Dude just wanted to say. Your shit is so well written. Like in terms of blog quality, I wud rank you in the leagues of Gwern and Scott, but you just spit straight facts without a side helping of rationalist rhetoric. God bless you
>After all, they say an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind
Notably, this quote is mistakenly attributed to Gandhi, as it is indeed a description of his philosophy. This is notable, as Gandhi thought that nonviolent resistance was the solution to the Holocaust, so maybe Gandhi and pseudo-Gandhi quotes should sit this one out.
>For Rabbinic Jews, prophecy ended when the temple fell and, as we know, it will not return until after it is reestablished
Not sure where you're getting this from. The classic rabbinic source about the loss of prophecy is the Tosefta (late second century) which states that the last prophets were Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi who lived many centuries before the final destruction of the temple in 70.
This isn't a mere technicality, as if prophecy was lost before the temple fell, one could imagine it having been restored before the temple was restored. Indeed, in rejecting Muhammad's claim to prophecy, later medieval rabbis implicitly acknowledged the possibility of prophecy during that period, and gave other reasons to reject it.
Claims of "apartheid" and "settler colonialism" are not simply rhetorical nonsense. They have true (and competing) basis in international law, depending on whether the Palestinian territories are "part of Israel" or not.
If the Palestinian territories are indeed "part of Israel", Palestinians should have the same rights as Israelis. As long as they don't have these rights, Israel is running an "apartheid state." Of course, Israel cannot accept this, as doing so would be demographically fatal to the Jewish state. But Israel's concerns do not change the fact that their solution to the conundrum is to simply deny these people rights, which results necessarily in the creation of an apartheid state.
If the Palestinian territories are "not part of Israel", on the other hand, Israel is indeed engaging in "settler colonialism." The Badinter Commission found that internal boundaries between subnational entities are akin to frontiers in international law. Article 73 of the United Nations Charter dictates that nations administering territories which have not yet attained full self-government have a sacred trust to administer these territories with the interests of the inhabitants as their paramount interest. Israel is certainly not doing this. It simply has decided to acquire Palestinian territory for the expansion of the state of Israel.
The fact that Israelis often purchase this land from its owners does not eliminate these concerns. We would, in general, not accept Chinese nationals buying up all the real estate in San Francisco, then deciding to expel all Americans from the territory and turn it into a Chinese enclave. Israel is able to conduct this process because the Palestinian territories are in a strange limbo state: neither part of Israel, neither not part of Israel.
Despite this, I do not necessarily criticize Israel's position up to the present. If Israel had simply given the Palestinians their own state in 1968, they would have all the problems they do now plus some: endless terrorism intent on destroying Israel plus the complete inability to prevent the endless flow of arms and jihadists into Palestine. My preferred solution remains a two-state solution on 1967 borders. In 1948, Israel would have accepted this, but the Palestinians would not. In 2023, I believe the Palestinians would accept this, but Israel will not. So the killing will continue.
It seems doubtful, even if the Palestinians all became pacifists, that Israel would ever let them have a (or two) free and independent state(s). Palestinians can have peace, sure, but that’s not their major issue. But full separation and statehood are 100% in Israel’s hands, and since a large and growing % of Israelis are religiously opposed to ceding the West Bank or Gaza, that’s unlikely going forward. Settlement expansion also belies the idea that Israel expects to let go of the West Bank at some point.
I would guess Israel hopes the Palestinians will gradually leave of their own accord, but this can also be accomplished with fairly minimal backlash by, say, allowing them to evacuate via ‘humanitarian corridors’ during wars like the current one, then just not let them back in once the conflict is over.
Hello! Not opposed to your overall view, but I will add Israel has accepted proposed two-state solutions on many occasions, which have been rejected by Palestinian leadership. As one would expect, every time a peace offer was rejected by a group whose leaders, at least, chose violence instead, the follow-up offers got smaller and smaller. I would add that a fully separate state isn’t what I’ve heard Palestinians push for either, as it’s usually wrapped up with Right of Return and access to Israel’s economy and currency— none of which one would expect to be inherent with two separate countries.
It is true that some support for settlement expansion and annexation plans for the West Bank comes from religious, historical, and archaeological motivations— but there is the added layer of national security concerns. Jews do not have the same level of religious and historic ties to Gaza as they do to some of these other areas, which makes it easy to understand why it was the first area they were willing to fully pull out of (in 2005). Seeing the endless rocket fire and more or less constant state of war emerging from there ever since has not made the prospect of doing so on the West Bank very enticing for Israelis. I would add, though, that Gazans seeing the dreadful mismanagement of the West Bank under botched Oslo agreements (regardless of who we want to blame) doesn’t make the prospect of laying down their arms very enticing either.
Yes, now that we are here, Netanyahu’s plans are opposed to a two-state solution (as are Hamas’). The PA still nominally want this, but has neither popular support from their own people nor the trust of the Israeli government.
But generally, as long as each side has reason to believe that the other will continue to push for a single state (in a way that threatens the other group’s rights within that state, or a violent means of achieving that state) I can’t see either side laying down their arms. It’s not 100% in either party’s hands, which is why outside observers should continue to push both sides towards a peaceful solution.
> Israel’s Arab citizens comprise around a fifth of its total population and they have the same rights as its Jews. They’re not pushed into camps or “open air prisons” that are, notably, larger and less densely populated than Manhattan. If these people were able to provide proof of their family’s history in the region, they would be able to obtain citizenship as an Israeli.
