Palestine & The Occupation

This is absolutely outrageous. Israeli State policy has becoming flagrant in their disregard of basic human rights for the Arab minority residing within their borders as well as the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The latter are basically living in an open air prison that lacks access to basic medical supplies and suffers rolling power outages. The residents are stateless and have no freedom of movement. The youth unemployment is at about 40% and there is systemic underinvestment in education and infrastructure. It is a totally hopeless situation. Meanwhile, residents in the West Bank are being driven out of their home by settlers, which is in flagrant defiance of internationally agreed upon peace settlements. The aggressors of this past weekend were all right-wing Israeli nationalists who are marching through Palestinian neighborhoods with the explicit intention of egging on their resistance so that they can gain legitimacy a campaign of airstrikes on civilian populations. The PLO is an abject political failure. There have not been democratic elections held in the territories for more than a decade. Planned elections have recently been postponed, again, because Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are being denied access to the polls.

Anyone equivocating on this shit is a fucking moron. This isn't a conflict. It is an settler-colonial regime that defines statehood ethnically and is now flirting with the cleansing of their enemies. It is so entirely fucked.

Any criticism of Israel is met with so much anti-Semite accusations that I can’t tell if these are bots or actual people who’ve lost their minds.

Same. It's absolutely maddening.

Blame Hillary and the State Department: https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/156684.pdf

The disclaimer at the bottom does little to mitigate the intent of these definitions and examples to equate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism.

The new leader of the center-left Italian Democratic Party was at a pro-Israeli demonstration yesterday in Rome, which was also attended by the leaders of the country's main far-right and anti-migrant nationalist party. These people have shit for fucking brains.

I have been reading into this a lot lately and I am still trying to fully understand. However, I feel that my past reading, and current reading, really substantiates and supports the argument of WP64. What I have been trying to find more information about is: how could Israel handle this differently? Why would it benefit Isreal to have this constant state of war, strife, and open air prison?

In other words, WP64, is this just a general question of outright greed? Could Israel choose to create a better world for the Arabs there, and if so: why don't they?

Those are all good questions that require long and complex answers. First, I think it is always important to remember the geo-political context that gave birth to Israel as an ethno-national state of the Jewish people. The contested land was previously administered by the Ottoman Empire and became a British colony in the aftermath of WWI. The State of Israel was declared after the Second World War. It was basically the Europeans trying to absolve themselves of their historic crimes against their own Jewish minority populations by providing them with an internationally-recognized state in the Near East (prior to the Jewish settlement of Israel there were similar experiments in present-day Ethiopia). Very little consideration was given to the existing Arab residents and the settler-colonial Jewish state required the forced removal (Nakba) of those existing populations.

For decades, this was a regional issue that pitted the imperial interests of Europe and the United States against pan-Arab nationalists (Nasser) and other regional allies of the Arab Palestinian cause. The formation of OPEC was a direct response of the oil-producing Arab countries to the military aggression of Israel during the Six-Days War. More recently, Israel has established diplomatic relations with several majority Muslim and Arab countries (the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, etc.) Pan-Arabism is no longer a meaningful political ideology and the majority of the Gulf monarchies basically see the Palestinian cause as a nuisance to be overcome through backdoor diplomacy rather than a national liberation struggle upon which to establish their own legitimacy as the defenders of regional Arab interests. Prior to the most recent outbreak of violence, the Saudi monarchy was even warming to the idea of closer Israeli ties because of shared economic interests (arms deals, oil sales, etc.)

There is also the internal political dynamics within Israel, which mostly revolves around Netanyahu (the longest serving Prime Minister in the country's history). He is facing serious corruption charges. Only by hanging onto power is he going to be able to avoid trial and absolve himself of any wrongdoing. In the past two years, there have been four elections in the country but nobody has been able to form a majority government in Parliament. After Netanyahu's most recent failure, the baton was passed to an opposition leader who was leading talks with a small Arab-Islamic political coalition to establish some temporary compromise government that would have forced Netanyahu out of power. The outbreak of communal violence between Jews and Arabs within the Israeli borders now makes that compromise a total impossibility.

At this point, Netanyahu's governments have completely destroyed the possibility of a two-state agreement, which was long considered the most realistic peace settlement by the international community. The only alternative is a one-state solution, which will never be agreed upon by the Israelis because it would make them a minority in their own country. And so they are just going to keep occupying the West Bank, forcing more Palestinian refugees into Jordan, and bombarding Gaza into submission.

Now that is what you call a terrific damn post.

The Israelis learned their settler-colonial military practices from the US. With all the money we give them for weapons, there's absolutely no reason they would do anything except use every cent of it to bomb shit and gain more territory and "regional influence".

I'm very guilty of moving to criticize Israeli hypocrisy re: Palestine, but truthfully they can't fully be blamed while we fund the whole operation.

The point about the end of Pan-Arab ideology is a good one. The US/British/French supported intrafamily rivalries and tyrannical monarchs throughout the Middle East for so long that the ruling class in these places don't rely on a popular base of support—they have enough military might and money to do whatever they want. The Jordanian monarchs sold the Palestinians down the river during the Nabka, for example.

WP64 wrote:Those are all good questions that require long and complex answers. First, I think it is always important to remember the geo-political context that gave birth to Israel as an ethno-national state of the Jewish people. The contested land was previously administered by the Ottoman Empire and became a British colony in the aftermath of WWI. The State of Israel was declared after the Second World War. It was basically the Europeans trying to absolve themselves of their historic crimes against their own Jewish minority populations by providing them with an internationally-recognized state in the Near East (prior to the Jewish settlement of Israel there were similar experiments in present-day Ethiopia). Very little consideration was given to the existing Arab residents and the settler-colonial Jewish state required the forced removal (Nakba) of those existing populations.

