August 23, 2006
Peace Now Under Fire
SHOMRAT, ISRAEL -- I drove up to Kibbutz Shomrat, just north of Akko (Acre) near the border with Lebanon, and met two middle-aged members of Peace Now who stayed in the line of Katyusha fire throughout the war. I expected to meet two marginalized members of the old left who were stuck on the sidelines as history roared past. Instead, they insisted the rest of Israeli society is coming around to their point of view.
Amichai Geva warmly welcomed me into his home and fed me pitas, hummus, cucumbers, tomatoes, and watermelon. Yehuda Beinin joined us in the living room.
Both men and their families stayed on the kibbutz during Hezbollah’s attack.
“Lots of rockets hit near the kibbutz,” Amichai said. “One fell right here in the orchard next to the houses. But none of the houses were hit. Most people without children in the house stayed. It’s hard to keep children in a bomb shelter for almost five weeks.”
“How much time did you have after you heard the siren before the rockets actually hit?” I said.
“Thirty seconds sometimes,” Yehuda said. “Sometimes five seconds. Sometimes minus five seconds…the sirens didn’t always come on until after the rockets exploded. We’re right near the border here.”
I didn’t want to meet these guys to talk about rockets, though. I wanted to get an idea of how the peace movement is faring after Israel was attacked from a country they pushed to withdraw from.
The short answer is that they’re frustrated. But their own country isn't the only one that frustrates them.
Yehuda told me he recently spoke to an Egyptian via email about an anti-Hezbollah article published in Lebanon.
“This guy came up with all of the regular tradition anti-Israel positions that we’re familiar with,” he said. “I responded to this guy and said ‘You’re living in the past. There are things that happened sixty years ago, and if you’re going to relate to them like they happened yesterday then we’re not going anywhere.' I, as an Israeli, don’t have a problem admitting that a tragedy befell the Palestinians in 1948. And this guy, first of all, couldn’t believe that an Israeli would actually admit that something happened to the Palestinians. And in a very course and dogmatic way, just wasn’t going to cut me a break.”
“The Arab Nationalists say Israel has no role to play in the Middle East and that we’ll have to leave,” Amichai said.
“What do you do with this?” Yehuda said. “It’s not reasonable to expect Jewish people to just roll up and go away or disappear. But on the other hand, a true injustice was done to the Palestinians. Between those two poles, you have all sorts of people coming up with all sorts of statements, theories, and whatnot. And it’s all obviously useless. Nothing has led to anything. All we see is military confrontation. When the first Zionists came to Palestine, Palestine was a feudal society. And you have a big clash between concepts that have nothing to do with religion or anything of that nature. The fact that the Arab-Israeli conflict is degrading into a religious conflict is a tragedy beyond description. It never really was.”
Israel is often thought of, in the West, as an unhinged fanatically right-wing country, like the U.S. on speed. Israel is far more ‘European,’ though, than it is ‘American.’ If Israel were not constantly under fire and constantly embroiled in conflict with eliminationist enemies, Israel would resemble a Jewish France or even Sweden of the Levant. The country was founded by democratic Labor Party socialists, and only rather recently has become more capitalist and complex.
“We have always considered ourselves leftists,” Yehuda said. “Always questioning ourselves about what is going on. But there is no way to bridge the gap between the statuses of the two societies that came here. Evidently only time will tell. The gaps that were created at the beginning were wide and have become wider. My conclusion for the time being is that just, evidently, not enough people have died for people to catch on here that there is an alternative that would suit everyone better.”
“How many people are in the peace movement?” I said. “It looks pretty small, especially during this latest round of fighting in Lebanon.”
“20 to 50 thousand people generally throughout the 1980s and 1990s came to [Peace Now] demonstrations,” Amichai said. “One of the major things that happened in 1982 was the Sabra and Chatilla massacres.”
He was referring to the massacre of Palestinians in refugee camps south of Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. The Lebanese Phalangist militia did the deed under cover of Ariel Sharon and the Israeli Defense Forces.
“It was a tremendous shock to Israel,” he said. “Hundreds of people were being massacred and slaughtered. This caused the trauma for many many people in Israel of the Holocaust all over again. But in reverse. People said how could our country allow this to happen? Even if the people who did the actual killing weren’t Israeli soldiers. But the Israeli army was in control of that area. And they let them in. That was the largest demonstration in Israel.”
“Ever?” I said.
“Ever,” he said. “There were 400,000 people. At the time the population of Israel was less than four million. Ten percent of the population went to Tel Aviv and demonstrated.”
I wanted to know if there are many Berkeley-style leftists in Israel.
“I think what’s different from our peace movement,” Amichai said, “from the peace movements in the United States, in other countries, and in Europe is the question of serving in the army. Peace movements are usually pacifists and they don’t encourage their members to serve in the army. The Israeli peace movement believes that Israel would not exist if we didn’t defend it. There is a slogan that’s going around: If the Arabs put down their arms, there will be peace. If the Jews put down their arms there won’t be any Jews left. And I think there’s a basic truth to that.”
“Amichai is speaking in the context of Israel,” Yehuda said, “and I can understand that. My feeling goes beyond the spirit of Israeli society only. I see organizations like Hezbollah as a threat to humanity in the same manner, for me, as the settler movement is also a threat. Where you have a nationalism that hooks up with a religious idea, I see only trouble. I’m not willing to discriminate between Jews and Arabs on this score. Not at all.”
“The Saudi peace plan is on the table,” Amichai said. “It’s what’s going to be in the end anyway. It’s just a question of how many more people are going to get killed.”
“Do you guys think Hamas agrees that the end is going to look like this?” I said. “Or do they actually believe they are going to destroy this country?”
“They actually believe they are going to destroy this country,” Amichai said. “They look at the Crusades as their historical comparison. It took 200 years to kick the Crusaders out. And the Jews have been here for 100 years. Wait another 100 years. If it doesn’t take 200 years, it will take 400. But eventually they think they will succeed.”
The Israeli peace movment serves in the army. Combat units include members of Peace Now. Israel is the only Western country that still fights wars with people like this as its soldiers. Some of the ultra-orthodox, by contrast, do not serve in the army. So while the U.S. military is more conservative than America as a whole, the Israeli army is slightly more liberal than Jewish Israeli society as a whole.
“Our group came to the kibbutz in the early 1970s,” Amichai said. “We were finishing high school and starting college during the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in the late 1960s. And we attended the march in Washington and a whole bunch of other massive demonstrations against the American involvement in Vietnam. And then we came to Israel as committed Zionists. And we had to face going in the army. And…all of us did. Many of us served through over 25 years of reserve duty after finishing our regular service. That changes your opinion when you go to reserve duty and put your life on the line.”
“How does that affect you as a peace activist?” I said. “Does it make you more committed or less?”
“It made us more committed to that,” Amichai said. “Especially, I think, when the first intifada broke out. When there was the Yom Kippur War and the Israeli army was attacked on two fronts we felt that by serving in the army we’re defending our country. But when the intifada broke out and there was the question of masses of Arab women and children throwing stones – that was the war of the rocks – we felt that by serving and trying to oppress the justified anger of the Palestinians from trying to achieve self-determination, that made it much much harder to go into reserve duty. It made us more committed to try to leave both Lebanon and the Occupied Territories. The main goal of the peace movement was to get out of Lebanon and to get out of the Occupied Territories. I was very very active in the struggle to leave Lebanon. I served in Lebanon twice.”
“In 1967 Israel just blew it,” Yehuda said. “Ben Gurion said to get rid of those territories. No good is going to come out of it. People were overwhelmed with the victory. I don’t think Israel had a choice. Then we ended up with the territories. Nobody forced us to hold onto that and to start a settlement movement there.”
Amichai and Yehuda both think withdrawing from occupied territory in Lebanon and Gaza was the right decision, even if things did not go as planned.
“This recent war has shown how much latitude the world is willing to give Israel when we fight from our recognized border,” Yehuda said. “I strongly object when people come up with all kinds of excuses for why we can’t withdraw from the West Bank. They come up with strategic excuses or water excuses or land excuses, all kinds of excuses. But the simple fact of the matter is that this is what the world recognizes. And from that border we could wreck havoc on any attack like we did here.”
“You guys,” I said “think the recent invasion of Lebanon was a mistake?”
They both laughed.
“I think that if you ask most Israelis today in retrospect,” Amichai said, “looking at the results after the month, a large majority thinks it was a mistake.”
“I thought it was a mistake right away,” I said.
“Very few of us did," Amichai said.
“Here was a golden opportunity,” Yehuda said, “that the whole world and half the Arab world gave us on a silver plate. And we blew it. It had to happen quick. You have to understand something, though. Israel is not in the business of killing civilians. People in this country left, right, up, down really can’t tolerate that, won’t tolerate it. Because it’s bad. It’s not a value that Israel goes by. Israel also is sensitive, on the bottom line and in the final analysis, Israel is sensitive to world opinion. Nobody likes to hear all this nonsense. But there is also the realization that the whole ethos of the IDF was the lighting quick strike, boom, and finished. As soon as people saw that it wasn’t getting finished, everyone knew what the consequences were. This is also a major intelligence failure as well.”
“In the first few days,” Amichai said “and I think this was your basic question, almost all of us were supportive of the Israeli action.”
“Yeah,” Yehuda said in a tone of voice that suggested he, too, was supportive.
“We were because for years we were struggling to take the Israeli army out of Lebanon,” Amichai said. “And we did that. And we felt that the United Nations recognized the fact that Israel withdrew from the very very last centimeter of Lebanese territory. And we think this whole Shebaa Farms thing is a ploy. Hezbollah used it as their raison d'être to continue to rearm and continue their resistance movement. We felt that Israel was right to leave Lebanon. And Israel was exactly right to leave Lebanon. But if we’re attacked after we leave then we’re completely right to defend ourselves. And the basic question that I was asking myself was, how do we do that? And I think we did it very very poorly. And we did it without using forethought. Many people in Lebanon supported the action in the first few days and then we lost the support. It was the exact same with me. Sitting in our bomb shelter – and I’ll show it to you right afterwards – and we’re watching our soldiers and the army and…when I mentioned the fact that after being 1960s radicals and coming to Israel and serving in the army it’s a whole complete different mindset when our children start serving in the army.”
“What do you think Israel should have done instead at the beginning?” I said.
“Knowing Hezbollah,” Yehuda said, “there would have been ample opportunities to launch a strike. If the army would have been better prepared, and if the civilian population would have been prepared. What were these people thinking? What were the circumstances that led people into this kind of train of thought that they thought they could get away with this kind of activity being so ill-prepared. Some kind of hubris that goes way beyond, I mean, this is, from my point of view, this whole war and the results thereof have weakened Israel a great deal. And it almost certainly dictates a second round.”
