I asked Chomsky about this when I last interviewed him. I will again if he agrees to join us again this year. I want to get Finklestein on the calendar too to see if these are still his views.
"It was once possible to argue credibly that the best way to satisfy the Ukrainian and Russian rights to self-determination was for both peoples to control their own states. Yet even this solution would have entailed real costs to other rights. It would have meant second-class citizenship for those 8,334,100 ethnic Russians who lived in a state that privileged Ukrainians over them.
"Given the impossibility of a two-state solution, the only way to respect both the Ukrainian wish and Russian rights to national self-determination is to define that right as autonomy, not sovereignty. Ukrainians and Russians could exercise that autonomy in a binational state that gave each the authority to preserve its language and culture. Governing binational states is difficult.
"But contrary to the claims of establishment Ukrainian groups, a democratic binational Ukraine/Russia would be no more bigoted against Ukrainians than binational Belgium is bigoted against Walloons or binational Canada is bigoted against Quebecers. To the contrary, if you truly believe it is bigotry to deny any people its national—let alone individual—rights, then a binational Ukraine/Russia would be far less bigoted than the status quo.
"The Biden administration must soon choose whether to accept the Ukrainian establishment’s claim that opposing Ukrainian statehood constitutes racism. If it does, it will legitimize the perverse argument that treating Ukrainians and Russians equally constitutes bigotry but privileging Ukrainians over Russians does not. And, in so doing, it will delay Americans’ much-needed reckoning with the current one-state reality in Ukraine/Russia, where one people’s right to self-determination comes at the cost of another’s."
I know, I've read it several times. That's why it's so hypocritical and ridiculous for you to go to bat for Ukraine and claim their war against Russia is a just war. If there's no right to Jews to have a state, there's no right for Ukrainians to have a state.
There is no right of Ukrainians to have a state, but there is a right for them not to be invaded, and there is no right of Russians to live in Ukraine because they're not natives of that land. By contrast, Palestinians (like Jews) are natives of Palestine/Israel, and they're not invading Israel nor is Peter or anyone proposing that they do so.
I don't know what drug has been added to the water where you are that you're making these absurd analogies.
Peter wrote that Ukrainians have the right of self-determination and independence. I'm glad we agree that Jews also have the right of self-determination, independence, and the right to not be invaded.
"there is no right of Russians to live in Ukraine because they're not natives of that land."
That's not what Putin believes. He said that Ukrainians and Russians are one people.
I don't know if you're genuinely this stupid or you're just trolling for entertainment.
If the Russians were originally from Ukraine and were displaced in the process of the creation of Ukraine, relegated to the status of refugees in most places they live in, and there was no state of Russia but a territory about equal in size to Ukraine in which the majority of these displaced Ukrainians were under military occupation from the people currently living in and running Ukraine, then you'd have a leg to stand on. Otherwise GTFO with your braindead analogies.
I couldn't care less what Putin thinks. I care about the truth, unlike some people.
Peter had advocated for the revoking of Israel's independence and sovereignty and denied the Jewish people's right of self-determination and independence. I'm glad you agree with me and disagree with him.
No, he advocates for the return of Palestinians who wish to return to the place they were forcibly displaced from, which is also their native land. It's got nothing to do with independence or sovereignty.
There's no such thing as a right of self-determination. I don't know what 'independence' means here, but in any case if you think peoples have these rights, then you believe Palestinians have them too.
Your verbal comprehension is really in the gutter if you think I'm agreeing with you in this thread.
i don't see them as two separate entities. 20% of israel's citizens are palestinians. it would be far more if not for the nakba. and there are perhaps israeli jews across the green line in "Palestine." That's why i link the two. i think we're in one integrated political unit that must be equal and binational. so it's partly a recognition of reality and partly a statement of aspiration. as i said, i have no problem referring to israel as the name of the state, just not the territory
Russia, Ukraine, Russia/Ukraine, or Russia-Ukraine?
I haven't been on the blog for too long but has Beinart ever addressed these criticisms of his "one state solution" by Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein?
"There is no one state solution. That is a total illusion! It in fact serves as a way to support Israel. There is no possibility that Israel would agree to terminate its existence to go out of existence and to become a Palestinian state and furthermore there is no support for that in the world. None! Not in the African countries, not in the third world, not in the global south, certainly not in Europe....Third world countries are very jealous of sovereignty. They don't want to see sovereignty overruled, it's dangerous for them, so this is a proposal with no support, no possibility of being realized." - Chomsky
"There's nothing in the law for one state! It's a nonstarter." - Finkelstein
One more quote for good measure:
Hussein Ibish, an Arab-American scholar who supports a two-state solution, says that “Finkelstein and Chomsky have enough experience and have their ear to the ground to see that the one-state effort is quixotic. BDS’s hysterical reaction to Finkelstein was inevitable, because it’s much closer to a religion than it is to a political idea.”
