Matt Yglesias

86 Responses to “After the Two-State Solution”

1. August J. Pollak Says:
   February 11th, 2009 at 2:49 pm

   It’s not clear to me how stable U.S. support for Israel would be under those conditions

   I think we all know that’s not true.

2. Omri Says:
   February 11th, 2009 at 2:49 pm

   A non-violent Palestinian campaign would require Palestinians regarding Jews as human rather than sub-human. And that would be contrary to Sharia Law, and centuries of Jews being in a submissive place compared to their Arab counterparts. A non-violent campaign would require accepting Jews as equally dignified.

   People who go around chanting “al yahud kilabna” (The Jews are our dogs.) would never degrade themselves by asking nicely for anything from their “dogs.”

   Dream on, Matt.

3. Don Williams Says:
   February 11th, 2009 at 2:50 pm

   Re “Bibi Netanyahu’s faith in his ability to sustain U.S. political support may not be mistaken.”
   —————
   Congress is your friend until the money runs out.

   So how are those derivatives doing?

4. otto Says:
   February 11th, 2009 at 2:51 pm

   “The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us”

   Yes, absolutely laughable that Jewish organizations will turn against Israel because of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian arabs.

   Note also that Olmert appears to be under a common delusion that it is Jewish organizations which are Israel’s power base in America, when everyone knows it’s just that Americans love Israel even in the absence of any lobbying on its behalf, and, if you have to name a lobby group, perhaps Christian evangelicals might have a minor role to play.

5. Mythbuster Says:
   February 11th, 2009 at 2:52 pm

   Matt says: “A determined non-violent Palestinian campaign of resistance could cause public sympathies to flip, and certainly an apartheid Israel will pay an increasing price in its relations with Europe and Asia, but I think Bibi Netanyahu’s faith in his ability to sustain U.S. political support may not be mistaken.”

   Bibi is not mistaken. Ask the Dalai Lama how the non-violent approach is getting America to divest from China.

6. Rich in PA Says:
   February 11th, 2009 at 2:55 pm

   And, this, my friends, is why we need a one-state solution with a state subsumed into a European superstate.

7. daveNYC Says:
   February 11th, 2009 at 3:06 pm

   Going to a straight up apartheid situation might not go over so well with the EU. I don’t think that their economy would be doing too well if the EU and Turkey decided to cut off their markets.

8. pseudonymous in nc Says:
   February 11th, 2009 at 3:07 pm

   I think it’s fair to say that the operating policy of the Israeli right is heading towards something like this:

   - carve out the shittiest bits of the West Bank and a few deserted Bedouin areas of Israel proper, and tell the Palestinians (and possibly Israeli Arabs too) ‘there, that’s your state’.
   - push towards Egypt and Jordan annexing Gaza and the West Bank respectively.

   A little bit Kurd, a little bit India-Pakistan. Basically, the ‘make the Palestinians go away’ strategy.

   Remember that Bullshit Bill Kristol revived this recently, and you have to assume he’s been on the phone with Bibi.

9. anonymous Says:
   February 11th, 2009 at 3:07 pm

   It is clear that US voters (or at least those that actually matter, I’m looking at you Florida) care more for their preconceptions and prejudices than for reality, and so blatant deprivation of Palestinian civil rights will not even flash on their radar screen. Unless Mitchell does a really good job despite all the bias against his doing so, the US will be of little use to the Palestinians on this issue.

10. anonymous Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 3:16 pm

    I think the whole argument is silly. If people don’t think that the /current/ situation is apartheid, where Palestinians are walled up in tiny areas and fired upon when their incompetent leaders fire a few rockets into uninhabited fields, then what difference does it make whether you call it one state or two? It’s two classes of people either way, the Jews and the unworthy.

    And no I’m not being anti-Semitic, because this is exactly how the right-wing Israelis define the issue themselves. They’re just not apologetic about it.

    Frankly, I think a one state solution is perfectly tenable if you simply require that the assembly be one-half Israeli and one-half Palestinian. You would have shared governance but not a crowding out of Jewish power, at least not immediately. No, this would not be a Jewish state. But no one-state solution would ever be a Jewish state, and if all you’re looking for is a pure Jewish state then the only solution is to drive every last Palestinian out of Israel.

    Why do we need a Jewish state anyway? Why can’t we have a secular state with individual townships being controlled by either Jews or Palestinians? Jews will still have power over their individual lives, but so will Palestinians for a change.

11. daveNYC Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 3:21 pm

    Frankly, I think a one state solution is perfectly tenable if you simply require that the assembly be one-half Israeli and one-half Palestinian. You would have shared governance but not a crowding out of Jewish power, at least not immediately. No, this would not be a Jewish state. But no one-state solution would ever be a Jewish state, and if all you’re looking for is a pure Jewish state then the only solution is to drive every last Palestinian out of Israel.

    Because what the world really needs is another Lebanon.

