranian (Farsi) and Russian languages are more similar to Spanish (or English) than Basque is.
The Basques are ethnically distinct, speak their own language, and were the original inhabitants. Yet half their people live across the border in France and half live in Spain and there hasn’t been an independent Basque since the 8th century, when the Moors moved in from North Africa. Most of what is today Basque country actually remained under Frankish (now French) rule during the Middle Ages!
So does Spain have the right to exist? Do the Spanish-speaking peoples who are descended from those who arrived in the peninsula later than Basques or Galicians deserve to decide where the national boundaries are more than the Basques or Galicians do?
Does might make right? Does the fact that the Spanish-speaking (actually Occitan-speaking) people conquered the Basque-speaking people 1,100 years ago give the now Spanish-speaking people some inherent “right to exist” that the Basque people don’t have?
And people always say, well Jews have to have a place to live. Sure they do. What does that have to do with the government currently in place in Israel’s right to exist? Jewish people have the same right as you or me or a Mexican person or an Argentinian or a Chinese person to live somewhere. And Jews live in the United States, Mexico, China and Sierra Leone without ever having set foot in Israel.
And people say, well Israel is the Jews’ “homeland”. Well the Basque country (currently in France and Spain) is their homeland. At least the Basques have always been there while most of the Jews were exiled for a few thousand years. Ok well if the Jews get permanent, infinite timespan access to their homeland then so do the Kurds, Abkhaz, Chechens, Dagestani, Ingush, Gagauzians and Tatars. So do the hundreds of indigenous peoples of Brazil and the rest of South America. There’s a long, long list of people who are denied access to or the ability to self-govern who have equally well-established “homelands” as do the Jews.
Well people say, “Hitler massacred the Jews so they need a safe haven”. And that massacre was a tragedy, but how does that equate to Israel the country’s “right to exist”? It equates to “Jews deserve humanitarian treatment and the freedom to live in peace”. But if maltreatment on a horrendous scale implies the “right” to self-government in one’s homeland, then what about the Tutsis in Rwanda? What about the Hutu in Burundi? What about the Twa people in Rwanda and Burundi? What about the Acholi people in Uganda? What about the Fur people in Sudan? What about the Acehnese people in Indonesia? What about the Hmong people in Laos? Etc etc.
For that matter, the Basques were devastated by Hitler himself in World War 2 (remember Guernica) and then their culture, language and identity was banned under the 40 years of Spain’s dictator, Generalissimo Francisco Franco. I realize Franco never mass murdered the Basques but he still did his level best to crush them and their culture for 40 years.
No, I think the concept of Israel having a “right to exist” is patently absurd. I think Jewish people have a right to exist peacefully and be treated humanely in whatever nation they were born in, the same as you or I or anyone else. I think that Jews living in Israel have the right to the same – a peaceful and humane existance and fair treatment. But I just cannot stomach or support the thought that any political entity, not even the United States, has some fundamental and inalienable “right to exist”.
And even if I go ahead and posit that ok, Israel does have a right to exist, does that give Israel a right to impose apartheid? Does that give Israel a right to deny half the people under its authority basic human rights such as citizenship and the right to vote? Does it give Israel the right to shoot and kill innocent men, women and children? Does it give Israel the right to impose miscegeny laws prohibiting inter-religious marriages? Does it give Israel the right to mistreat a single human being? Does it give Israel the right to invade and occupy neighboring countries?
And last but not least, does Israel’s “right to exist” include a right to exist at the expense of Palestinians?
As many of you know, I lived in Israel. I realize what I’m saying is often mirrored by those who have anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) views and wish serious harm or death for Jewish people. I certainly don’t wish any of that on anyone nor am I denying that previous atrocities occurred or anything even close to that. Nor am I condoning or approving of terrorism or violence by Palestinians or anyone else as justified in their struggle to obtain basic human rights.