For decades, this was a regional issue that pitted the imperial interests of Europe and the United States against pan-Arab nationalists (Nasser) and other regional allies of the Arab Palestinian cause. The formation of OPEC was a direct response of the oil-producing Arab countries to the military aggression of Israel during the Six-Days War. More recently, Israel has established diplomatic relations with several majority Muslim and Arab countries (the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, etc.) Pan-Arabism is no longer a meaningful political ideology and the majority of the Gulf monarchies basically see the Palestinian cause as a nuisance to be overcome through backdoor diplomacy rather than a national liberation struggle upon which to establish their own legitimacy as the defenders of regional Arab interests. Prior to the most recent outbreak of violence, the Saudi monarchy was even warming to the idea of closer Israeli ties because of shared economic interests (arms deals, oil sales, etc.)

There is also the internal political dynamics within Israel, which mostly revolves around Netanyahu (the longest serving Prime Minister in the country's history). He is facing serious corruption charges. Only by hanging onto power is he going to be able to avoid trial and absolve himself of any wrongdoing. In the past two years, there have been four elections in the country but nobody has been able to form a majority government in Parliament. After Netanyahu's most recent failure, the baton was passed to an opposition leader who was leading talks with a small Arab-Islamic political coalition to establish some temporary compromise government that would have forced Netanyahu out of power. The outbreak of communal violence between Jews and Arabs within the Israeli borders now makes that compromise a total impossibility.

At this point, Netanyahu's governments have completely destroyed the possibility of a two-state agreement, which was long considered the most realistic peace settlement by the international community. The only alternative is a one-state solution, which will never be agreed upon by the Israelis because it would make them a minority in their own country. And so they are just going to keep occupying the West Bank, forcing more Palestinian refugees into Jordan, and bombarding Gaza into submission.

I am not sure I understand the part about the Israeli's becoming a minority:

* As of 2013, Israel's population is 8 million, of which the Israeli civil government records 75.3% as Jews, 20.7% as non-Jewish Arabs, and 4.0% other. Israel's official census includes Israeli settlers in the occupied territories (referred to as "disputed" by Israel).

The way I see it, is the Jews always planned to completely eradicate the Arabs (since about 1880), and they have never once compromised even an inch. And, until every Arab is gone, they will never rest. It's a slow takeover. You illustrate above that they are succeeding because I think as the region normalizes to that reality: the Jews will continue to push harder towards their main goal of an entirely Jewish state. The USA talks a good game sometimes, but in the end we UN veto everything even mildly against Israel and we have given Isreal what? billions over the decades?

And, that is unfortunately answering my own question. I think I saw a recent survey that basically showed Jews don't even see Arabs as fully human in their own country, and that something like 95% (albeit 4 varied religious factions) of the Jews surveyed thought that it was their God given right to make Israel a completely Jewish state. So, to answer my own question: their end game is all Arabs leave. So, they have zero desire to make the Arab lives anything but miserable.

I conclude that in a very literal sense, while it's foreign to modernity, and more in line with the pretext of the Old Testament: the Jews are just fulfilling what they view as their manifest destiny. To them, they are simply moving back into Canaan.

John Boy Walton wrote:I am not sure I understand the part about the Israeli's becoming a minority:

* As of 2013, Israel's population is 8 million, of which the Israeli civil government records 75.3% as Jews, 20.7% as non-Jewish Arabs, and 4.0% other. Israel's official census includes Israeli settlers in the occupied territories (referred to as "disputed" by Israel).

Exactly. Already one-fifth of the current residents within the present-day territorial boundaries of Israel are non-Jewish Arabs. In a hypothetical one-state solution, the Palestinian residents of Gaza and the West Bank would combine to outnumber Israeli Jews, which would make them an ethnic minority population in can only be, according to their own constitution, *their* country. The current tactic is basically to continue the occupation of the Palestinian territories until enough illegal Jewish settlements have driven Palestinians from their homeland so that they would never have to confront this hypothetical reality. The only peaceful and democratic settlement requires the complete dissolution of Israel as an ethnically-defined state of the Jewish people.

It also always really important to separate the ambitions and crimes of the State of Israel from the rights and legitimate historic claims of Jewish residents in the region. They are not the same thing and nobody is suggesting that Jews should be collectively punished for the crimes committed by their government. The Palestinian liberation struggle is for the restoration of their rights, which does not impinge upon the rights of their Jewish neighbors.

I think that's the broad strokes of it with some somewhat unfair essentialization, JBW.

The anxiety about Israelis being a minority is that if there had actually been a state given to the Palestinians before 1967, Arabs would've outnumbered Jewish people in the region. The fear was that a "one-state solution" with shared control of Jerusalem would have led to persecution of the Israelis by the Palestinians and that a "two-state solution" would create "enemies on all sides" and leave the newly formed Israel unable to defend itself.

Given the lack of Palestinian unity and infighting among traditional leadership, the historical record can't substantiate that the creation of a Palestinian state between 1948 and 1967 would have resulted in the end of Israel in the Levant. We don't know how the Israelis and Palestinians would have coexisted if they had both been granted statehood at the time. Certainly there were Arabs in the region who didn't want Israel to exist at all, some who thought they could coexist with it, and even some who wanted to partner with Israeli against other regional forces.

