Hezbollah’s sole goal is the destruction of the State of Israel and the eradication of its people. And Hezbollah does not deny it.

Hezbollah has many goals. It is a Khomeinist organization that seeks to establish and Islamic republic in Lebanon. It has an elaborate political platform, most of which is focussed on Lebanon, and it participates in the Lebanese government.

The destruction of the State of Israel remains one of its goals. But it is a strange bit of hyperbole to describe that as its sole goal.

Not so strange. Since I'm only discussing Israel, I refer to its sole goal which relates to Israel.

Note: "Not to say that there aren’t plenty of anti-Semites and Arab bashers out there – and there is no reason not to label them as such."

I see no problem labelling anti-Semites as such or consigning them to Aryan nation.

Do you think that's precious? Thanks.

I'll let go of the strawmen (No doubt M.J.'s clumsy way of making amends for calling everyone he disagreed with a Jew killer in his previous post.)

There's actually lots in this post that I agree with. Point 1 is that what's happening now is a tragedy for all sides. Point 2 is that without a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, you can kiss any chance of peace in the region a big, fat good-bye.

What's striking though is how much M.J. simply doesn't "get" Hezbollah. And to "get it" doesn't mean to make excuses for it. Everything he says about the horror of terrorism and the twisted ideology is spot on. But trying to dismiss Hezb as a bunch of ideological nut jobs is making a huge mistake. One that plays into Hezbollah's hands.

First, virtually everyone in the Arab world views Hezbollah as a legitimate resistance movement. They fought against Israeli occupation for 20 years. They won. If there had been a peace treaty, Israel would have had to pay reparations. No such treaty was ever signed and Israel held on to Chebaa, against Hezb's will.
So, from Hezb's point of view, the war still goes on.

I have to run, so I'll make 2 quick points.

M.J. makes two strategic mistakes:

1. He says: "Israel doesn't fight just ... but also a malignant ideology that reduces women to servitude, encourages the “honor killings” of rape victims."

Nonsense! First, that's none of Israel's business. Second, Turkey is best friends with Israel and... "honor killings" are common in Turkey, too. I don't see Israel doing much about that.

2. "I hope Israel wins its war with Hezbollah"

Don't we all? Seriously, that comment demonstrates a worrisome lack of understanding about the region. Hezbollah is native to South Lebanon: it ain't going nowhere. It provides all services, schools, hospitals, etc.

This talks reminds me of the same naivete one used to hear about Iraq: Failure is not an option. yeah, yeah.

Israel will have to sign a peace treaty with Lebanon that includes the interests of Hezbollah.
And the pledge "to destroy" Israel is a red herring. After all, remember the PLO: they, too, pledged to destroy Israel, and that changed and Rabin/Arafat shook hands, etc. No reason to think Hezbollah can't follow the same path.

At any rate, any talk of "destroying Hezbollah" is not worth the paper it's written on.

When you choose to attack another country, even when the attack is wholly justified and has clear goals, one of the things you must do is consider how the military tactics you apply will work to achieve those goals. While I have heard no small number of politicians describe how Hezbollah would be destroyed through what is primarily an air campaign, even those expressions have now been modified to weakening Hezbollah. From the perspective of having destroyed some (or even much) of its infrastructure and arsenal, and having killed many of its fighters, at least in the short-term it is fair to say that Hezbollah has been weakened. But if you mean in terms of popular support and its ability to re-arm once the conflict has ended, Hezbollah may in fact have been strengthened by what has happened to date.

To the extent that it is possible to destroy Hezbollah, or diminish the long-term threat it poses to Israel, a significant, sustained ground offensive will be required. This is the position taken by a number of Israeli generals, as well as the position dictated by the history of this type of conflict. The benefit of an air campaign is that you can cause widespread devastation without putting your soldiers at risk. But if a politician promises that an insurgency or guerrilla force can be eliminated through an air campaign, the politician is either uninformed or is being deceptive. When has that ever happened?

There are also serious questions as to how any force, Israeli, international, or otherwise, could actually take control of the areas historically held by Hezbollah without getting involved in a protracted war similar to (or worse than) the U.S. battle against the so-called insurgency in Iraq. How do you put Hezbollah into a box if nobody is willing to put troops on the ground and engage in what will quite likely be a protracted ground war involving significant casualties, or for that matter without becoming a de facto occupying force instead of a peacekeeping force? It’s great to speak of disarming or dismantling Hezbollah, but we can’t do it from the air and nobody seems to be willing to do it from the ground.

Would it be helpful for Israel to resolve its border claims with its neighbors, assuming it would negotiate (or even dictate) reasonable terms. Despite your statements, Hezbollah does assert that Israel occupies Lebanese territory, specifically the Shebaa Farms. The UN and pretty much the rest of the world believes the Shebaa farms to be Syrian territory. If Israel were to declare which portions of the Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms would be returned if it achieved a peace agreement with Syria, it would be more difficult for a group like Hezbollah to argue, pretextually or genuinely, that ending Israel’s occupation was among its sincere goals - as its tactics would be overtly hindering the return of the occupied lands.

I think the history of Israel’s conflicts and failed peace negotiations evidence that border issues cannot be left to the end of the negotiation process - they need to come first. Such a proposal by Israel would also help diminish and perhaps even end the perception that Israel cares more about keeping significant portions of the lands it occupies than in negotiating an end to its conflicts with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians.

I think that your argument lends credence to an observation made many years ago by, I believe, Moshe Arens. He noted that Israel complained about the tactics utilized by the Palestinians, but had created a history where it would ignore the conflict during periods of calm then make concessions only when confronted with violence. When did Hezbollah score its most recent appreciable "victory" against Israel? In 2004 when it negotiated a prisoner exchange with Ariel Sharon. Many warned then, probably including Moshe Arens, that this would set Israel up for exactly what occurred - Hezbollah's grabbing Israeli hostages to use as bargaining chips.

Okay.

I do not believe Israel can be expected to stop fighting until the Hezbollah threat is, at the very least, controlled. (mjrosenberg)

Israel will never control Hezbollah by fighting. By fighting, Israel will just get more fighting.

To make the rockets into Haifa stop and get its captured soldiers back, Israel needs an agreement with Hezbollah. Israel has arranged cease-fires and swapped prisoners with Hezbollah before and can do it again.

I hope Israel wins its war with Hezbollah.

You know what, I hope the US wins its war against "Iraqi insurgents." Thing is: chances of that are as fat as the chances of Israel winning "its war with Hezbollah." AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN. Hope in one hand, shit in the other. See which one fills up first.

Even if the Palestinian question were settled, the manner in which Israel continues to attack Lebanon and Hezbollah will only serve to generate more popular support for Hezbollah (and their ilk) throughout the Middle East. Just as the actions of the US in Iraq create insurgents and terrorists faster than it can eliminate them, so too will Israel's actions make dismantling Hezbollah an ever increasing impossibility.

I read the following mindbending piece in Haaretz today, buried in an op-ed by Doron Rosenblum:

Future researchers may hunt and comb to dig up all the historiosophic and political reasons for the outbreak of the current war with Hezbollah, but at least they will have no trouble finding the trigger. This war, with all its hundreds of casualties and tremendous damage, broke out not because of the abduction of the soldiers, but because of a speech: Hassan Nasrallah's short, bragging speech in which he provoked Israel's new leaders.

Was it a clever trap laid by the wily fox, or perhaps one uncalculated moment of catastrophic hubris when, with that defiant smile, the Hezbollah leader told his listeners that Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz and Dan Halutz are inexperienced and "small" as compared with Ariel Sharon? And, as though to add fuel to the fire, he emphasized the "small" with his fingers.

It's possible that the war would at least have been postponed if the prime minister or the defense minister had been a woman, or if Hezbollah had made do only with the incident in which soldiers were killed and abducted, without the provocative speech. But with that speech, and with this kind of cast on our side - bad-tempered Olmert, egocentric Peretz, arrogant Halutz - Nasrallah had a better chance of emerging unscathed if he stood barefoot in a puddle and stuck a nail into an electric outlet. Is there a trigger that can light a fuse and generate testosterone more surely than that mocking smile and small gesture of the fingers? Whose blood wouldn't rush to his head? Who wouldn't be ready to get up and head-butt the man instantly, Zinadine-like?

So the war, whatever its price, was unavoidable. Let us therefore not be surprised that it has no well-defined "strategic goals." It burst out reflexively, like a blow delivered below the belt.

Lemme get this right. Nasrallah implied or suggested that Olmert had a small dick? I mean, did he? Did he?

Is this all you need to start a war these days? For real?

This creates an impossible situation for Israel, though. Especially given its and its people's history. What you seem to be suggesting is that Israel should simply tolerate at a minimum low-level rocket attacks for the indefinite future. I think everyone agrees that striking back further embitters people. But is it really tenable not to react?

It seems entirely reasonable to me that Israel doesn't want temporary cease fires which allow Hizbullah to resume attacks the next time they want to. The alternative has real downsides as well, as you rightly point out. But Israel just isn't in a position to have daily life in the northern portion of the country at the sufferance of Hizbullah. It is a situation no other country would tolerate.

Did you see Warren Christophers Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post? He calls for a cease fire. He gives as background the times that He worked out a cease fire after Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel in 1993 and again in 1996.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I can't recall where I found it, but I read earlier this weak about some results of a UN report on border violation incidents on the Israel/Lebanon border over the past several years. According to the report, there were significantly more incidents of border violation by the Israeli side than the Lebanese/Hizbollah side.

I don't recall the time frame, and don't have the data here. And I assume that many of those violations have to do with the Shebaa farms issue.

While I'm not particularly concerned, in a direct way, with what Israel wants or what Hizbollah wants, the international community has an interest in secure borders, and in preventing incidents that can lead to the sort of escalation we have seen recently. So I am in favor of some sort of stepped up international presence at the border. However, if it is true that the provocations come from both sides, I don't see why the "neutral zone" should all lie on the Lebanese side.

There are enough answers here to both M;J Rosenbers's post and J. Marshall's comment.
So why were their descriptions of the situation so simplistic?

"This creates an impossible situation for Israel, though. Especially given its and its people's history."

The doctrine of exceptionalism.

I'd like Mr Rosenberg to tell me why I have a right to return to a place I've never been, and why the Palestinians do not. I am not denying the fact that the people of Israel are there and are not going to leave; I am asking him to defend the sense of moral -and intellectual- superiority that justifies the locking out of people from their homes. I would like to hear someone who is not a supporter of Kach or Kahane Chai tell me, not why a bi-national state is impossible (it isn't) but why it is undesirable.

Give me the liberal moral defense of a modern state built upon racial lines.
thank you.

That's some serious teeth-gnashing.

The first camp supports the Israeli incursion to the hilt. It supports not only the Israeli incursion into Lebanon but any and all Israeli attacks on Arabs. These are the people who opposed the Oslo process, believe that Israel’s peace with Egypt is next to worthless, and railed against the Gaza withdrawal.

This is a strawman argument.  It's important to note that not all people who "support the Israeli incursion to the hilt" were hard-core Likudniks who opposed Oslo and railed against the Gaza withdrawal.  As an example, I cite myself.  I supported both the Oslo process and the Gaza withdrawal.  But I also support Israel's actions in Lebanon "to the hilt" in part because Israel's experiences since the Oslo process have convinced me that true peace with the Arabs is, if not a total fantasy, at least a very distant possibility. 

But my support is also based on a changed view of the conflict.  As long as the conflict was with the Palestinians, who do not by themselves pose an existential threat to Israel, one could argue that it made sense to test the limits of how far Israeli concessions could go to foster peace.  At the very least, it made sense to withdraw from places like Gaza that hold no strategic value for Israel.  But now the conflict is with a genocidal Islamist group that cannot be appeased.  They represent the Islamization of the conflict and they must be destroyed or at least seriously degraded.  Iran cannot be allowed to play a role in stirring up trouble on Israel's border.

What's remarkable is that MJ Rosenberg seems to get this, yet still is able to say the following:

The only real connection between the Palestinian issue and Hezbollah is that the Hezbollah situation makes it all the more critical that Israel cut a deal with the Palestinians.

