Realists
I understand the desire of New York Times columnists to appear realist. Writers who advocate for US intervention to induce Israeli-Palestinian peace, in column after column, month after month, can get to look, well, idealist. Writers are assumed to be wimps anyway.
Still, something strange is happening. On two occasions in as many weeks, columnists who have written passionately about the US pushing peace have argued, in effect, that the Obama administration should just disengage. Last week, Tom Friedman wrote that it's "time to call a halt to this dysfunctional 'peace process,' which is only damaging the Obama team's credibility." Today, Roger Cohen sees Tom Friedman's bid, and raises him, quoting Israel's most widely respected political scientist to boot:
Obama, who has his Nobel already, should ratchet expectations downward. Stop talking about peace. Banish the word. Start talking about détente. That's what Lieberman wants; that's what Hamas says it wants; that's the end point of Netanyahu's evasions.It's not what Abbas wants but he's powerless. Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist, told me, "A nonviolent status quo is far from satisfactory but it's not bad. Cyprus is not bad."
I have abiding admiration for Shlomo Avineri (and Friedman and Cohen as well), but there is something in this realism that lacks common sense. For it assumes that the status quo can remain peaceful, especially if "we stop talking about peace." That Palestinians can pursue some under-the-radar economic evolution, or that Israelis and their "security wall" can force things to remain quiet when they have to; that Obama and America are better off letting the sides pursue detente, not peace--as if "some non-violent status quo" will hold; as if only idealists like Obama are making the great the enemy of the good.
Look, this is all dangerously wrong--and familiar. Moshe Dayan, too, had proposed an "open bridges" policy--in effect, the status quo occupation, in which Palestinians accommodate to economic peace, while Israel does its thing in Jerusalem and with settlements--and the 1973 War blew it up. This has happened again and again since. And today, too, the status quo is a powder keg, and the blasting caps are, among other things, "what Lieberman wants" and "what Hamas says it wants." Is a realist someone whose purchase on reality is so great there is nothing to learn from experience?
- The wall has made a pathetic ghetto of the nearly 300,000 Arabs of Jerusalem. A couple of nights ago, a gang of youths from East Jerusalem had some fun--so my young friend, the journalist Benjamin Joffe-Walt, told me--attacking night-clubbers in Nachalat Shiva, right in front of his apartment, with electric cattle prods. The last two terror attacks against Jews in Jerusalem came from neighborhoods within the wall. South Central LA anyone? Do we even need more disturbances on the Temple Mount to get things to blow?
- Nor, as I've argued again and again, can the Palestinian economy grow at nearly the rate it needs to--certainly not "like Cyprus"--if the occupation is not ended. IDF presence is largely meant to secure settlements in Area B and C--belts of land that surround Palestinian towns. So the occupation is a kind of antibiotic against Palestinian entrepreneurship. The Palestine Authority is much more likely to just collapse, or fold up, than engage in some "detente" with an ongoing occupation, with its closure regime. Read Shaul Arieli's urgent piece in today's Haaretz, which argues that the status quo, leading to the PA's "disintegration," would open the door to Hamas; or read Steven Cook's thoughtful piece in, of all places, The New Republic.
- IDF units sympathetic to Greater Israel are already showing an unwillingness to follow any orders to evacuate settlements. This tendency will only grow.
- If the West Bank blows, so will the Arab towns of Israel's little triangle, which Lieberman has already defined as alien to Israel (unless its residents, who have committed to Hebrew, also swear to uphold Israel as a "Zionist-Jewish" state). And when these towns blow, we will be in a Balkan-like civil war, with all the trappings: sniping, ethnic cleansing, terror on all sides.
- Oh, and remember Hezbollah's and Hamas's missiles? If the Mubarak regime in Egypt falls to Islamist rioters, will that be good for America, let alone Israel? No doubt, such riots will have a formal cause in Islamist attitudes toward the West; but will not the efficient cause likely be yet more pictures on Al-Jazeera of Israeli bombs dropping on civilian buildings where missiles are launched? Will Mubarak protect the Israeli embassy yet again?
