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One of the problems you have is that you take for granted that those who disagree with you are in favour of “privilege” and oppose “universalism”. You fail to understand that you are the one who believes that every time the rights of Jews and the rights of Palestinians contradict each other, the Palestinians must prevail. On top of that, you seem to genuinely ignore what are the rights and duties of a nation state (perhaps you should read Yakobson and Rubinstein again). You can’t blame Israel for violating international law and argue, in the same breath, that it can’t benefit from it. A state is required to grant equal civil and political rights to all its citizens. It is not required to be culturally neutral nor to have a neutral immigration policy. However, it is precisely because I care for the rights of Palestinians too that I was already in favour of a confederal solution to the conflict while you were still a steadfast proponent of “separation.” A confederation (with a joint army and a joint foreign policy) would give this new polity all the trappings of a joint country without depriving any people of its right to self-determination.

Isaiah Berlin used to say that we live in a world of conflicting rights, and those who are willing to do away with all rights that step in the way of those they cherish most inescapably veer into tyranny (abolishing democratic rights for the sake of equality, for example).

There are creative ways to accommodate both Palestinian and Israeli rights. You should know better. Using the refugee issue to justify the dismantling of Israel is just disingenuous.

Finally, Yemini and Hazkani’s claims are not mutually exclusive. Uri Avnery himself said that at the outset of the war (which killed 1% of Israeli Jews, 8% of Jewish males aged between 19 and 21, and displaced 10% of Israeli Jews), the Yishuv genuinely feared annihilation. However, after its early successes, it decided to take revenge and conquer as much land as possible. Once again, you seem to be fond of false dilemmas, just like Yemini and Haskani!

One last thing: anti-Zionists love to say that Jewish statehood is anachronistic (Tony Judt), but you are those who transpose today’s reality onto the past. Jews are not in danger anymore. However, in the late 1940s, the world was still divided between countries that persecuted Jews and those that refused to welcome them. It was impossible at the time to predict that their situation would improve so much during the second part of the 20th century. This is why the creation of a Jewish state was seen as a necessity by most progressive minds. As for those who (anachronistically) claim that a Jewish state should have been established in Germany after WW2, they seem to ignore that the Yishuv already existed way before the Holocaust.

Isaac Deutscher used to compare the Israel-Palestine conflict to a man jumping off a building in fire who injures a passer-by. While the Israeli right resolve this dilemma by saying that the Palestinians had no right to walk on their side of the street to begin with, you fail to realize that you are blaming Jews for not staying in the blaze. This argument is not very convincing either!

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I’m writing from the South Hebron Hills where I am with the Center for Jewish NonViolence. Just read your piece, Peter. Many thoughts, but for the minute just this. Hillel’s three questions (if not for myself, if only for myself; if not now…) seem to be at the core here. People sometimes see his questions as trite, but in the context of Israel/Palestine, these questions are heartbreaking. I sit here in a village in the Firing Zone where people are trying to live their lives and raise their children while their whole village is now threatened with complete demolition with no right to rebuild or return. It tastes like dust in my mouth to ask “Is this good for us as Jews?”

Hillel’s last question (If not now, when?) needs to be understood as not valuing one question over the other. They are equal in value and in time. This is tough. Hillel’s questions have no easy answers. Neither does Peter’s

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Peter, while I applaud the willingness to confront arguments against your position of a one-state solution, I don't think either one of them is the strongest argument against the 1SS.

The strongest argument against the 1SS is that the Jewish people will no longer be equal to the dozens of other nations who have states. They will no longer have a voice or a vote at the United Nations. In a 1SS, they would once again be a minority in a secular (at best) or more likely Arab state, with the government of that state speaking not for them but for the Palestinian Arab majority.

You referenced this when you wrote "But putting that aside, I think the answer is probably no. I can’t guarantee that a future equal Israel-Palestine would necessarily, you know, send planes to pick up some persecuted group of Jews in the Horn of Africa. I mean, why would Palestinian political leaders necessarily feel like that was one of their paramount concerns?"

So you can't deny that the Jewish people would suffer, lose their rights, lose their voice and be worse off in your 1SS. That's the whole point of your second argument, the particularism argument. But rather than raise up the Palestinians and advocate for them to have their own state, the state they want and have murdered thousands of people in pursuit of, you call for the Jewish people to be cast down instead. No wonder you're struggling with the second one. You know, in your heart, it's wrong. Very, very wrong.

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Beinart, what's so jarring about El-Kurd's quote? He doesn't give a fuck about what happens to Israeli Jews in a one state solution, and NEITHER DO YOU.

You don't care that they lose their national rights, their sovereignty, their representation at the UN. You don't care that they'll be under the control of a Palestinian Arab majority that absolutely hates them and has been taught from birth to fight and kill them. You don't care that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Lion's Den will be let loose into Israel to do whatever they want to any Israeli Jew they get their hands on, and the government will no longer be interested in or able to protect them.

