Discussing Israel

The phenomenon that you describe is likely partly due to the fact that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is tied up with world-historical and moral issues — the Holocaust, the US role in WWII and the Cold War, the religious element of the Israeli state, the legacy of colonialism, etc. — in a way that the Turkish/Kurdish conflict, for example, is not. Thus, support for one side or the other of the I/P conflict can never be the result of an objective weighing of the claims and faults of either side — it’s already too closely tied to “worldview” type issues.

Same reason why a lot of strange things happen in online discussions; the internet is a favourable environment for hacks. While the vast majority on both sides are in favour of a sensible negotiated settlement, some of the people who aren’t have spent a lot of money on ensuring that the common English phrase “pro-Israel” has acquired the connotation “pro-the least rational, most conservative and most insane political forces in Israel”, while the opposing side has repeatedly risen to the bait and adopted equally silly counterbalancing positions.

Irishmen of Irish descent living in Ireland certainly were angry at, and fighting the English until really very recently indeed.

(More generally, Cranky makes a lot of sense; one of the many things which made Northern Ireland so intractable was that nobody really engaged with the not necessarily well-grounded but certainly sincere fear of the Protestant Northern Irish that they would be ethnically cleansed).

As I’ve said before, Zionist arguments are predicated on the assumption that the creation of Israel was just. Such reasoning is necessary in support of the continuing policy of the right of ‘return’. The state of Israel is still being built. It needs its illusions.

Anti-zionists can not accept the moral argument. It’s obscene. The religious fundamentalist argument is reactionary garbage, and the more modern nationalist one can be responsed to by stating simply that two wrongs do not make a right. No one on this page has ever responded to my questions about German expansion into western Poland. If the they had stopped after getting their little lebensraum, there be Polish terrorists to this day. And they would be blowing up German settlers, and their grandchildren.

There’s another argument that most anti zionists would accept, even most Palestinians. And that is that the population of Israel is not going to leave, any more than my family is going to leave the North American continent.* The new population of the middle east is here for good. Any discussion I could have that would not immediately dissolve into vitriol, on my part at least, begins there.

*After last tuesday my mother is threatening to move to western Canada.

I also suspect that the anti-semitism problem comes into it. Before Sept. 11th 2001, I think I’d heard one or maybe two anti-semitic remarks in my life (speaking as a non-Jew who’d had a couple of Jewish girlfriends and a number of Jewish friends). I heard a bona fide anti-semitic remark on Sept 13th, (‘Rubin, eh? We know what side he’s on with a name like that’) and I’ve heard a good few since. So one reason is that at least some of those on the anti-Israel side are actual anti-semites. Some idiot recently left comments on a dsquared thread saying that whilst it wasn’t necessarily true that Israel was behind the genocide in the Sudan, it wasn’t necessarily untrue either, especially as so many people believed it. And there have been at least a couple of anti-semitic trolls on Oliver Kamm’s site. I told one such cretin, who pseudonymously called himself ‘Jabotinsky’ (nudge nudge), to rename himself ‘Gobineau’, after the originator of modern anti-semitism. The very next post he did just that, and, God help me, he still had defenders saying ‘oh, he’s not anti-semitic’.

The other side of the coin- and I’m sorry if this sounds like liberal equivocation, but there is another side of the coin- is that there is a rightwing echo chorus prepared to label any criticism of either the state of Israel, of American or other diaspora Jews, or of specific Jews in positions of authority, as ‘anti-Semitic’. These loonies mainly confine themselves to LGF and suchlike sites, but again, a good few used to show up when Oliver Kamm had comments.

You’ve got some people on one side of the debate motivated by the evil passion of anti-Semitism, and you’ve got people on the other side of the debate who, through cynicism, ignorance or emotional upset, are too eager to throw the accusation of anti-Semitism at those who don’t deserve it. End product- an appalling debate, all the more so because sensible people tend to back out of it and leave it to the loonies.

What Yglesias said.

However I have to say I found the post funny. To have a discussion specifically about why extremists talk past each other while deleting any comments that either side would find offensive should have created an empty thread.

Or you simply have the moderates engaging in ernest, reasoned and pointless mutual admiration.

I grew up and formed almost all of my views outside the context of having a stake, so to speak, in this matter. Put another way, I approached this as a liberal without having had anyone previously tell me what to think. It is one of the very few benefits of ignorance.