Contrary to the mantra of the Jewish right, the Hezbollah situation does not weaken the case for negotiations with Palestinians, it strengthens it.

Here we go completely off the rails.  How does Israel negotiate with a government that is sponsoring (or at least refusing to crack down on) launching missiles at Israeli cities? OK, you say, so negotiate with Abbas.  But hasn't it been shown by now that Abbas has no power to enforce anything? He is, in many ways, just like the beleaguered Lebanese prime minister, helpless to confront the armed gangsters who hold all the cards.

The formula of land for peace has been rendered inoperative by events.  There is no chance that if Israel were to sign an agreement, that the Palestinians could enforce it.  So what's the point?  I think theoretically land for peace makes sense.  But land for way is a non-starter.  Yet there seems to persist this notion that the Palestinian situation must be resolved and it's up to Israel and the US to take action to resolve it.  How? With whom?  How can anyone seriously think that even if the Palestinians were given everything they have been asking for, they would agree to a true peace. 

People always cite various polls that show majorities of Palestinians favoring a two-state solution.  But that is totally irrelevant if they are unable to control the radical elements in their midst.  Israel cannot be expected to make concessions based on nothing but empty promises by a corrupt, incompetent authority that has no power over and no willingness to confront the vicious killers in their midst.

Interesting question -- slightly off topic though.
(Walzer has tried to answer it: by comparing Israel to... Norway and its need for an identity separate from Sweden. I kid you not.)

Another intolerable conceit is that Israel speaks for all Jews. Olmert was in France a few weeks ago telling French Jews that they don't belong in France but in Israel.
French Jews don't belong in France?? Never mind that they've lived there for 2,000 years.
Olmert speaking like Le Pen. Lovely!

Based on that statement, I am curious to know (saying that facetiously, don't bother, really) if you support the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey having their own country, and whether you think the international community should push for Iraq itself to stay as one country or be broken down into segments which are often described as religious but are actually more tribal in their origin. And what about that former Yugoslavia, what happened to it and what is continuing to happen. Also, how about those French and Dutch struggling to retain their Frenchness and Dutchness in light of their "immigrant problem."

Talking morals on this is talking black and white, no grey. As a reader who comes here for nuance, I say: bah; hope no one takes your bait. I say the same thing to the I.R. people here who do it.

MJ,

I sympathize with your predicament. I don't think anybody can deny your committment to a just peace between Palestinians and Israelis, and your empathy with both peoples.

This is a comment I left on Ami Isseroff's web site (Isseroff is a Zionist dove who is a full-throated supporter of Israel's campaign in Lebanon):

Like most of Israel, you are absolutely convinced that last week's kidnapping was an "act of war" that gave Israel no choice but to respond with nothing but unrestrained, maximum force, concepts like proportionality or the Geneva Convention be damned. As if last week was the first time in the history of the world that a militia in one country has crossed the border and attacked military forces in another country.

Actually...cross-border attacks occur all the time, all over the world. Look at the Kurdistan-Turkey-Syria borders, or the Russia-Georgia border, or India-Sri Lanka, etc (In fact, since 2000, Israel has continued to cross over into Lebanon to attack Hizbollah). For example, PKK rebels cross over from Iraqi Kurdistan all the time to carry out attacks in Turkey. Crossing over into Kurdistan to pursue the PKK rebels would be an appropriate response. Launching a war to destroy the Iraqi Republic and dismembering its Kurdish community would not be.

Second, you are under the assumption that Israel has no alternative to what it's doing now because Hizbollah is committed to Israel's destruction. I do not deny that Hizbollah wants to destroy Israel. Does that mean it poses an existential threat to Israel? Only to the extent that Israel treats it that way. Hizbollah thrives on conflict with Israel. The more Israel escalates each incident with Hizbollah, the more it gives Hizbollah an opportunity to escalate in response. Treat a cross-border operation like the start of World War III, and that's exactly what it will become.

That doesn't mean turning the other cheek to Hizbollah. It does mean responding to Hizbollah's attacks in a measured and restrained way, avoiding disproportionate responses that only fuel the conflict. Hizbollah could not have survived if it didn't understand concepts like deterrence and balance of fear.

As analysts like Uri Avnery and Henry Siegman have argued, the best way to neutralize Hizbollah is for Israel to make a just peace with the Palestinians. What if Israel offered to hold an international peace conference with any Arab government (including the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority) that accepted its right to live within pre-1967 borders in exchange for a Palestinian state in all of West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem?

An issue that can’t be left out is the mindset of the IDF. Why is it that the case of both Gaza and Lebanon, the IDF has responded so much more severely to the kidnapping of soldiers than to terrorist attacks on civilians? Does it have something to do with how the IDF is still smarting from its defeat to Hizbollah to 2000? With how Hizbollah continues to inflict one humiliating victory on the IDF after another? Is is possible that just as Hizbollah craves conflict for conflict’s sake, there are Generals within the IDF who have no less a thirst for war?

Hezbollah has no legitimate grievances against Israel. Israel holds no Lebanese territory.

Maybe you consider the Chebaa farms not to be Lebanese territory, but from my understanding that's not an uncontroverted position to hold.

The UN says Shebaa Farms belongs to Syria not Lebanon.

I'd wish we could hear more from people whose sole goal relates to the United States.

I take it from the 2 rating that Daniel G is a Le Pen supporter. Little surprise there.

I love to read wise commentaries explaining how "saving face" is paramount to Arab culture. As opposed to who?

Currently we are supporting a government of fundamentalist pro-Iranian Shia militias just to avoid admission that Iraq is, from the point of view of our future influence, FUBAR.

We will not engage in direct talks with countries that we deem "unworthy" even if we actually have something to negotiate about.

Israel of course represents the same school of thought -- I have hard time figuring who is aping whom.

By the way, the root of the current crisis is the determination made by Israel and USA that "Hezbollah has to be eradicated". It would be half-bad if that was feasible. The persistent talk that we should whack Syria and Iran did not help either. If you talk a lot about a confrontation, sometimes it leads, well, to a confrontation.

The way I see it, the "Shia axis" felt that a confrontation is unavoidable and thus they would better initiate it at the time of their choosing. I admit that this is a mere conjecture, but unfortunately, the conjecture that some combination of threats AND concessions could lead to a de-facto peace between Lebanon and Israel was never tested.

I agree, Dan K, and was thinking the same thing this morning as I listened to the news. A nice wide neutral zone made up of equal territory from both sides.

I'm troubled, as I always am, by references to the Holocaust (earlier in this thread). The Holocaust explains why Jews wanted and needed their own territory but it should never ever be used to justify immoderate actions or territorial grabs on the part of the state of Israel.

What's more, the circumstances of the creation of Israel, its character as an nation, its decision to limit its citizenry to a single ethnicity and religion make it all the more important that Israel be accomodating. That's just plain good sense if you're moving into a home which is surrounded by neighbors who are suspicious and aggrieved by the displacement of their kin, friends, and allies.
But Israel's short history has shown any number of occasions when it's effectively given the finger to its neighbors.

One big problem with these discussions about the latest events is that they are crippled by our lack of full information as to the tipping point. Do we really know, yet, what set off the attacks -- who started it? Or are we hamstrung by strong biases on both sides, exacerbated by reports of heavy civilian ("women and children") death counts which seem, if the reports are accurate, to make for justifiable anger and grief aimed at Israel.

The one thing I regret about the way the TPM café is that it is very difficult to simply express appreciation for the author's original essay without going into detail about why one appreciates it.  There's no 0,1,2,3,4 scale for essays themselves, and I've seen some which I could assign to any of those categories.

In this case, I'd offer a 4 (maybe a 3, but I think a 4) to Mr. Rosenberg, even though I remain unconvinced by most of what he says.  He took his readership (i.e. us) seriously, as if convincing us was important to him.  He wrote with feeling but without an intent to push as many emotional buttons as he could, and he left room for persons to disagree with him, and the impression, at least, that he'd consider what they had to say in response.  For all of that I say thanks, indeed.  I think this is one of your best, Mr. Rosenberg.

The other thing which prompts me to write this little note is that most of responses I've read so far are taking a cue from Mr. Rosenberg's original essay:  they're thoughtful, considered, responsive in the main to what he actually said, and thus I'm doubly educated:  by the author, and by the commentators alike.  So let me extend the same thanks to you all as well.  The interchange I've read, in the main (not all, but in the main) gives me some hope that there are a few breaths of life left in the Age of Reason, though I think in our world generally Unreason is way ahead on points. 

Mike

I find it interesting that the facts on the ground force proponents of a two state solution to imply that anyone who disagrees with them are anti-semites.

If it is possible to reasonably disagree with that position, then there is no justification for denying political power to Hamas as well as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hezbollah or for containing Iran.

On the other hand, it is not an accusation that can stand up to direct questioning.  The fact is that it is not possible to draw a necessary connection between advocacy of a one state solution and any moral failing.

So instead we get this dance, "you're anti-semitic" "oh, I wasn't necessarily calling you anti-semitic.  Don't be so jumpy" "but a lot of you are anti-semitic" "I'd rather not name names.  I'd rather not point to exact phrases I consider anti-semitic" "anti-semitism is a big problem that you may not have, but a lot of people on your side have" "of course you are not anti-semitic until proven otherwise"

When the populations of every state in the region oppose a two-state solution, opposition to a two state solution cannot be just a difference of opinion, because if it was just that then it could just win in the marketplace of ideas.

Proponents of a two state solution are forced by circumstances to make an accusation that on some level they understand cannot withstand scrutiny, and to make that accusation in a way that they are not required to justify it.

I was comparing US commentators in North America (generally supportive of Israel) to Arab commentators in the Middle East (generally not supportive).

You as a US commentator can produce powerful arguments why there should be a Jewish state.

Arab commentators can produce a valid argument why, when the rights of the refugees conflict with the right to a Jewish state, human rights should overcome national, ethnic or group rights.

So even accepting that you have an argument that you consider valid.  You (as the US) have to take another step and nullify by force the valid arguments of the Arabs.  I'm asking for a justification of that.

If the people of Palestine vote, especially including the refugees and the Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis, and most do not want Israel to be a Jewish homeland - that is the usual way to settle disputes with valid arguments on both sides.

To argue against that you need more than just a valid argument in support of a modern ethnicity based state - not that I've seen any particularly strong one in response to the grandparent post - you need an argument that the other side should be suppressed even if it is more popular.  That is an even higher hurdle.

There's a lot the Israelis did wrong in the 1990s -- chief of which was continuing to build and expand settlements, a mistake which had many roots. But this is a terribly, wildly one-sided take on the situation. Especially with regards to Syria.

The statement is controverted or it is not.  Are you saying nobody has disputed that the Shebaa farms is Lebanese territory?

I guess your logic escapes me. There is a simple, if tragic and protracted disagreement. Some people believe in a Jewish state, others don't. You are saying that in addition to saying there should be a Jewish state I must also show why the contrary view must be "suppressed". That doesn't make sense to me. The two things are one in the same. If A and B are exclusive of one another, then believing A means not believing B. On the other point, you seem to have this vision all the people currently living on the land that was once a unified political district -- Palestine -- should vote on this matter. Why? And which unit? Palestine wasn't one district under Turkish rule. In any case, it's just a solicism. Israel is a state. It votes on its own. On the larger point of the Arab world, your point seems to be that there should not be a Jewish state because of how many Arabs there are. So America, Israel and all the Arab states have a joint plebiscite. And that plebiscite decides whether there should be a Jewish state? Is that the idea?

They are a sovereign state. No furhter justification is needed.

Well, obviously, some sovereign states are more sovereign than others.

Is a two state solution in which Israel withdraws to the 67 borders not reasonable to you?

Christian Science Monitor 28 Jul 2006:

The stakes are high for Hizbullah, but it seems it can count on an unprecedented swell of public support that cuts across sectarian lines.According to a poll released by the Beirut Center for Research and Information, 87 percent of Lebanese support Hizbullah's fight with Israel, a rise of 29 percent on a similar poll conducted in February. More striking, however, is the level of support for Hizbullah's resistance from non-Shiite communities. Eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis.

Lebanese no longer blame Hizbullah for sparking the war by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers, but Israel and the US instead.

As for the issue of a binational state, a central premise of Zionism has always been that after millenia of oppresion and degradation in Europe and the Muslim Middle East, Jews would never be safe and secure unless they had a state of their own and an ability to defend themselves. That, I would say, is the Israelis core opposition to a binational state. And I think history gives them a lot of backing for that argument.

This defense of the Zionist project - and I think it really is the strongest argument - raises so many questions in my mind. Here are some of them:

Are Jews now safe and secure?

Which Jews are more safe and secure? Those in Israel or those in America?

Given the tiny size of Israel, is there reason to believe that the Jews who live there will ever be safe and secure, so long as their relations with much of the world around them are hostile?

What realistically possible historical processes or courses of action might bring it about that the relationship between Israel and its neighbors is not hostile?

If the motivation for the establishment of Israel was the safety and security of Jews, why did Israel's Zionist forbears establish a state in a region where there was so much hostility to its presence?

Isn't there something chimerical in the notion that the mere possession of a state is enough to provide safety and security? Ultimately safety and security come from numbers - lots of friends and allies. There are many small states in the world today whose safety and security extends only so far as the good will of its more powerful neighbors in the world. And there are many peoples in the world who do not possess their own state, and yet whose safety and security is greater than that possessed by some peoples who possess their own state.

If ther safety and security of Jews was the primary motivation for the Zionists, why did they establish a state that seems destined from the start to possess such a small number of citizens?

Isn't it the case that Israel's safety and security these days is guaranteed by its remaining friends in the United States and Europe? If those friends ceased to be friends, wouldn't Israel's days be numbered?

Does Israel owe any consideration to those friends, and their interests, given that the friends are the ultimate guarantors of its security?

Many Americans these days have seen their own safety and security compromised by virtue of their country's relationship with Israel, and the consequent enmity of Israel's enemies. Are these Americans entitled to a say in the resolution of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians and its other enemies? Should these Americans send one dime to Israel so long as it persists in its policy of not just occupying, but conquering and annexing additional territory?

Is it prudent to maintain a security relationship with a country that can't seem to decide where its borders are?

I meant "standing" not "standard". I was writing too quickly. But I very much stand by the point I was making. Yes, anyone can criticize. And their crits are either valid or their not. In this case, I think the Europeans frequently show a bias rooted in the anti-Semitism that has always afflicted the continent. That isn't to say there isn't also historic bias against Muslims. That has very deep roots too. I guess here I would point to the fact that many argue that Jews have nothing to fear living as minorities everywhere in the world. Well, yes, I don't think Europe has much ground to make this argument.

Grey is my favorite color.

First, my point on the Arab world is that a lot maintaining peaceful neighbors for Israel seems to require undemocratic regimes, and US support for these undemocratic regimes, and opposition to democracy in these states comprising a very large population of Arabs.

How do we settle a dispute where both sides have valid contradictory views?  We can't have a plebecite because we don't want the side that would win to win. 

That is the step that I wanted to point to in addition to what Seth brought up.  Seth asked for a valid argument.  My point is even if someone supplies a valid argument you cannot treat them as two competing valid arguments. That needs a separate justification.

Can you draw a boundary that, accepting refugees, would vote to be a Jewish state?  It would not be the 1967 borders of Israel.

You think Israel has valid reasons not to accept the refugees? OK.  Refugees think they have valid reasons to be accepted.  Can we put it to a vote?  No, because you do not want the side you know would win to win.

Forgetting this, I would rather put a single question to you directly - Assuming it is possible to create a one-state solution that protects the lives and property of individual Jews do you prefer that to the status quo? 

Personally, I think it’s probably the only answer. And the ramifications of implementing this whole New M.E. Order that BushCo envisions is scary. But the "right of return" for refugees that can prove claims, dismantling settlements, and Jerusalem would all (will always?) be sticking points.

My feeling is that Israel would have to give in more than it wants to. I see Israel as the interloper here (MHO) and just don’t think that past discriminations, even the Holocaust, give any group rights over another. Wars, occupations, refugees have been Israel’s history. Settlements have continued house by house for decades. Most of the world would support a fair two-state solution. I’m not sure that either side has ever really tried to get one (maybe with Oslo but that didn't last long).

You as a US commentator can produce powerful arguments why there should be a Jewish state.

Are there "powerful arguments" that Israel shouldn't be allowed to exist?  There might be arguments that could be made by a very small minority of people but I wouldn't characterize the arguments as "powerful". 

Sometimes it's useful to step back and say, forget who's right, who's wrong, who started it, who's morally justified, etc. Let's look at the cold facts and see how to make it work.

One cold fact is that Israel has 10-20 years to "make it work." If it doesn't then Israel will have failed permanently. Time is not on Israel's side. The country will be unprotectable from its enemies in 20 years. (If you think Zelzals are bad now, you just wait and see what's coming up.)

Trouble is, Israel is caught in a zero-sum game mentality (the expansion of settlements during Oslo, the layout of the fence, etc, being typical examples) which will never lead to peace.

It's up to Israel to make a move. Again this is not a MORAL statement I am making here.
Simply a pragmatic one. If Israel does not achieve permanent peace in two decades, it'll be a place no one will want to inhabit, except those waiting for the end times or believing that God truly really truly gave them that land.

Now you can all gnash your teeth all you want about how horrible those Arabs are and how Israel is justified to do X, Y, and Z.
But being "justified" is not the name of the game. Time is. And it's not on Israel's side.

I've read a report.  I will not be able to find it, that Sharon believes that over the next 10-20 years, Israel will build a greater technological gap ahead of its neighbors and be in a better strategic position.

Let's say I'm wrong or I misread the report it may still be too strong a statement to say time is not on Israel's side.

"They" were expelled from? What possible relationship do a bunch of Europeans and Russians have with the ancient Hebrews that makes them qualified to eject and ethnically cleanse the "land without a people" from its non-Jewish people today?

In fact, you speak as if the ancient Hebrews were the 'original' inhabitants. They weren't. The ancient Hebrews barely controlled the area for a smidgen of its history.

That's a well-written reply: Simple, clear, and yet wrong.

You don't have to consider them powerful.  Arabs consider them far more powerful than the arguments in favor of Israel that US commentators make.

My only point is that it is a difference of opinion, not a situation where your ability to make an argument makes you "right" in any sense.

That the people whose removal was necessary to make way for a Jewish state were treated injustly and correcting that injustice is a stronger moral imperative than maintaining Israel's Jewish majority is considered in much of the world to be a very powerful argument. 

Well it has to stop somewhere, doesn't it?

I consider it a meaningless hypothetical in the same way that I think it is a meaningless hypothetical to speculate on how much of American territory on Mars we might be willing to cede to China in exchange for a settlement of the Taiwan issue. On the other point you seem to believe that it is a profound insight that my opinion is only my opinion. That's not a point or an insight; it's a truism. As to the issue of a Jewish majority, again, this is a silly point. If we are discussing the long term changes in Israel's demographic by the process of differential rates of reproduction, then population levels are the proper means of discussing it. But you're not. You're talking about forcibly redrawing the countries borders and/or bringing millions of new people into the country, both against the wishes (democratically ascertained) of the state and citizenry which is currently there. You may not think that state should exist or has a proper moral foundation. But the proper term for what you're describing is dismantle. Honesty in language is important.

The statute of limitations applies to individuals, not to states or religions.

And it shouldn't apply to these entities, because it is individuals who do wrong, not states or regions or religions or ideologies. I don't blame America for what it's doing these days: I blame Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and a list of people as long as my arm. And when they're out of office, or dead, I'm going to be measuring their successors by what they themselves do, not by what their predecessors did.

The same applies to Europe and Islam. States are not individuals. Religions are not individuals. And they should not be collectively judged as if they were individuals.

What you characterize as Israel's "right to exist" is better characterized as Israel's right to deny the existence of Palestinians.

I never said or implied anything of the sort...

What makes you think that Israel's rights are superior?

Israel currently exists so as the saying goes "it is what it is".  Israel's rights are equal to the rights that any sovereign nation enjoys.   

No, you're absolutely right. He believes(d) that.
And he's not the only one. I travel to Israel all the time and I've debated this with the locals on numerous occasions.

One word for it: Insanity!

I am enormously fond of Israelis. They're among the most fun, warmest, greatest people to be around. They are intellectually fearless (in ways, say, our media could only dream of).

But their political leadership has been organically immature. Maybe it's because the country is very young, or it's heavily militarized, but Israeli leaders and the whole political class consist of moral/intellectual midgets.

And Israel is paying a huge price for that.
(As we are with Bush.)

You keep hearing how come Arab countries don'thave Mandelas and Gandhis. Fair enough.
But the same criticism applies to Israel.

And we, American Jews, have done Israel a huge disservice. For all sorts of reasons, we feel guilty about the place (we don't live there; we say we hate France but we visit France and not Israel; we did nothing to help Jews in WWII, etc).
So we turn a blind eye to Israel's stupidity.

American Irish did the same with the IRA. Easy to understand human behavior.

You don't have to consider them powerful.  Arabs consider them far more powerful than the arguments in favor of Israel that US commentators make.

I think it is fair to say that most of the ME regimes do not question Israel's right to exist.  Most people who question that right to exist belong to groups like Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah.

I am not defending all of Israel's actions...in fact I have been very critical of some of the things Israel has done.  But it has nothing to do with Israel's right to exist...

Arnold, you seem to think that anyone is vaulted on to the defensive because you pose a question that is logically and historically empty. During the Cold War, the US had one view, the Soviets had another. Heck, why didn't we all just get together and vote? How about this? Since there are valid arguments on both sides, why don't we have a baking contest and see how it shakes out? Democracy has a meaning within constituted political communities. Here's another one. Mexico thinks it should remain independent. The US think Mexico should be annexed to the United States? Let's get everyone in the US and Mexico together and vote on it. How's that? If you want to get into a more elemental debate about political theory and the nature of the state, have at it. But your training wheels version is just silly.

What exactly does this mean?

Does this mean that Europeans who criticize Israel, or who say that Israel's Jewish ethnic status is the result of an injustice that should be corrected are anti-semitic until proven otherwise?

I would like to know how many supporters of Israel and a two-state solution are able and willing to say "Advocacy of Jews losing their political majority of Israel is not anti-Semitic. Period."

If you want to claim that there have historically been or there are now anti-Semitic Europeans, OK.

But this subterranean attempt to attach this anti-Semitism to questioning Israel as a Jewish state, but while never actually puting the supposed connection into the open where it can be disputed, is, I have to say, cowardly if understandable. 

I'm not confused: Some people in the occupied territories--the settlers--are part of the state; others--the Palestinians--are not. That's not right.

The author stated both that Hezbollah's sole goal was the extermination of the Jews, and that Israel holds no Lebanese land. If, in fact, factions in Lebanon believe that Israel does hold Lebanese land, that would be an argument that they have at least two goals. The merits of the belief are unimportant. It goes to state of mind.

Yet there seems to persist this notion that the Palestinian situation must be resolved . . .

You're arguing that it should be left unresolved?

Dan K., you get my prize for the best comment here.  Israel is committed to a course of action that has not yet been successful, and isn't likely to ever be successful, if the goal is for Jews to have a state where they can live in peace and safety.  Sometimes it is necessary to concede that a new course of action is needed.  Surely we are past that time.

The world can best help Israelis by opening our borders to them, allowing them unlimited immigration quotas.  If they want a state of their own, well the Mormons have a state of their own, Utah, so if the immigrating Jews were to decide that Iowa, for example, were suitable, they could all move there and vote in whatever government they wished.  They would be at least as safe as the Mormons, and that is far, far safer than they are in Israel.

This would not be a just solution to the problems faced by Israel, but it would be a successful solution.  The policies followed today will not lead to a successful solution. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

Two things will have to happen before there is even a serious attempt made at working out a settlement - the first is that the Israelis will have to acknowledge the wrong that they did to the Palestinians by taking the land, and the second is that the Palestinians will have to acknowledge that Israel is there now and will stay there.

The only other solution is that one people completely destroys the other people. Since neither side is capable of admitting any wrongdoing or concessions of any kind, it is obvious that the solution they've chosen is total annihilation.

I'm removing my comment. I've said enough.

I think you've misread or misunderstood the next comment, which was:

It's possible that the war would at least have been postponed if the prime minister or the defense minister had been a woman,

I understood this to clearly mean that if the Israeli prime minister or defense minister had been a woman, she would not have been at all bothered by Nasrallah's sexual jibe: only particular sorts of men are bothered by that kind of thing. In short, a woman would have shrugged off such remarks.

If Lebanon has a claim to the land they should first work out the deal with Syria and get the UN to agree to it. Then Lebanon can work it out with the Israelis. It is not for a militia group of thugs to arm and fight their own private war at the expense of the citizens of Lebanon.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I would be curious as to your source of history. The Romans required a rather large effort and had to come back to quell the Jews and oust them.

There were a fair amount of Jews in the "Holy Land" during the various crusades. However, the Christians and the Turks either killed or drove out a fair amount of them at that time.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

About a 1000 years from the first king to 70AD.

However, the Arabs did not control any of the region until the British and the French started carving up the Ottoman Empire after WWI. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan, and Saudi Arabia are all fictious countries.

They mainly owe their existence to the British deep desire to punish the Turks.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Who is "Europe"? This "you and me against the world" pose that the US and Israel put on is self-defeating for both. The real allies who have really fought side by side with Americans are almost all European and the others are Canadian and Australian. I'd like to see any Israeli politician walk the walk for the American people the way Tony Blair has for the United States. And the French would have saved us the loss of thousands of American lives had we but listened to them on Iraq (and Vietnam!).

The problem is "wipe out Jews" is sometimes treated as synonymous with "end Israel's Jewish majority".

We have to be clear that "wipe out Jews" is wrong.  "End Israel's Jewish majority" is not wrong.

Once we can do that, most organized political bodies in the Arab world, even the most militant opponents of Israel, can agree with the second goal instead as opposed to the first.

At some point a high ranking Muslim brotherhood member said that his organization has no problem accepting Jews as individuals, just not as a state in the Middle East.

That is a very different position than "wipe out the Jews" and not anti-Semitic.

Supporters of Israel benefit from those two concepts being conflated at the expense of regional peace. 

 Q. E. D.

Mike

"In this case, I think the Europeans frequently show a bias rooted in the anti-Semitism that has always afflicted the continent."

I think anti-semitism is deep and pretty universal. It existed in a very LARGE dose in the US; and in Argentina. If the Danes are considered European (and when I last checked they were) then there is hardly any people in my historical reading that ever stood up so bravely against bigotry and persecution of another people; the same is certainly true of the Dutch in Amsterdam. I know no comparable acts in America that were as heroic (certainly not during this period); maybe the anti-slavery movement. What ARE you talking about? You advise people to learn the facts and then you ignore history. Take a walk in Yad Vashem.

"Unfortuanately, the Israeli body politic has never come close to accepting a solution that involves a return to the '67 borders. The last time the so-called Israeli "left" was in control, they made it clear this was completely unacceptable to them. And it is vastly more unacceptable to the center and the right."

I also have the same impression. I wish I were wrong. All my life I have heard from more militant pro-Israeli relatives and friends that "All Israel wants is its own state with security" "Just a secure land set at the 1967 borders" ; but there is precious little that the Israeli says publicly that gives anyone indication that this is acceptable to the leadership. Josh you raise this point; can you give us some serious Israeli support for the 1967 borders? And you know it's funny because the argument is going to run that Israel does not want to give away its negotiating points before it engages in negotiations (which I could understand but I am not so confident that the Israeli leadership in fact is willing to fully dismantle the colonization program (called the "West Bank Settlements")...but this is exactly the point Hamas (and I am not so sure I believe them either) says regarding its desire to put off Israeli recognition until negotiations begin. But here the Israelis (maybe not so surprisingly but certainly uncompromisingly) insist on preconditions. Explain.

I think the question isn't whether or not Israel should react (it has to react), but how it reacts.

yes.

I actually don't think Hamas says that. Their position, at least for now, is that they simply don't accept Israel at all. They'll have truces, not peace. As for the '67 borders, there's a lot of truth to what you say. There's all sorts of intransigence and triumphalism in the Israeli politic. There's also a lot of quite legitimate fear for their own security. Lost of course in all of this is what actually started the war that produced these territories. The rub has come down to roughly 10% of the occupied territories. I think they'll need to bite that bullet, a think it's probably essential to a settlement that is a lasting one, though even I find it hard at some level to wholly embrace. I have this argument with supporters of Israel all the time. But as the argument is developing here I think it presents a very one-sided view of the situation. Very one-sided.

"the Palestinians were cheated out of their state when it was cut in half"

I am bothered by this description. Who cheated them? The British? The UN? Or the Israelis? Remember at that time the Pan-Arab coalition really was trying to kill all the Jews, drive them into the sea, and not rhetorically. I don't know the Jews, fighting for their lives had so much time on their hands to work out a cheat.

Let me first stipulate that I think "razing Lebanon" overstates things. Certainly, a vast amount of destruction is taking place. On the point you're raising though I really don't agree with the argument about proportionately that gets raised. I wonder myself whether it was wise or right for the Israelis to bomb transport hubs in the North. On this question of proportionality, however, again I don't buy the argument. Israel doesn't accept military attacks into their country. They're not trying to get retribution for this one attack. They are trying to destroy the capacity to launch those attacks. More generally they're trying to raise the deterrent price for the attacks. Then, finally, they're trying to do something more general. Lebanon (though to a great degree involuntarily) and the rest of the world has looked at Hizbullah's military hold over southern Lebanon and just let it be Israel's problem. Tough luck basically. Israel is trying to make it someone else's problem too. Europe's problem, Beirut's problem, etc.

Whether their approach is wise or effective, let's leave to a different thread. But again the point of what they're doing is to make something like this not happen again. So the calculus about proportionality doesn't add up to me.

And there's one other point too. People often say, well, say some guys come over from Canada or Mexico and shoot up a town. Would America launch bombing runs against those countries? Of course, not. But they're simply not analogous in any way. Israel is a very small country. It has little strategic depth. It is surrounded by hostile populations if no longer hostile governments in each case. Israel is threatened in a way the US simply isn't. The other issues of right and wrong, effectiveness and folly, are good arguments. But the comparison to the US is just a sign of hopeless naivite. (Of course, I should point out, I know you weren't making this last point. I'm just addressing a related issue.)

It didn't happen just once. First, the Jews sneakily tricked the British into excluding them from the Trans-Jordan. Then they connived the U.N. into cutting Palestine in half again. This was the last straw for the Arabs. Outraged with being given even more territory, they were compelled to denounce the U.N. plan and attack in full force.

Dan K says:

I can't recall where I found it, but I read earlier this weak about some results of a UN report on border violation incidents on the Israel/Lebanon border over the past several years. According to the report, there were significantly more incidents of border violation by the Israeli side than the Lebanese/Hizbollah side.

This sent me prowling to see what I could find, and this may be useful to those who are of a research bent.  The Global Policy Forum has produced a Lebanon Syria Archive which consists of documents and news reports collected from American, European, and Middle East Sources, as well as from think tanks concerned with that part of the world.

I haven't located a document which precisely fits the description Dan provided, but it may be there.   I'm going to prowl a little tomorrow to learn what I can about the area.  Insomniacs can get a head start.  :-) 

Mike

Q. E. D.

The difference between first and second class minority status is laws.  There is no reason to believe that no set of laws can protect the first class citizenship of Jews in Israel even if Jews are not the majority.  The dichotomy that either there is a Jewish state or Jews must be second class citizens is false and I doubt you can support it.

"Parlor game" is completely ad-hominem.

The same words coming from a different person would be no more or less true or valid.

Where "parlor game" seems to be leading is that Jews can validly hold opinions, Palestinians can validly hold any opinion they choose, but non-Palestinians only advocate a two-state solution unless they are anti-semitic.

Once again, it is not anti-semitic, it is not morally deficient in any way.  It is a legitimate different opinion that has just as much right on the table of reasonable discussion as your opinion.

"Wipe out the Jews" should not be on the table.  That is not a reasonable different opinion.  That is anti-semitic.  "Jews should be second class citizens" should not be on the table.  That is not a reasonable different opinion.  That is anti-semitic.

"Jews losing their majority status would be acceptable for peace." Should be on the table.  That is a reasonable different opinion, even if held by a non-Palestinian.  That is not anti-semitic.

Do you disagree or not? Is "Jews losing their majority status in Israel would be an acceptable price for peace" anti-semitic, extreme or otherwise invalid or is it a legitimate different opinion from the one you hold?

"They were expelled for standing up to the Romans" ...

might lead one to believe "they" includes a large proportion of Jews living at the time and that if not for that expulsion, the majority of Jews that ended up in Europe would have been in Israel.

If it turns out that the area was not ethnically cleansed, but that a substantial amount of Jews stayed in the area, and converted to Christianity as it differentiated itself from Judaism or other religions and eventually Islam just as many other populations in the region converted to Islam and became "Arabs" then that statement as made by Josh that they chose their homeland where they were expelled for standing up to the Romans misses a lot of the story.  Because in a strong sense "they" were not expelled.

Especially if there were already large populations of Jews that would form a large proportion of the ancesters of the Europeans Jews already outside of the area before they were kicked out by the Romans. 

As you all know, I'm sure, Tsahal calls itself "the most moral army in the world." Haaretz reports how, even after killing 200 children, the IAF still believes that. If it helps them sleep better at night, why not? But one day they'll realize that, unbeknownst to them, they became just the band of thugs that any arrogant army eventually becomes. Just like our very own thugs patrolling in Baghdad tonight.

I don’t think “razing Lebanon” is necessarily an overstatement. That’s a question of degree. The last time Israel invaded Lebanon it killed tens of thousands of civilians (with U.S. assistance) and destroyed most of what was left after civil war and other occupations. No, it’s not Dresden. But it is a purposeful attack on civilians. Collective punishment. It is immoral, illegal, and a war crime.

"Purposeful attack on civilians"?

I'm really curious what, in the minds of many commentators here, is the appropriate response to an organization that launches rockets from areas near civilians.

Perhaps, but Hezbollah et al. uses this to their advantage. And successfully.

I hardly a hardline Israel person, but all the talk of atrocities gets old. War is war.

There's no single answer, which depends on how near to civilians, what forces you have in the civilian area (e.g., covert ground observers or surveillance from the air), the type of terrain and vegetation, etc.

With the electronics available (e.g., AN/TPQ-36 or -37 Firefinder radar), detecting a launch and determining the launch site before the rocket lands isn't terribly difficult. The challenge is how to counter the rocketeers.

For example, there are reports that a significant number of rockets are coming from orchards. While I hate to destroy fruit trees, the reality is that area won't have many people in it. I believe it would be entirely legitimate to respond much as is done to a conventional army firing battery: send the coordinates to waiting cannon and blanket the firing site.

If the rockets are fired from a residential area, this is quite another problem. Current US Army tactics, techniques and practices (TTP) for rockets from populated areas in Iraq includes putting observers into the area, developing human intelligence, and then ambushing the fleeing rocket crews or directly engage them, possibly with heliborne infantry.

Clearly, this isn't fully practical unless your ground forces can operate freely. It isn't implausible, however, that the Israelis might have covert observers in the area, which could laser-designate or otherwise bring precision-guided weapons, probably from aircraft, onto the target. They won't stop all, but using full counterbattery artillery against populated areas would be extremely questionable.

This is only meant to be an introduction to some of the options, and minimizing civilian casualties is a clear objective in the tactics I described.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

For several years Israel has been in a position to broker a long-standing peace deal with the Palestinians. The persistent violence between the two snug neighbors carries with it a truly remarkable irony.

The Palestinians controlled the land that is now Israel for over 700 years. Not until the end of the Second World War did Great Britain officially endorse the Zionist Movement.

The United States enters this picture under a Cold War pretext by offering its support of Israel as a means of checking Soviet interests the region. The ability to have a footprint in the region also appealed to American oil barons who saw an opportunity to promulgate their visions of supply-side grandeur.

