Dershowitz et al happily endorse funding relocation of Jews – but recoil in horror at any suggestion of funding the relocation of Palestinians.
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Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. – George Santayana, Life of Reason (1905)
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The major issue is not [attaining] an agreement, but ensuring its actual implementation in practice. The number of agreements the Arabs have violated is no less than number which they have kept. – Shimon Peres, Tomorrow is Now (1978)
These excerpts aptly convey the fanatical fraudulence of two-state advocates – at least of those who claim to be pro-Israel Zionists. For in redoubling their efforts to reach their preferred mode of resolution of the Palestinian issue, they seem to have forgotten that the real aim is not an agreement on the establishment of a Palestinian state, but long-term stability and security for Israel.
Desperation, denial and disregard
Seemingly oblivious of – or determined to disregard – the fact that the greater the efforts made to reach such a two-state arrangement, the more Israel’s stability and security have been undermined, twostaters persist in their quest.
Regrettably – indeed, tragically – many in the “intellectual establishment” have embraced the failed formula of two-statism as a corollary of the historically disproven dogma of “land-for-peace,” staking their personal prestige and professional reputation on its desirability and feasibility.
In so doing, they have mortgaged their intellectual integrity to a policy that is demonstrably neither.
Not only is it impossible to justify two-statism on the basis of logical consistency or empirical validity, but its continued pursuit will almost inevitably bring about a situation that directly negate the values invoked for its adoption, and precipitate consequences which are the antitheses of those its advocates intended.
Impervious to fact and reason, its high-profile proponents cling doggedly – some might say obsessively – to it, disregarding the massive accumulation of contradictory evidence and denying the unequivocal significance thereof.
Confronted by the resolute refusal of reality to bend to their will, two-staters are beginning to promote proposals that appear increasingly desperate and detached from the real world.
These defects were clearly evident in the recent proposal by Alan Dershowitz, the analysis of which I began in last week’s column and will continue with this week – not as an ad hominem attack on the good professor, but because, as I pointed out, “given his significant public influence and considerable media access, his well-meaning but ill-advised proposals cannot go unchallenged.”
The insistence of self-professed pro-Israel pundits such as Dershowitz regarding the desirability and feasibility of the two-state paradigm has arguably done more than anything else to nourish the ongoing delegitimzation of the Jewish state and the Zionist enterprise.
Recapping briefly
Readers will recall that Dershowitz suggested that the West Bank can be realistically divided into three effective areas:
• Those that are relatively certain to remain part of Israel.
• Those that are relatively certain to become part of a Palestinian state.
• Those reasonably in dispute (which may well remain part of Israel, but subject to negotiated land swaps).
He proposes that “there would be no Israeli building in those areas likely to become part of a Palestinian state” and “no limit on Israeli building within areas likely to remain part of Israel,” but says nothing about constraining Arab building in these areas – assuming of course any relevant Palestinian negotiator would agree a priori that there are any such areas – itself a giant leap of optimistic faith.
His attitude to the “disputed” areas is especially revealing. He states the “freeze [on Israeli construction] would continue in disputed areas until it was decided which will remain part of Israel and which part of the new Palestinian state.”
Yet he seems to prejudge the outcome of the “dispute,” by refraining from placing a similar freeze on the Palestinians.
And to eliminate any lingering doubt about how Dershowitz really intends the fate of the these “disputed” areas – in which he includes “some of the large settlement blocs such as Ariel” – to be determined, he declares: “An absolute building freeze would be a painful but necessary compromise. It might also encourage residents of the West Bank to move to areas that will remain part of Israel, especially if the freeze were accompanied by financial inducements to relocate.”
Clearly, if the Palestinians are permitted to build in these areas where Jews are not only barred from doing so, but “induced” to evacuate, deeming them “disputed” is little more than a ruse.
For if Palestinian development is allowed, while Jewish development is stifled, the obvious intention is for the area to eventually be transferred to the Palestinians.
It is unlikely that Dershowitz acquired his formidable reputation as a lawyer by counseling such defeatism, or, alternatively, such benevolent largesse, to his clients.
Prejudicial, partisan and perverse
The issue of financial inducements for residents of Judea and Samaria to relocate is of particular importance, for it is a proposal that has been raised with increasing frequency by a number of prominent twostaters, both Israeli and non-Israeli.
Apart from Dershowitz, it has been suggested by former president of the Union for Reform Judaism Eric Yoffie, United Jewish Israel Appeal head Mick Davis, former US diplomat Dennis Ross, US pundit Peter Beinart, former adviser to Ehud Barak Gilead Sher and former Shin Bet head and Labor politician Ami Ayalon, to name a few.
Yet although two-staters appear to have no ethical inhibitions regarding the principle of providing economic incentives to induce people to move, when it comes to its practical application, their preferences seem wildly prejudicial, partisan and perverse.
While they see nothing wrong with funding relocation of Jews to facilitate the establishment of what in all probability will be a failed micro-mini-state providing a haven for radical Islamist terror groups, they recoil in horror at the idea of funding relocation of Palestinians to prevent its establishment. How perverse it that?
After all, the only way the putative Palestinian state will not become a haven for Arab terror organizations is for the Palestinians to behave in a manner diametrically opposed to the manner in which they have behaved for seven decades – arguably even longer.