There is no such entity as a Jewish-supremacist democracy, any more than there could be a Muslim-supremacist democracy, or a white-... etc. If Zionists refuse to admit this self-evident fact, the worldwide campaign to persuade them will simply continue and become ever more bitter.
It is no longer a question of choice. Israelis have painted themselves into a corner by allowing their nascent Democracy to become a semi Theocracy. Religion and Democracy do no, can not , and will not ever mix.
To the credit of the Palestinians, they do tolerate a mix of Moslems and Christians among them ( my Physician in Chicago was a Christian Palestinian man). Can Israeli society expand to do the same..or will the crazy bible thumping Settlers determine the National Characteristics of Israeli society going forward?
One State, Two States..this is an academic argument while innocent people are murdered on both sides.
I’m sorry the Israeli state doesn’t meet your entirely arbitrary expectations of its behavior, but Jewish people still have rights including the right of self determination.
No, I think it reflects the profound difference in political cultures between the two countries. And it's not just a matter of political cultures but institutions. The Israeli Land Authority, for instance, which gives almost half its seats to the Jewish National Fund, does not have an equivalent in Ukraine or the US, France, Nigeria etc. I do have a consistent standard: equality under the law irrespective or race, religion of ethnicity. Rights to sovereignty must be judged on how well they provide for that. I'll give you the last word.
No you don’t have a consistent standard Beinart, and that’s why people think you’re an anti-Semite. Palestine doesn’t have equality under the law regardless of race, religion or ethnicity, but I haven ever seen you write a column condemning them for it.
Your logic is that Jews don’t have rights because of X, and then when proven wrong you say that Jews don’t have rights because of Y, and then when proven wrong again you say Jews don’t have rights because of Z. You’re starting at a conclusion that Jews don’t have rights and working your way backwards from there. And when people point out that your standards for Jews don’t actually apply to anyone else in the real world, you just change the subject.
You *are* the wicked son, just like you wrote about a few weeks ago.
So now you've pivoted from "state for all its citizens" to "minority religion head of state", and from that to "equality under the law irrespective of race, religion, or ethnicity." The ever changing standards and criteria reveal your intellectual dishonesty and lack of principles.
All Israeli citizens are equal under the law, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity. Even if they weren't, there is no article in international law or conventions that states that countries and nations lose their rights to exclusive sovereignty because Peter Beinart doesn't like some of their laws. Rights are rights, and they're not lost because you don't like that Israel's never had a Muslim prime minister. What a joke.
That's an incredibly weak response and I think you know it. It's indisputable that Ukraine is an ethnic-based nation state, the same as Israel, and it is acting on behalf of an ethnic group, the same as Israel. If you're going to arbitrarily declare one nation, the Ukrainian nation, has the right to exclusive sovereignty, and another nation, the Jewish nation, does not, you need to have an actual consistent standard for why that is. Flippant comments about the identity of the head of state, which has literally nothing to do with your previous statement about states being "a state for all its citizens", just continues to show that your views are intellectually baseless.
By the way, Israel has had an Arab head of state before, google "Majalli Wahabi" some time. I suppose if tomorrow Israel has a Christian prime minister, you'll walk back all of your previous statements and acknowledge that Jews do have a right to a state and to exclusive sovereignty? Don't make us laugh.
there's a fundamental difference between ukrainian (or french or italian or nigerian) sovereignty and Jewish sovereignty. You can be a Muslim or Christian or Jewish Ukrainian. You can't be a Muslim or Christian Jew. if Israel were a state for all its citizens irrespective of religion, ethnicity and race than i'd have no problem with Israeli sovereignty, though since the name itself suggests one religion it would have to expand to include others. but i'd absolutely oppose Ukraine (or France, Italy or Nigeria) defining itself as a Christian state and giving Christians rights than members of other religions don't have
Ukraine isn't a state for all its citizens irrespective of religion, ethnicity and race. It's a state for the Ukrainian people, who are an ethnic group.
Wikipedia: "Ukrainians (Ukrainian: Українці, romanized: Ukraintsi, pronounced [ʊkrɐˈjinʲts⁽ʲ⁾i]) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine".
Ukrainian Constitution: "based on the centuries-old history of Ukrainian state-building and on the right to self-determination realised by the Ukrainian nation, all the Ukrainian people,
providing for the guarantee of human rights and freedoms and of the worthy
conditions of human life, caring for the strengthening of civil harmony on Ukrainian soil, and confirming the European identity of the Ukrainian people and the irreversibility of the European
and Euro-Atlantic course of Ukraine,"
The EUROPEAN IDENTITY of the Ukrainian people, Peter. Imagine if Israel had something like that in its Basic Laws.
