What Will Israel Become?

[Jesus Malverde]

Uneasiness inhabits Israel, a shadow beneath the polished surface. In a violent Middle Eastern neighborhood of fracturing states, that is perhaps inevitable, but Israelis are questioning their nation and its future with a particular insistence. As the campaign for March elections begins, this disquiet looks like the precursor of political change. The status quo, with its bloody and inconclusive interludes, has become less bearable. More of the same has a name: Benjamin Netanyahu, now in his third term as prime minister. The alternative, although less clear, is no longer unthinkable.

“There is a growing uneasiness, social, political, economic,” Amos Oz, the novelist, told me in an interview. “There is a growing sense that Israel is becoming an isolated ghetto, which is exactly what the founding fathers and mothers hoped to leave behind them forever when they created the state of Israel.” The author, widely viewed as the conscience of a liberal and anti-Messianic Israel, continued, “Unless there are two states — Israel next door to Palestine — and soon, there will be one state. If there will be one state, it will be an Arab state. The other option is an Israeli dictatorship, probably a religious nationalist dictatorship, suppressing the Palestinians and suppressing its Jewish opponents.”

If that sounds stark, it is because choices are narrowing. Every day, it seems, another European government or parliament expresses support for recognition of a Palestinian state. A Palestinian-backed initiative at the United Nations, opposed in its current form by the United States, is aimed at pushing Israel to withdraw from the West Bank by 2017. The last Gaza eruption, with its heavy toll and messy outcome, changed nothing. Hamas, its annihilationist hatred newly stoked, is still there parading its weapons. Tension is high in Jerusalem after a spate of violent incidents. Life is expensive. Netanyahu’s credibility on both the domestic and international fronts has dwindled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/opinion/sunday/roger-cohen-what-will-israel-become.html

[Scootaloo]

1. "Become"? That word suggests a transition into something new and different

[BillZBubb]

2. I would more question the "will". It should read "has".

What has Israel become. Something no one should be proud of, that's for sure.

[Israeli]

3. whatever we have become ....

we could not have done it without you BillZBubb.......

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1419008088/

For more than 40 years now, this contempt has never been shaken. Israeli leaders relied on the US to block each and every Security Council resolution that the Israeli government disapproved of, irrespective of its content. If the UN had been asked to reaffirm the Ten Commandments contrary to Israeli wishes, the US would have vetoed them.
Now, for the first time in UN history, this sword of Damocles may disappear. The US has hinted that it may not veto a Security Council draft resolution that the Israeli government strenuously objects to.

Incredible! No US veto? It's like saying that the sun may not rise tomorrow.
HOW COME? What has happened?

The simplest answer is that Barack Obama, like so many others, is fed up with Binyamin Netanyahu. Our prime minister has burned one bridge too many.
He has humiliated the US president time and again. He has let loose the hounds of AIPAC against him. And he has done the worst he can do to a politician: he has openly supported his opponents in the last two election campaigns.

The Prime Minister's support of Mitt Romney was nothing short of scandalous. Netanyahu, following the orders of his owner, the primitive but enormously powerful casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, campaigned for Romney openly and unabashedly. In return, Adelson created and finances the Yisrael Hayom ("Israel Today&quot newspaper, which, being distributed gratis, now has the widest circulation in the country. Its sole editorial policy is to support Netanyahu through thick and thin.

In the recent US mid-term elections, AIPAC assisted the Republicans again, helping them to turn the Senate into an anti-Obama bastion.
Obama has kept quiet. But he would be superhuman if he didn't plot his revenge. He has done so by secretly encouraging the Europeans to go on with their pro-Palestinian efforts. Now he has come out into the open. The US has announced that it is considering not to use its veto.

[shira]

4. No mention of what will Palestine become....

1. Another failed, racist, totalitarian state with no such things as civil liberties or human rights.

2. No mention of Hamas at all, despite most of the article dedicated to what's happened in Gaza. No reasons why.


Meh.

[Ken Burch]

5. Hamas is not the only thing that matters, shira. The conflict wasn't started BY Hamas

And it's not as though it's either possible to end Hamas or to resolve things without somehow including them.

Chanting "Hamas, Hamas, Hamas" does not end the discussion, much as you would like it to.

Your hero Netanyahu(he whom you never, ever criticize or question in this group)is as much to blame as Hamas or anyone else.
And if he's defeated in the Likud primary by Danny Danon, the advocate of simply never ever ending the war, everything will get worse.

There is no alternative to accepting a Palestinian state. It's impossible to change anything for the better in Palestine until that happens, and it may be impossible to change anything for the better in Israel as well. The status quo is untenable.

[King_David]

6. Hopefully we will be rid of Netanyahu soon

There's no mechanism to be rid of Hamas though.

