"liberals are going to want to give Israel a "democracy bonus," is the current American level of aid to Israel really justifiable?"

I really don't think that the level of aid in terms of cash dollars is the question here. After all the US government wastes money all the time. The point is that Israel is being supported by the US to make policies such as colonising and ethnic cleansing the Palestinian arabs which are a) morally disreputable (hence the resort to euphemism, distraction, what-about-chechnya-ism) and b) make millions of arabs/muslims hate us. I'd be happy to give them twice as much money if it would stop Israel's colonisation and ethnic cleansing (and plans for expelling the Israeli arabs from Israel to solve the 'demographic problem'). Of course, it would be cheaper to make the level of aid contingent on Israel removing all settlements established in 1967. But the point is Israel's behaviour, not its regime type, or its dollar cost of the US budget.

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

Hey I am a liberal dammnit. And if liberals can be hawks, they can be realists too!  Hells bells you think we're ALL "wooly headed"???

As for the simplistic causation question - yes it's a polemic. I also enjoyed Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Exexutioners, and would have reminded him of that in comment on his recent screed on the Israel Lobby but thanks be to Allah, my subscription to the The New Likud Republic finally expired!

I think what Otto is referring to is Avigdor Lieberman's proposal to carve out the Arab population centers from Israel and give them to the Palestinians in return for other West Bank land concessions. This would be done irrespective of the Arab Israeli citizens wishes.

I thought that our level of aid to Israel was a direct result of Jimmy Carter's promises. Does anyone know if those promises were written in the text of the Camp David Accords? Or are they just oral promises made by Carter?

In any event, regardless of the current American level of aid to Israel is "really justifiable", it was promised to Israel. (Ditto for our aid to Egypt, BTW.) So the question is whether we should renege on our promise.

Lieberman's plan doesn't call for ethnic cleansing in any way. It calls for resetting Israel's borders to not include areas with high Arab populations. Those areas would then become part of a Palestinian state. Since nobody would be forced from their homes, it's absurd to call such a move ethnic cleansing.

Regardless of the morality of such a move, it's kind of pointless to debate it exhaustively because it will never happen. According to current international law, there is no mechanism for revoking a group of people's citizenship en masse and against their will. Thus Israel could withdraw from the Arab population centers behind the green line, redraw its borders and still have those Arabs as citizens, although now they would be expatriate citizens. Since the whole point of the plan is to reduce the number of Arab voters--and even after such a withdrawal those folks would still be Arab voters--it doesn't make sense.

Israel could of course simply unilaterally revoke the expats' citizenship, but nobody would recognize it. Putting into action Lieberman's plan would change nothing in regards to the world's acceptance of a Jewish state. The whole thing is a non-starter.

"Since nobody would be forced from their homes, it's absurd to call such a move ethnic cleansing."

They would be being removed from a political jurisdiction because of their ethnicity against their will. It's absurd not to call such a move ethnic cleansing.

"Israel could of course simply unilaterally revoke the expats' citizenship, but nobody would recognize it. Putting into action Lieberman's plan would change nothing in regards to the world's acceptance of a Jewish state."

Of course it would change nothing in the world's acceptance of Israeli. But it would make Israeli more jewish and less arab, and there are lots of Israeli jews who want just that.

Of course Israel is a state where Israeli arabs are systematically discriminated against because they are not jews. That doesn't mean that the Israeli arabs would prefer to be living in a bantustan where all the important decisions were still made by Israel but they even lacked the modest political and legal protections they get inside Israeli.

I think you are - or should be - aware that the desire to reduce the number of arabs in Israeli is widespread across the jewish political spectrum in Israel.

Your question restated: If Israeli Arabs are so horribly mistreated, why would it be so horrible to ethnically cleanse them from Israel?

Of course, if you are syympathetic to ethnic cleansing, you may be endlessly inventive in finding reasons for it.

at the risk of imperiling everyone's careers I'd like to see if anyone else here at this fine café can be persuaded to wade a bit deeper.

This substantiates that Jews have immense power in this country and if you fuck around with them they'll bury your ass. This is why Congress is quiet about the whole thing; this is why Matt's dancing salsa on the issue leaving others to debate the essence of the essay; this is why writers have to tell us "Don't be afraid to debate Israel policy" etc. Shit -- you guys are so afraid of the Jews that you prefer to get on this shit with a fake name. Why are so many people afraid? Let's have a debate on that. It's really freakin' sad.

"I think you are - or should be - aware that the desire to reduce the number of arabs in Israeli is widespread across the jewish political spectrum in Israel."

Otto--do you say this because you live in Israel or because you've reviewed extensive polling data? If the latter, can you provide the opinion polls on which you're basing this statement?

Or, alternatively, are you completely full of $#$*?

Also, what's a Bantustan?

The vast bulk of U.S. aid to Israel was a quid pro quo for Israel withdrawing from Sinai and signing the Camp David accords. There were no written promises guaranteeing the loans. But it was clear that the massive amounts of aid going to both Israel and Egypt were in return for the peace treaty.

One thing is clear about America's financial gifts to Israel: it doesn't need it. U.S. grants to Israel now account for less than 1% of GDP--their elimination would be a minor irritant to a thriving economy.

More than half of the money goes directly to the IDF and would thus have a major impact on its budget. But much of it is earmarked for purchases of U.S. weaponry (such as F-15 fighter jets and Apache helicopters) which don't provide Israel with much of a bang-for-buck to begin with.