We also know from the mouth of Ben Gurion and other Zionist records that the right-wing faction in Israel always believed in a "Greater Israel" project which would not accept a two-state solution that didn't give them ALL of their preferred territories, let alone accept a shared-state solution.

Obviously "the Jews always planned to completely eradicate the Arabs" is a fucking ridiculous statement. I think what can be said is that there has always been a strong faction within the Zionist leadership that would only be satisfied with a strongly Jewish nationalism, backed by a strong military, that is unchallenged in the region.

Since 1948, Israel has been the proxy for the Western powers in the Middle East. The British/French decided they couldn't do it themselves anymore, so they let Israel take up that mantle. Israel operates under the exact same settler-colonial practices that the Europeans did. When Westerners say that Israel is a "beacon of Democracy in the Middle East", they mean that they have institutions which we can access and they will help us achieve our desired outcomes in the region. They are the target of vitriol in the Arab world because they are on the frontlines, which deflects criticism of the Western powers.

There is an extent where "both sides" (vomit) have come to define the other side by their most extreme elements. Every Israeli is some genocidal superNazi and every Palestinian is a hostage-taking suicide bomber. I'm sure the reality is that very few individuals see the need for such a ridiculous armed conflict or are that ideologically passionate about the particulars of statehood. Most modern people want a simple, good life.

The evangelical/manifest destiny angle in the Middle East is certainly interesting. One cannot completely discount the ideological underpinnings of the whole Zionist movement—Israel doesn't exist without it. I don't think US support for Israel was fundamentally about the evangelical "rapture" angle, but it certainly helps when there are people pushing tooth and nail in favor of Israel because they personally have those beliefs. I certainly think a Judeo-Christian sense of shared history is an important intellectual component of the West backing Israel. Also, the Zionists couldn't have convinced anyone to move to that region without the historical ethnic connection. In that way, a historical narrative combined with a political project is quite ideologically powerful.

Further, I think it's somewhat ridiculous when people try to dismiss Zionism as this ridiculous, ahistorical beast. The history of antisemitism in Europe is brutal and horrible. Historical persecution of the Jews drove them from the Levant. People like to point to specific examples of religious harmony facilitated by Islamic leadership like the Ottoman Millet system, but those are specific contexts. It's hard to argue that the Jewish people had been allowed to grow and flourish under Ottoman, Arab, Christian, or any other kind of leadership. When people point to Jews being "outnumbered" in places all over the world, think about why. Think about why Jewish communities weren't allowed autonomy or allowed to get particularly large. It's hard to get land and grow your population when, in many countries, you can't own land.

Ben Gurion was an extraordinary man (in the extra-ordinary sense, not morally). So were many of the early Zionists and founders of Israel. The movement they created and the outcome they achieved was unprecedented. And they used commonly accepted tactics of the time to achieve those ends. They used violence and settler-colonialism, which the European powers had been doing for over 300 years. It was "okay" when they did it, why the sudden reaction when Israel did it? The reality is that after the West realized there was no more territory around the global to colonize and it was difficult to rule over it, they decided "colonialism is bad" and tried to prevent anyone else from reaping the benefits. Honestly, people tend to focus on Israeli colonialism simply because they know the US/Britain/France will never atone and Israel is easier to bully.

I am in favor of decolonial practice around the world because I believe the European colonial period is the most disgusting period in human history and is directly responsible for almost all of the world's geopolitical problems. To that end, I would like to see a two-state solution where Israel is forced to return land and we return to a border geography roughly similar to the 1947 partition plan. The 1947 plan was already incredibly favorable in terms of the amount of land it afforded to Israel relative to the Jewish population in the region.

I would only advocate for that if the European powers who engineered this mess—namely, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Russia, along with the United States—also do big land transfers back to indigenous people and work to create self-determined states with a real economic future. Once that happens, maybe we can get China and Japan to do a few kickbacks too. Honestly, I'd be happy to they trade us some reduced greenhouse gas emissions instead.

chrondog wrote:The evangelical/manifest destiny angle in the Middle East is certainly interesting. One cannot completely discount the ideological underpinnings of the whole Zionist movement—Israel doesn't exist without it. I don't think US support for Israel was fundamentally about the evangelical "rapture" angle, but it certainly helps when there are people pushing tooth and nail in favor of Israel because they personally have those beliefs. I certainly think a Judeo-Christian sense of shared history is an important intellectual component of the West backing Israel. Also, the Zionists couldn't have convinced anyone to move to that region without the historical ethnic connection. In that way, a historical narrative combined with a political project is quite ideologically powerful.

I think it has become an important element but this conceptualization of a shared Judeo-Christian heritage is both relatively novel and incredibly flimsy. Evangelicals have become major supporters of Israel but they also think Jews killed Christ and will need to repent for their sins on the Day of Armageddon or face eternal damnation. They really don't make very convincing intellectual allies, imo.

chrondog wrote:Ben Gurion was an extraordinary man (in the extra-ordinary sense, not morally). So were many of the early Zionists and founders of Israel. The movement they created and the outcome they achieved was unprecedented. And they used commonly accepted tactics of the time to achieve those ends. They used violence and settler-colonialism, which the European powers had been doing for over 300 years. It was "okay" when they did it, why the sudden reaction when Israel did it? The reality is that after the West realized there was no more territory around the global to colonize and it was difficult to rule over it, they decided "colonialism is bad" and tried to prevent anyone else from reaping the benefits. Honestly, people tend to focus on Israeli colonialism simply because they know the US/Britain/France will never atone and Israel is easier to bully.