[Ken Burch]

7. Why do you care about being rid of Netanyahu?

You have defended everything he's ever done here.

And you have to know that nothing other than a two state solution has any hope of bringing peace.

There can't be peace AND continued West Bank occupation AND continued settlement expansion.

Everyone who wants the settlements expanded, whatever they say to the contrary, is actively working against peace.

Nothing good comes of settlement expansion.

It can never lead to a change for the better in the Palestinian leadership(the only change it ever has produced in that leadership was the rise of Hamas...which was the only change the Occupation ever produced).

It can never make it possible for the Arabs to recognize Israel. They HAVE to get a Palestinian state to be able to do that.

It's either Occupation, settlements, and perpetual war and misery...or change and at least the chance of peace.

There's no other choice. There's no other possible way.

[King_David]

8. Can you link to my defenses please....

This should be interesting...

[Ken Burch]

9. I'm not playing that game. No one has the time.

You've defended "the line" over and over again.

You've never criticized(in anything I've read)settlement expansion, OR anything Netanyahu has had the IDF do to people in the West Bank.

You've never criticized The Wall(even though the Israeli government had no right to run that wall past the Green Line and hive off Palestinians from land they owned)

I've never seen you post anything that questioned any aspect of the Occupation at all, or of collective punishment of people in the West Bank or Gaza for the crimes of a violent few.

And you LIVE in the settlements at least some of the time(by your own admission). That, by itself, means you endorse all the propaganda of the Israeli far right. There are no progressives and no supporters of peace living on those settlements-all such people know that to do that would be hypocrisy.

Your entire posting history has been an unquestioning defense of the status quo and demonization as "anti-Israel" (or, by implication, antisemitic)anyone who disagrees with any of the Iron Fist policies.

It's not a matter of any one post. It's pretty much every post you've ever written-all of which could have been posted by Naftali Bennett or Danny Danon.

[King_David]

10. Didn't read all that-/ but I thought not

[Ken Burch]

11. I don't have to post your posts again.

You're posting record is pro-settler, pro-Occupation, anti-peace and anti-dissent. Everybody's read your posts and I have nothing to prove.

(on edit)I just tried to go back and find some of your posts, but DU's site search system now makes it all-but-impossible to do so by name. Will keep trying(though you know perfectly well I'm not making this up)but it may not be technically possible to do so.

[King_David]

13. Ok keep trying...

BTW you mixing up Jewish Zionist Leftish Democrat Gay boy with pro settler ... Which in this group is often mistaken by half the people for Jewish ( Zionist ) and not by the Democratic party supporters in the group ( half )

[Ken Burch]

14. I know that you are gay-but so what?

We all know that about you.

I'd say I support you in your fight against homophobic persecution, but you appear to have that covered, and more power to you.

The fact of your sexual orientation doesn't mean you can never be on the wrong side of history or the pro-oppression side of an issue.

It hasn't stopped you denouncing QuAIA, your fellow LGBTQ people as anti-Israel(and, for all practical purposes, as antisemitic, even though you know they aren't), or from demanding that they be kicked out of the Toronto Pride Parade just for expressing opinions you disagree with.

And it hasn't stopped you from engaging in "pinkwashing" on the I/P issue.

And it hasn't stopped you from abetting the oppression of the Palestinian people by sometimes living on a West Bank settlement and by defending the settlement project(even though you have to know, as an intelligent person, that the settlements are anti-peace).

You'd most accurately be in the category of the "PEP&quot Progressive EXCEPT for Palestine).

Me...I'm against all bigotry and all oppression. And all forms of military occupation.

I don't want ANYBODY held down.

Anywhere.

And I know that Palestinian hostility to Israel has nothing in common with old-time European antisemitism(it's a territorial conflict more than anything else), and the need for Jews to have a place of safety should not have to lead to Palestinians ending up dispossessed and stateless, treated as if they are nothing other than "generic Arabs" who should be just as content in Rabat or Baghdad. Wounds on both sides need to be acknowledged AND healed.

[oberliner]

16. "it's a territorial conflict more than anything else..."

This is the most inaccurate of the many inaccurate items contained in your post.

I know that certain secular, liberal, "progressive including Palestinian" Americans and Westerners like to pretend that religion has nothing to do with the conflict, that pointing out Israel's gay friendly environment is "pink washing", and that everything is simple - just end the occupation. Oh and then allow unlimited immigration of all the descendants (children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren) of Palestinian refugees. Oh and then eliminate the Jewish character of Israel completely so that Muslims are not "second-class citizens". And then after that everything will be good - maybe BDS can be lifted at that point.

Are you against all bigotry and all oppression? As someone who is a passionate about supporting the Palestinian cause, perhaps you have a special responsibility to address Palestinian bigotry as well.

