Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Israel and/or Palestine Page 8 of 10

Jews to Be a Nationality

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On December 11, 2019

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Sigh

President Trump will sign an executive order defining Judaism as a nationality, not just a religion, thus bolstering the Education Department’s efforts to stamp out “Boycott Israel” movements on college campuses

This is, of course, the standard anti-semitic smear of the 19th and 20th centuries: That Jews cannot be loyal to their country, because they are loyal to other Jews first. This was also said, by the way, of Catholics, because of the Pope, and it’s why John F. Kennedy becoming President as a Catholic was a big deal, and why he felt he had to explicitly state that he wouldn’t take orders from the Pope.

But all those Jews, and there are many, who have been so vehement in support of Israel that they say, in effect, that any criticism of Israel is criticism of Jews and therefore anti-semitic have also brought us here.

Trump just believes them. The interests of Jews and Israel are identical, to him. Just like they are to the Anti-Defamation League.

This is, of course, a horrible thing. It will lead, in time, to many people being sure that Jews are traitors to the US, because they put another country before the US. Traitors are generally considered to deserve death.

How did we get here?

Well, Hitler genocided millions of Jews–after he liquidated the socialists and trade unionists (he knew his real enemies). That scared and horrified many Jews, as it would anyone. So a bunch of them, in a land they didn’t control, used military force to throw out the then-current occupants (if they didn’t, then their opposition to Palestinians returning and taking their homes back is odd), and set up a religious ethnostate. Because if someone genocides your people, the best response is to ethnic cleanse another group. (Yeah, it meets the definition, sorry.)

At this point, the Israelis rule a lot of Palestinians and treat them terribly, in what many consider an apartheid system. Nelson Mandela always opposed the occupation, and his grandson has straight-up said Israel is an apartheid state.

So the sort of people who oppose injustice now want to treat Israel the way South Africa was treated when it was an apartheid state. But the Israeli lobby is extremely strong in the US (please don’t waste anyone’s time denying this), in large part because of the large numbers of American Jews who support Israel, even when it’s doing evil things. (The other large group supporting Israel is the evangelicals, who want Israel to put up the Temple so that the apocalypse can happen. Nice folks.)

So Trump is giving Israeli supporters and Jews (not the same group, always) what he thinks they want.

Perhaps the real problem is nationalism: the idea that every ethnic group deserves self-determination in the form of its own state. Perhaps that’s a bad idea, actually. (Nazism comes directly out of this: “Blood and land and folk.”) Perhaps ethnic states aren’t a good thing, because we shouldn’t base how we treat people on their ethnicity. This doesn’t mean everyone has to open their border to unlimited immigration or any thing silly, but it does mean people in their country should be treated equally.

That’s all that’s being asked for these days. Treat Palestinians equally. Make them citizens with equal rights. The two-state solution is dead, anyone looking at a map knows that. So, are you going to have a massive second-class population or actually be a genuinely democratic state?

The problem is that Israel can’t remain a religious ethnostate if it does that.

Meanwhile, putting Israel first, before Jews has, in effect, lead to a situation in the US which imperils Jews. In Britain it has lead to an entire campaign run on the idea that Corbyn is anti-semitic, when he’s spent his entire life fighting racism. Why? Because Corbyn is opposed to current Israeli policy towards Palestinians.

The funny thing is that both Israel and Jewish people would be safer and better off if they simply did the right thing and gave Palestinians citizenship.

But people who have been terribly abused too often think that abusing other people is the only way to be safe.

It’s sad, and I hope for everyone’s sake–especially the Jews and Palestinians–that this era of conflating Jewish and Israeli interests and of weaponizing charges of anti-semitism against people who oppose injustice, ends soon.

We’ll all, minus some settlers, be a lot better off.

(Or, to put it another way: Don’t be evil, K?)

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When Are You Guilty for the Crimes of Your Group

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On February 13, 2019

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One of the most stable political situations in the West is the use of charges of anti-semitism to attack those who criticize Israel.

