1. Israel faces an existential crisis as soon as the U.S. "aid spigot" gets cut off for whatever reason (including possible American political or economic crisis, with the dysfunctional House Republicanssteering us over a cliff).
2. Any viable solution must enable Israel to be secure without const…
1. Israel faces an existential crisis as soon as the U.S. "aid spigot" gets cut off for whatever reason (including possible American political or economic crisis, with the dysfunctional House Republicanssteering us over a cliff).
2. Any viable solution must enable Israel to be secure without constant infusions of American aid.
3. This requires peace with Israel’s neighbors, including Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
4. This requires undoing the Nakba terrorist atrocity and withdrawing to the U.N.-mandated pre-1948 borders.
5. This can only be done in the context of peaceful economic integration throughout the region, for the benefit of all. A lasting peace must be guaranteed individually by each permanent member of the U.N. Security council, and endorsed by Israel’s neighbors.
6. The recent Hamas atrocities were sparked by provocations (yet again) at the Dome of the Rock. The dream of rebuilding the Temple of Herod must be given up and replaced by the will to rebuild the Temple of Solomon in its correct location.
John, I completely agree with you. While unpopular historically to disagree with supporting Israel it is time to stop. We are openly enabling this war with the arms and money we have been sending their way for I’m-not-sure-how-long.
Kathy Clark, perhaps you could come up with a specific point of disagreement.
Perhaps it is well to remember that Israeli settler extremists in the West Bank are terrorists, and therefore Israel, funding the settlers and giving them guns, is a state sponsor of terrorism.
See “France Calls West Bank Israeli Settler Violence a ‘Policy of Terror’”
p.s. Belligerent, bellicose Biden has brought us closer and closer to the brink of both nuclear holocaust and financial meltdown.
I wish I didn't have to speak up (there are plenty of things that I'd rather do), but today's horde of mindless Democratic talking-pointers is herding the party and the American people into the abyss.
Amateur astrologer, experienced genealogist, make models of WWII ships (the ships had/have spirits that are still around); I also like hiking when I find the time, and do a bit of gardening.
1. That American "aid spigot" is about 1 percent of Israel's budget. Go ahead and cut it off, but be careful what you wish for, you may get it good and hard. This "aid spigot" in actually American welfare to the American arms industry, because Israel is required to spend that aid exclusively on buying American weapons. Without this aid, Israel can shop wherever it wants, and the American MIL will have to find a new way to launder Uncle Sam's money.
2. "Nakba" was a tragedy inflicted on Palestine's Arabs by Palestine's Arabs. If Arabs had not voluntarily decided to invade and conquer Israel in 1948 to steal all of Palestine for themselves, instead of accepting the UN's fair and legal offer of half the land for an Arab state and half the land for a Jewish state, not a single Arab would have had to flee. That nearly a million did flee is Arab doing, not Israeli, so take up your "terrorist" complaint with them. Arabs should not have terrorized their own people by invading Israel.
3. Israel did not exist until 1948, so there is no "UN-mandated pre-1948 borders" to which to return. You act as if Palestine was an Arab nation that Jews stole. It was not. Palestine was a geographic location that was home to two indigenous people--Jews and Arabs, each descended from the Iron Age tribes of Canaan. Jews retained their Canaanite tribal name throughout; the other Canaanite tribe became "Arabs" when conquered, absorbed into, and renamed during the Islamic Arab Conquest of the ME in the 600s AD. The name stuck, and DNA analysis shows that the Jews and the Arabs of Palestine both have legitimate claims to states there. Hence, the UN offer of half-and-half, which Jews accepted and Arabs rejected. Sucks to screw up like that.
4. The Hamas pogrom in October had nothing to do with "provocations at the Dome of the Rock." There haven't been provocations at the Dome in forever. Do you mean Jews having the audacity to pray on their own Temple Mount? If that provokes Palestinians, too bad, so sad, they can learn to share. Temple Mount is as holy to Jews as the Western Wall that supports the Mount's western flank, and Jews have every right to go wherever they want around or atop that complex, same as Muslims and Arabs have that right.
5. Hamas planned and rehearsed its terror attack for years, so again, it has nothing to do with Dome of the Rock, Temple Mount, al-Aqsa, or anything else. It has to do with Hamas being the assassination squad of the 7th Century Islamic fundamentalism currently practiced by Iran, which pays and equips Hamas handsomely to continue its "Death to Israel! Death to Jews! Death to America!" pogroms.