The leaders and politicians in the United States all stand united that the only Palestinian worth talking to is one who acknowledges Israel’s “right to exist”. But I wonder if it wouldn’t be a whole lot more equitable AND productive if the same standard was applied to Israeli leaders and politicians – in other words, speak, finance and engage in dialogue only with those who acknowledge the Palestinian‘s right to exist.
In my humble and worthless opinion, ALL the people who live in Israel of all ethnicities and religions have a right to exist.
Sorry about the ranting, folks. Sometimes though there’s just only so much I can take.
Pax
Thank you for expressing so well just what I think about the state of Israel. What about the Palestinians right to exist? I doubt you’ll get an equitable answer to that question.
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as usual they lack balance, wisdom and insight.
The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Report finalizes the failure of U.S.-Israeli Mid-East Policy:
While Bush-Cheney entered the Iraq arena, security in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and other Muslim front nations has been neglected. Future generations of Americans and Western European citizens will suffer the consequences. PM Blair has found his place in history for sure, similar to W. Churchill in the naval disaster by Gallipoli .
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Oui,
Agree, but the obstacle is Israel. Unfortunately, Israel dictates U.S.foreign policy in the Middle East and they need to be told this has to end or they’ll be on their own.
The cancer leads to Jerusalem. If the situation was reversed -the Palestinians had erected that wall to blockade Jewish movement, had confiscated Israel’s tax revenues or had imposed collective punishment – in a heart beat the west would have invaded to make things right.
U.S. influence has been diminished and the chaos will escalate unless there’s a comprehensive settlement of the Israel Palestinian conflict- an abandoned people – the dispossessed of the Palestinian territories
“Who does Mr Zarhouk, who voted Fatah in the last election, blame? “I blame democracy,” he says with a flash of sarcasm. “The whole world wanted us to have democracy and said how fair had been our election. The problem is they didn’t like our results.”
Of course he has a different view – Israel wants to keep the Golan Heights and other stolen lands. They have forgotten their history and the inhumanity – ‘do unto others as you would they do unto you.’
The issues are joined.
Two comments and a note:
Also, a side note, Guernica was bombed by German and Italian forces during the Spanish Civil War, not World War Two.
As an aside to the main issue, I’d like to point out that Jordan, Egypt, and Syria don’t have long histories. All three are 20th century creations springing from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Egypt, in particular, hadn’t had political independence since the defeat of pharaoh Nectanebo II by the Persians, and the relationship of the modern state of Egypt to its last independent form is virtually nil. Jordan didn’t exist as a distinct entity until 1921. Syria only began to coalesce as a state after WWI.
As for the main issue, there wouldn’t even be any discussion about Israel’s right to exist if not for the Holocaust. That monumental, horrific injustice becomes the all-purpose excuse for any subsequent crime committed by the survivors and their descendants. It’s an appeal to emotion to bypass logic.
The historic claim of the Jews to Palestine is otherwise utter bosh. One might as well argue that Americans of Anglo-Saxon descent have a “historic right” to invade and resettle central Germany, or that the whole lot of the human race has a historic right to seize control of eastern Africa. Screw the people who live there now, even if, like the Palestinians (or Philistines and Samaritans, as they were known before the 20th century), they’ve been living there for thousands of years and their ancient cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ashdod predate the original Hebrew invasion of Canaan.
It’s frankly appalling the degree to which religious mythology manages to obscure clear reasoning even among the enlightened secular classes. The establishment of the modern State of Israel was not some kind of historic return of the Hebrews to the Promised Land. It was the last great European colonization movement of the 20th century, tolerated by the major colonial power in the region, Britain, only because they held Arab Muslims in even lower esteem than they did European Jews. It was a land theft, pure and simple, excused by the modern west, or parts of it, only because the Holocaust excuses everything in perpetuity from the initial seizure to the current drive for Lebensraum in the West Bank.