Article 11: "The State promotes the consolidation and development of the Ukrainian nation, its
historical consciousness, traditions and culture, and also the development of the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of all indigenous peoples and national minorities of Ukraine."
If anything, Israel is LESS discriminatory than Ukraine, because anyone in the world can become Jewish, but you have to be born Ukrainian. Sorry, Peter, but you're completely off base with this one.
Ukraine is a Ukrainian state. Israel is a Jewish state. No difference, just double standards.
But Ukraine wasn't established by displacing the majority members of another ethnicity who are still forced to be in the status of refugees and not allowed to return to the land from which they were displaced.
in his first podcast he was quite clear that he does see the bedouins as amalekites but in his second he says that we can't project the texts about the amalekites into the present day
The idea of one-state for all is a pipe-dream so long as the Palestinians continue to propagandize their people with the belief that the land between the river and the sea is their land, that there is a "right of return" to the millions of descendants of 1948 refugees (literally a made-up definition of refugee), that children are taught antisemitism in school, that murderers of innocent Jews are memorialized as heros and their families are paid a lifetime pension, etc.
For this to ever even be considered, the onus is on the Palestinians to show that THEY want peace and that THEY want to live in harmony with Jews. For 70+ years, it has been and continues to be the opposite.
It is in both peoples' interest to live in their own countries, side by side in peace. The current Israeli government is not playing into the appeasement game. They're playing hard ball. If the Palestinians want change on the ground to claim the West Bank, they must explicitly say and act 3 things: 1) acknowledge Israel's right to exist in peace (and please -- don't start up with the nonsense of "oslo"); 2) agree to recognize" borders that define their own country and Israel; 3) any "right of return" will be to this new Palestinian state. If and when that happens, any Israeli government would respond positively, even the current one.
Until this corrupt Palestinian leadership does that, the Palestinian people are the ones losing out as the world moves on without them. This is not on Israel to change, it's on the Palestinians.
Essentially boiled down to defining the border between the two countries, giving the Palestinians tremendous economic support to make their economy viable, and assuring a demilitarized Palestinian state to assure Israel's security. But, not surprising...it was immediately rejected by the Palestinians -- as every peace negotiation always ends: "not fair to the Palestinians" "no right of return" "unfair borders" etc., etc. And where does that leave things? With the Palestinians without a country and the corrupt Palestinian leaders still in charge.
"For decades, Israeli governments, pursuing the colonization of the entirety of “Eretz Israel,” have systematically destroyed the prerequisites for a solution involving a contiguous, sustainable, sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Nevertheless, the myth that a real Palestinian state is on offer, and that there actually is a genuine “peace process,” endures as one of the greatest examples of magical thinking in modern times."
*That myth has been crucial for the continuation of Israel’s permanent occupation and unending colonization of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, shielding it from any serious international pressure."
"The final interment of the already moribund “two-state solution” would force all concerned to face what is obvious to any honest observer. For decades, an imposed reality of one-state – the only sovereign entity enjoying total security control – has existed between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. This one state is Israel. Irrespective of the label one uses for it, this is the only outcome that this Israeli government will accept, whatever subaltern, or helot, or “autonomous” status it deigns to allow the Palestinians."
" Netanyahu did not mince words while standing next to Trump. He said that in any peace agreement “Israel must retain the overriding security control over the entire area west of the Jordan River.” He has long stated that he would only allow the Palestinians a “state minus;” that most Israeli settlements must remain in place; that all of Jerusalem belongs to Israel alone; and that Israel must keep 50-60% of the West Bank including the fertile Jordan River Valley."
"It matters little whether this travesty is called a one-state or a two-state “solution,” or whether the Palestinians get the right to fly a flag over such a pitiful Bantustan."
The Palestinians have put themselves in this predicament for rejecting every overture toward a 2-state solution. In fact, please send me ANY official PA, PLO, Hamas, et.al., declaration that they would accept a two-state solution. You won't find it because it is fundamentally opposed to what they do believe: they want the Palestinians to control what is now Israel.
There is a growing belief that the only way a conflict ends is when one side acknowledges defeat. Japan only after the 2 atomic bombs; Germany after Allied troops began marching into their territory; etc. With Israel now moving on without the Palestinians, it is the Palestinians who are increasingly looking like losers for not accepting their own state. If one courageous leader comes along who says "we accept two states", this conflict would end and the biggest beneficiaries would be the Palestinian people. And the reality on the ground today is different than the first opportunity they were presented decades ago. That's reality and there's no crying over spilled milk. The Palestinians should move forward with today's reality.