Two-staters have yet to produce persuasive augments – rather than fervent hopes – as to why this is at all likely.
Until they do, they should not be surprised that many relate to their proposal – at best – as a wildly irresponsible gamble; and – at worst – as what Barry Rubin has termed “betrayal glorified.”
Incomprehensible and indefensible
As time goes by, continuing support of two-statism, by alleged pro-Zionists, as a feasible policy option for Israel, is becoming increasingly incomprehensible logically, and indefensible morally.
For unless we are prepared to embrace the bizarre formula, recently proposed by Shimon Peres, that peace should be pursued with “our eyes closed,” deleting any record of the past from our memories; unless we are prepared to totally dismiss the lessons of experience, clearly continued support for two-statism is fraught with risk and bereft of rationality.
Two-statism is fatally flawed in its logic, because its proponents offer no persuasive mechanism for its successful implementation.
Their only formula is a repetition of what has already failed, without providing any compelling explanation why it is likely to work in the future when it hasn’t in the past.
Two-statism is fatally flawed in its morality because its proponents insist on the implementation of measures that will expose millions of Israelis (and eventually Palestinians) to dire dangers that have regularly resulted from previous attempts to implement similar measures. The only formula they furnish for contending with these dangers is to hope they won’t occur, without providing any compelling explanation for that.
Despite the slim likelihood of success and the disastrous cost of failure, twostaters cling to their haughty, but harebrained, notions, proclaiming that their adherence to failed folly somehow confers upon them intellectual and ethical superiority. Isn’t that bizarre!
And Plan B is? Given all their disproven prognoses, unfulfilled predictions and broken promises, one can only wonder what, if anything, might induce two-staters to recant – or at least reconsider – their position.
After all, over the past two decades, during which the goal of two-states has been vigorously pursued, with huge international endorsement and massive financial backing, all the warnings of the dangers by its opponents have proved true, while all the promises of benefits by its proponents proved false. Yet unmoved by evidence, two-staters persist in their fanatical – see Santayana above – insistence that theirs is the only way forward.
In so doing, two-staters fail in their moral duty – twice.
First, in failing to put forward any convincing argument why their hitherto disastrous doctrine will now succeed and how this miraculous metamorphosis will take place.
Second, in failing to prescribe what measures they propose if such a miraculous metamorphosis does not occur and the Palestinians – for whatever reason – do not dramatically change their behavior patterns, but continue to conduct themselves as they have over the past half-century and more? What if – as in the past – any territory ceded to them is used to mount attacks on Israel? What is the two-staters’ Plan B? What Israeli response, and pursuant policy, would Dershowitz and other twostaters then endorse?
These issues are becoming ever-more pressing and pertinent, especially since all the post-Arab Spring developments across the region make the prospects for two-stater success even more remote, and failure more perilous than ever.
A mega Cast Lead?
But even if we suppose, despite the odds and the evidence, that two-staters are right, and it is possible to locate some mythical moderate Palestinian who is prepared to sign an agreement with Israel in good faith and who genuinely intends to honor it, how is implementation to be ensured? After all as Peres, in a more lucid era, pointed out: “The major issue is not [attaining] an agreement, but ensuring its actual implementation in practice.”
What if for reasons of political – or physical – survival, that moderate Palestinian was forced to renege on the agreement? What if he was unable/unwilling to rein in renegade radicals backed by rejectionist regimes or organizations? What if he was removed from power – either by the ballot or the bullet – and replaced by successors whose raison d’etre was repudiation of the recognition of Israel? After all, as Peres once observed: “The number of agreements the Arabs have violated is no less than the number which they have kept.”
What if, after it is established, it turns out that the Palestinians really meant what they said – that the founding of a Palestinian state is (merely) a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel? What if they really believe their National Charter, that “the partition of Palestine in 1947, and the establishment of the state of Israel, are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time?” What if they act to promote this belief? What if the residents of the Coastal Plain are subjected to anything even remotely approaching what the residents of Sderot have been subjected to for years? This is not an implausible prospect and twostaters have moral duty to provide a plausible contingency plan to respond to it.
Would they demand that Palestinian sovereignty be revoked and the Palestinian state be annulled, because it was established under false pretenses? Would they endorse a massive military campaign in the “West Bank” to quell the violence that made the maintenance of socioeconomic routine in the Tel Aviv area impossible? On a scale and intensity far greater than the IDF’s 2008/9 Operation Cast Lead in Gaza? Along a front much longer (about 400-km. long as opposed to 50 km.)? In topographical terrain far more disadvantageous?
Insane fanaticism or fanatical insanity?
It is astonishing that anyone claiming to don the mantle of enlightened rationality would urge a policy so unlikely to succeed and so likely to wreak appalling consequences on both Israelis and Palestinians.
Indeed, when confronted with the repeated and misguided endeavors to promote measures with such manifest potential for tragedy, one is reminded of a definition of “insanity,” variously attributed to Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain, according to which “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
This, together with Santayana’s above-cited characterization of “fanaticism,” leaves us with an unpleasant dilemma: Should the behavior of two-staters be diagnosed as “insane fanaticism” or “fanatical insanity?”
www.martinsherman.net
Yamit
Nicholai Berdysev is absolutely full of it. You and him will get along just fine. And Yamit enjoy your new groupie Dervolin but (wee problem Yamit) Dervolin seems to be keen that you adore your Israeli leaders…so good luck with that one Yamit. I predict (using all the powers of dialectical materialism…my new religion!!!)that on that basis you and Dervolin will get along great…for about 15 seconds flat!!!!
