Looks like the dream of a Jewish homeland is on its last legs. At the rate the settlements in the West Bank are expanding, there won’t be any alternative but a binational state left in a few decades time.
Personally I think a Federated model is the best solution – have a single government headquartered in Jerusalem, with three provinces (west bank, Israel, and Gaza).
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Yeah, Aziz, keep dreamin’.
After 2000 years God returns His children to their ancient homeland. I think He can make sure that land stays in possession of His children as well. Your predictions not withstanding.
Nation states are like any form of real estate – possession is 9/10ths of the law. If Israel can defend its borders, it will continue to possess its land.
Kevin, I dont have a dog in this fight. I think the two-state solution is the unqualified “better” one in every respect. Your theologic twist on the utterly secular conflict is intriguing, but hinges on who the “chosen people” are, doesn’t it?
Mary, I agree, and the unquestioned ability of Israel to defend its territory, including the land in teh west bank it has acquired by force via the colonization program, is in fact its own undoing. At some point the reality will be that Israel has ownership of the entire West Bank, and that means they have to either legally entrench the status of Palestinians as second class citizens, or accord them full citizenship.
Israel’s ability to maintain its borders has always depended on the good graces of the West. With that mostly gone in Europe, and crumbling rapidly in this country, Israel’s future as a nation state is in grave doubt at this time.
Indeed it does! Which begs the question, if the Jews aren’t God’s chosen people, but the Arabs are, then how did they come to lose the territory to a nation in exile for over 2000 years? And even after numerous attempts to retake it to boot!
Yes, Aziz, it does all hinge on who God’s “chosen people” are. I think we know the answer to that one, don’t we? ;-)
There is no theological test to which the State of Israel need answer. Although ultimately God did promise the land to my ancestors, He exiled us from it twice because the People of Israel did not merit to possess it. The Torah “warns the People against the contamination of the Holy Land of Israel, which has a moral barometer of its own, ‘and let that Land to which I am bringing you not spit you out …’”
agreed with Ron. Israel doesn’t need God’s blessing to exist. Israel has a right to exist just like any other state – including Palestine.
Kevin, i dont see how any argument can be made for the Arabs to be Gods chosen people. certainly no justification or any such concept in Islam exists – salvation is due to belief, not blood. The Chosen People are probably indeed Jews – but which Jews? I think probably ones like Richard Silverstein, or Uri Averny.
CC, Im not a military triumphalist, but I will confess to enjoying the ass kicking in Iraq in 2003. Anyone wanting to frak with israel today is gonna get same, period. And thats even befre Israel rolls out the nukes. Israel is about the best-defended state in the middle east. she’s not a wilting flower but a roughneck.
It is a myth, as Aziz says, that Israel has ever needed to hide behind the skirts of “the West” — which I can’t imagine what that could mean besides the United States except perhaps for the 1956 Suez Crisis — for protection or even any meaningful support.
Oh, and I did not say Israel doesn’t need God’s blessing to exist, Aziz.
I said quite the opposite.
ah, Ron, on re-reading I see what you mean. my apologies. Gods blessing is a different matter than a “theological test” – the latter being something applied by man, not the divine, correct?
Aziz: Yes, as of this moment, in September of 2009, Israel has enough military reserves that they can probably “kick ass” again. But without constant support from the USA, that capability will degrade while Iran and other Arab states will expand. Eventually (and “eventually” may mean in a few years) Israel will no longer be able to keep up. And as soon as that happens, they will be at war without massive military superiority.
It’s just a matter of time.
I dunno know about that. You know I’m the first to support Israel’s military dominance but Israel never needed the U.S. for meaningful support?
I think a powerful argument could be made that without American support during the Yom Kippur War Israel would have been destroyed. Or, at least, that was the thought in the U.S. as Israel was quickly approaching the line to unleashing their nuclear arsenal because it looked like defeat was nearing.
Um.. just for the sake of argument, can anyone tell me what kind of airplanes Israel flies? What air force and army they train with? Whose anti-missile batteries they use? What companies they have support contracts with? What country sends them billions of dollars in aid? What country has, until now, pledged to support them in case of need?
I guess none of that matters….
Israel did need U.S. support during the Yom Kippur war — but only as a counterbalance to threatened Soviet intervention. After its initial losses, it recovered big time and was on the way to Damascus when Moscow got nervous.
Israel flies U.S. jets and uses, almost exclusively, U.S. weapons, as do most countries that can afford them. Israel has made a number of attempts to develop its own fighters but has been discouraged by the U.S., which essentially subsidizes the defense industry here and keeps production rolling by more or less paying for Israel to Buy American.
The U.S. and Israel have no NATO-type “an attack on one is an attack on all” treaty. But are there substantial links between Israel and the U.S. defense establishment, such that the sudden withdrawal of the latter would be disastrous for Israel? Yes.
Does any of this matter? Maybe not at all.
A real two-state solution with a peaceful Palestinian state not devoted to the utter destruction of Israel would be a fine solution.