The argument for Israel boils down to “God gave us this land,” and “The Holocaust was truly awful.” The first argument is pure superstitious nonsense, and the second argument is irrelevant. There’s a third argument, “the facts on the ground”, or as another race-obsessed movement put it with respect to the annexation of Czechoslovakia, the fait accompli. It’s the appeal to the power of brute force. We stole it, now what are you going to do about it, you filthy ragheads? Rise up from your ghettos?
The extent to which people come to resemble their enemies is horrifying.
Finally, the question that the US perpetually fails to confront, largely because of our own fundamentalist religion, is whether Israel is a strategic interest of the US. It can be argued that Israel is not a strategic interest, and that it has in fact been the primary impediment to protecting our strategic interests for the last sixty years. Furthermore, from an ideological standpoint, it makes no sense at all for us to back a race- and religion-based colonial state. We demanded — and got — the downfall of longer-established the Republic of South Africa, but for no clear reason, while the abuse of black Africans by white European colonists was a very bad thing, the abuse of Arabs by white European colonists is a very good thing.
Well, there’s no pleasing some people. Anyone who argues that Egypt or Syria don’t have long histories is obviously willing to distort the truth to make whatever argument they want to make. It’s true that Egypt and Syria in their current forms, within their current boundaries and with their current governments didn’t exist until recently, historically speaking, and that they both suffered long periods of colonial invasions when the people who currently live there were not autonomous.
I could make a similar argument about China, whose current borders are a historical accident and which was ruled by non-Chinese peoples (Mongolian, Manchu) for a good portion of the previous millenium. Does this mean tat China doesn’t have a long history, or that the Chinese people don’t have a long history? It’s ridiculous to argue either way.
Of course it’s no surprise that the western concept of the modern nation-state didn’t spread to these nations until the post-colonial era, and only then because of the United Nations and the colonial powers yielding power back to the people from which they had stolen it. Name me a post-colonial nation, in Asia, Africa, or elsewhere, that doesn’t carry some heinous legacy from its era of European colonialism, and I’ll give you a pony.
While it is true that the Middle East, for fact of geography, resources, and religion, has been in flux, both politically and ethnically, to a much larger extent than China, it is as silly to argue that the Jewish people have no ties to the land that comprises Israel as it is to argue that the Palestinians have no claim. The world is no stranger to indigenous peoples who, despite not having lived on land for many generations, making claims on that very soil.
Lastly, I would point out that Israel was populated originally with refugees, which is entirely different from most of the colonial occupations that took place in Asia and Africa (with the exception of South Africa). This serves as a disadvantage as the Jews of Israel did not start with the sad truths of colonial occuption, which the British, French, Russians, Americans, and other powers gained through experience.
But, to your larger point:
You seem to be under the impression that the presence of the Israeli state is somehow up for debate at all, which is rather comical. Do you think that the government of Israel should be dissolved in entirity and that all Jews should go elsewhere? Hopefully you don’t, if you do, the discussion has devolved from solving the problems of the Palestinians to simple anti-semitism.
The problem with this diary, and with your comments, is that you assume that there needs to be a debate about the existence of Israel. It’s a non-starter. Israel exists, and it’s not going anywhere. There are plenty of better questions to ask, like
Instead of speculating about the legality of the very existence of Israel, which is as certain as the legality of the existance of the United States, why not put your mind to figuring out how it can peacefully coexist with other peoples and regional powers? No one here is denying the ridiculousness of the idea that God gave Israel the right to exist, but neither should we give into the idea that it is the only reason (along with the terrors of the Holocaust) that cause Israel to exist as a nation-state.
Anyone who argues that Egypt or Syria don’t have long histories is obviously willing to distort the truth to make whatever argument they want to make.
My point, which you are conveniently obscuring behind a straw-man argument and an ad hominem attack, is that modern Egypt has next to no cultural connection with Ottoman Egypt and none whatsoever with Christian Egypt or Pharaonic Egypt. Different cultures, different religions, different languages, and different ethnicities over the last forty centuries. The British Isle aren’t Pictish anymore, either. And prior to the 20th century, there has never been anything approaching a Syrian national consciousness. Remove the Baathist boot and it would disintegrate just like Iraq.