Tony Judt, who was a Marxist and Zionist in his youth, used to make this point a lot. Europeans basically feel a sense of embarrassment and revulsion when they are confronted with the brutality reality of Israeli policy because they are forced to reckon with their own historic crimes. Also, after the brutal traumas of the first-half of the twentieth century, any liberal-minded European shudders at the thought of nationalist projects that conceptualize the State as the spiritual embodiment of an ethnically/racially-defined group (volk). I don't need to explain why.

WP64 wrote:I think it has become an important element but this conceptualization of a shared Judeo-Christian heritage is both relatively novel and incredibly flimsy. Evangelicals have become major supporters of Israel but they also think Jews killed Christ and will need to repent for their sins on the Day of Armageddon or face eternal damnation. They really don't make very convincing intellectual allies, imo.

Like I said, it's mostly the "true believers" who are driving that stuff. If you've got one evangelical fanatic at the UN or State Department who makes it their life's work to support the State of Israel, that's better than 10 people who are lukewarm about it. There's also a history of Christian Zionism in England that influenced the Zionist movement. It's all theocracy, so to me none of it makes sense. It's an intellectual tradition that people buy into. Without the twin intellectual traditions of British Christian Zionism and the global Jewish Zionist Movement, you don't have the Balfour Declaration, most likely.

Further, "Judeo-Christian tradition" is jargon for "European governmental institutions" which includes colonial rule. It was simply easier for Western powers to have a formal political relationship with the State of Israel—a familiar political nationstate created by Jewish people with Western legal traditions—than with less formalized Palestinian Arab representation. Even if Israel does some things the West doesn't like, there is a mutual political understanding and acknowledgement.

WP64 wrote:Tony Judt, who was a Marxist and Zionist in his youth, used to make this point a lot. Europeans basically feel a sense of embarrassment and revulsion when they are confronted with the brutality reality of Israeli policy because they are forced to reckon with their own historic crimes. Also, after the brutal traumas of the first-half of the twentieth century, any liberal-minded European shudders at the thought of nationalist projects that conceptualize the State as the spiritual embodiment of an ethnically/racially-defined group (volk). I don't need to explain why.

As they should. The current Israeli policy of "10 of your lives for every one of ours" is colonial intimidation that was perfected by the British. This is what nationalisms do. They decide that some lives are more valuable than others, and so politicians trade lives for outcomes. The bombings in Gaza are classic shock and awe: if you attack us even once (even in a decentralized way), we'll blow up women and children until you regret those actions for the rest of your life.

Yet, liberal-minded Europeans are pushing ethnocentric nationalisms all the time. Why did they support it in Yugoslavia (and later Kosovo and Albania)? Why do people still toss around the idea of a Kurdish state? It's because other ethnicities have "already got theirs" and it's a popular appeal by oppressed people for their own statehood. It transfers persecution as a minority within a state to the persecution of being constantly involved in sectarian conflicts with your neighbors.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, this kind of ethnocentric nationalism was actually considered progressive! Ben Gurion was a socialist and a left winger in many aspects. He idolized Lenin, took his cues from The Communist International, and was friendly with Ho Chi Mihn. Settler-colonialism was actually friendlier compared to straight-up-colonialism where you walk in with an army and start running shit. The Zionists built an ideological, political, and military movement over the course of decades. It's actually very impressive. They may be the brutal colonizers now, but they were certainly the underdogs then.

Multi-ethnic states based on a shared political and economic history are much more liberal and stable than ethnostates, but here we are. To the modern progressive mind, it's simply wrong on the face of it. "Every person from the same ethnicity should have the opportunity to live in the same country." What a horrible and ridiculous idea.

At the same time, most people are not modern and progressive. They are small-minded tribalists, like humans have been throughout all of our history. It's no surprise that ideas like "do it for our people" resonate more than complicated geopolitical histories and terms like "asymmetry".

"Humanism" is fucking dead.

WP64 wrote:

John Boy Walton wrote:I am not sure I understand the part about the Israeli's becoming a minority:

* As of 2013, Israel's population is 8 million, of which the Israeli civil government records 75.3% as Jews, 20.7% as non-Jewish Arabs, and 4.0% other. Israel's official census includes Israeli settlers in the occupied territories (referred to as "disputed" by Israel).

Exactly. Already one-fifth of the current residents within the present-day territorial boundaries of Israel are non-Jewish Arabs. In a hypothetical one-state solution, the Palestinian residents of Gaza and the West Bank would combine to outnumber Israeli Jews, which would make them an ethnic minority population in can only be, according to their own constitution, *their* country. The current tactic is basically to continue the occupation of the Palestinian territories until enough illegal Jewish settlements have driven Palestinians from their homeland so that they would never have to confront this hypothetical reality. The only peaceful and democratic settlement requires the complete dissolution of Israel as an ethnically-defined state of the Jewish people.

It also always really important to separate the ambitions and crimes of the State of Israel from the rights and legitimate historic claims of Jewish residents in the region. They are not the same thing and nobody is suggesting that Jews should be collectively punished for the crimes committed by their government. The Palestinian liberation struggle is for the restoration of their rights, which does not impinge upon the rights of their Jewish neighbors.

Ah, so when I look at the numbers, the population of "Israel" is not including the 4 million inhabitants of Gaza and West Bank (I just looked it up). Thank you very much.

