Discuss: Fencing Israel

Yehuda - What leaves me almost totally puzzled is how you guys who support Israel sound intelligent, write coherently, and are otherwise sound members of one society or another, can be such total bozos on the Palestine issue.  You JUST CANNOT take 78% of someone’s country, then take the remaining 22% WITHOUT Resistance.  It does not happen!  And to pretend to the world that it is your party that is the aggrieved party is hubris unparalleled. You cannot just go into a country, commit mayhem and murder with one of the world’s most powerful (and practiced!) militaries and then complain about suicide bombings.  Its patently disingenuous. Why don’t you just admit that ‘we do this because we CAN do this’?  And stop with the moral angst.

It appears that we are bent on an eternal “have the last word contest.” If that is the case, you are likely to win, because I go back as a personal witness to the establishment of the State of Israel, and biology has a tendency to put the younger at an advantage in these situations.

Speaking of biology, the DNA accounts of the Palestinians I know of do not correspond to those of descendants of those pre-historical entities that no longer have had an identity in the last millenium or so. So here we have a factual disagreement.

However, that is not the alpha and omega of what we are talking about. It started with a fence, which is always problematic, and which we hope will come down soon as possible, meaning we have conditions which render it unnecessary.

It is important to separate the incidental from the principle, and the principle we should be seeking is the peaceful and just solution with the establishment of two sovereign and equal nations side-by-side, Israel and Palestine.

In a struggle that has gone on for so long, it is easy to point out faults and errors of the “other side,” but it does nothing to bring us together to resolve the essential and existential problems.

Israel is a democracy, and to quote Winston Churchill, “Democracy is the worst system in the world except for the rest of them.” In other words, it is not neat.  But nobody in a democracy has the power to lay down fiats to be obeyed without question, but it is better than what has been the powers of governances in most of the surrounding states in the Middle East. (And I am certainly not referring to the “spread of democracy a la George W. Bush.) However, I believe the region has much to learn by living at peace with democracies in their midst. I know that the Palestinians want to live in a democracy where one is free to develop and express oneself without concern of some security apparatus coming and disciplining the individual who crosses those undefined but “understood” lines.

So I say, work to make peace, and with peaceable relations, Israel, Palestine and the other states in the region can attain their prosperity and freedom for the individual and the group.

Well, if its about biology then I have but small advantage - I was born during the Truman Administration.
The DNA of Palestinians has shown them to be closely related to other currently extant people of the area - Lebanese and Syrian in particular.  The evidence shows that Arabian peninsula input to be something like 8% - this likely more prevalent among Bedouin, less so among city dwellers and fellahin.  The region has been continuously inhabited since the Neolithic or earlier, and Jews were never a majority until the ethnic cleansing of 47 - 49.  Palestinians are descended from all those who have lived there, whether Canaanite, including Phoenician, Philistine, Jew, Greek, Nabateaen, and later arriving Arabs among others.  This history is not the basis for their claim to the land - their claim is based in being the actually existing people on that land when the European colonizers arrived. 
Yes, the conversation started with the fence - and West Bank ecology.  But to discuss such in an illegally occupied landscape is like the National Socialists discussing preservation of the forests of the Sudetenland.  There’s an elephant in the room.
I have no problem with two separate entities if that is what Palestinians want.  I do know that is what Palestinians on the WB&G;want - but I’m not sure at all about those in exile.  They surely want to return home (as guaranteed by the UN) - but under what auspices? 
That Israel is a democracy is not saying much.  Turkey is a democracy, so was Apartheid South Africa, so was Jim Crow America.  There are maybe 20 laws on the Israeli books that are race-based.  And since about 93% of Israel is set aside for Jews, and the theocratic and military sectors of Israel are so strong - Palestinian Israelis are not really in this narrative.  So its a democracy, but we know there’s a lot of dirt under the rug in democracies.
Working to make peace may be fruitless if there is no effort to make justice. Then again, maybe Palestinians can be crushed like so many groups have been crushed before - either made to disappear like the Tasmanians, or made into miscellaneous Arabs, as in the paraphrased words of Golda Meir, “at home anywhere nowhere.” It’s in large measure up to the Israelis how this is going to play out, they can do the right thing, or do the wrong thing and expunge it from the history books.

And I was born during the Coolidge adminstration. What bragging rights! If you think you have an argument to make seven million Israelis disappear you have another think coming. Let us concentrate on the possible and not the impossible.

Either you and/or the Palestinians find a way for a two-state solution with the Israelis, or the Palestinians will be assimilated in the backwash of history in spite of their strong propaganda efforts. Jews know what it is like to be powerless which is why they always will say “never again” and really mean it.

We’ve had a number of back-and-forths but we haven’t had any reasonable steps towards agreement. So I believe you have a lot of time on your hands, or do you find this a remunerative pastimes? Personally, I don’t.