All previous peace initiatives have got nowhere for a reason that neither Biden. nor the EU has had the political courage to acknowledge. That reason is the consensus reached long ago by Israel’s decision-making elites that Israel will never allow the emergence of a Palestinian state which denies it effective military and economic control of the West Bank. To be sure, Israel would allow – indeed, it would insist on – the creation of a number of isolated enclaves that Palestinians could call a state, but only in order to prevent the creation of a binational state in which Palestinians would be the majority.
The Middle East peace process may well be the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history. Since the failed Camp David summit of 2000, and actually well before it, Israel’s interest in a peace process – other than for the purpose of obtaining Palestinian and international acceptance of the status quo – has been a fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and an occupation whose goal, according to the former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, is ‘to sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people’. In his reluctant embrace of the Oslo Accords, and his distaste for the settlers, Yitzhak Rabin may have been the exception to this, but even he did not entertain a return of Palestinian territory beyond the so-called Allon Plan, which allowed Israel to retain the Jordan Valley and other parts of the West Bank.
Anyone familiar with Israel’s relentless confiscations of Palestinian territory – based on a plan devised, overseen and implemented by Ariel Sharon – knows that the objective of its settlement enterprise in the West Bank has been largely achieved. Gaza, the evacuation of whose settlements was so naively hailed by the international community as the heroic achievement of a man newly committed to an honourable peace with the Palestinians, was intended to serve as the first in a series of Palestinian bantustans. Gaza’s situation shows us what these bantustans will look like if their residents do not behave as Israel wants.
Israel’s disingenuous commitment to a peace process and a two-state solution is precisely what has made possible its open-ended occupation and dismemberment of Palestinian territory. And the Quartet – with the EU, the UN secretary general and Russia obediently following Washington’s lead – has collaborated with and provided cover for this deception by accepting Israel’s claim that it has been unable to find a deserving Palestinian peace partner.
Click on the link below to read the full article :
“…if their residents do not behave as Israel wants.”
Precisely. Israel wants them to live in peace, accept Israel’s right to exist as a neighbor, and to acknowledge that the so-called “right of return“ would be to a Palestinian state. Pretty basic requests. Always rejected by the corrupt Palestinian leadership.
Peter,I have been following your comments over the years and I am so pleasently suruprised byyour evolution from writing in thes Jerusalem Post to being the editor of Jewish Currents which during the 90s I was in the editorial board. I am fully supportive of your vision of a binational state as the only way to bring peace and reconciliation to the region, and equality and justice to both Jews and Palestinians.
Peter, how come you never wrote an article about any of my questions or arguments? Mine are way more important and impactful than what to name the region! You're hurting my feelings.
"They both have the right to self-determination, but not self-determination meaning exclusive sovereignty, which denies the rights of other people, but self-determination meaning communal autonomy within a framework of legal equality for both people’s absolute legal equality in a binational state. "
Peter, you literally just wrote two weeks ago about how Ukrainians are fighting a just war to keep Russia out of their territory and how the US is right to support Ukrainian independence and self-determination and not wanting to be part of Russia. How are you able to handle this blatant and obvious cognitive dissonance? If self-determination for Ukrainians means exclusive sovereignty, why doesn't self-determination for Jews and Palestinians mean exclusive sovereignty? If "communal autonomy within a framework of legal equality" isn't acceptable for Ukrainians, then why should it be acceptable for Jews and Palestinians?
Now THAT's a Substack article I'd like to read about.
Mr Winters, it is very obvious to me that what Israel wants, is all of Palestine with as few Palestinians living there as possible. The actions by Israel since 1948 confirms this. Don’t you agree?
Agree completely with your naming & why. Also deeply appreciate yr willingness to engage with those with whom you disagree. (Tho' I do wish you'd given Tom Friedman & Brett Stephens more of a challenge to their thinking, they desperately need it!) Onward with many thanks for all that you do.
I asked Chomsky about this when I last interviewed him. I will again if he agrees to join us again this year. I want to get Finklestein on the calendar too to see if these are still his views.
What did he say and what did you say?
I wrote at some length about the question of self-determination here https://jewishcurrents.org/there-is-no-right-to-a-state
So would you agree with the following statements:
"It was once possible to argue credibly that the best way to satisfy the Ukrainian and Russian rights to self-determination was for both peoples to control their own states. Yet even this solution would have entailed real costs to other rights. It would have meant second-class citizenship for those 8,334,100 ethnic Russians who lived in a state that privileged Ukrainians over them.
"Given the impossibility of a two-state solution, the only way to respect both the Ukrainian wish and Russian rights to national self-determination is to define that right as autonomy, not sovereignty. Ukrainians and Russians could exercise that autonomy in a binational state that gave each the authority to preserve its language and culture. Governing binational states is difficult.