And as for Shlomo Avineri's sense of things, a little history. When I first got to know him, as a grateful graduate student in 1972, he chastised the peace movement that advocated for a Palestinian state. No, he said, Dayan's "open bridges," preserving the status quo, was the only realistic way to go. When Avineri was Director General of the Foreign Ministry under Yigal Allon in 1976, President Sadat sent Israel his first direct message that he was interested pursuing a comprehensive deal. The foreign ministry (among others in Prime Minister Rabin's government) rejected the overtures, since the National Religious Party, which was part of the coalition, had threatened to bolt if the West Bank would become a focus for any negotiation. Avineri, among others, supposed Sadat's initiative was unrealistic.
There is, in other words, a kind of realism that you can never look stupid peddling. It basically assumes the present exercise of force is always better than the prospect of making peace with political enemies, because the other side can never be trusted; that, Hobbes or no Hobbes, it is vain to try to conceive of institutions in which trust is hedged about by policing, clear commitments and simple justice. I am not sure why we need "political scientists" who do not help us conceive these very institutions, especially in the face of violence and threats. In any case, the only psychological force more powerful than realism seems to be repetition compulsion.
I have abiding admiration for... (and Friedman...
ewhewww...
That's what I love about our moneyed classes. No matter how much they pretend to disagree, they always "admire" each other.
I always appreciated the value of class consciousness.
November 17, 2009 8:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why do people quote Friedman as offering sensible advice on Arabs? He wants to stop importing oil to crush Arab economies and he wants the US to disengage from the "peace process"--but not from American guarantees to Israel. Result: We wait while Israel takes every decent part of the West Bank.
November 17, 2009 9:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why do people quote Friedman as offering sensible advice on Arabs?
Do you think the NYT pays columnists according to how sensible they are?
Or according to how much they help the NYT perform its role at the newspaper that keeps the record and the boundaries of the thinkable safe for corporate America?
November 17, 2009 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I like nothing better than a NYT story about Iranian deceit with lots of quotes by Israelis. Deliciously ironic.
As FDR allegedy said when he appointed Joe Kennedy head of the SEC, "it takes a thief to catch one." (paraphrase.)
November 17, 2009 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't it like the academia version of "No offense, but...". (as in: No offense, but your wife is a whore)
Here M. Avishai says: I have abiding admiration for these deluded, misguided fools.
November 17, 2009 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Of course it is, but the question is how is that politeness distributed.
But you should pay attention to who is deserving of "admiration" and courtesy even when they advocate and justify mass murder (in fact, even when they actually participate in mass murder), and who can be safely ridiculed, bullied, rejected as totally insane or irrelevant, or simply completely ignored.
That tells you more about how the discourse is structured, and about our masters' abiding solidarity than their actual professed opinions.
November 17, 2009 11:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
My God, can one not appreciate what one learns from another over the years and yet disagree publicly about this or that important thing?
November 17, 2009 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
What one learns from Tom Friedman? Seriously, you learned something from Friedman? What was it? How to become an authority by selling neo-liberal pro-war ideology coated in the progressive sugar de jour? How to spend two days in a country, speak to a couple of rich kids or nephews of the local macher, and come back as an 'expert' on what the people of said country "really want" from America?
Everybody appreciate that you disagree with Friedman. But surely just because a guy advocates mass murder does not mean he should be shunned, should he? We're polite, aren't we. By the way, I personally disagree with Dietrich Eckart on a lot of things. Still, I try to be polite. Why not? It's not like we should let petty academic hair splitting get in the way of what really matters to us.
November 17, 2009 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I cringed at this too, but perhaps we can give Avishai the benefit of the doubt here, as in he admires Friedman for pushing Israeli concessions to Palestinians rather than for his other, especially economic views. In any case, it is sometimes possible to view issues in isolation, and Avishai's post is only about Israel-Palestine. Plus I'm sure he wouldn't profess admiration for various right-wingers who are treated by the powers that be as "mainstream."
November 17, 2009 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Peace may go the way of freedom: "freedom's just another word for nothin' left to loose" (Joplin).
Everything may be lost at the moment.
There is an abundance of the toxins of power in the world system, to the point of corrupting it beyond the beyond.
November 17, 2009 9:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
""freedom's just another word for nothin' left to loose" (Joplin)."
Not Joplin. Kristofferson.
