Open Mic for the week of 9/23/2024

InMD in reply to InMD

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Just to put a finer point on this, I think South Africa is really instructive, and not the fairy tale version of it we got before the press went dark on the subject. Specifically the ANC was an anti-white vengeance party out of power and has remained one in power. Not to the degree people feared, and not nearly to the degree other anti-apartheid groups might have been. But they’ve nevertheless destroyed the country through a combination of short sighted black economic empowerment policies, weird ideas they got from the Soviets who were their main sponsors, outrageous acts of ethnic violence, often against other black groups, and just flat out petty corruption and incompetence.

Now the fact that the white South Africans maxed out at something like 16% of the population, and were spread across both the urban centers and had taken over all of the arable land, meant there was no neat solution with a geographic split. Israel has an advantage in that something like that is still possible.

But the longer Israel stays in the territories, the more the actual Israel becomes less a democracy occupying foreign territory, and more a single, unitary state, where roughly half of the population is not a citizen, cannot vote, and has no say or stake of any kind in its governance. Something like that can’t go on forever, not in the modern world.

If it refuses to leave, Israel will either have to ethnically cleans the territory and accept the consequences of that, which could be permanent and grave, which it is slowly doing now, or eventually give in to demands to enfranchise all of the people under its authority, in which case it goes the way of SA, or just collapses into civil war.

Which is why the security case you’re making is so absurd. What you’re really arguing for is one of those latter two outcomes.Report

InMD in reply to North

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That’s closer to what I think is likely to happen on current trajectory. There will still be a place on the map, most likely called Israel, but where all of the Jews with the wherewithal are leaving for America or Europe. The political situation resembles Lebanon where the state exists mainly on paper.
There are a small number of relatively secure zones in what was Israel proper while non state actors vie for control over an area increasingly unable to produce anything or function due to the danger and instability.

I’ll also just throw in I am capable of changing my opinion based on actions and facts on the ground. I used to have a hell of a lot more sympathy for the Palestinians than I do today.Report

InMD in reply to LeeEsq

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Lee, this is where I think being so much more obsessed with what people say instead of what facts are creates problems and confusion for the Israel camp.

Of course apartheid SA and Israel aren’t exact parallels. The ANC never needed to take an official, whites out position because all they had to ask for was actual democracy where black people had equal rights and the vote. It also goes without saying that in principle their stance was the right, morally defensible one, which goes a long way towards explaining why they won the battle for world opinion.

Nevermind the fact that the ANC has always also been an expressly Leninist party with plans for radical affirmative action sure to create the exact conditions that exist today. All the Mandela speeches in the world weren’t going to change the mission of rewarding the Xhosa ethnic group that dominated the coalition, primarily at the expense of the white holders of wealth and power (though some black ethnic groups as well). The whites then predictably began a steady exodus that continues today. All of SAs racists from the old regime and apologists said that was what would happen. It wasn’t some secret.

So the question for Israel is whether it’s more important to secure itself as a democratic, Jewish homeland that will last for the foreseeable future, or to have a little more territory but where the democratic nature of the government and demographic ascendency of Jews is under perpetual threat. That’s the actual, real, state of affairs, and the choice to be made, regardless of whether the Palestinians say nice things or say horrible nasty things.Report

InMD in reply to Dark Matter

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No, I still don’t think this is right for two reasons:

The first is that Palestinian hatred for Israeli Jews isn’t completely spontaneous. I don’t kid myself about the tolerance of Muslims and especially not middle eastern Sunni Muslims. They’re an anti Jewish people steeped in an anti Jewish cultiure and a backwards regressive religion. But the attacks are driven as much by the day to day reality of Israeli settlers, soldiers, and the state actively engaging in its own violence and terrorism against Palestinian civilians. This is the one area where that Ta Nahesi Coates piece Chris shared made a point. What would you think of Israelis if it was your brother killed by an IDF patrol or your parents driven off their land by psychotic settlers? What if it was your kid who couldn’t get medicine because of the blockade? Would you care that Hamas was as much to blame or would you be tempted to take up arms? I know I would.

The second and related point is that the biggest threat to Israeli democracy isn’t violence. It’s insisting on creating a state with boundaries full of hostile non-citizens.

The Palestinians own what they do and so do the Israelis. But it’s the Israelis by their own policies insisting on living in the same country with Palestinians, then pointing to Palestinian violence as the reason for their own crazy choice. It’s completely circular.Report