“Yes,” Amichai said. “Many people are talking about the second round.”
“That in itself is a grave error,” Yehuda said. “You don’t want to create a war where you have to have another war to fix the first one. It’s just bad error of judgment.”
“What, as specifically as possible, should have been done instead?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Amichai said. “None of us do. I think what we do know is what shouldn’t have been done. Look at what we did in the past. There were two major bombings of Lebanon in the past. One of them was by the Labor government in 1995 or 1996 called The Grapes of Wrath.”
“That was the first Qana incident,” I said.
“Prior to that,” Amichai said, “there was Judgment Day which was very very similar to that. Trying to bomb Southern Lebanon to force the people to flee and cause pressure on the Lebanese government. This is the third time we’re doing that. And it’s not a very clever way of doing it. And they failed three times. All three cases failed. You would think that an intelligent country would learn from its first mistake or even from the second mistake. Why would you do it the third time? I am flabbergasted by this military strategy. I cannot understand it. I think it had to be done differently and cleverly without causing masses of civilian casualties and civilian destruction.”
“How do you do that with a guerilla army, though?” I said. “There’s no bad guy bullet that just hits Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah.”
“It’s very very hard to destroy Hezbollah,” Amichai said. “I don’t think you can destroy it without sending in tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers and suffering hundreds and hundreds of casualties. That’s one possibility. And it would last a very very long time. That’s what many people said should have been done from the very beginning. Other people said – and this was a debate in the cabinet – that after one week when you’ve tried all the things that you’ve tried with the bombing in first week and you didn’t succeed you try to achieve a cease-fire that will force the international community to disarm Hezbollah.”
“This was the point of view of the Foreign Minister,” Yehuda said.
“And this is the position that I support,” Amichai said. “And this is what we’re trying to do now. And the terrible loss of life on both sides, it’s a tragedy.”
“Do you guys feel alienated from the Israeli mainstream?” I said.
“I think the mainstream has become much closer to what we think,” Amichai said, “than twenty years ago. I mean, leaving the Gaza Strip, we were against the settler movements in Gaza Strip for 30 years. The father of the settlements, Arik Sharon, is the one who removed them. If you would ask me two years ago – it happened exactly one year ago – if you asked me two years ago was that possible, I would say it would be impossible. The people who voted for him in power were all the settlers. They are his political supporters. It’s as if, like, suddenly Bush, who is supported by the Evangelical Christians in the United States, suddenly becomes pro-abortion and anti-NRA. That’s the switch that happened in Israel.”
“That’s why the Likud Party split,” Yehuda said.
“But 70 percent of the people of Israel supported it,” Amichai said.
“How many would support doing the same thing in the West Bank?” I said.
“The same 70 percent,” Amichai said.
“Absolutely,” Yehuda said. “This is the point. The settler movement has shown itself to be very pernicious and has its tentacles very deeply in a lot of different government ministries. The general population perceives this as a basic threat to the country. There were official government decisions not to build any more settlements, and building is going on. In addition to the obvious anti-democratic aspects of this activity, people perceive it as a threat. I mean, we’re trying to get something done here. There is a kind of dialectic here between the left and the right. But people want to be in the center where they’re comfortable.”
“One of the things,” Amichai said, “that I think has put a damper on the idea of removing settlements and leaving the Occupied Territories in the West Bank has been the example of Gaza. Since the day we left we’ve had Kassem rockets fall on our territories. So people say, here’s your example. I was always saying, for years, let’s remove the settlements and let’s let the Palestinians rule, and this will show us that it’s possible to reach peace, by not controlling the Occupied Territories. And anyone saying, well if you open your eyes and look what happened, you’ll see we’ve been proved wrong.”
“So what do you do then?” I said.
“I think my criticism of the Israeli government from the very beginning of leaving the Occupied Territories…was not trying to strengthen the moderates. If Israel would have made gestures of support to Abu Mazen and tried to strengthen the moderate wing and engage with him and give the Gaza Strip back to him rather than not have any negotiations with him, I mean, I cannot understand the logic of that. I mean, they strengthened the radicals who have the glory of kicking the Israelis out of the Gaza Strip. Or out of Southern Lebanon. That’s a stupid way of going about it.”
“But if the moderates are strengthened,” I said, “the radicals haven’t gone anywhere. They still have their Kassem rockets. What do you do with these guys? I mean, you can’t just take rocket hits.”
“No,” Amichai said. “You can’t. You have to strike back. You have to strike back.”
“What do you think about the fact that peace movement don’t exist in Arab countries?” I said.
“Disappointing,” Amichai said. “It is disappointing.”
“I hope this is not an offensive question,” I said, “because I don’t mean it to be. But, do you ever feel like a sucker?”
“No,” Amichai said. “I think my best interest is not to have an occupied people under my foot and under my boot. I think that affects my freedom when Palestinians don’t have their natural rights to live alongside of me. My desire for freedom is to have an independent Jewish state next to an independent Palestinian state. That will liberate me. And I just hope we can find a partner so there will not be Kassem rockets flying from that state into the Ben Gurion airport when they’re just a few kilometers away.”
“I think the occupation makes people think unclearly,” Yehuda said.
“You mean Israelis?” I said.
“Israelis,” Yehuda said. “And Arabs. Everybody’s playing with matches.”
Post-script: Unfortunately I am not allowed into Gaza right now, due in part to security and in part to bureaucracy. I do intend, however, to visit the Israeli areas right next to Gaza so I can get as good an understanding of what’s going on down there as possible. Please hit the PayPal button and help me out.
If you would like to donate money for travel expenses and you don't want to use Pay Pal, you can send a check or money order to:
Michael Totten
P.O. Box 312
Portland, OR 97207-0312
Many thanks in advance.
Posted by Michael J. Totten at August 23, 2006 03:20 AMThis was interesting.
The ultra-orthodox do serve in the military, albeit, in some circumstances, differently. Some of them engage in armed and dangerous operations.
Posted by: Alice at August 23, 2006 05:00 AMThese guys sound pretty frustrated.
How do you argue a satisfying "third way" between existing and not-existing?
Posted by: Johnny Eck at August 23, 2006 05:09 AMYou must be very brave to travell to such a place of misery.
I find your writing very informative. I would like to read more stories from your vacation in Gaza.
Thank you for sharing this sory with me !
Posted by: Maria making pictures at August 23, 2006 05:13 AMAlice,
Please explain where I'm wrong. Is it just that the ultra-Orthodox aren't conscripted?
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 23, 2006 05:48 AMVery interesting sort of fleshing out the background and some of the people impacted by the events there. I like the extended quotes, which is something you wouldn't find in the daily press releases.
Posted by: Shawn in Tokyo at August 23, 2006 06:27 AMMost ultra-orthodox are not drafted. Some few volunteer. But, in large measure, the settlers whom your Peace Now interviewees so loathe, are not ultra-orthodox. Most are just regular orthodox, are drafted and, in fact, quite often volunteer for the most elite units in the army.
During the years since 1967, Israelis have had two pipe dreams. The right believed in the "Whole Land of Israel" pipe dream: that somehow, we could hold on to every bit of what we took in 1967, settle it and not suffer any ill results. Peace Now and others on the left believed in the other pipe dream: that, really, the Palestinians want peace and, if we would only end the occupation, would be happy to agree to it and we could all live happily ever after. The last intifada awoke many on the right (as, for example, Ariel Sharon) and many on the left (but notably, not Peace Now) from their pipe dreams. The new hope - we called it "disengagement" - was that we could resolve our problems unilaterally: end the occupation and protect ourselves better at the same time. Whoops. My own take is that we (or most of us) have hit reality now. It's not a pleasant reality, but any reality is better than pipe dreams. Reality means that we know that the Palestinians want us dead, occupation or no, and that peace with them is, at the present, an illusion. Reality means that we know that many (not all)of the settlements were a mistake but that if we get out unilaterally, we will make our position worse and potentially untenable. Reality means that we hunker down, carry a big stick (speaking softly is useless in this part of the world) and not be afraid to use it every so often.
Michael, I much appreciate your reporting. It's as close to honest as comes out of this region and it is consistently observant and well-written. But if you really want to understand Israel, for your next long interview, try someone who is more mainstream than Peace Now. Michael Oren would be a good candidate.
Posted by: David in Jerusalem at August 23, 2006 06:29 AM
Shawn,
I used a digital voice recorder. Works much better than a notepad for soundbites.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 23, 2006 06:30 AMDavid,
I'm working on Michael Oren. He is busy as hell, as you can imagine. I might get him next week, though. Natan Sharansky is also a possibility...
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 23, 2006 06:32 AMIt depends what you mean by "ultra", but in general, the ultra-Orthodox aren't conscripted if they are currently studying in a Yeshiva (Talmudic academy). Females are not conscripted at all. My "ultra orthodox" friends in Israel have all served, but only after getting married, at which point they leave the Yeshiva. This is when they are around 20 years of age, more or less.
Posted by: peter at August 23, 2006 06:41 AMOk, I corrected this slightly in the text by saying "Some of the ultra-Orthorox" instead of just "The ultra-Orthodox."
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 23, 2006 06:46 AMI voted for the left (Meretz and its predecessors) for years. I'd still vote for them if I bothered to vote at all.
But the guys from the piece above are just clueless.
Thing is: the right wing here was correct all along - descriptively. The Arabs are as bad as they say. Sometimes even worse.
Morally, however, the right wing here is below depravity. It has actively supported a Nuremberg-like regime in the Territories for a generation.
Posted by: Disk on Key at August 23, 2006 06:48 AMAnd MJT, suggestion: Try MP Yuval Steinitz. An ex-Peace Now member turned a very pessimstic security hawk. A very complex type with unusual views.
Posted by: Disk on Key at August 23, 2006 06:51 AM“What, as specifically as possible, should have been done instead?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Amichai said. “None of us do.--MJT
And this pretty much sums up the situation. No-one knows exactly what to do when those whom the actions might act upon, show no sign whatsoever of amending their outlooks, no matter what.
The intransigence and madness of the 'neighbours' has been what has marginalised the 'peace movement' in Israel. It doesn't know what to do because it cannot reconcile its 'peace dogma' with the enemy that it clearly sees. This thread runs throughout your fine article highlighting these two 'decent' men.