November 17, 2009 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
From the standpoint of America's foreign policy and where our national security and defense is concerned, the Palestinians should declare for themselves their nation-state, and followed by their appeal to the United Nations for their international recognition. If so, here is what I think will happen here in the USA.
If President Obama does NOT exercise a "veto" in the Security Council, the international community will come to the aid of Palestinians and provide some serious and sizable economic assistance. And we here in the USA, we will all be thankful that the "cooler heads" have prevailed in our foreign policy regimen.
If President Obama DOES exercise its "veto", all hell will break loose. And how will this manifest itself?
Imagine the turbulent political times of the 1960s and 1970s and where "the man" was perceived as both bigoted and racist. Thus, Obama as "the man" will suffer the political fallout for his re-election in 2012, and it will not be pretty, especially here in the Sonoran Desert. Obama's Legacy will become institutionalized for a Second-Rate Leadership Model.
Consequently, the traditional storyline for supporting the "underdog" and in this case, the Palestinians, will turn the conversation in the Spanish-speaking community--in favor of the Palestinians. And the Democratic Coalition of American Jewish activists and Chicano activists, will be at political odds since the notional for a "pro-Israel" and "pro-peace" will NOT continue as the status quo. As such, there are simply more votes in the Spanish-speaking community. And I can envision that AIPAC will 'interfere' on Immigration Reform as the tool or fulcrum for keeping the finger in this unrelenting dike for progress. Thus, 11 million of the 12 million "legalized" immigrants will become staunch Democrats and which poses an even larger problem for our fellow citizens in support of Israel. And as I said above, America's politics will get 'really' ugly.
And lest I forget, a few and reputable voices in the Chicano Community are already calling for Clinton's resignation for her "incompetence" relative to our national foreign policy in the Latin America Region. And these voices are not 'chump change'.
Jaango
November 17, 2009 9:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not detente. Leave them to stew in their own juices. It isn't our problem. Take our guns and money away. Demand they give up their nukes as we would any other 3rd rate country that managed to get nukes. Treat them as the renegade country they are.
November 17, 2009 9:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is really the right attitude. We have to stop asking the Israelis to do things and to start telling them what to do. We can't afford to keep letting Israel's problems be our problems.
November 17, 2009 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
If Israel is such an economic "miracle," why do they even need American aid?
November 17, 2009 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Demand they give up their nukes as we would any other 3rd rate country that managed to get nukes.
And how is it that you propose to take Israel's nuclear weapons away? The United States government manifestly lacks the capacity even to get Israel to stop building small domiciles in the West Bank. And yet you suggest we "demand" that Israel give up hundreds of nuclear weapons?
Honestly, mental clarity and political realism about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have recently been in very short supply around these parts.
November 17, 2009 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
The situation is completely different from 1973. None of the adjacent states is preparing to attack Israel. They are all content to let the Israelis and Palestinians achieve whatever modus vivendi they can within the current borders.
November 17, 2009 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent point.
November 17, 2009 10:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
I almost lost my breakfast this morning reading Cohen's column. He admits defeat of Justice and is resigning himself to putting Palestinians on reservations, forever stateless, and assigned to the dustheap of history as helpless subjects of Israel.
In October when I was in Israel for the High Holy Days, the people I talked with felt that with Obama giving in to Netanyahu, the permanent colonization of the West Bank could be completed within 5 years. This has always been the Likud plan.
Is this kind of injustice going to be allowed? There are very few voices in Israel willing to take a stand against ghettoizing the Palestinians. In America with such prominent people as Obama, Friedman and Cohen admitting defeat of Peace and Justice, how will the Israeli onslaught be stopped?
Even in our own TPM community I see formerly moderate voices like bslev and armchair guerilla lately only concerned that no one say anything nasty about Israelis. When the Israeli "reservation" plan is complete, will they come to Israel's defense - it's not Israel's fault, it's just the Palestinians tough luck to be treated like animals in a pen.
Everyday I bow my head and pray to G-d to deliver my people from committing this atrocity. Yet every day it seems like Israel and my Jews move several more dumans in that direction. What is happening to the moral underpinnings of my people and my religion? May G-d have mercy on our souls.