Perhaps this is an issue of unclear wording, but citizenship is not simply offered to any Arab who can "provide proof of their family's history in the region". If this were the only standard to obtain citizenship, then Israel would very easily cease to be a Jewish-majority state as millions of Palestinian refugees could meet this standard. Consequently, this criteria for citizienship *only applies* to those Arabs whose ancestors were able to remain in Israel *after* the Nakba took place (i.e. it doesn't apply to the several hundred thousand Palestinians who fled/were expelled as part of the Nakba).
The other issue with this passage is that it completely ignores the unequal treatment of Jewish and non-Jewish paths to citizenship under Israeli law. By the law of return, Jews whose only connection to the land is of an ancient thousand-year-old nature have an easier path to citizenship that Palestinians who have an immediate ancestral connection to the land within the last century. Putting aside the semantics of whether or not this is apartheid, would you acknowledge that this arrangement is deeply unjust?
No, very few either can or want to meet the relatively low bar to obtain citizenship. The 1980 revision to the nationality law already corrected the issue of people who fled, 1948-52. I have never thought that overstating the effects of the Nakba is helpful, either.
Israel is a state for Jews, so aliyah will remain for Jews, not non-Jews. This is obviously not apartheid or anything like it, and it doesn't matter that it feels unjust, when the state is for Jews.
> No, very few either can or want to meet the relatively low bar to obtain citizenship. The 1980 revision to the nationality law already corrected the issue of people who fled, 1948-52.
To clarify, does your claim about the ease of obtaining citizenship apply only to Arab non-citizen residents of Israel or does it apply to all Arabs within the region (i.e. Arab non-citizen residents of Israel and Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza)?
If it applies only to the former group, then the claim misses the forest for the trees because the crux of the Palestinian view is the right of return for *all* Palestinians. If it applies to the latter group, then the claim is incorrect.
To elaborate, [1] states that the 1980 amendment conditioned citizenship on having already obtained permanent resident status via the Israeli government. But [2] (Section 1.F) points out that Palestinians living in Gaza or the West Bank are almost never granted permanent resident status, meaning that their ability to gain citizenship is not blocked by a lack of want but instead by a barrier imposed by the Israeli state.
> Israel is a state for Jews, so aliyah will remain for Jews, not non-Jews. This is obviously not apartheid or anything like it, and it doesn't matter that it feels unjust, when the state is for Jews.
But I think that's where the crux of the issue arises. Is it morally acceptable to have a state which is explicitly premised upon the preferential treatment of certain ethnoreligious groups relative to others? To be clear, I don't uniquely (or anti-Semitically) direct this criticism only towards Israel. I believe that an analogous argument could easily be made about the ways in which Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East have discriminated against Jews.
The claim applies to those affected under the law, i.e., Arabs within the region, yes. It also applies to many who have fled farther afield.
It seems morally fine to have a state that is for any particular group that can support a state, whether it be Jews, Arabs, Koreans, or Martians. The expulsion of Jews from most of the Middle East during the Israeli War of Independence was a morally repugnant act that deprived hundreds of thousands of their livelihoods in areas they had lived for hundreds of years, but if those countries wished to cater only to Muslims, it was certainly within their rights to do so. This all comes down to opinion though, so I don't think there's much to say.
How is the Nabka overstated? They were forced out or fled fearing for their lives and prevented from returning. Hundreds of thousands fled. Such a casual dismissal.
Part of it is that there's a strong tendency on the Left to outright regect the legitimacy of the nation state whenever possible, but the experience of the Jews alone really demonstrate why this beliefe is not merely wrong, but evil. And not just for the Israeli example. The mechanisms of the existing states that even the Nazis ruled over made it so that they couldn't just round Jews up for any reason and kill them, though they sure made a strong effort of it all the same. The Holocaust happened because the Nazis went and outright abolished nation states in their Eastern conquests, and these lawless zones they created gave them exactly what they needed to kill as many people as they wanted without any procedure nor restraint. Hence why the Jews of Western and Central Europe were deported to the East to be killed rather than just murdered where they were. Timothy Snyder details this practice in Black Earth, and demolishes the myth that Hitler was any kind of nationalist at all. He wasn't. He was a revolutionary socialist who hated the very concept of nation states, and worked astudiously for their destruction.
The nation state saves lives. Those who seek their abolition, regardless of their reasons, are fighting on the side of evil.
>His answer was Biblical, and specifically, Exodus 21:23–27. His interpretation was not by Midrash either—it was one obtained through Peshat: to ensure the world knew Jews could not be attacked again, he would take six million German lives.
This seems like an odd description of the passage as it elides the distinction between direct punishment and vicarious punishment alluded to in "implement “an eye for an eye” at the scale of “a nation for a nation”."
To be sure, there are other passages that could be quoted to justify such an action, e.g. Deut. 20, but the application of eye for an eye on a national scale instead of an individual one, seems like poetic license.