Alexandria Occasio-Cortez, who championed Palestine in her primary run, was quickly broken by the pro-Israeli lobby, before she was even elected. The UK Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn has been under constant attack for “anti-semitism” because Corbyn is sympathetic to Palestinians. And recently, Representative Ilhan Omar suggested that donation from AIPAC are why Congress supports Israel.

(I don’t think that’s mostly correct. They fear AIPAC for far more than monetary reasons.)

Anyway, Ilhan was forced to apologize.

I tend to avoid the Israel-Palestine issue because it’s so dangerous. It’s the only issue I’ve ever been told to shut my mouth about or else (a donor strike, in that case).

But let’s state this simply: Israel is a religious-ethnic apartheid settler state, where the land and homes of much of the people who lived there were seized by force.

The problem is that criticism if Israel, a particularly evil state, is deliberately conflated with criticism of Jews, because Israel is an explicitly Jewish state.

So, here’s the formula:

Jews: Wonderful.

Israelis: Citizens of an apartheid, colonial state running the world’s largest open air prison. Any Israeli who opposes their government’s Palestinian policies is good in that regard.

Any Israeli who supports the government is evil. It’s not hard.

Let us extend this:

Germans: Wonderful.

Germans who supported the Nazis. Evil.

Germans who opposed the Nazis. Good.

Or:

Americans: Wonderful

Americans who supported the Iraq War: Evil.

Americans who opposed the Iraq War: Good.

(We could instead say, oh, Whites, or African Americans, or women, then move to Americans.)

People have responsibility exactly equal to their power. Nonetheless, if you support evil, you are culpable.

Most ethical situations are, in fact, black and white. We like to pretend they aren’t. Let’s take another situation:

Raising the price of Insulin 1000 percent in a few years: Evil.

People who do it? Mass murderers.

Correct punishment? Same as for any other murderers.

None of this is to say redemption is impossible. One of my friends supported the Iraq War. He quickly realized his mistake, reversed his position and has consistently opposed shitty American wars since then.

George Bush wouldn’t get off so easy: He had a lot of power, therefore his responsibility is much greater and as he’s no longer in power, he can no longer “make it up”.

The rule for redemption is as follows:

First stop doing evil. Apologize. Make it up. Those insulin execs: Drop the prices back down. Disgorge all the profits you made, with a priority to the families of those you killed. That’s all it takes.

But if you keep doing it or supporting it you are responsible or complicit.

This isn’t hard. Don’t do evil. Don’t support evil. If you do or support evil, then you are stained by that evil.

As for Israelis: It is not their fault they are Israelis. However, if they support their government’s policies against Palestinians, well, they’re evil.

The same is true of Jews, as it is of individuals belonging to identity-group you wish to name.

With respect to Israel, well, all it has to do is offer all Palestinians full citizenship and give them reparations equal to what was stolen. This will probably mean the end of Israel as an religious-ethnic state, but, umm, are religious ethnic states a good thing?

We all know what is required when we do wrong. Stop doing harm, apologize, and recompense the victim(s) as best one is able. (Yeah, this applies to black descendents of slavery in the US, though not so much as it does to the remaining Native Americans in the US, Canada, and elsewhere.)

While often what we should do as individuals isn’t true of states, for redemption and forgiveness, it is. Stop doing evil. Say sorry. Make it up as best one can.

But first stop doing evil.

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Israeli Killings Are the Result of De-Humanization of Palestinians

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On May 15, 2018

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So, Palestinians protested moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and Israel shot and killed somewhere between 52 and 60 of them, and injured hundreds more.

The rule of international law (yes, I know, a dead letter) is that force must be proportional to threat.

This is disproportionate.

The simple fact is that too many Israelis now think of Palestinians as sub-human; animals to be killed if they are inconvenient.

Israel is an apartheid state. A large chunk of the population is denied their rights–including their right to vote. And both the West Bank and Gaza are, yes, open air prisons.

