As with Helen Thomas when asked what she thought about Israel. “I think they should get the hell out of Palestine.”
Israel is a colonial power occupying a land whose population was, prior to their getting rid of many of them, majority non-Jewish. This is why “right of return” is a non-starter, because if all the people pushed out of Israel were allowed to return…
The general assumption has been that if push comes to shove between Israel and Turkey, that NATO allies will not support Turkey, and that the US will supply Israel, but not supply Turkey.
I wonder if those two things are both true.
It’s interesting to note that Britain, normally a staunch Israeli ally, in response to the attack on the aid flotilla in international waters called for an end to the Gaza blockade. As with both Turkey and Israel’s actions, one imagines this may be driven by domestic political concerns. To put it simply, Britain has a lot more Muslim citizens than Jewish ones, and England’s Jewish residents tend to be liberal and unlikely to become radicalized and blow things up. Electorally, helping Palestinians may be a winner.
In the US, AIPAC and the Jewish lobby are generally considered amongst America’s strongest lobbies. But it’s worth putting in perspective—when George Bush senior tackled AIPAC, he crushed them. The vast majority of likely Democratic voters aren’t that sympathetic to Israel. And to mess with Israel, all Obama has to do is stop protecting it at the UN, which is completely under his control, and not preferentially ship supplies to Israel in the case of a crisis, something which is also 100% inside the executive’s purview.
Obama has been snippy with the Israelis in the past, as when new settlements were announced during vice-President Biden’s visit. While it’s hard to read Obama, I think it’s clear that he hasn’t appreciated the way Israel has taken the US’s support for granted.
And hey, changing the conversation from the BP oil spill can only be good.
I also don’t think it’s clear that Israel can use its nukes on Turkey without any other nuclear power threatening retaliation. Glassing a major metropolis is not something likely to make Britain, the US or France happy. In the US the idea of using nukes seems to occasion something of a yawn, but in the rest of the world it is the ultimate taboo.
Likewise, I’m not entirely sure that if Israel attacks Turkey’s military vessels in support of what may soon be considered an illegal blockade of Gaza, that other NATO nations won’t back Turkey up if it responds with a naval blockade of its own. In particular, I’m not sure that the new British government comes in on Israel’s side, nor am I sure France does. And either of those nations is more than capable of slapping Israel around if Israel gets too big for its britches.
Israel’s been pissing off its friends for a long time now. This particular attack seems to have been done for domestic political reasons, and was a deliberate flouting of international law, a slap in the face “you won’t do anything about this, we can do whatever we want.”
Works, until it doesn’t. I don’t know if Israel has crossed the line, but I think it may have. For Britain, in particular, to come out with a statement calling for the end of the Gaza blockade is not a small thing.
All of which is a long way of saying, I’m not so sure the US, and particularly Britain, will automatically support Israel in any confrontation with Turkey.
If they actually do this, it is the very definition of throwing down.
Wow.
Does Israel want a war with Turkey? They can’t win it, short of using nukes, and Turkey is a NATO member, if Israel attacks NATO ships, Turkey can invoke Article V (in fact, they can invoke it already, since the ships were attacked by a non NATO power on the high seas.) If Turkey does so, of course NATO nations will refuse, but doing so will break NATO.
This is high stakes.
Update: I might add that in the case of a war between Turkey and Israel, if Turkey is serious, unless Israel uses nukes, my money is on the Turks. They have a huge armored corp, and the nations between Israel and Turkey aren’t going to say no if Turkey asks for access (because if they do, Turkey will just roll right through them.) Also if Turkey and Israel goes to war, it’s at least 50/50 the Egypt jumps in as well.
Israel is really playing with fire on this one.
Update 2: See Sean-Paul’s comments on the domestic reasons of Turkey’s reaction, and what the death of the Israeli/Turkish Entente means.
Update 3: See this analysis (h/t Pogge) for the legalities. Short of it is that if the act wasn’t rogue, then this was an act of war, not an act of piracy.
As news comes in that Israeli commandos, boarding a relief flotilla for Gaza, have killed 10 to 16 peace activists, it’s worth reviewing the situation Israel finds itself in.
First, Israel is a state about half of whose population, the Palestinians, have restricted economic and political rights. This is true both of muslim citizens and those Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza. I count them as under Israeli rule because when Israel controls their ability to exit or enter the country, bulldozes their houses at will, decides if they can import food and medicine, arrests “cabinet members” at will, determines where and when Palestinians can go, what the curfews are, and so on, it is clear that Israel rules them.
This makes West Bank communities (which are divided from themselves) and Gaza effectively South African bantustans, where non-citizen residents are forced to reside. And that means that Israel, is, yes, effectively an apartheid state, different from South Africa in the eighties only in that a smaller proportion of the population are second class citizens confined to ghettos.
Population is, of course, the key to understanding the Israeli situation. Not only are Palestinians outbreeding Israelis, so that they will soon be the majority of the population, but within the Israeli population proper, right wing religious Jews are outbreeding their more secular brethren. This is leading to a hardening within the voting population, and a higher tolerance for violence and crackdowns, at the same time as the Jewish population feels itself more and more beleagured.
Population is also at the core of the resource problem, or, to be more specific, the water problem. There is a limited amount of water in Palestine, and as the population increases, there are fears that there isn’t enough. A viable Palestinian state would require more water than Israel wants to give up, for very good reasons.
Another important demographic issue is that given how young their population is almost every living Palestinian has never known anything but Israeli occupation. This is less true of Israelis, but still, any Israeli who isn’t closing in on 50 probably doesn’t remember a time when Israel wasn’t occupying a hostile population.
Demographic realities lead to one conclusion: if things keep going on as they are now, in two generations Israel will e so clearly an apartheid state, with the vast majority of the population powerless Palestinians without a vote, that no one will be able to pretend otherwise, either inside or outside the country.
Since Israel’s identity is as a specifically Jewish state, that is, one based on religious and ethnic identity (many Jews don’t recognize converts) that will mean that Jews will rule over a population mainly made up of non Jews.
This is, in a sense, a modern Sparta, an outnumbered ethnicity ruling over numerous Helots. It is unlikely the rest of the world will tolerate it, and it is an unstable state for a nation with democratic aspirations.
The status quo thus ends, most likely, in a single state solution. The Palestinians are given the vote, as the blacks were in South Africa, and the state of Israel as a Jewish state, ends. Those who find the idea of one ethnicity or religion ruling over others may not find this end particularly tragic.
However this end-state is anathema to most Israelis, who believe that Israel should be a state based on religious ethnicity. If they are unwilling to accept it, then there are two options available to them to avoid that fate.
First, they can try and come to a two-state solution. This has been the status quo preferred solution for a couple decades now, but it seems more and more unlikey. The number of settlers in the West Bank goes up every year, as does the continued ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem of undesirable Muslims. The facts on the ground say very clearly that the Israeli government does not want a two-state solution, and is not acting to achieve one. However, as the situation becomes more intolerable, they may come to see the situation otherwise.
Any Israeli Prime Minister who acts on this will take his life in his hands. Right wing settlers have already assassinated one Prime Minister, and there is no reason to believe they would hesitate to do it again. Furthermore the Israeli military has become infected by right wing religious Judaism, with right wing Rabbis, in the last incursion into Israel, telling soldiers that killing Palestinians was their religious duty. This influence is likely to only grow stronger the more time goes on, and by the time a Prime Minister feels he must make a deal, or else, the military may no longer be willing to obey orders.
The ability to make a two-state deal is thus likely to decline over time, even as the necessity to do so increases.
The third solution set is to simply remove all Palestinians from the occupied territories. This doesn’t mean genocide, this just means shoving them out into neighbouring nations, and letting them worry about the Palestinians. This will turn Israel into a pariah state, but it will give them control of a good portion of Greater Israel without having to worry about pesky Palestinians, and while the neighbouring nations won’t like it, Israel has nukes, so who cares what they think?
These seem to me to be the three most likely endgames for Israel – the end of the Jewish ethnic state in a one state solution, a two-state compromise, or the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestine and the creation of a Greater Israel which is Jewish, and a pariah state.
It’s hard to anticipate which solution will be chosen, but I think the single state or the cleansing of Palestinians are the most likely end-games at this point. The two-state solution is unlikely to occur, since making it occur would cost an Israeli PM his life and might not be allowed by the army.
One might object that a single-state is unlikely for the same reasons, but single-state is the long term solution. When population numbers become 80/20 Palestinian/Jewish you either have to ethnic cleanse or give up, the status quo will be intoldrable. The two-state solution is what occurs before then.
I don’t hold out a lot of hope for a pretty solution in Israel/Palestine, or a solution in the near term. Could be I’m wrong, and I hope I am, but it seems unlikely.
Retired People’s Liberation Army Major General Xu Guangyu said in the newspaper commentary that China wanted a minimal nuclear deterrent and would avoid any arms race. “China resolutely adheres to a defensive nuclear strategy, and has always adhered to a policy that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances,” wrote Xu
The Barack Obama administration’s declaration in its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that it is reserving the right to use nuclear weapons against Iran represents a new element in a strategy of persuading Tehran that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites is a serious possibility if Iran does not bow to the demand that it cease uranium enrichment.
Although administration officials have carefully refrained from drawing any direct connection between the new nuclear option and the Israeli threat, the NPR broadens the range of contingencies in which nuclear weapons might play a role so as to include an Iranian military response to an Israeli attack.
A war involving Iran that begins with an Israeli attack is the only plausible scenario that would fit the category of contingencies in the document.
The NPR describes the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in those contingencies as a “deterrent”. A strategy of exploiting the Israeli threat to attack Iran would seek to deter an Iranian response to such an attack and thus make it more plausible.
In other words, if Israel attacks Iran, the US says it might nuke Iran if Iran strikes back after an Israeli attacks.
Say what? Oh, I see “You’re going to let my friend Israel beat the shit out of you, or I’m going to pull the trigger of this gun I have pointed at your head. Because you’re a bad country, and Israel and the US are the good guys.”
Gee, the idea of those crazy Iranians getting nukes seems so much scarier than the US having them, doesn’t it?
A force for peace, and the home of the free, indeed.
And it isn’t lending it out cheap:
JPMorgan will on Thursday unveil a £1bn deal to buy Cazenove, the UK broker with which it has had a joint venture for the past five years.
The bank is to pay about 535p a share in a deal in which David Mayhew, widely recognised as one of the City’s best-connected corporate advisers, will retain the title of chairman of the Cazenove brand.
Last year myself and Stirling both noted that what would be done by banks if they were bailed out is to horde their money, not lend it out cheap, and save it to buy up competitors, make leveraged plays and so on. That is EXACTLY what has happened. Exactly.
During a downturn, if you have money, you don’t want to lend it out for low gains when you can buy up competitors, cheap. You don’t want to lend it out cheap, when you can make leveraged plays off the bottom of a stock and commodity market which is bound to go up because trillions are being poured into it by central banks. You want to take that money, and buy things while they are cheap, not lend it out for 4 or 5% returns, when you can make many many times that.
Why, exactly, governments expect banks who have better ways to make money to act like retail banks who don’t have any other way to make money but lend out at prime +3 or 4 percent is beyond me. They think they’ll do it out of gratitude for being bailed out, or some sort of sense of civic duty? Most politicians may be stupid, venal and corrupt—but it’s that very greed and venality which means they should understand that banks will do no such thing.
Banks will do it only if they are forced to do it. Remove retail banking from investment banking, insurance and brokerage services, and disallow any risky games on the markets for retail banks. Remove all special facilities from non retail banks because Goldman Sachs should not be doing highly leveraged plays with free money from the Federal Reserve. And reinstitute serious leverage limits, not just for retail banks but for everyone.
As for retail banks, if they don’t lend to the public at rates approved of by the Federal Reserve and Congress, they too should lose their access to special facilities. Banks are given the valuable right to borrow money for almost nothing, and to, in effect, print money by lending out money they don’t have. Those are privileges which are given to them in the expectation that they will use them to benefit the economy. If they refuse to do so, they should lose the privileges.
None of this is rocket science. Those of us who predicted both the crisis and what the bungling of the crisis would cause, however, are precisely the people who are not listened to by those in power. Obama is having his jobs summit, and forget nobodies like me, he isn’t even inviting somebodies like Stiglitz and Krugman.
If you’ve been right down the line, then you are precisely the sort of person who isn’t “serious” and shouldn’t be listened to when it comes to what it takes to fix the problem.
Why? Because everyone knows that fixing the problem will end the gravy train for a lot of very rich people. A lot of very rich people who give a great deal of money to Democrats in general, and gave a lot of money to Obama in particular. If the cost of keeping that gravy train and the donations it enables going is tens of millions of unemployed people, well, so be it. Because serious people know that real change isn’t going to happen under Obama or under this Democratic Congress, so there’s no point in even talking to people who might suggest it.
Plus ca change. Plus c’est la même chose.
The measure of terrorism's success
The Tiller family has announced that it is closing Dr. Tiller’s clinic. The terrorists have won, and that assassination has succeeded in doing what it was meant to do. I’m sure the murderer is very happy tonight.
The bottom line on right wing terrorism against abortion rights is that it’s succeeding and has been for some time. Take a good hard look at the chart at the top and try and tell me otherwise. And when it comes to late term abortions, well, Tiller was one of the very few who still provided the service. According to Tiller, speaking in March before his assassination, he was one of only three doctors left in the US doing such abortions. Now there are two. If those numbers are right, one third of all abortion doctors doing these abortions were just killed.
In the aftermath of Tiller’s death, I heard a lot of progressives talking about how the anti-abortion folks were losing. The bottom line is that they’re winning. It is harder to get abortions than it was 5 years ago, or 10 years ago, or 25 years ago. Abortion access peaked in 1982 and has been declining ever since. Consider that the US population has increased by approximately 30% since 1982. At the same time the number of providers has dropped by over a third.
Now, most types of abortion violence had been in a slow, long term decline (the exception is burglary) so there’s certainly some reason for optimism. At the same time I strongly suspect that anti-abortion violence will rise, along with other types of right wing terrorism, during Obama’s administration.
The larger point is simpler. It’s harder to get an abortion than it has ever been since Roe vs. Wade, because there are just less doctors who perform abortions. Until more doctors step up and start providing abortions, especially late term abortions, this will continue. It’s hard to blame doctors for not being willing to provide abortions. Not only could you be killed for doing so, your family will be stalked and perhaps harmed, your clinic will be burglarized, you will be subject to constant legal harassment and your life will, in general, be made a living hell along with the lives of your family, friends and associates.
It’s a lot to ask of someone. But this comes back to the truth of rights. You have no rights that people aren’t willing to suffer and die for. Rights that someone won’t put their life on the line for will be taken away by people who are willing to resort to intimidation, violence and to push for laws which take those rights away.
So the questions, then are these:
1) Where are the doctors who are willing to risk their lives, the lives of their families, and to endure constant harassment to ensure that women keep this right, not just in theory, but in practice?
2) Where are the mass of people who will provide money, aid, and physical protection to the doctors who put their lives on the line? Yes, they exist even now, but obviously there aren’t enough of them, because the number of abortion providers keeps going down.
Is this a right you’re willing to risk your life to keep? If enough people don’t answer that question yes, then you will continue to lose it.
Had a conversation with a friend who kept insisting Hamas are radicals because they pay suicide bombers to kill people and engage in propaganda.
Personally I’ve never understood why people get so upset by suicide attacks when bombs dropped from airplanes kill far more people.
I guess Americans are radicals, since they spend billions of dollars funding people to blow up other people and Americans have killed a ton more people in the last eight years than Hamas has. Heck, Hamas isn’t even in contention, it’s apparently orders of magnitudes less radical than America.
I just don’t get it. I really really don’t get why people get so caught up on the form of things, rather than the end effects.
I have no idea what the word radical means, I guess. Perhaps it means”they don’t kill people in the ways we approve of, and they believe in a different religion than us”. Or something. I just don’t know.
But if funding people to kill other people is the metric, well then, Hamas are hardly radicals at all compared to most governments in the world. Pikers, in fact.
As for propaganda, they’re just not very sophisticated. American propaganda is far better and far more pervasive. How many Americans thought Iraq was behind 9/11? How many do today? Without even having to use Mickey Mouse.
Propaganda makes you radical?
Welcome to the Radical States of America – which funds more murders and engages in more propaganda than Hamas could ever hope to.
And without even as much justification. What did Iraq do to America compared to what Israel has done to Palestinians?
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