When I write essays, like the one I recently published on antisemitism in The New York Times, people sometimes respond with questions via email or Twitter.
Beinart, you must think your audience are a bunch of idiots. But as Norman Finkelstein said, you're only clever in your cult. You can dress up your desire to destroy Israel in whatever clothing you like, but the rest of us can see right through it. This claim that *Israel* has a right to exist but its *political system* doesn't is total nonsense. And yes, it is unfair and it is anti-Semitic.
When the US criticizes other countries, we criticize their *policies.* We don't like that China mistreats Uighurs and we don't like that Xi is a dictator. But we don't say "China is an inherently oppressive country because not everyone who lives there is Chinese. China must change its name and inherent nature to be a state for all its citizens." And you know why we don't say that? Because countries have the right to national characters. When the Irish were agitating for independence, the British didn't accuse them of racism and discriminating against non-Irish people. The idea is absurd.
One more example: I have never seen the US or the UN or anyone else criticize any Arab state (including Palestine) simply for being an Arab state and discriminating against non-Arabs.
In fact Beinart recognizes in this column that only some Palestinians consider Palestine to be encompassing everyone who lives there. Those of us who read Palestine's constitution know this to be false. Yet Beinart seems to think contrary to all evidence that if the Palestinians are given the vote, the result will not be a sharia controlled fascist dictatorship that identifies as a Muslim and Arab state explicitly, and therefore a racist one by his own logic, like Palestine is now. It is a good thing therefore that Beinart is not taken seriously by anyone.
I think the argument in the JewishCurrents piece is making a different point.
Under the current regime of international law, the State of Israel has a _legal_ right to exist merely because it already exists and no other state or political entity has any superseding claim to deny her that right now or ever. But Beinart seems to take issue with American Jewish groups moving the goalposts to claim that the State of Israel has essentially a _natural_ right to exist specifically as a Jewish state, even though Israel has effective control, directly or indirectly, over all people living between the river and the sea, of which Jews are a slight minority. That’s in direct tension with basic liberalism, which holds that only individuals have natural universal rights and one individual’s or group’s rights cannot supersede another’s.
The two-state solution was proposed as way to establish a Jewish-majority State of Israel that was consistent with liberalism, but Beinart believes that for all practical purposes that tension can never be resolved with any kind of 2SS that would ever be palatable to Israeli Jews so he abandoned it. It's at root a simple liberal argument, not some wild-eyed leftist clap-trap.
So far from Beinart looking like someone trying to pull the wool over the eyes of his “idiot” readership, he looks more and more like a cold-eyed realist about the illusory and doomed nature of the 2SS. Beinart’s critics would do well to understand the appeal that position has for liberals in the US and elsewhere who have grown disillusioned with the “peace process”, Israeli intransigence, and PA dysfunction and corruption.
The way I'd put it is that states are legitimate but there is no right to have a state whose political system grants you legal supremacy over people of a different religious/ethnic/racial group.
According to whom, Beinart? Because the vast majority of states do grant legal supremacy to one group over all the remainders, most notably Palestine. Meanwhile in Israel all CITIZENS are equal under the law.
Whoops careful by this criterion both China and India are out. And frankly so are most of the Arab countries they bar Jews. For someone with your knowledgebase I expect better. Sorry.
About 20% of Israeli citizens are arabs, with full citizenship rights, and all other Israeli citizens, of whatever race or ethnicity, have full citizenship rights.
Paul, you're conflating two separate problems here. Ending the occupation and Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state are two fundamentally different issues no matter how much you and Beinart try to pretend like they are one and the same. Are we supposed to believe that if Israel ended the occupation and created a Palestinian state tomorrow, Beinart, Ali Abunimah, yourself, and all the other anti-Zionists would stop claiming that a Jewish state is inherently discriminatory and that Jews actually do have a right to their own state separate from all the rest? I find that difficult to believe.
The United Nations through their International Convention on Civil and Political Rights has made it quite clear many times over that all peoples, including the Palestinian people, have the right of self-determination. So either the UN is in direct tension with basic liberalism or you and Beinart are wrong. I'm going to go with the latter.
Beinart is not a realist in any sense. Like many leftists he is good at identifying problems but woefully lacking when it comes to finding solutions. You think the 2SS is "illusory" and "doomed?" Beinart's one state solution is even more so: neither side wants it, it's in direct contradiction with international law and in history, and will result in civil war and suffering on a scale heretofore unseen in the conflict. Pushing for it is not realistic in the slightest. The 2SS effectively already exists already, de facto if not in name.
And as much as one can criticize the historical treatment of Jews in Muslim lands, it was certainly better than the treatment of Jews in most Christian lands at the time!
Honestly the reversal of these situations to me seems largely the result of the Allied handling of the former Ottoman Empire after WWI, as in seemingly every other situation we can just blame the British!
The Kurds as a people and a nation, like Jews or Palestinians, have a right to self-determination, but that right can be respected, in principle at least, even if Kurds live as political minorities spread out in different pluralistic nation states--Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, etc. The world, the UN, and other international institutions are perfectly fine with this situation. The Kurds might like to have a state of their own and western liberals like me might like to see them get one, but there is no legal regime or universalist ideology that asserts a natural right to a political nation-state with borders drawn to ensure a Kurdish majority. More importantly, there’s currently no politically feasible path to achieve an independent Kurdish state however desirable to outside observers that end goal might be. There are plenty of Kurdish “Zionists” in that regard but very few non-Kurds take that position seriously considering the obvious political challenges.
As for my post above, I was writing my mistaken interpretation of Beinart’s position in the two articles (and I’m pleased to see that he personally corrected it) in response to your vitriolic attacks, not my own (I support 2SS in principle but am increasingly disillusioned and seeing it now as a pipe-dream in practice. The status quo is unsustainable so alternatives are needed—there’s basically no political will to make 2SS happen, the “Camp David / Blame Arafat” narrative is now 20 years old and is more of a facile excuse than an illuminating explanation at this point, so I fault persistent Israeli rejectionism as a major reason for lack of progress since then. Maybe this is the “Andrew Sullivan” position?) If the occupation ended tomorrow, I agree with Beinart that Israeli subjugation of Palestinian rights would probably not end but also believe rocket attacks and border security risks to the State of Israel would also not end.
I dispute your claim that my opinions are "vitriolic attacks." If Beinart doesn't wish his offensive views to be criticized he should consider putting them on a site without a comment section.
In response to your Kurdish example, allow me to quote the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights: "1. All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development." Key phrase there: THEY determine their political status. THEY decide if they want to have their own state or if they want to live as a political minority spread out across states. THEY decide. NOT. YOU. So there's your legal regime or universalist ideology.
I see no reason to deny the Kurds their rights because Internet commenters thousands of miles away flippantly decide there's "currently no politically feasible path to achieve an independent Kurdish state" while ISIS and the Assad regime slaughters them. Not that that's a reasonable point anyway, because you're ideologically against it as well.
An injustice inflicted on one group doesn't justify an injustice inflicted on another somewhere else. As I said, the Kurds have been slaughtered in Syria, in Turkey, and elsewhere precisely because they are weak without a state of their own, yet for some reason you find a continuation of the status quote acceptable? And in favor of the Israeli Jews being subjected to a similar fate?
There's also a difference between preventing a people without a state from getting one and depriving a people who already have a state of it. They are both morally wrong, but the latter latter is explicitly against international law. And as you yourself said, Israel has a legal right to exist and there's nothing you or Beinart can do about it. Thank God.
Legalism is a dubious basis on which to construct a philosophical argument.
Anyway, if ethnic groups should have the right to self-determination, then why has Israel consistently resisted Palestinian unilateral independence? The fact that many Palestinians are waging war against Israel (and vice versa!) shouldn't undermine the basis of their fundamental human rights, if indeed you actually believe human rights should have any validity here.
As to the conflict between state sovereignty and human rights, well... Hannah Arendt knows better than I do, but I'm more skeptical of the state side of things myself.
With regard to the "one-state solution" versus the "two-state solution" I don't have any personal preference or indeed any stake in the matter, but it has become my impression that for all intents and purposes (i.e. not just nominally), most Israelis and Palestinians oppose the "two-state solution", with the preferred alternative left poorly specified, and the only people who meaningfully support it are Americans.
The one thing I personally think would be and is already an ongoing disaster is the sort of "one-and-a-half-state solution" that is the status quo. The more the status quo becomes entrenched, the more difficult it becomes to dispel unflattering comparisons to past South Africa. Thanks, Ariel Sharon!
Elsie, I’m not making a legalistic argument. The law is quite clear that not only do states have the right to exist, including Israel, but trying to destroy them is a violation of international law, and nations have the right of self-determination. It is in fact you , Beinart, and the other anti-Zionists who are arguing against the law and basic morality as usual.
Israel is only against Palestinian self-determination in so far as that ideology has been weaponized against its people. Israel has been willing to accept a Palestinian state alongside it since as far back as the 1940s. Israelis do not say Palestine is a racist state for being Muslim/Arab and they do not call the Palestinians racists for wanting their own state. This is not a two sided issue, it is a not a two way street. Palestine and and their anti-Zionist allies are simply in the wrong.
Apartheid label against Israel by legal definition is absolutely false. Apartheid is segregated a race within a state. Israel has African Jews and. Jews are a natio n culture ( as well as religion - unique to Jews) and so are Arabs- is a culture and nationality . This is a dispute over disputed borders between 2 different culture societies and Israel is already declared legally as a Jewish majority state- it cannot be a crime of an apartheid by definition for many reasons. The HRW has deceptively changed the universally recognised legal definition of Aparthied to discredit Israel. Arab Palestinians could have had an independant state but they rejected it from 1948 etc
I personally have no objections to a Kurdistan, ideologically or otherwise, if one could merely snap their fingers and will it into existence. But that’s not the way the world works and international law makes no pretense that it does either. There is nothing in your quote that conflicts with this observation. You tell me explicitly the means with which you would propose to bring a Kurdistan into existence, then I will explain my objections. War on Syria, Turkey, and Iraq? Who would wage it? What about those who live there and don’t want war imposed on them? What does international law say about that? Moving political boundaries are zero-sum—what one party gains, another loses. Who decides whose rights lose out to another’s? Let’s agree that it shouldn’t be keyboard warriors thousands of miles away. Defining rights of self-determination in terms of political boundaries is untenable.
Back to Israel as a Jewish state. My primary objection is to the framing of it as an ideological matter of some inalienable right. That is, that a party can be passively entitled to have someone else give it to them at the expense of other impacted parties. I see a 2SS with a Jewish majority state as a desirable, but manifestly-political outcome, in which the onus falls on the party in question—Israel-- to actively make it a reality by political means, including making the hard choices and sacrifices that Israeli Jews have become loathe to make. If they are unwilling to do that—and all indications of the last 20 years says that they are unwilling--then it’s perfectly justifiable for observers to move to support a binational “equal-citizenship- for-all”1SS as default. It’s not my position yet, but that’s where I think a lot of liberals who follow the issue are headed.
So you’re not ideologically opposed to a Kurdish state or a Jewish state. Then do you disagree with Beinart’s entire column? Because he’s arguing the opposite.
Well, considering your nom de plume is "Anonyomous", and you effectively sign your comments as such, you are—like the rest of us—more pseudonymous than truly anonymous, and indeed if your comments were truly, i.e. individually, anonymous, how could the allegedly persistent correctness be attributed to you and you alone?
Far from being anonymous, you are instead just "*that guy* [who wears a Guy Fawkes mask like it's 2008]": https://xkcd.com/1105/ Oooh, so edgy!
The absurdity of some of these comments is truly stupefying. Is wanting to abolish segregation on the South equivalent to destroying it or wanting it to cease to exist? The two-state solution, Israel’s version of “separate but equal” offers neither separateness nor equality, let alone sovereignty, to the Palestinians, and merely implements formally, in perpetuity, some of the very same systems of oppression that the Jews have struggled under throughout their history. What has Peter done other than to confront this fact with the utmost honesty and courage, and search his conscience for a better way forward while staying true to his principles and faith? The Palestinians and Israelis may seem very different and incompatible at the moment, but as Peter has eloquently and extensively written about in the past, a justice and human rights-based approach can completely transform their attitudes towards each other. Before too long they would hopefully come to realise what many of us who know both communities well already know: That they have so much in common and ultimately have nothing to fear.
How does a two state solution formally implement oppression? A strong majority of Israelis and Palestinians both wants states of their own, why do you feel you know better than them what's best for them?
Palestinians would be happy with a state on some of Palestine. Israel won't be happy till it has all of Palestine. And please don't tell me about all the beautiful offers Israel gave the Palestinians, especially Trump's steal of the century.