November 17, 2009 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why are you shocked? Moshe Dayan said the Palestinians would have to live like dogs--or leave. There is nothing new here.
What is probably most disturbing to you--who strikes me as a Righteous Jew--is that the rationalizations for this cruelty just aren't convincing anymore.
The Palestinians I know don't want sympathy. They just want the Israeli boot off their throats.
Are you prepared to boycott Israel to fight this brutality?
November 17, 2009 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jdledell:
Excuse me? This American's views about the Middle East haven't changed a bit, not one fucking bit. Please don't use me as a prop to show what other Jewish people are thinking as opposed to your what's going on in your own head.
I reserve the right to discuss policy if, where and when I please. I reserve the right to challenge people for comparing the State of Israel to Nazi Germany if, where and when I please as well. I've written quite a number of posts about policy and zionism and the rights of Palestinians and Jews at the Cafe over the years JD. I don't have to justify my decision to write fewer posts in the current milieu at the Cafe with you or anyone else.
I haven't agreed with some of the things you have written JD, most of all about your evolving description about what you witnessed at a West Bank checkpoint--I'll leave you to discuss that if you choose. But I don't write about that when you're not around or participating in the discussion. Indeed, I've tried to overlook that and give you every benefit of the doubt because of our correspondence relationship and what I understood to be a shared and mutual respect.
I respect your right to post where and when you choose. I am entitled to the same respect. I am not your Jew prop.
Bruce S. Levine
New York, New York
November 17, 2009 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am not your Jew prop. now that's funny.
the middle-east peace process is a dialogue between the israeli and the USA which is ball-chained to AIPAC. in this discussion, the palestinians are just props, background scenery.
when the I-P conflict is discussed in the US media and there is a palestinian voice to be heard there must be a jew prop there next to the palestinian to validate or invalidate the palestinian. example, barghouti and balzac with john stewart.
November 17, 2009 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce - I do repect you and miss the insights you provided in the past. However what I read lately is a lot of anger just as you probably read a lot of despair from me. So be it.
As far as the checkpoint issue, it is something I beat myself up more than you can imagine. I was at a symposium that had Pat Lang on and during the Q&A and heated discussion period I got caught up in embellishments(whether out of goading or ego, I don't know) and found myself trapped into posting on his web site by his supporters. I feel deep seated shame and you can consider this a mea culpa and an apology.
November 17, 2009 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
JD:
I'm not looking for an apology, and I don't wish to clutter Bernie's thread with anything else, but thanks and no harm no foul.
Bruce
November 17, 2009 4:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
But JD is correct. Your rhetoric has become more angry and defensive in the last six months. I attribute it to cognitive dissonance that many progressive Zionists have experienced since the Gaza massacre. You know when reality conflicts with ideology, ignore reality and reaffirm ideology.
November 17, 2009 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, since I've barely posted for the last six months, I don't see where you're getting your information from. Certain things and certain posters and bloggers do make me angry, indeed. I will say, without apology, that comparisons between the Nazis and the State of Israel make me very angry, and I have been angry in my posts over the last couple of days accordingly. I will also concede, because I'm a man who doesn't hide in anonymity and tries to be honest, that the Gaza experience has been very tough for me as a supporter of the State of Israel, but I will also state that I spent very little if any time defending the decision to invade Gaza and the manner in which it was invaded. The record is available.
On the other hand, I have always questioned the good faith of many contributors here who appear to be oddly obsessed with the State of Israel. For at least some posters I think it's a vestige of the way Jews have been looked at for generations, and I'm not afraid to say that either (because, again, I'm an honest guy). Perhaps its cognitive dissonance at work there too for the haters of Israel, but, unlike you, I loathe to dabble in psychoanalysis from afar.
In certain (allegedly) progressive circles, it's beyond weird to me but hardly surprising to call it cognitive dissonance when someone responds with disgust to analogies between Nazism with Israel. But perhaps that's why so many folks who peddle such analogies end up typing on websites like this in blissful anonymity, festering in a circle jerk of like-minded thinkers.