The two state solution is dead. I’m not sure it was ever viable, but it no longer is. Israel will either have to cleanse Palestinians from its territory (something the de-humanization is clearly working them up to) or Israel as a religious-ethnic state will, inevitably, end.

It is well noted that those who are abused tend to become abusers. The applicability to Israel is obvious and sad.

Still, while tragic, today’s events pale in comparison to what Saudi Arabia, with America’s assistance, is doing in Yemen.

Plenty of tragedies to go around on Earth.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

The Banal Hypocrisy of the Western Coverage of Israel

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On May 10, 2018

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So, I see the usual suspects, in response to a large attack by Israel on Iranian targets in Syria, are saying the usual, “I support Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Really what they mean, of course, is “I’m scared of the Israeli lobby in my country, and of being called an anti-Semite if I dare say the truth.”

The truth is that Israel attacks other countries far more than other countries attack Israel.

The truth is that the Iranian missile attack the to which the Israelis were responding was actually in response to routine Israeli attacks on Syria.

The truth is that Iran is an invited guest in Syria and Israel is not.

Modern Iran has not attacked multiple neighbours over the course of its history. Israel has, and taken territory from them to boot.

The Golan Heights was taken from Syria, by Israel.

And, of course, Iran has no nukes, and Israel, which claims Iran wants them, does have nukes.

Our entire “conversation” about Israel and the region around it is based on hypocrisy, fear and guilt over the holocaust, as if because Germany killed millions of Jews, it’s ok for Israel to treat Palestinians and everyone else in the neighbourhood monstrously.

Israel should remember that “the powerful do as they will, the weak suffer what they must” was replied to “what you do to us, will one day be done to you, because seeing how you treat us, no one will trust you or have mercy on you.”

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

To Summarize the Israeli/Gaza War

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On July 27, 2014

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1) The causus-belli, the kidnapping and death of three Israeli teenagers was false.  This has now been admitted by Israeli officials. There was never a scrap of proof, only supposition.

2) Bibi said Hamas did it, and started a war based on that, for vengeance.

3) Ooops.

4) Except that we all know it was just a pretext.  Doing it based on a lie just rubs that in.

5) Hamas has been fighting better than last time, inflicting enough Israeli casualties to matter.

6) Israel has been deliberately leveling large parts of Gaza.  The damage is much worse than Cast Lead.  Most refugees will have no home to go back to.

7) Israel wants truces now, but by and large it’s Hamas who is refusing them.

8) Why?

9) Because the status-quo ante is unacceptable. Gaza was under siege, unable to bring in most goods, food, water and so on and most residents could not leave, even for life-saving medical care.

10) Hamas’s condition for the end of the war is substantially “life the siege”.  If the siege is not lifted, the parts of Gaza which have been flattened cannot be rebuilt, because the equipment needed cannot enter Gaza.

11) Israel can inflict as much collective punishment (a war crime) as it likes on the Gazans, but it can’t make Hamas stop fighting, or shooting missiles.

12) Israel also wants, as part of a condition for peace, for Hamas to let it keep hunting down the tunnels. In other words, it wants Hamas to allow Israel to destroy its ability to fight back even a little.

Israel has a problem.  It takes two to make peace, and Hamas won’t.  Israel could re-occupty Gaza, of course, but that leaves them with occupation troops in Gaza indefinitely, and while they’ll eventually root out Hamas, they’ll take significant casualties doing so.  Plus, then, they have to run Gaza rather than just try to starve it into submission.

Though I know of no polling, I have seen more than one interview where non Hamas Gazans have supported Hamas continuing the war until the Israelis lift the siege.  The general consensus seems to be that living in Gaza is death already.

The larger problem is simple enough.  Israel is an apartheid state which wants to pretend it doesn’t rule its Bantustans while at the same time slowly strangling them to death, and in the case of the West Bank, continuing to settle them.

This is an unsustainable position.  Israel needs to either become a secular state with equal citizenship for all residents regardless of religion or ethnicity; or the logic of situation will require them to remove the Palestinians once and for all.

As a bleeding ulcer, Israel does not work.  More and more diaspora Jews are turning away from it.  At some point the foreign aid it requires to exist will go away.

Israel was always a profoundly ill-considered venture: the idea of giving Jews a homeland by pushing current residents out, in many cases literally, of their homes, could only be an ongoing war crime and this is no longer the great colonial era, where genocide to create settler states is acceptable (nor is there a great plague to target only Palestinians and wipe out 90% of their population, as with the Native Americans.)

Israel is a state which, as currently constituted can only continue to exist by engaging in regular and ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Its right to exist is irrelevant, its ability to exist is the question.  Israel will either engage in as great a crime as was used to justify its existence after World War II, or it will become a secular state.  The two state solution is dead.

Media Coverage of Israel’s killing of Palestinians

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On July 20, 2014

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During Operation Cast Lead, the last time Israel decided to concentrate a large number of war crimes into a short period by kicking the shit out of Gazans despite the fact that Palestinians offer exactly zero real military threat to Israel I wrote a lot about it, and received the strongest pushback of my writing life: rich donors don’t like it when you say bad things about Israel.

Coverage in the US, of Israel, is so slanted that the Washington Post runs with 2 Israeli soldiers dying rather than over 60 civilians being slaughtered.

Simply put, for most news organizations, when Israel goes on a rampage, inflicting massively disproportionate collective punishment (a war crime), you have to make your bones.  Ideally you should cover for Israel: make excuses or slant coverage.  Of course the Post mentions that many more Palestinians are being killed by Israel than vice-versa; and of course the Washington Post will get around to mentioning the number of children killed

But the Washington Post editors know what all news editors know: about half the audience only reads the headlines.  Half of the remaining audience reads only the first paragraph.  If you don’t get around to mentioning inconvenient facts until later, most people will never read them.  You can feel virtuous “we covered that”, while being a propaganda outlet at the same time.

As with a lot of topics, writing about Israeli war crimes endangers your career.  The publishers and editors don’t want to hear; powerful politicians don’t want to read it.  Those who wrote against the Iraq war tended to get demoted or lose their jobs.  It’s not so bad for Israel and Palestine, of course: if you’re the sort of person who might write such articles, you’ll never make it to a position to write those articles.

Oh, to be sure, there are exceptions, and there are more in Britain than in the US.  But they are exceptions.

Writing about Israel and just noting the facts even handedly (starting with the higher casualty numbers, say), if you’re career minded, or just want to be able to feed your family, is a bad move.  It’s just not worth it.

Israel

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On June 30, 2014

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1) Israel is a settler state.

2) Israeli land was, mostly, taken from other people, by force.

3) Thus the vast majority of Israelis live on land taken by force from the indigs.

4) The “settlers”,are simply the leading edge of taking land and destroying homes, by force, from the indigs.

5) Israel is, also, a religious ethnic state where you only have the full rights of citizenship if you are of the correct religion.

If you are a believer in modern secular democracy, it is hard to see any solution for the Israel/Palestine issue which is not a single state solution.  Give everyone in Palestine full citizenship rights, including the right to vote.

It happened in South Africa. It may happen in Palestine.  If it doesn’t, the other routes out are uglier: full-on ethnic cleansing, or a loss by Israel of its “Jewish legal identity” in war (no, their nukes won’t protect them.)

America isnt’ going to be able or willing to support Israel’s colonial ambitions forever.

None of this is to say that Israel’s crimes are unique.  Conquering indigs and taking their land is old-hat. Those of us who live in North America are lucky—our genocide was long over before most of us were born, and much of it was done by germs.  We keep the few remaining indigs largely on reservations, where they live in squalid 3rd world conditions, far from the sight of their conquerers.  Israelis live right on top of those they are conquering, and have to become indifferent at best or monsters who regard Palestinians as sub-human at worst, in order to function.  After all, the Palestinians are still right there, in their face, daring to look like humans who some mother loved.

“The weak do what they must, the powerful what they will” – Thucydides.  And the Palestinians are weak.  And the Israelis are still (comparatively) strong.

They won’t be forever, however.  When they aren’t, they should worry that they will reap as they have sowed.

The Gaza Reminder

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On November 19, 2012

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is about the value of human life.

When I was a child, my father once threw some Christian evangalists off our property.

They had said, “everyone who doesn’t believe in Christ will go to hell.”

Now my father had a temper, but the way his voice dropped to a whisper, and the step he took towards them screamed incipient violence and they virtually ran.

I didn’t ask why, but he told me.

“I lived in Bangladesh, Malaysia and other Muslim countries for years.  Anyone who tells me that the good people I knew are going to burn in hell, can go to hell.  I’ll have nothing to do with any God who does that or people who believe that.”

I always remembered that.  Truth be told my father was slightly racist himself, he was of that generation.  But he was ashamed of it, he knew better, and he fought it.  What he understood was something simple: every human life has the same value.  Any moral system which places one life above the other is not ethical, it is evil.

We in the developed world, and in America and Israel in particular, don’t believe that.  We don’t even, any more, give it lip service.  And we especially don’t believe that a Muslim life is worth the same as an American life, or an Israeli life, or well, pretty much any non-Muslim life.  When Madeline Albright can say that half a million dead Iraqi children is a price worth paying for the sanctions, even before 9/11, we’ve become inhumane.

Osama bin Laden once asked, rhetorically, if Muslim blood was red, and if Muslim children were worthy of life as much as American children.

Israel is doomed.  The generation of young American Jews do not have the loyalty to Israel, no matter what it does, that older American Jews, as a group, have.  The world is coming to see Israel as an apartheid state, which is what it is.  The demographics are against it, and at some point America will cut Israel off, and Israel’s economy is not sustainable without the US.

And more to the point, somewhere, alive today, is the person who believes that losing Jerusalem is an acceptable price for wiping out Tel Aviv.  That person has been created by Israeli policy, by Western policy and by Saudi policy.  Israel is a small country.  It will not exist in 50 years.  It may be destroyed in an apocalyptic terror attack, it may be destroyed in military action, it may be destroyed by demographics, it may fall apart economically.  Its military advantage is already going away.   Hezbollah took away Israel’s armor advantage, straight up defeating them in their last invasion of Lebanon.  The Israeli air force was unable to substantially dent Hezbollah’s missile force, despite complete air supremacy.  If Hezbollah had had the good missiles, it could have wreaked much more damage.

Right now Hamas has rockets.  They look like something out of the 15th century.  They are pathetic.  It won’t stay that way forever.

All this before we get to the fact that Israel’s military is incompetent.  They are no longer the Israeli military of 68, they are an occupation military, and occupation militaries are only good at fighting weaklings, they always become corrupt, brutal and weak themselves.

Israel faces a stark choice: the two-state solution is no longer viable, there is not enough water and arable land, and too much population.  It can no longer work.  Israel can either become a secular single state, giving a vote and rights to everyone, it can ethnically cleanse out all Palestinians and become a pariah state, or it can cease to exist (option 2 and 3 may both occur).  Its end, moral or physical, may occur through terror, demographics, war, economic collapse, military decline or more likely, some combination, but it is as close to any historical process comes to inevitability.

Israel is acting like a monster, killing vastly disproportionate numbers of Palestinians.  But the grave it is digging, in the not so long run, isn’t that of the Palestinians, it is its own.

W.H. Auden once wrote the line that applies to Israel, and to the Palestinians, for that matter: Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.

I can find no joy in this, no happiness, but it is what it is.  If Israelis, not Israel the religious-ethnic state, want to avoid catastrophic destruction, their only solution is simple: stop doing evil, and start doing good.

People will dismiss that as naive, but it is the hardest of hard headed pragmatism, and as such, is advice unlikely to be taken.

Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.

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