So if Israel does't really need the money and America has much better things to do with the money, why does it continue to flow? The primary reason has to do with the superior influence of the defense industry (which in the end gets most of the money back through weapons purchases). A secondary reason has to do with plain old provincial politics. Jewish voters put Israel very high on their list of priorities. Thus the tiny portion of senators and congressmen who represent areas with large Jewish populations satisfy that constituency by aiming a tiny portion of the federal spigot Israel's way (the two most ardent supporters in the 1990's of federal aid to Israel were Curt Weldon and Jane Harman, both of whom represented areas with large Jewish populations (LA and suburban Philly).

If the debate about money to Israel is really about reality, the question we should be asking is this: What are we getting in return? And the answer is very little. The Camp David peace treaty is a done deal. The Oslo process has completely broken down. Likewise, our money for Egypt has only reinforced a dictatorship that probably poses a greater strategic threat to the U.S. than any other Arab country than Saudi Arabia.

And in the case of Israel, we have very little influence over decision making in that country. Israeli governments have historically based their policy on only one thing--existential security. American money doesn't help them with that. But America's allegiance does. Thus when Israel pulled back from Gaza, it did so more out of an interest in keeping a political alliance with America than to ensure that the dollars flow from Washington.

A smarter policy would be to eliminate the Camp David flow of funds to both Israel and Egypt and replace them with a much more valuable carott: allowing Egyptian and Israeli firms to bid openly with American firms for U.S. defense purchases. ALthough Israel does sell some materiel to the U.S., it does so only when it can massively underbid U.S. suppliers, thanks to regulations that give better bidding terms to U.S. firms. By allowing Israeli and Egyptian firms to freely bid on U.S. defense contracts, they could save the U.S. government money from their cheaper products while providing a real tool of leverage that U.S. governments can use to influence policy in the region. Just an idea.

One more thought: until Hamas installed its new government, no nation enjoyed more per capita largesse from the U.S. government than the Palestinian Authority. We gave them close to half a billion dollars in direct U.S. government aid--all of which paid for civil servants salaries directly. And we got absolutely nothing in return. Likewise Europe, which gives nothing to Israel, gave the PA close to $400 million a year. Now that we've cut off that flow in its entirety, we are in exactly the same position as we were before--the Palestinian public views the U.S. government as pawns of an international Jewish cabal. U.S. aid to the PA for the last ten years did nothing but feed extremism and corruption. The most important lesson that we should learn from all this isn't that evil Jews control our government, but that money doesn't buy friends or influence politics in the middle east. Stop making the mistake of giving everyone money so they'll be nice to each other. Send it to New Orleans instead.

I want to question the premise: is it really correct to call Israel a democracy? This state declared itself ethnocentric 'Jewish state', enacted ethnocentric 'repatriation' laws and used them to import most of its population.

Vast majority of the people who immigrated to Israel consider themselves members this ethnic group - and that's OK, that's fine, not a problem at all - but they are also to a significant degree a group people of who find ethnocentric view of the world attractive, who subscribe to it.

IOW, this is a group of people selected by ideology. Not all of them, of course, but to a large extent. And then they vote.

Is this really a democracy? It's basically a case of crude gerrymandering on international scale, isn't it?

That said, I've read Lieberman's proposal described as "voluntary transfer" - that implies the people will be moved to the West Bank. That sounds like ethnic cleansing to me.

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

BantustanFrom Wikipedia,

Bantustan refers to any of the territories designated as tribal "homelands" for black South Africans and Namibians during the apartheid era. The term "bantustan" was first used in the late 1940s and was coined from Bantu (meaning "people" in the Bantu languages) and -stan (meaning "land of" in the Persian language, equivalent to the Latin ending -ia and the Germanic -land). It was a disparaging term used by critics of the apartheid-era government's "homelands" (from Afrikaans tuisland).

The word "bantustan" is often used in a pejorative sense when describing a country or region that lacks any real legitimacy or power, and that sometimes emerges from national or international gerrymandering. It has been used particularly by opponents of Israeli policies towards the Palestinian populations of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, in particular concerning the "Apartheid Wall".

There are about 1 million non-Jews who vote in Israel in a population of about 7 million. There is not much support for resettling anyone among Israelis. If Olmert follows up with his plan to settle the borders by 2010 there should be very little need to resettle people.

Why is it that the Arabs of Israel have more rights than the Arabs of most Arab countries?

Daniel A. Greenbaum

My subscription to TNR had been expired for months, but they didn't block me form access until I lit into Martin Peretz for his shameless slandering of Mearshimer and Walt.

Peretz also consistently failed to mention that he is part of a Zionist lobbying group that was mentioned in passing in the M/W paper.

I'd post here, but I'd probably get banned again.

Apparently Ivo Daalder doesn't like being called a moron and an idiot. Well, I suppose he's right - it was impolite.

It's just that I'm used to posting at Huffpo, where the discussions are, shall we say, a bit rougher than here - not to mention Slashdot where flame wars are a way of life.

I could have been told to keep it clean and offered a way back in, but apparently criticizing the site's favored pundits has put me beyond the pale.

Oh, well, Arnold Evans argues fairly well. I'll let him take up my slack.

There are about 20 million unionized workers in the US. If you add family members, that's a population of at least 50 million people. According to this, the Labor PAC contributed $21.4 million to congressional candidates in the 2003-2004 election cycle.

There are less than 7 million people in Israel altogether. According to this, the Pro-Israel PAC contributed $39.8 million in the 2003-2004 election cycle.

That's - what? - about 14 times more per head?

And what's the "gay lobby"?

Mr. Transhuman, you will be missed if you stop posting here.

Do you have a Daily Kos page? Register there and a week from now you can post one diary a day.

I'd also recommend that you start a thread in the cafe management section and post under this handle until it is resolved.

If it really is resolved against you, then there are other places to post where you will have as many or more readers as here.