12. Sock Puppet of the Great Satan Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    “while I think the argument that Israel’s battle against Hamas is of a piece with the United States’ battle against transnational jihadis is wrong, it’s not nearly as nutty as the argument that South Africa’s battle against the ANC was of a piece with the United States’ battle against international Communism was.”

    Err, no: remember, Cuban troops were in Angola in the 1980s, Mozambique was Marxist, SWAPO was at least socialist and backed by Angola, and the ANC and SA Communist Party were joined at the hip [plus, the SACP was not one of yer lily-livered Eurocommunist parties: it was very hardline, even durign the Gorbachev era].

    Don’t get me wrong, the US (and Reagan in particular) support for apartheid was despicable, but there was a more plausible geopolitical argument than the US backing Israel against Hamas.

13. Steve Sailer Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    “The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us,”

    No.

    This is a Who? Whom? / Is it good for the Jews? situation.

    “A determined non-violent Palestinian campaign of resistance”

    Won’t happen.

    The Palestinian leadership might someday want it, but young punks who want to become the leadership will constantly provoke violence with Israel to climb the ladder.

    Prediction: Things will keep on keeping on.

14. anonymous Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 3:25 pm

    Israel must face fact: you can’t always get what you want.

    But if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need.

15. Steve Sailer Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 3:27 pm

    The Israelis see what happened in Rhodesia when it became Zimbabwe. They see where South Africa is headed under Jacob “Bring Me My Machine Gun” Zuma. Who cares about democracy when national survival is at stake? The Israelis will do what they have to do to stay the Jewish State.

16. otto Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 3:34 pm

    The White Rhodesians and the White South Africans felt the same way. But the necessary political support in Europe and the US evaporated over time. If there’s to be any change in the outcome in Palestine, that is the route for change there too — not because Jewish organizations will turn against Israel, but because first left-liberals and then the squaihy center will turn against Israel, first in Europe, then in the US.

17. otto Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 3:38 pm

    “Squishy”

18. fostert Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    “push towards Egypt and Jordan annexing Gaza and the West Bank respectively.”

    Egypt and Jordan tried that already. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it didn’t work out so well. Now, it is simply impossible. Jordan is already a majority Palestinian country and wants fewer Palestinians there, not more. And Egypt certainly doesn’t want Hamas in their country.

    Ultimately, the solution will be expulsion of the Palestinians and Israeli control over all of the original Mandate but Gaza. Yes, it will be ethnic cleansing, but that’s never stopped anyone before. It certainly won’t stop the Israelis. And the long term consequences of ethnic cleansing are negligible. Serbia certainly is not suffering much of a downside from its ethnic cleansing. And the Serbs don’t have a powerful lobbying industry in the US. People will bitch and moan while it’s happening, but Israel doesn’t care about that.

19. Dagger DiGorro Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    Won’t Bibi or Tzipi be able to rely on the fact that the current resident of the White House, with his middle name, is the U.S. politician who can perhaps least afford to be seen as anti-Israel, even among people who couldn’t give a shit about Israel or her Jewish majority?

20. DAS Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    You can’t compare the situation in South Africa to the situation in Israel without comparing the ANC (which was deemed to be one of the more radical groups opposing apartheid) and Hamas.

    The ANC went out of its way not to target innocents to the conflict. Who can say the same about Hamas. The ANC made it reasonably clear that there would be a place for Whites in an ANC dominated South Africa (better than, e.g., the status of whites in Zimbabwe). What could be said about how Jews would fare even in a Fatah dominated “one state solution”? Where is there any evidence that it would turn out like anything other than Lebanon or Zimbabwe?

    For that matter, where is the evidence that even a two state solution would lead to peace? Israel didn’t occupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip before 1967, and we know how peaceful the region was then.

21. Peter K. Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 3:58 pm

    Don’t get me wrong, the US (and Reagan in particular) support for apartheid was despicable, but there was a more plausible geopolitical argument than the US backing Israel against Hamas.

    I don’t know if it was more plausible, given that the Communism failed so dramatically in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, but the animosity against Communism was greater than with “Islamofascism,” so I disagree with Matt. It was the Cold War.

    Ariel Sharon gave up Gaza because he realized the demographics are against the Zionists. Also howabout Turkey’s President freaking out on Peres at Davos? That’s new. Also Palestinians demanding the franchise can point to Iraq’s purple fingers, although I can understand why doves wouldn’t want to highlight that.

22. sambasmith Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 4:12 pm

    This idea that Palestinians have never tried non violent resistance is a myth. The first intifada relied extensively upon campaigns of economic boycotts, popular demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins, teach-ins. Today on a regular basis there are non-violent protests in the Palestinian territories. They simply aren’t covered in the MSM and they are met with harsh Israeli (and sometimes, Palestinian Authority) suppression.