6. What do you believe is the "correct" location for the Temple of Solomon and its Temple Mount, if not where it is now? Be specific so we can Google Map it.
We'll just have to disgree about provocations at the Temple Mount fueling Hamas preparations for their pogrom. And it was Netanyahu, as much as anyone else, who enabled Hamas's atrocity:
To blame the Arab states for the Zionist ethnic cleansing in 1948 is just sick.
Regarding aid to Israel, the House recently passed a 14-billion-dollar military package, on top of the usual $3 billion or so. Israel's budget for 2024 is around 155 billion dollars, so our proposed wartime aid to Israel is around 10 percent, not one percent, of Israel's budget.
Many of the descendants of the Hebrews and Idumeans (Herod was an Idumean) who had been in Palestine all along converted to Christianity and/or Islam, becoming modern-day Palestinians: the original Jews who never left.
The original temple of Solomon would never have been built on Mt. Moriah.
Netanyahu's support of Hamas is so vile he should be charged with treason for it. But I'm not an Israeli prosecutor, so I can't.
Yes, the 14B supplemental would bump the U.S. aid package to Israel this year to around 10 percent, where in most other years that annual aid would amount to 1-2 percent of Israel's budget. But it's a temporary bump that still may not pass Senate and Biden, and all that extra money still has to be spent on U.S. made weapons. I'd argue the House didn't approve it to help Israel as much as it saw an opportunity to lavish more welfare to American corporations. But even if it voted the temporary bump to help Israel defray its war expenses, so what? The U.S. gives Palestinians a lot of aid, too, and nobody's arguing that it should be cut to zero because of Palestinian warmongering--the Hamas pogrom.
"To blame the Arab states for the Zionist ethnic cleansing in 1948 is just sick." It's sick because truth is sickening. Arab states CHOSE to invade Israel rather than grant Jews a sovereign state of ANY size in Palestine. The UN Partition plan was the best way to give each people the state they deserved in Palestine under the auspices of the Mandate system.
Jews accepted their half. Arabs invaded Israel to steal both halves for an entirely Arab State of Palestine. That invasion caused the "Nakba"--absent the invasion of choice, no one, Arab or Jew, would have fled, been displaced, become a refugee, or been killed in a war that Arabs started. "Zionist ethnic cleansing" my ass.
I accounted for your converts when I said Palestine had two indigenous people, not just one: Jews and Arabs. The Jewish line continued straight from the Iron Age until present day; the Arab line had one name from the Iron Age till the Islamic conquest, then renamed Arab. That some converted from Judaism is is meaningless; the Jewish line remained intact and became the second indigenous people that needed to be given a state.
Palestine was and is not an Islamic or Arab state, despite all the propaganda otherwise. It was a geographic location in which two indigenous people lived, and as such, both people were due states through the Mandate system that gave conquered Ottoman land (of which Palestine was a region) to local populations to develop into sovereign states after WWI. Jews got to have one too, and they're not giving it up.
Today's Palis need to accept that their leaders sold them down the river in 1948 by not accepting that state on half of Palestine; that those leaders waged and lost three wars to Israel, resulting in the forfeiture ALL of former Palestine to victorious Israel; and since Israel won and they lost, Israel is going nowhere.
If Palis still want a state of their own--of which I am in favor--they need to be realistic about what they can get. That includes no longer allowing Iranian terror groups to operate freely in their nation, and ending the teaching of their children that Jews and Israelis are monsters who must be slain.
Thank you Shane. I copied your comment to my fellow book club members. We recently read We Could Have Been Friends by Raja Shehadeh, Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (most excellent!), and Exodus by Leon Uris . (Well, some of us on that last 600 pager!).
It's very nice of you to post this, becky, thank you and your book club. I love book clubs, having spoken with many while publishing my crime novels. Hanging out with readers is a blessing for all authors!
I'll have to check out Minor Detail. When you get through Exodus, you might give The Haj a try. Also by Uris, he examines the Israel-Palestine upheaval through the eyes of Arabs as well as Jews. It was quite a good read.
Another point: You refer to the "mandate system," which came about as a result of what Arabs (using the word loosely to mean those who spoke the language of the Koran as their first language) regarded as British betrayal after they helped overthrow Ottoman rule. In other words, for the colonized Arabs, the mandate system was unjust, imposed by force on peoples too week to resist imperialist oppression.
I could go on about how Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinski compared the Palestinians to the American Indians: They would never willingly give up their land.
"for the colonized Arabs, the mandate system was unjust, imposed by force on peoples too week to resist imperialist oppression."