November 17, 2009 6:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Syvanen:
By the way, since you're so interested in projecting my feelings about Gaza to fit your anonymous but steadfast political perspective, here's one of my blogposts from last winter. 104 comments, no bloodletting, lots of passion, and with people with all different perspectives chiming in. That's the kind of contribution I like to think I've made around here. Y tu'?
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/bslev/2009/01/the-israel-policy-forums-state.php
P.S. Some say that in addition to a nasty temper, my other flaws include, but are hardly limited, to arrogance and self-righteousness. But I try.
Bruce S. Levine
New York, New York
November 17, 2009 7:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here is a smart American Jewish guy who just compared Israel to Nazi Germany.
Challenge This!
November 17, 2009 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh my, you found a Jewish guy to say some stuff, and a smart one too. Hell I thought we wuz all smart. Well, I don't think that Bernie wants a debate in his thread about whether there is any daylight left between his country and Nazi Germany. On the other hand, if you'd like me to read and discuss the piece you link to, let me know where you'd like to meet to chat about it tough guy; I can't seem to find the name "evildoer" in the phone book.
Bruce S. Levine
New York, New York
November 17, 2009 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
nah. Why bother? It makes you angry, and I don't want you to be angry. It just that your policing of what is legitimate to say about Israel makes me angry, so I reciprocate.
I guess we're different. I guess what Aaron describes in that quote doesn't make you as angry as the fact that he says it.
My blog is on line at http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com. Whenever you feel like being angry, you can visit. But take your blood pressure medicine in advance, cause we lay it like it is, with no discount for anybody's feelings.
November 17, 2009 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the invite evildoer. In truth, my bloodpressure is fine. When I get worked up the principal physical manifestation is sleeplessness. Perhaps we can discuss that at your blog sometime without getting angry, and maybe we'll work our way up from there. Peace.
November 17, 2009 6:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Avishai outlines some of the things that could go wrong if there is no Palestinian State soon. What he leaves out is how bad things could be if there is a Palestinian State:
Hamas takes over the West Bank and leads a sovereign nation that has full access to imported weapons. They build up and start a war. Tens of thousands of people die. Maybe hundreds of thousands.
If not Hamas, then a Syrian proxy. Same result.
Or do you think that the PA/Fatah will defeat Hamas? Or that Hamas will moderate?
With the Arabs split and both sides differing so much from Israel, there isn't a whole lot that can be accomplished, anyway. Abbas even refuses to negotiate, so what can anybody do?
The idea that Israel will stop all settlement construction in return for nothing was never realistic. Even if Abbas makes a counter-gesture in return for the partial stoppage, there is really no way forward now.
Perhaps after Abbas is replaced the situation will appear in a new light. Possibly a better light.
November 17, 2009 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Friedman is one of the all-time greatest at adeptly leaping from bandwagon to bandwagon without bothering to look back at how many crashed and burned after he jumped off. The shredding of his incredible gullibility on Iraq, by Matthew Yglesias, is a classic case in point. In this instance, the Fried Man offers a rhetorically polished but pitifully flimsy figleaf to all tokenly pro-mideast-peace Jews in America by arguing, in essence: You can't claim victory, AIPAC, we already surrendered to you.
November 17, 2009 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bernard, you are clearly right about the unreal and uncomprehending pseudo-realism of Friedman and Cohen. But there is a lot of this kind of thing going around these days. I suspect that a lot of American liberals are experiencing Netanyahu Derangement and Denial Syndrome. They haven't been able to come to grips intellectually or emotionally with how profoundly Netanyahu and Lieberman have changed the game.
The world view of many mainstream pro-Israel liberals in the US has been based on a cluster of denials and self-deceptions. They have usually convinced themselves that most Israelis really want a fair peace, deep in their hearts, but that these forlorn peace-lovers are embroiled, despite their better intentions, in a cyclical conflict from which they cannot extricate themselves. Liberals have then usually convinced themselves that all that is lacking is some paternal American hand-holding and "engagement", to guide the parties into making the peace that they all really want anyway.