"But contrary to the claims of establishment Ukrainian groups, a democratic binational Ukraine/Russia would be no more bigoted against Ukrainians than binational Belgium is bigoted against Walloons or binational Canada is bigoted against Quebecers. To the contrary, if you truly believe it is bigotry to deny any people its national—let alone individual—rights, then a binational Ukraine/Russia would be far less bigoted than the status quo.
"The Biden administration must soon choose whether to accept the Ukrainian establishment’s claim that opposing Ukrainian statehood constitutes racism. If it does, it will legitimize the perverse argument that treating Ukrainians and Russians equally constitutes bigotry but privileging Ukrainians over Russians does not. And, in so doing, it will delay Americans’ much-needed reckoning with the current one-state reality in Ukraine/Russia, where one people’s right to self-determination comes at the cost of another’s."
Sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it Beinart?
I know, I've read it several times. That's why it's so hypocritical and ridiculous for you to go to bat for Ukraine and claim their war against Russia is a just war. If there's no right to Jews to have a state, there's no right for Ukrainians to have a state.
There is no right of Ukrainians to have a state, but there is a right for them not to be invaded, and there is no right of Russians to live in Ukraine because they're not natives of that land. By contrast, Palestinians (like Jews) are natives of Palestine/Israel, and they're not invading Israel nor is Peter or anyone proposing that they do so.
I don't know what drug has been added to the water where you are that you're making these absurd analogies.
Peter wrote that Ukrainians have the right of self-determination and independence. I'm glad we agree that Jews also have the right of self-determination, independence, and the right to not be invaded.
"there is no right of Russians to live in Ukraine because they're not natives of that land."
That's not what Putin believes. He said that Ukrainians and Russians are one people.
I don't know if you're genuinely this stupid or you're just trolling for entertainment.
If the Russians were originally from Ukraine and were displaced in the process of the creation of Ukraine, relegated to the status of refugees in most places they live in, and there was no state of Russia but a territory about equal in size to Ukraine in which the majority of these displaced Ukrainians were under military occupation from the people currently living in and running Ukraine, then you'd have a leg to stand on. Otherwise GTFO with your braindead analogies.
I couldn't care less what Putin thinks. I care about the truth, unlike some people.
Also I don't see anywhere where Peter or me have advocated for Palestinian invasion and bombardment of Israel??
Peter had advocated for the revoking of Israel's independence and sovereignty and denied the Jewish people's right of self-determination and independence. I'm glad you agree with me and disagree with him.
No, he advocates for the return of Palestinians who wish to return to the place they were forcibly displaced from, which is also their native land. It's got nothing to do with independence or sovereignty.
There's no such thing as a right of self-determination. I don't know what 'independence' means here, but in any case if you think peoples have these rights, then you believe Palestinians have them too.
Your verbal comprehension is really in the gutter if you think I'm agreeing with you in this thread.
i don't see them as two separate entities. 20% of israel's citizens are palestinians. it would be far more if not for the nakba. and there are perhaps israeli jews across the green line in "Palestine." That's why i link the two. i think we're in one integrated political unit that must be equal and binational. so it's partly a recognition of reality and partly a statement of aspiration. as i said, i have no problem referring to israel as the name of the state, just not the territory
One integrated unit? You mean like the PRC and Taiwan? Does your logic apply for China and Taiwan as well?
Thank you
Russia, Ukraine, Russia/Ukraine, or Russia-Ukraine?
I haven't been on the blog for too long but has Beinart ever addressed these criticisms of his "one state solution" by Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein?
"There is no one state solution. That is a total illusion! It in fact serves as a way to support Israel. There is no possibility that Israel would agree to terminate its existence to go out of existence and to become a Palestinian state and furthermore there is no support for that in the world. None! Not in the African countries, not in the third world, not in the global south, certainly not in Europe....Third world countries are very jealous of sovereignty. They don't want to see sovereignty overruled, it's dangerous for them, so this is a proposal with no support, no possibility of being realized." - Chomsky
"There's nothing in the law for one state! It's a nonstarter." - Finkelstein
One more quote for good measure:
Hussein Ibish, an Arab-American scholar who supports a two-state solution, says that “Finkelstein and Chomsky have enough experience and have their ear to the ground to see that the one-state effort is quixotic. BDS’s hysterical reaction to Finkelstein was inevitable, because it’s much closer to a religion than it is to a political idea.”
There is no such entity as a Jewish-supremacist democracy, any more than there could be a Muslim-supremacist democracy, or a white-... etc. If Zionists refuse to admit this self-evident fact, the worldwide campaign to persuade them will simply continue and become ever more bitter.
Would you agree then that there’s no such thing as a Ukrainian democracy and therefore Russia is entitled to conquer Ukraine?
