The Right of Israel to Exist and the Fresh Hell it Is Heading Towards

Even the notoriously Liberal Human Rights Watch, with its usually very good relations to Washington, has confirmed Israel as an Apartheid state, see https://www.juancole.com/2021/05/apartheid-humanity-prosecuted.html

An oldie, but a goodie.

https://conservative-headlines.org/89-of-our-senators-and-congress-hold-dual-citizenship-with-israel/

Are you joking? You let “Jeremy” spam the board with veiled white nationalism perspective towards Israel and yet my benign comment in comparison gets thrown into moderation?

Ian,

I really can’t imagine this post costing you any subscriptions. You’ve touched on way too many 3rd rail topics to still have any “liberal except on Israel” goodthinker supporters left. You’re just stating a truth, the denial of which has done much to rot the US body politics.

Israel may lose its US support in a generation, both due to decline of the US and because very few young Jewish people in the diaspora actually want to go there. The honest ones are already in open opposition. The dishonest (to themselves) ones still toe the line but I don’t see them doing more than taking advantage of their free birthright fieldtrip.

Che,

Thanks for the explanation. So again, it’s short term political survival and advantage over any kind of long term strategy. Everytime the crappy little state does this, especially in the age of video smartphones, actually undermines their long term survival. The elites and their brainwashed populace might even believe this, since they are so insulated from the consequences of their actions for now.

And if you think Israel doesn’t influence our elections, then think again.
In what kind of world is this political meddling acceptable?

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/video-how-israel-helped-bring-down-jeremy-corbyn

Genuinely curious, given the depth of emotion commenters here seem to have invested in illegal occupations in the Near East, what is your take on the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus? Anyone?

what is your take on the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus? Anyone?

We’ve been trying to get rid of our all-powerful Turkey lobby here in the U.S. for decades. There are a lot of Turks with dual citizenship and ties to the highest levers of both governments here in the U.S. and in Turkey. It’s obviously not a kosher situation.

And the money we’ve sent to Turkey over the decades dwarfs what we send to Isra…oh wait, nevermind.

Thank you to Che Pasa for a very insightful, factually detailed comment regarding the repeated nightmares that the Palestinian populace endlessly suffers while the “international community” stands by and twiddles their thumbs (seemingly) while actually of course giving Israel the green light for ethnic cleansing. To add one detail to Che’s account, every war Israel initiates over the past decades, I have always noticed that the casualties are at a rate of at least 10 Palestinians to 1 Israeli. And (almost needless to say), of course the IDF kills mainly more civilians than actual resistance fighters. A quick look at the Electronic Intifida this morning which (alongside moonofalabama, ianwelsh.net, moderaterebels, mondoweiss, etc.) are among the more balanced and truthful media I look to for coverage of the area, shows tweets of families and multiple small children killed by Israeli bombing. War crimes, clearly. I think that Ian is very even-handed to say that the deliberate mass ethnic cleansing does not rise to the level of genocide. Technically, this may be true, because of course there are no hard-and-fast standards for what is “genocide”, any more than what “human rights” means, etc. And Blinken’s beloved “rules based order” means 2 countries, the U.S. and Israel, are completely exempted from any actual Nuremberg conventions, UN standards regarding occupation and civilians, limitations on collective punishment of populations or torture, etc. (Kind of a corollary of Ms. Helmsley’s “Only the little people pay taxes” for international relations, “Only the non-exceptional States have to follow international law and standards.) The only thing I can add to Che Pasa’s comment is how disgusting and craven the US media’s dishonesty and one-sidedness on reporting in this area are. I am kicking myself this morning for having donated to KALW the better of the Bay Area’s 2 NPR radio stations some months ago, as their news coverage was so skewed and biased. Every report started with “Palestinian rockets” and then the “response” of the poor Israelis, who of course, as Van Creveld’s statement above admits, “respond” with hugely disproportionate force against a civilian populace. The fact that Israel whipped up violent settler pogroms, often supported by local police, against vulnerable Palestinian civilians, while trying to steal the homes of Palestinians who’ve lived in areas they want for generations via legal fiat, is never mentioned, of course. Instead, KALW offered an interview with the openly racist Mark Regev, former ambassador to the US from Israel. I of course would like to believe that eventually this will end as badly (or worse) for the the Israeli ubermenschen as it did for the whites of South Africa (though economically, things improved little for the black majority in S.A.). Sadly, I despair that that is likely soon, if ever.

@Synthetic Yams

That’s actually much better Hasbara. We don’t really care about the underlying humanity, we just can’t stand “the Jews.”

You get a star.

Dear Hasbara trainee,

Thank you for demonstrating technique #3 of the online disinformationalist. Your “genuine concern” about a conflict that is nothing like Israel/Palestine (and even it is, does not offer any sort of support for the Israeli position), is clarifying.

https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

I reread Ian’s post and I can’t believe I missed this:

Israel, so far, has done great criminal acts. But yes, it has only ethnically cleansed, it has not committed genocide.

This isn’t helpful. These are weasel word terms used by the powerful to retain their power and to deny the powerless justice.

The entire Zionist plan is the intentional displacement and the destruction of all facets of existing life in what was formerly known as Palestine, to be replaced by a Jewish state. This is their own literature!

So far, close to one million Arabs of Palestine (Palestinians) have been killed and millions displaced. And the project continues.

If we don’t have a term for this slow, deliberate displacement of a people from their ancestral land and the destruction of their entire way of life in the interest of an ethnic nation-state, in this case Jewish – then we desperately need one, so that its perpetrators can be prosecuted.

This PBS article actually does a decent job explaining the terms and their practical application. It also mentions how the “genocide” label is studiously avoided by the U.S. because then they would have to do something. International law lacks enforcement mechanisms…

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/whats-the-difference-between-genocide-and-ethnic-cleansing

I want to repeat this statement:

it has only ethnically cleansed

I’m sure when Palestinian parents tell their children about their history, they always end the conversation with this: “But we were only ethnically cleansed kids. We weren’t genocided. It could have been worse, so count your blessings.”

https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/16/israel-and-hamas-need-each-other/

That’s not to deny the enmity that marks the ties between Hamas and Israel, or the existential rhetoric that drives the tone of their public accusations. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that if Israeli and Hamas leaders had one wish, it would be to destroy the other. But in the practical world of Israeli-Palestinian politics, getting rid of one another is neither achievable — nor perhaps even desirable. Indeed, because it’s not an option, Israel and Hamas have not only made do with each other’s existence, they have tried to figure out how to derive the maximum benefit from one another.

The Israeli-Hamas bond goes back to the very inception of the Palestinian Islamist organization. Israel didn’t create Hamas in 1987, but in an effort to counter the more secular Fatah and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 1970s, it gave a variety of Islamist groups political space and leeway. It even granted an operating license for an organization created by Hamas’s founder, Ahmed Yassin. Paradoxically, Hamas’s very reason for being depended on the existence of Israel — even though its main aim was to destroy it.

One way to look at this is as a Middle Eastern form of mutually assured destruction. Hamas cannot destroy Israel, and Israel knows that it cannot reoccupy Gaza and eradicate the Islamist organization at a cost that it is willing to bear. So each actor uses the other for its own purposes.

@Synthetic Yams

So the issue is not one of people being brutally thrown out of their ancestral homes and replaced with settlers, so much as it is one of nationals of said occupier sinking their greedy, sinister tentacles into the media, political and banking system. Clarifying.

This is actually decent Hasbara. You are insinuating in the readers’ minds the idea that we don’t care about the human beings involved, rather we just “hate the J…s”

You get a star. ✡

The entire framing in the mainstream and much if not most of the alternative media is wrong. They still insist that this incident was instigated by the oppressed Palestinians (in the form of, they’re all led by the ever convenient Hamas). They neglect what they’re doing to Jerusalem on the whole and what happened specifically. And they don’t investigate to uncover the fact that these ops are planned in advance and then blamed on the oppressed, as an excuse to further oppress them and continue the glorious path to Eretz Yisrael.

Israel and its agents in the U.S. and around the world are the oppressor.

You put someone in jail and piss on her constantly and then call her an instigator because she threw a homemade schiv made out of toilet paper and gum at you and then you – backed by your nuclear superdaddy – go back and shoot her in the groin and laugh.

Fuck you.

Thousands of Israeli Jews singing about revenge, chanting “Yimach shemam (may their names be erased),” dancing as a fire burns on the Temple Mount:

https://twitter.com/simonerzim/status/1391869749303316483

It is a gift to Israel and its violence against Israel is predictable and easily managed by Israel and serves as a pretext for Israel to further terrorize ordinary Palestinians.

This is straight Hasbara. It takes the responsibility off the bully. It ignores that – in addition to the monstrous historical and ongoing death, destruction, and dispossession – this specific fighting was started by Israel.

It’s akin to the father beating the child: “You’re making me do this!” as the child tries to protect itself from the father’s beating – perhaps even by hitting back a bit, however meekly.

Interesting that I often sense a lot of Old Testament thinking in the Zionist way of looking at a situation. Maybe it’s just an authoritarian nature in general. Who knows.

I don’t know if this is intentional or not. PS’ response will enlighten further.

I should clarify, it’s not a war crime. It’s a crime against humanity, as first established under the Nuremberg principles. These principles are evoked and hailed when they are used against officially approved enemies, to borrow Noam Chomsky’s terminology.

The Palestinians, not so much.

This should not be. It is blatant injustice, not to mention pure hypocrisy.

Even absent power, the zeitgeist around Zionism and the entire Israel project can change by constantly calling out the intentional disinformation.

But are Israelis committing “cultural genocide” on Palestinians??

This is actually decent Hasbara. You are insinuating in the readers’ minds the idea that we don’t care about the human beings involved, rather we just “hate the J…s”

You get a star.

It is especially telling that not once did I say a single thing in defence of Israel or its actions. The fixation is what I am trying to understand here.

I think the issue is plain to see and the fixation we should be most concerned with is the United States political class’ fixation on Israel and what feeds it.

The “United States political class” has supported all sorts of shitty regimes. Why, to pick one example, does no one question Saudi Arabia’s right to exist? Mere criticism seems to suffice. Why not in this case?

@Bridget

Also very telling is your inability to respond to my comments without resort to the term “Hasbara”, as if any and all questioning of your narrative could only be done at the behest of the Israeli government.
Again, notice that I have not made one single defence in my comments of Israel or its actions.

“Why, to pick one example, does no one question Saudi Arabia’s right to exist? Mere criticism seems to suffice. Why not in this case?”

What “right” does any nation have to exist? Nations, are, in one of the clearest definitions, merely “imagined communities.”

The reason Israel’s “right to exist” is discussed, just like their constant of their “right to self-defense,” is because A) these are “rights” they constantly and loudly assert, and B) these are rights they unambiguously deny Palestinians.

So yes, if Israel wants to discuss their “right to exist,” then by no means should it be forbidden to take the assertion seriously. And in agreeing with Welsh here, I would say if they think they have this “right” and the Palestinians do not, then there is no moral reason to agree with them.

If you don’t like the word “Hasbara” I won’t use it. Here is my post without it. The points you ignored are still valid

I don’t use the “right to exist” argument. No nation-state has an inherent, perennial “right to exist.”

Tiny Israel receives more military equipment from the U.S. than does Saudi Arabia. This comes under the rubric of maintaining the “quantitative and qualitative edge” that may be the primary objective of Israel Lobby, though it has many raisons d’etre.

That said, I encourage everyone to know and understand Hasbara and how it works. I would also suggest looking into Sayanim.

as if any and all questioning of your narrative could only be done at the behest of the Israeli government.

I don’t know if you are acting at the behest of the Israeli government or not. You mimic all their defensive talking points on the issue. I’m merely pointing that out.

I hope you continue in your earnest desire to come to an understanding of the situation.

The original post is about Israel’s right to exist. It says so right there in the title.

Ian’s original post was indeed about Israel’s “right to exist” as a Jewish ethno-state, and included information specific to the topic, both historical and contemporary. The topic being Israel and Palestine and, by extension, their respective relationships to the United States.

There were 12 comments that discussed this to varying degrees. Then you popped in with this:

Genuinely curious, given the depth of emotion commenters here seem to have invested in illegal occupations in the Near East, what is your take on the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus? Anyone?

Your obviously legitimate, valid concerns about the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus were addressed by commenters. Remember: Israel is the topic of conversation here. Well, it was. Because next you decided that it absolutely needs be mentioned that Saudi Arabia is a monster and the U.S. funds it, so….

So we’re off the subject again.

I am not taking issue with any particular criticism of Israel, which you probably would have noticed had you taken a deep breath and paused before reading my comments.

Good. Then call your representatives and tell them to stop funding Israel or you won’t vote for them. Also tell them that AIPAC et al ALL have to register as agents of a foreign power.

You can also mention the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, if you so desire. Perhaps the person you’re talking to on the phone may have heard of it. You be damn sure they’ve heard of Israel.

Israel deliberately torpedoed our ship, blocked our radio distress signals, and then used their lobby and operatives to cover the entire thing up. That was almost 55 years ago, and their power and stranglehold on the U.S. government has grown exponentially since then.

As I said back in 1983 when I was still with you:

“I’ve never seen a President . . . stand up to them [Zionists]. If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms.”

I am not taking issue with any particular criticism of Israel

Any particular criticism? It’s a detailing of monstrous crimes and Israel’s entire history of subterfuge. Ian included a map of the decades-long Israeli takeover of Palestine. The first post, by Jan Wiklund, linked to a Human Rights Watch report outlining Israeli apartheid. Jeremy included a video of how Israel’s operatives used their ever-handy “anti-semitism”smear to ruin a politician in the UK. That’s just the beginning.

It’s telling that upon reading all this you construed the entire thing as merely a critical commentary against Israel. It’s much more than that.