By Ted Belman
Ever since 1967, I have read Commentary from cover to cover and kept all the issues. But I no longer worship them as I did. For one thing there is a lot of opinion to choose from these days and for another thing, Seth Mandel in this weeks Commentary Mag took Dani Dayon to task for his “wrongheaded” comments in the NYT article.
Mandel accused him of ignoring “both an accepted reality and the Palestinian people”. Further that “two of his ideas contained in the op-ed would be, if accepted, detrimental to the American foreign policy doctrine that results in such steadfast American support for Israel.”
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“It is much easier to understand why the Times chose to publish the op-ed: the American left would like to frame the debate as consisting of two points of view–Dayan’s and J Street’s. Both are outside the mainstream consensus on this issue, and it is only up against Dayan’s arguments that the hard-left can appear reasonable. With regard to Dayan, there are three questions he should be asked after writing this op-ed.
First, the obvious: What about the Palestinians? Dayan doesn’t say Israel should give the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria voting rights. If he would, is he not concerned about the demographics at play? If he would not, is he suggesting that the Palestinians should be a permanently stateless people and that Israel would be permanently without clear national borders? He writes that Israeli security should be paramount, but the Judea and Samaria he envisions would be a long-term security nightmare for Israel.
Second, has he thought through the implications to U.S. foreign policy of his proposal? Specifically, he seems to want the U.S.–a principal external force on the peace process–to ignore its own dedication to the right of self-determination for the Palestinians. But that would mean weakening American devotion to the general principle of self-determination, which is a major driving force behind continued American support for Israel. Does Dayan, as a political figure in a country whose right to exist is constantly being questioned by a resurging global anti-Semitism, not just in the Arab states but all over Europe, really want to weaken American support for the idea of a right to self-determination?
Additionally, Dayan writes that the return of the Palestinian refugees from around the Arab world to the Palestinian state would be a major security threat. But he also acknowledges that those Palestinian refugees are treated as second-class citizens in those countries and kept in squalor elsewhere (chiefly by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency). Should they stay that way? And isn’t a primary goal of Israeli national policy to convince the Palestinians to return to a Palestinian state, not Israel? Humanitarian concerns often clash with security concerns, but that doesn’t mean we ignore the humanitarian concerns altogether–it means we go back to the drawing board and get creative, not give up.
And finally: Dayan claims removing the settlers would be impossible. Why? Today there are no settlers in Gaza. He’s also moving the goal posts; many of the settlements would remain in Israel as part of any final-status agreement. Israel’s critics often dishonestly ignore this when speaking in broad terms about The Settlers. Dayan is making the same mistake, and playing right into their hands.
The fact is, Dayan is right that the current Palestinian leadership prefers the status quo, and are not making the effort needed to secure a deal. He’s also right that a Hamas takeover of all of the future state of Palestine would immediately nullify the peace deal, and anyone who thinks Hamas isn’t still dedicated to Israel’s destruction is not paying attention. But it would be more constructive if Dayan made these critiques of Mideast policy as part of an effort to reform the current structure of the two-state solution in ways that might make it more workable, not less.
Except where Mandel agrees with Dayan, I disagree strongly with everything he wrote.
@ Squall:
Times have changed and the Arab view of the territories today is far different from Arafat’s. I was present when he was asked about the settlements and the settlers. His answer: The settlements are not on what he considered Arab land and he wanted the Settlers to remain because he saw them as an engine for the “Palestinian” economy. As much as he was a despicable, rotten, pedophile, in this regard he was relatively benign.
The article by Seth Mandel in Commentary is another reason to stop reading Commentary. The lines in this country are already drawn. The Left will not budge from any of its failed,lunatic policies nor will they listen to any other voices than their own. So for Commentary to repeat and reprint the same leftist garbage is an insult to its presumably intelligent readership.
In the first place the “palestinians” have no legal or historical right to statehood on Israeli land. And secondly their acts of savagery against Israel forfeit their right to self-determination.
How the arab countries treat the “palestinians” is not Israel’s problem.