    If you would like to read about the weekly “creative direct action” done by the villagers of Bilin, in coordination with Israeli and international supporters, to protest the construction of the wall on their land, you can follow this link to Middle East Report.

    http://www.merip.org/mer/mer240/blecher.html

23. ba Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 4:22 pm

    The Israeli public seems inclined to put this proposition to the test by installing into power a party that rejects retreating from any settlements anywhere, operating in coalition with some further-right parties.

    Except that Yisrael Beitanu would gladly trade Arab-inhabited neighborhoods in Israel for Settlements. So a trade and a land for peace model can come with the “further-right” party.

    This post continues MY’s explication of how uninformed he is about Israel-palestine.

24. Craig Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 4:29 pm

    It won’t happen tomorrow, but demography is still destiny. There are really no reservoirs of Jewish population left in the world that might care to move, en masse, to Israel and run up the numbers on the “Jewish” side of the ledger. (As is, the “law of return” has been stretched so large as to basically admit any Russian who can hum a few bars of “Tradition.”) And as for the Palestinians, as the Telegraph recently reported:

    “Altogether, about 5.7 million Jews and 5.4 million Arabs live between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Because Arabs have more children, they will probably become the majority within a decade.”

    The point is, Israel only has a limited time to get this straightened out if they want to exist as a Jewish democracy. At least while Arafat was in power, they could pretend that the Territories were something other than colonial possessions upon which they imposed an explicitly racist domination. Now that that fig leaf is gone, and the Israeli government has spent the last decade or so systematically undermining and destroying all the Palestinian institutions of statehood they could get their hands on, what do they propose should be done with Palestine?

    It looks like their proposal is “Bantustan on the Jordan.” I don’t think, in the long run, the world will tolerate that.

25. El Cid Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 4:37 pm

    The weird thing in Matt’s analogy with U.S. aid to South Africa against the ANC is that it wasn’t that U.S. leaders feared the ANC was truly Communist in the sense of leading to a Soviet takeover, or simple U.S. opposition to indigenous democracy based on the real domino theory.

    Rather, quite a number of our most prominent U.S. leaders, like Ronald Reagan, or Jesse Helms, or Dick Cheney, actually liked white-run South African fascism, and were happy to help them slaughter civilians all around Southern Africa to try and defend a fascist apartheid system.

26. daveNYC Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 4:42 pm

    Except that Yisrael Beitanu would gladly trade Arab-inhabited neighborhoods in Israel for Settlements. So a trade and a land for peace model can come with the “further-right” party.

    A combo of ethnic cleansing and a land grab isn’t exactly the same as ‘land for peace’.

27. JT Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 4:43 pm

    The idea that very many nonMoslem Americans would ever seriously care about dirty fucking Arabs is laughable.
    Olmert knows this.
    What he is really saying is that Israel must engage in the pretense of pursuing a two state solution because this gives American Jews and Christians the fig leaf with which to cover their eyes at Israeli crimes.
    Chomp chomp chomp… that is the sound of Jewish settlement activity further ghettoizing the West Bank.
    Now tell me who cares?

28. JMG Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    Matt is right. An overwhelming majority of the U.S. Congress would vote to support Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from any land west of China or north of Antarctica.
    Then they’d wonder why there was another terrorist attack on the U.S.
    That isn’t Israel’s fault. It’s ours. Countries respond to incentives, and if the U.S. wasn’t such an enabler, Israel might seek different policies. IF not, we’d save a lot of money.

29. John Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    The ANC went out of its way not to target innocents to the conflict. Who can say the same about Hamas. The ANC made it reasonably clear that there would be a place for Whites in an ANC dominated South Africa (better than, e.g., the status of whites in Zimbabwe). What could be said about how Jews would fare even in a Fatah dominated “one state solution”?

    Er…what on earth would be a Fatah dominated “one state solution”? Whites were something like 15% of the total population of South Africa. Jews are over 50% of the total population of the old British mandate. A one state solution would have to involve real power sharing between moderate Israelis and moderate Palestinians – it would of necessity have to be a coalition government of Kadima and Labor and Fatah, not some sort of Fatah run state. It should be noted, furthermore, that military and economic power in such a state would almost certainly continue to be heavily concentrated in the Jewish part of the population.

    Now, there’s every reason to think a Lebanese style solution is a terrible idea which would not work. But I don’t think the idea that a monstrous Fatah government would persecute the powerless Jews is one of them.

30. Richard Steven Hack Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 5:12 pm

    Matt’s analysis seems correct to me (for a change). It will depend exactly on how brutal the Israeli apartheid is DEPICTED in the US news media – which is run by right wing Jews like Murdoch. So it would take a while for the US to build up the sort of anti-apartheid operations that eventually put pressure on the US government and the international community to pressure the South Africans.

    Anonymous at #11 is correct – the whole concept of a Jewish state is just ridiculous given the demographics. It always was since the beginning. The entire Zionist dream was PREDICATED on colonial, racist, fascist means, even if the rhetoric in the early years wasn’t necessarily so. That quickly changed once the reality on the ground was recognized – and the Zionists turned to terrorism and military conquest and have remained on that path ever since.