My impression was that Israel's 'Black Arrow' operation targeting the Egyptian military in Gaza in 1955 was the game changer. Prior to that, it was believed that Arab countries could train and send Palestinian refugees across the border without fear of retaliation. The UN unanimously condemned Israel. Nasser stepped up support for the 'fedayeen' and Israel too escalated. It is likely that this was a contributing factor to Israel joining France and Britain (or giving them a pretext for invading) in the Suez war. It is the need to retaliate against the backers of Palestinian groups which complicates the picture. At some times, Palestinian attacks are endogenous. At others it is 'pay for slay' and the Israeli reaction has to be against those doing the paying. There is a further problem that Palestinians- as with the recent Hamas atrocities- may attack so as to turn from being a cat's paw into the cat's whiskers if only briefly. Sadly, exporting terror is not as remunerative as exporting defensive military technology or water conservation technology or all the other things which Israel has managed to do. This is because any nutter can go around knifing people. The Israeli military, by contrast, is a great tech incubator. Israel has prevailed because it found a way to reintegrate extremists like the Lehi (Stern gang) and get them to enter mainstream politics and focus on bread and butter issues. But the problem always was, as the Brits had found, that whereas the Zionist state was at least potentially economically viable, Palestine could only exist if subsidized and provided with an administrative apparatus. This remains the problem to this day. It is understandable that Hamas wants to escape from Gaza, which it has turned into a Hell-hole, into East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The trouble is, it will turn such places into Gaza quickly enough. Still, for the moment, it appears that Hamas is the tail wagging the Iranian dog. If the POTUS was anybody but Biden, I would say this is the moment of Iran's extreme peril. It has gained so much so quickly, that the time might be ripe for a sudden reversal of fortune favourable to the Arab cause. After all, it was the Turk and the Persian who had inflicted most harm on the Arab people. As things stand, however, who can say what will happen next? Biden was a young senator fifty years ago when Nixon launched Operation Nickel Grass which soldered the US to Israel at the hip and assured American hegemony in subsequent decades. Biden has been quick enough to institute something similar but he may abruptly do a U turn. If so, the entire MENA will be plunged into confusion. Previously, there was some hope of a Chinese brokered rapprochement between Saudi and Iran and Israel and Hamas and so forth. Clearly the Hamas attack was meant to derail that. But was it also a repudiation of the rich and elderly leadership in Doha? The problem here is generational. We don't really know the mood of the young officers and 'basiji' type para-military outfits in the region. If you look at Yemen, some did very well for themselves out of that nation's misery. Why not go for War-lordism with some religious tincture if that can make you rich or, if not rich, get you killed while high on Captagon while you are still young and good looking?
Dear Cremeux Recueil, you are so learned I hesitate to submit my reaction to October 7 to your criticism. For in it I first document that Europe (as a whole) is ultimately responsible for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict -- in part owing to centuries of European anti-Semitism, culminating in the Holocaust, which drove the Jews out of Europe; and in part because Western statesmen during WWI (English, French, Russian, and to a lesser extent Italians and American) decided to solve their "Jewish problem" by giving someone else's land away. And then I propose what only Europe (and the West more generally) can do to help bring that conflict to an end, which I will leave for you to read. Anyway, here is the piece describing my reaction. I hope you enjoy it. https://shorturl.at/bIUV3
What is your opinion about impact of non-spatial ashkenazi intelligence on israel's military capacity? i know israeli military victories in past. However urban warfare has different circumstances.
I don't think there's any meaningful effect on Israeli military capabilities because the Ashkenazi spatial deficit is very overstated and it's hard to imagine it having much validity in the first place.
"If these people were able to provide proof of their family’s history in the region, they would be able to obtain citizenship as an Israeli." do you have a source for this?
While I enjoyed much of the historical retelling and statistical analysis in the first two-thirds of the article, I found myself reflexively disagreeing with the last one-third. I know that this issue can spark heated emotions so I'm curious to see what your response to my critiques are.
> The Israeli military follows these rules, and violations are both exceptional, punished, and responsible for few lost lives relative to the conflict as a whole.
I would encourage you to look up the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre which resulted in the deaths of anywhere between 460 and 3500 civilians.
> The claim that “settler colonialism” is violent ends up being the claim that people who move into an area through peaceful means rather than by killing its inhabitants are doing some sort of violence by merely immigrating, working the land, and—in many cases—operating under well-defined property law instead of previously-extant informal, often tribal rules.
This statement seems to ignore the multiple atrocities which took place as part of the Nakba (e.g. Al-Dawayima, Burayr). How can you claim that settler colonialism takes place via "peaceful means" when there is documented evidence of such atrocities? And even if you don't take my word for it, consider the words of Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky. In his 1923 essay titled "The Iron Wall", Jabotinsky makes it abundantly clear that acquisition of the land to create a Jewish state would *never* happen with the consent of the Arabs in the land (although in fairness, he personally didn't support acquiring the land by force even though that's what eventually happened).
> This statement seems to ignore the multiple atrocities which took place as part of the Nakba
Definitely important not to ignore, and your comment shares some of my few criticisms of this article.
I will add, though, that in a situation where the Palestinian leadership rejected a peaceful solution (especially one embraced by the entire international community at the time, as the UN 1947 partition vote shows) and opted to attack instead, in a bid to take the whole land, the fact that they lost land from this miscalculation is hard to see as definitively unjust.
I accidentally removed your comment when I meant to remove my own. My bad.
I'll still post a response to it and I hope you'll make it again so people can see.
I don't see the relevance of a massacre committed by the Lebanese Forces.
The claim that settler colonialism is violent because various bad things have happened doesn't follow.
I don't understand how Jabotinsky's claims that have no bearing on anything are relevant to what has actually happened in Israel. It doesn't matter that he said things like "we do not want to eject even one Arab from either the left or the right bank of the Jordan River. We want them to prosper both economically and culturally. We envision the regime of Jewish Palestine as follows: most of the population will be Jewish, but equal rights for all Arab citizens will not only be guaranteed, they will also be fulfilled", because this has no bearing on anything that has occurred in Israel.
> I don't see the relevance of a massacre committed by the Lebanese Forces.