The other Israeli factions don't know what to do either, but when in doubt very few feel comfortable with a less than robust line of active defense. And unhappily the best defense is usually a good offense. Smashing the 'neighbours' may not be a strategy for 'peace' but until the 'neighbours' become 'sane', better that they be smashed than have them in a position to truly harm you.
There is almost NOTHING Israel can do to 'solve' the problem. It's all dependent on the 'others'. And when the 'true' absolute position of the others is Juden Raus , what solution other than killing them in volume, when they come at you is ever really possible.
Thanks again for a 'human' article. You are the best.
Posted by: dougf at August 23, 2006 06:57 AMMichael,
Regarding exemption of Ultra-Orthodox Jews from conscription in the IDF, the relevant piece of legislation is the Tal Law. It was passed last year by the 15th Knesset after the courts ruled that exemptions that have been de facto on a certain level since the founding of the State of Israel needed to be based on more than just peripheral laws and precedent. The law is quite specific in the criteria for exemption and really pertains to the most religious of the religious who feel that time spent in Yeshiva studying the Torah is serving the state in a way that is above and beyond their military service. Obviously many people disagree with this stance and the law, which is set to expire in 2007, is controversial to say the least. On a practical level, though, some argue that IDF has agreed to such deferments because it simply does not have the resources to delicately accomodate such niche needs into the greater IDF. To David in Jerusalem's point above, many, many religious Jews, whether they live in the West Bank, Beit Shemesh or anywhere, proudly serve in the IDF. A larger issue that is getting some attention now is the deferments or cushy non-combat jobs (so called "jobniks") obtain now and whether that is a function of the power of the elites and if such trends are dangerous to the State, etc. For a society that excels in handwringing, it's a deep topic.
In any case, I did some digging for a source that explains the different perspectives on this issue instead of just one strong stance (not easy!) and found this page in the Educator section of the Jewish Agency website:
http://www.jafi.org.il/education/actual/tal.html
My apologies if I didn't give a thorough explanation in my own words above or rambled too much -- just trying to belt this out quickly!
BTW, I echo David in Jerusalem's sentiments above.
Josh
Posted by: Josh at August 23, 2006 06:58 AM"Modern" orthodox now serve in elite units in numbers far above their relative percentage of the population. The "hesder" program, combining advanced Jewish learning and army service in a four or five year program, has proven very popular.
Some ultra-orthodox sects (Chabad, for example) have always served. More and more of the other ultra-orthodox are now in army units - it has finally been recognized by almost all sectors of Israeli society that these folks need to be integrated if the nation is to succeed.
Israel has vast cultural, language, religious, and even racial diversity - the IDF is really the only universal assimilation vehicle, the one means through which all (or almost all) Israelis meet different people, and then obtain a common set of experiences and relationships. The US Army served a similar role during the 1940s and 1950s (remember Elvis in boot camp?), at least until college deferments became common. Frankly, I think we (the US)have suffered a great deal for want of a similar integration vehicle.
Michael - your reporting is absolutely outstanding. Thank you.
Posted by: Reed at August 23, 2006 07:02 AMMichael, instead of just accepting the universal demonization of the settlers at face value, as being like militant shi'ites, you should actually go meet some settlers and talk to them yourself and see what you think. It would improve your understanding of Israel immeasurably. And otherwise you don't have a true basis for comparison, only the say-so of other people and whatever prejudices you have accrued about the situation until now.
Moreover, a great deal of the Israeli army - especially the officer class - is made up of religious Israelis who are settlers. And those guys are plenty right wing. So I'm not sure I accept the sweeping statement that the Israeli army is more left wing than the population at large. I think Israel is in the midst of demographic change as well, and those guys being old 60s radicals, have their inflexible prejudices in place as well.
Moreover, if these guys believe 70% of the people would support withdrawal from the West Bank, which was always a very different case than withdrawal from Gaza, even today, after this war, they are both delusional. You notice they gave you protest figures from protests in the 80s and 90s.
As for this statement: Amichai and Yehuda both think withdrawing from occupied territory in Lebanon and Gaza was the right decision, even if things did not go as planned.
It didn't go as planned by Israeli left wingers. It went as planned by Hamas. These guys are acting like there was a way to get the interlocuters to go along with Peace Now, if only the right diplomatic steps had been followed.
The other side has a will and a brain.
As the US has found in Iraq, whatever steps you take are always countered. Every action causes a reaction, and when the reaction is led by people who want to win - and want you to lose - whatever steps you take are going to be undermined one way or another. There is no "right way" to go about these situations.
Posted by: Alcibiades at August 23, 2006 07:04 AMCan't let this pass: "Morally...the right wing here is below depravity. It has actively supported a Nuremberg-like regime in the Territories for a generation."
Disk on Key - Are you on crack? Do you know the first thing about what the "Nuremberg regime" was? Remember, it is the Palestinians, not the Jews, who read Mein Kampf and preach mass murder. Also, by every measure - health care, education, infant mortality, personal income, and political freedom (even after six years of open war) - the Palestinians in the Territorities are better off today than they were before Israel won in '67, and, as a population, better off than nearly every other Arab/moslem group in the middle east. Man, you better watch what you say; stupid statements discredit any substantive point you might want to make. Folks will begin to think you have your head so far up your tail you can't see the sun at noon-day - not the way to persuade, IMO.
Posted by: Reed at August 23, 2006 07:16 AMyou should actually go meet some settlers and talk to them yourself and see what you think
May I suggest David Bogner?
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at August 23, 2006 07:26 AMCrack? Lousy Mekorot tap water does the job.
To business: regardless of the Palestinians' non-existent merits, I think that a system that grants full constitutional rights to a small minority and denies them to a great majority that this minority lords over, is a racist system.
Ever read Tocqueville on early America? He says that slavery in the South was not a matter of economy. Southern economy was worse off for slavery, and the Whites knew this. They kept the Blacks in chains because they were afraid of them. Here, it's called 'security'. Nothing justifies slavery. Nothing justifies the occupation.
Make no mistake: I dislike the Arabs and mistrust them. But I grudgingly accept that they are human like me and should be treated by law accordingly.
Posted by: Disk on Key at August 23, 2006 07:27 AMDisk On Key
You are just like me. Both of the extremes (Peace Now & The Settler Movement) are dangerous.
I am a Meretz and Ma'pal -- remember them in the early nineties?
Posted by: Marty at August 23, 2006 07:28 AMReed and Dave have done a good job on the "ultra-Orthodox" topic, but I have a quibble they didn't make:
So while the U.S. military is more conservative than America as a whole, the Israeli army is slightly more liberal than Jewish Israeli society as a whole.
1) Unlike in the US, where almost everything divides along a single right-left axis (even if it makes no sense to do so), it's hard to say what "liberal" means in Israel. Are anti-Zionist, pro-Fatah haredi right or left? When they and the Muslim clergy unite against gay and lesbian parades, are they right or left then? There are multiple axes (hawk-dove, religious-secular, free market-socialist) that don't fall into "conservative" and "liberal".
2) More importantly, while the haredi mostly don't serve in the army (and, again, the ones who don't mostly aren't "conservative" in the sense Michael most cares about), remember that the Arabs also (mostly) don't serve. (Michael hints at this but I wanted to say it explicitly.) For that matter, the service rate among a lot of the "leftist" Jews isn't that high either, even if they're all supposed to be serving. So it's hard to say how the center of gravity of the IDF compares to the overall Israeli population.
3) As others have pointed out, the religious nationalists (and non-Jewish minorities) are overrepresented in elite units. Think of how the US military as a whole is heavily black and Latino, but combat units, particularly special forces, are much more white than the overall numbers.
Posted by: JSinger at August 23, 2006 07:51 AMI think there is only one solution to the conflict : exterminating all Palestinians, and if need be all Arabs. Ethnic cleansing is the solution.
Posted by: Ariel at August 23, 2006 07:59 AM"So while the U.S. military is more conservative than America as a whole, the Israeli army is slightly more liberal than Jewish Israeli society as a whole."
Yehuda and Amichai, like most lefies really have no clue.
Things have been changing. While the socialists and the kibutzniks where the spearhead of conquering Zionism before 1948, and in the 2 or 3 decades after, and the dominant group in the IDF, they no longer are.
Nowadays more and more of the lefty elite's sons find ways of avoiding military service. Since they beleive Israel's policies to be wrong, they prefer not to serve...
More and more of the IDF elite combat units and officer corps is made up of people who are still zionists, not post-zionists - many of them are religious (not ultra-orthodox, the ultras are just a tiny minority), many of them "settlers". (Once upon a time being a settler was regarded as a honor; we, Israelis, are all settlers ).
To be sure: there still are many zionists in the Kibutzim and Moshavim, and this last Lebanon war proved that a disproportionate number of the fallen came from that sector.
"army is slightly more liberal than Jewish Israeli society as a whole."
Dead wrong, factually. The army is significantly more right-wing than society as a whole, this is conclusevily proven in every election. (Votes cast in Army voting booths are counted separately).
Posted by: Jacob at August 23, 2006 08:01 AMSo it's hard to say how the center of gravity of the IDF compares to the overall Israeli population.
Army votes are tabulated separately (i.e. they don't go home to vote), so we know exactly how it compares to the overall population. But you are correct that a single axis is not enough to describe it.
Also, "anti-Zionist, pro-Fatah haredi" are a tiny minority within the haredim (Neturei Karta) who are rejected by the "majority" haredim.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at August 23, 2006 08:02 AMOne thing most people forget - and the Israeli Left hopes you do - is that over the last 20 years or so, Peace Now's policies have largely been adopted in Israel, and they've gotten results: One fiasco after another. No one has managed to kill more people, Arabs and Jews, than these serial morons.
Posted by: Dan Friedman at August 23, 2006 08:05 AMAddendum to the above. The religious issue is a red herring and a lie. Hard statistics show that the Israelis who evade military most often are the same types who avoid it in the US: middle-class, liberal and secular. Olmert's daughter is a member of Peace Now and his sons were overseas this month, e.g. In this last war against Hezbollah hard statistics show that soldiers from "settler" communities on the West Bank served and became casualties in much greater proportion to their numbers than the "sophisticated" residents of Tel Aviv and central Israel. Fact.
Posted by: Dan Friedman at August 23, 2006 08:14 AMPeace Now will not get the peace it wants now or ever because it is still a Zionist group. It supports Jewish separatism, Jewish dominion, partition and the dispossession of enough Palestinians from their homeland to make it all possible. At best it is a group of Zionists with a pacifist streak. I realize it's tough at this juncture to welcome the Palestinians back, but how can Israel expect to be welcomed when its basis is the displacement of the indigenous population? The fact is it can't and won't be until partition is ended and those false prophets of Zionism and Islamism are called out for what they truly are no matter how much of the population they currently represent.
