In 40 years or so* how would the Israeli's view it if the developed world said "You're an apartheid nation now, there's no longer any ambiguity. You need to issue citizenship and civil rights to the Palestinians that lie within the practical boundaries of Israel which, now, includes all the West Bank and you're getting the South Africa treatment if you don't.**"
In that scenario Isaelis would respond differently- the most cosmopolitan ones who'd also likely be the most liberal, the most wealthy and the most skilled would decamp for elsewhere. The right wingers and moderates would flip the world the bird. But that'd create a downward spiral for Israel in which it'd regress to the mean of its neighborhood.
This isn't an immediate peril, this is a long term one but it is very real.
*Or LESS! If the Palestinians pop out a Ghandi or Mandela level leader who manages to morally control their own people and capture their worlds imagination I could see this scenario coming about far sooner.
**And if world opinion gets REALLY bad they could also insist on Israel repatriating descendants of Palestinian refugees in the camps which would really fish the whole situation for the Israelis.
We're not talking -now- Koz, we're talking long term. Israel is quite secure -now- but if they don't sort out the Palestinian question the peril is in the future.
As for trade, that same argument applied to South Africa but when apartheid got odious enough it simply... didn't... apply. I'm not even talking about food or other essentials- Israel is a modern and very trade integral state. Even modest sanctions could cause a major exodus of their most high value add industries. Particularly if it's coming because Israel goes far right.
Israel is a profoundly trade dependent nation and is, accordingly, profoundly dependent on good will from its developed peer nations. The eroding of Israel’s position is not particularity ambiguous if you look at its trajectory for the past couple of decades.
-The Israeli right, while politically dominant due to the collapse of the Israeli left (which is strongly attributable to Palestinian decisions), has gotten increasingly authoritarian and problematic. They range in their answer to the West Bank question either with traditional soft voice allusions to slow motion ethnic cleansing or openly advocate for an apartheid or an active ethnic cleansing outcome.
-The pattern of public opinion in Israels’ peer nations is not, at all, promising. While Israel garners significant support and sympathy; that support is rooted in middle aged and older voters who mostly remember Israel either as a plucky vulnerable young nation surviving against all odds or as a mature Democracy seeking a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian question and being stymied by Palestinian refusals. Most younger voters have come to know Israel as the unambiguously dominant and unthreatened regional power with an iron boot on the West Bank which they are slowly, but not at all subtly, ethnically cleansing through settler violence. Their opinions of the state reflect that.
Sure, Israel’s position at the moment is secure but the fissures are evident and widening. The Israeli right has been provoking a series of near constitutional crises and offers no realistic moral suggestion as to how the Palestinian question will be resolved. Their perpetual and obvious stance is they will somehow acquire the West Bank lands for Israel without incorporating the people who live in them. It’s not a stable equilibrium in the long run. I’m, personally, a long standing fan of the Israeli’s but, looking at it objectively, I only see two likely outcomes unless the Israelis change course: either Israel ceases to be a liberal state and ethnically cleanses the Palestinians (I cannot guess if Israel could survive such an outcome) or they continue to hemorrhage support internationally until at some point in the future the international community forces Israel to accept a one state outcome much like what South Africa experienced (I cannot guess how that outcome would turn out either but I fear- not well).
Sure, but the left wing fringe and the Muslim nations opinions wouldn't matter a wit for the well being of Israel and everyone -else- would be generally ok or resigned to any Israeli retaliation. And, again, it bears noting that Israel's settlement activity -directly- contributed to the lethalness of the Simchat Torah massacre.
If Israel divests itself of the West Bank than the world will likely simply stop caring to Israel's great benefit. But as long as that occupation continues... tick tick tick goes the bomb.
Israel withdrew from Gaza, yes, but they A) kept it besieged and B) stayed in the West Bank and continued expropriating land there. Despite both of those things, though, the world basically yawned and shrugged at Israel's treatment of Gaza right up until the conflict this year which is, itself, a -direct- result of Israel's policy regarding the West Bank*.
