<p>OMG. Nothing further to say to you.</p>
<p>I have a question for FountainSiren (or fundingfather, et al.): Having tossed the hand grenade into the room here, what is the conservative view of the relationship between official Israeli policy and apartheid? I can rattle off a few differences. Israel would accord full citizenship and theoretical equal rights to a relatively small group of Israeli Arabs – albeit with a big dose of harassment and majestically forbidding the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges (Jews and Arabs alike are restricted from visiting or being visited by their relatives in Gaza, the West Bank (other than Jewish settlements), and Jordan; Jews and Arabs alike are unable to get citizenship rights for a non-Jewish spouse). Intermarriage is merely extremely difficult, not criminal.</p>
<p>I think it is a fairly broad, majoritarian position in Israel that it is not morally acceptable or practically feasible to maintain permanent political and administrative control over people who constitute a majority (or very large minority) of the overall population, who do not have full civil and political rights, who have not consented to the authority of the state, and who have important cultural differences (starting with language and religion) from the body of citizens. The Israelis are trying to find a way out of the apartheid box, without giving up the idea of a state that is specifically and permanently Jewish. I think it is possible to do that, at least under current conditions. But the prerequisite is a strong, vibrant, independent Palestinian state – something that is really different from the bantustans South Africa tried to create – and so far Israel has not been prepared to go far enough to make that happen.</p>
<p>JHS</p>
<p>I have written on the subject elsewhere. Here is a review I wrote for TDR:</p>
<p>The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege
Kenneth Levin
(Levin is a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School)
<a href=“http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2005/10/07/myth_and_madness_in_the_middle_east.php[/url]”>http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2005/10/07/myth_and_madness_in_the_middle_east.php</a></p>
<p>Beyond this, the subject is beyond me. I simply do not know enough about the situation to speculate on it. The situation, to my mind, is almost beyond rational solution at this point. Still, it is well beyond my intellectual means to offer up anything like an original opinion. The situation is, I believe, catastrophic, requiring more than the insights of a sophomore. </p>
<p>Fwiw, the grenade was lobbed by the elder statesman of the Democratic party, and former president Jimmy Carter. </p>
<p>I expect that had I not mentioned it on cc, it would have gone unmentioned. Guess why.</p>
<p>Can I ask what would have been wrong if after WW II the allies did carve out a section of Germany to create a Jewish state. Would the world be a safer place now or would there just be a different set of combatants?</p>
<p>I am aware of the justification for the location of the current State of Israel.</p>
<p>“Can I ask what would have been wrong if after WW II the allies did carve out a section of Germany to create a Jewish state.”</p>
<p>Nothing would have been wrong with that in my book. In fact, I rather wish they had. But IMHO it’s not really relevant to the conversation at this point. I mean, there’s no question that the United States wrongly stole a great deal of our land from other people, committed genocide and ethnic cleansing on those people, etc. But we built a nation here, it’s too late to give the land back, and at this point all of us have a right to be here. There are things we can do to create fairer conditions for American Indians, but abolishing the U.S. is not the answer. I see a parallel between the U.S. and Israel on that score. A nation has already been built, it isn’t going away, and we have to figure out the best and fairest way to run it.</p>
<p>Hanna- I agree with you completely.</p>
<p>Yes, exactly Hanna. </p>
<p>As repugnant as some of you find Israel, it is equally repugnant to oh-so-cavalierly suggest that the entire country and its six million occupants (most of whom were Holocaust survivors and others evicted from their home countries) be relocated (i.e. evicted again) elsewhere. </p>
<p>Israel exists. Deal with the reality, not the “what-ifs”. Israel has made far too many blunderous policy errors, but moving back to the '67 lines will not in any way offer her safety and security, which is a right of all countries. Gaza has shown us that.</p>
<p>Hanna, I wouldn’t take that analogy too far. I’m not taking sides here but Native Americans can vote and travel freely can’t they? and they are “protected” from discrimination in housing, employment, and education aren’t they?</p>
<p>Like I said, I’m not taking sides. What “we” did to the indigenous Americans is even by history’s standards pretty dang barbaric but we have the beauty of a longer lens and a people largely without access to the media. Time and national amnesia and little written record of the oppressed helps out “our” position more than Israel’s more recent, more accessible efforts at nation building.</p>
<p>“Can I ask what would have been wrong if after WW II the allies did carve out a section of Germany to create a Jewish state. Would the world be a safer place now or would there just be a different set of combatants?”</p>
<p>Well look at northen Ireland’s history a bit. Or our own American history about occupations and reservations… just a different set of combatants? yup. We just moved away from the extremes, they didn’t.</p>
<p>“Hanna, I wouldn’t take that analogy too far.”</p>
<p>Oh, neither would I. For one thing, it’s beyond question that Jews in 1947 had more of a legitimate claim to Israel than white colonists had in what is now the U.S., because the latter had no legitimate claim whatsoever. But I do think the comparison helps us to focus on the matter actually at hand, and the realistic options we have to choose from. When we debate fair land use in South Dakota, the option of evicting all the white people and handing the entire state over to the Sioux just isn’t on the table, even though there’s a good argument to be made that they’re morally entitled to the whole thing. There are two sets of people there now, they both have a right to call it home, and we have to figure out how to make that work. Period.</p>
<p>This leads into my philosophy about Israel in a nutshell. Both sides are filled with people who will defend their homes with their lives. So in the long term, there are two options:</p>
<ol>
<li>Genocide on one side or the other.</li>
<li>Sharing that land.</li>
</ol>
<p>If Option 1 is untenable, and I start from the assumption that it is always untenable, then we have no choice but to work toward Option 2, no matter how long it takes, no matter how difficult it gets, and no matter how many people on both sides are enthusiastic about Option 1. I judge every policy decision in the region according to whether I believe it moves us toward or away from Option 2. Therefore, I very often disagree with the policy pursued by both sides.</p>
<p>ITA, Hanna.</p>
<p>Now comes the hard part. How would you propose that I/P policy makers embark on getting to Option 2, especially since most Palestinians want all of Israel (the original Palestinian land) Judenrein, and have no interest in sharing it at all (and likewise, some Israelis still harbor their hopes for “greater Israel”).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Great job, Hanna. So true and hilarious at the same time. It does seem sometimes that the Option 1 folks are in control. doesn’t it?</p>
<p>“How would you propose that I/P policy makers embark on getting to Option 2”</p>
<p>I don’t know, but I think moving away from Option 1 policies is a necessary beginning. Getting rid of every settlement in the West Bank and Gaza – without scorching the earth on the way out – would be a great first step. Until that’s done, I don’t think we can even see the path to Option 2.</p>
<p>Education also has to play a huge part. I’d love to see Seeds-of-Peace style youth camps implemented on the scale of the Boy & Girl Scouts. I’m aware that there’s no political will for this yet, but…I just keep plodding away from Option 1.</p>
<p>“Now comes the hard part. How would you propose that I/P policy makers embark on getting to Option 2, especially since most Palestinians want all of Israel…”</p>
<p>Funny. Looking at the reality on the ground, I would have thought you had the subject and object confused…</p>
<p>I think if the U.S. got its nose out, they’d settle, and rather quickly I think. A one-state solution. Two states don’t work…it still leaves Israel with the demographic reality that in a generation or two there is an Arab majority in Israel. And since this is a theocratic state - by definition a Jewish state - that’s not a viable option. And so Israeli politicians keep putting off the inevitable because they know the U.S. will back them in any case, even when it means bombing a million Lebanese (many of them Christian) out of their homes, and pushing a secular Palestinian force (with major Christian leadership form Hanna Ashrawi) to the side in favor of an Islamic one.</p>
<p>How to embark? </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.theparentscircle.com/[/url]”>http://www.theparentscircle.com/</a></p>
<p>You really think they’d settle if the US backed out (I agree that the US is mucking things up but good in the ME, and I/P is no exception)? The hundreds of years of history prior to 1948 don’t speak to some cozy arrangement between Arabs and Jews.</p>
<p>Demography is not on Israel’s side. There isn’t a question about that. However, a single state solution is really rosy in theory, and really dreary in reality. History predicts that one.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Almost totally against Carter.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Don’t assume things, my dear.</p>
<p>No dice on its not realistic to move the Israelis into Germany. 1948-2006. Only about 58 years. You can’t skip over the original sin and try to make an agreement. Israel never had any right to exist in Palestine and that’s the word.</p>
<p>You are nuts.</p>
<p>The State of Israel, persay, doesn’t have to moved to Germany. If America and the EU and the Arab merely cuts off aid and trade with the apartheid state will merely fall like a deck of cards. The Arab Jews will probably immigrate into the Arabic countries and I also heard a very large percentage of Israelis have dual citizenship (probably w/America) and it is all done.</p>