Posted by: The Other Alan at August 23, 2006 08:22 AMAlso, "anti-Zionist, pro-Fatah haredi" are a tiny minority within the haredim (Neturei Karta) who are rejected by the "majority" haredim.
Absolutely -- I was just using them as a particularly clear example of being both "right" and "left", instead of going with budget arcana or daylight savings time squabbles.
Posted by: JSinger at August 23, 2006 08:29 AMI think for MJT's sake and for those on the board who are not familiar with the Orthodox of Israel, I will summarize that there are three Orthodox communities being brought up here:
1. As David Boxenhorn mentioned, the "Neturei Karta" look like most Ultra-Orthodox in the Diaspora (beards, sidelocks, black suits, often speak Yiddish) but they are anti-Zionists at the Hamas-level and obviously do not serve in the IDF.
2. There are the more common Zionisit Ultra-Orthodox; most Lubavitch groups -- that are similar in look to the Neturei Karta -- have very strong pro-Israel feelings, as they are messianic. The Nahal Haredi/Netzah Yehuda battalion (http://www.nahalharedi.org) has been formed to serve their religious needs.
3. Finally, there are Religious Zionists, who are the West Bank and (formerly) Gaza settlers. Except for their Rabbis, most do not dress like the above two groups. A common distinction for them is that their kippot (skullcaps) are woven, as opposed to the basic black. Due to their Zionist/expansionist views, they are the Orthodox most often motivated to serve in the elite fighting forces. Not too many of them exist in the Diaspora for the obvious reason that Greater Israel is their founding principle so they've moved (= made aliyah) there.
BTW, MJT, if you want to get in touch with group #3, which would certainly serve as the best counterpoint to Yehuda and Amichai, you can reply to my email I sent you yesterday. While 70% of Israelis that Y&A mention truly believe the Religious Zionists have been harmful to the morale and security of the country, I think it is important that their views should also be heard in a neutral forum. And, as opposed to their geographical counterparts, the likelihood of their kidnapping you is less than nil. Meeting them will take you into the West Bank proper.
Posted by: jjdynomite at August 23, 2006 08:52 AMMJT: You have an excellent site which I find interesting and visit daily. I do hope, however, you'll have time to keep a regular troll patrol in your comments section.
Posted by: johnny Eck at August 23, 2006 09:04 AM"But there is also the realization that the whole ethos of the IDF was the lighting quick strike, boom, and finished."
And if something needs to be done that can't be done with a lightning quick strike? Like stopping Hezbollah's rocket attacks?
Israel had better either adapt the IDF to long-haul military assaults, or create some force that can. Otherwise, the destruction of Israel is a certainty.
Posted by: Tatterdemalian at August 23, 2006 09:05 AMSharansky is a guy devoid of any real political stature in today's landscape. He is basically Netanyahu's outsourcing agent for getting the Russian vote, and in that capacity he has been hammered time and again by Avigdor Liberman.
On the other hand, Steinitz is an articulate, both-feet-on-the-ground hawk. As a dove, he is the kind of person I'd like to debate. Even though he also does some kowtowing to Netanyahu's sound-bite philosophy here and there.
Posted by: Alex at August 23, 2006 09:08 AMAriel, if you think my writing "expansionist" = "left wing nuts", I apologize; I tried to be as measured as possible. But I'm sure most Religious Zionists would agree themselves that their philosophy is expansionist. It's not like I'm making this stuff up, I have family and friends who live there.
Anyway, your posts are inflammatory and add nothing to the discussion so you should be careful going forward or MJT will ban you.
Posted by: jjdynomite at August 23, 2006 09:13 AMPerhaps you could temper this view by talking with some folks in Judea and Samaria.
Likewise, you may want to temper the white, Euro, Ashkenazi utopian socialist perspective with the more hard headed perspective of the million+ Sephardim who escaped the Arab world.
Likewise, you may want to consider talking with some Jews from the former Soviet Union, most of whom laugh at the Israeli left and peace now (again, because they have actual experience with leftism unleashed).
Posted by: Original Judean at August 23, 2006 09:19 AMMichael,
Whether or not Sharansky has political "stature" should not influence your desire to meet with him. Sharansky articulates the basic premise of democratization for all nations, and challenges the proposition that Arabs are incapable or uninterested in democracy and other western values. Since Ariel Sharon went into a coma, he is arguably the most adhered to voice of the Americans and George Bush in particular. That is some serious "stature."
I would love to see you interview him.
Posted by: jeff stillman at August 23, 2006 09:23 AMThere are people who consider themselves religious zionists in the US. I consider myself to be one of them.
I favor a more aggressive approach to conflict resolution which is largely driven by the fact that I believe the differences are irreconcilable.
I am convinced Arabs will never accept peace with the state of Israel. Ergo, Israel must be stronger than its opponents or it will perish.
The Arab groups like Fatah are quite explicitly clear that they are out to slaughter all Jews, if we only listen to what they are saying.
To those who believe Israel is a racist country, designed to keep others down I put the obvious (and unanswered) question: How do you design a system to maintain the legal rights of people who believe that God has called them to slaughter you and your entire culture?
Posted by: Strabo at August 23, 2006 09:30 AMAriel, expansionism is an ideology, which can be either good or bad. Syria also has an expansionist ideology. "Greater Syria" would encompass Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Iraq, Egypt and Cypress. Obviously the non-Shi'ite Lebanese have suffered greatly from this ideology over the past 30 or so years, but Hez'bollah and its supporters have gained from it.
Not being an Israeli, I personally make no judgement on whether expansionism is good or bad for Israel. However, since in 1967 the native Palestinians were not forceably removed from the the West Bank & Gaza (or Judea & Samaria, depending on your POV), the facts on the ground are that Religious Zionism has engendered a smaller population of state-supported Jews living among a much larger population of increasingly hostile Palestinians.
Posted by: jjdynomite at August 23, 2006 09:44 AMUm, jjdynomite, Ariel is a troll. You are not having a conversation with it.
Posted by: zara at August 23, 2006 09:52 AMIf Israel were not constantly under fire and constantly embroiled in conflict with eliminationist enemies, Israel would resemble a Jewish France or even Sweden of the Levant.
Israel is what you get when Leftists get mugged by reality-- Rightwingers.
Posted by: Carlos at August 23, 2006 10:11 AMExcellent article, Michael. I mentioned a name before -- Nehaimia Dagan, a retired reserve IAF General and part of Isram Travel now. I think he'd be a superb interview. Sort of a liberal hawk.
There are lots of complaints about how many ultra-orthodox males do not serve in IDF, and I wonder if this war won't highlight that issue again.
To Maria -- Israel is not a place of misery! Israel is a vibrant, resilient culture and a beautiful land, and in spite of much sorrow and never-ending struggle, Israelis have the most radiant smiles you will ever see in your life. Tell her, Michael!
Posted by: Pam at August 23, 2006 10:12 AMI guess we need our daily reminder :
DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!!!
Trolls have short attention spans and need regular feeding to survive. If they are not fed they will get bored and go away. MJT cannot baby-sit this thread every minute, those who actually care about the discussion need to be responsible for not feeding genocidal trolls.
Ariel, it does not matter which ethnic group has greater numbers in Syria, the leadership with all the money and weaponry is under Shi'ite control. So the country is de facto Shi'ite by internal governance and foreign policy until it is overthrown (as it is not a democracy). The inverse parallel of this is Saddam Hussein (Sunni) in heavily-Shi'ite Iraq; he went to war with Iran because they are Shi'ite.
At its root, almost all wars have a religious and/or sectarian basis. Assyrians and Babylonians were religious (Pagans) and they certainly took it to Hebrew Israel. How were those not religious wars? And if you think the Syrians are out of Lebanon, you are also mistaken; President Emile Lahoud and Hez'bollah are Syrian proxies.
As for whether the Palestinians need or deserve this right of self-determination, I do not think it is possible for a "one state solution" going foward due to demographic reasons. There is now a 4:1 ratio of Jews to Israeli Arabs of the 7 million Israelis. If the 3.5 million or so of Gaza and West Bank Palestinians were granted a similar status, Israel as a Jewish state would be no more.
As I believe in the legitimacy and value of a Jewish-majority state, I lean towards a two state solution with a security barrier. I have no opinion where the barrier should be situated and I personally dislike how those in the diaspora (both Jews and Gentiles) make judgement calls as to its morality and/or route, as a country's security should be determined by that country's citizens.
I must add, when I broach this issue (a two state solution) to Religious Zionists they object to it outright as anti-expansionist. They can express their views better than I can so I hope MJT interviews some of them. And with that, I will sign off so I don't monopolize this post any further.
Posted by: jjdynomite at August 23, 2006 10:21 AMPeople who feed the trolls are almost as idiotic as the trolls themselves.
Posted by: Carlos at August 23, 2006 10:27 AMDamn these trolls. They are really scary. Maybe we should fence them somewhere. Or plain slaughter them.-- Anon
I didn't know that those options were allowed. You could at least have had the courtesy of informing everyone previously. It would have saved ever so much aggravation.
14 of 55 current postings on this thread(25%).
Wonderful. Isn't your mother calling you ?
Posted by: dougf at August 23, 2006 10:32 AMExcellent reporting Michael. Your interviews with Israeli leftists remind me of why I had to leave the country. I just couldn't stand an elite dominated by people like that.
Posted by: diana at August 23, 2006 10:44 AMinteresting post Michael.
seems there is still hope after all...
Ariel: I think there is only one solution to the conflict : exterminating all Palestinians, and if need be all Arabs. Ethnic cleansing is the solution.
Ariel is soooooo banned.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 23, 2006 11:32 AMAll of Ariel's comments after the first one have been deleted. Do not engage in conversation with such people.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 23, 2006 11:36 AMThanks Michael for banning Ariel and his despicable comment. It's also astonishing that none of your readers dared criticize it (very worrisome) Thanks for pointing it out.
Posted by: The Troll at August 23, 2006 11:42 AMIt's also astonishing that none of your readers dared criticize it
What's the point of criticizing such abject nastiness and stupidity? Most people just asked me to get rid of it and asked everyone else to ignore it. Which is, I think, the right way to handle it.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 23, 2006 11:46 AMMichael, don't feed the Troll.
Posted by: Johnnybegood at August 23, 2006 11:48 AMResponding in ANY way to a Troll is feeding and encouraging it, THAT is why there were not a lot of outraged responses to it. (OOPS, did I just respond to a self described troll, Doh!)