The problem with this diary, and with your comments, is that you assume that there needs to be a debate about the existence of Israel. It’s a non-starter. Israel exists, and it’s not going anywhere.
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that Israel will last only as long as it receives backing from a great power, and not very much longer. We can talk about theoretical concerns of legitimacy until we’re both blue in the face, but the practical matter is that, in the medium- to long-term, Israel will eventually be destroyed by its Arab neighbors. Whether that ends up being a long war of attrition or a very brief exchange of nuclear weapons, it is all but certain for much the same reasons that the Christian crusader states were untenable in the long run.
Israel’s right to exist — which contrary to your claims is up for debate among pretty much everyone but Israelis and their American backers — doesn’t really matter. It simply will not endure because it can’t. The only pragmatic concern is whether it will be possible to evacuate the survivors and how many of them there will be.
Would you like to explain how Israel can continue to exist? Do you think a couple of tiny gerrymandered Palestinian reservations, too small to be independent states, are going to make everything okay? Maybe if the Israelis let them build casinos and duty-free gift shops? Pure fantasy.
Do you think that the government of Israel should be dissolved in entirity and that all Jews should go elsewhere? Hopefully you don’t, if you do, the discussion has devolved from solving the problems of the Palestinians to simple anti-semitism.
The last resort of the pro-Israel coward, of course. Opposition to the existence of Israel does not equal anti-semitism unless and until the day comes that Israel somehow equals world Jewry. I suppose opposition to the apartheid government of South Africa was anti-Dutch or anti-white by your definition.
Go spread your smear tactics somewhere else. No one is afraid of them anymore.
I didn’t “resort” to calling you an anti-Semite, I only stated that, if your solution to the problems of the middle east was the expulsion of the Jews, you were an anti-semite. If that isn’t your ideal solution, then you aren’t.
I’ll leave alone your ridiculous Egyptian argument (because it assumes that all other states haven’t undergone massive shifts in governance) to focus on the matter at hand:
There are three types of people in the debate on Israel.
The first believe in the Zionism, in the persecution and second-class status of the Palestinians. These people are racists (e.g. anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim) and deserve scorn.
The second believe that Israel has the right to exist, but also that Palestians deserve their own state and that Israeli Arabs and Palestinians within the borders of Israel deserve equal rights. The debates in this group are about the size of the Palestinian state, potential restitution costs to Palestinians, and how to peacefully acheive these goals with a minimum cost to all peoples.
The third believe that Jews don’t belong in the Middle East at all, and that the state of Israel should be destroyed. These people are racists (e.g. anti-semites) and deserve scorn.
If you fit into the first or third group, then you’re an idiot. If you’re a part of the second group, then let’s have a sane debate.
Egypt, as I noted, has undergone a lot more than changes in governance. Modern Egypt stands in relation to Ancient Egypt in exactly the same way that present-day east-central England does to the Danelaw. Outside of museum staffs and historians, Danish Mercia has negligible impact on daily life in Staffordshire.
A large part of my point is that there isn’t an ideal solution or anything close to it. The closest approach to a just solution would be a unified, secular, egalitarian state with compensation for the stolen land of the original Arab inhabitants and something along the lines of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As that would make Jews a minority in the resulting state and remove their privileged status, it’s hard to imagine Israelis ever agreeing to it.
Your second group, which wants the Palestinians ghettoized into a pair of tiny reservations carved up along the sinuous Sharon-Olmert line — it being inconceivable that the Israelis would agree to the partition of Jerusalem, much less the original 1967 borders — seeks the same travesty of justice that any resident of an American Indian reservation would recognize.