You can believe whatever you want but as Chomsky said, sovereignty is a thing and people have rights. Unless you don’t think Jews are people?
That analogy is beyond ridiculous.
It's a perfect analogy, that's why you and Peter can't come up with a coherent argument against it.
Lol
It is no longer a question of choice. Israelis have painted themselves into a corner by allowing their nascent Democracy to become a semi Theocracy. Religion and Democracy do no, can not , and will not ever mix.
To the credit of the Palestinians, they do tolerate a mix of Moslems and Christians among them ( my Physician in Chicago was a Christian Palestinian man). Can Israeli society expand to do the same..or will the crazy bible thumping Settlers determine the National Characteristics of Israeli society going forward?
One State, Two States..this is an academic argument while innocent people are murdered on both sides.
I’m sorry the Israeli state doesn’t meet your entirely arbitrary expectations of its behavior, but Jewish people still have rights including the right of self determination.
Indeed it will!
No, I think it reflects the profound difference in political cultures between the two countries. And it's not just a matter of political cultures but institutions. The Israeli Land Authority, for instance, which gives almost half its seats to the Jewish National Fund, does not have an equivalent in Ukraine or the US, France, Nigeria etc. I do have a consistent standard: equality under the law irrespective or race, religion of ethnicity. Rights to sovereignty must be judged on how well they provide for that. I'll give you the last word.
No you don’t have a consistent standard Beinart, and that’s why people think you’re an anti-Semite. Palestine doesn’t have equality under the law regardless of race, religion or ethnicity, but I haven ever seen you write a column condemning them for it.
Your logic is that Jews don’t have rights because of X, and then when proven wrong you say that Jews don’t have rights because of Y, and then when proven wrong again you say Jews don’t have rights because of Z. You’re starting at a conclusion that Jews don’t have rights and working your way backwards from there. And when people point out that your standards for Jews don’t actually apply to anyone else in the real world, you just change the subject.
You *are* the wicked son, just like you wrote about a few weeks ago.
So now you've pivoted from "state for all its citizens" to "minority religion head of state", and from that to "equality under the law irrespective of race, religion, or ethnicity." The ever changing standards and criteria reveal your intellectual dishonesty and lack of principles.
All Israeli citizens are equal under the law, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity. Even if they weren't, there is no article in international law or conventions that states that countries and nations lose their rights to exclusive sovereignty because Peter Beinart doesn't like some of their laws. Rights are rights, and they're not lost because you don't like that Israel's never had a Muslim prime minister. What a joke.
The president of Ukraine is a Jew. When israel has a christian or Muslim prime minister let me know
That's an incredibly weak response and I think you know it. It's indisputable that Ukraine is an ethnic-based nation state, the same as Israel, and it is acting on behalf of an ethnic group, the same as Israel. If you're going to arbitrarily declare one nation, the Ukrainian nation, has the right to exclusive sovereignty, and another nation, the Jewish nation, does not, you need to have an actual consistent standard for why that is. Flippant comments about the identity of the head of state, which has literally nothing to do with your previous statement about states being "a state for all its citizens", just continues to show that your views are intellectually baseless.
By the way, Israel has had an Arab head of state before, google "Majalli Wahabi" some time. I suppose if tomorrow Israel has a Christian prime minister, you'll walk back all of your previous statements and acknowledge that Jews do have a right to a state and to exclusive sovereignty? Don't make us laugh.
there's a fundamental difference between ukrainian (or french or italian or nigerian) sovereignty and Jewish sovereignty. You can be a Muslim or Christian or Jewish Ukrainian. You can't be a Muslim or Christian Jew. if Israel were a state for all its citizens irrespective of religion, ethnicity and race than i'd have no problem with Israeli sovereignty, though since the name itself suggests one religion it would have to expand to include others. but i'd absolutely oppose Ukraine (or France, Italy or Nigeria) defining itself as a Christian state and giving Christians rights than members of other religions don't have
Ukraine isn't a state for all its citizens irrespective of religion, ethnicity and race. It's a state for the Ukrainian people, who are an ethnic group.
Wikipedia: "Ukrainians (Ukrainian: Українці, romanized: Ukraintsi, pronounced [ʊkrɐˈjinʲts⁽ʲ⁾i]) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine".
Ukrainian Constitution: "based on the centuries-old history of Ukrainian state-building and on the right to self-determination realised by the Ukrainian nation, all the Ukrainian people,
providing for the guarantee of human rights and freedoms and of the worthy
conditions of human life, caring for the strengthening of civil harmony on Ukrainian soil, and confirming the European identity of the Ukrainian people and the irreversibility of the European
and Euro-Atlantic course of Ukraine,"
The EUROPEAN IDENTITY of the Ukrainian people, Peter. Imagine if Israel had something like that in its Basic Laws.