    Again, the only solution is for the UN to revisit its 1947 partition, declare Israel an illegal state, and create a new bi-national state. In the end, nothing would happen to Jews or Palestinians once the usual nuts on both sides got tired of making noise, and the rest of the population got on with their lives.

31. Jaango Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 5:21 pm

    Since this is my first post to your political blog, I will be gentle in my words and approach.

    For starters, I believe Omert to be correct!

    Here in the Sonoran Desert, we, and who ascribe to being Chicanos under the Construct for Native American/Chicano/Hispanic/Latino, firmly believe in the now historical notion that “No Native American will die in Israel!”. Given that we will not surrender our votes to America’s ‘conventional wisdom’ currently being espoused, we will flex our political muscle and Israel will become disaffected with us despite the best of intentions demonstrated towards us by America’s Jewish Groups.

    Therefore, we fully understand and appreciate the historical behavior for the Nation of Origin, and yet, we adamantly opposed the Cheney/Bush War of a Manifest Destiny Exported.

    And it would be both wrong-headed and narrow-minded to think that we, who reside in a Spanish-speaking environment and in many instances, the Third World of America, and affectionately known as the Rez, would not challenge these intentional purveyors for refusing to establish a two-state solution.

    Consequently, we strongly agree with Jewish Groups relative to domestic politics, but, when it comes to foreign policy, we will be in strong disagreement and ultimately, pursue our self-interest, as in “fair is fair”.

    Unfortunately too much snake oil and crappola has passed under the proverbial bridge to accept ‘face-value’ but we will accept the historical standard for a ‘competitive price point’ and that means full sovereignty for Palestinians. So, if President Obama and SOS Clinton are not careful, they will continue to practice their politics for the next 205 weeks, and nothing beyond that point in time.

    Jaango

32. Omri Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 5:36 pm

    Utter, utter bullshit from Hack.

    The early Zionists weren’t even set on having a state. They were perfectly willing to remain Ottoman subjects, let alone be “colonialists” (which nowadays is nothing more than a label to apply to people you deem worthy of ethnic cleansing or murder).

    As for brutality, it’s the Arab World that is fete-ing and giving medals to a guy for crushing a toddler’s skull (Samir Kuntar), not the “brutal” Israelis.

33. tomemos Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    “As for brutality, it’s the Arab World that is fete-ing and giving medals to a guy for crushing a toddler’s skull (Samir Kuntar), not the “brutal” Israelis.”

    Yes, someone as brutal as, say, Ariel Sharon would never achieve political success in Israel.

34. Omri Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 5:50 pm

    Ariel Sharon, the most belligerent Israel has to offer, never grabbed a toddler and crushed its head with the butt of a rifle.

35. Ed Marshall Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 5:58 pm

    I like the random Arab atrocities you pepper your bullshit up with, Omri.

    If you want to play this stupid game though, your problem is that Ariel Sharon really did personally kill children on purpose in revenge raids in the 50’s.

    Before him there was Begin and Shamir both unrepentant terrorists who murdered women and children. I’m sure an Arab did something bad to *make* them have to do it, I get the pattern here.

36. Mythbuster Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 5:58 pm

    Omri you are in such denial about that evil sh*thole called “Israel.” They just finished murdering more than 400 Palestinian children–and this after using food as a weapon for months.

    They even attacked UN food warehouses.

    What is Zionism? We saw in on display in Operation Cast Lead. I’d as soon take a lesson in morality from a Zionist as I would from Milosovic.

37. duBois Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 6:01 pm

    Dead due to chronic malnutrition or white phosphorous burns or a rifle butt to the head is irrelevant. There are no style points deducted.

38. Ed Marshall Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 6:07 pm

    Thinking more, Samir Kuntar is wierd. That’s a Lebanese Druze. I was going to say it would be like someone trying to deflect away from an embarrassing thing a Palestinian did by finding some crime a Jew did anywhere, but he’s not even a Muslim.

39. Zephyrus Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 6:13 pm

    And Omri, radical right wing Zionists who blow up hotels and murder civilians end up as Prime Ministers, from the inception of Israel to the present.

    Remember, Likud has its roots in Irgun. Irgun, if you’ll recall, was responsible for the King David bombing and Deir Yassin and countless other crimes, all under the leadership of Menachem Begin.

    Let it be noted: many Jews spoke out against this at the time, correctly calling out its crimes of terrorism against the British, Palestinian Arabs, and moderate Palestinian Jews. But now, in an equivalent situation, you attempt to slime the entirety of the Palestinian population with the actions of a few.

40. Fred Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 6:13 pm

    Israel’s mistake was not expelling all of the Palestinians west of the Jordan in 1967, when they first captured the West Bank and Gaza. But it’s not to late to do that now. The land west of the Jordan is clearly too small to be shared by two enemies. Since Palestinians are already a majority of the population in Jordan, let them take that country over. It’s much bigger than Israel anyway, so they’d have more elbow room. The Palestinians in Gaza could use 40 years in the Sinai to cool their heads. It worked for the Jews once.