So, then my next question would be is the end game for Israel to annex those territories into Israel? When we hear of them building settlements there, are they slowly annexing that territory into the present day boundaries of Israel? or, do you think that the 4 million is just too high of a number and they hope to have an "open air prison" for say, the next 50-100 years?

WP64 wrote:
I think it has become an important element but this conceptualization of a shared Judeo-Christian heritage is both relatively novel and incredibly flimsy. Evangelicals have become major supporters of Israel but they also think Jews killed Christ and will need to repent for their sins on the Day of Armageddon or face eternal damnation. They really don't make very convincing intellectual allies, imo.

This is how my aunt is. She stringently views the state of Israel through the lens of the OT. They are God's chosen people and so we need to support them at all costs, and anyone who stands in the way will ultimately be crushed by God. And, that was what I was trying to vocalize upthread: it seems like that's how the current Jews living in Isreal view it also.

chrondog wrote:I think that's the broad strokes of it with some somewhat unfair essentialization, JBW.

The anxiety about Israelis being a minority is that if there had actually been a state given to the Palestinians before 1967, Arabs would've outnumbered Jewish people in the region. The fear was that a "one-state solution" with shared control of Jerusalem would have led to persecution of the Israelis by the Palestinians and that a "two-state solution" would create "enemies on all sides" and leave the newly formed Israel unable to defend itself.

Given the lack of Palestinian unity and infighting among traditional leadership, the historical record can't substantiate that the creation of a Palestinian state between 1948 and 1967 would have resulted in the end of Israel in the Levant. We don't know how the Israelis and Palestinians would have coexisted if they had both been granted statehood at the time. Certainly there were Arabs in the region who didn't want Israel to exist at all, some who thought they could coexist with it, and even some who wanted to partner with Israeli against other regional forces.

We also know from the mouth of Ben Gurion and other Zionist records that the right-wing faction in Israel always believed in a "Greater Israel" project which would not accept a two-state solution that didn't give them ALL of their preferred territories, let alone accept a shared-state solution.

Obviously "the Jews always planned to completely eradicate the Arabs" is a fucking ridiculous statement. I think what can be said is that there has always been a strong faction within the Zionist leadership that would only be satisfied with a strongly Jewish nationalism, backed by a strong military, that is unchallenged in the region.

Since 1948, Israel has been the proxy for the Western powers in the Middle East. The British/French decided they couldn't do it themselves anymore, so they let Israel take up that mantle. Israel operates under the exact same settler-colonial practices that the Europeans did. When Westerners say that Israel is a "beacon of Democracy in the Middle East", they mean that they have institutions which we can access and they will help us achieve our desired outcomes in the region. They are the target of vitriol in the Arab world because they are on the frontlines, which deflects criticism of the Western powers.

There is an extent where "both sides" (vomit) have come to define the other side by their most extreme elements. Every Israeli is some genocidal superNazi and every Palestinian is a hostage-taking suicide bomber. I'm sure the reality is that very few individuals see the need for such a ridiculous armed conflict or are that ideologically passionate about the particulars of statehood. Most modern people want a simple, good life.

The evangelical/manifest destiny angle in the Middle East is certainly interesting. One cannot completely discount the ideological underpinnings of the whole Zionist movement—Israel doesn't exist without it. I don't think US support for Israel was fundamentally about the evangelical "rapture" angle, but it certainly helps when there are people pushing tooth and nail in favor of Israel because they personally have those beliefs. I certainly think a Judeo-Christian sense of shared history is an important intellectual component of the West backing Israel. Also, the Zionists couldn't have convinced anyone to move to that region without the historical ethnic connection. In that way, a historical narrative combined with a political project is quite ideologically powerful.

Further, I think it's somewhat ridiculous when people try to dismiss Zionism as this ridiculous, ahistorical beast. The history of antisemitism in Europe is brutal and horrible. Historical persecution of the Jews drove them from the Levant. People like to point to specific examples of religious harmony facilitated by Islamic leadership like the Ottoman Millet system, but those are specific contexts. It's hard to argue that the Jewish people had been allowed to grow and flourish under Ottoman, Arab, Christian, or any other kind of leadership. When people point to Jews being "outnumbered" in places all over the world, think about why. Think about why Jewish communities weren't allowed autonomy or allowed to get particularly large. It's hard to get land and grow your population when, in many countries, you can't own land.

Ben Gurion was an extraordinary man (in the extra-ordinary sense, not morally). So were many of the early Zionists and founders of Israel. The movement they created and the outcome they achieved was unprecedented. And they used commonly accepted tactics of the time to achieve those ends. They used violence and settler-colonialism, which the European powers had been doing for over 300 years. It was "okay" when they did it, why the sudden reaction when Israel did it? The reality is that after the West realized there was no more territory around the global to colonize and it was difficult to rule over it, they decided "colonialism is bad" and tried to prevent anyone else from reaping the benefits. Honestly, people tend to focus on Israeli colonialism simply because they know the US/Britain/France will never atone and Israel is easier to bully.

I am in favor of decolonial practice around the world because I believe the European colonial period is the most disgusting period in human history and is directly responsible for almost all of the world's geopolitical problems. To that end, I would like to see a two-state solution where Israel is forced to return land and we return to a border geography roughly similar to the 1947 partition plan. The 1947 plan was already incredibly favorable in terms of the amount of land it afforded to Israel relative to the Jewish population in the region.

I would only advocate for that if the European powers who engineered this mess—namely, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Russia, along with the United States—also do big land transfers back to indigenous people and work to create self-determined states with a real economic future. Once that happens, maybe we can get China and Japan to do a few kickbacks too. Honestly, I'd be happy to they trade us some reduced greenhouse gas emissions instead.

Thanks. A lot to ingest. Good insight and I am glad to gather education.

chrondog wrote:Obviously "the Jews always planned to completely eradicate the Arabs" is a fucking ridiculous statement. I think what can be said is that there has always been a strong faction within the Zionist leadership that would only be satisfied with a strongly Jewish nationalism, backed by a strong military, that is unchallenged in the region.

Your right. My bad.

chrondog wrote:
To that end, I would like to see a two-state solution where Israel is forced to return land and we return to a border geography roughly similar to the 1947 partition plan. The 1947 plan was already incredibly favorable in terms of the amount of land it afforded to Israel relative to the Jewish population in the region.

From what I am seeing, that doesn't seem possible going forward: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine#/media/File:UN_Palestine_Partition_Versions_1947.jpg. That would be quite a step back and quite the admission of guilt I just don't see Israel every buying in to.

chrondog wrote:
would only advocate for that if the European powers who engineered this mess—namely, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Russia, along with the United States—also do big land transfers back to indigenous people and work to create self-determined states with a real economic future.

How could that mechanism work? the UN? At this stage of the game is that even possible? Why would Israel listen to them?

chrondog wrote:Multi-ethnic states based on a shared political and economic history are much more liberal and stable than ethnostates, but here we are. To the modern progressive mind, it's simply wrong on the face of it. "Every person from the same ethnicity should have the opportunity to live in the same country." What a horrible and ridiculous idea.

I am not following you here on why you think that is horrible and ridiculous. And, I am not sure I understand what you mean by the quotes either.

John Boy Walton wrote:

WP64 wrote:

John Boy Walton wrote:I am not sure I understand the part about the Israeli's becoming a minority:

* As of 2013, Israel's population is 8 million, of which the Israeli civil government records 75.3% as Jews, 20.7% as non-Jewish Arabs, and 4.0% other. Israel's official census includes Israeli settlers in the occupied territories (referred to as "disputed" by Israel).

Exactly. Already one-fifth of the current residents within the present-day territorial boundaries of Israel are non-Jewish Arabs. In a hypothetical one-state solution, the Palestinian residents of Gaza and the West Bank would combine to outnumber Israeli Jews, which would make them an ethnic minority population in can only be, according to their own constitution, *their* country. The current tactic is basically to continue the occupation of the Palestinian territories until enough illegal Jewish settlements have driven Palestinians from their homeland so that they would never have to confront this hypothetical reality. The only peaceful and democratic settlement requires the complete dissolution of Israel as an ethnically-defined state of the Jewish people.

It also always really important to separate the ambitions and crimes of the State of Israel from the rights and legitimate historic claims of Jewish residents in the region. They are not the same thing and nobody is suggesting that Jews should be collectively punished for the crimes committed by their government. The Palestinian liberation struggle is for the restoration of their rights, which does not impinge upon the rights of their Jewish neighbors.

Ah, so when I look at the numbers, the population of "Israel" is not including the 4 million inhabitants of Gaza and West Bank (I just looked it up). Thank you very much.

So, then my next question would be is the end game for Israel to annex those territories into Israel? When we hear of them building settlements there, are they slowly annexing that territory into the present day boundaries of Israel? or, do you think that the 4 million is just too high of a number and they hope to have an "open air prison" for say, the next 50-100 years?

Their end game is for the Palestinians to admit they don't have a chance at statehood and to force them to emigrate en masse to other Arab countries. By destroying infrastructure and depressing the population in Gaza it gives Israel more time to change the population numbers. I'm sure they'd eventually like to annex those areas and absorb their populations into Israel, once they can be sure they'd have no political power. They might also accept them as "autonomous regions" or some other BS with diluted influence once the population numbers are low enough for their liking.

John Boy Walton wrote:

chrondog wrote:
To that end, I would like to see a two-state solution where Israel is forced to return land and we return to a border geography roughly similar to the 1947 partition plan. The 1947 plan was already incredibly favorable in terms of the amount of land it afforded to Israel relative to the Jewish population in the region.

From what I am seeing, that doesn't seem possible going forward: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine#/media/File:UN_Palestine_Partition_Versions_1947.jpg. That would be quite a step back and quite the admission of guilt I just don't see Israel every buying in to.

With the politics of "doesn't seem possible", nothing is possible. Conditions change. I'm much more concerned with what is just than what is "possible". The point here is that the West enabled Israel to do what it did and we could take it away, too. And we should. What we did was wrong and we should work to correct it. Palestinians should have a self-determined government in the region that has access to fertile farmland, ports, coastline, water rights, and everything else they need to create a stable society. For them to accept a meager territory with no chance at building a lasting state wouldn't correct the injustice.  

We could push Israel in this direction. We won't, but we could. We could lead the charge to sanction them, kick them out of the UN, withdraw our funding of their military, or even fund a Palestinian force to take back the land. That would be all out warfare, but we could do it if we wanted to. The other option is to condemn the Palestinians to their fate and continue to support colonial projects worldwide, like we did when we let Russian invade Crimea.

John Boy Walton wrote:

chrondog wrote:
would only advocate for that if the European powers who engineered this mess—namely, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Russia, along with the United States—also do big land transfers back to indigenous people and work to create self-determined states with a real economic future.