What is particularly disgusting about this entire argument you make over and over is that you're willing to gamble the lives of millions of innocent people, people who are part of a historically oppressed minority group, people who have been persecuted, abused, and genocided throughout history, without even an iota of evidence that anything will work out the way you say it will but you're not even willing to put yourself among them. You don't live in Israel, so you just sit in your ivory tower looking down and judging other people thousands of miles away, making pronouncements based on no evidence but rather your insipid feelings of how the world works. I think it's ridiculous and disgusting that you're rendering moral judgements on Israelis and telling them how to run their lives.

I see your only response to Israel's legitimate security concerns about Palestinian terrorism and murder is the race card and your baseless claim with no evidence that the Palestinians will become 100% peaceful if they're "allowed to participate in politics", and that's not even close to good enough.

El-Kurd is saying what you and your supporters are all thinking. He just has the courage to say it out loud.

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Why is it racist to say "Palestinians just want to kill the Jews. They wanna drive the Jews into the Sea. And look at the Hamas charter" but it's fine to say Netanyahu and Israel just want to ethnically cleanse and subjugate the Palestinians?

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Thank you

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Thank you, Virginia. I very much appreciate it

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thank you

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what are you referring to?

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beautiful

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keen to watch this

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Thank you for those kind words and the quotes, which I'd never heard before

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Thank you once again, Peter, for this humble, sincere and honest examination of the arguments regarding the Palestinian-Israeli relationship. You know, in your heart, that you are right. Very, very right.

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The assumption that things are going more or less OK for Israeli Jews now does not take into account the huge amount of PTSD, anxiety disorders, ongoing fear, periodic flare ups and wars, the toll of having kids in the army and the West Bank and them damaged by doing what they do, the fear of losing them, the fear of living in close quarters with enemies in the most dense country in the world, a country with a triple climate change crisis, the time and financial costs, and much more, it all means a totally abnormal life. It seems like these are discounted, and it is true that people get used to live under war conditions, but is it worth it, if a better way can be tested? I don’t think Israel, with the most powerful military in the Middle East, will be conquered, and it can resort back to wars if it fails. But I think we have not yet learned the lesson of Rabbi Shimeon Ben Gamliel. We remember the quote of Rabbi Shimeon Hatzadik, he of Sheik Gerach, the head of the old order before the destruction of the Temple, who said the world stands on the Torah, Avoda (service in the Temple), and G’milut Hasadim (voluntary giving to the poor). But we should better remember the words of Rabbi Shimeon Ben Gamliel, who after the destruction declared that the world exists because of Truth, Justice and Peace. It is worth trying for the good of the Jews in Israel.

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Thank you, Peter, for your humility and honesty, your willingness to acknowledge your uncertainty about the incontrovertibility of your current positions. Those qualities—coupled with intelligence, extensive knowledge, openness to the irreducible plurality of views, and deep caring about much more than being right—are what keep me listening and learning from you even though I don’t always agree with where your evolving arguments take you.

Yes to Hillel’s three criteria of a fully realized humanity. But, needless to say, Hillel’s teaching isn’t a formula for resolving the often seemingly irreconcilable conflict between universal and particular values or obligations. There is and can be no such formula, though there are many pretenders. Which is why your avowed skepticism about views is so important. It seems to me that only in a climate of shared skepticism about the ultimacy of views is it possible for creative and non-triumphalist solutions to intractable conflicts to emerge. “From the place where we are right, flowers will never grow in the spring.” (Yehuda Amichai)

Even as staunch and unapologetic an advocate for the rights of Palestinians as Edward Said confessed to worrying about the fate of Jews in a Palestinian-majority binational state. Keep worrying, Peter! It’s the least we all can do. Yes, we must make up our minds and make our wager in terms of action on that basis, but always—as you model so beautifully—provisionally.

“The essential contradiction in human life is that man, with a striving after the good constituting his very being, is at the same time subject in his entire being, both in mind and in flesh, to a blind force, to a necessity completely indifferent to the good. So it is; and that is why no human thinking an escape from contradiction.

“…[A]n infinite distance separates the good from necessity [or—their equivalents—justice from force] They have nothing in common. They are totally other. Although we are forced to assign them a unity, this unity is a mystery; it remains for us a secret. The genuine religious life is the contemplation of this mystery.” (Simone Weil, “Is There a Marxist Doctrine?”, 1943, in Oppression and Liberty, 1973)

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Well said, Peter. For a deep, seriously deep, conversation between a Palestinian and an Israeli scholar (both friends), your subscribers will learn from this event at Harvard. WARNING: Coffee, or stronger, recommended while watching:

https://youtu.be/0lGLNmkk7og

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