Thanks for the banishment! Too bad you can't have a few hours peace without an infestation popping up.
Keep up the great work!
-L
When crazy Muslims say stupid ****, should it be deleted and ignored or, quite the contrary pinpointed by the many radars out there (ADL, dhimmi watch, jihad watch etc.) ?
Posted by: Mustapha at August 23, 2006 11:53 AMThe Israeli peace movment serves in the army. Combat units include members of Peace Now. Israel is the only Western country that still fights wars with people like this as its soldiers. Some of the ultra-orthodox, by contrast, do not serve in the army. So while the U.S. military is more conservative than America as a whole, the Israeli army is slightly more liberal than Jewish Israeli society as a whole.
Hmm. If anything, it is the other way around. Around 30% of secular Israelis simply do not serve in the army. Many of those that do end up as jobnikim (Israel's REMFs). By contrast, national-religious soldiers make up 30-50% of combat units, with a smaller proportion in non-combat roles.
Regarding the 70% figure, the largest margin I saw was ~60% in favour, ~30% opposed. And not one poll since the Gaza pullout has shown 70% favouring a withdrawl from Yehuda and Shomron. There was one with a similar figure opposed to another pullout.
This recent war has shown how much latitude the world is willing to give Israel when we fight from our recognized border
That's the model Peace Now want to use? It was in the U.S. interest to see Hezbollah damaged, so they prevented a ceasefire resolution in the UNSC. That's it. Every other 'ally' wanted a ceasefire and immediate Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
Posted by: Colt at August 23, 2006 12:10 PM“I strongly object when people come up with all kinds of excuses for why we can’t withdraw from the West Bank. They come up with strategic excuses or water excuses or land excuses, all kinds of excuses. But the simple fact of the matter is that this is what the world recognizes. And from that border we could wreck havoc on any attack like we did here.”
Terrifying. Those 'excuses' have been shown to be accurate, with Oslo, Gaza and Lebanon. These guys don't even claim that it would be different next time.
How can they say, on the one hand, that they are 'flabbergasted' by the inability of the Israeli military to develop an effective strategy for Lebanon, but trust that withdrawing to the bottom of a mountain range isn't seriously dangerous thanks to the Israeli army?
Posted by: Colt at August 23, 2006 12:21 PMThe irony about "Ariel" is that while only a tiny, fringe element of Israeli society agree with the comments he was making while pretending to be Israeli, an anti-Semitic equivalent (e.g., kill all the Jews and let Gd sort 'em out) is pretty much the official policy of many Arab governments.
Posted by: NDogg at August 23, 2006 12:40 PMOne of your best posts. Thanks.
Posted by: sean at August 23, 2006 12:52 PMAmichai & Yaron - Thank you for the demonstrating of our dilemma here in Israel (no matter right or left, for most ppl. if you not willing to go to the extremes the dilemma is very the same) .
Michael – Thanks to put it in writing.
BTW Regarding the statement: "Israel is far more ‘European,’ though,...."
Well read this first
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7796479
\Ronen
Posted by: rrs at August 23, 2006 01:21 PMHmmmm.
1. Frankly it seems that any result that includes a Palestinian state must be dangerous for Israel as long as Palestinians simply will not accept Israel's existence. And I'm not planning on holding my breath on Palestinians accepting Israel's existence.
2. Unless my readings are completely wrong there has never been a distinct Palestinian Arab nationality, ethnicity or group. So continuing the fiction seems to be a bit backwards.
3. shrug Personally the only way this situation will ever be resolved is by Israel annexing Gaza and the West Bank and kicking every Palestinian in those two areas out. Shove them out and let them resettle in whatever Arab nation that wants them.
Particularly Jordan since the original Palestinians were actually part of Jordan anyways.
Sure doing this would make the Palestinians mad. shrug So what else are they going to do to Israelis that they haven't already done? Become terrorists? Blow people up? Shoot people? Kidnap them? They already do this stuff, so there's not all that much downside for Israelis.
Posted by: ed at August 23, 2006 01:46 PMHmmm.
1. The idea that the world would give Israel any slack in defending itself is laughable. Conceptually there is no attack, insult or infringement that would be sufficient, in the eyes of the world, that would justify Israel defending itself in any way.
Which is why I, as an American conservative, really couldn't give a rat's a** what the world thinks.
2. IMHO the only reason for disengagement and the unilateral creation of a Palestinian state is to make the conflict less of an "oppressor/oppressed" situation and more of a nation-vs-nation conflict. In the first example there are numerous restrictions on what Israel could do. In the second situation Israel would be fully and completely justified in invading, conquering and annexing any enemy territory.
I figure taking Gaza, annexing it and forcibly relocating it's Palestinian inhabitants to the West Bank would remove one source of attacks, inform the Palestinians in the West Bank of their fate should they continue their aggression and provide an explicit source of internal friction between Palestinian factions as the former Gaza inhabitees now want their share of space and funding excised from the current inhabitants of the West Bank.
shrug I always thought Sharon's reason for leaving Gaza was to enable Hamas to rise in stature enough to challenge Fatah and thereby initiate the Palestinin Civil War.
As any reader could imagine I have little sympathy for Palestinians. Perhaps it's because of all those Americans murdered by Palestinians. Frankly I wouldn't shed a single tear if 50 B-52 bombers carpet bombed the West Bank with incendiaries.
Posted by: ed at August 23, 2006 01:55 PMEd says:
3. shrug Personally the only way this situation will ever be resolved is by Israel annexing Gaza and the West Bank and kicking every Palestinian in those two areas out. Shove them out and let them resettle in whatever Arab nation that wants them.
The problem here is that when you start to accept logic like that, then you're also accepting the same logic, when it's applied by Arabs: "Kick all the jews out and let them resettle in whatever other nation wants them." No?
I don't think this "solution" should be acceptable for Palestinians or Jews. Period.
Yo, Ed. I just banned a guy for advocating genocide against Palestinians. And you come along and advocate ethnic-cleansing, the next worst thing.
I don't have time to babysit you people. Go away. Now.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 23, 2006 01:59 PMPopulation exchange is, de facto and sometimes de jure, considered legitimate by the 'international community'. See Bosnia/Serbia/Croatia, Kosovo/Serbia, Greece/Turkey, India/Pakistan, post-WW2 Europe, etc.
What Ed says is wrong. 'Kicking them out' is wrong, in all but the most extreme circumstances.
Offering substantial financial compensation for those willing to move away is a much better option. There were some polls a while back showing considerable proportions (majorities?) of Palestinian Arabs willing to accept financial incentives rather than live in the territories. Given the Jews kicked out of Arab countries had everything but what they could carry stolen, it would be generous, too.
Posted by: Colt at August 23, 2006 02:23 PMI think for MJT's sake and for those on the board who are not familiar with the Orthodox of Israel, I will summarize that there are three Orthodox communities being brought up here:
Thank you for doing that -- I was too lazy to. But to repeat the clarification David Boxenhorn made on my comment, most of the haredi actually fall at various intermediate points between your groups 1 and 2.
Posted by: JSinger at August 23, 2006 03:01 PMGood post, Mike. Frankly, in the absence of the ability to attempt to talk to anyone on the other side, Peace Now is the closest you can get - a segment of Israeli society that at least atttempts to consider the other guy's perspective.
I sympathize with you on the banning - I think it's hard to administer and hard to maintain balance.
It's a sad and pathetic thing how willing your blog audience is to run around with omnipotent declarations about how "Arabs" and "Palestinians" are all fanatically determinated to never stop until the last Jew is destroyed. You'd think that the Palestinian public that supported the Oslo process by large majorities in polls during the 1990's never existed. Of course, it did - but that reality has been washed away by hordes of groupthink and fearmongering - staring into the abyss of the most manipulative and deranged of the Palestinian extremists, and forming views of an entire society based on that.
The motto around here should be "go out and claim tomorrow's pointless, annihilative clash of civilizations for your own".
And of course, the Palestinians believe the same nihilistic fantasies about how the Israelis are universally dedicated to keeping their feet on their throats, forever.
That's why Americans are so needed in peacemaking - everyone involved needs someone to set an example and an expectation that a peace process can really exist.
By the way, the Oslo process worked great, relative to what's happening today. It failed to seal the deal due to its own specific procedural failings, the weakness of the leaders involved, and the glacial pace of change - but everyone involved felt a lot safer and less savagely inclined. And, I might add, a lot less people were dying from 1993 to 1999.
But when the backlash came, the moderates had no faith and fell all over themselves to repent.
Again, on all sides.
I am surprised that no-one has mentioned that the Defense Minister during this war, Amir Peretz, was in fact an early member of Peace Now. Here is an article which discusses the implications of this:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745601.html
It is rather surprising that the two persons interviewed do not allude to what I believe to be the major issue. The problem of education. The Palestinians, like all Arab societies are imbued with a virulent Jew-hating ethos that goes to the root of the reason that any peace is elusive--it is incompatable with any notion of peace. This is not my idea. Take a look at what Walid Shoebat says; it is very compelling.
shoebat.com/
Here is a Palestinian, a former PLO fighter and self-confessed terrorist who in an epiphany turned against everything that he had ever been taught. In his words, Palestine has become a psychosis.
Watch his interviews and the most revealing is the audio of a lengthy interview on Irish radio, a couple of years ago.
For anyone who has studied the history of this area of the world, this kind of testimonial from someone from the other side, from one with all the appropriate credentials, is mind-numbing.
It does however draw the inescapable conclusion that peace in this lifetime is a hallucination. Until the vicious indoctrination of children stops, no amount of planning, discussions or actions will bring any real peace.
Posted by: ankhfkhonsu at August 23, 2006 04:42 PMI think the quote is an adaption of the words from the start of this letter.
If Hizbullah put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1840904,00.html
Ironic.
Posted by: rich at August 23, 2006 04:57 PMMichael,
Nice job! It is cool to see some semi-realistic peace types. Glad to see Ariel was shown the door. I can't see what absolute crazy, Nazi, evil speach really brings to the table. My guess is that Ariel ran back to his online home, stormfront.org.
Michael. I see you were very uncomfortable with Ed's proposal of ethnic cleansing. But ask yourself, what exactly is ethnic cleansing ?
For my mind, its a population transfer. Moving people out of their homes, with force if necessary. Now most people suggest that forcing the Palestinians out of some of their homes and villages is an abhorrent, murderous and inhuman act akin to genocide. I don't buy it for a second. I think its nothing more than hysterics.