Apologies, I should've clarified my view better here. While it's true that the Lebanese Forces directly carried out the massacre, the IDF surrounded the Sabra and Shatila camps and provided entry for the Lebanese forces to "kill terrorists" in the camp. And even when notified of the carnage against civilians that was occurring, they allowed the bloodshed to continue. Thus, the IDF was undeniably culpable for the civilian casualties which occurred, though not to the same degree as the Lebanese Forces.
> The claim that settler colonialism is violent because various bad things have happened doesn't follow. I don't understand how Jabotinsky's claims that have no bearing on anything are relevant to what has actually happened in Israel.
Prior to 1948, [2] states that 28% of the land was acquired by Jews through private land purchases. This share of land acquisition does not constitute violent settler colonialism (as you point out). But importantly, what does that say about the share of the land which was *not* acquired through such peaceable means? This is where the acts of violence and the words of Jabotinsky come into play. (Note: I'm not saying that 72% of the land must've been Arab-owned because the cited article calls that claim into question. I am merely pointing out that a non-trivial share of the remaining land was Arab-owned and had to come under Israeli control through some mechanism).
Importantly, the violence I outlined (e.g. Al-Dawayima, Burayr) was not carried out thoughtlessly, but was done so with the intention of displacing the Arab population who had lived within those villages. Thus, these acts of violence can only be fully understood when viewed through the lens of settler colonialism. This point is supported by Jabotinsky's own words which (correctly) point out that acquiring the land upon which Arabs historically lived upon could not be done without violating the consent of the Arab population. In other words, the use of force against the Arab population was a necessary condition to provide Israel with the land upon which it rests today.
I don't think it's abundantly clear that the IDF was culpable for the actions of the Lebanese Forces. They did commit a massacre, but what was the IDF to do? Fight them too? It seems unreasonable to place this on the shoulders of the IDF, but it shouldn't matter either way; tragedies happen, and they invite tragedy comparisons that turn into an endless and pointless back-and-forth that doesn't resolve to any particular conclusions.
> But importantly, what does that say about the share of the land which was *not* acquired through such peaceable means?
I don't think it says anything about it, but I will note that 72% is not the correct denominator, because the Israeli victory in the War of Independence did not result in Israel governing or even allocating all of the land of Mandatory Palestine, nor did it result in the immediate dissolution of the three quasi-/actually communal Ottoman land categories (miri, matruke, and mawat), although Israel would eventually dissolve those and modernize the classification of waqf and mülk holdings.
If the Arabs who began the war with Israel had agreed to the partition agreement, they would have lost far less land, and their expulsions from the area Israel would come to govern would have been more mutual and peaceful. That is to say that, though in the real world, Israel expelled more Arabs than the Arabs would expel Jews from the parts of the Mandate they ended up governing (however poorly, indirectly, etc.), if they had simply agreed to the U.N.'s partition plan, they wouldn't have lost as much and individuals wouldn't have really lost much of anything. That's simply how armed conflict goes.
> Thus, these acts of violence can only be fully understood when viewed through the lens of settler colonialism.
They seem to me much more like what happens when someone loses a war, and not at all like settler colonialism. Arabs failing to accept the partition agreement wasn't Israel's fault.
> This point is supported by Jabotinsky's own words which (correctly) point out that acquiring the land upon which Arabs historically lived upon could not be done without violating the consent of the Arab population.
Two things:
Firstly, Jabotinsky's words don't have any relevance. Jabotinsky could have said that the only way Jews will acquire land in Mandatory Palestine would be by jumping-jack competitions and foot races, but he would still be wrong. He could have said Jews could only acquire land by constructing nuclear missiles and launching them into the ocean. Again, he would be wrong. That he can be quoted saying things that are wrong doesn't help any discussion except about Jabotinsky himself.
Secondly, Jews were acquiring land peacefully prior to the War of Independence, and after that, the land transfers were what happens in war, rather than Israel's fault per se, as the Arabs did not agree to the partition agreement and Israel could not simply stop on a dime where land ownership demanded while also winning the war.
The use of force was not a necessary condition to provide Israel with the land it rests upon today. This is a claim that can never be justified, because all land transfers can, in principle, be done peacefully.
The counterfactual to Israel's winning the War of Independence and its expulsion and expropriation-related effects is far bloodier than what really happened. Had the Israelis lost, they would have been wiped out. The bloodletting that occurred across the Middle East that motivated so many to flee to Israel during and after the War of Independence wouldn't have had an escape valve, and the tragedy of the Holocaust would have been repeated again on a smaller scale.
Israel today faces the prospect of elimination at all times, and that must always be considered when discussing what is right about Israel's governance and various claims that end up being window-dressing for rewarding people who want a genocide of the region's Jews—a genocide that, mind you, will never have any equivalent committed *by* the region's Jews.
> I don't think it says anything about it, but I will note that 72% is not the correct denominator
Yup! I took care to note in my earlier comment that the 72% number is not implied by my claim.
> Secondly, Jews were acquiring land peacefully prior to the War of Independence, and after that, the land transfers were what happens in war, rather than Israel's fault per se, as the Arabs did not agree to the partition agreement and Israel could not simply stop on a dime where land ownership demanded while also winning the war.
But would you accept this logic when applied to, say, Russia's invasion of Ukraine? To be more concrete, let's imagine that the following conditions held:
1. The UN negotiated a partition plan such that Ukraine would cede the Donbas region to Russia in exchange for peace.
2. If Ukraine didn't accept the UN partition, they would be unable to stave off Russia and would lose even more land and lives as a result.
If Ukraine rejected the partition plan and lost almost all of its land as a result, would you then say that "land transfers happen in war and Ukraine didn't agree to the partition plan, so it's not Russia's fault"?