Article 11: "The State promotes the consolidation and development of the Ukrainian nation, its
historical consciousness, traditions and culture, and also the development of the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of all indigenous peoples and national minorities of Ukraine."
If anything, Israel is LESS discriminatory than Ukraine, because anyone in the world can become Jewish, but you have to be born Ukrainian. Sorry, Peter, but you're completely off base with this one.
Ukraine is a Ukrainian state. Israel is a Jewish state. No difference, just double standards.
But Ukraine wasn't established by displacing the majority members of another ethnicity who are still forced to be in the status of refugees and not allowed to return to the land from which they were displaced.
And the goal posts are once again shifted. Israel has the right to sovereignty, period, the end, no qualifiers.
What has Ukraine and Israel got in common?
They are both supported by America to the tune of billions of dollars of military aid.
Israel to keep the Palestinians under the Israeli boot.
Ukraine to boot the Russians out.
We know why you are in these comments. You feel that Peter Beinart's words threaten to shed light on the evil that is settler colonialism."
in his first podcast he was quite clear that he does see the bedouins as amalekites but in his second he says that we can't project the texts about the amalekites into the present day
Why don't you come out from hiding .." Anonymous". I can't believe I even responded to such nastiness.
Why don't you stop making personal attacks "Su Libby?"
Can someone make personal attacks against someone who is anonymous?
The idea of one-state for all is a pipe-dream so long as the Palestinians continue to propagandize their people with the belief that the land between the river and the sea is their land, that there is a "right of return" to the millions of descendants of 1948 refugees (literally a made-up definition of refugee), that children are taught antisemitism in school, that murderers of innocent Jews are memorialized as heros and their families are paid a lifetime pension, etc.
For this to ever even be considered, the onus is on the Palestinians to show that THEY want peace and that THEY want to live in harmony with Jews. For 70+ years, it has been and continues to be the opposite.
It is in both peoples' interest to live in their own countries, side by side in peace. The current Israeli government is not playing into the appeasement game. They're playing hard ball. If the Palestinians want change on the ground to claim the West Bank, they must explicitly say and act 3 things: 1) acknowledge Israel's right to exist in peace (and please -- don't start up with the nonsense of "oslo"); 2) agree to recognize" borders that define their own country and Israel; 3) any "right of return" will be to this new Palestinian state. If and when that happens, any Israeli government would respond positively, even the current one.
Until this corrupt Palestinian leadership does that, the Palestinian people are the ones losing out as the world moves on without them. This is not on Israel to change, it's on the Palestinians.
I would like to know what you thought about Trump’s deal of the century?
Essentially boiled down to defining the border between the two countries, giving the Palestinians tremendous economic support to make their economy viable, and assuring a demilitarized Palestinian state to assure Israel's security. But, not surprising...it was immediately rejected by the Palestinians -- as every peace negotiation always ends: "not fair to the Palestinians" "no right of return" "unfair borders" etc., etc. And where does that leave things? With the Palestinians without a country and the corrupt Palestinian leaders still in charge.
In a nutshell Richard :
"For decades, Israeli governments, pursuing the colonization of the entirety of “Eretz Israel,” have systematically destroyed the prerequisites for a solution involving a contiguous, sustainable, sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Nevertheless, the myth that a real Palestinian state is on offer, and that there actually is a genuine “peace process,” endures as one of the greatest examples of magical thinking in modern times."
*That myth has been crucial for the continuation of Israel’s permanent occupation and unending colonization of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, shielding it from any serious international pressure."
"The final interment of the already moribund “two-state solution” would force all concerned to face what is obvious to any honest observer. For decades, an imposed reality of one-state – the only sovereign entity enjoying total security control – has existed between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. This one state is Israel. Irrespective of the label one uses for it, this is the only outcome that this Israeli government will accept, whatever subaltern, or helot, or “autonomous” status it deigns to allow the Palestinians."
" Netanyahu did not mince words while standing next to Trump. He said that in any peace agreement “Israel must retain the overriding security control over the entire area west of the Jordan River.” He has long stated that he would only allow the Palestinians a “state minus;” that most Israeli settlements must remain in place; that all of Jerusalem belongs to Israel alone; and that Israel must keep 50-60% of the West Bank including the fertile Jordan River Valley."
"It matters little whether this travesty is called a one-state or a two-state “solution,” or whether the Palestinians get the right to fly a flag over such a pitiful Bantustan."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/18/the-middle-east-peace-process-myth-donald-trump-ended-it
The Palestinians have put themselves in this predicament for rejecting every overture toward a 2-state solution. In fact, please send me ANY official PA, PLO, Hamas, et.al., declaration that they would accept a two-state solution. You won't find it because it is fundamentally opposed to what they do believe: they want the Palestinians to control what is now Israel.