41. Fred Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 6:16 pm

    The wing of the King David Hotel that was blown up by the Irgun was the British military headquarters — not exactly a civilian target. And the Brits were given advance warning to evacuate. Despite that, Irgun was considered too radical for Israel and was forcibly marginalized. It was decades before an Irgun leader became Prime Minister, and only after a Labor Prime Minister almost let the country get destroyed.

42. Ed Marshall Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 6:28 pm

    King David?

    Irgun and Lehi massacred people in 1948, market bombings, bus bombings, machine gun massacres something like the Second Intifada if you turned it up to 11. Seriously, do you not know this?

43. Zephyrus Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 6:36 pm

    Shorter Fred: Israel’s biggest mistake is not ethnic cleansing non-Jews from Palestine.

    As for the King David Hotel, it was not “the British military headquarters.” (Even if so, most people consider flying a plane into the Pentagon an act of terrorism.) It was the British Mandate Secretariat office, which handled government administrative tasks. A better analogy would be bombing the White House, or maybe the Patent Office or an American embassy. Of the nearly 100 people killed, only 13 were soldiers.

    And are you seriously arguing that Likud is a marginalized organization?

44. Zephyrus Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 6:43 pm

    Let me guess, though. The 80 or so non-military casualties at the King David were collateral damage. Irgun didn’t consciously mean to kill them, so it’s okay!

45. tomemos Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 6:43 pm

    Zephyrus, can’t you see that the British Army was hiding behind women and children?

46. Hector Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 6:46 pm

    Re: The wing of the King David Hotel that was blown up by the Irgun was the British military headquarters — not exactly a civilian target.

    Exactly- it was a government building, exactly the kind of target that are routinely attacked in civil wars.

    I don’t deny that the Stern Gang committed other atrocities, specifically against Arab civilians, but specifically focusing on the attack on the King David Hotel is really stretching it. By that logic the Viet Cong and French Resistance were terrorists too.

47. Ed Marshall Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 6:49 pm

    Why are people hooked up on King David? Is it because the victims were British and they are the only one’s that got remembered? The Foreign Offices reports on atrocities during the time chronicles page after page of zionist terrorism.

48. Fred Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 7:02 pm

    “Ethnic cleansing” is a pejorative term. Expelling the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza makes sense for the same reason it made sense to expel the ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland after World War II: to remove a source of conflict and create the conditions for a durable peace. The situation in Gaza after Israel ceded the territory to the Palestinians shows that a two state solution west of the Jordan is impossible. Since Israel has no desire to rule over a hostile population, that means that the Palestinians have to go. If the Arabs continue to treat the Palestinians as refugees and pawns, and refuse to give them citizenship and let them assimilate in their countries, then perhaps the enlightened Europeans will do so. Certainly a few million Palestinians can be easily absorbed by Western Europe.

49. Fred Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 7:04 pm

    Ed Marshall,

    Why are you hooked on British Foreign Office reports from the Mandatory period? Seems like an odd obsession, and one that might offend your pro-Arab sensibilities if you read enough of them. It was the Arabs, after all, who started the fighting initially with their pograms against Jews in the 1920s. Wait until you get the part about the despicable turd Haj Amin al-Husseini.

50. Raimo Kangasniemi Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 7:05 pm

    I’m sure that your average member of US House of Representatives or Congress will declare their undying loyalty towards Israel no matter what Israel’s leadership will do. After all, to them what matters is making a public show of this loyalty and getting paid for it through campaign money from lobbies and the great hordes of Christian Zionist, who are after all the footsoldiers of the Israel lobby in US, and give it it’s power in votes and money. And they are utterly ignorant of the situation in Israel and Palestine and anyway only care about the area because it plays a role in their religious fantasies of an Armageddon and second coming of Jesus during their own life times. You can’t sway these kind of people with facts, arguments or claims about human rights or basic decency that should rule out support for apartheid states.

    I doubt there’s any chance whatsoever for a non-violent Palestinian resistance to have more than a very small effect in US because it wouldn’t get much reported in mainstream media. And US isn’t utterly alone in this. And one should remember that when the Palestinians did went to Hague and won, the wall in West Bank being deemed illegal where it deviates from the Green Line, they didn’t get any support from any Western country, who basically all – minus Norway and Switzerland – supported Israel. For various reasons. To German and Austrian politicians for example, it is easy to try to wash off their sins towards Jews with Palestinian blood, declaring support for Israel and then anonymously whispering that would like to, but can’t publicly oppose what Israel does etc.

    But in the end, it’s Israel whose grave is dug here. It can’t dominate the Middle East forever, US and European support or not. It’s a small country whose faunted army isn’t really that great or modern – I mean, they used WW II British Centurion tanks against Lebanon in 2006. Not really state of the art, is it?