But I see no plausible way to get there from here, so calling it “inevitable” is laughable.
We have a “two-state solution” now – the problem is that Gaza is not remotely peaceful and is committed to the destruction of Israel, rather than peaceful coexistence and cooperation. There is a “Palestine” rump now … and it will continue to be a rump so long as the criminals continue running the place, and so long as much of the neighboring Arab world (and Iran) happily support them and support blaming everything in the world on Israel, Jews, and the Great Satan in order to distract their populations from their own governments’ predations.
Cosmic/Kevin: I think Ron and Aziz meant direct military support or hiding behind threats of US retaliation to attack (which there really haven’t been any of). US troops have never really fought alongside Israel, nor have they needed US “advisors” or training*, apart from when they’re sold new aircraft (which of course every seller of military aircraft provides to their customers).
* Cosmic suggests that Israel “trains with” the US Army and Air Force… maybe I’m somehow vastly ignorant of an area I though I was reasonably well acquainted with, but when have the IDF and US Army ever engaged in maneuvers together? If they have, it must be pretty On The Down Low, since I’ve never heard it, or heard the anti-semites screaming about it, as I’m sure they would incessantly…
I mean, sure, we trained their pilots when we sold them those F16s, but they should have their own cadre by now, and their pilots are some of the best in the world in their own right…
Ron:
It is my belief that a major deterrent to Arab attacks on Israel is the belief that the USA would get involved if Israel’s existence was truly threatened. That may not be US policy, but I am quite certain with Reagan or either Bush in the White House the world was damn sure that the USA would get involved, and with Clinton that would have been considered a pretty good bet.
With Obama I think the world is starting to wonder if the USA would care. And that is a dangerously destabilizing situation. The more the USA and Israel pull apart, the more exposed Israel will be to aggression from its neighbors.
You can argue this, and I certainly hope that you would be right. But I fear that the end result would be a genocidal war which would leave citizens of Israel scrambling for refuge in an area where they would find nothing but hungry, gnashing teeth.
Also, nevermind most of what I just said, since I completely misread “binational solution” as the opposite of what was intended.
CC, you’re just winging it. Considering that Israel has whipped the Arab states every single time without direct US involvement, your argument makes no sense. The threats to Israel today are essentially from non-state, or officially non-state violence, as well demographics and as its own serious existential crises.
I think that if the U.S. would have ever landed boots on the ground for Israel it would have been during the Yom Kippur War. We didn’t. We provided badly needed material supplies that help Israel turn the tide. But if Israel was really that close to defeat, and pressing the nuclear button (as Kissinger believed), it was then the U.S. would have engaged in active fighting beside Israel.
Again, we didn’t.
Ron:
Whatever you say. I can guarantee you that Israeli defense commanders would take my position far more seriously than you are. I think they probably think their neighbors are telling the truth when they say their goal is to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
With Obama I think the world is starting to wonder if the USA would care. And that is a dangerously destabilizing situation
Bush verbally supported Israel, but he also supported the elections which led to Hamas taking control of Gaza. His words were comforting, but often his actions were not.
The only thing that changes after an election is the way the goverernment markets the same old state department policies. The Democrats pretend to care more about diplomacy than military support, and they make an effort to appear to cater to Arab/Muslim beliefs. The Republicans sell traditional American Judeo/Christian beliefs and ‘security’. But both are just changing the packaging on the same old brand of foreign policy soap.
The leadership in Israel is probably more important in evaluating Israel’s survival potential. Olmert & co. were dangerously incompetent, and they were hated by the majority of voters in Israel. Netanyahu may have his critics, but at least he’s competent and politically astute. I’d say that Israel is better off now.
I would go so far as to say the reason Israel has NOT conquered larger portions of Trans Jordan / Palestine / Egypt is direct meddling of the West. In the short run, if Israel feels abandoned and without any sort of favor from the US or the West, I don’t see any restraining influence on Israel’s expansion.
Mary:
I agree with you about Israel’s current leadership. I’m talking about larger geopolitical realities. I guess my point is not getting across. I am not one of those who believes geopolitics is a complex, nuanced and highly volatile thing that changes with the winds. I find geopolitics to be virtually indistinguishable from a kindergarten playground. The bullies will bully when they think they can be successful at it, and they will grouse around and threaten when they think they can’t.
Early on after Israel was formed, the bullies thought they could get away with it and went to war repeatedly against Israel. As Israel’s relationshiop with America grew both overtly and under the radar, the bullies realized that the teacher was watching.
When the teacher stops watching, the bullies will act.
Now, in the meantime, the little kid in the playground has grown up quite a bit and has punched the bullies in the nose pretty effectively. But those bullies are growing up too. And as soon as they think they can get away with it, they will go after Israel again.
In my mind it’s that simple. I suppose other people have more nuanced views. Obama is the teacher who has taken his eye off the victim. He is perilously close to the teacher who has winked and nodded at the bullies. Eventually the bullies are going to conclude that the teacher is not really watching things any more.