Joe Hamilton Said:
In time the swindle must be reversed. Jews have a right to rely on agreements made not on agreements broken and replaced. If the world does not give justice to the Jews then justice must be seized.
Yidvocate Said:
NOt only that: 77& of palestine mandate territory was severed and created and maintained JEW FREE. this banning of Jews to settle their own homeland on the mandate territory DESIGNATED FOR JEWS is their palestine and all of gaza should be transferred there in the same way the jews were tranferred by Sharon and by Arabs from their countries. Why is it the jews responsibility to create a contiguous arab state. This is all part of a conspiracy to continue to swindle the jews which originates in europe with the europeans.
I have written a line by line response to Mandel and sent it to American Thinker for first publication.
We received our new air conditioner today. Not much of a shocking set of new is it? Anyway, the installing team spoke Arabic and I felt that working while fasting would be quite an effort so we offered to them to rest anytime they felt like.
They both crossed themselves and laughed. Both Christians living in Ma’alot. Both serve in Tzahal and both help in Yehuda and Shomron.
Remind me why I should give a flying f…petunia about pseudo Jews, AKA unJews again? I keep on forgetting. (My friend Jack coined this phrase).
As far as I am concerned, Mandel and the rest of them can shove their self justifying as assimilating former Jews stupid “views” deep where the Sun does not shine.
@ Yidvocate:I agree “What Palestinians”. The group of trespassers were mainly brought in by the worst country in world history formerly Great now Dhimmi Britainstan. The Fakestinians have absolutely no right to remain in the Jewish national homeland (JNH). In a census by the Ottoman Empire of the area that encompassed the JNH in approximately 1900,due to the racist, anti-Jewish muslim supremacist policies of the Ottoman empire the majority of the population was Muslim but only approximately 5% were Arab. Even a portion of these Arabs only came when the Egyptians conquered part of what today would be Southern Israel before they fell victim to the British empire.Other Arabs were only living in the JNH in 1900 because of jobs provided by Jewish immigration when the modern Zionist movement began in 1882. It is not a coincidence that the vile beast Yasser Arafat was born in Cairo or that the Fakestinians never referred to themselves as “Palestinians” until the mid 1960s. The Jewish National Homeland according to the treaty of San Remo encompasses what is today the nation of Israel , Judea Samaria,Southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, Gaza and Western Jordan whose eastern border would be a line directly following the Damascus railroad line that connected Damascus to cities in the Arabian peninsula westward to the Jordan River and the Golan Heights. The Jewish People need to keep at least Judea Samaria and the Golan Heights in order to have room for the expected great increase in the Jewish population of the JNH in the next 50 years.
@ Yidvocate:
It would take 500 words to reply and I didn’t have the time. I’ll try to get to it tomorrow.
Ted, it’s vital to state all the reasons you disagree strongly with Mandel. Can I suggest:
First: What “Palestinians”? Why should these Arab’s statelessness be Israel’s concern and how does it prevent Israel from having clear national borders? Mandel doesn’t bother to say and my little brain can’t figure it out.
Second: No one is denying these Arabs their right of self-determination. Only let them self-determine somewhere else. They have no place in the ancient homeland of the Jewish people they detest so much. They have 22 other Arab and over 50 Muslim countries they can self-determine in (as if other Arabs enjoy such rights!). We only have this sliver that the world order had recognized as uniquely ours. Mandel would have us dimihtude ourselves to the likes Obama and Clinton to our destruction as a preferred way forward.
Third: The diseased mindset of the demented Left never ceases to amaze me. Underlying Mandel’s world outlook is the acceptance of a true peace that has one peace partner forbidding the other from any residence on any of his newly created stated carved out of the heart of the other – on penalty of death! This makes sense to Mandel.
Mandel wrote : “[…]many of the settlements would remain in Israel as part of any final-status agreement.”
How does he know that ? Does he know what Abbas and the Hamas are ready to accept ? Because even Clinton, Beilin and Barak thought they knew until Arafat left to launch the second intifada.
Dayan already thought about the “solution” of making the security barrier the border between Israel and a palestinian state. That’s why he cited the figure of 160000 settlers. Mandel is a moron.