In life the concrete is what is always vital and the concrete in this discussion is the issue of Syria.
As a Trotskyist the first principle to defend here is the sovereignty issue.
The US and the West has got no right whatsoever in attacking the Assad Government. I mean NO RIGHT! This is especially the case where Assad in Syria represents the secular, and it is this representation of the secular that creates the space for the minority Christian Syrians to actually exist.
Remove that space, remove Assad, and you create a situation in which Syrian Christians are in extraordinary danger.
I find that when people start throwing odd attacks about on the web, on blogs like this, that it is better to draw the discussion back to the concrete. There is nothing more concrete than what is the actual political positions taken on Syria.
Michael I will let you rant on but strip all the false accusations down and you will find just hatred of Trotskyism.
“Clerical Fascist”??? Where? You misunderstand badly! Learn to read more carefully please! When I use this term it is always in connection with Iran, or with the Muslim Brotherhood coups in Egypt, Libya and now Syria.
I have argued that the policies of the Israeli leaders everywhere, without exception, have been facilitating the coming to power in all of these countries of these “clerical fascists”
What should Israel have done? At the time when Obama called his conference in Cairo University (1909 first major Obama foreign initiative) and invited the Muslim Brotherhood, at that precise point the whole of the Israeli and Jewish leadership should have taken determined action.
For example, issue a statement and have it published as widely as possible, and repeat that statement a thousand times, that Israel opposed Obama in inviting the Muslim Brotherhood to his conference (as I said in 2009) a long time ago in political time indeed.
It should have said that the Muslim Brotherhood was “Clerical Fascist” (which is the word that the left used to use to describe such.
That Obama in inviting the Muslim Brotherhood to attend the 2009 Conference in Cairo was indeed declaring war on all progressive thought and movement in the world.
I speculated that the deepening economic and political crisis of capitalism was pushing these western governments, already in an oil alliance with the Arab rulers, WITH SHARIA AND AGAINST SECULAR, driving them to create alliance (to indirectly rule like the Romans) WITH THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD
…(continuing my speculation on what the Israeli leaders might have said to Obama) That Obama inviting the Muslim Brotherhood to his conference placed in extreme peril all who preferred a secular type arrangement in society, especially all Christians in Egypt, and not quite so directly but almost as directly the Jews in the state of Israel. Because Obama by inviting the Muslim Brotherhood was certainly creating the basis for OPENLY adopting the Hamas and Hizbullah against Israel, his main target all along.
Such a statement by the Jewish leaders would have made an appeal to Mubarak to encourage him to fight on against just this Clerical Fascism that Obama and Mrs Clinton were now taking under their wing.
That furthermore Israel would have no more confidence in the Obama Government and would end all discussions with the US about Iran. Israel would go it alone, strike against the Iranian Plutonium enrichment, and that if the slightest movement was made by Hamas or Hizbullah, such as ONE rocket, would proceed to destroy them by all means available.
And so on. It is all there on the Trotskyist great site http://www.4international.me. Not great in its massive readership but in its fight for principle.
I stand by my statements. It’s “odd” that I’d “accuse him of such”?? Did you not read his statments I posted above? He’s no different than the Brown Shirts who painted graffiti on Jewish shop windows during the 30s in Germany. “New to his writings”?? I’ll always be new to his writings: I don’t read such denigrative and asinine garbage. Can you not see that this guy is a retarded anti-Jewish bigot? He seeks to exculpate himself from his anti-Jewish hatred by declaring fidelity to a Zionism and the “real” Jew he defines, not the Zionism and the Jew as defined in the Torah. The Jew of the Torah, in his opinion, is a “clerical fascist” and a capitalist fiend. This is the same kind of degenerate who sent Russian Jews to the Gulag or prevented them from immigrating to Israel. Did you not read what he said about Ted Belman? Is Ted Belman a supporter of “horrific and treasonous policies”? “…a prominent Jewish site which is connected to all other Jewish sites” Ever read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Where do you think his innuendo about a “Jewish conspiracy” among “all other Jewish sites” is coming from? I’m not ok with this kind of language about Jews.
@ Michael Devolin:
Hating treasonous Jewish leaders that have facilitated one slaughter of Jews after another makes him an ‘anti-semite’??
There are different schools of thought, but IMO a gentile can point out the horrific and treasonous policies of Jewish leaders and this does not make him/her an antisemite. Note that I’m not quite as emphatic in my likes/dislikes as he is, but I’ve not detected even the smallest bit of antisemitism from him. It’s odd that you’d accuse him of such, unless you’re new to his writings and posts.
“The Jews are badly served by their Zionist bourgeois leaders. All are joining in with this replacement of secular by Clerical Fascist.” –Felix Quigley
“The Zionist leaders are tied to Capitalism just as much as they were under Herzl and from then on to the present. There is no REAL independent Zionist voice. All of the religious leaders in Yesha are in on this business of being tied to capitalism.” –Felix Quigley
“There now follows an extract from a prominent Jewish site which is connected to all other Jewish sites without exception (called Israpundit):” –Felix Quigley
“For many years I have commented on Israpundit which is controled by a Jewish person called Ted Belman. In recent weeks I have had my comments totally removed by Belman the editor.” –Felix Quigley
“But the Jewish leaders down through the years from that fateful time have lied about this.
“I mean lied lied lied.
“The Bolsheviks and their Russian Revolution saved the Jewish people in Russia from the most terrible Genocides, the real beginning of the Nazi Holocaust.
“But rather than be honest and thankful the Jewish leaders down the years have lied.
“And they will betray their Jewish people to save capitalism.” –Felix Quigley
“That is why the revered and reverend Ted Belman of Israpundit just hates to hear the name of Leon Trotsky uttered, and takes quite dramatic action on his site to ensure that it is not uttered.
“But out of this acorn a great movement will grow. While Ted will wither without any water in the desert sun.” –Felix Quigley
“It is a little like the crisis of leadership which allowed Hitler to march straight into power in Germany in 1933. And that destroyed subsequently half of the Jewish people. But these capitalist, reactionary, pro US Empire Jews have learned nothing!” –Felix Quigley
Not an ounce of Jew-hate in him, eh? This guy is a brain-dead anti-Semite. He doesn’t hate secular Jews, just the money-hungry, “clerical fascist” Jews. He’s such a typical and shameless anti-Jewish bigot.
Solution is for Israel to stop chasing after a Peace Agreement. Why should we seek the illusion of lasting peace? Wars violate treaties. We could sign peace treaties with all the Arabs, and we would still need a large army.
For the gentile nations and their leaders Jews are framed as enemies of peace because Arabs are unflinching. When the Arabs refuse to yield and Jews yield consistently, foreigners take Jewish procrastination in yielding as malicious. The enemy of peace is someone who can yield but does not. Arabs cannot be expected to yield, thus the Jews became an obstacle to peace.
The Arab refusal to yield is recognized as sensible: they are fighting for nationalist goals. Jews, on the contrary, speak in terms of security. Foreigners rightly assume that the current confrontation offers Israel no security, and imposing some restrictions on the Palestinian state answers Israeli security needs.
Arabs have always violated cease-fires with Israel; why imagine they would observe peace treaties with Israel? Israel, on the contrary, would hesitate to violate peace agreement with Arabs and would constrain retaliation for Islamic terrorism.
Compromise is a weasel word as are compromisers: Jews are supposed to compromise on our holiest places: Hebron and the Temple Mount, and the core lands, Judea and Samaria. In return, the Arabs benevolently grant us the right to exist within our Auschwitz borders, besieged by Arabs from outside and swarmed by Arabs from within. That looks more like a capitulation than a compromise.
I have yet to read or hear any serious reasoned explanation why Israel NEEDS a Peace Agreement with the Arabs.
@ jrob:
I agree that Felix does not hate Jews. He has little to no respect for Judaism which he does not understand and has a closed mind to understanding. He gives us historical recognition but that part the Judaism plays he downplays after-all as an ex Catholic and committed Marxist atheist he recognizes only materialism never anything spiritual.
His religion is Marxism, his ideology is Marxism and like Christians has a dream and agenda that is inimical to Jews and Israel if actualized.
In this regard he mirrors Christian fundamentalists, Pro Israel but theologically and ideologically anti Jewish although few will admit to be anti-Jewish but virtually all of them are anti-Judaism albeit from different POV..
For Felix:
You’re welcome to your opinion. Now you know mine.
@ Felix Quigley:
Rumors of our impending demise are greatly exaggerated and premature. I think you are deeply into wishful thinking.
Tell us how we can REALLY become a great nation? I know trotsky,
@ Michael Devolin:
Having corresponded quite a bit with Felix and having read his work for years(as have other here), there’s not an ounce of Jewhate in him.
Thankyou, Yamit. That means a lot to me coming from you. Much appreciated.
@ Michael Devolin:
I like you Devolin. You have a way about you that only the Irish seem to have especially in these times. Directness with an economy of words, w/out the BS.
“And perhaps this is why Jews tend to divide radically on what is to be done and how to do it.”
This is a human tendency inherent in all peoples, not just the Jewish people. Hence the American Revolution, the murder of Michael Collins, Quebec Separatism, the history of Eastern Europe, the foolish imprudence of Marxist-Lennonism. The list is endless. Again, you posit a veiled emasculation of Judaism and the Jews. You’re showing your true colours now.
“Judaism cannot match up to the severe needs of our severe times.”
This is exactly what the German liberals told their Jewish colleagues just before they turned against them for not repudiating their Judaism and their Jewish identity. And this from an Irish Communist/Sinn Fein.
Judaism has outlasted Marxism and Trostky. A lot you know about Judaism. You need to read about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, or the Jewish Partisans. They would have kicked your ass any day of the week. That was Judaism in action. Read about modern Israel’s victories over all her Arab enemies (those enemies whom so many Sinn Fein Irish love and support). That was also Judaism in action. Tell all the Jewish bloggers how Sinn Fein members hate Israel. Tell the truth. Yes, you’re Irish till you die, me too. Only I’m not a Troskyite till I die. Your denigration of Judaism is a veiled anti-Jewish hatred. (And you thought you were going to wander in here and have a chat and just as an aside you would emasculate Judaism.) They kicked an Israeli diplomat out of Ireland not so long ago. I had an article published in the Irish Sun about this. The Sinn Fein Irish would have lynched me would they have caught up with me. They’re not too fond of the Jews, laddie. You would know this. The Republic of Ireland is predominantly anti-Israel/anti-Jewish. And they’re not fond of Jewish history either. They prefer the history written by Yasser Arafat and his anti-Jewish suicide bombers.
@ SHmuel HaLevi:
Not quite “no one”, Shmuel. The massacre of the Seventh Day Adventists at Waco by Federal troops in 1992 was a test, to see how much Americans would tolerate religious persecution. Unfortunately for all of us, we tolerated it all too well, and gave both the GHW Bush and Bill Clinton administrations a pass on clearly criminal, unconstitutional behavior.
@ Laura:
Lets leave it at that. I have nothing against you on this at all.
It is just too much US interference for ill intended purposes to let it pass w/o response. The US government and those such as the “40” etal, must remember that their acts will not any longer be ignored. There are many corners out there no one wants to dig up and expose, including WACO, Texas, very near to where we lived.
I enjoy your comments otherwise.
@ SHmuel HaLevi:
I do not have a problem with your criticisms of our government, which is well deserved.
Speaking for myself, I was never made to feel like a foreigner in this country. I’m sorry you’ve had that experience working in the federal government. I wonder if they would dare say such things to muslims.
I maintain that the large majority of the American people support Israel.
And finally, I am a TRUE NATIVE AMERICAN. I was born here.
Felix Quigley Said:
It is my view that the current problem flows from historical habit. the Jews have tended in the past to operate out of duress in order to survive. this explains the continuing giveaways and need to view security in the form of harmony with its masters. If we give the Jew killers and their allies what they want we will be allowed to live. The Jew must be educated out of this collective psychological malaise to see that they are really now in control of their lives and that decisions made which regard real military limitations are not the same as those built on fear of the masters bloodlust. It is important for jews to be taught to use the tool of double standard analysis to apply to some of the absurd positions they now take. They will then see that they are merely acting to assuage the masters. They must be educated to the continuing swindles of the descendants of the Jew killers in order to see that the current swindles are merely a new covert form of Jew killing in hiding waiting to emerge like a herpes virus. the jew must repudiate any concessions which were made under duress as law recognizes that such agreements are not binding. The Jew must also come to recognize how incredibly perverse were the British and others to swindle and kill the Jews even while they were already being slaughtered and while trying to escape the nazis. there can be no forgiveness for this. That todays europeans exhibit the same perversity.
Felix Quigley Said:
/needs to get out more often
Bernard
I confess i have not studied this Levy Report but from what I have read in second hand reports is this:
1. It is based somewhat on UN American analyses which stated that following the 67 war that Israel did not have to give up ALL of the land occupied by that war
2. The fact is that these analyses were faulty because they were in conflict with San Remo
the jewish land according to the bourgeois rulers of the world was no less that:
present day Israel
Judea and samaria (West Bank)
Gaza
The Sinai (where jews were driven out by beigin once a great fighter)
The Golan Heights
Present Day Jordan where nothing was settled and is very defintiely today NOT settled.
The Jews are a great nation and can be a really great nation.
War is coming. Major war is coming. Be ready.
But being ready means considering all aspects of leadership.
I happen to believe that a Trotskyist party will be built in Israel and part of this belief is that I am determined it will be built.
It will be part of the world proletarian revolution which itself is caused by the interminable crisis and crises of the capitalist system.
The Proletarians of the world, with Trotskyist leadership, will insist that ALL of those territories listed above, and more if necessary, will be devoted to a situation where the JEWS CAN LIVE ALONE and be unmolested by Antisemitism until that too in time can be got rid of.
To Laura
The Spanish are a nation indeed, but they will only be a nation worth inviting into the community of humanity when they end their grizly habit of torturing bulls and other animals for human pleasure
Similarly precisely with the monstrous treatment by the Spanish of the people of South America and however long those had lived there pre Spanish is totally not relevant.
Similary with the new Americans and their treatment of the natives, who were essentially hunter gatherers. They needed the land. Treaties were merely a means of trickery to get that land.
If an American Jew cannot take up THAT position then they either are in or will become the “Kapos” of the future to their own Jewish people also. There is no other alternative.
Wallace et al
The issue is this:
Let me first tell you that I am Irish, not Jewish, will always be Irish etc., totally atheist and so on.
So in this I am on the outside. But that may have its advantages.
1. There is something wrong with Judaism as a modern fighting ideology. At least and I try here to express myself in diplomatic language it is limited and it is that quality that means that it is inadequate to face the perils of the present period, perils that we all face, but which Jews face in a special; way and always have faced, because Jews are the universal scapegoat especially in times of crisis, and this crisis will be worse than any other previous. Note that I say this in the context that I fight for the right to hold religious views and to practice etc., rather this is an opinion about the value of Judaism in a political sphere.
2. That is a fundamental problem right there. Judaism cannot match up to the severe needs of our severe times. And perhaps this is why Jews tend to divide radically on what is to be done and how to do it.
3. As a complement to those above 2 points Jewish nationalism is not that different to any other nationalism, say the Irish, and the main quality of all of these nationalisms is their great perseverance and genuineness, but ALSO and with those stirling qualities that the leaders they all throw up tend to be weak and vacillating.
4. These concepts were/are contained in Trotsky’s wonderful theories of Permanent Revolution which you may have little real knowledge about. these theories and speculations by this great historical personality (working along with Parvus) pinpointed the weakness of national leaderships in carrying out “what must be done” (I am deliberately avoiding jargon)
Obama is sitting around, wondering how to further his objective of putting the Muslim Brotherhood in charge of the Middle East. He ignores the evidence in the Holy Land Foundation case that the Muslim Brotherhood (the Ikwhan) is also trying to take over the US Government from within. After winning the Holy Land Foundation case, the Justice Department has dropped follow up prosecution of other organizations previously found to be unindicted co conspirators found to be parties to that conspiracy such as CAIR. A document in that case showed that many mainstream Muslim organizations conspired in a “settlement process” as a “grand jihad” eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Author Robert Spencer has characterized this process as “stealth jihad.” The authenticity of the documentary evidence was not challenged at trial.
Life is an every day war since the first human landed on E.
I would not touch Gaza with gloves, but make their life so unbearable that they would quit or commit suicide. This is one of their specialty!!!.
@ babara:
There is a solution, Barbara. You just haven’t thought of it.
1. The Government of Israel should approve the Levy report.
2. The Government of Israel should annex Judea and Samaria, citing its rights based on the San Remo agreement and retaining its majority (down from 80% to 66%) but offering compensation to get as many Arabs who do not want to swear fealty to Israel, to go elsewhere to be with their Arab brothers under sharia law. Those who want to stay without swearing fealty, should remain non-citizen permanent residents of Israel.
3. The IDF should take over GAZA as with its constant shelling of Israel it has committed a “casus belli”. Also, Israel’s gift of political rights over Gaza was subject to a TACIT AGREEMENT with a TACIT CONDITION that if it did so, the attacks on Israel would cease. Instead of stopping, they increased, thus a material breach of the agreement.
4. I would then give the GAZANs home rule. This temporary status should satisfy the civil rights savings clause of the Balfour Declaration and the San Remo agreement as modified by the French “process verbal” and the cession of sovereignty over Palestine in Article 95 of the Treaty of Sevres (affirmed in the Treaty of Lausanne). I would suggest the Israeli government retain the right to disbar specific candidates and specific parties from GAZA elections if they are terrorists. The Arabs would not be “surrendering any of their rights by this as prohibited by the process verbal and agreed to by the other parties that interprets the “civil rights and religious rights” savings clause.
5. Many years later, when the Jewish population grew still further so that annexing GAZA would not disturb a Jewish population majority, I would annex GAZA.
In this way World Jewry, through the Government of Israel, its agent, can continue to exercise the political rights it was granted on April 25 of 1920 at San Remo and not be an antidemocratic government or practice “apartheid”as many leftist Israelis claim it is doing. Some polls have shown that many Arabs prefer to remain in a stable, prosperous, Jewish state, rather than continue to fight uselessly for self government.
Since 1920, some Arabs in Palestine have sought to deprive the Jews of their exclusive political rights by violence and by threats of violence. In the US when the Mafia tries to obtain the property of others in this way, we call it extortion..
@ babara:Barbara, It is even better when the commenter uses his eyes to read and his brain to think. See my comment above. Try reading and thinking and then commenting when you have the relevant facts.
@ moishe:Moishe, Yes. I can imagine what would happen with a one state Arab Majority solution. You probably can too. It would mean that Jews would become unwelcome guests in their own National Home. And Jews in the Diaspora, such as in Toulouse, would lose the only place on earth they can go to and not be in the minority. I can also imagine what would happen with a one state Jewish Majority solution and a two state temporary solution followed by a one state Arab majority solution but I don’t think you can..
The peace process is and always has been a charade. According to Pacepa, who had personal knowledge of the matter, Brezhnev told Arafat to pretend to renounce violence and pretend to seek peace. See: Brand, Soviet Russia, the Creator of the Palestinian People and the PLO. http://www.think-israel.org/brand.russiatheenemy.html
Even if all Arabs swore fealty to the State, annexing Judea and Samaria would only reduce the Jewish majority from 80% to 66%. That is because the PA overstates the Arab population in those areas — by about one million. If you have trouble imagining what a two state temporary solution would produce, see: Brand, “Remember the Quraysh”, http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2012/03/remember-quraysh.html Also, it would be helpful for you to look at what Dr. Daniel Pipes has uncovered about Yassir Arafat and the treaty of Hudibyah, a two-tribe solution that went sour. http://www.danielpipes.org/316/al-hudaybiya-and-lessons-from-the-prophet-muhammads and
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/1999/09/arafat-and-the-treaty-of-hudaybiya-updates. If you want the complete story, see: http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2012/06/salubrius-responds-to-eli-hertz-myths.html
Happy Ramadandingdong!
@ SHmuel HaLevi:
America has its own problems. America is not solely sitting around and thinking of Israel.
@ steven l:
The real trojan horse is when you wrap the viper around your neck in a unified state. That is simply no solution, purely a figment of wish fulfillment. Dreaming it will not make it so. We have Syria to show what happens when you attempt to bring two very disparate people together in an artificial entity.
Moishe. It is nice to have someone like you comment- someone with a functioning brain. So rare in these parts.
Oh boy. Can you imagine what will happen with a one state solution. All hell will break out and don’t think your pollyannish solutions (such as the hare brained-loyalty oath) will solve the mess. It is only the possibility of a two state solution that keeps the pot from boiling over.
@ Laura:
I do not feel like a foreigner Laura, I was told many times that I was one…
Even if I held senior staff positions within the US Department of Defense Programs, on the record, many of that element told me in non uncertain terms all about my ancestry.
Now allow me deflate your and others sing song about the majority of the “Americans” supporting Israel. There are several religious organizations numbering millions that are our supporters. I maintain close connections with them.
Yet. The last time I checked the US Government faithfully represents the will of the majority of the people. Meaning in plain English that… well you can get to the rest.
If you do not like the way many of us in Eretz Israel feel about the insolent, undermining, sabotaging US Governments, (their specially vicious detention of Pollard is another example), please feel free to get back to where your loyalties are.
Far worse was done by the European hordes to most TRUE NATIVE AMERICANS.
The ORIGINAL inhabitants of the Continent have National names Laura, they were there thousands of years before the Europeans arrived to the “new” continent.
In California alone there are some 120 “ambulant” tribal groups and I visited the “reservations cum concentration camps” in most cases limited by barbed wire in three states.
The US will NOT get a free ride on that while passing judgement and threats to Jews in Eretz Israel. NEKUDAH!
The “natives” may have migrated from Asia. I will continue to call them Indians or American Indians instead of the politically correct term that historical revisionists have given them. I was born here, I am a native American. If you feel yourself to be a foreigner that doesn’t belong in America, you are free to leave.
The American people don’t attack Israel or Jewish rights in Israel. Stop conflating the American people with the White House and State Department’s policies. The irony is that those who hate Israel also tend to hate America while the most patriotic Americans tend to support Israel. I’m getting tired of the hostility towards America I increasingly find here.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History:
http://books.google.com/books?id=ltSIOnW6XLsC&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=the+politically+incorrect+guide+to+American+indians&source=bl&ots=sXatxYayur&sig=Z-i1SRPteR23ADZgmLusLldrT-Y&hl=en&sa=X&ei=BRkMUJG_D6H20gGUzeyEBA&sqi=2&ved=0CF0Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=the%20politically%20incorrect%20guide%20to%20American%20indians&f=false
@ Laura:
Well Laura, as soon as the United States as represented by those elected by descendants of foreigners including myself, STOP passing false judgment on Eretz Israel and our ancestral Heritage, sabotaging, blackmailing, in fact attacking Jewish rights and Jews here, one may consider not exposing the US about their true aberrations against those they despoil to this day. It is high time to proceed to present facts in a fashion far more accurate than the basis they use to attack us. I know in person how the “Indian reservations” are operated, in depth I know.
The Natives in the Continent the European invaders labeled America were not more or less violent against each other than the marauding Europeans were in Europe and around the world. AND to the best on my knowledge NO INCAS, DIAGUITA, PATAGON, AZTECS, SIOUX, COMANCHE, etc, sailed to Europe and grabbed lands there.
My campaign to expose the US crude duplicity is gaining some hold in various forums.
A state for the “Palestinians”, a fabricated entity, is nothing but a Trojan horse in Israel. Another way to divide the Jews.
The American Jews on the left are supporting Obama!
@ SHmuel HaLevi:
I reject the politically correct term “native American”. I was born here, therefore that makes me a native American. Furthermore, since there had not been a country called America before Europeans came, by definition the Indians can’t be considered the first and only true Americans. And far from having been the peaceful people as portrayed by politcally correct history, Indian tribes warred against each. And contrary to popular misconceptions, the Europeans settlers didn’t come to kill Indians, but it was the Indians who attacked them simply for being there and they defended themselves.
There’s no need to attack America in order to defend Israel. Usually the people who are anti-Israel are also anti-American. So I don’t think EM would have a problem with your take on American history.
The term “disputed territories” is another term like “occupied” which lends credence to fraudulent claims on jewish land. How is it possible that land guaranteed under the binding international law (e.g. San Remo, League of Nations Mandate Trust and successor UN Charter) to be designated and facilitated to encourage Jewish settlement, west of the Jordan River can be disputed? The one thing that is INDISPUTABLE is the clear, unequivocal, overt, uncanceled, unexpired right of Jewish settlement west of the Jordan River. I would like to see what Israeli and international courts have to say about these unexpired JEWISH rights. Would they say that becuase the state of Israel only is soverign west of green line then JEWISH rights are canceled east of green line? Would they say that the mandate is canceled, though unfulfilled, for the land between green line and Jordan River due to birth of state of Israel? I would like to see the reasoning for the denial of these rights which are enshrined on the altar of international law(laws which seem to never favor the Jew). Any arguments given would show the Jews the lies and double standards of their detractors and kapo jews allies. What has allowed this right to be obscured is the confusion of State rights(Israel) with Jewish rights of settlement west of river. What has allowed this muddying of the waters are successive Israeli govts who consider themselves to be cunning in allowing this fact to slip from the consciousness of Jews. I can see a reasoning for not annexing Y&S at this time but I see no legal reason, or impediment, for not facilitating and encouraging JEWISH settlement between the green line and the Jordan river as mandated under international law. I am unable to see when and how these LEGAL rights of JEWS were lost. DUH, silly me!