These liberals were also accustomed to a universe in which Israel's diplomatic posture toward the outside world was heavily larded with distraction, double-think and double-talk, and where the settlement of the West Bank was routinely denied and dissembled, and obscured by misdirection. If the colonization of the West Bank was defended at all, it was portrayed as an accumulation of disposable chips for some inevitable land-for-peace swap, or at worst depicted as an unintended by-product, produced by "extremists", of a non-colonial military occupation that was required for legitimate security needs. Israel used to help its liberal supporters maintain their self-respect by suggesting in a hundred different ways that the colonization wasn't on purpose, and wasn't a deliberate end-in-itself for the Israeli state and public.
But Netanyahu has ended all that by dropping the masks.
A truce or detente is precisely what Obama has already called for. And these calls failed spectacularly. Surely a pre-condition for any kind of peace settlement at all is, at a minimum, a preliminary truce based on the freezing of the facts on the ground. Obama's people calculated that, given Israel's previous stance of officially denying aggressive and expansionist aims, once Washington openly called for such a truce Israel would have no choice but to accept it.
But Netanyahu simply said, "No". He made it absolutely clear that Israelis, or at least the majority faction that put him and Lieberman in power, do not want any sort of peace or truce that stops the expansion in its tracks or reverses it. Their aim is to continue to expand until they have achieved their territorial ambitions in their full scope.
Now how much clearer does all this have to get before the clueless denizens of J Street and Friedman-land put two and two together?
Netanyahu has effectively declared a permanent war of conquest against Palestine. It's right out there now, on the surface, in the open. No double-talk about the security requirements of a mere military occupation; no posturing about down the road, land-for-peace promises; no blaming the settlements on a disreputable extremist faction. Israel's position toward East Jerusalem and "Judea and Samaria" is finally clear and open: they want it; and they're going to take it. That's that.
This kind of unanticipated and brazen assertiveness and aggression has fried the brain cells of a lot of poor old liberals, particularly some sadly disoriented liberal American Jews, whose sense of realty is dependent on the maintenance of polite illusions and mythology. These liberals, when faced with open and unapologetic aggression, experience mental paralysis. They then flail about looking for magical solutions, extraterrestrial gifts from beyond that might solve the problem for them - supernatural possessions that will make the expansionist power stop expanding of its own accord; the conjuring power of words and statements and position papers; the idolatrous image of an American president who can bring a halt to aggression through the sheer bravado of his baritone, etc.
But in the face of aggression, there are really only two choices: you either have to oppose the aggression with credible coercive countermeasures, or you have to accept it. That's all.
Friedman has no solutions; Cohen has no solutions; Ben-Ami has no solutions; MJ Rosenberg has no solutions. They are paralyzed and lost. The world has forced themselves into the position of having to make a choice that they are emotionally unequipped to make. These recent ramblings are a syndrome, not a solution.
November 17, 2009 7:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan, as usual you are eloquent beyond what might be expected in the precincts of "Comments." I would plead guilty-as-charged except for one matter, which I don't think you are seeing. There is another reality in this country, and another half of Bibi's brain, which may be thrown into a file called "the economy." The kind of diplomatic isolation a "permanent war of conquest" entails will inevitably severely undermine Israel's capacity to generate an economic life, levels of growth, etc. to contain the country's rising social tensions, poverty, educational system dysfunction, and so forth. Read Aluf Benn in today's Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1129016.html. I'm not sure I buy the whole analysis, but I have believed for some time, and probe this seriously in my last book, that the real social brake on greater Israel is greater Tel-Aviv, that is, the world of Israel's elites who can't stand where their country is going, or that their sons and grandsons have to do duty in the West Bank. The sheer numbers of our homegrown ultras may mean we are running out of time. But there is a secular-democratic, Hebrew-cosmopolitan reality here that is feeling as cornered by "settlers" as the Ramallah middle class is feeling cornered by Hamas. With the right kind of international support, they will come out of their depression, lethragy, and nighclubs by their hundreds of thousands. You cannot say what "Israel" wants watching Likud and AIPAC any more than you can say what America wants watching FOX after W.'s 2004 election.
November 18, 2009 4:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
We started with Avishai's admiration for Friedman and now we end with it! I guess it's possible to imagine the bourgeoisie and their global economy as Messiah, but somehow the red-meat-eating localists on FOX News, in the West Bank settlements, and in Gaza seem more . . . how should I put it? . . . hungry.
November 18, 2009 7:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well observed.
November 18, 2009 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink