This was a big topic of discussion on the other blog yesterday but apparently Hamas wanted Iran to participate in 10/7. The Iranian government had at least the intelligence to say no. Hamas seemed to have been fanatical that with Iranian participation, they could have destroyed Israel and make all the Jews go away. There is so much stupidity in Hamas' plan that the intent had to be malicious and they were basically not even thinking about what could possibly go wrong for them.
I am growing utterly disgusted with the continued dishonesty of the Further Left and Chattering Classes when it comes to the Jewish people. They know enough of our history to appeal for us to support their cause but at the same time resolutely refuse to give us any help and treat as an illegitimate group of wypipo cosplaying as an oppressed people. They delight in other oppressed groups fighting to preserve their cultures from forced assimilation, freedom, and liberation but look at the Jews with disgust when we do so. They think we are a bugs of a people getting in the way of their plans because of our insistence on our peculiarity and our refusal to accept even the most minor form of symbolic domination despite our small numbers.
The problem between determining what to do and what not to do is that all the solutions are very expensive, many are draconian and even racist as hell, and there is always going to be a lot tension between the bust heads crowd and the gentle people.
3. IDF rescues Bedouin held hostage by Hamas:
,
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w67w47eego
4. Here is a report from the Israel Democracy movement that presents a more accurate warts and all picture of Israeli Arab society, the good and the bad.
Chris, there are two million Palestinian-Israelis/Israeli Arabs in Greenline Israel and these Arab Israeli citizens currently sit in the Knesset, serve in the IDF and government, run businesses, and are enrolled in academia. They constitute 21% of all people in a medical profession in Israel. There are three million Palestinians in the West Band and two million in Gaza.
Meanwhile, the number of Jews in the rest of the MENA region is a number close to zero. Advocating for peace and diplomatic relationships with Israel is a death penalty offense in Iraq:
And the Palestinians on the ground make it clear that they are not seeking secular multicultural Palestine but Arab Muslim Palestine. The Further Left and chattering classes manages to ignore this because they don't like Jews and see us as white people cosplaying as an oppressed minority but creates an alternative universe in their headspace that doesn't correspond to reality.
Anti-Zionism tends towards anti-Semitism because going for "Israel is an evil bad settler-colonialist state" sounds a lot better than "we need the Jews of continental Europe and the MENA region to take a gigantic hit that they will get no credit for." They have no answers on what the Jews should have done as an alternative to save themselves, so they just ignore the peril that the Jews were in.
1881 is usually the given date of the start of the Zionist movement. Moses Hess' Rome and Jerusalem is a start but didn't really start the movement. Leon Pinsker's Automanicipation, the start of the Hovevi Zion, and the First Alyah are when things are really seen as starting.
There are several groups and people explicitly arguing for the destruction of Israel and even that all the Jews should leave the Middle East. So yes, the anti-Zionists are arguing that Israel should not exist even if that is not obviously going to happen without a world invasion.
I think one thing that Israel would dictate is stop demanding the Right of Return for Palestinians and their descendants, we aren't going to commit national suicide. The other thing that might be dictated would be Israel gets Jerusalem and the Palestinian state is demilitarized. I think these are realistic things for Israel to aim for in a forced settlement.
I think it has mainly been impossible because after WWII, the world lost it's appetite for these types of imposed peace. The world also never came up with an idea on what to do if the losing side in an armed conflict remains defiant and refuses to negotiate in good faith like what happened after the Israeli War for Independence or the Six Day War or even with the Palestinians making some very unrealistic demands.
I basically agree with the idea of withdrawal but I am a lot more skeptical about how it will turn out in the long run. There is a certain amount of underpants gnome thinking in the optimistic withdrawal scenarios. I just think that withdrawal is the most effective way to get a particular albatros off of Israel's back for the most part but not completely.
There are still millions of stateless Palestinians spread throughout the Middle East. A WB withdrawal won't do much for them and independent Palestine won't be able to handle them. The temptation to argue that it isn't a true withdrawal for various reasons will be too great.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by complete defeat of the Palestinians. To me it means something like the end of WWII where the winning side gets to more or less dictate the terms and the losing side accepts it.
The problem with the Israel-Palestine or really the broader Israel-Arab conflict is that the Palestinians were always allowed to make patently ridiculous demands like they were winning the battles despite getting their rears handed to them. Regardless of the morality of the Right of Return, the facts on the ground suggest that the Palestinians aren't going to get it but despite this the Palestinians keep demanding it and expect it to be honored. You have several organizations that are still calling for the destruction of Israel and maybe even the expulsion of the Jews as the one true solution despite the fact that this is also patently ridiculous based on the facts of the ground.
A defeat would mean the Palestinians realize that they basically lost and can't make maximum and flatly out there demands.
The peace keepers really didn't do much from preventing Iran and Hezbollah from playing military adventurism against Israel. The entire purpose of the withdrawal was that Hezbollah would not fire at Israel if Israel withdrew. Israel did so. Hezbollah kept being Hezbollah. The Lebanese government and the United Nations did nothing. If the world thinks that Israel needs to accept a certain amount of terrorism and Jews a certain amount of anti-Semitism than they should say so.
It can not be emphasized how pissed I am at the sheer dishonestly of Pro-Palestinian propaganda and how it removed all agency from the Palestinians and context from the Israel-Hams and Israel-Hezbollah Wars. Nothing happened on October 7, 2023 and Hezbollah wasn't firing rockets into north Israel that displaced 60,000 Israelis. It was just that "big bad Israel" got up and decided to invade Gaza and Lebanon and hurt those "poor brown people" for no reason.
The Palestinians have been using the same tactics and with the same revolts from before my parents were born. Despite a century of continued failure, they keep up the same ultra-rejectionism and demands for the complete destruction of Israel that never stops, too many people keep indulging and saving them. Maybe they should face complete defeat for once and have a deal forced down their throats because they have lost the war. Maybe that might restore some sense of reality.
I am re-reading Ada Ferrer's Cuba: An American History. One of the things that she points out is that during the American occupation of Cuba after the Spanish-American War, 25% of the occupation budget was spent on education and that the Americans really did seem to believe that this was necessary for self-government. Maybe education being the magic bullet is just one of those things that is part of liberal democracy despite not being exactly true because of the mythology of liberal democracy.
I am much less certain that things will play out with the PA being in control or the Palestinians doing anything to stop their crazies than you think. Lebanon did not do a great job combatting Hezbollah stupidity.
The online humanitarians are pissing me off. If people really cared about the Palestinians, they would at least notice that Palestinian strategy has been shooting themselves in the foot for the past 100 years. But it's all about "big bad Israel" and the Palestinians and other Muslims who can't quite stop fantasizing about the destruction of Israel despite that not happening.
Israel unilaterally withdraws. The stateless Palestinians in the refugee camps remain stateless. Whoever controls the West Bank says they can't take them all in and Israel must take them. Rocket fires from the border cities into Greenline Israel and Israel invades. A unilateral withdrawal will not end the I/P conflict.
And the West in the highest political circles is going to want a formal peace deal to make sure that the occupation is really over rather than a unilateral Israel withdrawal with the border settlements and all of Jerusalem being kept.
I think this gets to the heart of things. A lot of the West is losing the stomach for Israel doing what it has to do to convince the Islamists to cool it. This includes the political and diplomatic class. I really think that many people want the following to happen:
1. Israel agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state with maximum generosity.
2. Israel deals with the dead enders and Islamists with grace and a stiff upper lip or in English, they just keep calm and carry on but never respond.
3. Things will eventually get better.
The problem is that 2 is a very big ask for any democratic government. Very few states are just going to tolerate terrorism or violent acts from another state for long. 2 also makes 1 very unlikely. A Palestinian state is probably going to be very reliant on the Iranian Clerical Regime for funding, so is unlikely to do anything about 2.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/14/2024”
This was a big topic of discussion on the other blog yesterday but apparently Hamas wanted Iran to participate in 10/7. The Iranian government had at least the intelligence to say no. Hamas seemed to have been fanatical that with Iranian participation, they could have destroyed Israel and make all the Jews go away. There is so much stupidity in Hamas' plan that the intent had to be malicious and they were basically not even thinking about what could possibly go wrong for them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/12/world/middleeast/hamas-israel-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Rk4.t5oe.XnIWQ5Wgm8QC&smid=url-share
On “From the United Nations: Israeli forces fire on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon”
Hamas wanted Iran to participate in 10/7:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/12/world/middleeast/hamas-israel-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Rk4.t5oe.XnIWQ5Wgm8QC&smid=url-share
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
Studies show that Christopher Columbus might have been a Sephardic Jew from the Baleric Islands rather than Italian:
https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/christopher-columbus-jewish-dna-hv0323hdp
"
I am growing utterly disgusted with the continued dishonesty of the Further Left and Chattering Classes when it comes to the Jewish people. They know enough of our history to appeal for us to support their cause but at the same time resolutely refuse to give us any help and treat as an illegitimate group of wypipo cosplaying as an oppressed people. They delight in other oppressed groups fighting to preserve their cultures from forced assimilation, freedom, and liberation but look at the Jews with disgust when we do so. They think we are a bugs of a people getting in the way of their plans because of our insistence on our peculiarity and our refusal to accept even the most minor form of symbolic domination despite our small numbers.