    Eventually Israel will either have to accept a Palestinian state and a more modest role, or cease to exist. There are the demographic facts, and there’s the fact that the sleeping giants of the area will eventually awaken. Beyond Iran Egypt, which have far greater resources, for example, won’t be ruled forever by incompetent old cleptocrats, whose only achievement
    is being able to stay in power. Eventually Egypt – who has ten times the population of Israel – will have a government who will want to and can restore it to it’s “natural” place in Middle East and North African affairs. 60 years of Arab weakness will not last forever, except in Zionist dreams.

    Israel, logically, should accept the Arab league peace proposal. I doubt it will getter ones in the future, more likely worse ones.

51. Raimo Kangasniemi Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 7:07 pm

    That should, of course, be:

    I’m sure that your average member of US House of Representatives or Senate will declare their undying loyalty towards Israel no matter what Israel’s leadership will do.

52. Zephyrus Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 7:09 pm

    King David was, of course, just one of a series of atrocities. It is, however, unambiguous and undisputed about what happened there. Bringing up stuff that happened to Palestinian Arabs will just bring up a harangue about how it’s all lying propaganda.

    That said, King David was clearly a very bad thing; it was not a military target; if someone flew a plane into the White House, it would correctly be roundly criticized as terrorism. Saying that it was a state of “civil war” just serves to legitimize it. Irgun and the Stern Gang routinely attacked or killed not just the British but also Palestinian Arabs and non-cooperating Jews in the area. You can’t try to glam this up into some grand liberation struggle; it’s disgusting when people do it for Hamas, and disgusting when people do it for Irgun.

53. Fred Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 7:12 pm

    “60 years of Arab weakness will not last forever, except in Zionist dreams.”

    Where did you come up with the figure of 60 years? Were the Arabs strong 70 years ago, when they were under British and French mandatory administrations? How about 100 years ago, when they were still under Ottoman rule? How about 200 years ago, or 300 years ago? Arabs have been on the down slope of history since they lost Spain, and Islam has been seething with impotent rage about that ever since.

54. Fred Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 7:14 pm

    Check that: Arabs have been seething with impotent rage ever since. Although their are some non-Arab Muslims who have managed to adopt the Arabs’ dysfunctions (e.g., the Pakistanis), many non-Arab Muslims have turned their energies to more productive fields of endeavor.

55. Ed Marshall Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 7:20 pm

    I know the history, I just find it bizzare that when mandate era terrorism comes up people talk about King David. I’m on the road and don’t have books handy but I think there was an even bigger hotel bombing at the time. I’ve got to think it’s forgotten because we remeber dead brits and Arabs not so much.

56. This Machine Kills Fascists Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 7:22 pm

    Old white racists have been on the down slope of history since blacks got the vote, and Fred has been seething with impotent rage about that ever since.

57. Fred Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 7:47 pm

    I’m neither a racist nor am I unhappy that blacks have the right to vote. More power to them, I say. As long as the U.S. is only 12% black, there is limited damage they can do. When the stars align we may elect a smart, articulate black man president occasionally, as we did last November. I have no fear that we’ll elect someone like Maxine Waters or Sharpe James president though. It takes an electorate with a much higher black percentage to vote in that sort of talent.

58. wiley Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 8:28 pm

    Your issues about race, Fred, stand in contrast to your other postings. I must say, I find you enigmatic that way.

59. Bengt Larsson Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 8:38 pm

    As for brutality, it’s the Arab World that is fete-ing and giving medals to a guy for crushing a toddler’s skull (Samir Kuntar), not the “brutal” Israelis.

    He wasn’t given a medal for crushing a toddler’s skull, you silly person.

60. Ed Marshall Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 9:24 pm

    5 JANUARY 1948 Haganah terrorists made a most barbarous attack at one o’clock in the early morning of Monday, 5 January 1948, at the Semiramis hotel in the Katamon section of Jerusalem, killing innocent people and wounding many. The Jewish Agency terrorist forces blasted the entrance to the hotel by a small bomb and then placed bombs in the basement of the building. As a result of the explosions, the whole building collapsed with its residents. As the terrorists withdrew, they started shooting at the houses in the neighborhood.

    Those killed were: Subhi El-Taher, Moslem; Mary Masoud, Christian; Georgette Khoury, Christian; Abas Awad, Moslem; Nazira Lorenzo, Christian; Mary Lorenzo, Christian; Mohammed Saleh Ahmed, Moslem; Ashur Abed El Razik, Moslem; Ismail Abed El Aziz, Moslem; Ambeer Lorenzo, Christian; Raof Lorenzo, Christian; Abu Suwan, Christian family, seven members, husband, wife and five children. Beside those killed, 16 more were wounded, among them women and children.

    It wasn’t bigger, but that’s just down the memory hole when it comes to the standard narrative.