That certainly was their view, but their view was a load of crap. The Mandate system gave 99 percent of all Ottoman land to its Arab populations to turn into states. It even handed Eastern Palestine to an Arab tribe--the Hashemites--to turn into yet another Arab state, Jordan! Arabs had no business griping about the Mandate system, they won the sweepstakes with it.
Arabs were not the only ones to help overthrow the Ottomans, BTW. The Jewish Brigades fought in those wars too, on the side of the British. (They did so again in WWII while that bastard Mufti of Jerusalem was palling around with Adolf Hitler.)
The final 1 percent of the Mandate was disposition of Ottoman Palestine. Sure, Arabs regarded Palestine as all theirs. But, it wasn't--Arabs AND Jews were indigenous, still lived there, and were therefore entitled to states there under the system that gave 99 percent of Ottoman land to Arabs, and Arabs sure didn't reject that other 99 percent, did they? Their bitching and moaning was over the 1/2 percent that would become the Jewish state. Had they said yes, Arabs would have owned half of Palestine and ALL THE REST of the old Ottoman Empire, given to Arabs freely by the British and French "colonial occupiers."
But Arabs rejected the deal for Palestine in favor of war and conquest of Israel, foolishly believing Jews so weak and sapped from the Holocaust they would be pushovers--and believing in a racist way that no Jew could beat an Arab in a fair fight. So war it was. When Arab armies streamed into Israel, all bets were off and both parties set free from Mandate rules to grab whatever they could for their pieces of Palestine. Jews won the 1948 war, so Arabs wound up with less land in Palestine than they would have gotten without the war. That's on them. They did it again in 1967 and lost the rest of their land to Israel. Tried again in 1973 and gained nothing. Those outcomes are on them, too.
Is Israel supposed to say, "Oh, dear fellows, how unsporting of us to have taken your land solely because you killed so many of us and tried to steal ours. Here, here, you can still have half, there, that's a good fellow . . ." No. You start three wars of annihilation, you'd better win at least one of them.
Jabotinski was right when he said Palestinians would never give up their land. He was wrong to say it was "their" land. It was only partly theirs, the other part being owned by the Jews of Palestine.
p.s. Earlier we used the word "pogrom." I'll suggest that "atrocity" is better, if pogrom implies being carried out by or under a ruling authority (that is, with impunity).
We used pogrom correctly. Hamas is the legally elected and formal government of the Gaza Strip. That made its attack not that of a ragtag bunch unelected terrorists, it was a pogrom against the Jews by a ruling authority that stated its goal as the genocide of Israel and the Jewish people.
The "temporary bump" in military aid is exactly the type of support that Israel needs to be able to do without, which means a true and lasting peace, which requires pre-1948 borders. That is a present-day compromise that all the other players in this conflict can agree on.
Can you think of any other compromise that would be acceptable to both the Palestinians and all the other countries in Israel’s neighborhood?
Once again, the goal is to prevent Israel’s annihilation if and when the United States chokes on the latest need for a multi-billion dollar military giveaway.
Israel is a strong and longtime ally of the United States and of the West in general. When our allies are attacked, we give them money if they need it. We are correctly funding Ukraine in its fight against Russia because Ukraine is proving to be an ally of the West. We're giving money to Poland and others via NATO to help out. We are correctly funding ally Israel now. I don't believe this aid will be more than temporary; i.e., only for a year. That's appropriate.
I hope you mean "pre-1967 borders," because Israel did not exist in "pre-1948 borders." But keep in mind that "pre-1967 borders" is bogus, too. Arabs invaded Israel in both years, Arabs lost the wars in both years, Arabs lost their land to the victors in both years. The "borders"--which are not, they're only armistice lines--were won fair and square by Israel, because absent the invasions of Arab nations, old geographic Palestine would have been half Israel and half Palestine.
As for compromise, don't forget that Israel needs to agree to any deal too, and that Palestinians lost much of their leverage to demand anything because they willingly invaded Israel but lost. I am for any compromise that Israel and the Palestinians work out--between themselves. They have to live with the results, I don't, I'm an American who can analyze this mess from the safety of my easy chair.
You have been approaching this issue with a moral tone: "They got what they deserved, and if they learn to like it, they'll have peace." This approach, with sullen anv vindictive neighbors, necessitates that Israel continue to have a robust lifeline from the United States
My tone is realpolitik, not moral. If Palestinians want a nation, they have to accept one that will be smaller than the UN map. They lost that option by launching and losing three wars against Israel, then committing terrorist atrocities ever since, from Intifadas to Munich to Entebbe to the October pogrom.