How could that mechanism work? the UN? At this stage of the game is that even possible? Why would Israel listen to them?

They could just do it. Nothing stopping any of these governments from donating land they own back to indigenous groups or helping indigenous groups buy their own land holdings.

The fact is they don't give a shit. They rely on the narrative of "that's all in the past". It's all in the past until it's not and Israel and Hamas are firing rockets at each other. History matters and continues to create geopolitical conflicts. Failing to address historical wrongs will ensure they will keep happening. The world powers have decided that's okay with them. We always hide behind global competition. "Why would we reduce greenhouse emissions if China won't?"

How about because it's an existential threat and if we don't we'll all fucking die? Why is what China is doing a factor in doing the right thing? Further, why would China do anything if we are in the primary global leadership role and WE don't do a damn thing? This was one of the biggest loses of the Trump era. He ceded everything globally to China. We fucked off from the Paris Climate Accords, China lapped us with their globalist policies, and they jumped ahead about 10 years in terms of being the new global hegemon. After Obama we had a chance to be a GLOBAL LEADER on these causes. Obviously Obama was still a neoliberal who drone struck the hell out of Yemen and engineered a coup is Honduras because Hillary told him to, but we would've been in a much better position to lead on climate change, denuclearization, and human rights globally if we had stuck to a "liberal course".

Imagine if the US undertook a MASSIVE project to put Native Americans in control of managing public lands in the West while also giving them political control of a few emerging urban centers in the middle of the country. How much clout would that give us to speak from the moral high ground on issues of decolonialization? Wouldn't it also be good for the historical conscience of the nation, our environmental policies, and even our economy? If a nation as historically evil as us took an unprecedented action like this, how much pressure would it put on this movement globally?

We lack political imagination in this country. And so does everyone globally because "we are all in competition". That competition will lead us to death and destruction, so I hope everyone is psyched for that instead of a new era of global cooperation.

When Netanyahu is pulling shit like he is right now, you know there's little chance for a better world.

John Boy Walton wrote:

chrondog wrote:Multi-ethnic states based on a shared political and economic history are much more liberal and stable than ethnostates, but here we are. To the modern progressive mind, it's simply wrong on the face of it. "Every person from the same ethnicity should have the opportunity to live in the same country." What a horrible and ridiculous idea.

I am not following you here on why you think that is horrible and ridiculous. And, I am not sure I understand what you mean by the quotes either.

The idea that the main thing that binds people together is ethnicity is abhorrent. The idea that I have more in common with other people who are "Slavic" than people are kind, generous, and smart is ridiculous. On the face of it, ethnicity should not be the defining characteristics of nations. It is why regular people often tie their nationalisms and racism together. American jingoes want you to "love it or leave it", but will also tell non-white Americans that they don't belong here. People so strongly associate America with whiteness because people have been taught that nations and race/ethnicity go together.

However, we're stuck with it.

chrondog wrote:The point here is that the West enabled Israel to do what it did and we could take it away, too. And we should. What we did was wrong and we should work to correct it.

This is really *the* essential point to always highlight when talking about Palestine. Unfortunately, it is rather common for right-wing Israelis to accuse human rights campaigners of being closeted anti-Semites who are exclusively obsessed with punishing Jewish war crimes while ignoring those perpetrated elsewhere in the world. That is demonstrably false. However, it is also important to always remember why, as Americans, we should be concerned about the embargo on Gaza and the occupation of West Bank. We are enabling and literally financing it. For the same reason, we should also be horrified by the abuses of migrant laborers throughout the Arab Gulf monarchies since we exported our Jim Crow labor system to those countries and directly benefit from the commodities they produce.

I would love for more Americans to be internationalists. And by that I do not mean following geo-political events in our major newspapers since they almost always provide a narrative that is told from the perspective of powerful state actors.

Really enjoyed this guys. Thanks. I'll behave in other threads LOL.

chrondog wrote:

John Boy Walton wrote:

WP64 wrote:

John Boy Walton wrote:I am not sure I understand the part about the Israeli's becoming a minority:

* As of 2013, Israel's population is 8 million, of which the Israeli civil government records 75.3% as Jews, 20.7% as non-Jewish Arabs, and 4.0% other. Israel's official census includes Israeli settlers in the occupied territories (referred to as "disputed" by Israel).

Exactly. Already one-fifth of the current residents within the present-day territorial boundaries of Israel are non-Jewish Arabs. In a hypothetical one-state solution, the Palestinian residents of Gaza and the West Bank would combine to outnumber Israeli Jews, which would make them an ethnic minority population in can only be, according to their own constitution, *their* country. The current tactic is basically to continue the occupation of the Palestinian territories until enough illegal Jewish settlements have driven Palestinians from their homeland so that they would never have to confront this hypothetical reality. The only peaceful and democratic settlement requires the complete dissolution of Israel as an ethnically-defined state of the Jewish people.

It also always really important to separate the ambitions and crimes of the State of Israel from the rights and legitimate historic claims of Jewish residents in the region. They are not the same thing and nobody is suggesting that Jews should be collectively punished for the crimes committed by their government. The Palestinian liberation struggle is for the restoration of their rights, which does not impinge upon the rights of their Jewish neighbors.

Ah, so when I look at the numbers, the population of "Israel" is not including the 4 million inhabitants of Gaza and West Bank (I just looked it up). Thank you very much.