Would they, Sean? Ever heard the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"?
"Tens of thousands of supporters watched the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, speak from a large outdoor stage in the shape of a ship with a model of Jerusalem’s Al Aksa Mosque. Denying speculation that Hamas would turn its attention to nonviolent resistance, Mr. Haniya said: “Today we say it clearly. Armed resistance and armed struggle are the strategic way to liberate the Palestinian land from the sea to the river.”"
Who should we believe, Sean? You, or the Palestinians themselves?
The PA, Israel’s security contractor in the West Bank has taken the path of nonviolent resistance and were has it got them. More and more settlements, more and more evictions, more and more killings, more and more violence by the settlers aided by the IDF.
As for Hamas, some say that it is a creature of Israel, just like the PA.
Nice talking points, but let's stay on topic. When you say "Palestinians would be happy with a state on some of Palestine," which Palestinians are you talking about? You can't possibly mean the Palestinians in general.
If the PA and Hamas are contractors and creatures of Israel, then who represents the Palestinians? And if the answer is no one, what are you basing your statement on? Are you a mind reader?
When you say that Israel would be happy with a Palestinian state on some of Palestine, which Israelis are you talking about? Surely not Netanyahu, if your quotation of him is anything to go by.
If the Israeli government does not represent all Jews, then who represents the Jews?*** And if the answer is no one, what are you basing your statement on? Are you a mind reader?
***Note: it is antisemitic to hold diaspora Jews responsible for the policies of the Israeli government, so you probably shouldn’t suggest that the Israeli government speaks for all Jews.
Well, being Palestinian myself and the son of refugees I think i do have some idea. First, the Israeli governments of the last 20 years have not, as far as I know, support a 2-state solution. Second, your opinion is probably based on surveys done of Palestinians living in the West Bank only and not those still in Gaza, refugee camps and the diaspora. Third, numerous studies have shown that while, as you say, Palestinians in the West Bank do support the 2-state solution in principle, their views change drastically when the details of what Israel has in mind are explained to them: Limited access to resources, all settlements stay in place, démilitarisation, financial subordination, Israeli control of security and intelligence etc…
First, Netanyahu himself, a right winger, said in his Bar Ilan speech "we are ready to agree to a real peace agreement, a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state.” I would love to see an equivalent statement from any Palestinian government official, I don't think I ever have.
Second, my polls are from the Palestinian Centre for Survey and Research, which interviews Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. In March 2020, only 33% of Palestinians supported a one-state. Show me a poll that says a majority of Palestinians don't want their own state. I'd love to see it.
But you didn't answer my question. How does a two state solution formally implement oppression? I'm very curious to hear this answer.
I actually did answer your question. And I really don’t want to engage in a discussion about how Netanyahu is a real dove and peace seeker while the Palestinians have never made any statement in support of peace.
I didn't say Netanyahu was a real dove. I don't think I need to participate in this conversation since you seem perfectly capable for carrying on both sides by yourself.
"Demilitarization" is the sticking point in the statement you've provided. Would Netanyahu "agree to a real peace agreement, a demilitarized [Jewish] state side by side with the [Palestinian] state"? I kind of doubt he would, no? As long as the two states would not be on equal terms—i.e. both actually sovereign—the idea of the two-state solution is a farce. Now, I'm not saying a two-state solution *couldn't* be legitimate, but rather that people like Netanyahu clearly do not actually want one, even when they say they do.
Of course, this is literally exactly what Moonface60 said, and with which you concurred, while somehow still claiming to disagree, so I don't trust that you're actually bothering to read anything here. If you want a citation that Netanyahu opposes the two-state solution... you've provided it yourself.
Moonface claimed that the Israeli government would never support a two state solution. I proved otherwise, and now you're moving the goalposts. Demilitarization is just one of many issues in the negotiations, not "the" sticking point. In terms of the states being on equal terms, winners and losers are never on equal terms. After WWII, Germany and Japan were demilitarized and today they're doing great. Palestine isn't special.
And just to be clear, I, like Peter, absolutely, wholeheartedly and unequivocally support the right of Israel to exist and to be the ultimate place of refuge for both Jews and Palestinians, now and forever, until the end of time
Shwach that’s the Yiddish word for weak. But unlike weak Shwach has an edge. To say Israel has the right to exist as Israel-Filastin or Filastin-Israel by coin toss is just another way to say Israel will disappear.
You are proposing to reward the Palestinians for refusing every compromise solution in the last 100 years. And in effect condemning the Jews to again become a minority, knowing full well how Jewish minorities have suffered over millennia, and this time in what was once their state. And your reasoning? Israel is primarily concerned with the welfare of Jews and not of the Arabs.
The Arabs of course could have had and still can have their own state, but they have rejected that opportunity as well, because they are holding out for the day when more people will have your attitude. And their dream of “Palestine from the river to the sea” will be delivered.
The Jews who have been kicked around for 2,000 years and have somehow clawed their way to statehood should openly give it up to a people who have fought them tooth and nail and just trust in Palestinian loving kindness. Out of curiosity where have you observed loving kindness between Palestinians? How about between Palestinians and other Arab peoples?
There have been no elections in the West Bank or Gaza for many years and everybody without exception knows why. It's not so much that the Palestinian leadership in place is worried of losing; oh, they know they would lose. Its who they will lose to that worries everyone—it’s Hamas—an anti-Semitic theocratic party, whose charter and idea of Jews is similar to what Americans thought of native Americans—“The only good Indian is a dead Indian”.
And you believe that a joint dance between Israelis and Palestinians will melt away all the hatreds that have been there unabated for almost 2 centuries now (leaving out Moslem antipathy towards Jews from the time of its creation).
All of this is good stuff will somehow happen irrespective of the fact that there is currently not a single Arab state that is close to implementing Democracy in other than name.
As for Israel’s undisputed creativity, vibrancy, culture and contributions to the world? Eh, that is not nearly as important as creating yet another Arab state.
So it all comes down to since the Israelis and Palestinians could not agree on a Palestinian state side-by-side let’s just give in and eliminate Israel—except in name. Although to be sure in time that will be removed as well. As Jews will exit from yet another country, they have become a minority.
Sorry, but your answer is just convincing. Forcing Austria to merge with Germany or Ukraine to merge with Russia, means the end of Ukraine and Austria as sovereign states. States are the embodiment of a peoples’ self-determination. If both sides accept to merge, so be it. Otherwise, you just deprive a people of its independence (the downfall of the USSR did not deprive Russians of their independence).
According to international law, Israelis are entitled to a state of their own within the 1967 borders. In 2004, the ICJ called for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It did not call for one state.
Arguing that creating two states is no longer possible, it is baseless. Why can’t Jewish settlers live in a Palestinian state? Around 200,000 French settlers remained in Algeria in the first years following independence (most of them were gone by 1970). A 4% land swap would leave less than 100,000 Jews within a future Palestinian state, and most of them would leave on their own according to opinion polls.
Claiming that a Jewish nation-state is incompatible with liberal democracy is another spurious claim. It reminds me of the European far-right arguing that Islam is incompatible with democracy (the far left has the same problem with Jews that the far right has with Muslims - the far right says that Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy while the far left says the same about Judaism).
Nothing prevents Israel from being both the state of the Jewish people and that of all its citizens, the same way as one can love both of his parents. Like many critics of Israel (that was already true before you became an anti-Zionist), you fail to understand that international law requires states to give equal individual (political and civil) rights to all its citizens. It does not require states to give them equal group rights. Thus, a state has no obligation to be culturally neutral or to have a neutral immigration policy. Sure, Israel does not even uphold the individual rights of its Arab-Palestinian minority (only 50% of Arab of citizens of Israel identify as Palestinians, the others identify as Arab Israelis), but Israel is a country at war with a minority that belongs to the same ethnic group as the enemy. I dare you to name me any other country that did better under similar circumstances. Palestinian-Arab Israelis have more collective rights than Russian-speaking minorities of Baltic countries (who do not even have automatic access to citizenship), or the Turkish minority of Greece that does not even have the right to identify as Turkish or to choose its own communal leaders.
Finally, the elephant in the room: the occupied territories. The occupation is of course obnoxious but it is now clear that the Palestinians said no to the Clinton parameters in 2001, Olmert’s offer in 2008, and the Kerry-Obama principles in 2014. The revisionist narrative you subscribe to (I subscribed to it too) collapsed when Haaretz revealed in 2017 that Abbas said no to Kerry and Obama.
Hussein Agha and Akram Haniya have both said that Clinton’s framework would not suffice to solve the refugee issue.
Calling for dismantling Israel is not only unfair and illegal, it is first and foremost meaningless, as the Palestinians can achieve most of their demands (including the right of return) in a confederal framework. Nothing prevents a confederation from having its own army and its own foreign policy. It then has all the trappings of a federal state without depriving the member states of their independence. That would create a de facto reality of two states in a shared country.
Now my question for you, Mr. Beinart, is the following: why do insist on depriving Jews of their independence, when creative solutions can reconcile virtually all Palestinian demands with Israel’s existence?
Putin at one point called for a "demilitarized" Ukraine. According to "Anonymous" in this comment thread, Netanyahu calls for a "demilitarized" Palestine. Your lack of self-awareness in comparing Israel to Ukraine rather than Palestine to Ukraine is staggering. Sure, you can draw some valid comparisons between Israel and Ukraine, but your analogy is much weaker than you seem to think.
Oh, sorry, I mixed you up with Winters. Your personality is just not very memorable, so it’s easy enough to mix you up with someone else.
Anyway, here’s the quote from above:
> First, Netanyahu himself, a right winger, said in his Bar Ilan speech "we are ready to agree to a real peace agreement, a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state.” I would love to see an equivalent statement from any Palestinian government official, I don't think I ever have.
Of course you haven’t, and you won’t, because no Palestinian government official is willing to live side by side with a Jewish state, demilitarized or otherwise. They are the obstacle to peace.
Well, all comparisons are flawed. But you seem to forget that in 1967 Israel was surrounded by armies calling for its imminent destruction. Ukraine never called (or tried) to destroy Russia. The fact of the matter is that Israelis are entitled to self-determination according to the International Court of Justice.
Arguing that Israel would not cease to exist if Jews were to be stripped of this right is akin to saying that France would keep existing "without supremacy" if it were forced to merge with Germany.
Or, as you so eloquently put it, because I am a potty-mouth poopy-face. Truly the crème de la crème of argumentation. Socrates himself would be blinded by your brilliance.
Oh, and as far as unflattering comparisons go, both Russia and Ukraine have literal neonazis, which, uh, kind of makes it difficult to compare either of them with Israel. (Yes, Israel had Patrol 36, but Patrol 36 is incomprehensibly weird, and anyway it only consisted of nine people and has been defunct since 2007.)
If we’re going to continue with the Russia-Ukraine comparisons, Russia is currently militarily occupying Ukraine, while Israel since 1967 has been militarily occupying the West Bank. No, the West Bank isn’t an internationally recognized state in the way that Ukraine is, but it’s hard to deny the fact that Israel is militarily occupying the territory many Israelis see as the future Palestinian state, while even the most die-hard Zionists (ie the minority that wants to annex the West Bank) would have a hard time saying that the Palestinian Authority is militarily occupying anything. (No, Gaza doesn’t really fit into this analogy. As you have concurred, all analogies are imperfect.)
Another comparison could be that Russia has nuclear weapons, and Ukraine does not, while Israel… might(?) have nuclear weapons, and the PA and Hamas emphatically do not. Sure, Palestine has friends abroad who do have nuclear weapons (namely Pakistan, to an extent), but Pakistan isn’t exactly pulling a NATO and stationing missiles on a border with Israel (in no small part due to the fact that Pakistan and Israel are thousands of miles apart).
Palestinians can’t vote because they don’t want to. For 70 years, every opportunity for two states for two people that Israel was ready to embrace was rejected by the Palestinians. Palestinians continue to reject peace today.
If the Palestinians truly want to live in peace in their own country, side-by-side with Israel, the onus is on them to make it very clear to the world. Not their typical obfuscation and rejection.
The good news is that their rejecting peace is no longer preventing Israel from moving forward and establishing relations with its neighbors. Those most hurt by Palestinian leadership corruption and rejectionism are the Palestinian people.
Israel is not suicidal. Peter‘s idea of Kumbaya, everyone living together in peace, is absurd when the Palestinian people are taught that Jews are on land stolen from them and that murdering Jews is a virtue. What’s needed is a young, visionary, reformist Palestinian leader to emerge who recognizes that living in peace next to Israel will bring security and prosperity to its people. That’s what Peter should be focusing his advocacy on. Not wasting everyone’s time on his anti-Israel rants.