    Fred, you can’t write a little screed about how you aren’t a racist because you don’t mind if the wrong race votes as long as they are a minority. I realy don’t care what you think, but the idea you posited: That you *would* have a problem with blacks voting if they constituted a higher percentange of the population is a racist thesis. This isn’t about name calling it just is what it is. This is your politics, why do you have a problem just claiming racism? If this is how you feel, you are a white nationalist and you are racist and if you think you are right, stick your guns and be a man about instead of trying to hide behind this “I’m not a racist” bullshit.

61. srw Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 9:27 pm

    “What’s more, while I think the argument that Israel’s battle against Hamas is of a piece with the United States’ battle against transnational jihadis is wrong, it’s not nearly as nutty as the argument that South Africa’s battle against the ANC was of a piece with the United States’ battle against international Communism was.”

    Not really. Hamas and al-Qaeda despise each other. There is nothing similar about these groups except for the fact that they are Islamists.

    “A determined non-violent Palestinian campaign of resistance could cause public sympathies to flip…”

    They tried that. It was called the first intifada. Nothing changed.

62. Gene Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 11:31 pm

    Comment upthread: The Israelis see what happened in Rhodesia when it became Zimbabwe. They see where South Africa is headed under Jacob “Bring Me My Machine Gun” Zuma. Who cares about democracy when national survival is at stake? The Israelis will do what they have to do to stay the Jewish State.

    Guess who will pay the price …

    http://tinyurl.com/g5c8l

63. Fred Says:
    February 12th, 2009 at 1:44 am

    Wiley,

    “Your issues about race, Fred, stand in contrast to your other postings.”

    How so?

    “Fred, you can’t write a little screed about how you aren’t a racist because you don’t mind if the wrong race votes as long as they are a minority. I realy don’t care what you think, but the idea you posited: That you *would* have a problem with blacks voting if they constituted a higher percentange of the population is a racist thesis. This isn’t about name calling it just is what it is. This is your politics, why do you have a problem just claiming racism? If this is how you feel, you are a white nationalist and you are racist…”

    Ed Marshall,

    First, I never called blacks “the wrong race”, so no need to put those words in my mouth. Second, I would have no problem with blacks voting if they constituted a higher percentage of the population. I would have a problem living here if blacks comprised a majority of the population, but that’s not because I bear any ill will toward blacks but because the track record of black majority countries on the whole has been abysmal, to put it charitably (yes, there are outliers — Bermuda seems nice, for example). You can claim that’s a racist comment, and I suppose you will, but it’s simply a factual observation, and one you can’t refute. I am also not a white nationalist. I’d be happy to see more high IQ immigrants to this country, regardless of their race. If the smartest scientist in sub-Saharan Africa wants to move here, I’d welcome him.

64. fostert Says:
    February 12th, 2009 at 1:50 am

    “Not really. Hamas and al-Qaeda despise each other. There is nothing similar about these groups except for the fact that they are Islamists.”

    That’s not really even true. Al Qaeda is truly an Islamist group. They really do have delusions of a worldwide Caliphate. But they have no real means of creating it. Hamas is a nationalist organization that uses radical religious philosophy as a means of gaining support. Hamas may eventually support a global jihad, but they’d really like to have a country first. They aren’t really Islamists, they are simply desperate.

65. Richard Steven Hack Says:
    February 12th, 2009 at 3:51 am

    Omri: “The early Zionists weren’t even set on having a state.They were perfectly willing to remain Ottoman subjects, let alone be “colonialists” (which nowadays is nothing more than a label to apply to people you deem worthy of ethnic cleansing or murder).”

    Christ, what a fucktard response! This idiot has never bothered to even do a cursory read of Zionist literature. Sure, SOME early Zionists were appalled by the plan to colonize a country which had hundreds of thousands of citizens already in it. But that went by the wayside pretty damn quick once the Arabs started catching on to the plan to turn Palestine into a ZIONIST STATE.

    Nobody with a brain would have gone along with that.

    Had the Zionists come in as Omri believes they intended to, and simply said, “Hey, let us buy some land, work with you to develop economic opportunities, and you do what you want and let us do what we want, and no, we’re not gonna build a government of Jews to rule over you”, that just might – might – have worked.

    But that was not the final plan, or even the intermediate plan. And it certainly wasn’t the plan by 1947 when the Jews were running several different terrorist groups and committing massacres of Palestinians.

    As the Orthodox Jewish British MP said recently, “Israel was born out of terrorism.”

    “As for brutality, it’s the Arab World that is fete-ing and giving medals to a guy for crushing a toddler’s skull (Samir Kuntar), not the “brutal” Israelis.”"

    Look, stupid, you can find bad guys like him working for the IDF and the settlers. So take your little Zionist freakazoid attitude and shove it up your ass.