I’m sure this will be viewed as somehow condescending to Israel, I really don’t care. Israel is big enough to take care of itself right now. But things change and the balance of power changes. If and when that balance of power favors the bullies, they will act.
I hope I’m wrong. But I doubt it.
Well, Cosmic, I hope we don’t see Israel becoming the battered wife who feels there is nothing left but to burn the abusing SOB in his bed. I think that is more likely at this point, as Israel is not likely to accept extinction without bloodshed.
Kristian: I think that is also a very high risk as well. I personally think Obama is playing a very dangerous game and may not realize how dangerous it is. Presumably he does, he has all those smart people working for him, but based on his actions, sometimes I have to wonder what he could possibly be thinking.
Cosmic – when I say that our relationship with Israel is determined by our State Department, I don’t mean that this is a good thing. State is one of the most incompetent, amoral and unsupervised departments in our government. Their primary goal is to kiss up to the oil producing Arab countries (the bullies) and to blame most of the world’s problems on Israel (the victim) – when they’re not blaming the currently out of power party (Democrats or Republicans) for all the world’s problems. Some teacher.
If Israel depends on our State Department for their salvation, they will be lost. After 9/11, State’s first priority was to cement our friendship with the Saudis who sponsored the attacks. They proved that they were willing to throw American citizens under the bus to keep their oil-tick friends, so there’s no doubt they’d be willing to sacrifice Israelis. No matter who is in power.
The Middle East is currently a mess because various ‘superpowers’ use terrorists and the states that support them as proxies in various trade wars. See Britain’s deals with Libya as an example. If Israel wants to guarantee its survival in the long term, it will do what it can to destroy our alliances with oil tick/terrorist states. But for now, Israel will probably play along with our absurd games.
Mary:
Wow, I think I just relinquished the title of “most cynical DW poster” to you. :)
I’m with Ron on this one: Israel, like any nation, needs God’s blessing but needs to pass no theological test from anyone else. And, more to the point, militarily, the real reason Israel’s Arab neighbors fear Israel is because Israel is militarily far more powerful than any of them. Better trained, better equipped, better in general. The fear of U.S. power is there, but if the U.S. were to completely turn our backs on Israel during a conflict, Israel would still quite quickly destroy any invaders. All by themselves. Just as they have every single other time it’s happened.
The Arab nations fear to invade Israel precisely because they know that all by herself, tiny little Israel can wipe the floor with them. Which is why they talk about nukes; they know Israel would destroy them if they used anything less.
It is true that Israel gets some aide and some supplies from us. Having been a useful ally in the area for many of America’s other foreign policy aims, that’s not surprising. But Israel is perfectly capable of striking up other alliances. She has in the past and she’s certainly capable of it in the future. Israel may enjoy American support, and have things to offer America, but Israel does not NEED America.
And, so far as I know, Israel provides all their own training; they don’t have their military train with us any more than any other allied nation does. I’m sure there are occasional officer exchanges. I’m sure when we sell them planes, they send some pilots over here for training–just as when the French sell someone planes, or the Russians, or anyone else sells planes, whoever buys them usually sends pilots there for training, initially. But other than that, no, Israel is an incredible military machine all by itself.
As for the stuff about prophecy and chosen people and all of that: gah, I don’t want to go there, I’m sick of fighting with Kevin. But it’s not a theology I would expect most Muslms to even understand. It’s not even mainstream to Judaism or Christianity. It’s just not.
Well, as in most things, we’ll just have to see how these things play out. An Israel left adrift by the USA is an Israel on the way to a coral reef in my opinion. I certainly hope we don’t get to see if I’m right on this, I’d rather be wrong. But I don’t form my opinions based on what I wish were true.
By the way, I think Aziz makes a very good point, and I’m surprised that it got missed and we instead derailed into theology and stuff like the Israeli military. If I read him right, his point is that by continuing to expand Jewish settlements aggressively into the West Bank and Gaza, Israel is virtually guaranteeing one of two results in the next generation or so:
1) Permanent second-class citizenship for current non-Jewish residents of those areas, or
2) An end to the fundamental Jewishness of Israel, as they grant full legal and political rights to those non-Jewish residents.
He’s saying that if the Jews and Palestinians stay fairly rigidly segregated, as they are now, then retaining the Jewish character of Israel is easy. But full integration with Palestinians means an eventual end to the essential Jewish character of the state.
It’s a very good argument, really.
I mean, I suppose there’s a third option, to kill or eject all non-Jewish residents, but Israel isn’t going to do that so it’s silly to discuss in more than the abstract.
Here is what I see happening, due mostly to our fickleness: Isreal, South Korea and Japan starting to expand there defense programs. All three have different pieces of the tech industry that if used cooperatively are as good, if not better than the US. All three are threatened by ‘very bad people’, all three have benefited in some form or another from US paternalism. And all three are feeling not pleased with either our politics (Israel) or our actual physical presence (Japan and South Korea).
As for the palestinians becoming second class citizens in Israel, that is a damn site better than how they are living under the terrorist thugs ruling them now with the benighted oversight of UNHCR.
“At some point the reality will be that Israel has ownership of the entire West Bank, and that means they have to either legally entrench the status of Palestinians as second class citizens, or accord them full citizenship.”
Israel is not limited to those two choices, Aziz. The real policy of Israel for most of the 60 years since their successful conclusion of their war of independence in 1948-1949 has been encapsulated in a statement by the late Levi Eshkol, Israel’s prime minister in the years around 1967, referring to the Land of Israel and its remaining arab population:
“We will find a way to keep the dowry but get rid of the bride.”
Israel has had de facto ownership of all Yehuda and Shomron (Judea south of Jerusalem, Samaria north of Jerusalem) since about the second or third day of the Six Day War of June 5-10, 1967. The 42 years since have been more or less permanently characterized as follows:
– Israel’s air force controls the skies; and Israel’s nuclear weaponry control the ultimate destiny for life or death of everbody and everything in the Middle East within reach of its multistage long range ground to ground rockets.
– Israel’s strong, well-trained and well-equipped army controls the land routes, and Israel’s spy network has access to all the secret cabals of their arab enemies; Israel’s economy supplies whatever gainful employment the Arabs ever have found around there, including paid day labor pouring concrete for Israel’s residential construction projects;
– Israel’s hydraulic resources agencies control the entirety of the otherwise scarce water supply for the entire stretch of territory ultimately controlled or patrolled by its armed forces;
And above all, Israel controls the rate of growth of the already-burgeoning Jewish population of Yehuda, Shomron and Jerusalem, which now totals somewhere between 550,000 and 600,000, depending on whether you listen to their official reports or those of the hardened zionist activists who bit by bit are taking over the government of Israel. That particular Jewish population is the fastest growing in all Israel, with a doubling time rate of 15 years, compared with 35 years for Israel as a whole. And most significantly, that particular segment of their population has been rising faster than the rate of increase of the Arab population, so that the former arab territories immediately west of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea are lands in which the Jews are becoming the successor population.
Unlike most people reading what I have written here, my wife and I resided among those people for 18 months while we were studying under graduate fellowships at the great Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1973-1974. For my wife, those studies were in archaelogy and anthropology. For me it was city and regional planning.
We KNOW exactly what they are working to accomplish, and we know exactly how they are going about it.
First, they have carefully laid multiple belts of close suburbs around all Jerusalem. Ma’aleh Adumim was all planned and marked east of Jerusalem in 1974. Now, 35 years later, it is a full-grown modern city with a population approaching 60,000. The same is true of all the other major cities being built elsewhere in Yehuda and Shomron. The main purpose of that is to make sure Jerusalem can never be pulled loose from Israel to serve as the capital of any so-called palestinian state. The secondary purpose is to make sure that can be little or no connectivity between the Arab communities south of Jerusalem and those north of Jerusalem. That breaks up what remains of arab Palestine into three separate and never to be geographically unified clumps of land and people.
Second, they have been filling in all the empty strategic spaces within those multiple belts around Jerusalem. Inasmuch as Israel annexed all eastern Jerusalem and the land around it in 1968, and control it through force majeur, the world can and will do little but stare at them with stony eyes as they make all Jerusalem jewish.
Third, they have been laying out lines of cross-Shomron and cross-Yehuda highways as access points to the strings of villages and cities being built mainly in the western parts of both the northern and southern land bulges. These will help break up “Fatahstan” into still smaller parts.
So Israel now has a permanent grasp of the “dowry”, Eretz-Yisrael from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.
And all this without having to marry the “bride”, namely the Arab population. I am sure that in the fullness of time, they will use every opportunity, every artifice, with infinite patience, to see to it that the portion of the arab population that remains in place in their dwindling patches of land adjoining the Jews will never acquire either sovereignty or equal rights in any jewish state, either now or in the future.
Many of those Arabs will will emigrate with their families to anywhere in the world where they can build a better life for themselves. Once in diasporas of their own in Europe, North America or South Africa, they will grow now local economic and cultural ties. True, they will hate the Jews for a long time, possibly for a thousand years of more. But most of the Jews I met in Eretz-Yisrael could wryly tell those Arabs just how far that tactic got the jewish nation over some two millenia of exile. In fact, it got them nothing at all. Because only force counts. And most Israelis are now fully aware that nobody in the outside world will mount a 21st century crusade to take Jerusalem away from them, either to keep it for themselves or even less likely, to invite the Arabs back.
As for the neighboring Arab states, they will eventually extend whatever measure of de facto peaceful relationships they now have with the jewish state, irrespective of what everyone imagines is their holy cause of the so-called palestine Arabs.
That’s long-term reality as I see it.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold, your characterization of the Jewish people – a people and a nation whose commitment to justice is truly a light unto the rest of humanity – borders on obscene. I wont presume to speak for Ron or anyone else of Jewish heritage, but from where I sit you’ve reduced a glorious 5000 year civilization to a petty band of thugs. Which is exactly what the anti-semites the world over wanted you to do. You’re playing right into their hands.
Aziz,
That was excellent, concise and direct to the point.
I complement you.
The notion that city planning and a strong arsenal will ameliorate hatred and injustice in the mid-east is beyond objectivist qua apatheist thought.
Dean, you’re right, Aziz’s point got sort of lost in the haze of militaristic geopolitical commentary. I apologize for my contribution to that obfuscation.
It’s an interesting thing, but is it accurate to say there are only two possible outcomes? Isn’t it also possible that same Arab population can continue to be inflamed and remain a security threat to Israel and a tool for the surrounding Arab states to continue to inflame anti-Israel sentiment?
After all, that’s worked for nearly 60 years now. Why do you think that’s necessarily going to change in the next 20?
The issue is the settlements, Cosmic. Which are controversial within Israel as well as outside of it. They are intentionally and forcibly planting colonies of Jews–heavily armed and fortified–right in the middle of densely-populated Palestinian areas, with the goal of beefing up the population and reproducing as quickly as possible. Those favoring this policy are fairly clear what their goal is: to take over these areas, in effect coming to dominate areas now dominated by Christian, Druze, and Muslim Arabs. (Yes, they’re doing this to Christians, not just to Muslims).
The goal is that within a generation or two, the Jews living there WILL be simply an inseparable part of the economic and political and social reality. Those who advocate this policy are, by and large, perfectly aware that it will take 20, 30, 50 years, but that’s what they’re doing and that’s why they’re doing it.
Right now, in Israel, non-Jews–Christians, Druze, and Muslims, mostly–are accorded civil rights and full voting rights. They even serve in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), as full members.
Palestinians don’t get that of course. But if the Jews are populating the Palestinian areas, and those Jews are maintaining their full Israeli citizenship, what happens in 20, 30 or so years down the line, if the experiment is successful? Are the Palestinians still going to be non-citizens, but the Jews are full citizens? And non-Jews who lived in the original Israel will retain their citizenship, but the non-Jews in the West Bank and Gaza not?
What is going to be done with the non-Jews living in the West Bank and Gaza, assumning that the settlement project is successful? Will they be made citizens or will they not? Will they be accorded the same rights as their Christian, Druze, and Muslim Arab kin are in the rest of Israel, or what?
As I see it, the Jews can kill them, expel them, keep them as permanent non-citizens or second-class citizens, or accord them full rights. Are you seeing a fifth option I’m not seeing?
Israel does not have a serious terrorism problem with its non-Jewish Arab Christian, Druze, and Muslim citizens. It’s Palestinians and those outside of Israel’s borders who commit the terrorism. Those Arab Christian, Druze, and Muslims living within Israel are citizens and are by and large peaceful and fairly well integrated into Israeli society. So. Now. Let’s say that the West Bank and Gaza become absorbed by Israel, creating a Greater Israel, which is pretty obviously what the settlement plan is. So. What’s the result 20-30 years hence, if it continues apace?
I think Aziz has it right. You can have Greater Israel, Democracy, and a Jewish state: but you only get to pick two.
I said it was an interesting point, but I’m not totally convinced that it’s as simple as that. It might be, but this has been going on for more than 20 years and what Aziz is predicting hasn’t happened yet. You could argue that what the Arab nations in the region are doing by keeping the Palestinians pushed up against Israel is a very similar strategy, with a more sinister approach. So even if Aziz is right, the growth in Jewish population and spread of Jewish settlements has to be balanced against the continued presence of the Palestinians and the increased vulnerability these settlements create for Israel.
Also you seem to be saying that Israel can continue to provoke those non-Jews living among them without an increase in terrorism from within the groups who have so far been less inclined to practice it.
I think a very real scenario you and Aziz are ignoring is an increased friction with more terrorist attacks committed by those who are currently less inclined to do so. In fact that’s pretty much exactly the tactic I would expect the Arab states to pursue, and I would be very surprised if they were not already actively doing so.
So, the third option is essentially just a spiraling of terrorism inside Israel with the intention to force the Jews back from the settlements.
If the choices are Greater Israel, democracy, or jewish state, then as far as I’m concerned, you can drop the democracy jive. When and if the Arabs set up a Greater Southeast Michigan Little Palestine, it will be allied with Eurabia rather than the rest of what has been the USA. Non-Moslems who live under their local or continent-wide overlordship will all see then what arab democracy is like, both in theory and practice.
As for “a people and a nation whose commitment to justice is truly a light unto the rest of humanity”, it is obvious from the historical record that nobody except the whipped and murdered jewish victims of the Roman inquisition in Europe and the universal dhimmitude of the moslem world actually believed in that bullshit.
As for what Ron may think about all this, he doesn’t consult with me, and I sure as hell don’t hold any kind of communion with him or anybody even remotely like him. My interest in all this is practical Zionism, not the pasteurized one percent Judaism of the western liberals.
“Thugs”, you call us? One of my models of national leadership is one Mahmud al-Ghazni, an afghan islamic ruler who conquered northwestern India in the late 10th and early 11th centuries, murdering Hindus and Buddhists wherever his armies could reach, looting and destroying their temples, and permanently creating what became over the centuries the islamic presence in India. Also Andrew Jackson, the man who brought the eastern part of the United States under final control of the white Europeans by booting the organized indian tribes across the Mississippi River and into the Indian Territory that became the state of Oklahoma. So go ahead and lecture me about thuggery, while I sit here and snicker in contempt.
I say again that there is only one rule that applies to all life on this planet, and that is the territorial imperative. When the jewish survivors of the centuries all across Europe and the islamic lands rediscovered that principle, they had to choose among “Jewish homeland”, “democracy”, or maybe just to sit around praying in their ghetto shtetls of Poland, waiting for the Nazis to carry out their well-advertised promises to gas them to death, incinerate their bodies, and use the ashes to make soap. Enough of them chose wisely, learned how to get guns and to design their own combat aircraft, heavy tanks, intercontinental rockets, and thermonuclear weaponry. And along the way, they stole the land they needed to get their homeland going again. In that, I salute them and their memory. Because that alone, and not the good will of the world’s bleeding hearts, guarantees their jewish national homeland.
If there indeed are any gods, godesses, or maybe even a wrangling heavenly UN Security Council of all of them, then I am certain that they act upon life by destroying the weak and disorganized for the benefit of the strong and the well organized.
In any case, the Israel of the gun has done an infinitely better job of protecting the Jewish nation than all the medieval rabbinical authorities ever did.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
CC,
Spiriling arab terrorism inside Israel won’t make the Jews run away from their cities, villages and extended farms in Yehuda and Shomron. On the contrary, it will cause an even more militant right-wing coalition to take complete power in Israel, and they will use police force backed by their military power to expel significant numbers of Arabs.
Immediately following the Six Day War in June 1967, some quarter-million Arabs from Yehuda and Shomron ran away eastward from their cities and villages, to the then-destroyed crossings of the Jordan River around Jericho. They left because their feared the Israelis would massacre them if they stayed in the Israeli-occupied territories. Few of them have ever returned. My own observations which I derived from all this when I studied the phenomenon in detail a few years later was that the Israeli government should never have made the mistake of assuring them they would not be killed if their remained.
There’s always terror in this world, and as it gets more crowded and living conditions deteriorate, there will be more terror.
I know for a fact that we and our allies, the British and Russians, won World War II because we became much more efficient terrorists than the Germans, Japanese or their pitiful italian allies. Because terror itself, or the threat of it, can be a winning tactic in war. As regarding Israel, I sincerely hope they will become much more efficient terrorists than their arab enemies. Because in war, there are no rules whatsoever. It all boils down to win and live or lose and die.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I often think Arnold’s analysis of what’s going on in Israel is actually hampered by his experience there some 40 years ago.
The fact is that there is no spiraling increase in Arab-on-Jew terrorism within the current borders of Israel. Even though about a quarter of the population is non-Jewish Arabs (Christians and Muslims, predominantly). There is no spiraling problem of terrorism and violence from this full quarter of the population. They integrate just fine; vote in the elections, have their newspapers, have their radio stations, television personalities, etc. and are integrated just fine into the mainstream of Israeli society. Israel remains 75% Jewish and so the Jewish character of the state is unlikely to change any time soon.
The notion that Israel is going to use these settlements in the West Bank and Gaza until they dominate the population and then simply expel the Palestinians is unlikely in the extreme. It’s pretty clear that what’s really likely to happen is that all they’ll have is a large Jewish presence in what was once predominantly Arab. But if history is any guide, they aren’t just going to expel the Arabs in those areas, and they’re certainly not going to mass-murder them.
So the question is, if these settlers in the West Bank and Gaza remain Israeli citizens, then, what of the others in the West Bank and Gaza?
It does suddenly occur to me that there is an option that Aziz seems not to have thought of: what if the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza are never formally made Israeli? The Israeli government could, at some point, simply recognize the West Bank and Gaza as separate, and say that any Jews within those borders are entitled to Israeli citizenship if they want it but are otherwise subject to the authority of the governments of West Bank and Gaza. In other words, the settlements could wind up NEVER expanding Israel’s borders, merely establishing instead a strong Jewish presence immediately outside those borders.
Dean: As with all my predictions, I let history be the judge. I hope you are right and that we won’t see spiraling terrorism in these new Jewish settlements… If so I’ll be very pleased.
But based on the history of the area, and the political realities of the neighboring states, I can’t believe that Iran and its proxies haven’t decided to escalate the violence.
Time will tell. I hope you’re right. I fear you’re wrong.
Dean, thats an interesting hypothetical. I’ll raise you one by even saying, what if the recognition of the westbank/gaza as “separate” never happens either? in other words, the present status quo is maintained indefinitely? itf israel can leave enough (crappy, isolated pockets of) land for the palestinians in teh w. bank to eke out an existence on, and continues buildup of settlements over time, the W. bank might never “fully” fill up. The bigger settlements can grow denser more quickly than they can sprawl outwards – build up infrastruture in place.
the reason I do not think this is tenable however is that the palestinian population is growing faster than the israeli one. At some point, there will be more palestinians in the west bank than there are israelis in all of israel (and by israelis, i mean arabs and jews together). Further, within israel, there will come a time when there are more arabs than jews as citizens of israel proper. the combination of these two demographic presures is going to force israel to become an autocracy as it increasingly tries to dictate a “Jewish” identity within and suppress the increasingly isolated, precarous settlements outside the 67 borders. The Arabs citizens and the israeli Left will become strong critics of the state’s increasing authoritarianism (a trend that has been increasing since Taba anyway) and ultimately there will be conflict.
The magical pony solution to the entire problem is to drop Jewishness and embrace the other Two. Doing that removes all sources of tension – but also is the death of the Zionist “FUBU” dream. At some point, with an israel forced to rely on repressive measures internally as well as increasing brutality externally just to maintain an increasing fiction of Jewishness, the pressure will build for change from within.
Israel is already an apartheid state, but its not as bad as one as S Africa was. But it will get much worse. The S Africa trajectory is instructive here. I predict that without a two state solution in the next decade, Israel will devolve into a full S. African apartheid regime over the next 25 years, and then will be reborn as a binational state 50 years from now.
50 years is a long, long time Aziz….
By then the singularity will have transformed humanity into something nearly unrecognizable and all these petty differences caused by which skyfather different people want to kneel down to will all be so much historical amusement for the augmented and AI overlords…
Or so Ray Kurzweil says…
SKYNET!!!!!!!
Heh… hopefully not that dramatic Kevin, but I’ve been saying for years that unless something completely derails technological advancement (something like a new Dark Ages, for example) then the future of humanity is going to be one of self-augmentation, or else the AIs we create will simply outthink us.
Pure biological human beings will become oddities, kept in glorified zoos or “primitive” ecology parks, controlled and monitored by the augmented or AI overlords.
In some ways it will be a liberal fantasy land come true.
singularity? bah, humbug
Heh… Aziz, we’ll see whose 50 year prediction comes true, yours or Kurzweil’s.
:)
Yeah, Aziz. If Skynet comes, I own your butt.
if Skynet comes, we are meat. If the Matrix comes, we are batteries. Singlarity is just infinite boredom.
See, I like the Matrix option better. When you are freed from it, then go back into it, you are crazy powerful awesome.
With Skynet, the best you are is meat with a laser gun.
Um… why are you guys assuming you’d be on the “human” side?
I intend to be on the “augmented” side.
I have a friend that is an undertaker. He told me at age 20 or before he would live forever because he planned on putting his brain in a jar of chemicals and connect it to a computer (which hadn’t been invented yet).
50 years later, he now has alzheimer’s.
Question:
Can he be augmented ?
McK: I suppose that depends on the extent of the brain damage and whether it can be reversed.
By the way, we are already augmenting ourselves physically. We do it every time we put an artificial knee in a person. Those knees are getting better all the time. It is already relatively uncontroversial to speculate on what will happen to sports when artificial joints outperform human ones.
Mental augmentation is nothing new. The first time a neolithic genius turned charcoal to stone and marked it to remind himself of something, he was augmenting his mental capacity. Today’s augmentation includes everything from handheld calculators to the ubiquitous blackberry and iPhone. The military is already using interactive techniques which “read” the eyes of the pilot to reduce reaction times and gain an edge in combat. There have been experiments where mice control computer chips and computer chips control roaches.
It is inevitable that in the future human brains will have memory upgrades, processor upgrades and wireless worldwide connectivity.
The real question is whether that augmentation will be external or will eventually be wired directly into your cognitive processes so that your thinking itself will be partially controlled/processed through electronics and nanotechnology.
You guys can scoff at Kurzweil all you like. The man is onto something. He may be “out there” in predicting the consequences, but if so, in my opinion, he’s only off by time, not by destination.
Not me dude,
I’m not scoffing at anyone. The bad news is that human beings have always intuited and lived in the light of the singularity, ermmh (eschaton) , at the end of history.
“Consciously intuiting this singularity is one of the prerogatives of being human, and what sets us apart from the beasts, for it really amounts to intuiting ……(to be continued.)”
Furthermore,
“Kurzweil’s notion of some sort of purely “horizontal” singularity is simply a garbled misapplication of a transpersonal religious idea.”
“For the singularity is already here, and has always been here. It is radically transcendent, beyond space and time. ”
As Benedict 16 sez,
“I am convinced that the destruction of transcendence is the actual amputation of human beings from which all other sicknesses flow. Robbed of their real greatness they can only find escape in illusory hopes…. The loss of transcendence evokes the flight to utopia. ”
Of course B16 is talking about soul pathology in general.
Let’s get back on-topic.
Aziz, the kinds of Jews who constitute what should clearly be seen as the new Israeli nationalist leadership are not afraid of tags such as “apartheid state”. Clearly, your exposure to Jews of any kind has been limited to the western liberal variety, such as you undoubtedly have met around Madison, Wisconsin or in your university studies elsewhere. You would find a shrinking number of those in Israel these days, in proportion to the overall population.
Instead, the cultural norm in Israel has been impacted and steered hard right by the presence of vast number of former soviet Jews who grew up and made their way in the hardest school of hard knocks of all, that of the stalinist and post-stalinist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The fact is, the Jews purposely organized themselves into an aparteid nation shortly after the great great diaspora began about 2000 years ago. For them, apartness was a defense mechanism to keep Judaism and the scattered diaspora jewish communities from being swallowed by the cultures in which they would have to live out their lives over the next 60-70 generations or so.
Most such people never knew democracy, and like most Russians, want jobs, crime control, national security, stable prices at the food market, etc, even without democracy. Just like most other white europeans. And certainly like the non-jewish Russians from whom most of their bloodlines stem. Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu’s foreign minister, is a totally representative example of that kind of russian Israeli.
So Israel will be an apartheid state. So what? They are more interested in secure borders far away from their large population centers, and they value that on a much higher scale than having the various international equivalents of the American Civil Liberties Union slobbering over them at banquets in Los Angeles, London and Paris.
Will they lose American support over all this? I don’t think so. They advanced combat aircraft and other cutting-edge weaponry from this country for some excellent reasons.
First, the USA wants to maintain full employment at the specialized manufacturing firms where this weaponry is produced. Or at least the senators and congressmen who represent these states and districts want that, and they will continue seeing to it that Israel gets whatever it wants in the way of such weaponry.
Second, the US Defense Department and those same space-age hightech arms exporters don’t want Israel’s factories competing against them in the international arms markets. So supplying Israel with what Israel needs and wants is part of the american trade-off to limit such competition.
Third, Israel is known to be one of the top nuclear armed powers. The last thing this administration of any of our occasional european allies want is for Israel to openly detonate one of those devices, or test purposes, to say nothing of using them for any more serious purpose. Become a serious nuclear power, and you suddenly find you have major leverage among the leadership cadres of the west.
Fourth, Israel enjoys more hard-core support from the american protestant bible-focused Christians than they ever got from any bunch of diaspora Jews. And those bible-focused pro-Israel Christians outnumber all the Jews of the world by about twenty or thirty to one. And unlike the western Jews, who tend to be a moneyed and educated class with frequently useful business, professional and social connections, those Christians are much of the core of the political leadership of this country. Do these people and their radiant Christianity make the Jews nervous because of their religious differences? The liberal Jews are indeed alarmed about them. But I don’t know of any hard-core Zionists who share such feelings. For one thing, most of these bible Christians consider international Islam a major threat to Christianity as well as the Jews feel about them in relation to Judaism and Zionism. And just like the Arabs and probably most other Moslems, the Jews follow the adage of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
So what will happen to what will certainly be segregated Arab communities left over in what I am certain will be an expanding Israel? First, they will largely be a class of city dwellers, because Zionism will be controlling and taking over their farmlands west of the Jordan. The jewish farmers who will take their place will engage them for hired labor, just like the california produce growers hire Mexicans for stoop labor. They will be dishwashers in Jewish restaurants.
But they will have local autonomy only, and they will never be allowed to vote in Israeli national elections or draw Israeli social welfare benefits.
But if this situation persists for a long time, a social change will take place among them. The parents will lose the strict degree of control over their children that arab familes traditionally maintain. The girls and married women among them will begin picking up the ideas of the Israeli women in the growing society around them. They too will want to take off the ugly bodywraps in which they are forced to hide their femininity. Nearly all of them will be able to speak israeli street Hebrew interchangeably with Arabic.
Maybe — just maybe — and over an extended period of time, their cultures will begin merging in imperceptible stages. And along with that, intermarriage, as the young people begin dating and with that, fucking one another just as elsewhere in the world.
What will this do to formal Islam and formal Judaism? That I don’t know. I’m a culturalist, and neither a racist nor religionist. But Judaism long ago adapted to serve as the main social connection among a displaced and scattered nation. I think Judaism in time will re-adapt to be something culturally akin to the Shinto practices and worship of the Japanese, who certainly are an established and monocultural nation. And about Islam? It underwent major changes in Turkey under Kemal Ataturk. Maybe it will do so again, in a manner that westerners and Israelis alike will be more comfortable living with.
“May you live in interesting times”.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I pretend to have no idea how to respond to all of the above very interesting comments. I merely posit this:
West Bank and Gaza really have no business declaring themselves a discrete country. They just don’t. Arafat created that idea, and he’s dead.
West Bank and Gaza have this notion that they are one nation, but in reality they aren’t, and reality since Arafat’s death recognizes this.
West Bank and Gaza have some things in common, but they truly aren’t one people or one nation. Maybe they have a lot in common, but they each have separate identities. And we would do well to recognize that.
Oh, shit, I’d best make this a front-age post. So I will.
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