So, then my next question would be is the end game for Israel to annex those territories into Israel? When we hear of them building settlements there, are they slowly annexing that territory into the present day boundaries of Israel? or, do you think that the 4 million is just too high of a number and they hope to have an "open air prison" for say, the next 50-100 years?

Their end game is for the Palestinians to admit they don't have a chance at statehood and to force them to emigrate en masse to other Arab countries. By destroying infrastructure and depressing the population in Gaza it gives Israel more time to change the population numbers. I'm sure they'd eventually like to annex those areas and absorb their populations into Israel, once they can be sure they'd have no political power. They might also accept them as "autonomous regions" or some other BS with diluted influence once the population numbers are low enough for their liking.

John Boy Walton wrote:

chrondog wrote:
To that end, I would like to see a two-state solution where Israel is forced to return land and we return to a border geography roughly similar to the 1947 partition plan. The 1947 plan was already incredibly favorable in terms of the amount of land it afforded to Israel relative to the Jewish population in the region.

From what I am seeing, that doesn't seem possible going forward: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine#/media/File:UN_Palestine_Partition_Versions_1947.jpg. That would be quite a step back and quite the admission of guilt I just don't see Israel every buying in to.

With the politics of "doesn't seem possible", nothing is possible. Conditions change. I'm much more concerned with what is just than what is "possible". The point here is that the West enabled Israel to do what it did and we could take it away, too. And we should. What we did was wrong and we should work to correct it. Palestinians should have a self-determined government in the region that has access to fertile farmland, ports, coastline, water rights, and everything else they need to create a stable society. For them to accept a meager territory with no chance at building a lasting state wouldn't correct the injustice.  

We could push Israel in this direction. We won't, but we could. We could lead the charge to sanction them, kick them out of the UN, withdraw our funding of their military, or even fund a Palestinian force to take back the land. That would be all out warfare, but we could do it if we wanted to. The other option is to condemn the Palestinians to their fate and continue to support colonial projects worldwide, like we did when we let Russian invade Crimea.

John Boy Walton wrote:

chrondog wrote:
would only advocate for that if the European powers who engineered this mess—namely, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Russia, along with the United States—also do big land transfers back to indigenous people and work to create self-determined states with a real economic future.

How could that mechanism work? the UN? At this stage of the game is that even possible? Why would Israel listen to them?

They could just do it. Nothing stopping any of these governments from donating land they own back to indigenous groups or helping indigenous groups buy their own land holdings.

The fact is they don't give a shit. They rely on the narrative of "that's all in the past". It's all in the past until it's not and Israel and Hamas are firing rockets at each other. History matters and continues to create geopolitical conflicts. Failing to address historical wrongs will ensure they will keep happening. The world powers have decided that's okay with them. We always hide behind global competition. "Why would we reduce greenhouse emissions if China won't?"

How about because it's an existential threat and if we don't we'll all fucking die? Why is what China is doing a factor in doing the right thing? Further, why would China do anything if we are in the primary global leadership role and WE don't do a damn thing? This was one of the biggest loses of the Trump era. He ceded everything globally to China. We fucked off from the Paris Climate Accords, China lapped us with their globalist policies, and they jumped ahead about 10 years in terms of being the new global hegemon. After Obama we had a chance to be a GLOBAL LEADER on these causes. Obviously Obama was still a neoliberal who drone struck the hell out of Yemen and engineered a coup is Honduras because Hillary told him to, but we would've been in a much better position to lead on climate change, denuclearization, and human rights globally if we had stuck to a "liberal course".

Imagine if the US undertook a MASSIVE project to put Native Americans in control of managing public lands in the West while also giving them political control of a few emerging urban centers in the middle of the country. How much clout would that give us to speak from the moral high ground on issues of decolonialization? Wouldn't it also be good for the historical conscience of the nation, our environmental policies, and even our economy? If a nation as historically evil as us took an unprecedented action like this, how much pressure would it put on this movement globally?

We lack political imagination in this country. And so does everyone globally because "we are all in competition". That competition will lead us to death and destruction, so I hope everyone is psyched for that instead of a new era of global cooperation.

When Netanyahu is pulling shit like he is right now, you know there's little chance for a better world.

John Boy Walton wrote:

chrondog wrote:Multi-ethnic states based on a shared political and economic history are much more liberal and stable than ethnostates, but here we are. To the modern progressive mind, it's simply wrong on the face of it. "Every person from the same ethnicity should have the opportunity to live in the same country." What a horrible and ridiculous idea.

I am not following you here on why you think that is horrible and ridiculous. And, I am not sure I understand what you mean by the quotes either.

The idea that the main thing that binds people together is ethnicity is abhorrent. The idea that I have more in common with other people who are "Slavic" than people are kind, generous, and smart is ridiculous. On the face of it, ethnicity should not be the defining characteristics of nations. It is why regular people often tie their nationalisms and racism together. American jingoes want you to "love it or leave it", but will also tell non-white Americans that they don't belong here. People so strongly associate America with whiteness because people have been taught that nations and race/ethnicity go together.

However, we're stuck with it.

You are a good person, but the world sucks.

Thanks lol. I don't think that my point of view is mainstream or that anyone will be thinking like me on a wide scale anytime soon. I like to think these things through for myself, form my perspective, and move on.

If I ever expect the world to be the way I want it, it makes me sad. Unfortunately, I can't expect anything I want to happen sociologically to happen. We can only make things happen for oursevles.

Like WP said, I wish more people were internationalists instead of nationalists. It's hard for people to see eye to eye when they start making these really twisted evaluations of the value of human life because of the country someone is from.