To say definitively that you know "that Palestinian hostility to Israel has nothing in common with old-time European antisemitism" is based on what? Conversations with Palestinians? Have you had any? Or just from reading stuff online?

[Ken Burch]

18. I don't support all of the things that you list there.

Last edited Sun Dec 28, 2014, 12:05 AM - Edit history (2)

I support some RoR, but not for everybody who's a descendant of the dispossessed of '48. I think the elders should be allowed back, with maybe the immediate next generation getting long-term visiting privileges.

(on edit: as to the later generations, they should receive not only compensation, but apologies for the dispossession and an admission that their families didn't deserve what was done to them. They could also get French-style "overseas department" seats in the Palestinian Assembly, and maybe a couple in the Knesset as well).

And I don't call for eliminating "the Jewish character of Israel"-I just reject the idea that repression of Palestinians is ever necessary to preserve that character(It can also be fairly asked whether the actual conduct of the Israeli regime reflects the humane, liberation-based character of the Jewish tradition, but that's for another discussion). You appear to assume that preserving that "character" requires the state to have an ethnic-religious supremacist character...I don't think that's a consensus position even among Israelis.

And I'm not saying it's wrong to point out that Israel is gay-friendly...good for them. What is wrong is to use that attribute of Israeli society(as most of those who pinkwash do, as you know)to imply that progressivity in this aspect of Israeli society means that progressives should take Israel's side AGAINST the Palestinians...should defend and support the Occupation...should pretend that the settlements and the land theft don't matter, simply because Israel is decent towards gay people.

I with all countries were gay-friendly, but that's not what pinkwashing has ever been about. It's been about leveraging decency on one thing in a country to draw attention away from indecency and injustice in another. Plus. we can't be sure that, if the right wing keeps growing(especially the settler right)that those gay-friendly policies will stay in place. At some point, somebody trying to form a government is bound to cut a deal with the settlers and the religious fascists to throw gays under the bus. And I doubt any pinkwasher will say a word in protest, because they'll be too busy defending the latest settlement expansion and accusing anybody who questions anything in the West Bank of anti-Semitism.

And it's absurd to act like the Israeli government has no alternative to do most of what it has done. Every state has options, choices, alternate policy possibilities. Israel has no fewer than any other state.

And it's time to admit that Israel isn't really in a fight to survive. It's going to survive. That isn't in question. Hamas doesn't have the ability to defeat the iDF and never will.

As to Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule, my assertion that most of it is not bigotry(I didn't say there was NO Palestinian anti-Semitism, and you know it) that derives from the fact that Jews living in the Arab/Muslim world in the 1930's and 40's, as opposed to those living in Europe, were pretty much unscathed. If the whole Arab/Palestinian position really did correspond to the right-wing Likudnik "they are the latest in a long line of villains" narrative, the Jews of the Arab/Muslim world would have been rounded up and put on boats to Marseilles or Fascist Rome or Nazi-occupied Athens, where they would have been sent to the death camps. Arabs are not saints, but historically they treated Jewish people in their midst far more decently than Germany, Poland, France, Russia or the Baltics ever did.

This, by itself, proves that the Palestinian position was never based primarily on intractable hatred of Jews.

What's the point of insisting that it's mainly about Palestinian bigotry, anyway? What good purpose does that serve? Demanding that everyone see it that way means demanding that everyone give up on ending the conflict, and demanding tha everyone endorse everything Netanyahy and Co ever did in the West Bank or Gaza.

Palestinians feel a lot of anger at Israel and how Israel has treated them(which, you would have to concede, is massively worse than how any Palestinians have treated Israel and Israelis...the relative casualty counts show who the greater victim is). Insisting that that anger is based on solely or even primarily on bigotry is about saying that Palestinian anger has no legitimacy...that they have no major valid grievances about anything..that they are just being ugly for the sake of being ugly. What good does it to pretend that is the case.

The way to diffuse Palestinian bigotry is to address the valid grievances Palestinians have about the occupation and the settlements(which are still being illegitimately and unjustifiably expanded in the West Bank...and based on no practical need, because there is more than enough room for Israelis to live in Israel proper(behind the Green Line). Water is still being unfairly distributed there, with the illegal and bigoted settlers getting for more than Palestinians get(and there are still examples of utterly pointless acts of collective immiseration of Palestinians, such as the destruction by the IDF of solar panels that the IDF had no good reason to object to, just because the construction of those panels hadn't been approved yet by the IDF high command(which NEVER would have approved of them because the IDF high command hates ALL Palestinians and wants to keep them in poverty just because they can).

Bigotry grows out of these real grievances...people who want to spread it are able to because they have real anger available to twist.
Also, it probably grows(and it shouldn't, but it does)as a result of the constant propaganda from the Likudniks that Israeli Jews(I'm not talking about Jewish people in the Diaspora, whose suffering has nothing at all to do with the I/P situation and which cannot fairly be used to justify the Israeli government inflicting suffering on Palestinians, most of whom, even you would have to concede, are innocent and nonviolent people who haven't harmed anybody, Just as can be said of most Israelis)are the ONLY real victims.

You defeat Palestinian antisemitism by addressing and diffusing the root causes of anger...not by wagging a finger at Palestinians and shouting "don't hate! don't hate! don't hate!".

And you need to address the fact that Israelis are just as bigoted towards Palestinians and Arabs as the other way around. Stop pretending that Israel is always a virtuous victim nation, supremely entitled to claim purity and moral superiority at all times. A nation CAN'T be morally superior AND rule another nation with an iron fist at the same time.

Admit that, and you'll have gone a long way towards understanding and diffusing Palestinian rage...and contributed towards peace.

There is equal pain, equal hate, and equal sin on both sides.



How about just leaving ordinary West Bank Palestinians completely alone...letting them have enough water, letting them have green energy, letting them have jobs and hope? How about admitting that decades of relentless siege haven't made Israel any more secure

[oberliner]

21. Thanks for the thoughtful reply

I don't think I have ever claimed that Israelis are not just as bigoted towards Palestinians and Arabs as the other way around. In fact, I know that many are - and worse - and I think that is one of the biggest problems with modern day Israeli society.

[Israeli]

17. Please ......

And it hasn't stopped you from abetting the oppression of the Palestinian people by sometimes living on a West Bank settlement and by defending the settlement project(even though you have to know, And it hasn't stopped you from abetting the oppression of the Palestinian people by sometimes living on a West Bank settlement and by defending the settlement project(even though you have to know, as an intelligent person, that the settlements are anti-peace). that the settlements are anti-peace).

He has never lived here,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,period .
A tourist would best descibe him.

Its all a figment of his imagination .

" as an intelligent person, " .....who KD ?

[King_David]

20. Your insults and personal attacks against myself are immature

And tiresome .

" as an intelligent person, " .....who KD ?

Not to mention juvenile.

I do get it : I am a very difficult person to "score" points again in debates.

But by constantly taunting that KD ( moi = French - Google it ) is "low in intelligence " or some other childish taunt , it's not me your making look bad in this exchange.

It's like " water off a ducks back"
( Google it).

Kadima ....

[Ken Burch]

22. You're taking it as a personal attack that I called you intelligent?

That's bizarre.

[oberliner]

23. I think you misunderstood

The other poster appears to be mocking the fact that you called him intelligent and so that was the source of offense.

[Ken Burch]

24. Oh. n/t.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

25. Really!!! Dave is a part time settler?

If true that explains everything.

[shira]

12. Hamas is atrocious. All I'm looking for is some balance....

Last edited Thu Dec 25, 2014, 01:10 AM - Edit history (1)

Hamas doesn't get condemned anywhere near as much as Israel. Those writing articles against Israel more often than not defend or support Hamas actions. If you want proof of that, I have plenty.

And they never condemn and hardly acknowledge Hamas' horrific human rights record against the Gazan population.

Your views pretty much line up with theirs.

==========================

Please don't tell me what I think about Netanyahu or the 2-state solution. Just ask next time.

[shira]

28. Don't know whether to LoL or SMH at that one. n/t

[Just for Fun]

31. provide proof that Palestine existed before 1910.

You cannot.

[Just for Fun]

33. No they weren't.

It was Ottoman Empire, not Palestine.

Here is Jordan's version of Palestinian history: http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/his_palestine.html

So there is not a single shred of proof that Palestine existed before 1917 - the Balfour Declaration, and it was that declaration that the part of Israel which had historical evidence that it existed in the past, become the Jewish homeland.

And the only Palestine had a very brief history - 1918 to 1948. 30 years.

Before that, the Ottoman Empire.

Nothing more, nothing less.

[Israeli]

15. Ah ...Danny Danon....

WATCH: Rightists campaign on hate, incitement and arrogance

Two different election campaign videos released by major right-wing candidates have one major thing in common: they are very clear about what and who they are against, yet indicate next to nothing about what they stand for.

http://972mag.com/watch-rightists-campaign-on-hate-and-arrogance/100466/

[Ken Burch]

19. Who do they think they are...AMERICANS?

[on point]

27. Inevitable evolution to single secular state. Only question is how long and how much pain beforehand

[PDJane]

30. A great deal of pain. In part, because a singular Jewish state

is what the aim is at the moment. The idea behind Zionism is that Jews, Christians and Muslims cannot live together without creating anti-Semitism. This is not, as far as I can determine, quite true, as long as the doctrine of being God's chosen people doesn't cause Jews to refuse to assimilate with their neighbours. Unfortunately, that happens all too often.