There is a growing belief that the only way a conflict ends is when one side acknowledges defeat. Japan only after the 2 atomic bombs; Germany after Allied troops began marching into their territory; etc. With Israel now moving on without the Palestinians, it is the Palestinians who are increasingly looking like losers for not accepting their own state. If one courageous leader comes along who says "we accept two states", this conflict would end and the biggest beneficiaries would be the Palestinian people. And the reality on the ground today is different than the first opportunity they were presented decades ago. That's reality and there's no crying over spilled milk. The Palestinians should move forward with today's reality.
The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam
All previous peace initiatives have got nowhere for a reason that neither Biden. nor the EU has had the political courage to acknowledge. That reason is the consensus reached long ago by Israel’s decision-making elites that Israel will never allow the emergence of a Palestinian state which denies it effective military and economic control of the West Bank. To be sure, Israel would allow – indeed, it would insist on – the creation of a number of isolated enclaves that Palestinians could call a state, but only in order to prevent the creation of a binational state in which Palestinians would be the majority.
The Middle East peace process may well be the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history. Since the failed Camp David summit of 2000, and actually well before it, Israel’s interest in a peace process – other than for the purpose of obtaining Palestinian and international acceptance of the status quo – has been a fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and an occupation whose goal, according to the former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, is ‘to sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people’. In his reluctant embrace of the Oslo Accords, and his distaste for the settlers, Yitzhak Rabin may have been the exception to this, but even he did not entertain a return of Palestinian territory beyond the so-called Allon Plan, which allowed Israel to retain the Jordan Valley and other parts of the West Bank.
Anyone familiar with Israel’s relentless confiscations of Palestinian territory – based on a plan devised, overseen and implemented by Ariel Sharon – knows that the objective of its settlement enterprise in the West Bank has been largely achieved. Gaza, the evacuation of whose settlements was so naively hailed by the international community as the heroic achievement of a man newly committed to an honourable peace with the Palestinians, was intended to serve as the first in a series of Palestinian bantustans. Gaza’s situation shows us what these bantustans will look like if their residents do not behave as Israel wants.
Israel’s disingenuous commitment to a peace process and a two-state solution is precisely what has made possible its open-ended occupation and dismemberment of Palestinian territory. And the Quartet – with the EU, the UN secretary general and Russia obediently following Washington’s lead – has collaborated with and provided cover for this deception by accepting Israel’s claim that it has been unable to find a deserving Palestinian peace partner.
Click on the link below to read the full article :
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n16/henry-siegman/the-great-middle-east-peace-process-scam
“…if their residents do not behave as Israel wants.”
Precisely. Israel wants them to live in peace, accept Israel’s right to exist as a neighbor, and to acknowledge that the so-called “right of return“ would be to a Palestinian state. Pretty basic requests. Always rejected by the corrupt Palestinian leadership.
I say nicer things than Ron and I didn't get a special mention in the video. :P
(I'm just kidding I don't really mind lol.)
Peter,I have been following your comments over the years and I am so pleasently suruprised byyour evolution from writing in thes Jerusalem Post to being the editor of Jewish Currents which during the 90s I was in the editorial board. I am fully supportive of your vision of a binational state as the only way to bring peace and reconciliation to the region, and equality and justice to both Jews and Palestinians.
Peter, how come you never wrote an article about any of my questions or arguments? Mine are way more important and impactful than what to name the region! You're hurting my feelings.
"They both have the right to self-determination, but not self-determination meaning exclusive sovereignty, which denies the rights of other people, but self-determination meaning communal autonomy within a framework of legal equality for both people’s absolute legal equality in a binational state. "
Peter, you literally just wrote two weeks ago about how Ukrainians are fighting a just war to keep Russia out of their territory and how the US is right to support Ukrainian independence and self-determination and not wanting to be part of Russia. How are you able to handle this blatant and obvious cognitive dissonance? If self-determination for Ukrainians means exclusive sovereignty, why doesn't self-determination for Jews and Palestinians mean exclusive sovereignty? If "communal autonomy within a framework of legal equality" isn't acceptable for Ukrainians, then why should it be acceptable for Jews and Palestinians?
Now THAT's a Substack article I'd like to read about.
Mr Winters, it is very obvious to me that what Israel wants, is all of Palestine with as few Palestinians living there as possible. The actions by Israel since 1948 confirms this. Don’t you agree?
Quiet, Sean, the adults are talking right now.
Agree completely with your naming & why. Also deeply appreciate yr willingness to engage with those with whom you disagree. (Tho' I do wish you'd given Tom Friedman & Brett Stephens more of a challenge to their thinking, they desperately need it!) Onward with many thanks for all that you do.