> The counterfactual to Israel's winning the War of Independence and its expulsion and expropriation-related effects is far bloodier than what really happened. Had the Israelis lost, they would have been wiped out. The bloodletting that occurred across the Middle East that motivated so many to flee to Israel during and after the War of Independence wouldn't have had an escape valve, and the tragedy of the Holocaust would have been repeated again on a smaller scale.
I view this as the most robust argument in defense of Israel: namely, that the consequences of Israel's absence would be far more devastating than the consequences of its presence (in that Jews would be decimated in the former condition but not the latter).
But I do think that making this kind of argument requires an acknowledgement that the establishment of Israel was a decision to choose between the lesser of *two* evils. In other words, one must recognize that the creation of Israel did inflict a serious toll on the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, even if that cost was outweighed by the benefit of avoiding a second Holocaust. Benny Morris made this acknowledgement, albeit incredibly crudely, when he stated in [1] that "You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs."
> But would you accept this logic when applied to, say, Russia's invasion of Ukraine?
I wouldn't, since they are very different scenarios, so the logic isn't directly applicable. In the case of Russia and Ukraine, Russia is an aggressor. They're not coming forth with an agreement that's generous to the other side, nor is their independence contingent on some form of agreement or conquest.
If we modified the scenario so that it was more comparable, as in something like Tatarstan if it included Ufa and Orenburg and bordered Kazakhstan, then I would perhaps apply it in the scenario where Tatarstan is capable of winning the war. I think I'd definitely accept that ruling in favor of the Tatars.
Or maybe better, if the original Russia-Ukraine scenario were modified so that Donbas legitimately voted to join Russia and the UN approved that and every major power agreed it was good and should happen, except Ukraine, I would think that'd be fine too.
But as it is, I don't think it's similar enough to the Israel-Palestine scenario to treat it similarly. The more similar it gets to the Israel-Palestine situation, it's likely the more I'll think it's alright, regardless of the specifics parties involved.
Dude just wanted to say. Your shit is so well written. Like in terms of blog quality, I wud rank you in the leagues of Gwern and Scott, but you just spit straight facts without a side helping of rationalist rhetoric. God bless you
>After all, they say an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind
Notably, this quote is mistakenly attributed to Gandhi, as it is indeed a description of his philosophy. This is notable, as Gandhi thought that nonviolent resistance was the solution to the Holocaust, so maybe Gandhi and pseudo-Gandhi quotes should sit this one out.
>For Rabbinic Jews, prophecy ended when the temple fell and, as we know, it will not return until after it is reestablished
Not sure where you're getting this from. The classic rabbinic source about the loss of prophecy is the Tosefta (late second century) which states that the last prophets were Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi who lived many centuries before the final destruction of the temple in 70.
This isn't a mere technicality, as if prophecy was lost before the temple fell, one could imagine it having been restored before the temple was restored. Indeed, in rejecting Muhammad's claim to prophecy, later medieval rabbis implicitly acknowledged the possibility of prophecy during that period, and gave other reasons to reject it.
Claims of "apartheid" and "settler colonialism" are not simply rhetorical nonsense. They have true (and competing) basis in international law, depending on whether the Palestinian territories are "part of Israel" or not.
If the Palestinian territories are indeed "part of Israel", Palestinians should have the same rights as Israelis. As long as they don't have these rights, Israel is running an "apartheid state." Of course, Israel cannot accept this, as doing so would be demographically fatal to the Jewish state. But Israel's concerns do not change the fact that their solution to the conundrum is to simply deny these people rights, which results necessarily in the creation of an apartheid state.
If the Palestinian territories are "not part of Israel", on the other hand, Israel is indeed engaging in "settler colonialism." The Badinter Commission found that internal boundaries between subnational entities are akin to frontiers in international law. Article 73 of the United Nations Charter dictates that nations administering territories which have not yet attained full self-government have a sacred trust to administer these territories with the interests of the inhabitants as their paramount interest. Israel is certainly not doing this. It simply has decided to acquire Palestinian territory for the expansion of the state of Israel.
The fact that Israelis often purchase this land from its owners does not eliminate these concerns. We would, in general, not accept Chinese nationals buying up all the real estate in San Francisco, then deciding to expel all Americans from the territory and turn it into a Chinese enclave. Israel is able to conduct this process because the Palestinian territories are in a strange limbo state: neither part of Israel, neither not part of Israel.
Despite this, I do not necessarily criticize Israel's position up to the present. If Israel had simply given the Palestinians their own state in 1968, they would have all the problems they do now plus some: endless terrorism intent on destroying Israel plus the complete inability to prevent the endless flow of arms and jihadists into Palestine. My preferred solution remains a two-state solution on 1967 borders. In 1948, Israel would have accepted this, but the Palestinians would not. In 2023, I believe the Palestinians would accept this, but Israel will not. So the killing will continue.
It seems doubtful, even if the Palestinians all became pacifists, that Israel would ever let them have a (or two) free and independent state(s). Palestinians can have peace, sure, but that’s not their major issue. But full separation and statehood are 100% in Israel’s hands, and since a large and growing % of Israelis are religiously opposed to ceding the West Bank or Gaza, that’s unlikely going forward. Settlement expansion also belies the idea that Israel expects to let go of the West Bank at some point.
I would guess Israel hopes the Palestinians will gradually leave of their own accord, but this can also be accomplished with fairly minimal backlash by, say, allowing them to evacuate via ‘humanitarian corridors’ during wars like the current one, then just not let them back in once the conflict is over.