And from that vantage point, what I see is that many of the people that have any strong interest in this matter have been, well, indoctrinated into a very biased and especially angry view. There’s almost no common ground for discussion. As someone says above, there’s the assumption by both sides of bad-faith on the part of the opposition.

I sometimes see, less these days, the same sort of thing with regard to Northern Ireland. My cultural context is completely alien to that conflict—I approached it, intellectually, only as an adult and from quite a bit of ignorance. And what I used to see a lot of, as I see often with the Palestine situation, are people that seem to be speaking completely different languages. And a lot of anger that precludes a productive discussion.

You’ve got some people on one side of the debate motivated by the evil passion of anti-Semitism, and you’ve got people on the other side of the debate who, through cynicism, ignorance or emotional upset, are too eager to throw the accusation of anti-Semitism at those who don’t deserve it.

to say this very nicely, i think a lot of people become very cynical when they notice that anti-semetism is taken seriously in the US, while the profound anti-muslim and anti-arab prejudice that exists is simply ignored by certain sorts of people. if you think the problem is anti-semetism v false accusations of anti-semetism, i’d suggest you are missing something.

At some fundamental level – and, of course this involves an over-simplification – most positions on this debate are based on an assumption as to whether zionism is “right” or “wrong”. This transcends the praticality of discussing what the actual options are for resolving the conflict, one such example as outlined by Matt Yglesias above. Depending on which of these assumption one adheres to, the other side’s stance is ‘unacceptable’ and leaves little room for common ground.

I think the main reason why people get cranky is simply that there is no rational reason to get that worked up about Palestine and Israel – its concerns less than 10 million people and the conflict is relatively low key – seldom accounting for more than 500 deaths per annum.

One therefore suspects that anyone who talks repeatedly about it has another point they’d really rather be making.

And I don’t really buy the religious conflict human rights angle either – after all in Thailand this year , a country of 60 mill, we’ve over 500 deaths by variously beheadings, bombings and police brutality in a country that lies on the border of Muslim and Buhdist Asia and hence has the potential spill over into regional conflict. And yet you hear hardly a peek about what’s going on there. Why?

Henry, Daniel has a point. If you wonder at the tendency to irrational animus in online discussion of Israel/Palestine, just look up the road a bit.

Mick Fealty has his work cut out riding herd over Slugger (though adopting registration for comments might have helped). And I can recall years of time wasted on soc.culture.irish; wasted, before concluding that the signal-to-noise ratio on usenet would always remain unacceptably low and that the usual suspects would inevitably turn the place into taigs vs. jaffers instead of devoting discussion to the natural topic for an ‘Irish culture’ ng (I refer, of course, to the O’Leprosy brothers).

Perhaps this sort of disussion is likeliest to descend into unhelpfulness when both ‘sides’ have very legitimate grievances. As for the NI thing, I fully recognise the grievances of the ‘others’, and it is irrelevant to our present purposes which lot the ‘others’ are.

In essence, I think some of us want the Jews to be more grateful for the colonization privilege by acting like model citizens. But, it makes us feel guilty for saying it because, well, how can you expect a group that suffered so horribly to be grateful? Then there is the nasty fact that they have been attacked by peoples in the area and we feel guilty about that too, because, well wouldn’t we have had the same type of reaction if we’d been colonized?

Kirk, an inescapable corollary of your argument is that the issue won’t be resolved until everybody on one side or the other is dead.

I hope you’re wrong.

I also think you offer the key to the solution: “When animus and ignorance march hand in hand…”

Animus is a matter of choice. I can’t choose civility for you, but I can certainly choose it for me.

Ignorance, by contrast with stupidity, is a temporary ailment whose cure—truth—is uniformly effective. Provided the patient proves willing to swallow his medication.

Enter diplomacy.

Probably most people here know this already, but there is at least one blog, Jonathan Edelstein’s Head Heeb, which has been an oasis of unfailingly civil discourse on the I/P issue for quite some time now. And it’s sure not for lack of viewpoint diversity among the commentators.

What Jonathan has going for him, I don’t know exactly. Perhaps his own extreme fair-mindedness– he is far and away the most relentlessly calm commentator on these issues around, although certainly not neutral and in some ways not even moderate– produces a sort of civility-protecting force-field on the blog he owns. Or perhaps he has to delete a lot of garbage, though I’ve seen little if any of that in some months as a regular reader. Whatever it is, it’s worth trying to propagate.