"If one recognizes, as I do, that the root of the problem is the Jewish supremacist character of the state of Israel, it follows that ending the occupation is not enough; Israel, too, needs to be decolonized. The Palestinian citizens of Israel are second-class citizens. True, they have the vote, but there is a whole raft of laws and practices that discriminate against them. A two-state solution would not address their problem. On the contrary, it would distance them further from the other branch of the Palestinian family. The best hope for resolving the century-old conflict between Jews and Palestinians lies not in the partition of Palestine but in building one democratic state from the river to the sea with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of religion or ethnicity."
Jewish supremacist character? Palestinians second class citizens with laws discriminating against them? Those are strong damning statements…care to back them up?
The Arab Israelis have been polled many times about whether with a 2 state peace they would remain Israeli or become Palestinian. The overwhelming majority say stay Israeli.
It would be logical to redraw the border so that a new nation of Palestine would include these Arab villages and reunite Palestinians, while similarly including the largest West Bank Jewish villages as Israeli. Anyone from these areas who would prefer staying Israeli or becoming Palestinian citizens would have the right to move to a different place and do so.
"Jewish supremacist character? Palestinians second class citizens with laws discriminating against them? Those are strong damning statements…care to back them up?"
I did provide a link to the article I quoted, which I believe back's it up.
"The Arab Israelis have been polled many times about whether with a 2 state peace they would remain Israeli or become Palestinian. The overwhelming majority say stay Israeli."
As Israel has no intention of allowing a Palestinian state, the question isn't relevant.
Israel has wanted two states for two people for 70 years. It’s the Palestinians who continue to reject it. The onus is on them to announce their strong desire for their own country, a “right of return” to only this new country and not Israel, and to live side by side in peace. They do that, it’s a done deal.
“ Israel has wanted two states for two people for 70 years.”
Not true.
The two-state solution is the illusory end product of a U.S.-conceived “peace process” that has always been about things other than actually achieving peace—just as, contrary to the conventional trope, the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship” is not really about “shared values.”
This is all sort of "cool" in theory, but in practice, the Middle East is a genocidal, ethnic cleansing place. So, nice solution is going to be "heh, let's just join with a couple million people who's leaders and a large fraction of followers want to start a genocidal civil war or perhaps just a reign of ceasless terror attacks, all with "plausible deniability".
It just won't work on the ground in practice. So, what to do? Wait. As the age of oil ends (2050s?) the money that fuels the relentless war will dry up and you'll have a peace. Like in Ireland -- once Americans got tired of supporting Catholic terrorists, they settled. There is no such forcing function right now. Even if the Sunnis massively decided "OK, better for everyone", Iran would drive the wedge.
My claim is simple: Your "principled" stand will lead to genocide of the Jewish people, or at least to a far more destructive civil=>regional war.
I just read the comments section. OMG, Peter! Maybe we are in the twilight zone. I wish you strength and power. I find your honesty inspiring. Truth, and the golden rule are my mottos. Unfortunately both are becoming scarcer and scarcer in the world today.
Jim, I don’t think they do. I think they have de-humanized Palestinians, and that makes it okay for them. They are high on self-righteousness and indignation. Indignation of perceived danger coming from the Palestinians. They have been fed an altered version of history and facts about the eatablishment of Israel with the US, UK, and UN. They think Israel established all by itself and can make up any rules it wants, international conventions and laws be damned. They are so puffed up, that they are on a spiral of tit-for-tat, revenge, always, escalating. Both sides do this, of course. It is our monkey brains. To stop the spiral is risky, but it is the only way to bring the world into enlightenment. The kind of resolution Peter envisions would require Jews to not only think of Israel’s best interest, but also how to make an economically viable, resource-containing state for the Palestinians so that they may also have a good life. If Jewish leaders in Israel would stop the hasbara, start feeding the public positive statements about the Palestinians, stop locking up or killing potential good Palestinian leaders, and then retreat from the majority of the WB leaving it to those leaders they have stopped locking up, the world would be a different place. Other Arab countries would no longer be hostile to Israel. But, Israel and the CIA have, over the past 70 years, encouraged Islamic extremist theology to make their case for a greater Israel and American funds for weapons. The founders of Israel only thought of their own people. They did not wish their neighbours, or the people whose land they invaded, anything good. They wanted it all.
Cass, you are aware Palestinians were slaughtering Jewish children decades before Israel was even established, right? I don't think we're the ones you should be lecturing about dehumanization.
...and vice versa, you know, right? The main difference between Haganah (or Lehi or Irgun) and the PLO (or Hamas) is that the former were politically convenient for the United States and Western Europe to recognize as legitimate (despite, you know, massacres of civilians), while the latter were not (...for massacres of civilians). Ain't nobody the "good guys" here, so maybe take your crocodile tears elsewhere? Pshhhh!
So you admit the PLO and Hamas massacre civilians? Do you agree with me then that it is not Israel who should be lectured about dehumanization?
Also the main difference between the Lehi/Irgun and Hamas/PLO is that the former hasn’t existed for 70 years or more while the latter continues to slaughter civilians today. But I know you don’t care about murdered children, because you’re a Palestine supporter.
The PLO and Hamas do not AFAIK massacre civilians. The PLO used to be a terrorist organization... like fifty years ago, but now they're for all intents and purposes part of the Israeli government. Are you trying to relitigate the Camp David Accord here? I'm not familiar enough with the history of Hamas to elaborate there, but they certainly aren't doing much cooped up in Gaza.
Your original point was that "Palestinians were slaughtering Jewish children decades before Israel was even established", and yet you failed to point out that Hamas and the PLO *did not exist* back then, which suggests your intention in breaking down my analogy is not entirely in good faith. You could do a lot better if your intention is indeed to try and call out double standards in other people's arguments, you know.
By contrast, of course, Haganah continues to exist (as the IDF) and continues to kill Palestinian children.
I realize Peter is calling for one-state, but the philosophy is the same: don’t just think of your own self-interest, think of the needs of the other people too
You wrote, "Lots of people here who love the slaughter and rights violations committed by Israel on a daily basis." Who exactly are you talking about and why do you think they love the things you say they do?
It looks more to me like you're the one trolling and smearing everyone who disagrees with you by making stuff up about people. Pretty pathetic to be honest.
" But in its treatment of Palestinians, Israel’s political system fails the liberal democratic criteria that the US espouses, at least rhetorically, all across the world...Under such a system, all the people under Israel’s control would vote in its elections. In taking that view, I’m not singling out Israel. I’m applying the same principles—free elections and equality under the law—that I support in every country, including my own."
There is not a single country on the face of the planet in which "all the people under the control" of that country has the right to vote in that country's elections. Not the United States, not Canada, not a single solitary one. In the United States for example felons can't vote, neither can illegal immigrants and of course Washington DC residents don't have representation in Congress. As an American, you are in no position to call out Israel for "failing liberal democratic criteria" and accusing it of "Jewish supremacy" when your own country is not even close to matching the very criteria you lay out. This is pretty blatant hypocrisy and a double standard, Peter.
With all due respect, Peter isn't the US. I'm sure that he does not agree with all its policies, eg regarding felons voting. Thus his being American does not forbit him from criticizing other governments (he criticizes US policies enough as is). Also, I don't think you can compare Palestinians to felons or illegal immigrants. So, no, I don't think he's being hypocritical.
First I agree there is no comparison between felons and Palestinians because felons are US citizens and Palestinians are not Israeli citizens.
Second, Peter is criticizing Israel for not meeting the US's liberal democratic values, and the one value he identifies is one that the United States itself does not meet. If Peter wants to make the case that the US is not liberal and not democratic and equally as bad as Israel, that would be fine. But until then he is holding Israel to a higher standard than his own country and he should clean up his own country before he come for the Jews.
Peter, I'd be grateful if you'd explain the concept of "the right to exist". Does any state apart from its ability to hold onto its territory have the right to exist? Where would this right flow from? Who would grant it?
My position on "Israel's right to exist" is that the phrase is fundamentally meaningless and only serves as a shibboleth to divide people on the issue. That is, both agreeing and disagreeing with the phrase becomes inevitably bad-faith, and in order to have any truly constructive conversation, one must reject the phrase as a framing narrative and not allow the conversation to become bogged down in semantic arguments around it.
Peter there is something wrong with your head. All the evidence points to the reality that if Palestinians are accepted full stop, in Israel, Israel will cease to exist. Why are you so deaf, blind and dumb?
I agree that full Palestinian citizenship could present an existential threat to Israel. You should probably though word your argument a little differently (respectfully?), and also present some of the "all the evidence". You should also try to argue why it's okay to control the lives of Palestinians while not giving them fair representation - that would make your case stronger.
Israeli Arabs have full representation and right to vote. Palestinian refugees have chosen that path. They made war several times and this is their fate. They have themselves to blame. Exhibit A is Islam and its tenet that it will not be ruled by a non-Muslim, making them unsuitable as democratic political partners. Exhibit B is Jew-hatred among Israeli Arabs which is the reason they are constantly belligerent to Jews. Exhibit C is Jew-hatred among so-called Palestinians that causes them to make constant war toward Jews. Exhibit D is the reality that there has never been a state with defined borders called Palestine. Exhibit E is the lie that "Palestinian" is an ethnicity. Exhibit F is the reality that most, if not all, Palestinians names are Arabic. ... want more ? Peter Beinart does not deserve the respect you think he should get. He's a patsy for people who think with their hearts instead of their heads.
The Cuban government does not repress its people any more than does that of the US or here in the UK (where our Tory regime will soon remove yet more rights with the end of our Human Rights Act). You are repeating US propaganda and giving that government further permission to continue its decades-long war of sanctions against the Cuban people. The public demonstrations in Cuba in 2021 were dominated by two factions, in the main:
- those led by US agents with the aim of destroying Cuba and turning it into a society like that of Colombia or Haiti
- Cuban people who want their government to be more socialist.
If you regard the US as freer or more democratic than Cuba, ask yourself how much freedom and democracy American workers have in their workplaces.
Hey everyone, I am a first generation student in the U.S. and recently started writing on substack about human rights. I am almost to 50 subscribers, would appreciate if you could read my writing, give some advice, perhaps subscribe and add me to your reading list! If anyone wants to collaborate let me know! Mr. Beinart, I would love to collab with you...
Can you bunch of haters read the last paragraph and explain why that’s antisemitic?
< At the end of the day, what really matters is the right of individual human beings to exist, in safety and freedom. Any political system, any border, any country must ultimately be judged on how well it safeguards that.>
Sure, I'll tell you. Palestine does not respect the rights of individual Jewish human beings to exist in safety and freedom, which is why Israel has borders and keeps them out of its territory. By calling for the dissolution of Israel and the so-called one state solution, Peter puts the Jews of Israel at risk, both from Palestine and from other threats like ISIS. Look to the Kurds as an example of how well minorities are allowed to exist in safety and freedom in Arab and Muslim countries in the Middle East.
Personally, I think disenfranchising millions of Israeli Jews and putting them at risk is anti-Semitic. You can feel free to disagree. I know Peter does.
Thanks for this piece Peter. I see your point and as always it’s so clearly stated. But i think you’re missing a crucial issue in responding to the mantra-type question (by which I mean one of the many inherited cliches that Israel supporters pull out in response to most every critique) that your reader asked about “why is Israel the only country on earth whose very existence is routinely challenged”.
Talking about Israel’s political system today, while central to understanding why people around the world consider Israel’s claim to democracy fraudulent and their political system in need of being dismantled, still doesn't get to the heart of the matter. And so in some ways it leaves all the usual bundle of excuses and cliches Jews lean on intact.
I would add to your piece that the central reason why so many question Israel’s existence is that it was created as a settler colonial state on another people's land, and Jews have masked (or been aware of, or been in denial about) this reality with words — in the form of over a hundred years of “fake news” — with oppression and with violence. I'm aware that doesn't sit comfortably even with left leaning Jews who want to admit some of Israel's wrongdoing but still want to see the origins as "complicated". But in many ways it is that simple.
When a country comes into being as Israel did, and its supporters today know so little about its real origins that they arm themselves only with a series of cliches about an innocent Zionists or an innocent state under attack, no one can take any defender of Israel seriously. No amount of defensive rage and furious labelling on the part of Jews will free them/us of the reality that most people have long moved beyond the original creation story: with just a bit of honest research that creation story crumbles to bits, and anyone looking into it will know that.
The Jews-in-denial crowd are the last to know, but they cannot stop the march of history. And their wilful ignorance on the real reasons why the world is angry at Israel simply fuels more rage, not only at Israel but at Jews around the world, for defending an oppressive regime while touting the virtues of democracy and human rights.
I don’t think any of the core “mantra” questions can be fully answered in reference to the present: if Jews can’t/won’t/refuse to really confront the origins of the Palestine problem they will never know why Israel’s existence is challenged, will remain captivated by their sense of blissful victimhood and will never be able to help address the real questions that the future needs in order to avoid more pain.
I agree that Israel has a lot of settler-colonial features but other settler-colonial states that have granted citizenship and at least formal legal equality to native and historically disenfranchised groups (the US, Canada, Australia etc) don't have their political systems challenged in the same way--nor should they--because despite very real flaws they are far closer to being genuine liberal democracies. They don't deny citizenship to large swaths of native-born people just because they're not of the dominant ethnic/religious/racial group.
Have you considered that the actual reason why Israel doesn't just hand all Palestinians citizenship is because of the genocidal wars Palestine and its allies has waged against Israel, not to mention all the terrorism? Just some food for thought.
"Have you considered that the actual reason why the United States doesn't just hand all American Indians citizenship is because of the genocidal wars American Indians and their allies have waged against white Americans, not to mention all the terrorism? Just some food for thought."
Yes, the United States and Canada are garbage-tier democracies. And as a white American, I feel comfortable saying that Israel is just as garbage-tier as we are!
OK, then, take it with Peter Beinart who seems to think the US is significantly better than Israel. I'm happy to agree with you that Israel is just as liberal and democratic as the United States and Canada.
Settler colonial state. Really? May I suggest Professor Beinart and Ms. Gill and many others on this site do the research or at least read the research. There is a lot out there. And you might be surprised.
While it is hard to pin down the actual population of Palestine in the 19th century most people (John McCarthy is best known) posit somewhere between 250,000 and 275,000 between 1800 and 1850. That number ballooned to almost twice that by 1900. How did that happen? Given that most Palestinians at the time were poverty stricken, often intra tribal fighting, earthquakes (1837) and just plain lawlessness not to mention that more than 75% had a permanent version of Trachoma (even in 1924 when the British surveyed the land) it was not a natural doubling of the population.
So where did they come from :
1. An Egyptian invasion in 1832 which upon withdrawal left somewhere between 30,000 and 75,000 behinds. Mostly near Gaza, Jaffa had a significant Egyptian population by 1900.
2. The contraction of the Ottoman Empire led to a significant, in the many thousands of additional Moslems from Algeria, Libya, Bosnia, Circassia. All to be resettled some in Syria, Some in Trans Jordan and many in Palestine (not yet Palestine). They were supported by the Ottoman Empire, and they were indeed colonial enterprise!
3. Also a significant number of Kurds and Bedouin tribes were also moving in and out of Palestine. Even Sudanese who came with the Egyptian army stayed and farmed water buffalos in the many swamps in the Sharon and Hula.
In fact there were more than twice as many new Arab villages established in the 19th century then Jewish ones. (Kirk and Grossman).
As Jews came in especially in the 20th century and created not only an industrial base a significant number of more Arabs simply walked across the British Mandate Borders.
The fact is the original Arab population of 250,000 was itself made up of differing people who also came in at different times. For example, two warring Arabian tribes the Qais and Yamens (you can read about them in Aryeh Avneri’s book also Dowty’s book and the comments of a British consulate Finn who described some of these horrific battles in teh 1850s.
None of these people are indigenous to the area. And while I think the concept of indigenous people is not particularly helpful (after all what are you all doing in America do you consider yourself indigenous?) while you are on the subject, I do think that you need to take into account that Jews were indigenous and returned in great numbers in the 19th and 20th century. Jews were in the area continuously although they were not Zionists. Jerusalem's population in 1900 had a majority Jewish component.
My point is simply that a great many people came in at once. To single out the Jews as external colonial enterprise is both anti-Semitic and is showing your terrible lack of knowledge.
You need to read up. You all remind me of the 60s when we were educating our fellow students about Vietnam our mantra then was: “Show me your sources”. Stop the BS and get some knowledge. Its a lot more complicated than many of you think.
I wondered how long it would take for Joan Peters to come up. I provided sources and Joan Peters was not among them. I don’t want to discuss Peters because I did not read her book thinking she was discredited but I do know now that she had good data and that she misused it in some of her analysis.
My sources for external inputs for:
1. Egyptian invasion with well over 100,000 many conscripts who upon withdrawal almost 8 years later decided to stay is well established. This event occurred and is historical.
2. The contraction of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century is also well known and it led to an import of significant number of Moslems from the entities that the Ottomans gave up. This too is well known and is even mentioned in general histories of Palestine. And yes, they were funded by Ottoman Turkey and provided with land, often villages vacated by others due to Bedouin attacks and intra tribal battles. See below.
3. Palestine even before it was an entity was porous and many others from the neighborhood often came and often left depending on strife and level of lawlessness. British Mandate Data has shown that and is routinely cited by researchers.
One source, especially for no.2 above, would be David Grossman Rural Arab Demography and Early Jewish Settlement in Palestine. Ruth Kark has written much about this as have many others. General introductions to Palestine all bring up these issues for example Gudrun Kramer A history of Palestine.
But we also have primary sources in the form of visitors and government officials like James Finn a British consul general in the 1850s and 60s. Travelers like Tristram Henry Baker (a 19th century British explorer and clergy man) who described the disappearance of villages and how all of sudden people from Algeria and Libya for example took over certain villages.
My point was that many people showed up in the 19th century and even more showed up in the 20th century—the Jews “were not Johnnys come lately”. Most of the Arab population also came there recently; certainly the majority were not there from Canaanite/Philistine times. I know this does not conform to the current narrative of Jew usurping the land, but narratives can change over time.
Even if you’re not citing Joan Peters, you’re recycling her basic point by reframing the ongoing conflict as a question of whether Jews or Arabs have a greater claim of indigeneity to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Even if they had only lived in their homes for a matter of decades, the permanent displacement of over 700,000 non-Jewish residents during the civil war of the late 1940s would still be unjustified, and neither would the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the Civil Administration since 1967 in the West Bank.
The fact of the matter is that both Jews and Arabs have lived in the region since antiquity, and claims that some Arabs’ tenure was illegitimate because it may not have dated more than a generation or two before the late 1940s make it absurd to suggest that the tenure of Israeli Jews making Aliyah is somehow more legitimate than the tenure of the Arabs who were displaced.
In all likelihood, *both* Jews and Arabs are indigenous to the eastern Mediterranean. In all likelihood, Mizrahi Jews have significant shared ancestry with the non-Jewish Arabs with whom they have cohabitated for thousands of years. And anyway the Israeli doesn’t use ancestry to determine eligibility for Aliyah; they only care whether a given individual is considered halachically Jewish according to the Chief [Orthodox] Rabbinate, a point which has proven contentious, e.g. with the evacuation of Beta Israel from Ethiopia from the late 1970s onward. What does the Aliyah of Beta Israel have to do with the demographics of the late Ottoman Empire? Nothing!
Elsie, If you look over my earlier piece, I was clear that I find the concept of indigenous people as a true measure of rights unhelpful (as I often point out we are all here in America and not indigenous). All you have to do is read David Reich Who we are and how we got here to understand that. Unfortunately, it is something that is constantly being used and is part of the false narrative of “settler colonial enterprise”. Namely, the Jews came and displaced the Arabs who had been there forever.
The data is clear that the Jews did not displace the Arabs. More Arab towns were created in the 19th century than Jewish ones and many more Arabs came in to Palestine as the Jews came in.
Arabs farmers (fellahin) were displaced by an onerous tax system put in place by the Ottomans and rapacious theft by their village chiefs, and the wealthy Arab class who literally took ownership of the land and sold it from underneath them. While it is said they were absentee landlords, just about all the members of the eventual Palestinian leadership sold land to the Jews. But before you pity the poor fellahin, the farming they engaged in was simply unsustainable and when offered new land or cash they always opted for cash.
It is true that 700,000 Arabs were displaced in the aftermath of the 1948 war. What is not true is that they were all or mostly expelled. If you go back and read the commentary at the time, particularly Arab commentary, before it was buried, massaged and replaced by today’s narrative. You will find that the notables (as they were called) class (74,000) left overnight and left with their funds. That send a powerful signal to many others who followed in their footsteps. Certainly, there were atrocities committed by both sides and had been for more than just the 1948 war and that was enough to set many in motion. As often happens in a war. European Jews found out in the aftermath of WWII that they could not return to their homes!
Also, when we talk about how the Arabs who came to Palestine came recently, which is true, the fact is that many simply returned to where they came from. From the 1918 British occupation until 1948 more than 100,000 came from neighboring countries they too are now considered refugees.
It is also true that the Arabs in Palestine were offered numerous chances at some form of statehood even prior to the partition plan. And I am quite sure if they were offered the partition plan today, they would grab it. All were always rejected. As for post 1967 I am in full agreement that Israel needs to vacate the lands but I also don’t see an Arab leadership ready to negotiate that departure. They are hoping Peter Beinart’s concept will take hold.
"the central reason why so many question Israel’s existence is that it was created as a settler colonial state on another people's land"
Assuming that's true, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. were all created as settler colonial states. So which lie do you want to push, Natasha? That people question the existence of the United States (laughable) or that the United States was not created as a settler colonial state on another people's land (equally laughable)?
If that's your problem with Israel, then I assume as an American you'll be leaving the country soon and returning your house to the indigenous people? Or is this a 'do as I say, not as I do' type situation?
…and I can see that you aren’t familiar with Landback. No, the Lenape aren’t proposing that New York City be given back to them. That would be ridiculous.
The Yellowhead Institute Red Paper is probably the most concrete description of Landback, though it’s more about Canada than it is about the United States:
"the Lenape aren’t proposing that New York City be given back to them. That would be ridiculous."
Funny, because that's exactly what Palestine is proposing. That Tel Aviv and Jaffa and Jerusalem and everything else in Israel be "given back" to them. That's what "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" means. I'm glad we can agree that such a demand is "ridiculous."
Tell you what, you clean up your mess in the United States (and Canada, and Australia, and New Zealand) and solve all the many many injustices and problems with the indigenous peoples there, and once that's done, maybe then you can point fingers at Israel. Deal?
Anyway I’m glad to see you are continuing the proud tradition of justifying Stalin’s multiple genocides by pointing out that everybody else is racist, too!
I thought no state had the right to exist?
https://jewishcurrents.org/there-is-no-right-to-a-state
Beinart, you must think your audience are a bunch of idiots. But as Norman Finkelstein said, you're only clever in your cult. You can dress up your desire to destroy Israel in whatever clothing you like, but the rest of us can see right through it. This claim that *Israel* has a right to exist but its *political system* doesn't is total nonsense. And yes, it is unfair and it is anti-Semitic.
When the US criticizes other countries, we criticize their *policies.* We don't like that China mistreats Uighurs and we don't like that Xi is a dictator. But we don't say "China is an inherently oppressive country because not everyone who lives there is Chinese. China must change its name and inherent nature to be a state for all its citizens." And you know why we don't say that? Because countries have the right to national characters. When the Irish were agitating for independence, the British didn't accuse them of racism and discriminating against non-Irish people. The idea is absurd.
One more example: I have never seen the US or the UN or anyone else criticize any Arab state (including Palestine) simply for being an Arab state and discriminating against non-Arabs.
In fact Beinart recognizes in this column that only some Palestinians consider Palestine to be encompassing everyone who lives there. Those of us who read Palestine's constitution know this to be false. Yet Beinart seems to think contrary to all evidence that if the Palestinians are given the vote, the result will not be a sharia controlled fascist dictatorship that identifies as a Muslim and Arab state explicitly, and therefore a racist one by his own logic, like Palestine is now. It is a good thing therefore that Beinart is not taken seriously by anyone.
I think the argument in the JewishCurrents piece is making a different point.
Under the current regime of international law, the State of Israel has a _legal_ right to exist merely because it already exists and no other state or political entity has any superseding claim to deny her that right now or ever. But Beinart seems to take issue with American Jewish groups moving the goalposts to claim that the State of Israel has essentially a _natural_ right to exist specifically as a Jewish state, even though Israel has effective control, directly or indirectly, over all people living between the river and the sea, of which Jews are a slight minority. That’s in direct tension with basic liberalism, which holds that only individuals have natural universal rights and one individual’s or group’s rights cannot supersede another’s.
The two-state solution was proposed as way to establish a Jewish-majority State of Israel that was consistent with liberalism, but Beinart believes that for all practical purposes that tension can never be resolved with any kind of 2SS that would ever be palatable to Israeli Jews so he abandoned it. It's at root a simple liberal argument, not some wild-eyed leftist clap-trap.
So far from Beinart looking like someone trying to pull the wool over the eyes of his “idiot” readership, he looks more and more like a cold-eyed realist about the illusory and doomed nature of the 2SS. Beinart’s critics would do well to understand the appeal that position has for liberals in the US and elsewhere who have grown disillusioned with the “peace process”, Israeli intransigence, and PA dysfunction and corruption.
The way I'd put it is that states are legitimate but there is no right to have a state whose political system grants you legal supremacy over people of a different religious/ethnic/racial group.
According to whom, Beinart? Because the vast majority of states do grant legal supremacy to one group over all the remainders, most notably Palestine. Meanwhile in Israel all CITIZENS are equal under the law.
Well that simply isn't true.
Whoops careful by this criterion both China and India are out. And frankly so are most of the Arab countries they bar Jews. For someone with your knowledgebase I expect better. Sorry.
It's almost like nation-states are inherently flawed as a societal institution!
About 20% of Israeli citizens are arabs, with full citizenship rights, and all other Israeli citizens, of whatever race or ethnicity, have full citizenship rights.
Paul, you're conflating two separate problems here. Ending the occupation and Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state are two fundamentally different issues no matter how much you and Beinart try to pretend like they are one and the same. Are we supposed to believe that if Israel ended the occupation and created a Palestinian state tomorrow, Beinart, Ali Abunimah, yourself, and all the other anti-Zionists would stop claiming that a Jewish state is inherently discriminatory and that Jews actually do have a right to their own state separate from all the rest? I find that difficult to believe.
The United Nations through their International Convention on Civil and Political Rights has made it quite clear many times over that all peoples, including the Palestinian people, have the right of self-determination. So either the UN is in direct tension with basic liberalism or you and Beinart are wrong. I'm going to go with the latter.
Beinart is not a realist in any sense. Like many leftists he is good at identifying problems but woefully lacking when it comes to finding solutions. You think the 2SS is "illusory" and "doomed?" Beinart's one state solution is even more so: neither side wants it, it's in direct contradiction with international law and in history, and will result in civil war and suffering on a scale heretofore unseen in the conflict. Pushing for it is not realistic in the slightest. The 2SS effectively already exists already, de facto if not in name.
Jews lived under the rule of Moslem toleration in the past; so now the situation reversed. But the territories are a different matter.
And as much as one can criticize the historical treatment of Jews in Muslim lands, it was certainly better than the treatment of Jews in most Christian lands at the time!
Honestly the reversal of these situations to me seems largely the result of the Allied handling of the former Ottoman Empire after WWI, as in seemingly every other situation we can just blame the British!
The Kurds as a people and a nation, like Jews or Palestinians, have a right to self-determination, but that right can be respected, in principle at least, even if Kurds live as political minorities spread out in different pluralistic nation states--Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, etc. The world, the UN, and other international institutions are perfectly fine with this situation. The Kurds might like to have a state of their own and western liberals like me might like to see them get one, but there is no legal regime or universalist ideology that asserts a natural right to a political nation-state with borders drawn to ensure a Kurdish majority. More importantly, there’s currently no politically feasible path to achieve an independent Kurdish state however desirable to outside observers that end goal might be. There are plenty of Kurdish “Zionists” in that regard but very few non-Kurds take that position seriously considering the obvious political challenges.
As for my post above, I was writing my mistaken interpretation of Beinart’s position in the two articles (and I’m pleased to see that he personally corrected it) in response to your vitriolic attacks, not my own (I support 2SS in principle but am increasingly disillusioned and seeing it now as a pipe-dream in practice. The status quo is unsustainable so alternatives are needed—there’s basically no political will to make 2SS happen, the “Camp David / Blame Arafat” narrative is now 20 years old and is more of a facile excuse than an illuminating explanation at this point, so I fault persistent Israeli rejectionism as a major reason for lack of progress since then. Maybe this is the “Andrew Sullivan” position?) If the occupation ended tomorrow, I agree with Beinart that Israeli subjugation of Palestinian rights would probably not end but also believe rocket attacks and border security risks to the State of Israel would also not end.
I dispute your claim that my opinions are "vitriolic attacks." If Beinart doesn't wish his offensive views to be criticized he should consider putting them on a site without a comment section.
In response to your Kurdish example, allow me to quote the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights: "1. All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development." Key phrase there: THEY determine their political status. THEY decide if they want to have their own state or if they want to live as a political minority spread out across states. THEY decide. NOT. YOU. So there's your legal regime or universalist ideology.
I see no reason to deny the Kurds their rights because Internet commenters thousands of miles away flippantly decide there's "currently no politically feasible path to achieve an independent Kurdish state" while ISIS and the Assad regime slaughters them. Not that that's a reasonable point anyway, because you're ideologically against it as well.
An injustice inflicted on one group doesn't justify an injustice inflicted on another somewhere else. As I said, the Kurds have been slaughtered in Syria, in Turkey, and elsewhere precisely because they are weak without a state of their own, yet for some reason you find a continuation of the status quote acceptable? And in favor of the Israeli Jews being subjected to a similar fate?
There's also a difference between preventing a people without a state from getting one and depriving a people who already have a state of it. They are both morally wrong, but the latter latter is explicitly against international law. And as you yourself said, Israel has a legal right to exist and there's nothing you or Beinart can do about it. Thank God.
Legalism is a dubious basis on which to construct a philosophical argument.
Anyway, if ethnic groups should have the right to self-determination, then why has Israel consistently resisted Palestinian unilateral independence? The fact that many Palestinians are waging war against Israel (and vice versa!) shouldn't undermine the basis of their fundamental human rights, if indeed you actually believe human rights should have any validity here.
As to the conflict between state sovereignty and human rights, well... Hannah Arendt knows better than I do, but I'm more skeptical of the state side of things myself.
With regard to the "one-state solution" versus the "two-state solution" I don't have any personal preference or indeed any stake in the matter, but it has become my impression that for all intents and purposes (i.e. not just nominally), most Israelis and Palestinians oppose the "two-state solution", with the preferred alternative left poorly specified, and the only people who meaningfully support it are Americans.
The one thing I personally think would be and is already an ongoing disaster is the sort of "one-and-a-half-state solution" that is the status quo. The more the status quo becomes entrenched, the more difficult it becomes to dispel unflattering comparisons to past South Africa. Thanks, Ariel Sharon!
Elsie, I’m not making a legalistic argument. The law is quite clear that not only do states have the right to exist, including Israel, but trying to destroy them is a violation of international law, and nations have the right of self-determination. It is in fact you , Beinart, and the other anti-Zionists who are arguing against the law and basic morality as usual.
Israel is only against Palestinian self-determination in so far as that ideology has been weaponized against its people. Israel has been willing to accept a Palestinian state alongside it since as far back as the 1940s. Israelis do not say Palestine is a racist state for being Muslim/Arab and they do not call the Palestinians racists for wanting their own state. This is not a two sided issue, it is a not a two way street. Palestine and and their anti-Zionist allies are simply in the wrong.
Apartheid label against Israel by legal definition is absolutely false. Apartheid is segregated a race within a state. Israel has African Jews and. Jews are a natio n culture ( as well as religion - unique to Jews) and so are Arabs- is a culture and nationality . This is a dispute over disputed borders between 2 different culture societies and Israel is already declared legally as a Jewish majority state- it cannot be a crime of an apartheid by definition for many reasons. The HRW has deceptively changed the universally recognised legal definition of Aparthied to discredit Israel. Arab Palestinians could have had an independant state but they rejected it from 1948 etc
I personally have no objections to a Kurdistan, ideologically or otherwise, if one could merely snap their fingers and will it into existence. But that’s not the way the world works and international law makes no pretense that it does either. There is nothing in your quote that conflicts with this observation. You tell me explicitly the means with which you would propose to bring a Kurdistan into existence, then I will explain my objections. War on Syria, Turkey, and Iraq? Who would wage it? What about those who live there and don’t want war imposed on them? What does international law say about that? Moving political boundaries are zero-sum—what one party gains, another loses. Who decides whose rights lose out to another’s? Let’s agree that it shouldn’t be keyboard warriors thousands of miles away. Defining rights of self-determination in terms of political boundaries is untenable.
Back to Israel as a Jewish state. My primary objection is to the framing of it as an ideological matter of some inalienable right. That is, that a party can be passively entitled to have someone else give it to them at the expense of other impacted parties. I see a 2SS with a Jewish majority state as a desirable, but manifestly-political outcome, in which the onus falls on the party in question—Israel-- to actively make it a reality by political means, including making the hard choices and sacrifices that Israeli Jews have become loathe to make. If they are unwilling to do that—and all indications of the last 20 years says that they are unwilling--then it’s perfectly justifiable for observers to move to support a binational “equal-citizenship- for-all”1SS as default. It’s not my position yet, but that’s where I think a lot of liberals who follow the issue are headed.
How could Kurdistan come into existence? How about boycotts, divestments and sanctions?
So you’re not ideologically opposed to a Kurdish state or a Jewish state. Then do you disagree with Beinart’s entire column? Because he’s arguing the opposite.
Cry harder
Most eloquent Beinart fan.
Thanks! Coming from a hypocrite like you it means a lot.
All these comments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to log off. (Both of you lol.)
Always anonymous.
And always right.
Well, considering your nom de plume is "Anonyomous", and you effectively sign your comments as such, you are—like the rest of us—more pseudonymous than truly anonymous, and indeed if your comments were truly, i.e. individually, anonymous, how could the allegedly persistent correctness be attributed to you and you alone?
Far from being anonymous, you are instead just "*that guy* [who wears a Guy Fawkes mask like it's 2008]": https://xkcd.com/1105/ Oooh, so edgy!
I’m sorry, did you have something actually useful to contribute?
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
I seriously doubt you do much thinking, if your verbal diarrhea on this thread is anything to go by.
The absurdity of some of these comments is truly stupefying. Is wanting to abolish segregation on the South equivalent to destroying it or wanting it to cease to exist? The two-state solution, Israel’s version of “separate but equal” offers neither separateness nor equality, let alone sovereignty, to the Palestinians, and merely implements formally, in perpetuity, some of the very same systems of oppression that the Jews have struggled under throughout their history. What has Peter done other than to confront this fact with the utmost honesty and courage, and search his conscience for a better way forward while staying true to his principles and faith? The Palestinians and Israelis may seem very different and incompatible at the moment, but as Peter has eloquently and extensively written about in the past, a justice and human rights-based approach can completely transform their attitudes towards each other. Before too long they would hopefully come to realise what many of us who know both communities well already know: That they have so much in common and ultimately have nothing to fear.
Keep up the great work Peter!
How does a two state solution formally implement oppression? A strong majority of Israelis and Palestinians both wants states of their own, why do you feel you know better than them what's best for them?
Palestinians would be happy with a state on some of Palestine. Israel won't be happy till it has all of Palestine. And please don't tell me about all the beautiful offers Israel gave the Palestinians, especially Trump's steal of the century.
Would they, Sean? Ever heard the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"?
"Tens of thousands of supporters watched the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, speak from a large outdoor stage in the shape of a ship with a model of Jerusalem’s Al Aksa Mosque. Denying speculation that Hamas would turn its attention to nonviolent resistance, Mr. Haniya said: “Today we say it clearly. Armed resistance and armed struggle are the strategic way to liberate the Palestinian land from the sea to the river.”"
Who should we believe, Sean? You, or the Palestinians themselves?
The PA, Israel’s security contractor in the West Bank has taken the path of nonviolent resistance and were has it got them. More and more settlements, more and more evictions, more and more killings, more and more violence by the settlers aided by the IDF.
As for Hamas, some say that it is a creature of Israel, just like the PA.
Nice talking points, but let's stay on topic. When you say "Palestinians would be happy with a state on some of Palestine," which Palestinians are you talking about? You can't possibly mean the Palestinians in general.
If the PA and Hamas are contractors and creatures of Israel, then who represents the Palestinians? And if the answer is no one, what are you basing your statement on? Are you a mind reader?
When you say that Israel would be happy with a Palestinian state on some of Palestine, which Israelis are you talking about? Surely not Netanyahu, if your quotation of him is anything to go by.
If the Israeli government does not represent all Jews, then who represents the Jews?*** And if the answer is no one, what are you basing your statement on? Are you a mind reader?
***Note: it is antisemitic to hold diaspora Jews responsible for the policies of the Israeli government, so you probably shouldn’t suggest that the Israeli government speaks for all Jews.
Well, being Palestinian myself and the son of refugees I think i do have some idea. First, the Israeli governments of the last 20 years have not, as far as I know, support a 2-state solution. Second, your opinion is probably based on surveys done of Palestinians living in the West Bank only and not those still in Gaza, refugee camps and the diaspora. Third, numerous studies have shown that while, as you say, Palestinians in the West Bank do support the 2-state solution in principle, their views change drastically when the details of what Israel has in mind are explained to them: Limited access to resources, all settlements stay in place, démilitarisation, financial subordination, Israeli control of security and intelligence etc…
First, Netanyahu himself, a right winger, said in his Bar Ilan speech "we are ready to agree to a real peace agreement, a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state.” I would love to see an equivalent statement from any Palestinian government official, I don't think I ever have.
Second, my polls are from the Palestinian Centre for Survey and Research, which interviews Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. In March 2020, only 33% of Palestinians supported a one-state. Show me a poll that says a majority of Palestinians don't want their own state. I'd love to see it.
But you didn't answer my question. How does a two state solution formally implement oppression? I'm very curious to hear this answer.
I actually did answer your question. And I really don’t want to engage in a discussion about how Netanyahu is a real dove and peace seeker while the Palestinians have never made any statement in support of peace.
I didn't say Netanyahu was a real dove. I don't think I need to participate in this conversation since you seem perfectly capable for carrying on both sides by yourself.
"Demilitarization" is the sticking point in the statement you've provided. Would Netanyahu "agree to a real peace agreement, a demilitarized [Jewish] state side by side with the [Palestinian] state"? I kind of doubt he would, no? As long as the two states would not be on equal terms—i.e. both actually sovereign—the idea of the two-state solution is a farce. Now, I'm not saying a two-state solution *couldn't* be legitimate, but rather that people like Netanyahu clearly do not actually want one, even when they say they do.
Of course, this is literally exactly what Moonface60 said, and with which you concurred, while somehow still claiming to disagree, so I don't trust that you're actually bothering to read anything here. If you want a citation that Netanyahu opposes the two-state solution... you've provided it yourself.
Moonface claimed that the Israeli government would never support a two state solution. I proved otherwise, and now you're moving the goalposts. Demilitarization is just one of many issues in the negotiations, not "the" sticking point. In terms of the states being on equal terms, winners and losers are never on equal terms. After WWII, Germany and Japan were demilitarized and today they're doing great. Palestine isn't special.
And just to be clear, I, like Peter, absolutely, wholeheartedly and unequivocally support the right of Israel to exist and to be the ultimate place of refuge for both Jews and Palestinians, now and forever, until the end of time
Shwach that’s the Yiddish word for weak. But unlike weak Shwach has an edge. To say Israel has the right to exist as Israel-Filastin or Filastin-Israel by coin toss is just another way to say Israel will disappear.
You are proposing to reward the Palestinians for refusing every compromise solution in the last 100 years. And in effect condemning the Jews to again become a minority, knowing full well how Jewish minorities have suffered over millennia, and this time in what was once their state. And your reasoning? Israel is primarily concerned with the welfare of Jews and not of the Arabs.
The Arabs of course could have had and still can have their own state, but they have rejected that opportunity as well, because they are holding out for the day when more people will have your attitude. And their dream of “Palestine from the river to the sea” will be delivered.
The Jews who have been kicked around for 2,000 years and have somehow clawed their way to statehood should openly give it up to a people who have fought them tooth and nail and just trust in Palestinian loving kindness. Out of curiosity where have you observed loving kindness between Palestinians? How about between Palestinians and other Arab peoples?
There have been no elections in the West Bank or Gaza for many years and everybody without exception knows why. It's not so much that the Palestinian leadership in place is worried of losing; oh, they know they would lose. Its who they will lose to that worries everyone—it’s Hamas—an anti-Semitic theocratic party, whose charter and idea of Jews is similar to what Americans thought of native Americans—“The only good Indian is a dead Indian”.
And you believe that a joint dance between Israelis and Palestinians will melt away all the hatreds that have been there unabated for almost 2 centuries now (leaving out Moslem antipathy towards Jews from the time of its creation).
All of this is good stuff will somehow happen irrespective of the fact that there is currently not a single Arab state that is close to implementing Democracy in other than name.
As for Israel’s undisputed creativity, vibrancy, culture and contributions to the world? Eh, that is not nearly as important as creating yet another Arab state.
So it all comes down to since the Israelis and Palestinians could not agree on a Palestinian state side-by-side let’s just give in and eliminate Israel—except in name. Although to be sure in time that will be removed as well. As Jews will exit from yet another country, they have become a minority.
For those who want anther well-reasoned answer https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/among-the-antisemites-a-response-to-peter-beinart/
Sorry, but your answer is just convincing. Forcing Austria to merge with Germany or Ukraine to merge with Russia, means the end of Ukraine and Austria as sovereign states. States are the embodiment of a peoples’ self-determination. If both sides accept to merge, so be it. Otherwise, you just deprive a people of its independence (the downfall of the USSR did not deprive Russians of their independence).
According to international law, Israelis are entitled to a state of their own within the 1967 borders. In 2004, the ICJ called for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It did not call for one state.
Arguing that creating two states is no longer possible, it is baseless. Why can’t Jewish settlers live in a Palestinian state? Around 200,000 French settlers remained in Algeria in the first years following independence (most of them were gone by 1970). A 4% land swap would leave less than 100,000 Jews within a future Palestinian state, and most of them would leave on their own according to opinion polls.
Claiming that a Jewish nation-state is incompatible with liberal democracy is another spurious claim. It reminds me of the European far-right arguing that Islam is incompatible with democracy (the far left has the same problem with Jews that the far right has with Muslims - the far right says that Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy while the far left says the same about Judaism).
Nothing prevents Israel from being both the state of the Jewish people and that of all its citizens, the same way as one can love both of his parents. Like many critics of Israel (that was already true before you became an anti-Zionist), you fail to understand that international law requires states to give equal individual (political and civil) rights to all its citizens. It does not require states to give them equal group rights. Thus, a state has no obligation to be culturally neutral or to have a neutral immigration policy. Sure, Israel does not even uphold the individual rights of its Arab-Palestinian minority (only 50% of Arab of citizens of Israel identify as Palestinians, the others identify as Arab Israelis), but Israel is a country at war with a minority that belongs to the same ethnic group as the enemy. I dare you to name me any other country that did better under similar circumstances. Palestinian-Arab Israelis have more collective rights than Russian-speaking minorities of Baltic countries (who do not even have automatic access to citizenship), or the Turkish minority of Greece that does not even have the right to identify as Turkish or to choose its own communal leaders.
Finally, the elephant in the room: the occupied territories. The occupation is of course obnoxious but it is now clear that the Palestinians said no to the Clinton parameters in 2001, Olmert’s offer in 2008, and the Kerry-Obama principles in 2014. The revisionist narrative you subscribe to (I subscribed to it too) collapsed when Haaretz revealed in 2017 that Abbas said no to Kerry and Obama.
Hussein Agha and Akram Haniya have both said that Clinton’s framework would not suffice to solve the refugee issue.
Calling for dismantling Israel is not only unfair and illegal, it is first and foremost meaningless, as the Palestinians can achieve most of their demands (including the right of return) in a confederal framework. Nothing prevents a confederation from having its own army and its own foreign policy. It then has all the trappings of a federal state without depriving the member states of their independence. That would create a de facto reality of two states in a shared country.
Now my question for you, Mr. Beinart, is the following: why do insist on depriving Jews of their independence, when creative solutions can reconcile virtually all Palestinian demands with Israel’s existence?
Best,
B. Bohbot
Putin at one point called for a "demilitarized" Ukraine. According to "Anonymous" in this comment thread, Netanyahu calls for a "demilitarized" Palestine. Your lack of self-awareness in comparing Israel to Ukraine rather than Palestine to Ukraine is staggering. Sure, you can draw some valid comparisons between Israel and Ukraine, but your analogy is much weaker than you seem to think.
I never said Netanyahu calls for a demilitarized Palestine. Why are you lying about my positions, you hypocrite?
Oh, sorry, I mixed you up with Winters. Your personality is just not very memorable, so it’s easy enough to mix you up with someone else.
Anyway, here’s the quote from above:
> First, Netanyahu himself, a right winger, said in his Bar Ilan speech "we are ready to agree to a real peace agreement, a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state.” I would love to see an equivalent statement from any Palestinian government official, I don't think I ever have.
Of course you haven’t, and you won’t, because no Palestinian government official is willing to live side by side with a Jewish state, demilitarized or otherwise. They are the obstacle to peace.
Of course I haven’t mixed you up with Winters by attributing his quote to you? Surely this misattribution is part of the vast Palestinian conspiracy!
Of course not. You're just stupid.
Well, all comparisons are flawed. But you seem to forget that in 1967 Israel was surrounded by armies calling for its imminent destruction. Ukraine never called (or tried) to destroy Russia. The fact of the matter is that Israelis are entitled to self-determination according to the International Court of Justice.
Arguing that Israel would not cease to exist if Jews were to be stripped of this right is akin to saying that France would keep existing "without supremacy" if it were forced to merge with Germany.
You’re 100% right Bernard, don’t listen to Elsie she has already shown she knows less than nothing about this issue.
Or, as you so eloquently put it, because I am a potty-mouth poopy-face. Truly the crème de la crème of argumentation. Socrates himself would be blinded by your brilliance.
If you say so.
Oh, and as far as unflattering comparisons go, both Russia and Ukraine have literal neonazis, which, uh, kind of makes it difficult to compare either of them with Israel. (Yes, Israel had Patrol 36, but Patrol 36 is incomprehensibly weird, and anyway it only consisted of nine people and has been defunct since 2007.)
If we’re going to continue with the Russia-Ukraine comparisons, Russia is currently militarily occupying Ukraine, while Israel since 1967 has been militarily occupying the West Bank. No, the West Bank isn’t an internationally recognized state in the way that Ukraine is, but it’s hard to deny the fact that Israel is militarily occupying the territory many Israelis see as the future Palestinian state, while even the most die-hard Zionists (ie the minority that wants to annex the West Bank) would have a hard time saying that the Palestinian Authority is militarily occupying anything. (No, Gaza doesn’t really fit into this analogy. As you have concurred, all analogies are imperfect.)
Another comparison could be that Russia has nuclear weapons, and Ukraine does not, while Israel… might(?) have nuclear weapons, and the PA and Hamas emphatically do not. Sure, Palestine has friends abroad who do have nuclear weapons (namely Pakistan, to an extent), but Pakistan isn’t exactly pulling a NATO and stationing missiles on a border with Israel (in no small part due to the fact that Pakistan and Israel are thousands of miles apart).
Palestinians can’t vote because they don’t want to. For 70 years, every opportunity for two states for two people that Israel was ready to embrace was rejected by the Palestinians. Palestinians continue to reject peace today.
If the Palestinians truly want to live in peace in their own country, side-by-side with Israel, the onus is on them to make it very clear to the world. Not their typical obfuscation and rejection.
The good news is that their rejecting peace is no longer preventing Israel from moving forward and establishing relations with its neighbors. Those most hurt by Palestinian leadership corruption and rejectionism are the Palestinian people.
Israel is not suicidal. Peter‘s idea of Kumbaya, everyone living together in peace, is absurd when the Palestinian people are taught that Jews are on land stolen from them and that murdering Jews is a virtue. What’s needed is a young, visionary, reformist Palestinian leader to emerge who recognizes that living in peace next to Israel will bring security and prosperity to its people. That’s what Peter should be focusing his advocacy on. Not wasting everyone’s time on his anti-Israel rants.
"If one recognizes, as I do, that the root of the problem is the Jewish supremacist character of the state of Israel, it follows that ending the occupation is not enough; Israel, too, needs to be decolonized. The Palestinian citizens of Israel are second-class citizens. True, they have the vote, but there is a whole raft of laws and practices that discriminate against them. A two-state solution would not address their problem. On the contrary, it would distance them further from the other branch of the Palestinian family. The best hope for resolving the century-old conflict between Jews and Palestinians lies not in the partition of Palestine but in building one democratic state from the river to the sea with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of religion or ethnicity."
https://www.pij.org/articles/2144/the-twostate-solution--illusion-and-reality
Jewish supremacist character? Palestinians second class citizens with laws discriminating against them? Those are strong damning statements…care to back them up?
The Arab Israelis have been polled many times about whether with a 2 state peace they would remain Israeli or become Palestinian. The overwhelming majority say stay Israeli.
It would be logical to redraw the border so that a new nation of Palestine would include these Arab villages and reunite Palestinians, while similarly including the largest West Bank Jewish villages as Israeli. Anyone from these areas who would prefer staying Israeli or becoming Palestinian citizens would have the right to move to a different place and do so.
"Jewish supremacist character? Palestinians second class citizens with laws discriminating against them? Those are strong damning statements…care to back them up?"
I did provide a link to the article I quoted, which I believe back's it up.
"The Arab Israelis have been polled many times about whether with a 2 state peace they would remain Israeli or become Palestinian. The overwhelming majority say stay Israeli."
As Israel has no intention of allowing a Palestinian state, the question isn't relevant.
Israel has wanted two states for two people for 70 years. It’s the Palestinians who continue to reject it. The onus is on them to announce their strong desire for their own country, a “right of return” to only this new country and not Israel, and to live side by side in peace. They do that, it’s a done deal.
“ Israel has wanted two states for two people for 70 years.”
Not true.
The two-state solution is the illusory end product of a U.S.-conceived “peace process” that has always been about things other than actually achieving peace—just as, contrary to the conventional trope, the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship” is not really about “shared values.”
The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n16/henry-siegman/the-great-middle-east-peace-process-scam
'Peace process Israeli scam to steal Palestine'
https://www.presstv.com/DetailFr/2017/07/24/529486/Palestine-Israel-alAqsa-Peace
The Two-State Solution – Illusion and Reality By Avi Shlaim
https://www.pij.org/articles/2144/the-twostate-solution--illusion-and-reality
Beneath the conflict in Gaza lies the death of the two-state solution
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/25/beneath-the-conflict-in-gaza-lies-the-death-of-the-two-state-solution/
The Two-State Solution Is Dead
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-two-state-solution-dead-10862
The Middle East 'peace process' was a myth. Donald Trump ended it.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/18/the-middle-east-peace-process-myth-donald-trump-ended-it
Palestinian rejectionism:
https://besacenter.org/palestinian-rejectionism/
The Problem Is Palestinian Rejectionism
Why the PA Must Recognize a Jewish State
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2011-11-01/problem-palestinian-rejectionism
Palestinian rejectionism, glorification of terrorism is stopping peace
https://m.jpost.com/opinion/article-715868/amp
It’s time to reject Palestinian rejectionism. The Arab world has figured out it's better to work with the Jewish state rather than against it.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/this-nov-29th-its-time-for-palestinians-to-reject-rejectionism/
This is all sort of "cool" in theory, but in practice, the Middle East is a genocidal, ethnic cleansing place. So, nice solution is going to be "heh, let's just join with a couple million people who's leaders and a large fraction of followers want to start a genocidal civil war or perhaps just a reign of ceasless terror attacks, all with "plausible deniability".
It just won't work on the ground in practice. So, what to do? Wait. As the age of oil ends (2050s?) the money that fuels the relentless war will dry up and you'll have a peace. Like in Ireland -- once Americans got tired of supporting Catholic terrorists, they settled. There is no such forcing function right now. Even if the Sunnis massively decided "OK, better for everyone", Iran would drive the wedge.
My claim is simple: Your "principled" stand will lead to genocide of the Jewish people, or at least to a far more destructive civil=>regional war.
I just read the comments section. OMG, Peter! Maybe we are in the twilight zone. I wish you strength and power. I find your honesty inspiring. Truth, and the golden rule are my mottos. Unfortunately both are becoming scarcer and scarcer in the world today.
I join you; we are in the twilight zone, and I also wish Peter the strength to be who he is. Thanks
Lots of people here who love the slaughter and rights violations committed by Israel on a daily basis.
Jim, I don’t think they do. I think they have de-humanized Palestinians, and that makes it okay for them. They are high on self-righteousness and indignation. Indignation of perceived danger coming from the Palestinians. They have been fed an altered version of history and facts about the eatablishment of Israel with the US, UK, and UN. They think Israel established all by itself and can make up any rules it wants, international conventions and laws be damned. They are so puffed up, that they are on a spiral of tit-for-tat, revenge, always, escalating. Both sides do this, of course. It is our monkey brains. To stop the spiral is risky, but it is the only way to bring the world into enlightenment. The kind of resolution Peter envisions would require Jews to not only think of Israel’s best interest, but also how to make an economically viable, resource-containing state for the Palestinians so that they may also have a good life. If Jewish leaders in Israel would stop the hasbara, start feeding the public positive statements about the Palestinians, stop locking up or killing potential good Palestinian leaders, and then retreat from the majority of the WB leaving it to those leaders they have stopped locking up, the world would be a different place. Other Arab countries would no longer be hostile to Israel. But, Israel and the CIA have, over the past 70 years, encouraged Islamic extremist theology to make their case for a greater Israel and American funds for weapons. The founders of Israel only thought of their own people. They did not wish their neighbours, or the people whose land they invaded, anything good. They wanted it all.
Cass, you are aware Palestinians were slaughtering Jewish children decades before Israel was even established, right? I don't think we're the ones you should be lecturing about dehumanization.
...and vice versa, you know, right? The main difference between Haganah (or Lehi or Irgun) and the PLO (or Hamas) is that the former were politically convenient for the United States and Western Europe to recognize as legitimate (despite, you know, massacres of civilians), while the latter were not (...for massacres of civilians). Ain't nobody the "good guys" here, so maybe take your crocodile tears elsewhere? Pshhhh!
So you admit the PLO and Hamas massacre civilians? Do you agree with me then that it is not Israel who should be lectured about dehumanization?
Also the main difference between the Lehi/Irgun and Hamas/PLO is that the former hasn’t existed for 70 years or more while the latter continues to slaughter civilians today. But I know you don’t care about murdered children, because you’re a Palestine supporter.
Congratulations, you broke my analogy.
The PLO and Hamas do not AFAIK massacre civilians. The PLO used to be a terrorist organization... like fifty years ago, but now they're for all intents and purposes part of the Israeli government. Are you trying to relitigate the Camp David Accord here? I'm not familiar enough with the history of Hamas to elaborate there, but they certainly aren't doing much cooped up in Gaza.
Your original point was that "Palestinians were slaughtering Jewish children decades before Israel was even established", and yet you failed to point out that Hamas and the PLO *did not exist* back then, which suggests your intention in breaking down my analogy is not entirely in good faith. You could do a lot better if your intention is indeed to try and call out double standards in other people's arguments, you know.
By contrast, of course, Haganah continues to exist (as the IDF) and continues to kill Palestinian children.
They are evil. Not complicated.
I realize Peter is calling for one-state, but the philosophy is the same: don’t just think of your own self-interest, think of the needs of the other people too
No one here said anything in support of slaughter or rights violations. Project much?
I said it. You really this dense or does faking it help you avoid reality?
So you're the only one here supporting slaughter and rights violations. Thanks for admitting it.
English not your first language obviously. No doubt another troll paid by Zionist government to propagandize on internet. What a pathetic "job".
You wrote, "Lots of people here who love the slaughter and rights violations committed by Israel on a daily basis." Who exactly are you talking about and why do you think they love the things you say they do?
It looks more to me like you're the one trolling and smearing everyone who disagrees with you by making stuff up about people. Pretty pathetic to be honest.
" But in its treatment of Palestinians, Israel’s political system fails the liberal democratic criteria that the US espouses, at least rhetorically, all across the world...Under such a system, all the people under Israel’s control would vote in its elections. In taking that view, I’m not singling out Israel. I’m applying the same principles—free elections and equality under the law—that I support in every country, including my own."
There is not a single country on the face of the planet in which "all the people under the control" of that country has the right to vote in that country's elections. Not the United States, not Canada, not a single solitary one. In the United States for example felons can't vote, neither can illegal immigrants and of course Washington DC residents don't have representation in Congress. As an American, you are in no position to call out Israel for "failing liberal democratic criteria" and accusing it of "Jewish supremacy" when your own country is not even close to matching the very criteria you lay out. This is pretty blatant hypocrisy and a double standard, Peter.
With all due respect, Peter isn't the US. I'm sure that he does not agree with all its policies, eg regarding felons voting. Thus his being American does not forbit him from criticizing other governments (he criticizes US policies enough as is). Also, I don't think you can compare Palestinians to felons or illegal immigrants. So, no, I don't think he's being hypocritical.
First I agree there is no comparison between felons and Palestinians because felons are US citizens and Palestinians are not Israeli citizens.
Second, Peter is criticizing Israel for not meeting the US's liberal democratic values, and the one value he identifies is one that the United States itself does not meet. If Peter wants to make the case that the US is not liberal and not democratic and equally as bad as Israel, that would be fine. But until then he is holding Israel to a higher standard than his own country and he should clean up his own country before he come for the Jews.
Anonymous is a funny name; maybe it comes from an anonymous country with anonymous laws and human rights. I would not talk to anyone called anonymous.
Peter, I'd be grateful if you'd explain the concept of "the right to exist". Does any state apart from its ability to hold onto its territory have the right to exist? Where would this right flow from? Who would grant it?
My position on "Israel's right to exist" is that the phrase is fundamentally meaningless and only serves as a shibboleth to divide people on the issue. That is, both agreeing and disagreeing with the phrase becomes inevitably bad-faith, and in order to have any truly constructive conversation, one must reject the phrase as a framing narrative and not allow the conversation to become bogged down in semantic arguments around it.
I agree. Thanks, Elsie H.
Peter there is something wrong with your head. All the evidence points to the reality that if Palestinians are accepted full stop, in Israel, Israel will cease to exist. Why are you so deaf, blind and dumb?
I agree that full Palestinian citizenship could present an existential threat to Israel. You should probably though word your argument a little differently (respectfully?), and also present some of the "all the evidence". You should also try to argue why it's okay to control the lives of Palestinians while not giving them fair representation - that would make your case stronger.
Israeli Arabs have full representation and right to vote. Palestinian refugees have chosen that path. They made war several times and this is their fate. They have themselves to blame. Exhibit A is Islam and its tenet that it will not be ruled by a non-Muslim, making them unsuitable as democratic political partners. Exhibit B is Jew-hatred among Israeli Arabs which is the reason they are constantly belligerent to Jews. Exhibit C is Jew-hatred among so-called Palestinians that causes them to make constant war toward Jews. Exhibit D is the reality that there has never been a state with defined borders called Palestine. Exhibit E is the lie that "Palestinian" is an ethnicity. Exhibit F is the reality that most, if not all, Palestinians names are Arabic. ... want more ? Peter Beinart does not deserve the respect you think he should get. He's a patsy for people who think with their hearts instead of their heads.
Why give "respect" to a moron?
That's one way of putting it.
The Cuban government does not repress its people any more than does that of the US or here in the UK (where our Tory regime will soon remove yet more rights with the end of our Human Rights Act). You are repeating US propaganda and giving that government further permission to continue its decades-long war of sanctions against the Cuban people. The public demonstrations in Cuba in 2021 were dominated by two factions, in the main:
- those led by US agents with the aim of destroying Cuba and turning it into a society like that of Colombia or Haiti
- Cuban people who want their government to be more socialist.
If you regard the US as freer or more democratic than Cuba, ask yourself how much freedom and democracy American workers have in their workplaces.
Hey everyone, I am a first generation student in the U.S. and recently started writing on substack about human rights. I am almost to 50 subscribers, would appreciate if you could read my writing, give some advice, perhaps subscribe and add me to your reading list! If anyone wants to collaborate let me know! Mr. Beinart, I would love to collab with you...
Can you bunch of haters read the last paragraph and explain why that’s antisemitic?
< At the end of the day, what really matters is the right of individual human beings to exist, in safety and freedom. Any political system, any border, any country must ultimately be judged on how well it safeguards that.>
Sure, I'll tell you. Palestine does not respect the rights of individual Jewish human beings to exist in safety and freedom, which is why Israel has borders and keeps them out of its territory. By calling for the dissolution of Israel and the so-called one state solution, Peter puts the Jews of Israel at risk, both from Palestine and from other threats like ISIS. Look to the Kurds as an example of how well minorities are allowed to exist in safety and freedom in Arab and Muslim countries in the Middle East.
Personally, I think disenfranchising millions of Israeli Jews and putting them at risk is anti-Semitic. You can feel free to disagree. I know Peter does.
Well said.
Thanks for this piece Peter. I see your point and as always it’s so clearly stated. But i think you’re missing a crucial issue in responding to the mantra-type question (by which I mean one of the many inherited cliches that Israel supporters pull out in response to most every critique) that your reader asked about “why is Israel the only country on earth whose very existence is routinely challenged”.
Talking about Israel’s political system today, while central to understanding why people around the world consider Israel’s claim to democracy fraudulent and their political system in need of being dismantled, still doesn't get to the heart of the matter. And so in some ways it leaves all the usual bundle of excuses and cliches Jews lean on intact.
I would add to your piece that the central reason why so many question Israel’s existence is that it was created as a settler colonial state on another people's land, and Jews have masked (or been aware of, or been in denial about) this reality with words — in the form of over a hundred years of “fake news” — with oppression and with violence. I'm aware that doesn't sit comfortably even with left leaning Jews who want to admit some of Israel's wrongdoing but still want to see the origins as "complicated". But in many ways it is that simple.
When a country comes into being as Israel did, and its supporters today know so little about its real origins that they arm themselves only with a series of cliches about an innocent Zionists or an innocent state under attack, no one can take any defender of Israel seriously. No amount of defensive rage and furious labelling on the part of Jews will free them/us of the reality that most people have long moved beyond the original creation story: with just a bit of honest research that creation story crumbles to bits, and anyone looking into it will know that.
The Jews-in-denial crowd are the last to know, but they cannot stop the march of history. And their wilful ignorance on the real reasons why the world is angry at Israel simply fuels more rage, not only at Israel but at Jews around the world, for defending an oppressive regime while touting the virtues of democracy and human rights.
I don’t think any of the core “mantra” questions can be fully answered in reference to the present: if Jews can’t/won’t/refuse to really confront the origins of the Palestine problem they will never know why Israel’s existence is challenged, will remain captivated by their sense of blissful victimhood and will never be able to help address the real questions that the future needs in order to avoid more pain.
I agree that Israel has a lot of settler-colonial features but other settler-colonial states that have granted citizenship and at least formal legal equality to native and historically disenfranchised groups (the US, Canada, Australia etc) don't have their political systems challenged in the same way--nor should they--because despite very real flaws they are far closer to being genuine liberal democracies. They don't deny citizenship to large swaths of native-born people just because they're not of the dominant ethnic/religious/racial group.
Have you considered that the actual reason why Israel doesn't just hand all Palestinians citizenship is because of the genocidal wars Palestine and its allies has waged against Israel, not to mention all the terrorism? Just some food for thought.
"Have you considered that the actual reason why the United States doesn't just hand all American Indians citizenship is because of the genocidal wars American Indians and their allies have waged against white Americans, not to mention all the terrorism? Just some food for thought."
What genocidal wars?
What terrorism?
Also they are called Native Americans now. And they HAVE citizenship. You are a moron as well as a racist.
You really aren’t familiar with US history are you lol.
I guess not, please educate me about some of the genocidal wars waged by the Native Americans against the USA.
US and Canada: *slaughters millions of indigenous people and forces the remainder into reservations*
Peter Beinart: "Well they give the few survivors citizenship so they're genuine liberal democracies!"
Absurd. Completely absurd.
Yes, the United States and Canada are garbage-tier democracies. And as a white American, I feel comfortable saying that Israel is just as garbage-tier as we are!
OK, then, take it with Peter Beinart who seems to think the US is significantly better than Israel. I'm happy to agree with you that Israel is just as liberal and democratic as the United States and Canada.
I would agree that Peter is overly sanguine where the US is concerned.
Settler colonial state. Really? May I suggest Professor Beinart and Ms. Gill and many others on this site do the research or at least read the research. There is a lot out there. And you might be surprised.
While it is hard to pin down the actual population of Palestine in the 19th century most people (John McCarthy is best known) posit somewhere between 250,000 and 275,000 between 1800 and 1850. That number ballooned to almost twice that by 1900. How did that happen? Given that most Palestinians at the time were poverty stricken, often intra tribal fighting, earthquakes (1837) and just plain lawlessness not to mention that more than 75% had a permanent version of Trachoma (even in 1924 when the British surveyed the land) it was not a natural doubling of the population.
So where did they come from :
1. An Egyptian invasion in 1832 which upon withdrawal left somewhere between 30,000 and 75,000 behinds. Mostly near Gaza, Jaffa had a significant Egyptian population by 1900.
2. The contraction of the Ottoman Empire led to a significant, in the many thousands of additional Moslems from Algeria, Libya, Bosnia, Circassia. All to be resettled some in Syria, Some in Trans Jordan and many in Palestine (not yet Palestine). They were supported by the Ottoman Empire, and they were indeed colonial enterprise!
3. Also a significant number of Kurds and Bedouin tribes were also moving in and out of Palestine. Even Sudanese who came with the Egyptian army stayed and farmed water buffalos in the many swamps in the Sharon and Hula.
In fact there were more than twice as many new Arab villages established in the 19th century then Jewish ones. (Kirk and Grossman).
As Jews came in especially in the 20th century and created not only an industrial base a significant number of more Arabs simply walked across the British Mandate Borders.
The fact is the original Arab population of 250,000 was itself made up of differing people who also came in at different times. For example, two warring Arabian tribes the Qais and Yamens (you can read about them in Aryeh Avneri’s book also Dowty’s book and the comments of a British consulate Finn who described some of these horrific battles in teh 1850s.
None of these people are indigenous to the area. And while I think the concept of indigenous people is not particularly helpful (after all what are you all doing in America do you consider yourself indigenous?) while you are on the subject, I do think that you need to take into account that Jews were indigenous and returned in great numbers in the 19th and 20th century. Jews were in the area continuously although they were not Zionists. Jerusalem's population in 1900 had a majority Jewish component.
My point is simply that a great many people came in at once. To single out the Jews as external colonial enterprise is both anti-Semitic and is showing your terrible lack of knowledge.
You need to read up. You all remind me of the 60s when we were educating our fellow students about Vietnam our mantra then was: “Show me your sources”. Stop the BS and get some knowledge. Its a lot more complicated than many of you think.
You do realize that Joan Peters is completely discredited, right?
I wondered how long it would take for Joan Peters to come up. I provided sources and Joan Peters was not among them. I don’t want to discuss Peters because I did not read her book thinking she was discredited but I do know now that she had good data and that she misused it in some of her analysis.
My sources for external inputs for:
1. Egyptian invasion with well over 100,000 many conscripts who upon withdrawal almost 8 years later decided to stay is well established. This event occurred and is historical.
2. The contraction of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century is also well known and it led to an import of significant number of Moslems from the entities that the Ottomans gave up. This too is well known and is even mentioned in general histories of Palestine. And yes, they were funded by Ottoman Turkey and provided with land, often villages vacated by others due to Bedouin attacks and intra tribal battles. See below.
3. Palestine even before it was an entity was porous and many others from the neighborhood often came and often left depending on strife and level of lawlessness. British Mandate Data has shown that and is routinely cited by researchers.
One source, especially for no.2 above, would be David Grossman Rural Arab Demography and Early Jewish Settlement in Palestine. Ruth Kark has written much about this as have many others. General introductions to Palestine all bring up these issues for example Gudrun Kramer A history of Palestine.
But we also have primary sources in the form of visitors and government officials like James Finn a British consul general in the 1850s and 60s. Travelers like Tristram Henry Baker (a 19th century British explorer and clergy man) who described the disappearance of villages and how all of sudden people from Algeria and Libya for example took over certain villages.
My point was that many people showed up in the 19th century and even more showed up in the 20th century—the Jews “were not Johnnys come lately”. Most of the Arab population also came there recently; certainly the majority were not there from Canaanite/Philistine times. I know this does not conform to the current narrative of Jew usurping the land, but narratives can change over time.
Even if you’re not citing Joan Peters, you’re recycling her basic point by reframing the ongoing conflict as a question of whether Jews or Arabs have a greater claim of indigeneity to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Even if they had only lived in their homes for a matter of decades, the permanent displacement of over 700,000 non-Jewish residents during the civil war of the late 1940s would still be unjustified, and neither would the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the Civil Administration since 1967 in the West Bank.
The fact of the matter is that both Jews and Arabs have lived in the region since antiquity, and claims that some Arabs’ tenure was illegitimate because it may not have dated more than a generation or two before the late 1940s make it absurd to suggest that the tenure of Israeli Jews making Aliyah is somehow more legitimate than the tenure of the Arabs who were displaced.
In all likelihood, *both* Jews and Arabs are indigenous to the eastern Mediterranean. In all likelihood, Mizrahi Jews have significant shared ancestry with the non-Jewish Arabs with whom they have cohabitated for thousands of years. And anyway the Israeli doesn’t use ancestry to determine eligibility for Aliyah; they only care whether a given individual is considered halachically Jewish according to the Chief [Orthodox] Rabbinate, a point which has proven contentious, e.g. with the evacuation of Beta Israel from Ethiopia from the late 1970s onward. What does the Aliyah of Beta Israel have to do with the demographics of the late Ottoman Empire? Nothing!
Elsie, If you look over my earlier piece, I was clear that I find the concept of indigenous people as a true measure of rights unhelpful (as I often point out we are all here in America and not indigenous). All you have to do is read David Reich Who we are and how we got here to understand that. Unfortunately, it is something that is constantly being used and is part of the false narrative of “settler colonial enterprise”. Namely, the Jews came and displaced the Arabs who had been there forever.
The data is clear that the Jews did not displace the Arabs. More Arab towns were created in the 19th century than Jewish ones and many more Arabs came in to Palestine as the Jews came in.
Arabs farmers (fellahin) were displaced by an onerous tax system put in place by the Ottomans and rapacious theft by their village chiefs, and the wealthy Arab class who literally took ownership of the land and sold it from underneath them. While it is said they were absentee landlords, just about all the members of the eventual Palestinian leadership sold land to the Jews. But before you pity the poor fellahin, the farming they engaged in was simply unsustainable and when offered new land or cash they always opted for cash.
It is true that 700,000 Arabs were displaced in the aftermath of the 1948 war. What is not true is that they were all or mostly expelled. If you go back and read the commentary at the time, particularly Arab commentary, before it was buried, massaged and replaced by today’s narrative. You will find that the notables (as they were called) class (74,000) left overnight and left with their funds. That send a powerful signal to many others who followed in their footsteps. Certainly, there were atrocities committed by both sides and had been for more than just the 1948 war and that was enough to set many in motion. As often happens in a war. European Jews found out in the aftermath of WWII that they could not return to their homes!
Also, when we talk about how the Arabs who came to Palestine came recently, which is true, the fact is that many simply returned to where they came from. From the 1918 British occupation until 1948 more than 100,000 came from neighboring countries they too are now considered refugees.
It is also true that the Arabs in Palestine were offered numerous chances at some form of statehood even prior to the partition plan. And I am quite sure if they were offered the partition plan today, they would grab it. All were always rejected. As for post 1967 I am in full agreement that Israel needs to vacate the lands but I also don’t see an Arab leadership ready to negotiate that departure. They are hoping Peter Beinart’s concept will take hold.
"In all likelihood, *both* Jews and Arabs are indigenous to the eastern Mediterranean"
Fantastic, so Israel isn't a settler colonial state.
"the central reason why so many question Israel’s existence is that it was created as a settler colonial state on another people's land"
Assuming that's true, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. were all created as settler colonial states. So which lie do you want to push, Natasha? That people question the existence of the United States (laughable) or that the United States was not created as a settler colonial state on another people's land (equally laughable)?
Congratulations, you've identified the problem with Israel. I assume you support Landback in the US and Canada?
If that's your problem with Israel, then I assume as an American you'll be leaving the country soon and returning your house to the indigenous people? Or is this a 'do as I say, not as I do' type situation?
…and I can see that you aren’t familiar with Landback. No, the Lenape aren’t proposing that New York City be given back to them. That would be ridiculous.
The Yellowhead Institute Red Paper is probably the most concrete description of Landback, though it’s more about Canada than it is about the United States:
https://redpaper.yellowheadinstitute.org/
"the Lenape aren’t proposing that New York City be given back to them. That would be ridiculous."
Funny, because that's exactly what Palestine is proposing. That Tel Aviv and Jaffa and Jerusalem and everything else in Israel be "given back" to them. That's what "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" means. I'm glad we can agree that such a demand is "ridiculous."
Tell you what, you clean up your mess in the United States (and Canada, and Australia, and New Zealand) and solve all the many many injustices and problems with the indigenous peoples there, and once that's done, maybe then you can point fingers at Israel. Deal?
The “tu quoque” defense of Israel is so nakedly antisemitic I don’t even know where to start.
Ethiopia perpetrating a genocide against the Ethiopian Jews? Not Israel’s prerogative to criticize, since Israel has problems, too! 🙄
Anyway I’m glad to see you are continuing the proud tradition of justifying Stalin’s multiple genocides by pointing out that everybody else is racist, too!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
The fact that you’re openly embracing “tu quoque” argumentation is truly a demonstration of the best of faith. Bravo!
[citation needed]
So if having a double standard is is antisemitic, and having a consistent standard is hypocritical, I guess you’d rather be an antisemite?
If the United States should keep to itself, I guess we should stop giving Israel billions of dollars of military aid, no?
“ Assuming that's true, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. were all created as settler colonial states.”
Isn’t that why those states are big supporters of Israel.
No, that's not why.