Hello! Not opposed to your overall view, but I will add Israel has accepted proposed two-state solutions on many occasions, which have been rejected by Palestinian leadership. As one would expect, every time a peace offer was rejected by a group whose leaders, at least, chose violence instead, the follow-up offers got smaller and smaller. I would add that a fully separate state isn’t what I’ve heard Palestinians push for either, as it’s usually wrapped up with Right of Return and access to Israel’s economy and currency— none of which one would expect to be inherent with two separate countries.
It is true that some support for settlement expansion and annexation plans for the West Bank comes from religious, historical, and archaeological motivations— but there is the added layer of national security concerns. Jews do not have the same level of religious and historic ties to Gaza as they do to some of these other areas, which makes it easy to understand why it was the first area they were willing to fully pull out of (in 2005). Seeing the endless rocket fire and more or less constant state of war emerging from there ever since has not made the prospect of doing so on the West Bank very enticing for Israelis. I would add, though, that Gazans seeing the dreadful mismanagement of the West Bank under botched Oslo agreements (regardless of who we want to blame) doesn’t make the prospect of laying down their arms very enticing either.
Yes, now that we are here, Netanyahu’s plans are opposed to a two-state solution (as are Hamas’). The PA still nominally want this, but has neither popular support from their own people nor the trust of the Israeli government.
But generally, as long as each side has reason to believe that the other will continue to push for a single state (in a way that threatens the other group’s rights within that state, or a violent means of achieving that state) I can’t see either side laying down their arms. It’s not 100% in either party’s hands, which is why outside observers should continue to push both sides towards a peaceful solution.
> Israel’s Arab citizens comprise around a fifth of its total population and they have the same rights as its Jews. They’re not pushed into camps or “open air prisons” that are, notably, larger and less densely populated than Manhattan. If these people were able to provide proof of their family’s history in the region, they would be able to obtain citizenship as an Israeli.
Perhaps this is an issue of unclear wording, but citizenship is not simply offered to any Arab who can "provide proof of their family's history in the region". If this were the only standard to obtain citizenship, then Israel would very easily cease to be a Jewish-majority state as millions of Palestinian refugees could meet this standard. Consequently, this criteria for citizienship *only applies* to those Arabs whose ancestors were able to remain in Israel *after* the Nakba took place (i.e. it doesn't apply to the several hundred thousand Palestinians who fled/were expelled as part of the Nakba).
The other issue with this passage is that it completely ignores the unequal treatment of Jewish and non-Jewish paths to citizenship under Israeli law. By the law of return, Jews whose only connection to the land is of an ancient thousand-year-old nature have an easier path to citizenship that Palestinians who have an immediate ancestral connection to the land within the last century. Putting aside the semantics of whether or not this is apartheid, would you acknowledge that this arrangement is deeply unjust?
No, very few either can or want to meet the relatively low bar to obtain citizenship. The 1980 revision to the nationality law already corrected the issue of people who fled, 1948-52. I have never thought that overstating the effects of the Nakba is helpful, either.
Israel is a state for Jews, so aliyah will remain for Jews, not non-Jews. This is obviously not apartheid or anything like it, and it doesn't matter that it feels unjust, when the state is for Jews.
> No, very few either can or want to meet the relatively low bar to obtain citizenship. The 1980 revision to the nationality law already corrected the issue of people who fled, 1948-52.
To clarify, does your claim about the ease of obtaining citizenship apply only to Arab non-citizen residents of Israel or does it apply to all Arabs within the region (i.e. Arab non-citizen residents of Israel and Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza)?
If it applies only to the former group, then the claim misses the forest for the trees because the crux of the Palestinian view is the right of return for *all* Palestinians. If it applies to the latter group, then the claim is incorrect.
To elaborate, [1] states that the 1980 amendment conditioned citizenship on having already obtained permanent resident status via the Israeli government. But [2] (Section 1.F) points out that Palestinians living in Gaza or the West Bank are almost never granted permanent resident status, meaning that their ability to gain citizenship is not blocked by a lack of want but instead by a barrier imposed by the Israeli state.
> Israel is a state for Jews, so aliyah will remain for Jews, not non-Jews. This is obviously not apartheid or anything like it, and it doesn't matter that it feels unjust, when the state is for Jews.
But I think that's where the crux of the issue arises. Is it morally acceptable to have a state which is explicitly premised upon the preferential treatment of certain ethnoreligious groups relative to others? To be clear, I don't uniquely (or anti-Semitically) direct this criticism only towards Israel. I believe that an analogous argument could easily be made about the ways in which Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East have discriminated against Jews.
1. https://www.refworld.org/docid/4804c0ddc.html
2. https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/israel-west-bank-and-gaza/
The claim applies to those affected under the law, i.e., Arabs within the region, yes. It also applies to many who have fled farther afield.
It seems morally fine to have a state that is for any particular group that can support a state, whether it be Jews, Arabs, Koreans, or Martians. The expulsion of Jews from most of the Middle East during the Israeli War of Independence was a morally repugnant act that deprived hundreds of thousands of their livelihoods in areas they had lived for hundreds of years, but if those countries wished to cater only to Muslims, it was certainly within their rights to do so. This all comes down to opinion though, so I don't think there's much to say.
What did the 1980 revision do?
How is the Nabka overstated? They were forced out or fled fearing for their lives and prevented from returning. Hundreds of thousands fled. Such a casual dismissal.