Israel, for its part, found a most worthwhile partner with the United States. Indeed, the relationship would prove to be symbiotic when considering for the last several decades Israel has utilized its good standing with American government and industry to construct a veritable Mt. Olympus which has reigned over the region.

For several years the United States government was happy serve as Israel's loan officer because with one handshake they were 1)Gaining a "Democratic" (strategic) foothold in the Middle East, and 2)Providing American industry with lucrative contracts.

Though it took longer than one would expect, a sort of internal rebellion to this evil collusion finally took hold in the Middle East. Disguising itself under an umbrella of Allah and Islam, this fundamentalism has proven to be a very formidable foe; the insurgents improving their strategies with every disparate conflict with Israel or the U.S.

Israel could have initiated peace with the Palestinians long ago but doing so would serve as a coming out party for their exotic relationship with the United States.

Peace with the Palestinians would mean the United States can no longer fit and supply the Israeli military without revealing, for all to see, its imperialist aims.

The Palestinians fight to retain parts of the land which they occupied for 700 years. The Israeli's fight to keep the land they commandeered 50 years ago with a war sponsered by Western powers.

There has never been any doubt that modern Arab terrorism and fundamentalism is the direct byproduct of the West's adoption of the Zionist cause. What is in doubt is whether or not the west has enough money and might to deal with these "evil doers."

It appears as if Bush and Olmert intend to find out.

Then again, maybe they've already discovered the answer.

You have an opinion. That's it. An opinion. You think the opposite side is wrong.

I can't argue this point.  I have always said I also support the Palestinians having their own state.  I've heard arguments both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian that it is an all or nothing type of scenario...either there is an Israeli state and no Palestinian state or visa versa and no 2 state solution is tenable.  I don't agree with that argument...

Mr. Rosenberg - I have a few questions about your positions.
(1) Do you support the complete return of the Golan Heights to Syria and the dismantling of those settlements as part of a peace treaty?
(2) Do you support the return of Sheba Farms to Lebanon as both she and Syria have agreed.
(3) Do you support the cessation of Israeli overflights of Lebanon (both drone and fighter jets) as part of a peace agreement?
(4) Do you support an Israeli return to the 67 borders with a peace agreement?
(5) Do you support a Palestinian state that is completely soverign including the right to it's own international borders, seaports and airports?

I ask these questions to determine, from my own perspective, how moderate you really are. Thank you

"If the Danes are considered European (and when I last checked they were) then there is hardly any people in my historical reading that ever stood up so bravely against bigotry and persecution of another people; "

No Question but what the resistance movement in Denmark was able to accomplish much in the fall of 1943 when Himmler had ordered the round-up and deportation of the Jews. But I think it wrong to asscribe the outcome to Danish identity without a close examination of exactly what happened.

Key to The Danish Resistance being able to move most of the Danish Jews (about ten thousand) out of German reach was the geography -- Copenhagen is half an hour across the sound from Sweden, which was not occupied. Prior to the summer of 43, the Swedes had returned Jews who illegally crossed -- but in August 1943 Danish Resistance and British Intelligence spirited Neils Bohr out of Denmark, and he spent two weeks in Stockholm meeting with everyone to get Swedish policy changed. He met with his Scientist friends, the academy in general, the members of the Government and the leadership of the Social Democratic Party -- and he met the King. It was only when he had assurance of Swedish Asylum for Danish Jews that he flew out to London, and then on to the US, and eventually to Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project.

Why did the Swedes change their policy? Why did the Danish Resistance pick up the project? -- I think it is spelled Stalingrad, Kursk, The North African Invasion, Sicily, and the South of Italy. Assisting the Danish Resistance, and a winning project by the resistance put both Denmark and Sweden on the right side of the ledger given the likely victor in the war.

The Danish Resistance was effective for a couple of reasons. The Danish Government had resigned during the summer of 43 after a General Strike but the leading party -- the Social Democrats, still informally maintained control of the civil service. The Social Democrats included the trade unions -- and they were best positioned to do the illegal stuff that had to be done to move the Jews across the sound. In fact the warning of the round-up came to the secretary to a party leader from a Commercial Attache in the German Embassy. When the party leadership went to visit the leader of the Copenhagen Community to warn -- they were rejected -- told to buzz off as the SS had told the leader nothing was going to happen. (and he believed the SS). Thank goodness there was a young Rabbi who did take it seriously and pass on the warnings, even though his father, the Senior Rabbi believed the SS. When German intentions became clear, the trade unionists were told to go "find the Jews and hide them" anywhere they could. There were a vast number of interesting arrangements, most of which worked. Then money had to be raised to pay the fishing boat owners, petrol had to be stolen from German supplies to power the boats (the transport union and bus drivers did this)and in about a month, everyone was moved across the sound. It is a fascinating story, but it does not say a whole lot about anti-Semitism. It was about beating the Germans at something, (Remember Denmark lost three wars to Germany in 100 years), and it was about asserting Danish Identity, particularly on the part of the working class. In the 1940's Danish Jews fell into three general groups. The Leadership was Saphardic, arriving from Spain and Portugal a generation of so after 1492, A fairly large community from Poland and Russia had arrived in Copenhagen in the 1880's (and they were very much into the Social Democratic Party), and perhaps a thousand were German Jews who had inmigrated during the 1930's and managed to get residence permits. It was largely the fact that trade union members and Social Democrats trusted each other that put into place the essential network -- and other institutions in the society then followed the lead. No other country in Europe had the same sort of opportunity -- a network, a place to go, and support from the key and necessary elements in the society.

After the war the story got prettied up with the myth about the king wearing a yellow star (never were any yellow stars in Denmark.) No one wanted to give the working class -- their trade unions and their party real credit. (Good Lord, the Communists actually controlled the Transport union which stole the gas.) It took a number of years for Danish Historians to get into the records and write a corrected version of the history, which they did in the 70's and 80's.

Let's see. I have worked full-time for 8 years on promoting a West Bank/Gaza Palestinian state. I work closely with every major Palestinian organization. In fact, anyone who doubts that I am a moderate on the issue might want to consult Palestinians ranging from Mohammed Dahlan (the Fatah leader in Gaza) to Ziad Asali, the head of the Palestinian lobby in the US, American Task force for Palestine.
On the other hand, you might want to ask AIPAC what they think of my views and my work to block their various Palestinian bashing resolutions in Congress.
Bottom line. The people who are arguing that I am not someone who fights hard for a secure independent Palestine next door to a secure independent Israel tend to be casual watchers of the Israel-Palestine scene ( kind of like followers of the World Cup) rather than people engaged in it.

I'm not sure where we're disagreeing really. When I talked about Europe and the world of Islam, my point was not to exclude the United States. I was speaking broadly about the persecution of Jews in the Christian West and the Muslim East. In this sense, I am placing the US as an offshoot of Europe, which by and large for most of its history it was.

On the question of non-Jewish Europeans saving Jews, absolutely. Particularly in the Low Countries, but in many others too.

On the other hand, everyone should of course watch The Sorrow and the Pity, which tells the darker side of the story.

South Africa was changed from an ethinic-centric state to a neutral state without totally dismantling the state or the Afrikanners' national existence. I think all that Arnold is arguing is that Israel should go through a transition something like South Africa did, from an ethnic-centric state to a state that gives its indigenous population full citizenship. Now, we all know (or should know) that Israel is different from South Africa. Most important, it does give its Arab citizens a full right to vote and participate in the government--something South Africa never did with its black populations under apartheid. However, it also has many policies designed to keep Arabs in the minority (and therefore to limit their political power). It won't allow Arab refugees to return to Israel. It holds millions of other Arabs in political limbo in the West Bank and Gaza while settling that territory with Jewish Israeli citizens. Its land laws have been used to limit Arab ownership of land, and other laws (like the recent laws prohibiting citizenship to Arab spouses) are widely held to be discriminatory.

Now maybe Jewish history--combined with Arab resistance to a Jewish presence in the Middle East--justifies all this. And maybe the threat to the Jews is so great that it really does require a Jewish state to keep Jews safe (there's certainly enough evidence to support this view). But this argument does require one to make an exception to what I think most liberals genuinely believe--that ethnic-centric policies that result in discrimination against a part of the population are not good.

What's happening (what's terrifying to many) is the breakdown of nationalities as more and more people travel and live in different countries, speak different languages, live different cultures (not a typo -- I mean live a culture, not live in a culture). Look at the protest against having signs and government documents in Spanish as well as English as the Spanish-speaking population grows.

Perhaps one of the things about Israel which militates against its natural legitimacy as a nation is that its kind of nationhood was already archaic, out of step with the times, at its birth in the '40's. An odd enclave with a whiff of colonialism which, elsewhere in the world, was disintegrating. In a world where nations have increasingly porous borders and are increasingly conscious of interdependence, Israel's form of nationalism no longer makes sense.

That's probably why people are losing patience with Israel's privileged existence, its movable borders, its militarism, its exclusivism. In most other nations, people are having to learn to live with other, accept and learn other languages and cultures, endure the oddities of alien religions, deal with marriage outside of the group, go with the flow. The world is changing.

Victor,

What exactly in my comment are you responding to?

Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate what you wrote.

You are having a problem with hsitory. No one ignored the Arabs in 1947. The land controlled by the British was partitioned between the Jewish and Arab inhabitants. Neither people owned the land the British did.

In 1948 the UN accepted the partition. The Palestinian Arabs refused to accept the partition and engaged in a civil war with the Jewish Palestinians now Israelis. They were defeated. Some of the land that was to be part of the Arab portion of the partition was lost in the war to the Israelis. The bulk of it was made part of Jordan and some part of Egypt. It remained that way until 1967.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

You jumped in with the factually inaccurate. Barak did accept the Clinton proposal at Taba. That was the two state solution. Unfortunately Arafat would not say yes and Clinton left office and Bush did not follow-up. The PLO launched Ansar Intifada guaranteeing both Sharon's election and Peace Now's collapse.

There is no doubt that much of Israel was ready for a deal with the Palestinians. They are just not going to do it at the point of a gun.

Your stand paragraph very strange. Hezbollah could stop the fighting right now. Instead they have hijacked Lebanon in order to attack Israel. More to the point you may believe in the fantasy of Arab brotherhood but there is no doubt that Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia would very much like to see Israel keep the Shiaa Hezbollah at bay and feeling defeated.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Daniel - Can we modify your statement to the effect that it is the existing GOVERNMENTS of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudia Arabia that would like to keep the Hezballah at bay - not the people. I bet if a poll was taken in those 3 countries, Hezballah would get 80% approval ratings.

Why is it that whenever the issue is raised the Arab states are never discussed. There are people in Israel from virtually all corners of the globe. There are people of different religions. How diverse is any of the Arab nations?

Israel is also not the only country that has a right of return. There seems nothing particularly unique about Israel except for the millenial history of non-Jews trying to murder Jews. That liberals don't get that speaks more about liberals that about Israel.

Israel also has peace deals with Egypt and Jordan. Whatever deal Israel makes about the West Bank it will not stop the violence directed at Israel precisely because of the problem that liberals don't like facing the Islamists. Ironically in this fight Israel is on the same side as many of the Arab governments.

Lastly, if you look at the business pages you will note that Israel is quite intergrated into the worlds economy. They have robust industries in high-tech, drugs and weapons to name three. Their markets and banking system is also part of the world community. The Arab world, with the possible exception of Dubai, has oil. It is really the Arab World that is isolated and falling behind. If the West every breaks its dependence on oil, a big if, would you rather be Israel or the Arab countries? Perhaps to break the cycle an Arab leader needs to step forward and say Israel is not our problem development is.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

A bit of a nonsequitur, I guess, but Dana Olmert (his daughter) was part of a demonstration today asking for an end to the fighting in Gaza and calling Halutz a war criminal.

Now picture Jenna chumming it up with Cindy Sheehan...

Anyway, that's the sort of thing that makes think, well, maybe there's hope in Israel after all.