I'll tell you exactly why. Because these same people who express hysteria at the suggestion of moving Palestinians, so that Israel can unilaterally impose final borders, are often the same people who strongly advocate removing Israeli settlements from the West Bank and Gaza.
Removing Jews from these areas, even if they are religious settlers, is also ethnic cleansing. Some of them are there because of religious ideology, but some have also been living in towns like Hebron for several generations.
Nobody ever seems to squirm at the thought of removing Jewish families and villages, yet most people squirm at the mere mention of doing it to Palestinians.
To finalise, I'm sure we all recognise that population transfers ARE a pretty extreme government policy. It seems most people also recognise that Israelis and Palestinians cannot live side by side, hence the status quo. But we all must have cognitive dissonance, for refusing to contemplate population transfers that affect Palestinians, to once and for all, finalise the borders.
Posted by: Jono at August 23, 2006 06:18 PMLooking for a good Syrian General
Posted by: Fares at August 23, 2006 07:34 PMIt's amusing to me how some people still insist on putting a "soft" outlook on ethnic cleansing. "It's just a transfer of populations."
It violates the very basic human rights. It's unacceptable. Period.
It was unacceptable when it was done to the jews by the Nazis.
It was unacceptable when it was done to the Bosnians and Rwandans and Palestinians and anyone else in between.
I wish some of these people who talk about "transferring populations" in such a cavalier manner were to try it on for size sometime. Let me see you have to leave your home, perhaps, one you've lived your whole life in, and your business and your families and friends, and everything else you've built, and be shipped off to some remote place, just because some politicians somewhere decided your people needed to leave.
Posted by: bad vilbel at August 23, 2006 08:15 PMHmmm, bad vilbel, there are 7,000 or so Israeli Jews who can tell you exactly what that feels like. Those who were kicked out of their homes during "disengagement". But I guess that was A-OK - because the politicians making that decision are ones you agreed with.
Michael, great reporting. I add my voice to suggesting you visit living, breathing settlers before you accept what was told you at face value. Don't miss up a chance to see the cities of Ariel and Maale Adumim while you're at it - there's a good chance most of your readers visualize a settlement as being 10 houses on a hilltop surrounded by barbed wire.
Posted by: ER at August 23, 2006 08:43 PMHey bad villbel:
It violates the very basic human rights. It's unacceptable. Period.
It was unacceptable when it was done to the jews by the Nazis.
If only the Nazis were only guilty of ethnic cleansing. If transferring populations in as humane a way as possible had occurred, it would have been a lot better than the rioting, pogroms, terror, imprisonment, ghetto-isation, torture, separation of families, executions and trains to concentration camps.
You talk in the language of basic human rights. I'll tell you what is the most important human right.. the right to life. The right to freedom from violence. Israelis currently are already having these rights violated. There is simply no peace and security.
The primary role of a state is to ensure a monopoly on the use of force and violence. It is the responsibility of Israels government to defend its population.
But with the current borders, there is no such chance on stopping Hamas, PLO, Fatah, Al-Aqsa brigades and Hezbollah from carrying out attacks.
Unfortunately the Palestinians do not have any kind of functioning government that is capable of negotiating with Israel for peace. But lets pretend they had a powerful government with a strong police force, that negotiates over final borders with Israel. The government would be in a position to re-draw borders and would be committed to moving existing populations that fall outside the new borders.
Israel has already ethnically cleansed its citizens from Gaza (to the loud approval of the international community).
Posted by: Jono at August 23, 2006 09:10 PMHey ER,
Where on earth did I say it was ok when it was done to the settlers?
Please don't put words in my mouth. I said it is NEVER ok. Period.
Jono,
I'll tell you the same think I told ER. Where did I say anything about it being ok to move the settlers? Where did I say anything about Israel not having the right to a life free of violence?
What part of my previous comments do you guys fail to understand? Do you need some reading/comprehension help?
IT IS NEVER OK TO "ETHNICALLY CLEANSE" a people. EVER! I don't care who it is.
That is all I said.
Posted by: bad vilbel at August 23, 2006 10:03 PMNo one complained when they did it to the "settlers". I see a double standard.
Posted by: Double at August 23, 2006 10:15 PMOne doesn’t have to LIKE ethnic cleansing (i.e., population transfer) to distinguish it from genocide. Leaving your home, family and friends is not fun, but the ancestors of most Euro-Americans did just that. My grandfather left Riga because his neighbors made it very clear to him that Jews were not wanted there. He made a decent life for himself in America and his numerous descendants live in (relative) peace and security. The Jews who stayed in Riga perished in the camps; they have no descendants. This is the difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Ethnic cleansing is an extreme measure that should be used as a last resort, but there have been times and places when it has been the best solution – e.g., the transfer of ethnic Germans out of Poland after WW II. Prussian refugees living in Germany still pined for Prussia, but at least they are alive to pine for it, and after 1989 some of them were even able to visit their old homes in what is now part of Poland. Old wounds may not heal exactly, but sometimes they do scab over.
Posted by: Melissa Svendsen at August 23, 2006 10:19 PMMelissa. I agree. It should indeed be used only as a last resort.
And given that everybody here realises there are no other options left for middle east peace, it should therefore be considered more widely. Of course, most people already are considering ethnic cleansing throughout the European media and Arab world. But you can guess who they wish to ethnically cleanse. Even the UN supports Israel ethnically cleansing its civilians out of Gaza.
Bad vilbel. You make a fair point. I acknowledge that you never supported the ethnic cleansing that occurred during the Gaza withdrawal. Because you believe ethnic cleansing is wrong, does that mean you are in favour of the 7,000 Israelis returning to their righftul homes in Gaza now ?
I suppose you wouldn't, like most people. Whats done is done. And you know, hundreds of thousands of Jews have been ethnically cleansed from Europe and the Arab states, a terrible fate.
But it did result in a positive outcome ultimately, because the Jews decided to get on with their lives, rebuild and start over. Whether it be in Israel or America or Australia, refugees started over.
Well given the last 50 years, wouldn't something drastic, involving population transfers, be necessary to convince people to start over and build a new lives for themselves ?
Posted by: Jono at August 23, 2006 10:30 PMI don't claim to have a ready-made solution for this all. And in fact, I'm fairly certain ANY solution at this point, will involve some group being unhappy. You're not gonna be able to please them all.
If it were up to me - and I am being purely idealistic here, so no laughing please - they'd all live together in ONE state. That's right, ONE democratic state. Call it whatever you want, Israel or Palestine.
The reason I say this is because if you look at the practical matters (i.e. putting aside issues of religion and "God-given" promises), both Israel, in it's current borders, and the Occupied Territories are not exactly homogenous. Furthermore, from an economic standpoint, just looking at a map, one can see that these 2 states are not very viable because of the geography. You can't have enclaves, and islands for this or that settlment or Gaza for example...A state should have contiguous borders that allow the economic flow of labor, goods, and so on.
Obviously, I digress here, because there is no way Israel will accept one state that still includes the Palestinians (because then it would not be a jewish state anymore).
Am I making any sense here? :)
As for this whole population transfer business...If you don't want a double standard, you have to be very careful. When you offer a solution that involves Palestinians moving away to start a life for themselves elsewhere, you are also giving validity to the guys on the other side who say "Why don't jews move elsewhere and start a fresh life for themselves? They're surrounded by Arabs here, they clearly should go elsewhere."
See. That's why I said it's NEVER ok to talk about population transfers. Because once you do, then you're giving legitimacy to the other side to use that same logic too.
Posted by: bad vilbel at August 23, 2006 10:48 PMThe only solution to this conflict will come when the oil money that finances the most resilient and ruthless of the Muslim fanatics runs out. Alternative energy sources are a global security priority, not just an economic or environmental one.
Posted by: Mike at August 23, 2006 11:37 PMThe only solution to this conflict will come when the oil money that finances the most resilient and ruthless of the Muslim fanatics runs out. Alternative energy sources are a global security priority, not just an economic or environmental one.
Posted by: Mike at August 23, 2006 11:38 PMbad vilbel,
you REALLY shouldn't compare removing people from there homes with genocide. Ethnic cleansing is NOT a good description of what happened to the Jews and Rwandans.
Saddam Hussein "Arabized" the mostly Kurdish city of Kirkuk in the late 1980s so the Arabs could lay claim to it. Now that he is out of power, the Kurds want to pay those Arabs to move back out so Kirkuk can rejoin Kurdistan, the only part of Iraq that is peaceful and stable. Some say this is ethnic-cleansing. I do not think it is, since the Kurds are trying to do this legally (rather than violently), are compensating those being asked to leave, and because those Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk were moved there as part of an ethnic expansionist scheme. The Kurds are trying to undo ethnic expansionism rather than play ethnic expanionist games of their own.
This, I think, is the parallel to uprooting settlements in Gaza.
Pushing the Palestinians to Jordan is more like destroying Israel. (It would also destroy Jordan as we know it.)
In a better world, Jews would be allowed to live in an independent Palestine. Palestinians should allow a minority of Jews to live among them. But if Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza and did not take the Jewish settlers out along with the military, those settlers would be massacred by Palestinians. Moving them saved their lives.
If you think Israel should hold onto Gaza forever in order to protect those settlers and never force them to leave, consider this:
1. Greater Israel
2. Jewish majority
3. Democracy
Pick two.
It is in the interest of Israel to uproot settlements. It is not in the interest of Palestine to destroy itself.
Moving Jews out of Gaza is not comparable to moving Arabs out of Gaza. Moving Arabs out of Gaza is comparable to moving Jews out of Tel Aviv.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 24, 2006 01:06 AMMichael -
Your comparison of relocating Arab and Jewish populations is probably consistent with what you have been told - but it is not consistent with the facts!
Jewish communities existed in Hebron, Jericho, Nablus, Jerusalem, and Gaza for centuries - and the Jews were hounded out of these areas by post-World-War-I pogroms during the British mandate era.
In contrast, most of the Arab residents of Gaza and the West Bank emigrated into these areas around the same time, drawn by work opportunities such as the British railroad and Jewish construction.
One classic - and well-known - example of the misframed retelling of history is the "radical settlers" of Hebron: the Jewish quarter of Hebron was "ethnically cleansed" by a pogrom in the 1930s. The settlers - presented by the media's script as "a small, messianic minority forcing themselves on the innocent natives" are in fact returning to that old Jewish quarter, which was inhabited by Jews for centuries. Often the buildings they have refurbished still bear Jewish symbols in the stonework.
The same is true in old Jerusalem - where Jews were forcibly expelled from the old Jewish quarter when the city was divided - and Jericho, Nablus, and Gaza, where longstanding Jewish communities were slaughtered/expelled.