Part of it is that there's a strong tendency on the Left to outright regect the legitimacy of the nation state whenever possible, but the experience of the Jews alone really demonstrate why this beliefe is not merely wrong, but evil. And not just for the Israeli example. The mechanisms of the existing states that even the Nazis ruled over made it so that they couldn't just round Jews up for any reason and kill them, though they sure made a strong effort of it all the same. The Holocaust happened because the Nazis went and outright abolished nation states in their Eastern conquests, and these lawless zones they created gave them exactly what they needed to kill as many people as they wanted without any procedure nor restraint. Hence why the Jews of Western and Central Europe were deported to the East to be killed rather than just murdered where they were. Timothy Snyder details this practice in Black Earth, and demolishes the myth that Hitler was any kind of nationalist at all. He wasn't. He was a revolutionary socialist who hated the very concept of nation states, and worked astudiously for their destruction.
The nation state saves lives. Those who seek their abolition, regardless of their reasons, are fighting on the side of evil.
>His answer was Biblical, and specifically, Exodus 21:23–27. His interpretation was not by Midrash either—it was one obtained through Peshat: to ensure the world knew Jews could not be attacked again, he would take six million German lives.
This seems like an odd description of the passage as it elides the distinction between direct punishment and vicarious punishment alluded to in "implement “an eye for an eye” at the scale of “a nation for a nation”."
To be sure, there are other passages that could be quoted to justify such an action, e.g. Deut. 20, but the application of eye for an eye on a national scale instead of an individual one, seems like poetic license.
My impression was that Israel's 'Black Arrow' operation targeting the Egyptian military in Gaza in 1955 was the game changer. Prior to that, it was believed that Arab countries could train and send Palestinian refugees across the border without fear of retaliation. The UN unanimously condemned Israel. Nasser stepped up support for the 'fedayeen' and Israel too escalated. It is likely that this was a contributing factor to Israel joining France and Britain (or giving them a pretext for invading) in the Suez war. It is the need to retaliate against the backers of Palestinian groups which complicates the picture. At some times, Palestinian attacks are endogenous. At others it is 'pay for slay' and the Israeli reaction has to be against those doing the paying. There is a further problem that Palestinians- as with the recent Hamas atrocities- may attack so as to turn from being a cat's paw into the cat's whiskers if only briefly. Sadly, exporting terror is not as remunerative as exporting defensive military technology or water conservation technology or all the other things which Israel has managed to do. This is because any nutter can go around knifing people. The Israeli military, by contrast, is a great tech incubator. Israel has prevailed because it found a way to reintegrate extremists like the Lehi (Stern gang) and get them to enter mainstream politics and focus on bread and butter issues. But the problem always was, as the Brits had found, that whereas the Zionist state was at least potentially economically viable, Palestine could only exist if subsidized and provided with an administrative apparatus. This remains the problem to this day. It is understandable that Hamas wants to escape from Gaza, which it has turned into a Hell-hole, into East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The trouble is, it will turn such places into Gaza quickly enough. Still, for the moment, it appears that Hamas is the tail wagging the Iranian dog. If the POTUS was anybody but Biden, I would say this is the moment of Iran's extreme peril. It has gained so much so quickly, that the time might be ripe for a sudden reversal of fortune favourable to the Arab cause. After all, it was the Turk and the Persian who had inflicted most harm on the Arab people. As things stand, however, who can say what will happen next? Biden was a young senator fifty years ago when Nixon launched Operation Nickel Grass which soldered the US to Israel at the hip and assured American hegemony in subsequent decades. Biden has been quick enough to institute something similar but he may abruptly do a U turn. If so, the entire MENA will be plunged into confusion. Previously, there was some hope of a Chinese brokered rapprochement between Saudi and Iran and Israel and Hamas and so forth. Clearly the Hamas attack was meant to derail that. But was it also a repudiation of the rich and elderly leadership in Doha? The problem here is generational. We don't really know the mood of the young officers and 'basiji' type para-military outfits in the region. If you look at Yemen, some did very well for themselves out of that nation's misery. Why not go for War-lordism with some religious tincture if that can make you rich or, if not rich, get you killed while high on Captagon while you are still young and good looking?
Dear Cremeux Recueil, you are so learned I hesitate to submit my reaction to October 7 to your criticism. For in it I first document that Europe (as a whole) is ultimately responsible for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict -- in part owing to centuries of European anti-Semitism, culminating in the Holocaust, which drove the Jews out of Europe; and in part because Western statesmen during WWI (English, French, Russian, and to a lesser extent Italians and American) decided to solve their "Jewish problem" by giving someone else's land away. And then I propose what only Europe (and the West more generally) can do to help bring that conflict to an end, which I will leave for you to read. Anyway, here is the piece describing my reaction. I hope you enjoy it. https://shorturl.at/bIUV3
What is your opinion about impact of non-spatial ashkenazi intelligence on israel's military capacity? i know israeli military victories in past. However urban warfare has different circumstances.
I don't think there's any meaningful effect on Israeli military capabilities because the Ashkenazi spatial deficit is very overstated and it's hard to imagine it having much validity in the first place.
"If these people were able to provide proof of their family’s history in the region, they would be able to obtain citizenship as an Israeli." do you have a source for this?
While I enjoyed much of the historical retelling and statistical analysis in the first two-thirds of the article, I found myself reflexively disagreeing with the last one-third. I know that this issue can spark heated emotions so I'm curious to see what your response to my critiques are.
> The Israeli military follows these rules, and violations are both exceptional, punished, and responsible for few lost lives relative to the conflict as a whole.
I would encourage you to look up the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre which resulted in the deaths of anywhere between 460 and 3500 civilians.
> The claim that “settler colonialism” is violent ends up being the claim that people who move into an area through peaceful means rather than by killing its inhabitants are doing some sort of violence by merely immigrating, working the land, and—in many cases—operating under well-defined property law instead of previously-extant informal, often tribal rules.