Unfortunately, the best reference materials I have, which I bought at the Museum of the Resistance in Copenhagen, are in storage. On a practical level, I have to agree with Sara that there were some unique factors that let the Danes do what they did.

OTOH, I've discussed the evacuation with Danes whose parents were involved. The consensus seems to have been "why are you praising us? It was the right thing to do." That attitude comes across in the Museum, which is not limited to the Jewish occupation. There's a very matter-of-fact sense of ethics among the Danes I know, even if they are amused at my habit of addressing them in rudimentary Svensk while I try to talk to Swedes in Dansk.

While I've only spent a little time in Denmark, there seemed to be a national quirkiness, not just about ethics, but about being told what to do. As many know, Denmark was one of the first countries to legalize the sale of hard-core pornography, initially in special shops. A few years ago, an American video rental firm tried to set up in Denmark, but refused to carry pornography.

There was a very Danish reaction to this. I remember an interview with some protesters, including a minister. None of these people particularly wanted to see pornography, but the overwhelming sentiment is that no one had the right to tell Danes what they could see or how they can think.

While the recent cartoons about Muslims were in bad taste, and probably unwise, I can understand the Danish reaction better when I am reminded of a people saying "you have no right to tell us what to think."

AFAIK, Thomas Jefferson had no Norse blood, but I think he would have approved of Danes:

"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Thanks.

delete

The Palestinians were cheated by the British who reneged on self-rule (Balfour), but then tried to make up for that with the ‘39 White Paper; then the UN partition divided Palestine in half; after which the Arab-Israeli War started and Palestine lost about 80% of its territory; and so on. I am not going to argue the endless details of this history. The basics are well known anyway. If your snarky objection is not about history, but about the word “cheated” being juxtaposed with Israel and Jews, then you’re really reaching, aren’t you?

It isn't hard to call for the resignations of despots, but we saw that Saddam ignored that with a massive military force locked, loaded, and aimed at him. Calls would have to be nuanced, so they don't fall into the Arab street meme of "Zionist puppet."

Seriously, what could be said to these leaders to make them seriously consider resignation? Al Capone is reputed to have said "You can get more done with a smile and a gun than with a smile alone." How closely does the gun need to be pointed?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

I, too, applaud Mr. Rosenberg’s efforts promoting peace. But you can’t just dismiss out of hand those who disagree with your views on a discussion site. Honestly, I haven’t seen anyone question Mr. Rosenberg’s credentials or work on this thread.

He implies in his post that those who subscribe to his position are moderates, and then there are the extremists, who either support a full assault on Lebanon or destruction of Israel. I don’t think most observers fall into any of those categories. And I would add that a pro-Palestine supporter who would compromise is no more extreme than a pro-Israeli supporter who would compromise.

I would not deride the commenters here. I may be a Philistine (no pun intended), but there are many thoughtful and considerate (in its basic meaning) commenters here. Most are not just “talking out of ignorance and perhaps a hoped for vicarious experience of righteousness.”Of course, scholars and historians have an advantage and I learn a lot here. But, again, this is a discussion board.

The M.E. situation, especially, affects everyone and it is not just about Israel. If you only want the "players" debating the game, sites like this will die quickly. I don’t think that engagement in an issue is a prerequisite to analyzing or debating it. In fact, those that are "engaged" usually have an agenda or a biased perspective on the situation.

the dilemma that liberals and others who try to be consistent find when they bump their heads against Israel and an ethnic-based nation-state

Well, maybe they should be bumping more or less often. I fail to see how Israel is soooo extremely different in that then Egypt, Estonia, France, Greece, Germany, Azerbajan, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, The Phillipines, Ukraine, Vietnam, Macedonia, Albania, Cyprus.... Yes, Israel is on the extreme side of the balance in that, but they do indeed have minority citizens, I would venture a guess that they have more of those, percentage-wise, than Saudis do. (Note that Saudi Arabia is a relative recent nation-state as well.)

Indeed "new world" multi-ethnic states like U.S.A., Canada, Autralia, Venezuela are still quite rare. I am proud to be a citizen of one of them, and have a prejudice for them, but being reality-based, I don't expect the rest of the world to follow suit in my lifetime....matter of fact, a certain portion of Canada still fights to this day to separate, and we in the U.S.A. have sovereign pockets called Indian "reservations."

Those "liberals" with head bumps should honestly think about why this particular "ethnic-based" nation-state bothers them so much more than lots of others. I hope that they would get their mind around something like the Quebec separatist movement for a breather perspective and then rethink about the amount of obssession with Israel by so many.

We've done this before.

The Arab states do not have large populations that would otherwise have the right to return but do not because of their ethnicities.

If the Arab states were in this situation, the US would not support that.  I would not support that.  Liberals would not support that. 

Yes, Ireland may have a right of return. As far as I'm aware it isn't based on race or religion.

This may be the 11978th time, but could you please give an explanation of why you think a mono-ethic state is justified on liberal pronciples?

I happen to agree that a two state solution is the way forward, I also think that your reply to Arnold above is disgraceful.

Sorry, Zionista, the thread is so long I did not notice your response. And my memory is so short I am not so sure anymore. I think it might have been an earlier post or even a different thread in which you talked of negotiation with Abbas. I am just making a point I have made before, that while it is counterintuitive to deal with the hardline Hamas, they are precisely the group that can enforce security (if one can cometo a deal)...partly because they are the "bad" boys, the hardliners, and partly because they have some credibility with the Palestinian masses based on the election results.

I find this outrageous. I am putting a full response into a new comment thread.

Separate from the issue of whether it is anti-semitic to advocate Israel giving up its Jewish majority, there is the issue of whether that is the right position to take logically or in accordance with commonly accepted values.

I use the phrase "Jews losing their political majority in Israel". Supporters of Israel describe the same concept as "destruction" "eradication" or "dismantlement" of Israel. Josh has gone as far as to describe my phrasing as dishonest. I consider my phrase certainly more descriptive and less ambiguous than the others, though I admit it is less emotionally provocative.

Josh has said that most nations would not agree to be dismantled for peace. On the other hand, pretty much every country in Africa at the turn of the 20th century had a European political majority. Rhodesia, Algeria, Congo, and outside of Africa, India, Vietnam, Syria, etc. All of these countries saw their nations "destroyed" "dismantled" or "eradicated" in exchange for peace. In some cases the Europeans declared themselves independent of the European home country. That made no difference. The native populations still insisted on "destroying", "eradicating" and "dismantling" these independent nations without setting aside any territory for separate homelands.

South Africa is different from Israel, but what if it had not been? What if the Afrikaaners, instead of implementing Apartheid had partitioned South Africa - in a way that Afrikaaners got a disproportionate amount and value of land. What if the outgunned natives "forced" the Afrikaaners to fight a "defensive" war which left most black people outside of the border? Then denied the refugees reentry and citizenship because that would threaten White South Africa's Afrikaaner character. Then what if the relatively few black people who remained were given full voting rights.

Under those conditions, which I consider very similar to Israel, I would advocate a one-state solution. What is the argument that black people must accept an Afrikaaner state, still vastly disproportionate in its land allocation? Still militarily and economically dominant over the black states by design? I doubt blacks in Africa would accept that even if you can produce a good argument.

Lets now answer the question of why nobody talks about the Arabs. Does the US support a situation where people who want to return to Arab countries are denied reentry to a war zone because of their ethnicity? If so, I oppose that just as vehemently as I oppose it in the case of Israel.

Let's discuss the historical link of Jews to Israel. Was the link broken by Roman force? I'd say no. Rome was a brutal empire - far more brutal in the case of Carthage than in the case of Jerusalem - but for the most part the population of the region surrounding Carthage remained the same before and after the Romans came and left. The area surrounding Jerusalem, even after Rome attacked the city, did not get a new population nor was the link broken by that.

The link was broken when much of the native population converted, some to Christianity, some to Islam, some remaining Jews. Just as the Christians and other religions of Egypt and Libya broke their links to their previous ethno-religious identities when they converted to Islam

What has broken the link between Buddhists and India, where Buddhism started? The conversion of Buddhists to Hinduism and Islam. Do remaining Buddhists have the right to reestablish the link by force against the wishes of today's Hindu Indians? No.

The link between worshipers of Ra and Egypt? That was broken by the conversion of worshippers of Ra to other religions.

Let's assume that before Christianity, there were areas of Europe that practiced Wiccan religions. What broke the link? The conversion of Europeans to Christianity. Do Wiccans from other places have a right to reestablish the Wiccan populations in their historical homelands by force? No.

Now I want to address the Holocaust. The Palestinians should not pay the price for that. Hitler would be pleased to see the unity of European-derived nations in applying force to acquire land occupied by non-Europeans for this purpose. I've thought sometimes that Israel is Hitler's gift to the Palestinians.

What about the risk that if Arabs can outvote Jews, they will oppress them? I do not consider that risk as great as the risk the white South Africans took, when South Africa in one election became about 90% black. But before that election there were negotiations, laws and arrangements created to address that concern. The same thing can happen in Israel.

I believe the Arabs would accept a gradual phase-out of Zionism, where Israel would reach 50% Arab after nearly a generation, as long as the principle that their human rights to remain in or return to their home territory outweighs any ethnic, racial or religious right Jews assert to have a state with certain ethnic characteristics. Ultimately, the same way African Americans who do not want to live in a majority white country are able to buy plane tickets, Jews who consider the risk of living in an Arab country too great should be able to leave under unhurried conditions.

The US should primarily advocate a non-ethnic state in Israel for the same reason it eventually, led by Leftists and Liberals, came to advocate a non-ethnic state in South Africa. Because it is in line with US values.

It should, but may not, be a secondary concern that the US support of Israel as an ethnic state is extremely expensive for the US. Of course there are the direct payments to Israel and to corrupt regimes that ally with Israel but far greater is the cost of aligning US policy in the Middle East against democracy and in favor of tyrants on the condition that those tyrants cooperate with US support of Israel.

US troops in Iraq are hated, even by Shiites, largely because of the US relationship with Zionism. Bin Laden is outraged by the Saudi relationship with the US. Sadat was murdered by the Egyptian forerunners of Al-Qaeda because of the Sadat's relationship with the US. Why are Arabs so opposed to the US? A large part of it is that before the 1967 war, Nasser said that US support for Israel means that the US is Israel. Of course the relationship has gotten much more close since then.

US support for Zionism has put the US into a fight against a large proportion of the Arab people, with the Arabs having a fully rational and justifiable position. They will consistently vote to elect anti-American leaders when given the chance. Every dictator who grabs power will be tempted to turn anti-American to increase his legitimacy. The US can bribe dictators, at a high cost, prevent elections and punish democracy but this is the highest cost. The US opposes its founding values for the sake of supporting Israel's ethnic political structure.

M.J.

You're exactly right about about Israel being able to craft a definitive peace deal with Palestine at any moment it desires. It became fairly obvious when Clinton was in office that Israel was stalling on a peace deal.

Do all Irish Amerucans have a right to return? Fourth, Fifth, sixth... generation?

The comparison of Ireland's right of return with Israel's is a bit facile. Ireland's population a century ago was primarily Irish. Israel's population a century ago was primarily Arab. But in Israel, Arabs have no right of return, only Jews do. This is not an insignificant difference and it's intellectually sloppy to ignore it.

VLaszlo,

...partly because they are the "bad" boys, the hardliners, and partly because they have some credibility with the Palestinian masses based on the election results.

Which brings us back to the reality of Hamas' own military wing (Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades) independent of any centralized Palestinian authority.  This is similar to Israel's struggle with Hizbollah, in that there is no one-stop shop with which to negotiate, leaving a situation of perpetual grievance backed up with enough guns to escalate their conflict but not enough to triumph, and within an overall context of Arab rejectionism within a regionally united policy of political, economic and cultural isolation of Israel.

The international community helps sustain this conflict by arming all sides to the teeth, and bears some responsibility for bringing it to an end.  At this point there must be a top-down approach on the international level, whereby Israel receives unanimous recognition and normalization from the Arab League, in a process mediated by interested third parties that includes disarming the private armies of belligerent sub-parties to the overall conflict (Izzadin al-Qassam, Islamic Jihad, Tanzim Militia, al-Aqsa Martyrs, PFLP, DFLP, etc).

The slaughter of up to 100 innocent people in Qana, so far 35 of them children, as well as a hospital in another part of Lebanon, and the bombing of a house in Gaza are the news this morning. International condemnation, outrage throughout Lebanon, and abject apologies by Israel.

This is utter disaster. This militaristic agenda, with cover from the "Israel defending itself" crowd, is not good for Israel, or its patron, the US. Further isolated in international relations, and utterly despised in the world, with even Tony Blair fighting off a rebellion this morning in his own party as a result of his support for Bush's obstruction of a ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah.

Israeli "moderates" who are remaining silent out of misplaced empathy should know that "there comes a time when silence is betrayal," as Martin Luther King, Jr. so aptly said. It is time for you moderates to say "Enough. Stop the madness."

A ceasefire is only being obstructed by Israel, the US, and UK. Every other country demands it.

Further obstruction by Israel to an immediate ceasefire cannot stand. Stop the war.

Israel is no longer "defending" anything except its right to kill innocents. Hizbollah cannot be destroyed by war; it only feeds hatred and contempt for Israel every time another "QANA" occurs. Hizbollah is strengthened by it.

Israeli/US military aggression and occupation are failed policies. Stop bombing; stop shooting; stop killing. Start talking.

No, advocating one state for two peoples is not anti-semitic per se (unless Mel Gibson suggests it :-) )

I appreciate reading that.

[I still think Arabs are just as justified in not agreeing to start with two states as Californians would be if the UN decided to partition California, and I still think if there must be two states, Arabs have a reasonable and justifiable argument that the territory of the two states should be proportional to the populations of the two peoples and I still think that if millions of stateless refugees are the price for a Jewish state then the price is too high - but all that's for a different thread.] :)

I think discussion is hindered rather than helped if after the arguments are made any party declares that the other is morally deficient simply for holding its position.  It is good to see that you do not do that and I hope more people do the same.

If there is a concession you would like me to make in the spirit of civil discourse, just ask. 

For example I'll concede that before and even more after the Holocaust and continuing until today, Jews had and have an understandable desire for a Jewish state.

My problem is that there were people there who didn't want that and they had a right to say no.  If someone comes up with enough money or some form of barter that the Arabs, including the refugees accept without coersion as fair recompense I would be very happy and fully supportive to see that and at that point fully supportive of Israel, with the consent of the Arabs, being an ethnically Jewish state. 

I think I was also trying to address what you write about in the second paragraph. You write and have written about the importance of broad recognition and how that might affect the Israeli self-view and moderate its defensiveness born out of isolation, surrounded by a sea of hostility. i think you are right and any peace does have to involve an honest broker (is there anyone now who can qualify?) and a great deal of international participation.

But there is also the question of disarming the private militias and enforcing any agreement. As Aesop asked, who will bell the cat? In my opinion, if Abbas could have or would have we would probably be in a different place now. I think Hamas can but I am not so hopeful they want to (I know, it doesn't take a genius to figure this much out). But in some sense there are only two choices from the Palestinian side...some sort of accommodation with Israel or driving out the Jews altogether. And despite Hamas' hardline, and certainly very little indication they are willing to go the first route, there really isn't evidence that they are prepared to go the second route. They have honored extended cease-fires, for example.
Finally in your first paragraph you mention Arab rejectionism and its effect on the Israel state-psyche. I agree entirely. But there is also a strong element of Israeli rejectionism also responsible for a lot of the current problems. The whole policy of settlements on the West Bank was born from the idea that as long as there never was going to be peace with the Palestinians, one might as well expand Israeli territory; there are the repeated remarks that one hears from the Israeli administration that the "only language the Arabs understand is overwhelming military power". Israel has had overwhelming military power for the last 40 years; my impression is that the Arabs do NOT understand this either. If we are ever to have a peace out of this mess. then the rejectionists on both sides will have to be opposed.

MJ, a very reasonable post (as most of yours are). In a perfect world, a one-state solution, with everyone living together in peace would be the best. In the real world, a two-state solution will work just fine. So let's all get on with it! Why the endless delays?

Yes, you are right. My objection was partly to the juxtaposition of words. I guess even having said that, I do not think the description you gave was the best. I think it is certainly more complicated than your description of "Palestinians being cheated out their land". But, given your clarification one might expect greater hostility of the Arabs towards Britain and the UN. I mean this as a serious question: Why is all the animus directed at the Israelis, not the UN, and not so much Britain?

Zionista, I did not mean to imply that Jews don't have a right to live in the ME or to have their own state there. My point was simply that from an Arab point of view,accepting the position that the Jews--because of their suffering in Europe--must have a state in the ME even if it means the displacement of the Palestinians, seems to imply that Jewish rights are more important than Arab. The focus on providing a safe haven to Jews (at the expense of Palestinian homes) seems--to the Arab world--very biased in favor of Jews and against Arabs.

(Israel) is fighting a malignant ideology that reduces women to servitude, encourages the “honor killings” of rape victims, tortures and kills homosexuals, and would, if left unchecked, return the Middle East (and parts of Europe too) back to the dark ages.

If that is what Israel, and the Bush administration claim to be doing, in reality, they seem to be only empowering the 'malignant ideology' by killing thousands of innocent victims in the 'new' Bush Middle East. There are those old Newtonian laws of thermodynamics, that each action has an equal and opposite reaction, our violence and extremism begets opposing violence and extremism. 

C’mon guys. Yes, the narratives are wildly divergent but the facts are not and the history is probably less disputed than most histories with so much conflict at its core.

…it is certainly more complicated than your description of "Palestinians being cheated out their land".

“It” is not. I was explaining why I thought going back to the ’67 borders (though a good resolution now) is not giving back everything that the Palestinians lost in regards to their grievances. As far as animus directed at Israel, it doesn’t matter who the sheriff is that evicts you or serves foreclosure papers to you compared to the guy that actually takes your house. I try to be careful with my language with any subject. I do make a lot of mistakes but that’s more to do with trying to write on the fly in these online conversations.

That said, I will not edit myself to conform to every PC parameter that pronounces as taboo any meaning that can conceivably be read into your speech, regardless of your obvious intent. Language use is a potent and complex art. Think about what you are asking: Please don’t say, “Palestinians were cheated…” because any word related to cheating could correlate to “gypped” for gypsies or “jewed” for Jews and could be taken as a slur. In effect, that kind of editing changes the substance of what can be said.

In this case, Israel cannot be held accountable for ever cheating anyone (which I wasn’t saying anyway) because it’s a slur to say so. In truth, if I have any prejudice concerning Jews, it runs in the favorable direction. I wonder if you guys asked Mr. Greenbaum for clarification when he talked about those “lazy Arabs” last week. We do have to be careful with language. I think euphemisms like “collateral damage” are careless in that they hide meaning. If I wanted to cast epithets, wouldn’t I be zealous and want to absolutely clear about it?

First of all, I wasn't trying to have you edit your statement. I was bothered by the accuracy (originally a little by the Jewish-cheat stereotype). I am not accusing you of ANYTHING. I have repeatedly been called an anti-Semite by Greenbaum; he shoots that epithet around like buckshot; it is obnoxious and defamatory but he doesn't care. I scarcely bother to reply to his bigotry (against Arabs or Jews he disagrees with or anyone else who gets in the way of his hissy-fits).
But getting back to the point under discussion, I don't think the Palestinians were cheated out of their land. Colonialism brought on a whole slew of problems that have left pervasive inequities and injustices. Consider how oil wealth has been divided up by the colonialists. The existence of oil-rich emirates or the oil-rich "kingdom" of Saudi Arabias, or an independent Kuwait apart from the populous Arab population centers is not an accident; it is the residue of a deliberate imperialist policy to control oil-wealth on the part of Britain, France, the Dutch and the johnny-come-latelies like the US. It is easier to control the resource if all you have to satisfy is some self-interested, self-appointed, British -designated controllers and owners of the oil. To a much greater extent then, in my opinion, Britain cheated the Arab masses out of their major source of wealth. The situation in Palestine was, I repeat, more complicated, because there were different claims and conceptions on what to do with the British mandate. Undoubtedly because of the times (post WWII), the establishment of the Israeli state won. The Palestinian Arabs lost but were not more cheated than millions of other victims of imperialism.

Syria says Shebaa farms are Lebanese

"Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says Shebaa Farms is in Lebanon, but refuses to submit official documentation until Israel withdraws from the region, and Hizbullah has always stated disarmement is impossible while Israel occupies Lebanon. Negotiations to resovle the issue do not appear likely as of yet."

and again:
here

Absolutely right. Tell me, bluebell and co. What would President Feingold do if Detroit were in flames because a bunch of thugs took over the Canadian government and started firing rockets into the Renaissance Center from Windsor?

I might try to answer such a rhetorical question if your example, accepting the politics, made any sense. You don't seem to have any particular understanding of the power or capabilities of the weapons, certainly on the Hezbollah side but quite likely on the Israeli. The portable artillery rockets are blast-fragmentation and relatively unlikely to set anything on fire, unless they land on something already burning, such a stove or forge.

It is interesting that you cite Detroit, which, in 1967, did have a significant part in flames and random gunfire quite active. Riots, started in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, were bad in many cities, but worst in Detroit. They were beyond the capability of the police, and the governor sent in the National Guard.

Unfortunately, the Guard was poorly trained for urban operations and had extremely poor discipline with their firearms. There were some memorable cases where shots were reported to come from apartment buildings -- not confirmed and no visible shooter. The Guard opened fire on residential buildings with quadruple .50 caliber machine guns, designed for antiaircraft but used extensively in the Korean War for wiping out (along with dual 40mm antiaircraft cannon) large troop formations open.

Most people underestimate the power of even a single .50 gun. Suffice it to say that those guns made rubble of multistory brick apartment houses.

The situation grew so extreme, indeed with many fires in Detroit, that the Governor asked for Federal assistance. For the first time since Reconstruction, US Army troops, a brigade-sized element of the 82nd Airborne Division, was sent in to stop the violence. The Guard was federalized and put under Army control.

Once the Airborne was in action, they captured more armed gunmen, with weapons, than all the state forces had done up to that point. They also fired a tiny fraction of the number of rounds that had come out of state and local guns.

How did they do this? Speed, willingness to close with and dominate the enemy in an urban setting, much higher training (most had served in Viet Nam) and, to some extent, more helicopters and other equipment that they understood thoroughly. In a typical encounter when shots were reported from a building, two forces moved onto it. A ground security force sealed off exits, and a clearing force, usually delivered to the roof by helicopter, worked its way down to ground level, dropping off fire teams to secure each stairway below them, and then using covering and entry teams to force their way into apartments and search them. For any shooters in those apartments, the speed alone by which the soldiers came in was stunning. For those with a little faster reactions, they saw searchers -- and they also saw a security element covering them and completely ready to engage. Those that were even faster, and turned toward soldiers with weapon in hand, often found that their last sight as they went off to discover if there was an afterlife. Actually, in some of those cases where people tried to turn, the soldiers were fast enough to disarm.

There's no simple way to shoot down these rockets. We can identify the firing location before the rocket hits, and, if that location is not in the midst of civilians, return fire with a high confidence of destroying the launcher and its crew. This return fire would typically come from 155mm howitzers (cannon) rather than aircraft, because the radar can be linked to waiting cannon and counterfire on the way in a very short time.

In Iraq, the US does not blanket residential areas with fire when rockets come from them. It does not bomb the potential sources of supply. An example of the current doctrine for countering them is in the article "4-27 FA in Iraq: Applying D3A to
Counterinsurgency Operations" in the January-February issue of Field Artillery Magazine at the link given. Yes, this requires infantry in the area of the firing. To think that artillery and airpower alone can stop such rocket-firing terrorists is wishful thinking.

The US does lose soldiers, killed and captured. It does not, however, reply with massive firepower in civilian areas. During Viet Nam, North Vietnamese troops used the Ho Chi Minh trail in Cambodia and Laos. The US attacked those troops, under the internationally accepted doctrine of hot pursuit, when Cambodia and Laos could not stop them after being asked to do so. The US, however, bombed the enemy troops, and bboth used special operations forces and regular troops on the ground. They did not bomb the civilian electrical systems in Phnom Penh or Vientiane.