On “From Freddie: The Basics: School Reform”
The problem between determining what to do and what not to do is that all the solutions are very expensive, many are draconian and even racist as hell, and there is always going to be a lot tension between the bust heads crowd and the gentle people.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
I think Trump believes he can convert people to him or that he might really win a 1972 or 1984 style landslide.
"
1. Israeli Arab women appointed rector of Israel's third biggest university during the Israel-Hamas War:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/university-of-haifa-appoints-arab-rector-in-first-for-an-israeli-school/
2. On Arab doctors being 21% of doctors in Israel:
https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/physicians-in-israel-trends-in-characteristics-and-training/#:~:text=The%20share%20of%20physicians%20from,in%20the%20population%20(21%25).
3. IDF rescues Bedouin held hostage by Hamas:
,
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w67w47eego
4. Here is a report from the Israel Democracy movement that presents a more accurate warts and all picture of Israeli Arab society, the good and the bad.
https://en.idi.org.il/articles/38540
"
Chris, there are two million Palestinian-Israelis/Israeli Arabs in Greenline Israel and these Arab Israeli citizens currently sit in the Knesset, serve in the IDF and government, run businesses, and are enrolled in academia. They constitute 21% of all people in a medical profession in Israel. There are three million Palestinians in the West Band and two million in Gaza.
Meanwhile, the number of Jews in the rest of the MENA region is a number close to zero. Advocating for peace and diplomatic relationships with Israel is a death penalty offense in Iraq:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/26/iraqs-parliament-criminalises-normalization-with-israel
And the Palestinians on the ground make it clear that they are not seeking secular multicultural Palestine but Arab Muslim Palestine. The Further Left and chattering classes manages to ignore this because they don't like Jews and see us as white people cosplaying as an oppressed minority but creates an alternative universe in their headspace that doesn't correspond to reality.
"
Anti-Zionism tends towards anti-Semitism because going for "Israel is an evil bad settler-colonialist state" sounds a lot better than "we need the Jews of continental Europe and the MENA region to take a gigantic hit that they will get no credit for." They have no answers on what the Jews should have done as an alternative to save themselves, so they just ignore the peril that the Jews were in.
"
1881 is usually the given date of the start of the Zionist movement. Moses Hess' Rome and Jerusalem is a start but didn't really start the movement. Leon Pinsker's Automanicipation, the start of the Hovevi Zion, and the First Alyah are when things are really seen as starting.
There are several groups and people explicitly arguing for the destruction of Israel and even that all the Jews should leave the Middle East. So yes, the anti-Zionists are arguing that Israel should not exist even if that is not obviously going to happen without a world invasion.
"
Pro-Palestinian Activists: We are merely anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic.
Also Pro-Palestinian Activists: We will target any Jew we can find.
"
I think one thing that Israel would dictate is stop demanding the Right of Return for Palestinians and their descendants, we aren't going to commit national suicide. The other thing that might be dictated would be Israel gets Jerusalem and the Palestinian state is demilitarized. I think these are realistic things for Israel to aim for in a forced settlement.
"
Hezbollah jumped in rather than Lebanon. Most Lebanese would have preferred if Hezbollah stayed out.
"
I think it has mainly been impossible because after WWII, the world lost it's appetite for these types of imposed peace. The world also never came up with an idea on what to do if the losing side in an armed conflict remains defiant and refuses to negotiate in good faith like what happened after the Israeli War for Independence or the Six Day War or even with the Palestinians making some very unrealistic demands.
"
I basically agree with the idea of withdrawal but I am a lot more skeptical about how it will turn out in the long run. There is a certain amount of underpants gnome thinking in the optimistic withdrawal scenarios. I just think that withdrawal is the most effective way to get a particular albatros off of Israel's back for the most part but not completely.