Let’s be clear that Israel clearing out of the West Bank (realistically) wouldn’t be a negotiated arrangement but would simply be Israel withdrawing to sensible borders. They would, assuredly, keep Jerusalem and other large settlement blocks near the border and the world would likely let them so long as any Palestinians in those areas were, then, granted Israeli citizenship. The Israeli’s would get little credit for doing so, as they got little credit for pulling out of Gaza, but they would finally have closed the sucking chest wound that is the occupation of the West Bank.
And your misinterpretation of how the world treated the Gazan withdrawal seems colored by the identarian left. But it is what the larger world did that matters. The left never gave Israel credit for withdrawing from Gaza, but everyone else did. When Hamas turned Gaza into an armed camp the Palestinian Gazan cause was basically crippled.
I think it’s wildly overdetermined to assume that Hamas would take over the West Bank if Israel withdrew (the PA basically abandoned Gaza with the Israeli rights eager acquiescence. A Hamas attempt on the West Bank would mean the PA was fighting for their literal lives). If Hamas, or some movement like them, did take over the West Bank then their ability to actually threaten Israels’ survival would negligible. The Israeli’s defeated armies in their short national life- defeating a bunch of irregulars would be child’s play. The only thing the Israeli’s can’t defeat is their own short sightedness.
No, it is unambiguously the West Bank occupation that is the only serious danger to Israel’s survival long term:
-Every week the settlers are continuing their antics is another group of young people who form a negative impression of Israel and another group of pro Israeli elders who shuffle off this mortal coil.
-Every inch of ground the settlers expropriate makes the ultimate project of removing them that much harder.
-Every election where the settlements and settlers are a major force keeps pumping poison into the Israeli body politic.
At some point, somewhere in the future, the Israeli’s are going to have to choose what to do about the West Bank. If they keep putting that choice off then, in time, someone will choose for them. It’ll be either the illiberal Israeli right turning Israel into an actual apartheid state on one hand, or the Palestinians abandoning the two-state solution and forcing a Mandela one state resolution. And in a future world where Israel’s position in the hearts of the masses continues to slip there’s no end of additional trouble they could find themselves forced into**. The only way to avoid those outcomes is to either give up the land and the people that come with it or else accept the land and the people on it. Every other path leads to ruin and kicking the can down the road simply brings the day closer when the Israeli’s won’t be choosing what happens. Israel will always be a profoundly trade dependent state. She cannot survive without the good will of the developed world. Not forever.
*Not because Hamas used it as an excuse (they did but who cares) but because the Israeli's had their pants down because of the Israeli right's projects in the West Bank.
**Millions of descendants of the Palestinian refugees exist out there. An Israel that’s against the wall could be forced
It's odd you leave the Israeli's behavior in the West Bank out of this analysis, Lee, and avoid answering questions regarding it whenever it's brought up.
I feel and fear, but don't know, that in this world where fusion and self driving cars remain ten years away that actual AI is also going to fall into that same category.
Card on the table, I lean techno-optimist and I'm also a cynic so I am not profoundly worried about #3. I'm also, however, not a tech person professionally or by study so I also recognize that I mostly just don't know much about this stuff.
Looking at what this crew of people developed with ChatGPT, though, and now seeing that Microsoft functionally "acquired" them at a very cheap cost I'm quite confident in theorizing it's fantastic news for Microsoft. For the world? I just don't know.
Little to nothing that Israel has done in the West Bank since it fell into their hands has been particularly justifiable. Where I would disagree with you is your assertion that Israel is literally incapable of extricating itself from the West Bank. Sharon demonstrated in 2005 that Israel is capable of withdrawing from occupied territories (an act the Israeli right has frantically been trying to make impossible ever since) in a literal sense. Withdrawing from the territories is possible- it’d just be very difficult politically.
That the Israeli’s have made it very difficult for themselves to withdraw is not, however, any real defense of the occupation. If I steal a watch and you and the cops demand it back and I say “Well I’ve duct taped this watch to my arm with, like a hundred yards of tape and it’d take every hair and a lot of my surface skin off my arm to remove it and I don’t want to endure that pain!” you and the cops would be less than moved by my plight.
There really are only three outcomes in regards to Israel. Either the Israeli’s withdraw and the Palestinians get a state (the 2-state outcome); the Israeli’s remain and the Palestinians all become Israeli citizens (the 1 state outcome) or else Israel becomes an illiberal state either via active ethnic cleansing or some formal apartheid regime (I lump these together as a third option simple because both are illiberal, just to differing degrees).
Sure, the more activist left and Arabs in general have deeper and fundamental beefs with the literal founding of the state of Israel, no doubt. That being stipulated, Israel does not depend on the good will of either of those groups for its continued existence or prosperity. If Israel was out of the territories those complaints would remain extant but their salience to the great masses of voters in the developed world would be relatively marginal. There simply is zero material constituency capable of forcing Israel to undo 1948 or anything close to it and, absent the occupation of the West Bank, there's little realistic prospect of one arising in the foreseeable future.
With Israel in the West Bank, however, the trend lines are not ambiguous and they are not favorable to the Israeli project. If Israel stays in the West Bank the best case scenario is some kind of international movement arises that eventually forces it to adopt a liberal one state solution that would likely end Israel’s status as a Jewish state. The worst-case scenario is either endless violence or Israel mutating into some hideous illiberal Jewish fundamentalist state. A Jewish Tehran on the Levant so to speak.
Imagine you had a bomb belted to your chest, ticking away, that you had strapped there in the past for various somewhat defensible reasons that are now defunct.
Would it be rational for you to demand that specific people, who you know hate you and wish you ill, pay you to remove said bomb? Would it be rational for you to refuse to remove said bomb until the payment you demand is given to you by those people?
The occupation of the West Bank is a poison that is eating Israel alive both internally and internationally. The attack by Hamas originated in Gaza, agreed, but Israel was vulnerable to said attack because Bibi had refocused the IDF and intelligence services on defending the settlements in the West Bank.
If you interrogate left wing opponents of Israel the occupation of the territories remains just about the only subject where they have a substantive point that has any hope of appealing to a broader audience. Likewise when you ask any young person about why their opinion of the state of Israel is so poor the occupation of the West Bank is one of the first and best things they'll bring up.
Heck, the original sin of Hamas itself as an organization was propped up by the Israeli right as a means of dividing Palestinian leadership and, again, making it easier for Israel to hold onto the West Bank.
On every axis, in every category, when you drill down on the matter you find the occupation of the West Bank festering like an infected wound and either contributing to or causing almost every serious problem Israel faces today. Every long term threat Israel faces, domestically or internationally, has its roots in and draws its sustenance from the occupation of the West Bank.
And yet the Israelis say 'It'd be a lot of trouble to extricate ourselves from the West Bank so please give us something in exchange for us extricating ourselves so it's easier for us to do so."
And then they're "surprised" when their foes, who wish them ill, refuse to give them what they're asking for.
The Israeli position that their opponents need to pay the Israeli's, in concessions and promises, in order to get the Israeli's to stop destroying their own state remains one of the most baffling positions the Israeli's hold. The Israeli's opponents... well... oppose Israel. If giving Israel those concessions means Israel stops destroying itself then the decision makes itself.
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/20/2023”
In 40 years or so* how would the Israeli's view it if the developed world said "You're an apartheid nation now, there's no longer any ambiguity. You need to issue citizenship and civil rights to the Palestinians that lie within the practical boundaries of Israel which, now, includes all the West Bank and you're getting the South Africa treatment if you don't.**"
In that scenario Isaelis would respond differently- the most cosmopolitan ones who'd also likely be the most liberal, the most wealthy and the most skilled would decamp for elsewhere. The right wingers and moderates would flip the world the bird. But that'd create a downward spiral for Israel in which it'd regress to the mean of its neighborhood.
This isn't an immediate peril, this is a long term one but it is very real.
*Or LESS! If the Palestinians pop out a Ghandi or Mandela level leader who manages to morally control their own people and capture their worlds imagination I could see this scenario coming about far sooner.
**And if world opinion gets REALLY bad they could also insist on Israel repatriating descendants of Palestinian refugees in the camps which would really fish the whole situation for the Israelis.
"
We're not talking -now- Koz, we're talking long term. Israel is quite secure -now- but if they don't sort out the Palestinian question the peril is in the future.
As for trade, that same argument applied to South Africa but when apartheid got odious enough it simply... didn't... apply. I'm not even talking about food or other essentials- Israel is a modern and very trade integral state. Even modest sanctions could cause a major exodus of their most high value add industries. Particularly if it's coming because Israel goes far right.
"
Israel is a profoundly trade dependent nation and is, accordingly, profoundly dependent on good will from its developed peer nations. The eroding of Israel’s position is not particularity ambiguous if you look at its trajectory for the past couple of decades.
-The Israeli right, while politically dominant due to the collapse of the Israeli left (which is strongly attributable to Palestinian decisions), has gotten increasingly authoritarian and problematic. They range in their answer to the West Bank question either with traditional soft voice allusions to slow motion ethnic cleansing or openly advocate for an apartheid or an active ethnic cleansing outcome.
-The pattern of public opinion in Israels’ peer nations is not, at all, promising. While Israel garners significant support and sympathy; that support is rooted in middle aged and older voters who mostly remember Israel either as a plucky vulnerable young nation surviving against all odds or as a mature Democracy seeking a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian question and being stymied by Palestinian refusals. Most younger voters have come to know Israel as the unambiguously dominant and unthreatened regional power with an iron boot on the West Bank which they are slowly, but not at all subtly, ethnically cleansing through settler violence. Their opinions of the state reflect that.
Sure, Israel’s position at the moment is secure but the fissures are evident and widening. The Israeli right has been provoking a series of near constitutional crises and offers no realistic moral suggestion as to how the Palestinian question will be resolved. Their perpetual and obvious stance is they will somehow acquire the West Bank lands for Israel without incorporating the people who live in them. It’s not a stable equilibrium in the long run. I’m, personally, a long standing fan of the Israeli’s but, looking at it objectively, I only see two likely outcomes unless the Israelis change course: either Israel ceases to be a liberal state and ethnically cleanses the Palestinians (I cannot guess if Israel could survive such an outcome) or they continue to hemorrhage support internationally until at some point in the future the international community forces Israel to accept a one state outcome much like what South Africa experienced (I cannot guess how that outcome would turn out either but I fear- not well).
"
Sure, but the left wing fringe and the Muslim nations opinions wouldn't matter a wit for the well being of Israel and everyone -else- would be generally ok or resigned to any Israeli retaliation. And, again, it bears noting that Israel's settlement activity -directly- contributed to the lethalness of the Simchat Torah massacre.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Thanksgiving Open Thread”
Happy Turkey day, hope you had a fantastic one!
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/20/2023”
If Israel divests itself of the West Bank than the world will likely simply stop caring to Israel's great benefit. But as long as that occupation continues... tick tick tick goes the bomb.
"
Israel withdrew from Gaza, yes, but they A) kept it besieged and B) stayed in the West Bank and continued expropriating land there. Despite both of those things, though, the world basically yawned and shrugged at Israel's treatment of Gaza right up until the conflict this year which is, itself, a -direct- result of Israel's policy regarding the West Bank*.
Let’s be clear that Israel clearing out of the West Bank (realistically) wouldn’t be a negotiated arrangement but would simply be Israel withdrawing to sensible borders. They would, assuredly, keep Jerusalem and other large settlement blocks near the border and the world would likely let them so long as any Palestinians in those areas were, then, granted Israeli citizenship. The Israeli’s would get little credit for doing so, as they got little credit for pulling out of Gaza, but they would finally have closed the sucking chest wound that is the occupation of the West Bank.
And your misinterpretation of how the world treated the Gazan withdrawal seems colored by the identarian left. But it is what the larger world did that matters. The left never gave Israel credit for withdrawing from Gaza, but everyone else did. When Hamas turned Gaza into an armed camp the Palestinian Gazan cause was basically crippled.
I think it’s wildly overdetermined to assume that Hamas would take over the West Bank if Israel withdrew (the PA basically abandoned Gaza with the Israeli rights eager acquiescence. A Hamas attempt on the West Bank would mean the PA was fighting for their literal lives). If Hamas, or some movement like them, did take over the West Bank then their ability to actually threaten Israels’ survival would negligible. The Israeli’s defeated armies in their short national life- defeating a bunch of irregulars would be child’s play. The only thing the Israeli’s can’t defeat is their own short sightedness.
No, it is unambiguously the West Bank occupation that is the only serious danger to Israel’s survival long term:
-Every week the settlers are continuing their antics is another group of young people who form a negative impression of Israel and another group of pro Israeli elders who shuffle off this mortal coil.
-Every inch of ground the settlers expropriate makes the ultimate project of removing them that much harder.
-Every election where the settlements and settlers are a major force keeps pumping poison into the Israeli body politic.
At some point, somewhere in the future, the Israeli’s are going to have to choose what to do about the West Bank. If they keep putting that choice off then, in time, someone will choose for them. It’ll be either the illiberal Israeli right turning Israel into an actual apartheid state on one hand, or the Palestinians abandoning the two-state solution and forcing a Mandela one state resolution. And in a future world where Israel’s position in the hearts of the masses continues to slip there’s no end of additional trouble they could find themselves forced into**. The only way to avoid those outcomes is to either give up the land and the people that come with it or else accept the land and the people on it. Every other path leads to ruin and kicking the can down the road simply brings the day closer when the Israeli’s won’t be choosing what happens. Israel will always be a profoundly trade dependent state. She cannot survive without the good will of the developed world. Not forever.
*Not because Hamas used it as an excuse (they did but who cares) but because the Israeli's had their pants down because of the Israeli right's projects in the West Bank.
**Millions of descendants of the Palestinian refugees exist out there. An Israel that’s against the wall could be forced
"
It's odd you leave the Israeli's behavior in the West Bank out of this analysis, Lee, and avoid answering questions regarding it whenever it's brought up.
"
I sure as heck am not!
"
Yeah you have put it in far more clear technical language than I ever could but I think our sentiments are the same.
"
I mean, it IS Argentina.
"
I feel and fear, but don't know, that in this world where fusion and self driving cars remain ten years away that actual AI is also going to fall into that same category.
"
I remain pretty skeptical that OpenAI has actually gotten close to making an intelligence, let alone a super one.
"
Card on the table, I lean techno-optimist and I'm also a cynic so I am not profoundly worried about #3. I'm also, however, not a tech person professionally or by study so I also recognize that I mostly just don't know much about this stuff.
Looking at what this crew of people developed with ChatGPT, though, and now seeing that Microsoft functionally "acquired" them at a very cheap cost I'm quite confident in theorizing it's fantastic news for Microsoft. For the world? I just don't know.
"
Yeah the flop sweat is just dripping off that tweet.
"
I stand by my comment.
"
Yeah only thing I could say with any confidence is it's fabulous news for Microsoft.
On “Support for Israel is Strong, But….”
Yes, the active settlement activity in the West Bank is a very slow motion ethnic cleansing operation and there's really no way to defend it.
"
Little to nothing that Israel has done in the West Bank since it fell into their hands has been particularly justifiable. Where I would disagree with you is your assertion that Israel is literally incapable of extricating itself from the West Bank. Sharon demonstrated in 2005 that Israel is capable of withdrawing from occupied territories (an act the Israeli right has frantically been trying to make impossible ever since) in a literal sense. Withdrawing from the territories is possible- it’d just be very difficult politically.