    At least Samir is willing to see the person he’s killing, rather than bombing the fuck out of entire families from the air and only feeling “a little bump” as the bombs fall, like Dan Halutz:

    On the night of July 23, 2002, an IAF warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on a Gaza apartment building where senior Hamas commander Salah Shahade was sleeping together with his wife and family [1]. The building was situated in a densely populated residential neighborhood. Besides Shehada and his wife and daughter, a dozen more civilians were killed, most of them children. Israel’s prime minister Ariel Sharon called the operation a success in the war on terror, but political critics pointed out that it was carried out hours after Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin issued a statement offering an end to suicide bombing, and just as the Palestinian Authority was working out a deal with Hamas to end terror attacks. All these developments were undone by the bombing, and the terror wave resumed. There was at least one revenge attack directly related to the Shehade bombing – in July 31 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, killing 7 civilians including 2 Americans.

    On the moral level, human-rights organizations around the world including in Israel have severely criticized the attack, proclaiming that the intentional dropping of a one-ton bomb in the middle of the night on a dense civilian neighborhood is tantamount to a war crime. The Gush Shalom movement also threatened to turn the pilot over to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Halutz, who was abroad during the bombing itself but was still accountable as IAF commander, gave an interview to Haaretz, published on August 21, 2002. To his pilots he said:

    [To pilots] Guys, … you can sleep well at night. I also sleep well, by the way. You aren’t the ones who choose the targets, and you were not the ones who chose the target in this particular case. You are not responsible for the contents of the target. Your execution was perfect. Superb. And I repeat again: There is no problem here that concerns you. You did exactly what you were instructed to do. You did not deviate from that by so much as a millimeter to the right or to the left. And anyone who has a problem with that is invited to see me.

    When asked whether the operation is morally wrong because of the toll on some civilians, Halutz answered that the planning included moral consideration and that a mistake or an accident does not make it such.

    When the reporter asked him about the feelings of a pilot and what he feels when he drops a bomb, Halutz answered:

    No. That is not a legitimate question and it is not asked. But if you nevertheless want to know what I feel when I release a bomb, I will tell you: I feel a light bump to the plane as a result of the bomb’s release. A second later it’s gone, and that’s all. That is what I feel.

    In the same interview Halutz denounced the left-wing groups who attacked the pilots and called to have them tried for “treason”:

    Is this the public for which the Israel Defense Forces is fighting day in and day out? All those bleeding hearts who have the gall to use Mafioso methods of blackmail against fighters – I don’t recall that they ever threatened to turn over one of the arch-terrorists, the terrorists who have killed many Israeli civilians, to The Hague. What I have to say about those people is that this is a democracy, where everyone can always express his opinion. But not to be a traitor.

    [Interviewer asking] Are you suggesting that members of the Gush Shalom (”Peace Bloc”) group who made those comments should be placed on trial for treason?

    [Halutz answers] We have to find the right clause in the law and place them on trial in Israel. Yes. You wanted to talk to me about morality, and I say that a state that does not protect itself is acting immorally. A state that does not back up its fighters will not survive. Happily, the State of Israel does back up its fighters. This vocal but negligible minority brings to mind dark times in the history of the Jewish people, when a minority among us went and informed on another part of the nation. That must not happen again. Who would have believed that pilots of the air force would find their cars spray-painted with savage graffiti because of a mission they carried out?

    On 24 July it was reported that IDF Radio had broadcast details of orders issued by IDF Halutz:

    “Army chief of staff Dan Halutz has given the order to the air force to destroy 10 multi-storey buildings in the Haret Hreik (”Dahiya”) district (of Beirut) in response to every rocket fired on Haifa,” a senior air force officer told army radio on Monday [24th July]

    Fucking POS is no better than Samir.

66. Ed Marshall Says:
    February 12th, 2009 at 4:05 am

    Nothing Fred said is racist at all. This is your buddy, Zionist Jews. Have fun with all this, and when Israel goes the way of the dodo guess how your allies like this are going to feel.

67. NickM Says:
    February 12th, 2009 at 7:57 am

    “If the smartest scientist in sub-Saharan Africa wants to move here, I’d welcome him.”

    Sexist, too.

68. Fred Says:
    February 12th, 2009 at 9:00 am

    And nothing you say is anti-Jewish, btw, Ed Marshall. You just so happen to ignore every atrocity committed on Jews while you dig through dusty British Foreign Office files for unbiased accounts of Jewish attacks during the Mandatory period. People like you are the reason Jews needed a state in the first place.

69. srw Says:
    February 12th, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    “That’s not really even true. Al Qaeda is truly an Islamist group. They really do have delusions of a worldwide Caliphate. But they have no real means of creating it. Hamas is a nationalist organization that uses radical religious philosophy as a means of gaining support. Hamas may eventually support a global jihad, but they’d really like to have a country first. They aren’t really Islamists, they are simply desperate.”

    An Islamist group is any organization that believes Islam should have a role in politics. The AKP of Turkey, al-Qaeda, and Hamas are all Islamist groups. But as you point out, they are extremely different in their goals and methods; Hamas is Islamist, but they are completely nationalistic in their outlook. Thus my point that Matt’s comment about Hamas and transnational jihadism is wrong.

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