The fundamental problem is that there is no plausible and just solution to the injustice that is the establishment of the State of Israel. All of the debate on the pro-Israel side is quibbling over how much will, in the end, be stolen from the Palestinians. Israel’s existence, in essence, stands for the argument that Palestinians should pay for the sins of Europe.
My concern as an American and a firm believer in secular democracy, is that we ought not continue to waste our blood and our money to advance the futile efforts of one religious state to resist the inevitable triumph of a whole host of other, equally repugnant, religious states. Morally, it is the same kind of act as funding dog fights, but on a vaster and more tragic scale.
Your arguments have been clear-headed & cogent – my congratulations. I hold beliefs similar to yours, which have grown up despite forty years of pro-Israel propaganda. But I have never been able to express them as well as you have here.
Great work.
If the US Govt. stops supporting Israel, because people vote it that way, then that is how it goes.
But if Americans, such as Jewish Americans continue to fund Israel, or who ever else where ever, as is their democratic choice, then that is reality too.
Israel does not cease to exist, for the simple reason that there are a whole lot of Israelis and Jewish people at large who are not depending on you to stay alive.
The Arabs would stomp Israel into the ground if they had half a chance. Or would they set up Half and Half Jerusalem like they did in 1948?
Would they spare the Jews like the Christians did in the Inquisition?
The Israelis are in an alerted, protracted war with the Arab states no matter what anyone wants to say. Injustices on their part, do not at the same time mean that they are going away, just to be polite to you.
Nations can do what they want, because they have the power. I see nothing worse about what Israel is doing compared to what the US is doing to Iraq to boost Texas oil companies, and US weapons companies, which employ thousands of Americans so that they can go home and have a barbecue and buy a wide screen plasma tv.
So JUST WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU SEE AS MORE MORAL ABOUT THE US RIGHT TO A PLASMA TV vs ISRAELI’S choice TO EXIST AND STAY ALIVE?
Now if YOU want to go over there and stomp their butts, go right ahead, have a good time in the alleys of Tel Aviv. If Saddam could have driven Israel into the sea in 1991 he would have done it, if the Egyptians could have they would have done it, as would the Syrians.
That is the Israel reality, and where will you be posturing if it had already happened. There would be no Israeli refugee camps.
People and countries do what they want and I have no reason to be for or against anyone who is getting their butt kicked or kicking someone else’s butt if I don’t want to.
But what I really wonder is why people don’t speak about a WIDESPREAD Arab practice of cutting the clitoris off their women?
But what I really wonder is why people don’t speak about a WIDESPREAD Arab practice of cutting the clitoris off their women?
Maybe you missed the rather high level of activism in the US and Europe to discourage female genital mutilation in the Arab world and, for that matter, elsewhere? And if your point with that out-of-left-field non-sequitur was to argue that Arab barbarism doesn’t receive much attention, I think your observations are very selective. No end of ink has been spilled on Arab theocracy, the mukhabarat police states and feudal anachronisms, the cruel and unusual punishments of their savage medieval legal systems, the mysogyny, the racism and religious bigotry, and general willful ignorance of large parts of the Arab world.
So JUST WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU SEE AS MORE MORAL ABOUT THE US RIGHT TO A PLASMA TV vs ISRAELI’S choice TO EXIST AND STAY ALIVE?
I think you have mistaken me for an advocate of American imperialism. I am not. As far as I’m concerned, the only difference between the US and the USSR at this point is that the Soviets acted, on occasion, with actual competence.
The point I’m trying to make, with difficulty thanks to the artificially narrow framing that usually goes with the Arab-Israeli problem, isn’t that Israel is bad and Arabs are good, or vice versa. It’s not that I want to see Israel destroyed for its brutality or that I think very highly of the equally brutal but less well-equipped Palestinian militant factions. And it’s certainly not that I’m playing favorites with the so-called “great” religions — a pox on all three of their bloodstained “holy” books, as far as I’m concerned.
The point is that there is no plausible peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that, therefore, continued US support of Israel only postpones the inevitable and ensures that when the end comes, even more people will die.
The Six-Day War aside, Israeli invincibility is a myth, just as with every other country’s delusions of invincibility (including the US). Israel just failed miserably in its attempts to destroy Hezbollah, and has in fact increased the strength of both Hezbollah and Syria in Lebanon as a result. Sooner or later, Israel will lose, and then what? Surrounded on three sides by enemies and on the fourth by the sea, what can the outcome possibly be? The same thing that happened in the aftermath of the Battle of Hattin.
What exactly do you think will happen with Israel’s nukes in that situation? If for no other reason than to prevent a significant nuclear exchange in the region, a model for coexistence has to be found. A nuclear Masada is not something the world needs.
If for no other reason than to prevent a significant nuclear exchange in the region, a model for coexistence has to be found.
I think this is perfectly representative of the bulk of the well-intentioned thinking about the Arab-Israeli conflict: “a model for coexistence has to be found.”
But what if it can’t?
As far as Israel’s substantial nuclear arsenal goes, the time for dealing with that, as with everyone else in the nuclear club, was before they joined. They’ve got them now, view them as indispensible to their survival, and they aren’t giving them up.
I think this is perfectly representative of the bulk of the well-intentioned thinking about the Arab-Israeli conflict: “a model for coexistence has to be found.”
But what if it can’t?
Really, that’s my point. Israel is not going to be pushed into the sea. The battle of Hattin is a bad model because the crusaders didn’t have the means to kick over the game board. If Israel goes, the whole region goes. Total withdrawal of US support will only result in increased manufacture of nuclear weapons by an increasingly isolated Israeli government. Either the neighbors are going to have to learn to live with Israel or they’re going to have to enter into a mutual suicide pact. MAD, immoral as it may be, worked for years to keep the US and the USSR from annihilating each other and the rest of the world. Something like it will happen in the Middle East, or there will be no more Middle East. Anyone who doesn’t take that into account and makes claims that Israel is simply going to be destroyed is not living in the real world.
You make an excellent point, but the difference between the US-USSR conflict and the Arab-Israeli conflict is that the former was a secular struggle and the latter is essentially a religious war between belligerents with worldviews that are, to one degree or another, apocalyptic. The overall level of sanity and restraint is much, much lower in the current conflict. MAD only works if both sides view the end of the world as a bad thing. That is not true neither of the next likely nuclear power, Iran, nor of the various militant groups who might acquire a nuke or two.
I’ll concede the point that the parties involved are not as collectively sane as the US and the USSR were and that the possibility of mutual suicide is greater in this situation. I’m certainly not saying that it won’t happen, just that any discussion about Israel’s continued existence needs to take into account the nuclear factor.
I think that, barring unforseen events, the players are likely to reach a hostile stasis that is uncomfortable but sustainable in the long run, and that the entire world has a strong incentive to try to help them achieve that goal. The unforseen events clause is however a very big one. I can see any number of tipping points that would result in a major nuclear exchange and the middle east becoming uninhabitable.
The potential global human, environmental, and economic costs of such an event would suggest that the US and everyone else should be doing everything possible to help the parties reach some sort of accomodation. Any other course is terribly dangerous.
Hummmmmmmmmmmm!
My comments here will mirror, at least in part, those of zenbowl above. Note that although I am a Jew, I am no apologist for Israel.
With respect to the right of Israel to exist, I believe that it would more accurately be stated as Israel’s right to continue to exist. And that a reduction of attempts to undermine that continued existance is the actual intent. Certainly, a reduction in the conflicts that plague the region is a worthwhile goal.
…does that give Israel a right to impose apartheid?
This is a wholely separate issue of course, and one for which Israel has justifiably been crticized. Governments have attempted to justify many questionable actions in the name of security. Our own shameful treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII is but one notable example.
Now for the part that often leads to flame wars in certain place on the internet. I have attempted this once before with modest results. It’s not just about the holocaust. It’s about a continuum of more than 2 thousand years that began when the ancient Jewish kingddom was overthrown by its enemy and the inhabitants were eventually dispersed to countries around the globe. And Jews were mistreated and somtimes ejected from many of the places. Like I said it’s not just about the holocaust. It’s about the holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms, etc, etc, etc. It’s the continuum of events that has brought about the current state of things. Is it the right way for Israel to handle things? No, but in coming to a resolution of the “apartheid”, one must recognize the long, long history involved here. This current state of affairs was a long time in the making. It did not begin with Nazi Germany.
Which brings a question to mind: How did the US become so incredibly paranoid in such a (relatively) short history?
Didn’t sound like a rant to me. Sounded like a very well-reasoned article. Great.
I’ve been reading this diarist at dKos lately. He’s posting pro-Israeli dribble daily. Mostly, I’m uneducated enough on the topic to argue effectively. But this guy constantly floats out the “anti-semitic” argument to anyone who offers an argument that is pro-Palestinian or critical of Israeli policy. And my head just wants to explode. I feel like cutting and pasting your thoughts, next time.
Gosh thanks BJ and thanks to all for the great comments, all of which seemed more reasonable and substantive than my own. All I can say is thanks for your input and I’ve little to add.. I never failed to be surprised by the depth of the experience and wisdom of the members of this website.
As for the charge of anti-Israel = anti-Semitism, that’s a weapon that is blunting over time with overuse. It’s similar to how many people worldwide use the term “Nazi”, an appellation far less fearsome and awful than it was 60 years ago.
The ultimate ad reductio of this argument is when the Jewish settlers of Gaza were protesting their removal by Jewish IDF forces representing a democratic Jewish government of Israel and the settlers were calling the soldiers “Nazis”.
If Jewish IDF soldiers are “anti-Semites” and “Nazis” well then I guess we all are… and the true tragedy behind this overuse of the term for any and all opponents is that it provides cover for those who TRULY wish harm and death on Jewish people.
I also want to thank boran2 for the linguistic clarification… I think you’re right sir, it is more accurate to refer to Israel’s right to continue to exist.
Pax
and understood by a majority around the world. The shame is the majority of Americans are not included in thos who understand.
Is that really the case? Support for Israel is strong among evangelicals, much less so among the rest of the country. I think most Americans would like both the Israelis and their Arab neighbors to behave peaceably and decently and to coexist, but I don’t think you’ll find much unqualified support for Israel outside of the churches and the Beltway.
Evangelicals, of course, don’t want peace. They want Armageddon. But it’s no secret that they’re lunatics.
I think we first have to ask the question “what do you mean by Israel?” Now to a large extent the establishing of the UN legitimised all states using the boundaries of their then administrative areas. Israel is a particular case because of the League of Nations Mandate given to Britain which was passed back to the UN to decide on the appropriate way to de-colonise Palestine. In so far as it has a “right to exist” there is a stong case for a “Jewish homeland” to be recognised with those boundaries. There are legitimate greivances of those who were forced either physically or by fear and their descendants for compensation and redress.
Despite the myths of the establishment of the modern state of Israel the land was not a barren “terra incognata”. Highly legalistic western interpretations of land ownership have been applied so that traditional unwritten individual or joint ownership (such as the nomadic occupation of the Negev) have been ignored because they are not in written form. Israel also applies highly legalistic definitions of what constitues sufficent “Jewishness” to enable one to demand the “Right of Return”. Insofar as these are decided by Rabbinical authority, you should recognise that this is not a secular or even multi-cultural state but a theocracy in which minority groups are tolerated, if barely. It can also be argued that it has never been a homeland for all Jews, merely those who follow one or two strictly defined European traditions. The Ethiopean Jews were denied access until the Rabbinal authorities were strong armed into agreeing and even then they had to go through a form of conversion to the state sanction version of Judaeism. The Temba of Southern Africa are denied the Right of Return because they follow an oral tradition and not the written one. That is despite their following kosher law (to the extent of not eating hippos because they are pig-like) and claiming to be one of the “lost tribes” who travelled south.
IF then Israel has a legal “right to exist” it is within the borders agreed by the UN to be allocated to them. But that is not what those who are demanding the recognition want. They mostly want the pre-1967 borders which include lands acquired in the course of wars. Now the Israelis argue that this is legitmately part of Israel because it was won following attacks by those countries the land was previously part of. To follow this argument, the whole of what was referred to as “Eastern Europe” should be part of Greater Russia and not merely an ex-Soviet sphere of influence. That is not to say that wars cannot be used as justification to settle long standing land disputes. We should look at Alsace-Lorraine as an example.
Neither are the boundaries of nations absolutely set in stone once they have joined the UN. Countries do break up or previously independent parts ceceed. There are many examples in Europe. These go from the extremely bloody breakup of the main part of ex-Jugoslavia through the independence of the Baltic states after protests and a smaller number of deaths to the almost entirely peaceful “Velvet Divorce” of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Nor is the reverse process unknown. The re-unification of Germany springs to mind but there has also been the uniting of the two Yemens and of course Vietnam.
As far as Israel/Palestine are concerned, we should remember that the Palestinans as a people were granted their land by two sovereign nations whose legal property it was, namely Egypt (Gaza) and Jordan (the West Bank) As far as tbe later is concerned, if some more excitable polemic from the Arab side has expressed a desire to “drive Israel into the sea”, there have been similar Jewish militants who have expressed desire to drive Palestinians over the river (Jordan) and even use biblical sources to justify more extensive land claims.
There we get to the matter of the historic claims. Ironically we could also use it to state that is shows the Jews acquired the land by conquest and therefore was illegally held in the first place. If anything, the actual “homeland” is in Mesopotamia and to some extent this was in practice in the 1920s and 30s when there were more Jews around Baghdad than in Palestine. While obviously it has religious significance, can we use the claim that the land was given to the Jews by their God because it says so in a document they wrote be legitimate? The matter could easily be settled by God making a statement to the International Court of Justice (a UN body).
If we are to use historical precedent, then surely most Europeans can show an equal claim with somewhat greater authority by reference to their mitochondrial DNA and demonstrating that this confirms that their foremothers had settled that area prior. Indeed you could argue that the entire human race should have the “right of return” to the area of Africa that the “Eves” are believed by science to have started the long spread over the planet.
While there was indeed a case that the Jews should be given a homeland to enable them to protect themselves from the centuries of oppression, was it necessary for it to be the particular tract of land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Many in the World Jewish Congress were prepared to accept a British offer of an area of present day Uganda when it was made in the early 1900s. Although rejected, it is interesting to speculate whether the Holocaust would have been as devastating if it had been accepted.
To get back to the present day. I think a solution based on the 1967 borders, with very minor adjustments and access rights to the holy places would provide peace. I do not however consider that the “two state” solution is either the ideal solution or viable in the medium term if the two are to retreat behind borders and mutual prejudice. The ultimate (I NEARLY wrote “final”) solution must be a single secular Holy Land. I recognise that this will not happen for several or many decades and that in the interim there must be two admininistrations. I have set out some more details on Kos before but my ideal would be for the two states to recognise their mutual dependence and common histories in order to start the process of bringing the two nations back together. It will take a generation or two before the borders become less and less relevant. Nor should the process be delayed. Part of the settlement must be a finite time line of, say the end of the century. In the meantime referendums should be held every 10 years on the question of unification. If both sides concur, it can go ahead before 2100. It will take confidence building and increasing dialogue at the highest and lowest levels of both societies. Is this too idealistic? Well you have to look at the old bitternesses between the French and Germans and how their borders are to a large extent irrelevant, down to having joint units in their armed forces. To a large extent the same is true of the far older history of violence and war between England and France.