If they do not accept land and end terrorist, they will not get a state. They will live in the status quo they say they hate, or they will slowly be squeezed out of annexed West Bank and confined solely to Gaza.
They need to decide which they want more: peace and a state or forever war. Just like 1948, the choice is theirs.
Yes they would, atomized as incinerated ghosts as the environs of Riyadh get turned into radioactive glass.
Who do you think the Saudis outsourced their bomb production to? Not hard to guess. And Turkey wanted both F-35s and the Russian S-400 system so they could practice shooting down the Israeli air force. And Iran just teased the range of their hypersonic missiles. Are you mad?
p.s.Scorpions are lethal, but also vulnerable. If Israel will guarantee its existence with weapons of terror, then only suicidal madmen will dare to resist.
" 'Higher interest rates will feed through into higher and higher debt loads,' Mr. Kimmel summarizes (11:54). 'And those higher debt loads could eventually crowd out private capital formation. And in response to the higher interest burden, the government will have to increase taxes and reduce government spending, which combined are negative for economic activity going forward. You get to a point where at some point the debt loads become so high that the economy collapses on itself under the weight of its own debt.' ”
The United States is in the early stage of a debt spiral toward hyperinflationary financial ruin. This has been accelerated by a consequence of Biden’s strong support for Ukraine: The BRICS countries and others are ever further along the path of de-dollarization in their international trade, which makes it harder to sell U.S. Treasury bonds overseas.
That is to say: The U.S. lifeline to Israel, in times of urgent Israeli military need, is in
If the United States collapses in this manner, the entire world will, too, so Israel would be on its own anyway. I also think "hyperinflationary financial ruin" is some author or another trying to sell books, not anything planted in reality.
Think it through: The percentage of the yearly budget devoted to servicing the debt creeps inexorably upward, as the credit rating erodes, making the obligatory debt rollovers more expensive, and we are constitutionally forbidden to default, making hyperinflation the only way out.
My approach is focused on what Israel needs for survival WITHOUT a lifeline from the United States. Without that lifeline, to avoid annihilation, Israel needs a lasting peace under terms that its neighbors can accept. Its neighbors will accept pre-1948 borders if this is firmly embraced and guaranteed by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. That is my proposal to avoid the eventual annihilation of Israel.
(Part 1) I did mean pre-1948 borders, the original U.N. partition.
You have ably presented the Jewish side of the story. There is another side, and I would like to see someone argue it as you did. For now I will say that for the Zionists to steal the land of Palestinian villagers (being descendants of Jews who converted to Islam) was a far-reaching atrocity.
The UN plan is dead as disco. Palestinians had their chance to accept it and went to war instead to steal both halves—-three times. If Palis and their neighbors want peace and a state, they need to accept they will not get the 1947 deal, not any more.
As for Israeli “annihilation,” Arab nations have moved beyond that. They want to be rid of the Palestinian thorn in their sides, so will accept any deal Israel and the Palis make. What that deal is depends on who’s negotiating the terms.
The only nation that wants annihilation is Iran. Iran is going to implode because most Iranians hate the ayatollahs and will overthrow them to re-establish relations with the West. Without funding, Hamas and other assassins will wither away.
Finally, 100 nuclear weapons bearing the Star of David is a fine deterrent to any other threat.
So, whether or not the United States remains a partner, Israel will live on just fine. It’s in Israel’s interests to have peace with Palis, but not at the cost of the 1947 map.
Here is my peace plan for the Middle East:
1. Israel faces an existential crisis as soon as the U.S. "aid spigot" gets cut off for whatever reason (including possible American political or economic crisis, with the dysfunctional House Republicanssteering us over a cliff).
2. Any viable solution must enable Israel to be secure without constant infusions of American aid.
3. This requires peace with Israel’s neighbors, including Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
4. This requires undoing the Nakba terrorist atrocity and withdrawing to the U.N.-mandated pre-1948 borders.
5. This can only be done in the context of peaceful economic integration throughout the region, for the benefit of all. A lasting peace must be guaranteed individually by each permanent member of the U.N. Security council, and endorsed by Israel’s neighbors.
6. The recent Hamas atrocities were sparked by provocations (yet again) at the Dome of the Rock. The dream of rebuilding the Temple of Herod must be given up and replaced by the will to rebuild the Temple of Solomon in its correct location.
John, I completely agree with you. While unpopular historically to disagree with supporting Israel it is time to stop. We are openly enabling this war with the arms and money we have been sending their way for I’m-not-sure-how-long.
Stop with the propaganda.
Kathy Clark, perhaps you could come up with a specific point of disagreement.
Perhaps it is well to remember that Israeli settler extremists in the West Bank are terrorists, and therefore Israel, funding the settlers and giving them guns, is a state sponsor of terrorism.
See “France Calls West Bank Israeli Settler Violence a ‘Policy of Terror’”
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/france-calls-west-bank-israeli-settler-violence-policy-terror-2023-11-16/
and
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-gaza-west-bank-settler-violence-palestinians-rcna123311
and "The Rise of Settler Terrorism" (published in Foreign Affairs)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41720862
Kathy, you need help understanding what propaganda is.
Here you go, and you’re welcome.
Propaganda
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/05/28/most-propaganda-looks-nothing-like-this/
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/06/16/why-propaganda-works/
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/in-a-world-ruled-by-propaganda-a?publication_id=82124&isFreemail=true
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-illusory-truth-effect-and-the?publication_id=82124&isFreemail=true
CTRL C - CTRL V
John, do you have any other hobbies?
p.s. Belligerent, bellicose Biden has brought us closer and closer to the brink of both nuclear holocaust and financial meltdown.
I wish I didn't have to speak up (there are plenty of things that I'd rather do), but today's horde of mindless Democratic talking-pointers is herding the party and the American people into the abyss.
No hobbies, no friends, no life.
Trapped in a world where he thinks he is an intellectual and an authority.
I have reported him HUNDREDS of times now, and have repeatedly blocked and muted him--that works for one day.
I guess every other day I have to re-block and re-mute him.
Stuck on stupid...
Amateur astrologer, experienced genealogist, make models of WWII ships (the ships had/have spirits that are still around); I also like hiking when I find the time, and do a bit of gardening.
And spend time in the court system?????
Not exactly a hobby, but a civic duty.
1. That American "aid spigot" is about 1 percent of Israel's budget. Go ahead and cut it off, but be careful what you wish for, you may get it good and hard. This "aid spigot" in actually American welfare to the American arms industry, because Israel is required to spend that aid exclusively on buying American weapons. Without this aid, Israel can shop wherever it wants, and the American MIL will have to find a new way to launder Uncle Sam's money.
2. "Nakba" was a tragedy inflicted on Palestine's Arabs by Palestine's Arabs. If Arabs had not voluntarily decided to invade and conquer Israel in 1948 to steal all of Palestine for themselves, instead of accepting the UN's fair and legal offer of half the land for an Arab state and half the land for a Jewish state, not a single Arab would have had to flee. That nearly a million did flee is Arab doing, not Israeli, so take up your "terrorist" complaint with them. Arabs should not have terrorized their own people by invading Israel.
3. Israel did not exist until 1948, so there is no "UN-mandated pre-1948 borders" to which to return. You act as if Palestine was an Arab nation that Jews stole. It was not. Palestine was a geographic location that was home to two indigenous people--Jews and Arabs, each descended from the Iron Age tribes of Canaan. Jews retained their Canaanite tribal name throughout; the other Canaanite tribe became "Arabs" when conquered, absorbed into, and renamed during the Islamic Arab Conquest of the ME in the 600s AD. The name stuck, and DNA analysis shows that the Jews and the Arabs of Palestine both have legitimate claims to states there. Hence, the UN offer of half-and-half, which Jews accepted and Arabs rejected. Sucks to screw up like that.
4. The Hamas pogrom in October had nothing to do with "provocations at the Dome of the Rock." There haven't been provocations at the Dome in forever. Do you mean Jews having the audacity to pray on their own Temple Mount? If that provokes Palestinians, too bad, so sad, they can learn to share. Temple Mount is as holy to Jews as the Western Wall that supports the Mount's western flank, and Jews have every right to go wherever they want around or atop that complex, same as Muslims and Arabs have that right.
5. Hamas planned and rehearsed its terror attack for years, so again, it has nothing to do with Dome of the Rock, Temple Mount, al-Aqsa, or anything else. It has to do with Hamas being the assassination squad of the 7th Century Islamic fundamentalism currently practiced by Iran, which pays and equips Hamas handsomely to continue its "Death to Israel! Death to Jews! Death to America!" pogroms.
6. What do you believe is the "correct" location for the Temple of Solomon and its Temple Mount, if not where it is now? Be specific so we can Google Map it.
We'll just have to disgree about provocations at the Temple Mount fueling Hamas preparations for their pogrom. And it was Netanyahu, as much as anyone else, who enabled Hamas's atrocity:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
To blame the Arab states for the Zionist ethnic cleansing in 1948 is just sick.
Regarding aid to Israel, the House recently passed a 14-billion-dollar military package, on top of the usual $3 billion or so. Israel's budget for 2024 is around 155 billion dollars, so our proposed wartime aid to Israel is around 10 percent, not one percent, of Israel's budget.
Many of the descendants of the Hebrews and Idumeans (Herod was an Idumean) who had been in Palestine all along converted to Christianity and/or Islam, becoming modern-day Palestinians: the original Jews who never left.
The original temple of Solomon would never have been built on Mt. Moriah.
Netanyahu's support of Hamas is so vile he should be charged with treason for it. But I'm not an Israeli prosecutor, so I can't.
Yes, the 14B supplemental would bump the U.S. aid package to Israel this year to around 10 percent, where in most other years that annual aid would amount to 1-2 percent of Israel's budget. But it's a temporary bump that still may not pass Senate and Biden, and all that extra money still has to be spent on U.S. made weapons. I'd argue the House didn't approve it to help Israel as much as it saw an opportunity to lavish more welfare to American corporations. But even if it voted the temporary bump to help Israel defray its war expenses, so what? The U.S. gives Palestinians a lot of aid, too, and nobody's arguing that it should be cut to zero because of Palestinian warmongering--the Hamas pogrom.
"To blame the Arab states for the Zionist ethnic cleansing in 1948 is just sick." It's sick because truth is sickening. Arab states CHOSE to invade Israel rather than grant Jews a sovereign state of ANY size in Palestine. The UN Partition plan was the best way to give each people the state they deserved in Palestine under the auspices of the Mandate system.
Jews accepted their half. Arabs invaded Israel to steal both halves for an entirely Arab State of Palestine. That invasion caused the "Nakba"--absent the invasion of choice, no one, Arab or Jew, would have fled, been displaced, become a refugee, or been killed in a war that Arabs started. "Zionist ethnic cleansing" my ass.
I accounted for your converts when I said Palestine had two indigenous people, not just one: Jews and Arabs. The Jewish line continued straight from the Iron Age until present day; the Arab line had one name from the Iron Age till the Islamic conquest, then renamed Arab. That some converted from Judaism is is meaningless; the Jewish line remained intact and became the second indigenous people that needed to be given a state.
Palestine was and is not an Islamic or Arab state, despite all the propaganda otherwise. It was a geographic location in which two indigenous people lived, and as such, both people were due states through the Mandate system that gave conquered Ottoman land (of which Palestine was a region) to local populations to develop into sovereign states after WWI. Jews got to have one too, and they're not giving it up.
Today's Palis need to accept that their leaders sold them down the river in 1948 by not accepting that state on half of Palestine; that those leaders waged and lost three wars to Israel, resulting in the forfeiture ALL of former Palestine to victorious Israel; and since Israel won and they lost, Israel is going nowhere.
If Palis still want a state of their own--of which I am in favor--they need to be realistic about what they can get. That includes no longer allowing Iranian terror groups to operate freely in their nation, and ending the teaching of their children that Jews and Israelis are monsters who must be slain.
Thank you Shane. I copied your comment to my fellow book club members. We recently read We Could Have Been Friends by Raja Shehadeh, Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (most excellent!), and Exodus by Leon Uris . (Well, some of us on that last 600 pager!).
It's very nice of you to post this, becky, thank you and your book club. I love book clubs, having spoken with many while publishing my crime novels. Hanging out with readers is a blessing for all authors!
I'll have to check out Minor Detail. When you get through Exodus, you might give The Haj a try. Also by Uris, he examines the Israel-Palestine upheaval through the eyes of Arabs as well as Jews. It was quite a good read.
Another point: You refer to the "mandate system," which came about as a result of what Arabs (using the word loosely to mean those who spoke the language of the Koran as their first language) regarded as British betrayal after they helped overthrow Ottoman rule. In other words, for the colonized Arabs, the mandate system was unjust, imposed by force on peoples too week to resist imperialist oppression.
I could go on about how Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinski compared the Palestinians to the American Indians: They would never willingly give up their land.
"for the colonized Arabs, the mandate system was unjust, imposed by force on peoples too week to resist imperialist oppression."
That certainly was their view, but their view was a load of crap. The Mandate system gave 99 percent of all Ottoman land to its Arab populations to turn into states. It even handed Eastern Palestine to an Arab tribe--the Hashemites--to turn into yet another Arab state, Jordan! Arabs had no business griping about the Mandate system, they won the sweepstakes with it.
Arabs were not the only ones to help overthrow the Ottomans, BTW. The Jewish Brigades fought in those wars too, on the side of the British. (They did so again in WWII while that bastard Mufti of Jerusalem was palling around with Adolf Hitler.)
The final 1 percent of the Mandate was disposition of Ottoman Palestine. Sure, Arabs regarded Palestine as all theirs. But, it wasn't--Arabs AND Jews were indigenous, still lived there, and were therefore entitled to states there under the system that gave 99 percent of Ottoman land to Arabs, and Arabs sure didn't reject that other 99 percent, did they? Their bitching and moaning was over the 1/2 percent that would become the Jewish state. Had they said yes, Arabs would have owned half of Palestine and ALL THE REST of the old Ottoman Empire, given to Arabs freely by the British and French "colonial occupiers."
But Arabs rejected the deal for Palestine in favor of war and conquest of Israel, foolishly believing Jews so weak and sapped from the Holocaust they would be pushovers--and believing in a racist way that no Jew could beat an Arab in a fair fight. So war it was. When Arab armies streamed into Israel, all bets were off and both parties set free from Mandate rules to grab whatever they could for their pieces of Palestine. Jews won the 1948 war, so Arabs wound up with less land in Palestine than they would have gotten without the war. That's on them. They did it again in 1967 and lost the rest of their land to Israel. Tried again in 1973 and gained nothing. Those outcomes are on them, too.
Is Israel supposed to say, "Oh, dear fellows, how unsporting of us to have taken your land solely because you killed so many of us and tried to steal ours. Here, here, you can still have half, there, that's a good fellow . . ." No. You start three wars of annihilation, you'd better win at least one of them.
Jabotinski was right when he said Palestinians would never give up their land. He was wrong to say it was "their" land. It was only partly theirs, the other part being owned by the Jews of Palestine.
p.s. Earlier we used the word "pogrom." I'll suggest that "atrocity" is better, if pogrom implies being carried out by or under a ruling authority (that is, with impunity).
We used pogrom correctly. Hamas is the legally elected and formal government of the Gaza Strip. That made its attack not that of a ragtag bunch unelected terrorists, it was a pogrom against the Jews by a ruling authority that stated its goal as the genocide of Israel and the Jewish people.
A very minor point, but the Hamas raiders slaughtered OUTSIDE their area of authority. They were not the ruling authority in the area of the deaths.
Among other things:
The "temporary bump" in military aid is exactly the type of support that Israel needs to be able to do without, which means a true and lasting peace, which requires pre-1948 borders. That is a present-day compromise that all the other players in this conflict can agree on.
Can you think of any other compromise that would be acceptable to both the Palestinians and all the other countries in Israel’s neighborhood?
Once again, the goal is to prevent Israel’s annihilation if and when the United States chokes on the latest need for a multi-billion dollar military giveaway.
Israel is a strong and longtime ally of the United States and of the West in general. When our allies are attacked, we give them money if they need it. We are correctly funding Ukraine in its fight against Russia because Ukraine is proving to be an ally of the West. We're giving money to Poland and others via NATO to help out. We are correctly funding ally Israel now. I don't believe this aid will be more than temporary; i.e., only for a year. That's appropriate.
I hope you mean "pre-1967 borders," because Israel did not exist in "pre-1948 borders." But keep in mind that "pre-1967 borders" is bogus, too. Arabs invaded Israel in both years, Arabs lost the wars in both years, Arabs lost their land to the victors in both years. The "borders"--which are not, they're only armistice lines--were won fair and square by Israel, because absent the invasions of Arab nations, old geographic Palestine would have been half Israel and half Palestine.
As for compromise, don't forget that Israel needs to agree to any deal too, and that Palestinians lost much of their leverage to demand anything because they willingly invaded Israel but lost. I am for any compromise that Israel and the Palestinians work out--between themselves. They have to live with the results, I don't, I'm an American who can analyze this mess from the safety of my easy chair.
(Part 2)
You have been approaching this issue with a moral tone: "They got what they deserved, and if they learn to like it, they'll have peace." This approach, with sullen anv vindictive neighbors, necessitates that Israel continue to have a robust lifeline from the United States
My tone is realpolitik, not moral. If Palestinians want a nation, they have to accept one that will be smaller than the UN map. They lost that option by launching and losing three wars against Israel, then committing terrorist atrocities ever since, from Intifadas to Munich to Entebbe to the October pogrom.
If they do not accept land and end terrorist, they will not get a state. They will live in the status quo they say they hate, or they will slowly be squeezed out of annexed West Bank and confined solely to Gaza.
They need to decide which they want more: peace and a state or forever war. Just like 1948, the choice is theirs.
I am reminded of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1125: Well-established, with powerful but distant European patrons.
Templars would still be there if they had megatons of nukes and submarines to launch them ...
Yes they would, atomized as incinerated ghosts as the environs of Riyadh get turned into radioactive glass.
Who do you think the Saudis outsourced their bomb production to? Not hard to guess. And Turkey wanted both F-35s and the Russian S-400 system so they could practice shooting down the Israeli air force. And Iran just teased the range of their hypersonic missiles. Are you mad?
https://youtu.be/r12KJuVWb5w?si=BakUPI4-l3Dmb2TP
"...and I suffer premonitions of the holocaust to come..."
https://youtu.be/ZX7WpPP1FJQ?si=AtvFkPRhLG6WhkG4
"And as the windshield melts, and my tears evaporate..."
p.s.Scorpions are lethal, but also vulnerable. If Israel will guarantee its existence with weapons of terror, then only suicidal madmen will dare to resist.
(Part 5) Debt spiral:
https://doubleline.com/markets-insights/the-federal-debt-spiral/
" 'Higher interest rates will feed through into higher and higher debt loads,' Mr. Kimmel summarizes (11:54). 'And those higher debt loads could eventually crowd out private capital formation. And in response to the higher interest burden, the government will have to increase taxes and reduce government spending, which combined are negative for economic activity going forward. You get to a point where at some point the debt loads become so high that the economy collapses on itself under the weight of its own debt.' ”
(Part 4)
The United States is in the early stage of a debt spiral toward hyperinflationary financial ruin. This has been accelerated by a consequence of Biden’s strong support for Ukraine: The BRICS countries and others are ever further along the path of de-dollarization in their international trade, which makes it harder to sell U.S. Treasury bonds overseas.
That is to say: The U.S. lifeline to Israel, in times of urgent Israeli military need, is in
jeopardy.
If the United States collapses in this manner, the entire world will, too, so Israel would be on its own anyway. I also think "hyperinflationary financial ruin" is some author or another trying to sell books, not anything planted in reality.
Think it through: The percentage of the yearly budget devoted to servicing the debt creeps inexorably upward, as the credit rating erodes, making the obligatory debt rollovers more expensive, and we are constitutionally forbidden to default, making hyperinflation the only way out.
(Part 3)
My approach is focused on what Israel needs for survival WITHOUT a lifeline from the United States. Without that lifeline, to avoid annihilation, Israel needs a lasting peace under terms that its neighbors can accept. Its neighbors will accept pre-1948 borders if this is firmly embraced and guaranteed by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. That is my proposal to avoid the eventual annihilation of Israel.
(Part 1) I did mean pre-1948 borders, the original U.N. partition.
You have ably presented the Jewish side of the story. There is another side, and I would like to see someone argue it as you did. For now I will say that for the Zionists to steal the land of Palestinian villagers (being descendants of Jews who converted to Islam) was a far-reaching atrocity.
Pre 1948, Israel did not exist. Are you arguing that Israel should return to not existing?
No, no, I'm referring to the United Nations 1947 partition plan:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine
The UN plan is dead as disco. Palestinians had their chance to accept it and went to war instead to steal both halves—-three times. If Palis and their neighbors want peace and a state, they need to accept they will not get the 1947 deal, not any more.
As for Israeli “annihilation,” Arab nations have moved beyond that. They want to be rid of the Palestinian thorn in their sides, so will accept any deal Israel and the Palis make. What that deal is depends on who’s negotiating the terms.
The only nation that wants annihilation is Iran. Iran is going to implode because most Iranians hate the ayatollahs and will overthrow them to re-establish relations with the West. Without funding, Hamas and other assassins will wither away.
Finally, 100 nuclear weapons bearing the Star of David is a fine deterrent to any other threat.
So, whether or not the United States remains a partner, Israel will live on just fine. It’s in Israel’s interests to have peace with Palis, but not at the cost of the 1947 map.
Your other post has my replies:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-28-2024/comment/48471196