Jerry - I’m not bragging about how old I am, to be sure, I didn’t bring it up, I was merely conceding what is apparently of some importance to you - biological age.
I certainly am not arguing that 7 (or 5 million Israeli Jews) be disappeared - only that they make room in that state for those they evicted.  Jews know what it is like to be powerless, so do many peoples on this planet. Jews also know what it is like to exercise power as individuals or collectively, and they know how to usurp power to their own advantage from even larger powers - a strategy they have familiarized themselves with over the centuries. The Jews mistake - or specifically the Zionists (inasmuch as most Jews were not Zionists well past mid-century) was to render another group, in fact, the native people, powerless - well into the era of nationalism, and well on the downside of the era of colonialism.  So it is not surprising that the Palestinians were not disappeared despite the Zionist’s best efforts.
Basically, on this site, with a few exceptions - its been me and Zionist Jews who offer up the usual canards.  When I counter the canards with actual facts, they either fold up their tents or repeat the same bad history with no more nuance than they did the first time. 
The solution?? Magnanimity, not niggardliness.  It’s not too late.

While I disagree with some of your nomenclature that infers Jews/Zionists are interlopers and the Palestinians are the “natives,” I do agree with the concept of “Magnanimity,” it is a concept for both Palestinians and Jews.  The Palestinians want a state that reflects their particular cultural attributes, and the Jews want to preserve their national homeland for exactly the same reason.

Both deserve it, and after a century of conflict over the homeland of two peoples, at this stage, two states must be created where each can find their own normalities.

I believe that Jews and Arabs generally are the children of two separate civilizations, and to state that Zionism was not a characteristic of the Jewish civilization is to overlook the fact that the daily prayerbook spoke specifically of the return to Jerusalem; it was the prayer of a people in exile.  Zionism is what it came to be called in the 19th century, but it was not a new manifestation.

There are more than 5 million Jews now in what was Palestine because of the Zionist movement beginning with the late 19th century. That’s not much longer than your lifetime.  That there were a small and growing number of Jews there before that is unconnected with this political movement - in fact, this religious and generally anti-zionist population was not consulted by the secular Western atheist Jews who initiated political zionism.  When the Zionists arrived there was also a population of several hundred thousand people living on the land, cultivating it, buying, selling, trading, producing from it - and had done so for centuries, even millennia. So there is no doubt who the native population was. What exists in the Jewish prayer book stays in the prayer book.  Over the many centuries since Jews left the Levant those who wanted to return did so.  The vast majority had absolutely no desire to emigrate to this Arab land.  When political Zionism came to pass, it did so as a British colony, and the Zionists were only able to get colonists because of anti-Semitism (or perhaps because Western Europe had no desire for a foreign culture in their midst). The vast majority would (as most emigrants did) prefer to have gone to the Americas. The prayer book connection meant little to nothing to the Zionist fathers.

My guess is you are a more recent arrival at the 2 state solution. From 47 - 49 it was ‘grab all you can’ for the Jews - the Palestinians be damned. And in 67 when Israel grabbed the rest of Palestine, it was still Palestinians be damned. The only reason that some Jews now ‘favor’ a two state solution is because the Palestinians have not gone gently into that good night.  Usually, however, the catch for Jews these days is that the Palestinians have still to compromise.  Taking 78% of their country was not enough, and now having relegated the Palestinians to compounds on the WB, the Pals are expected to compromise further.  They say no thanks, and magnanimously concede all of what the world recognizes as Israel, not a dunam more.  But as for the Zionist created refugee problem, well, international law is clear on that too.  In fact, Israel was admitted to the UN precisely under the stipulation of the return of the refugees to their very homes. Israel reneged.
As for there being two separate civilizations, that’s merely a reflection of Israel being a European graft onto the Middle East.  To the extent Israel is not so, its because it drafted a large population of Arab-Jews as well as adopting the food, music, and cultural artifacts of the native population.  Israel owes the Palestinians Big-Time.  If they are not going to repatriate the refugees, its that much more they owe them.  Not to worry, Uncle Sam will pay for it. As it (we) always does.

It is true that Jews come in all sizes, shapes, etc., both politically, spiritually, but they do share a common core of civilizational distinction separate from either Europe and Muslim.

Additionally, at least 500,000 Jews were ejected from Arab countries when the Jewish state was established. Are they basically “European?” You say they were “drafted by the Zionists.” Well, I discussed this with many, many of them over the years, and they said that life was made intolerable.  There were pogroms, riots, killings, particularly of the Iraqi Jews who lived there for 2500 years.  Some of this diaspora, survivors of the Babylonian exile, incidentally, still live in Iran, but they are not enjoying complete freedom.

And it’s true that people have been living on the land for millenia, but over these millenia, the identity of these people has changed several times since the Jews were exiled.

You’re wrong about me and the two-state solution. I am no “Johnny-come-lately” to this idea. Even when the Egyptians were literally tossing bombs on my children’s heads, I was in favor of it. While neither you nor I can intelligently discuss the details of what the actual boundaries should be, I’m certain that the negotiators will be more skillful than Sykes-Picot.