All this has a bearing on the notion of transfer of populations. As the violent intent of the general Palestinian population becomes clearer, Israel is more and more justified in completing the "transfer of populations" that began in Mandate-era Palestine, and culminated in the massive expulsions of North African and Levantine Jewry shortly after 1948.
Michael - I appreciate your attempt to see and report clearly. Are you aware that interviewing these guys is like interviewing two old hippies at a "US Out of Iraq" protest in San Francisco - about as mainstream and representative?
I live just over the Green Line in a suburban "settlement" near Rosh Ha'Ayin. I commute every day to the Tel-Aviv metro area, and work in Israel's hi-tech industry. I will be happy to meet with you and give you another perspective - one shared by much more of Israel's "silent majority" than these fellow's opinions.
Posted by: Ben-David at August 24, 2006 02:30 AMIt is in the interest of Israel to uproot settlements. It is not in the interest of Palestine to destroy itself.
-MJT
Typo or intentional?
If intentional... well, how to put this... Palestinians seem to be remarkably unclear on what is (and isn't) in Palestine's best interest.
This is not a recent development.
Posted by: rosignol at August 24, 2006 04:29 AMNot a typo, Rosignol.
Moving Jews out of "Palestine" (ie, the West Bank and Gaza) does not destroy Israel. Moving Palestinians out of Palestine destroys Palestine and replaces it with a Great Israel.
There will be no Greater Israel that includes Nablus, and there will be no Greater Palestine that includes Tel Aviv.
Two state solution. Period. End of story. Everyone but Hamas knows this is true.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 24, 2006 04:34 AMglasnost said:
By the way, the Oslo process worked great, relative to what's happening today.
The "Oslo process worked great relative to what's happening today" in exactly the same way that Chamberlain's 1938 Munich agreement worked great compared to what came later.
There is one distinction between Chamberlain and today's appeasers: Chamberlain eventually admitted his mistake and advocated a different policy.
Posted by: Michael Smith at August 24, 2006 04:54 AMTwo state solution. Period. End of story. Everyone but Hamas knows this is true.
...a group which just happens to have been elected by the Palestinians to be the government of Palestine.
As I said: Palestinians seem to be remarkably unclear on what is (and isn't) in Palestine's best interest.
I have to conclude at least one of two things (maybe both): the Palestinians are irrational, or Arafat's crowd was indescribably awful at governance (and the MSM declined to inform us of this).
I am honestly unsure which it is.
Posted by: rosignol at August 24, 2006 07:27 AMIt's not one or the other Rosignol, it's both. Arafat was indescribably awful, and Palestinians are irrational, the least rational Arabs of all.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 24, 2006 07:30 AMHuh.
Maybe putting the area under Kosovo-style UN Inteirm Administration would be a better idea.
Yes, what the UN has done in Kosovo leaves a lot to be desired, but it sounds like it's less bad than what the PLO types and Hamas have been doing.
Posted by: rosignol at August 24, 2006 09:59 AMRosignol,
The UN doesn't want anything to do with Gaza. No one does.
Posted by: jsstag at August 24, 2006 10:55 AMTwo state solution. Period. End of story. Everyone but Hamas knows this is true.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
... except that the entire world spent the last 2 decades trying to make this happen, poured money into it... and Hamas is not just some fringe phenomenon, it is The Result of all this peacemaking.
Michael - you've gotta stop hanging out with these old peaceniks - you're picking up their bad habits. They got us into the current mess with just such a combination of overweening. simplifying certainty and willfull ignorance of reality that contradicts what "everybody knows".
I'm glad you're so confident that the 2-state solution is the only workable one - unfortunately the whole world's efforts to make that happen have had the effect of radicalizing one party to the conflict!
I suggest you talk to some people in the center and on the right to get a more complete picture of things in Israel.
Posted by: Ben-David at August 24, 2006 11:59 AMBen-David,
It's not just the peaceniks who advocate a two-state solution. It's everybody but you, some crackpots, and the terrorists.
I am not even remotely a peacenik, and haven't been since I was a kid.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 24, 2006 01:13 PMand Palestinians are irrational, the least rational Arabs of all.
Would you call this a professional analysis?
Giving popular approval to the most aggressive of major political options after the collapse of a peace process, for whatever reason, and the rapid escalation of a war involving the widespread impoverishment and forceful military control of your territory, is really, genuinely irrational?
To me it looks a lot like... everywhere.
Posted by: glasnost at August 24, 2006 04:05 PMThe "Oslo process worked great relative to what's happening today" in exactly the same way that Chamberlain's 1938 Munich agreement worked great compared to what came later.
Sure, buddy. Here I stand in what used to be Tel Aviv, now named Allahstan, with Palestinian armies threatening India and Poland, all thanks to that disasterous Oslo process...
wait a second.
That happened, right?
I'm not agreeing with Ben-David, but he did bring up something. Michael, do you distinguish between places (Hebron and Gush Etzion) that were resettled by Jews after being lost during the 1948 war and those that are new settlements?
Posted by: Selkie at August 24, 2006 05:26 PMWhy no Palestinians are reacting on this?
Just to utter one's own opinion as Israeli's or Americans isn't really sort of a discussion, no?
Tse.
Posted by: tsedek at August 24, 2006 05:30 PMWould you call this a professional analysis?
Somebody had to complain.
Have you been to Gaza? Looked long and hard into that abyss? You tell me if there are less rational Arabs around than the people of Gaza. The Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, perhaps. But don't give me any nonsense about how everyone in the world is equally rational or irrational. It's not true.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 24, 2006 10:04 PMIt's not just the peaceniks who advocate a two-state solution. It's everybody but you, some crackpots, and the terrorists.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
... which is why President Bush has gone out of his way to indicate that US policy now accepts the notion that Israel can retain parts of the West Bank - finally assessing the Arab-Israeli conflict by the rules of geopolitics, rather than victimology poltics, and indicating that victims need not wait around for 50 years hoping their attackers will "be nice" and accept a state?
... which is why Commentary magazine has just published a recap of the weak legal basis for the two state solution - undercutting the sacralization of the 1948 borders that has, again, forced this conflict out of normal geopolitics into talk of "oppressed peoples".
... and the newspapers in Israel have been full of analyses these past 3 weeks indicating not only that unilateral withdrawal is dead in the water - but that modern missile warfare has made it untenable for Israel to accept a possibly aggressive Arab presence in the central mountains of Judea and Samaria - which overlook the central plain (again - if you're willing to come out and visit, I'll be happy to show you the strategic importance of these mountains.... that is, if you're willing to meet with "crackpots"... which brings us to:)
Michael, if you start talking to some people outside the left-leaning bubble - AKA "the folks who correctly predicted the current troubles from Gaza and Lebanon" - you will realize that your Peace Now interview subjects are engaging in wishful thinking and projection of faded glory when they claim that "70 percent of the people agree with us".
If that were true, Arik Sharon would have happily opened the Gaza withdrawal to a public vote, as his own party requested. Instead he rammed it through the Knesset - against the will of his own party and the people who elected him, causing deep social rifts and damaging Israel's democracy.
The last decisive election result in this country was the landslide election of Arik Sharon - running on a tough-guy platform. Unilateral withdrawal was the platform of the opposing Labor party - and was trounced.
All those voters haven't gone away. And we have eyeballs in our heads... can you see us? Can you take the time to talk to us?
Have you looked at Ha'aretz and Ynetnews? Seen the mainstream Israeli voices that, unlike your Peace Now interviewees, have drawn the correct conclusions from the 20-year debacle of Oslo, that there is no future for a 2-state solution?
Do you see the contradiction between your posts that openly admit that the Palis are irrational and have not accepted Israel's right to exist - and the continued faith in a two-state solution?
It's not just a few "crackpots". Try talking to some of them.
Posted by: Ben-David at August 24, 2006 10:16 PMBen-David,
What left-wing bubble? Likud had its ass handed to it in the last election. The majority of Israelis want a two state solution, even if parts of the West Bank are to be swapped out. If you don't know this, then you're in a right-wing bubble.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 24, 2006 10:23 PMBen-David,
And I'm talking to as many people as I can, inside a "bubble" or not. I'm going out into the field again today (to the south this time) so I have to sign off on this conversation for now.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 24, 2006 10:39 PMMJT -
Thanks for this very interesting post. Whereas most of the media paint severely distorted caricatures of Israeli and Arab societies, you have a gift for bringing out the subtleties and contradictions, the uncertainties and the virtues of people with whom you talk.
I assume you'll collect interviews like this into a book at some point. I hope so.
Thanks again.
Posted by: American Jew at August 24, 2006 10:43 PMGlasnost said:
Sure, buddy. Here I stand in what used to be Tel Aviv, now named Allahstan, with Palestinian armies threatening India and Poland, all thanks to that disasterous Oslo process...
wait a second.
That happened, right?
Are you capable of thinking in terms of principles -- or are you limited to only perceiving things at the concrete level? It would seem to be only the latter. Oslo and the Munich agreement are both examples of the folly of attempting to appease those who, ultimately, will settle only for your destruction or domination.
In one case, the entity being appeased was an entire industrialized nation of some 30 million people with a huge professional military led by a madman bent on global domination. In the other case, the entity being appeased was a loose organization of poorly-equipped terrorists and their sympathizers in Arab governments across the mid-east. So, yes, the scale of the consequences of the appeasement are different -- Germany was able to overrun pacifist Europe in a matter of months, whereas the terrorists have not succeeded in overrunning Israel despite 14 years of terrorism and intifadas. But in principle the outcomes are the same: in both cases the appeasement achieved the opposite of the stated goal.
You must learn to think in principles. It is the only way to identify the causal relationships that allow us to learn from history. Without such learning, the same disastrous mistakes are repeated endlessly.
Posted by: Michael Smith at August 25, 2006 04:31 AMBut don't give me any nonsense about how everyone in the world is equally rational or irrational. It's not true.
Anything view other than this is ultimately either reducible to a genetics/racial-based worldview of inherent superiority and inferiority, or else the result of a misunderstanding of the concept of rationality itself. I don't say this to insult you or accuse you of extremist views, it's just a logical statement.
If you view "rational" as "has the same values as I do" and "irrational" as "has different values than I do", then you would be in the second category.
Or, to put it another way: when you put Americans in Gaza, they become like Gazans. When you put Gazans in America, they become like Americans. To say that Gazans are collectively irrational is to discount the basic mechanisms of the brain in interpreting environment and learning behavior, that are always the same everywhere. To say it is to say that Gaza itself is an irrational state of existence, and that is a meaningless statement. One cannot measure the rationality of reality.