In my view, the reason why it is impossible to have a civil conversation about this issue is that — in the American context, at least — the topic is taboo. When discussion is inhibited by taboos, the only voices that break out into the open are those of extremists. And if the inhibitions are ever lowered, a flood of pent-up frustration and anger is then let loose.

Yes, sure, there are wingnuts on both sides, no doubt, but only one side has been occupying 3 million people for 37 years. Only one side is armed to the teeth and operating one of the most powerful military in the world, equipped with nuclear weapons. Only one side operates powerful propaganda machine.

On the other hand, only one side puts bombs in nightclubs. You pays yer money and you takes yer choice. This is a matter of economic position, not any fundamental political morality; if the Palestinians had helicopter gunships, they’d use them.

some charts here

I’ve deleted a couple of comments that were tending distinctly towards slagging the Palestinians or slagging the Israelis. I’d have deleted abb1’s comment too – but dsquared’s response seems adequate enough.

I’ll continue to delete any comments that veer too far away from discussing why we can’t discuss this stuff in a civil fashion, and start using this thread as an excuse to bash one or the other side. Think of this as an experiment in seeing whether heavy moderation can work in keeping debate civilized.

One reason for lack of informed/civil debate is lack of informed people. Like ‘giles’ who seems quite unaware of the fact that, say, Jaffa was a flourishing mostly Arab city on the model of many British colonies up till about 1947. And then suddenly and mysteriously, virtually the entire native population vanished away. Perhaps ‘giles’ might also consider where the people in the refugee camps came from and why Arabs formed such a small minority in the newborn Israeli state.

In other words, knowledge of the history of the area for at least the last 60 years is a prerequisite, but actually very rare.

There is also the question of words. Both sides have their own jargon (‘right of return’ – meaning quite different things for both Jews and Palestinians – ‘iron wall’ – etc) which makes it difficult to apply usual principles such as self-determination or property rights.

And the actual state of things is hardly amenable to exact description in words. To take one example apparently there used to be some sort of communal land ownership in mostly Arab communities in British Mandate Palestine. But the British required each parcel of land to be registered to a particular individual, and the official register bore very little relation to the actual state of things. Thus very few individuals who by rights owned the land they lived on and farmed actually had title deeds (etc.) for it. Now can you say ‘the land was owned by the native population’ or not?

And of course there is the ‘Jewish state’: what exactly does this mean – especially in areas which are majority Arab – and the ‘Jewish nation’… and hundreds of other phrases which are very amenable to twisting or misinterpretation.

And not least the fact that both sides are masters of propaganda and at bringing their case to the attention of the media.

But it’s impossible to have a reasoned debate if you’re not willing to accept that the people on the other side really mean what they say they mean. The rules of the “civil discussion” game simply require that you take your opponent to be arguing in good faith and not acting as a screen for some other nefarious agenda.

This is an interesting problem, because it is not a physical impossibility for someone to actually have a position which is a screen for some other nefarious agenda. Once you get to the point where you can credibly suggest that the other side is just engaging in propaganda instead of real peace talks, it isn’t obvious that you shouldn’t point that out. Israel believesthat it got there with the Palestinians either two years after Oslo, or after the rejection of the Clinton proposals. Palestinians think they got there after Oslo and the things that they contest forced them to engage in the first intifada (especially the settlements).

Once the debate has broken down to that extent, the question is: what can you do (short of genocide on one side or the other) to bring it back?

My guess is that (whichever side you are on) you have to climb down from your own hugely divisive tactic AND do so at such a time where the other side does not or cannot immediately respond by increasing the potency of their hugely divisive tactic (which makes you look like a fool and contributes to the idea that the other side is really just proceeding after their nefarious agenda.)

bq. If you want to have a “civilized” debate you could limit the subject of discussion by choosing your topic carefully. Adding a disclaimer that you don’t want to discus say the political implications of a free birthright trip to Israel, isn’t exactly useful.

But sometimes it _is_ useful. Sure, birthright trips to Israel have an important political dimension. But it seems to me to be shallow and one-dimensional to require that discussions of birthright trips to Israel should always and everywhere focus on the political implications. It’s perfectly reasonable that people might want to discuss their experiences of birthright trips _qua_ trips sometimes, without getting their discussions hijacked by general disputes over the political legitimacy of Israel. Every time a post mentions Israel, even in passing, the discussion descends into a slanging-match. I don’t see that this is a good thing from anyone’s point of view – its end result is to discourage people from posting on Israel or Palestine related topics, because they know that the comments section is going to be dominated by people screaming at each other.

I shd add that my comment above is made in the spirit of attempting to answer Henry’s question about why “it seems to be absolutely impossible to have a civil argument about Israel and the Palestinians” only. I shd be clear that it does not necessarily follow that issues which cause the most difficulty for civil argument (like the candidate that I have proposed) may not be the ones which cause the most human suffering or obstacles for peaceful coexistence.

Some of the unique traits of the conflict that spill over into a unique way of talking about it:

1) In a world full of ethnocultural and secessionist conflicts, this is the only one I can think of in which *each side* perceives the existence or nonexistence of its state as at issue. The conflict appears to be over sky-high stakes in both directions. As important as Kashmir is, neither Pakistan’s nor India’s existence as a sovereign state turns on it. But there is no Palestinian state, and whether there will be one or not does turn on outcomes of the conflict; and there is an Israeli state, but there are both actors who deny its legitimacy and would do away with it if they could, and security outcomes that would credibly threaten it. (The fact that westerners develop plans for an imposed unitary binational state doesn’t help, either; again, the basic outlines of sovereignty seem up in the air and provisional.) It’s exceptionally difficult to talk about the moral claims one side has in terms that don’t seem to wholly deny the claims of the other side– because 1948 and its consequences are always at stake, not just 1967 and its consequences.

2) I don’t know of any other fifty-five-year long state of formal war in the contemporary world– or even (if one takes 1967 rather than 1948 as the relevant start date) any thirty-seven-year lonf state of formal conflict. India and Pakistan have had numerous wars, but also periods of peace in between. Most Arab states have never granted diplomatic recognition to Israel, and the wars have only been paused by cease-fires. Permanent war isn’t especially good for building up trust, or scaling back stereotypes, or even getting provisional agreement on the meaning of historical events.

3) Israel’s supporters resent the sense that Israel is singled out for an extraordinary level of criticism and ostracism, far beyond that leveled at actively murderous and dictatorial regimes, or at states involved in much bloodier occupations (Russia-Chechnya, India-Kashmir), and gets no credit for being a basically-functioning democratic state whose Arab citizens have greater political freedoms than the citizens of any Arab state. This seems to them explicable only in terms of the longstanding tropes of unique Jewish evil, and anti-Semitism. Palestine’s supporters resent that Palestinians in the territories are uniquely subject to statelessness (Chechens are Russian citizens, Tibetans are Chinese citizens) and apparently-permanent military rule.

4) The collapse of Oslo, and the lack of agreement on how and why that happened, engendered a lot of bitterness all around. I don’t know of another conflict in which hopes were raised so high and then dashed so low. The Good Friday process has stumbled a lot, but not wholly collapsed; and the accord seemed to be met with suitably modest expectations all around, unlike the Oslo euphoria.

I’m not sure about Henry’s rules.
Can a post stay up if one agrees with many of the worst accusations made against each side?

Zionism (leaving aside the binationalists, if they are considered ZIonists these days) had to presuppose that Palestinians were going to be at best second-class citizens and if they couldn’t be made a small minority through real estate purchases, they’d have to be expelled. And in the end they were. Since then Israel has become an apartheid state in the West Bank and Gaza, not the worst human rights violators in the world, but pretty bad all the same.

Palestinians, on the other hand, reacted to the Zionist threat by resorting to loathsome acts of terrorism. If there’s been a Palestinian Gandhi he obviously hasn’t gotten much support and that’s a shame, because a Palestinian Gandhi surely couldn’t have done worse for his people than Arafat has and he wouldn’t have supporters blowing up children. If pacifism is too much to expect, why not a Palestinian Mandela? Not that I think the Israelis would be happy dealing with a Mandela, who might start demanding “one man, one vote.”

Then there’s America, the unsung villain of the story. I’d include Clinton in this. Having read Charles Enderlin’s book “Shattered Dreams”, I wouldn’t blame Arafat for the second intifada or Barak–I’d blame Clinton’s hamfisted efforts to pressure Arafat into accepting an agreement that wasn’t as good as the Taba talks were achieving in January. Blame Arafat in January 2001 and Clinton in August 2000. Save a little blame for Barak, who walked away from Taba and of course Sharon, who’d never dream of giving so much up anyway. But Sharon is evidently a force of nature, not someone to be held responsible for his actions.

And the American press, which habitually whitewashes the seamier side of Israel’s history. Or at least that’s true of the NYT.

Anyway, the point here is that I think it’s difficult to be honest about the I-P issue without bashing virtually everyone involved.

there is no rational reason to get that worked up about Palestine and Israel

There is the fact of Israel’s enormous political influence in the US, which is strong enough to affect US policy in vital areas such as the decision to invade Iraq.

Just to add a historical point that seems missing from many of the earlier posts. In the 19th century the treatment of Jews in Arab lands took a violent turn for the worse as Jews adopted the enlightenment ideas taught at the influential Alliance Israelite Universale schools headquartered in France. Jews who had lived (separately) for many centuries in comparative peace in Arab lands were increasingly identified with the colonial powers. The conflict between Jes and Arabs predates 1967, 1948, the riots of 1929 and 1936, the Balfour Declaration and even the First Zionist Congress. The European face of Israel relects the temporal relationship between the Holocaust and the UN partition plan, the early Ashkenazi leadership of Israel (Sephardic Jews had little experience with democratic governance and suffered from the prejudice of their co-religionists)and the paradigm of western colonialism.

I think no preference has a very important point about political influence within the US. I also think that, as far as exercise of that influence goes, a lot of people who support Israel have a great deal to be ashamed of. Within the last year or two, the college where I did my undergrad had an event talking about a lot of different things having to do with the Middle East and peace and so on. ONE of the speakers in a full day of workshops advocates right of return for Palestinians, and because of this the president of the college was flooded with emails solicited by some website calling the event a hate-fest. An intense debate followed among college faculty, with some sending out emails that had obviously been cribbed from the website opposing the event. A faculty member on leave in Israel wrote in noting that a similar event or set of discussions held in Israel would be unlikely to draw controversy — she was essentially accused of being a self-hating jew (not in so many words, but close enough).

When any attempt to discuss these issues draws such vicious attack from people who would otherwise be advocates of academic freedom, it is difficult not to become defensive and overwrought about it. I myself feel incredibly defensive about my opposition to Israeli policy toward Palestine, not least because I am not jewish. An awful lot of people seem to be awfully quick on the trigger with accusations of anti-semitism, and it is hard to know how to engage in conversation in that atmosphere. I try not to dig in and sound more extremist in my opposition to Israeli policy than I am, but I do find that the tone of the national discourse on this issue makes it difficult.

Civil discourse about Israel is difficult on this blog because most poster are strongly anti-Israel, and they make many ad hominem attacks on supporters of Israel. Maybe in the broader world, the blame for vitriolic discourse is more equal but not on Crooked Timber.

Here are uncivil comments I’ve noticed in this thread about civility:

otto says supporters of Israel are “justifying continuing contemporary settler colonialism.” Some are, no doubt, but I’ve never seen such a statement on Crooked Timber.

Matt Duss speaks of “zealous appeals to thousands-years old tribal religious texts.” Again, these appeals may be made elsewhere, but I’ve never seen them on CT.

Abb1 says “Only one side operates powerful propaganda machine” and other offensive things.

Seth Edenbaum says the existence of Israel is obscene and compares it to the Nazi conquest of Poland. His comment is confusingly written, so perhaps I’m misinterpreting it, but I doubt it.

Thomas Dent says “One reason for lack of informed/civil debate is lack of informed people. Like ‘giles’ who seems quite unaware of the fact that, say, Jaffa was a flourishing mostly Arab city.” For the life of me, I cannot see how this claim that giles is uniformed is in any way related to anything giles said.

Cranky says “Also, the whole thing about being angry over something that was done to one’s ancestors 1000 years ago makes any reasonable solution to any issue just about impossible” Again, I see no supporter of Israel on CT talking about 1000 year old injustices.

One Laura writes “a lot of people who support Israel have a great deal to be ashamed of.”