So, yes, Detroit has been in flames. We didn't destroy it to save it.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Wasn't the initial cause the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers. It seems you are as practiced as some in the government at shifting the causes of a war from moment to moment to suit circumstance. The Hezbollah did not rain down rockets on Haifa until Beirut was burning, right?

As a Canadian citizen, I have to say that I'm a little bit, well, perturbed, shall we say?, by the oft-cited hypothetical gem of dangerous terrorists firing missiles from Canada.

In the unlikely event that crazy militants started firing at the US from, say, some strategically advantageous place in southwestern Ontario, I hope to God the American public would not feel justified in bombing Lester B. Pearson Airport in retaliation, and razing to the ground entire blocks of residential Toronto.

But perhaps my optimism is misplaced.

The comparison is off base, I think. The IRA and Hizbollah, the Irish Republic and Lebanon, and the nature of the threats to England and Israel are fundamentally different.

The numbers of women and children "with their skin torn open" would cease to increase mmediately if Hizbollah gave up its arms (what exactly is their grievance with Israel, which has left Lebanon?) and the Lebanese government imposed its sovereignty in South Lebanon (not about to happen), and Hamas and Islamic Jihad stopped sending rockets and suicide bombers to blow up buses and kindergartens in Israel.

R

In the real world, a two-state solution will work just fine.

Are you sure?  I'm not sure there is a two state solution acceptable to both the Arabs and the Israelis.  And if there is not, then calls for a two state solution are just calls for continuing the status quo.

I don't think there is even a solution to the refugee issue that is acceptable to both the Arabs and the Israelis. The same holds true for territory, armed forces, water and resource rights, border controls, etc.

The enemy living among unarmed civilians is not an acceptable excuse for killing unarmed civilians. Only a sociopath personality would accept such an argument.

Imagine a scenario in which an armed criminal holds an unarmed family hostage in its home. Would it be considered acceptable to kill the family to eliminate the criminal? If it would be, then one does not have much respect for unarmed families.

The family’s innocence or not is not the important idea, whether it is armed or not is. Of greater importance would be whether the family is in collusion with the criminal, (Stockholm syndrome?) If not, there is not sufficient justification for killing the family.

If the criminal had a device that could detonate a bomb at a remote location, killing many families, then there might be justification for killing the family and the criminal; regardless the wholesale slaughter of everyone in the neighborhood to get to the criminal through the family held hostage would not be acceptable.

The answer rests upon how much deference there is for unarmed civilians. In any case, it should not be elective. It must be necessary if one believes that the innocent or unarmed civilians have a dignity that must not be denied or disrespected. After all, the goal leads, not the reality. Reality repeats what is known; therefore, it follows.

Leaders learn how to manipulate the masses through observation and learning the observations of masters, but to inspire the masses they must provide the illusion of achievable ideals. One achievable ideal is respect for the individual. The illusion is thinking everyone would do so, knowing that if most would not it could result in disaster.

Who believes that unarmed Lebanese civilians should be slaughtered so that Israel can get to Hezbollah? Who believes that over 400 civilian, (not Hezbollah,) deaths, with thousands more to follow due to damage to Lebanon’s infrastructure is acceptable in light of the explanation for the attacks? May I suggest, some Israelis, would be the only ones with a possibly legitimate rationalization for the level of retaliation. Is it acceptable to kill the Lebanese simply because Israel cannot get directly to Hezbollah?

FIRST MAN: “Why did you kill the owner of the apartment complex, he never did anything to you?”

SECOND MAN: “I haven’t been able to find the bastard who killed my wife, but the owner of the apartment complex rented an apartment to him.”

FIRST MAN: “You can’t kill the owner of the apartment complex, because the killer rented an apartment from him. That’s nuts.”

SECOND MAN: “Guilt by association, that’s how I see it. He let the killer move in, and if he hadn’t the killer would have lived in another complex. It could have changed everything. The killer wasn’t around, so I killed the complex owner. He was, at least, tangentially responsible.”

FIRST MAN: Amazing? (euphemism for negative cognitive dissonance)

Remember, we are not discussing a battle between equals militarily, because there is no doubt that Israel is dominant in this regard. Israel can end this by just stopping its assault. The Arabs have once again been reminded of Israel’s military superiority and its merciless attitude toward all who would threaten Israel. Their mission is accomplished. They must stop killing, now.

Not totally sure, but I think most Palestinians would now accept the 67 borders with reasonable compensation for the refugees. I think the most important factor in the success of the Palestinian state will be its economic viability--and any solution needs to have a plan for creating economic viability.

Thank you, Mr. Rosenberg, for your article. It has incited the best and most hopeful discussion on the multiplex problems we all face as Americans. And thank goodness for Condi, who, if my gut feeling is even close, is finally letting the scales be removed from her eyes. A cease-fire will be an extreme challenge to all parties. I doubt it will be successful, any more than past cease-fires. But it's the only thing worthwhile to work for now.

That the people whose removal was necessary to make way for a Jewish state were treated injustly and correcting that injustice is a stronger moral imperative than maintaining Israel's Jewish majority is considered in much of the world to be a very powerful argument.

Yes. Based on how Josh characterized your previous statements as asserting that you were discussing dismantling Israel it is also a powerful argument to him as well. As Josh would not consider discussing the dismantling of Israel, we can presume he also would vehemently oppose how Palestine was dismantled to create Israel.

that Israel is different from South Africa. Most important, it does give its Arab citizens a full right to vote and participate in the government--something South Africa never did with its black populations under apartheid. However, it also has many policies designed to keep Arabs in the minority (and therefore to limit their political power). It won't allow Arab refugees to return to Israel. It holds millions of other Arabs in political limbo in the West Bank and Gaza while settling that territory with Jewish Israeli citizens. Its land laws have been used to limit Arab ownership of land, and other laws (like the recent laws prohibiting citizenship to Arab spouses) are widely held to be discriminatory.

Now maybe Jewish history--combined with Arab resistance to a Jewish presence in the Middle East--justifies all this. And maybe the threat to the Jews is so great that it really does require a Jewish state to keep Jews safe (there's certainly enough evidence to support this view). But this argument does require one to make an exception to what I think most liberals genuinely believe--that ethnic-centric policies that result in discrimination against a part of the population are not good

Why go so far around the globe...this aptly describes the Jim Crow Laws of the South that were establish after the Civil War and lasted over 100years.  And we certainly know that the Civil Rights Act clearly established that discrimination against a part of the population is not good...so how come this is so difficult to grasp when the topic is Israel? Particularly, when we know that Jews loss their lives as civil rights activists in the South.

MJ is exactly right when he says that the lack of a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians IS a root cause in the current violence, and that Hezbollah's case would be severely undercut if the enmity between the Israelis and Palestinians did not continue to fester. He is further correct in advocating for U.S. involvement in reaching that solution. The Campaign for American Leadership in the Middle East (CALME) is a major voice for this position, and I hope readers will join me in signing CALME's petition calling on the Bush Administration for active and sustained involvement in reaching a solution: www.mideastcalm.org

Howard says:

Note the way they treat people as pawns, and, where the psychodynamics can get complex, they may or not have a concept of right and wrong -- but right is only that which fits into their belief system.

It seems to me that this statement can be equally applied to States and terrorist organizations alike.  I'm remembering George Orwell's writing on the corruption of language, and Newspeak. Musing on the transformation of a Department of War into a Department of Defense and the destruction of innocents being euphemized into collateral damage is in danger of driving me closer to despair. 

Certainly our government hasn't hesitated to manipulate language as a way to manipulate people--to pawnify them.  George Bush has been nominated Master of Duckspeak, and of course many would argue that what Howard says about the concept of right and wrong applies to the people running the show in Washington these days.

One of the things which makes it easier to objectify people - to pawnify them - is the growing spatial distance between cause and effect.  I push a button over here, the effect of that happens over there and the reality of what I've done is distanced from me.  I feel less responsibility for what I do not see (out of sight, out of mind).  Of course this has been going on for a very long time (I shot an arrow into the air, it fell to earth I knew not where). 

What may be new is the speed with which images of effect are transmitted and how these images feed into the cycle.  If we consider temporally three things,  (a) a rocket is fired (b) a target is destroyed and (c) images of the destruction are transmitted far and wide by the media, I hazard that the time between (b) and (c) is not infrequently shorter than the time between (a) and (b).  We saw some of this in Viet Nam.  We see more of it today.  Images turn bystanders into observers, and observers, just perhaps, may occasionally modify the behavior of the actors. 

This is a feeble straw, but I grasp it to give me at least some hope that the pawns will be transformed back into people.

Mike

Wikipedia, as usual, is choc-a-bloc with interesting links to other Orwelliana.

whiterosebuddy,

Nope. This is  simply the glaring flaw in your reasoning that you deny the existence of a Palestinian state. What is clearly known is that there was not any state of Israel.

I know you didn't miss it, because you cut and pasted that part of my comment in your reply....

"(there was never any modern independent state in the area under discussion at all)" -- me.

Yep, we'd have to go back pretty far to reach Jewish sovereignty in what we know today as the modern state of Israel.  But where in the historical record is this Palestinian state you write of?  Who was its premier?  What was its capital city?  What was its national anthem?  What was the nature of its civil society?  Please educate us all.

The enemy living among unarmed civilians...

Don't they always? In every country in the world, the military are almost always dispersed among the civilian community, either in the form of military bases adjacent to, or inside, civilian cities. Also, a great many service men and women spend long periods of time at home with their civilian families. Also, in war time, the military regularly requisitions civilian property, and billets soldiers in civilian homes.

The charge against Hezbollah, that they are sneakily hiding behind civilians in southern Lebanon, is a charge that can be levelled at every single military outfit in the world.

While we still haven't quite gotten to the Ministry of Love (pause for Bill and Monica jokes), I think we had a problem since the National Security Act of 1947, which consolidated the War and Navy Departments and created the Air Force, CIA, and Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Clearly, the new cabinet department needed a name, and I personally wouldn't have objected to the traditional Department of the Army name, the War Department, being kept.

One Orwellian concept, not especially new, but perhaps an enabler for Congress to avoid its oversight responsibiity, is that "war" seems to become a word we cannot say. We don't declare war, we pass Authorizations for the Use of Military Force. We didn't have a Korean War, but a police action, admittedly with the criminals and cops carrying very big revolvers. The longest war in American history goes back certainly to presidential decisions in 1961, arguably to 1947 or earlier, and was mostly recognized as authorized by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. I was rather amazed that Congress subsequently passed something called the War Powers Resolution, but they reassured me by subsequently ignoring it for most situations.

Robert E. Lee was usually a wise man (no comment about Gettysburg). "It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it." Hiding the very name "war" avoids some of the terror, which may not be healthy.

Actually, the time cycles of which you speak are even faster. Assuming the Israelis are using standard US Army doctrine against rocket artillery, the rocket shows up on Firefinder (AN/TPS-36 or -37) radar almost instantly, and the radar plots its trajectory back to the launching point in seconds. In a combat zone (i.e., when there is no particular danger of causing civilian casualties), those coordinates immediately are sent to the computers of 155mm howitzers or M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, and a salvo that will devastate the area around the launcher is often on the way before the rocket hits. US offensive artillery doctrine is to have essentially everything self-propelled, and moving at high speed within 30 seconds of firing. The Israelis appear to use more air strikes than artillery in counterbattery, which has both advantages and disadvantages compared to artillery, the biggest concern being that unless the aircraft happens to be over the rocket launcher, it can't respond as fast as cannons.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

the IRA does not threaten England, which comprises the southern part of the island it shares with Scotland. The IRA's objective is on Northern Ireland, a separate province of the island shared with the Republic of Ireland, a separate country from 'England' or Britain.

Last time I read it, the UK stood for 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Great Britain consists of England, Wales, and Scotland. Northern Ireland is part of the UK, and its citizens enjoy the same rights as any other UK national. There are, furthermore, something like a dozen MPs in the UK Parliament that were elected by Northern Ireland.