Or - to take another tack - your human and rational reaction to being exposed to different situations than that to which you relate, has led you to form these types of judgements as a mechanism to interpret your world. That doesn't make them true, anymore than your average Gazan's interpretations are "true". But neither party is irrational.
Posted by: glasnost at August 25, 2006 05:36 PMMichael - let it not be said that I'm not willing to be civil while you are not directly espousing views I find offensive - frankly, wisdom is the act of learning to stop thinking in principles and start looking at cause and effect.
Principles are man's attempt to dictate to reality how it ought to be instead of how it is. In your case, the principle of
"of the folly of attempting to appease those who, ultimately, will settle only for your destruction or domination."
is compromised from the instant of its birth by the assumption of divine, certain knowledge of the intentions and desire of "those", and by the second assumption that the desires of "those" operate as axioms, irreducible and permanent as the laws of physics. Neither of these assumptions are true. In fact, they run absolutely contrary to the evidence of observation of the human species.
Human desires, of individuals and of collective societies, are in constant flux. Human beings are not capable of having "permanent" desires - only consistent reactions to stiumli.
So, like most principles, your principle is an atttempt to simplify reality for the convenience of thinking. And, like most principles, as it does so, it exits the real world, and becomes a tool of bad decisions, waste, and irrationality itself.
What people will or will not settle for is a function of conditions. You don't know anything about the people you assume total knowledge of, and you don't have the ability to pre-deduce their reactions to an infinite number of possible circumstances.
Posted by: glasnost at August 25, 2006 05:49 PMFor God's sake, Glasnost, it's not a racial thing. Gaza is a place, not a race.
Obviously if you take a Palestinian out of Gaza and plunk him down into Omaha Nebraska he will become more "American" than if he stays in Khan Yunis. If you forced me to live in Gaza City for ten years I would become a very different person than I am now. No doubt!
I don't assume total knowledge of anything or anyone. But if you seriously think the people of Gaza are no less rational than, say, the people of Beirut, Tokyo, or Geneva, you haven't paid much attention to Gaza.
I have met thousands of people in my life, and I've met hundreds of Arabs. Arab culture is not a monolithic block. It is extraordinarily varied. The Arabs of Beirut, for example, are considerably more rational in their thinking than the Arabs of Cairo. Don't believe me? Then I say you haven't spent much time in either place. And I'll bet that anyone else who has will agree wholeheartedly with what I just said. It's not because of race - again , obviously - it's because the culture, politics, and education in each place is different.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 26, 2006 12:18 AMIt may be that Gazans aren't rational, but the international community might be. If they could recognize the honest truth-Israel's borders, with the exceptions of those of with Egypt and Jordan, are temporary cease fire lines, and explicitly seen on both sides as such (albeit with different long-run intentions) then perhaps endless cries of "1967 borders" and associated worries over the locations of certain neighborhoods would be less fruaght. There's no particular reason why a combination of population exchanges and land swaps cannot work.
But as I've said before, in the long run one of two things will happen: Either the Arab world will reach internal crisis, and be forced to deal with its grave internal issues, hopefully peacefully, but possibly through internal violence that with luck Israel could weather (with international support). Or, the international community will let Israel be destroyed, probably allowing the massive civil war noted in option one to be triggered (upside for all sides-the Jews of Israel become stateless refugees). The latter option is worse, of course, if only because Israel provides such a nice source of seed capital for innovative Arabs, but sadly, I think we're careening towards option 2.
I suppose there's option 3-China, rich enough to be uncomfortable with volatile energy sources, yet still Chinese enough to not care about dead bodies, gets busy really being imperial. I'm not sure whether China would let Israel survive or not, but regardless the Arab world would be rather...distressed. This is rather out of character for China, but then again a China with a per capita GDP half that of Europe or North America could easily do a number on the Arab if it chose too.
Posted by: Mark at August 26, 2006 07:26 AMDear MJT,
I will be present at an (invitation only)afternoon lecture and discussion with Member of the Knesset Avshalom (Abu) Vilan,(Peace Now's co-founder) in Helsinki tomorrow.
If you're still reading these post entries, and would like to have a question or two of yours to be asked at the event, please send it to my email add. that is available at my own weblog.
KGS
Posted by: KGS at August 27, 2006 12:19 AMMichael - on the off chance you are still reading this thread - you wrote:
Likud had its ass handed to it in the last election. The majority of Israelis want a two state solution, even if parts of the West Bank are to be swapped out. If you don't know this, then you're in a right-wing bubble.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Well, no. Sharon shredded the Likud, then the elections were upon us. There was not much time for the Likud to reorganize, and Netanyahu was easily skewered for his (much needed!) open market reforms.
The media built up Kadima, projecting the inevitability of a crushing victory - but instead a record number of Israelis in this politically-focused culture felt disenfranchised enough to stay home - this last election had the lowest turnout ever in Israel's history.
Kadima fell far short of the predicted "landslide of support" for the pet project of unilateral withdrawal. And a flip, ironic protest vote by younger Israelis gave the single-issue fringe "Pensioner's Party" a significant chunk of seats.
Although Likud suffered, the parties of the Right did very well indeed, and Olmert was forced to include the laughable Pensioners Party in his coalition to form a government while avoiding compromise on the policy of unilateral withdrawal.
Events have overtaken the Kadimah party and now favor the Likud. Most recently, former Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon - dismissed by Sharon for telling the truth about the misguided Gaza withdrawal, and predicting the current mess - announced that, after a lifetime in the centrist Labor party, he is joining the Likud.
Likud has been strengthened by the exit of corrupt featherbedders like Olmert. A roster including Bibi, Ya'alon, and other loyal patriots is coming together, and looking very good to many shell-shocked Israelis - especially compared with the back-biting pols of Kadima, who were united only in the need to save their political skins by clinging to Arik Sharon's coattails, and now have shown extensive malfeasance and irresponsibility.
The following election will be a referendum on the peace-promoting Left's incompetence and lack of patriotism - just like after the Yom Kippur War - and Likud offers both military, cultural, and economic alternatives that will appeal to all the voters who gave Sharon his landslide victory.
Regarding the 2-state solution... Israelis have spent the past 4-5 weeks looking at newspaper maps that show, with big concentric rings, the range of missile strikes from Gaza and Lebanon. It has not escaped most readers that similar strikes from Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank) would decimate the densely populated corridor between Ashkelon, Jerusalem, and Haifa.
I suggest you read the Israeli papers a bit more closely - opinion has shifted rapidly.
Israelis first absorbed the bloody failure of Oslo and the realization that there is no partner for peace. The left - eager to distract from this debacle, yet unable to relinquish the idea of withdrawal - led a weary nation to think that Israel could unilaterally hunker down behind a wall and "let the Arabs do their worst".
Events have completely overturned this entire conception - not just with regard to the immediate issue of Gaza, but reaching back to previous Peace Now "victories" such as the withdrawal from Lebanon. Decades of peace-camp hubris and PC indoctrination have been trashed, and most Israelis now see clearly that these policies invited violent attack while they undercut our own authentic claims to our land.
Many Israelis are shaking off the politically correct framing of Israeli "colonialism" and Palestinian "oppression" that were used to promote the notion that 1967 was a mistake, and that the two-state solution is "inevitable, and the only fair and workable option" - an assertion contradicted by the bloody reality that has passed before our very eyes.
More and more Israelis are shaking the PC dust out of their eyes, and coming to view the West Bank as disputed rather than occupied territory, land won in a defensive war that Israel can annex for its security. (if you think that's a radical or extreme position, Michael - you can take it up with the editors of Commentary Magazine, who have published an article detailing the support for just such an assertion...)
Israelis are also coming to view the radicalized Palestinian population as not-quite-civilians who can be relocated if necessary - just as Hezbollah sympathizers were chased from their villages despite their masquerade as innocent civilians.
If you haven't picked up on this shift - you aren't talking to enough people, or to a diverse enough pool of Israelis.
Posted by: Ben-David at August 27, 2006 03:35 AMArafat was indescribably awful, and Palestinians are irrational, the least rational Arabs of all.
And yet, one hears, ad nauseum, from rational folk (such as the esteemed author of this blog) that the only "rational" solution is to share a sliver of land with them....
That being said, however, it is not at all true that the Palestinians are not rational. They only appear to be irrational to those who ignore Palestinian goals; to those who "know"---who are absolutely certain---that what the Palestinians want (i.e., should want and therefore do want) is to co-exist with the Zionist Entity.
Alas, the Palestinians, in spite of those who "know," sorely want Israel to disappear; however, as they haven't quite been able to achieve this goal militarily, at least not yet, they are quite content to chip away patiently.
Persistently.
Terror, threats, killing---and especially suffering---all serve to demoralize the Zionist enemy, weaken the Zionist economy, shatter the Zionist morale and deligitimize the Zionist project. So that as the attrition proceeds apace and the years fly by (what is it, 58 years now?), who in his or her right mind could possibly defend Israel's right to exist?
Water on rock. Israel, like the Crusaders that preceded them, will one day vanish into the sands of history.
Irrational? Quite the opposite. (Of course, we "know" better.)
Posted by: Barry Meislin at August 27, 2006 05:39 AMSimple solution that will prevent the settlers from having to relocate if Palestinian state is formed.
Let them stay in that Palestinian state if they want, as expatriates, under Palestinian rule. If they don't want, they can sell their houses to the Palestinians (prices are high in the West Bank I hear) and use the cash to buy a house in Israel.
Posted by: anthonyb at August 28, 2006 07:15 AMMichael J. Totten said, It's not just the peaceniks who advocate a two-state solution. It's everybody but you, some crackpots, and the terrorists.
How does that fit in with what you said earlier?
Arafat was indescribably awful, and Palestinians are irrational, the least rational Arabs of all.
So you're telling me that the "crackpots" are those saying that a two state solution with "the least rational Arabs of all" (your words) isn't a workable idea?
Have I stepped into some MJT twilight zone?
If the "Palestinians" wanted a country, they would have built one by now. When all they export to the world are terrorism and rocks, don't get surprised when some of us have had enough and advocate for forced removal or even (gasp!) a complete firebombing of the entire "Palestinian" areas. The world just may be a better place without "the least rational Arabs of all" (your words).
Posted by: likwidshoe at August 31, 2006 05:31 PMMichael J. Totten said, It's not just the peaceniks who advocate a two-state solution. It's everybody but you, some crackpots, and the terrorists.
How does that fit in with what you said earlier?
Arafat was indescribably awful, and Palestinians are irrational, the least rational Arabs of all.
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