“I’d have deleted abb1’s comment too – but dsquared’s response seems adequate enough.”
That is an adequate enough map to the terrain. The venue itself and the subjective condition you bring to it make it impossible for anything more than the mildest criticism of the dominant actors in this. Polite discussions of atrocity are only rarely valiant, and far more often genteel cowardice.
There isn’t really a neutral spot available is there? Not anymore. Too many of you find your livelihood depends on an illusion of neutrality that doesn’t exist in the system that sustains it.
It’s too late for reasoned discussion isn’t it? Be honest now.
Where would a dissenting opinion have any effect, or even be heard? Congress? Parliament?
Fallujah’s going down tomorrow. Will you moderate a discussion of that, afterward?
Even if you somehow found the conviction to condemn it, where would you go to do that? Here?
That you’d equate those two posts the way you did says all that needs saying.

Ha, ha. This is a game, right? How close to explicit conspiracy mongering can one get without getting banned… I guess we know what sort of “debate” CT attracts when Dsquared (!) has to intervene to redress the balance.

One side does have helicopter gunships and the other does not. This is a fact, this is asymmetrical and I think it does affect fundamental political morality

In fairness, Gerry Cohen thinks this too. Which leads me onto another subject …

Jacob Levy wrote:

Israel’s supporters resent the sense that Israel is singled out for an extraordinary level of criticism and ostracism, far beyond that leveled at actively murderous and dictatorial regimes, or at states involved in much bloodier occupations (Russia-Chechnya, India-Kashmir), and gets no credit for being a basically-functioning democratic state whose Arab citizens have greater political freedoms than the citizens of any Arab state. This seems to them explicable only in terms of the longstanding tropes of unique Jewish evil, and anti-Semitism.

Which is a fair enough summary of one big cause of the difficulty of discussing the whole issue.

What’s always interested me is that if you actually look at the Western critics of Israeli policy, and specifically if you look at those who single out Israel for criticism while not mentioning other states, you will see that there are an awful lot of Jews among them, and not a few Israelis. This issue is by no means one of Gentiles like me being motivated by the age-old anti-Semitism which lurks within us (in our blood?) and bashing Israel because it’s no longer PC to say what we really mean. If you decided to line up everyone who had written an article in a US newspaper in the last year on the Israel/Palestine conflict, I am by no means sure that the pro-Israel (by which I mean, I must emphasise “pro-the most reactionary forces within Israel”) side would have a higher percentage of Jewish people on it.

A large chunk of those who lead the debate in the Western media as seeming partisans of the Palestinian cause, are actually the Israeli opposition, carrying on domestic politics in the foreign media. A further large chunk are non-Israeli Jews who are “singling out” Israel because they feel a connection to (and understanding of) Israeli politics which they don’t feel with respect to the politics of Russia or Syria.

The (IMO disgusting) coinage of the “self-hating Jew”, of course, does not help even one little bit in this regard.

Well, I think solution is about simple justice; why do you call it falling into a trap? This is the 21st century and the UN Charter says: WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED […] to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained… Why can’t it be simple as that?

Also, I think a good outcome does require the Israelis stopping being nasty. It may (or may not) require a lot more, but that’s certainly a prerequisite. Until Israeli government armed with helicopter gunships, remote-controlled bulldozers and nuclear bombs stops being nasty, how can you even start thinking about a good outcome?

Also,

…Palestinians may have the sense that time is on their side from a demographic point of view…

what does it mean? Palestinians on the territories don’t vote. Let’s say there are 100 million of them tomorrow – how does it change anything?

Thanks.

Dan, but it was all said in a civil, non-heated, reasonable manner.
Wasn’t it?
I dont know, I lost track of what “reasonable” means.

As for uncivilized debate, just this mornings news from an easy going, quiet, and otherwise livable EU country:

firebomb attack on mosque,
explosion in a Muslim school,
Jew painted in front of a house.

Nothing to worry, all will be normal in a few days.

But the dialectic of the I/P conflict has infiltrated the local discourse.

And only that is reason enough to find this conflict more important than other conflicts. More people are dying in Darfur and other places, but those conflicts don’t end up on my doorstep. This one does. (Along with the WOT and Iraq, but that is for another subject)

Shorter version of my earlier post–

Of course Israel is ultimately to blame, but that’s not an excuse for Palestinians to kill children. (which Israel also does, but with more expensive US-supplied weapons and on a larger scale). The leaders on both sides are awful and always have been.

The US also stinks with its borderline-racist attitude towards Palestinians and Clinton’s little temper tantrum because he didn’t get an agreement on his time schedule made things much worse. What a creep.

I repeat myself because I’ve seen several one-sided posts since my last one clearing things up. There are at least three sides here people, and they’ve all been led by assholes.

The only reasonable solution to the I/P standoff is pretty much as Matthew Yglesias outlined it near the start of this thread — a two-state solution, some kind of fudging of the Jerusalem issue, and some kind of substitution of money for the right of return. The official positions of Israel, the EU and the US all agree on this. The PA’s bottom line for dropping an across-the-board right of return hasn’t yet been enunciated but most rational Palestinian observers realize that it will have to done. As for the settlements issue, though Sharon’s position has retreated from what Barak offered at Tabah, most Israeli observers figure that — given the right climate — he could offer something similar.

The real stumbling block is the lack of a “right climate”. Before September 2000, Israeli liberals and moderates were massively optimistic about reaching a negotiated settlement and polls showed a solid majority sharing that optimism. The 2nd Intifada destroyed that “climate”. The Israeli peace camp was decimated; they felt “tricked” by Arafat. Many prominent Israeli doves abandoned their positions. It was the Israeli left that first pushed for the security fence/wall — on the theory that it would reduce terrorist attacks and Israeli reprisals. The Israeli right were initially opposed; they were reluctant to create or discuss borders. In practice the fence/wall has been a great success from the Israeli point of view; in those areas where it has gone up, terrorist attacks have been reduced to near zero. Negotiations and political pressure may reroute it, but the fence/wall is unlikely to be removed any time soon. This doesn’t mean that other measures to improve the “climate” can’t succeed, especially with the imminent departure of Arafat. Mahmoud Abbas is tough but he is a pragmatist. He realizes that the Intifada has been a disaster for both sides and has said so publicly. It wasn’t only Arafat who sabotaged Abbas’ earlier stint as prime minister; Sharon refused to help Abbas build grassroots support by releasing Palestinian prisoners, and in the face of opposition from both sides, Abbas resigned. His reappearance offers a small glimmer of optimism.

Not sure why my previous post was deleted. I hope Henry won’t object if I restate the entirely factual and hopefully on-topic part.

Luc mentions “firebomb attack on mosque” and “explosion in a Muslim school” as indications that the Israel/Palestinian conflict impacts life in Europe.

But these incidents (presumably he means in Holland) have no apparent connection to the Palestinian issue, so it is not clear why he thinks the incidents are pertinent.

Not sure why my previous post was deleted. I hope Henry won’t object if I restate the entirely factual and hopefully on-topic part.

Luc mentions “firebomb attack on mosque” and “explosion in a Muslim school” as indications that the Israel/Palestinian conflict impacts life in Europe.

But these incidents (presumably he means in Holland) have no apparent connection to the Palestinian issue, so it is not clear why he thinks the incidents are pertinent.

Not sure why my previous post was deleted. I hope Henry won’t object if I restate the entirely factual and hopefully on-topic part.

Luc mentions “firebomb attack on mosque” and “explosion in a Muslim school” as indications that the Israel/Palestinian conflict impacts life in Europe.

But these incidents (presumably he means in Holland) have no apparent connection to the Palestinian issue, so it is not clear why he thinks the incidents are pertinent.

Sorry about the multiple posts. It might have to do with using arrow keys in Firefox.

I wrote: Abb1 says “Only one side operates powerful propaganda machine” and other offensive things.

Abb1 now replies by directing me to the site of a University of Michigan professor who is a vitriolic critic of Israeli policy, and of US supporters of Israel, who he likes to call “American Likudniks.”

The post he’s directing me to defends a Columbia University professor who is also a vitriolic critic of Israel and who says that “white American male sexuality exhibits certain sadistic attributes in the presence of non-white men and women over whom white Americans (and Brits) have government-sanctioned racialised power.”

Then Abb1 urges me to think!

Abb1, by bringing up these two professors from prestigious universities, I think you have proved my point. There is a powerful propaganda machine on the Palestinian side as well.

Abb1, the reason I find your “facts” offensive is because they are not true. Perhaps you should examine more sceptically the propaganda your side is putting out.

And perhaps you should stop suggesting that those who disagree with you are not thinking.