That the Israeli’s have made it very difficult for themselves to withdraw is not, however, any real defense of the occupation. If I steal a watch and you and the cops demand it back and I say “Well I’ve duct taped this watch to my arm with, like a hundred yards of tape and it’d take every hair and a lot of my surface skin off my arm to remove it and I don’t want to endure that pain!” you and the cops would be less than moved by my plight.
There really are only three outcomes in regards to Israel. Either the Israeli’s withdraw and the Palestinians get a state (the 2-state outcome); the Israeli’s remain and the Palestinians all become Israeli citizens (the 1 state outcome) or else Israel becomes an illiberal state either via active ethnic cleansing or some formal apartheid regime (I lump these together as a third option simple because both are illiberal, just to differing degrees).
"
Sure, the more activist left and Arabs in general have deeper and fundamental beefs with the literal founding of the state of Israel, no doubt. That being stipulated, Israel does not depend on the good will of either of those groups for its continued existence or prosperity. If Israel was out of the territories those complaints would remain extant but their salience to the great masses of voters in the developed world would be relatively marginal. There simply is zero material constituency capable of forcing Israel to undo 1948 or anything close to it and, absent the occupation of the West Bank, there's little realistic prospect of one arising in the foreseeable future.
With Israel in the West Bank, however, the trend lines are not ambiguous and they are not favorable to the Israeli project. If Israel stays in the West Bank the best case scenario is some kind of international movement arises that eventually forces it to adopt a liberal one state solution that would likely end Israel’s status as a Jewish state. The worst-case scenario is either endless violence or Israel mutating into some hideous illiberal Jewish fundamentalist state. A Jewish Tehran on the Levant so to speak.
"
I would answer with a simple question Lee.
Imagine you had a bomb belted to your chest, ticking away, that you had strapped there in the past for various somewhat defensible reasons that are now defunct.
Would it be rational for you to demand that specific people, who you know hate you and wish you ill, pay you to remove said bomb? Would it be rational for you to refuse to remove said bomb until the payment you demand is given to you by those people?
"
The occupation of the West Bank is a poison that is eating Israel alive both internally and internationally. The attack by Hamas originated in Gaza, agreed, but Israel was vulnerable to said attack because Bibi had refocused the IDF and intelligence services on defending the settlements in the West Bank.
If you interrogate left wing opponents of Israel the occupation of the territories remains just about the only subject where they have a substantive point that has any hope of appealing to a broader audience. Likewise when you ask any young person about why their opinion of the state of Israel is so poor the occupation of the West Bank is one of the first and best things they'll bring up.
Heck, the original sin of Hamas itself as an organization was propped up by the Israeli right as a means of dividing Palestinian leadership and, again, making it easier for Israel to hold onto the West Bank.
On every axis, in every category, when you drill down on the matter you find the occupation of the West Bank festering like an infected wound and either contributing to or causing almost every serious problem Israel faces today. Every long term threat Israel faces, domestically or internationally, has its roots in and draws its sustenance from the occupation of the West Bank.
And yet the Israelis say 'It'd be a lot of trouble to extricate ourselves from the West Bank so please give us something in exchange for us extricating ourselves so it's easier for us to do so."
And then they're "surprised" when their foes, who wish them ill, refuse to give them what they're asking for.
"
The Israeli position that their opponents need to pay the Israeli's, in concessions and promises, in order to get the Israeli's to stop destroying their own state remains one of the most baffling positions the Israeli's hold. The Israeli's opponents... well... oppose Israel. If giving Israel those concessions means Israel stops destroying itself then the decision makes itself.
On “Was the Government Shutdown Crisis Averted?”
Hah! I think of it more of a having my cake and eating it too scenario. Virtually a cheat code.
"
Fascinating. Thank you Michael.