@ E.M.: The faux “palestinians” already have 2 states which have been carved out of the original Palestine mandate territory for the Jewish homeland. The fact that they have these states and an overwhelming majority of the jewish homeland is not only due to the endless swindling of Jews by the usual suspects but to the ongoing “special” quality of Jews. By special I am not referring to the chosen people, the wily “negotiator”, the cunning people, the smart jewish lawyer(dershowitz), etc. I am referring to that special quality which allows a people to be repeatedly hoodwinked and believe it is special. A territory is acknowledged and designated to be the jewsih homeland and then immediately 77% is severed from it to create a JEW FREE state called trans jordan. Jewish settlement is intenationally guaranteed to be “encouraged” west of the jordan river and is immediately discouraged by those designated as trustee to ffacilitate the settlement and ignored to this day by those wily jewish “negotiators”. A second defacto JEW FREE state has emerged from another severed part of the “jewish homeland” and now the world clamors for a third in the spirit of the emperors new clothes. Furthermore even contiguity is to be severed from the “jewish homeland” to make the JEW FREE states contiguous. The Jews win repeated wars against the jew killers and become convinced to return the lands in the framework of international conventions which NEVER are applied to the Jew. EG visits to shalit, targeting of civilians, ethnic cleansing of jews from arab lands,etc. When will the Jews wake up and repudiate all the double standards applied to them and employ the military means to accomplish it. Israel has the right to target civilians in its enemies cities including the saudi financiers of dead jews. Israel has the right to seize land and assets of the killers and their financiers; Israel has the right to liquidate the financiers of dead jews in the banking centers where they reside. Israel has the right to return the slaughters of 2000 years on Europe; Europe is the greatest current ally of those who seek to swindle and kill jews. Admonishment to “turn the other cheek” is the biggest swindle of the jews. There is a Jamaican saying “play fool to catch wise”. I would like to add that the Jews have played “wise” to become the fool.
@ E.M.:æInto the Fray: Mad hatters, flat-earthers, two-staters and “poetic truthers”
These are the Truthers who actually believe the Narrative of Perpetual Palestinian Victimhood”, including that the so called “Palestinian Arab People”, i.e the Arabs local to Palestine, is a genuine people and have long wanted self government. Is Dershowitz a “poetic truther”? It seems so from what Sherman has written. Poetic truths can’t be dented by facts, logic, or reason. http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2586/palestinian-victimhood-narrative But even if one ignores that the Palestinian Arab People were invented by the Soviet dezinformatsia in 1964 when they used the term for the first time when they inserted it in the preamble to the 1964 PLO Charter drafted in Moscow , Brand, Soviet Russia, The Creators of the PLO and the Palestinian People, http://www.think-israel.org/brand.russiatheenemy.html and also invented a non-existent passion for self government corroborated only by the first 422 members of the “Palestininan National Council” formed contemporaneously and consisting of 422 Arabs hand picked by the KGB, Brand, Was there a Palestine Arab National Movement at the End of the Ottoman Period? http://www.think-israel.org/brand.palnationalism.html one must still deal with Arafat’s winks and references to the Treaty of Huddibyah when he was attacked by other Arabs for negotiating with the Jews instead of killing them. You must forget “Remember the Alamo!” and think “Remember the Quraysh”! http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2012/03/remember-quraysh.html Under the two state solution some land of the dar al Islam, namely Israel inside the Green Line, will still be under infidel control. See: Daniel Pipes, “Al-Hudaybiya and Lessons from the Prophet Muhammad’s Diplomacy” http://www.danielpipes.org/316/al-hudaybiya-and-lessons-from-the-prophet-muhammads and “Updates”, http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/1999/09/arafat-and-the-treaty-of-hudaybiya-updates I have suggested that Dershowitz and I should debate the question but I haven’t heard from him. Sherman would likely do much better than I in a debate with Dershowitz. I think he or some friends of his may also have suggested a debate to Dershowitz. Mr. Sherman has written an excellent review of Dershowitz on the two-state solution.
E.M. Said:
Israel is solid as a rock. The arab world is in the toilet. The only denial Israel is in is why every “palestinian” is not immediately given a one way ticket to Jordan – today
@ E.M.:
Please advise. Is it palestimians or palesimians…
And after you clarify that one, please tell us all who was the pale………. president elect before arafat. In fact, tell us where was their elected parliament seated, which flag they flew, etc.
As an item of general information be advised that ERETZ ISRAEL is JEWISH since at least 2700 years before the US assumed the Native Americans Lands, decimated them and sent the remaining ones into “federally controlled reservations” 480 of them still functioning to this day. (See, Secretary of the Interior, Bureau of “Indian Affairs”, Washington, DC, USA).
And in particular accept that the cult of death called islam was aborted at least 1500 years after the Jewish Land was set in place.
There shall be no pale……. state at all. We are not in the business of giving away our Heritage so others can have oil and markets. Clear enough?
Those mass murderers only live to kill others or each other.
Listen, Dershowitz, despite writing a good book, is a Kapo, that is one of those guys opening the doors to the gas chamber while the SS got the capsules ready. Anybody advocating a Palestinian state is a Kapo or an Antisemite