There are still millions of stateless Palestinians spread throughout the Middle East. A WB withdrawal won't do much for them and independent Palestine won't be able to handle them. The temptation to argue that it isn't a true withdrawal for various reasons will be too great.
"
I suppose it depends on what you mean by complete defeat of the Palestinians. To me it means something like the end of WWII where the winning side gets to more or less dictate the terms and the losing side accepts it.
The problem with the Israel-Palestine or really the broader Israel-Arab conflict is that the Palestinians were always allowed to make patently ridiculous demands like they were winning the battles despite getting their rears handed to them. Regardless of the morality of the Right of Return, the facts on the ground suggest that the Palestinians aren't going to get it but despite this the Palestinians keep demanding it and expect it to be honored. You have several organizations that are still calling for the destruction of Israel and maybe even the expulsion of the Jews as the one true solution despite the fact that this is also patently ridiculous based on the facts of the ground.
A defeat would mean the Palestinians realize that they basically lost and can't make maximum and flatly out there demands.
On “From the United Nations: Israeli forces fire on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon”
The peace keepers really didn't do much from preventing Iran and Hezbollah from playing military adventurism against Israel. The entire purpose of the withdrawal was that Hezbollah would not fire at Israel if Israel withdrew. Israel did so. Hezbollah kept being Hezbollah. The Lebanese government and the United Nations did nothing. If the world thinks that Israel needs to accept a certain amount of terrorism and Jews a certain amount of anti-Semitism than they should say so.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
It can not be emphasized how pissed I am at the sheer dishonestly of Pro-Palestinian propaganda and how it removed all agency from the Palestinians and context from the Israel-Hams and Israel-Hezbollah Wars. Nothing happened on October 7, 2023 and Hezbollah wasn't firing rockets into north Israel that displaced 60,000 Israelis. It was just that "big bad Israel" got up and decided to invade Gaza and Lebanon and hurt those "poor brown people" for no reason.
The Palestinians have been using the same tactics and with the same revolts from before my parents were born. Despite a century of continued failure, they keep up the same ultra-rejectionism and demands for the complete destruction of Israel that never stops, too many people keep indulging and saving them. Maybe they should face complete defeat for once and have a deal forced down their throats because they have lost the war. Maybe that might restore some sense of reality.
On “From Freddie: The Basics: School Reform”
I am re-reading Ada Ferrer's Cuba: An American History. One of the things that she points out is that during the American occupation of Cuba after the Spanish-American War, 25% of the occupation budget was spent on education and that the Americans really did seem to believe that this was necessary for self-government. Maybe education being the magic bullet is just one of those things that is part of liberal democracy despite not being exactly true because of the mythology of liberal democracy.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
I am much less certain that things will play out with the PA being in control or the Palestinians doing anything to stop their crazies than you think. Lebanon did not do a great job combatting Hezbollah stupidity.
The online humanitarians are pissing me off. If people really cared about the Palestinians, they would at least notice that Palestinian strategy has been shooting themselves in the foot for the past 100 years. But it's all about "big bad Israel" and the Palestinians and other Muslims who can't quite stop fantasizing about the destruction of Israel despite that not happening.
"
It might be the size of Vermont but it also captures the world's religious imagination.
"
Israel unilaterally withdraws. The stateless Palestinians in the refugee camps remain stateless. Whoever controls the West Bank says they can't take them all in and Israel must take them. Rocket fires from the border cities into Greenline Israel and Israel invades. A unilateral withdrawal will not end the I/P conflict.
On “From Freddie: The Basics: School Reform”
I think your first paragraph assumes facts not in evidence.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
And the West in the highest political circles is going to want a formal peace deal to make sure that the occupation is really over rather than a unilateral Israel withdrawal with the border settlements and all of Jerusalem being kept.
"
I think this gets to the heart of things. A lot of the West is losing the stomach for Israel doing what it has to do to convince the Islamists to cool it. This includes the political and diplomatic class. I really think that many people want the following to happen:
1. Israel agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state with maximum generosity.
2. Israel deals with the dead enders and Islamists with grace and a stiff upper lip or in English, they just keep calm and carry on but never respond.
3. Things will eventually get better.
The problem is that 2 is a very big ask for any democratic government. Very few states are just going to tolerate terrorism or violent acts from another state for long. 2 also makes 1 very unlikely. A Palestinian state is probably going to be very reliant on the Iranian Clerical Regime for funding, so is unlikely to do anything about 2.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.