You’ve also helped proved my larger point: in secular, left-liberal discourse about Israel, and without a doubt on CT, it is the anti-Israel side that engages in uncivil, name-calling, personal attacks.

The only reasonable solution to the I/P standoff is pretty much as Matthew Yglesias outlined it near the start of this thread — a two-state solution, some kind of fudging of the Jerusalem issue, and some kind of substitution of money for the right of return. The official positions of Israel, the EU and the US all agree on this. The PA’s bottom line for dropping an across-the-board right of return hasn’t yet been enunciated but most rational Palestinian observers realize that it will have to done.

That has been obvious just under forever. But is there any reason to believe that reasonable/rational solution will be the acceptable solution? If that were all there was to it, this would have been resolved at one of the previous junctures.

Otto,

No doubt you’re offering your argument in good faith. But I see no bind.

One can logically believe that Israel should ultimately give up all the settlements that aren’t suburbs of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, and also believe that the Palestinians are mostly to blame for the conflict. The Palestinians have made no secret of their desire to drive the Israelis into the sea, they launched the present conflict after Israel offered to make peace and give up most of the settlements, etc.

One can also believe that a lot of the settlements should ultimately be removed, but think that this would be a mistake in the absence of a peace agreement.

I’m decribing my view, of course, but there are many logically possible views that one could hold that involve supporting Israel but don’t imply support for “settler colonialism.”

(And, BTW, “settler colonialism” is a vague and unhelpful term. It’s not a clear statement of a position that might invite discussion. It’s just name calling.)

In any event, there’s no “bind,” and it seems pretty clear to me that you are suggesting that supporters of Israel have bad, hidden, motives that they aren’t willing to state.

And what is of course bizarre about the discussion (by people with no dog in the fight) is how they can come up with such weird equivalences. For example, one Cranky Professor says:

Israel is “… in the wrong on most of the key issues (settlements, Gaza, etc).

and then

“…..the ultimate goal of the Palestinians and most of their supporters is to utterly destroy (Jewish) Israel and kill or drive away all its citizens.”

He makes stupid Israeli policy equivalent to the goal of destroying Israel and seems puzzled about whom to support! (As if supporting one side or the other was particularly at issue.)

Henry, can you not understand why this discussion is so depressingly energizing?

But that debate [at The Head Heeb] is only civilized because the position of the author(s) and acceptable debate positions are effectively known in advance.

Since my comment policies have been called into question, I will state for the record that I have none; the only comments I’ve ever deleted are commercial spam. Nor do I enforce any kind of “acceptable debate positions,” although I am not and do not claim to be neutral in the debate. And I doubt that there’s any consensus among my commenters (who include Palestinians, right and left-wing Israelis, and interested bystanders) as to the narrative of the conflict.

I do, on the other hand, believe that it’s possible to disagree – even vehemently – without name-calling. People who can’t deal with that one ground rule don’t have their comments deleted, but everyone else tends to talk around them (hence the exchange you cited). It really doesn’t seem that difficult.

Ragout,
Professors at prestigious universities are hardly parti pris in this and are likely to be free to form their opinons as the facts suggest. To say that university professors with no obvious reason to favour the Palestinians are part of a propaganda machine is just not good enough. Juan Cole for example expresses himself extremely coolly. If you don’t agree, convince someone he is wrong if you can. What you have said would have got you challenged to a duel in earlier times.

ABB1,
I think building the wall on 1967 borders would have been an excellent thing — security and the moral high ground in one fell swoop. However I imagine it was not possible even if Sharon had been so inclined because of the settler vote.

I am surprised at how little pressure Sharon gets over the settlers however. US aid means there isn’t much of a peace dividend for Israel and the imbalance of power makes thes tatus quo sustainable and the settlers have votes. In combination there isn’t much political incentive for Israel to remove the settlers and the situation goes on.

…I imagine it was not possible even if Sharon had been so inclined because of the settler vote.

I dunno. Certainly not possible for the Sharon’s right-wing government, because the settleres is their core constituency. But for a center-left government – why not? It’s true, though, that the left there is in a very bad shape these days.

According to this BBC item about the “Geneva Accord”:

…A few weeks ago, a copy of the agreement was sent to every home in Israel. It was also printed in Palestinian newspapers.

A poll published shortly after suggested that 55.6% of Palestinians and 53% of Israelis backed the principles of the Geneva accord.