This statement seems to ignore the multiple atrocities which took place as part of the Nakba (e.g. Al-Dawayima, Burayr). How can you claim that settler colonialism takes place via "peaceful means" when there is documented evidence of such atrocities? And even if you don't take my word for it, consider the words of Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky. In his 1923 essay titled "The Iron Wall", Jabotinsky makes it abundantly clear that acquisition of the land to create a Jewish state would *never* happen with the consent of the Arabs in the land (although in fairness, he personally didn't support acquiring the land by force even though that's what eventually happened).
> This statement seems to ignore the multiple atrocities which took place as part of the Nakba
Definitely important not to ignore, and your comment shares some of my few criticisms of this article.
I will add, though, that in a situation where the Palestinian leadership rejected a peaceful solution (especially one embraced by the entire international community at the time, as the UN 1947 partition vote shows) and opted to attack instead, in a bid to take the whole land, the fact that they lost land from this miscalculation is hard to see as definitively unjust.
(Just found your conversation below on the topic. Carry on!)
I accidentally removed your comment when I meant to remove my own. My bad.
I'll still post a response to it and I hope you'll make it again so people can see.
I don't see the relevance of a massacre committed by the Lebanese Forces.
The claim that settler colonialism is violent because various bad things have happened doesn't follow.
I don't understand how Jabotinsky's claims that have no bearing on anything are relevant to what has actually happened in Israel. It doesn't matter that he said things like "we do not want to eject even one Arab from either the left or the right bank of the Jordan River. We want them to prosper both economically and culturally. We envision the regime of Jewish Palestine as follows: most of the population will be Jewish, but equal rights for all Arab citizens will not only be guaranteed, they will also be fulfilled", because this has no bearing on anything that has occurred in Israel.
No worries! I've reposted the comment at [1].
> I don't see the relevance of a massacre committed by the Lebanese Forces.
Apologies, I should've clarified my view better here. While it's true that the Lebanese Forces directly carried out the massacre, the IDF surrounded the Sabra and Shatila camps and provided entry for the Lebanese forces to "kill terrorists" in the camp. And even when notified of the carnage against civilians that was occurring, they allowed the bloodshed to continue. Thus, the IDF was undeniably culpable for the civilian casualties which occurred, though not to the same degree as the Lebanese Forces.
> The claim that settler colonialism is violent because various bad things have happened doesn't follow. I don't understand how Jabotinsky's claims that have no bearing on anything are relevant to what has actually happened in Israel.
Prior to 1948, [2] states that 28% of the land was acquired by Jews through private land purchases. This share of land acquisition does not constitute violent settler colonialism (as you point out). But importantly, what does that say about the share of the land which was *not* acquired through such peaceable means? This is where the acts of violence and the words of Jabotinsky come into play. (Note: I'm not saying that 72% of the land must've been Arab-owned because the cited article calls that claim into question. I am merely pointing out that a non-trivial share of the remaining land was Arab-owned and had to come under Israeli control through some mechanism).
Importantly, the violence I outlined (e.g. Al-Dawayima, Burayr) was not carried out thoughtlessly, but was done so with the intention of displacing the Arab population who had lived within those villages. Thus, these acts of violence can only be fully understood when viewed through the lens of settler colonialism. This point is supported by Jabotinsky's own words which (correctly) point out that acquiring the land upon which Arabs historically lived upon could not be done without violating the consent of the Arab population. In other words, the use of force against the Arab population was a necessary condition to provide Israel with the land upon which it rests today.
1. https://open.substack.com/pub/cremieux/p/the-cycle-of-violence?r=27wzgp&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=41987294
2. https://israeled.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/themes-land-issue-2-22-13.pdf
I don't think it's abundantly clear that the IDF was culpable for the actions of the Lebanese Forces. They did commit a massacre, but what was the IDF to do? Fight them too? It seems unreasonable to place this on the shoulders of the IDF, but it shouldn't matter either way; tragedies happen, and they invite tragedy comparisons that turn into an endless and pointless back-and-forth that doesn't resolve to any particular conclusions.
> But importantly, what does that say about the share of the land which was *not* acquired through such peaceable means?
I don't think it says anything about it, but I will note that 72% is not the correct denominator, because the Israeli victory in the War of Independence did not result in Israel governing or even allocating all of the land of Mandatory Palestine, nor did it result in the immediate dissolution of the three quasi-/actually communal Ottoman land categories (miri, matruke, and mawat), although Israel would eventually dissolve those and modernize the classification of waqf and mülk holdings.
If the Arabs who began the war with Israel had agreed to the partition agreement, they would have lost far less land, and their expulsions from the area Israel would come to govern would have been more mutual and peaceful. That is to say that, though in the real world, Israel expelled more Arabs than the Arabs would expel Jews from the parts of the Mandate they ended up governing (however poorly, indirectly, etc.), if they had simply agreed to the U.N.'s partition plan, they wouldn't have lost as much and individuals wouldn't have really lost much of anything. That's simply how armed conflict goes.
> Thus, these acts of violence can only be fully understood when viewed through the lens of settler colonialism.
They seem to me much more like what happens when someone loses a war, and not at all like settler colonialism. Arabs failing to accept the partition agreement wasn't Israel's fault.
> This point is supported by Jabotinsky's own words which (correctly) point out that acquiring the land upon which Arabs historically lived upon could not be done without violating the consent of the Arab population.
Two things:
Firstly, Jabotinsky's words don't have any relevance. Jabotinsky could have said that the only way Jews will acquire land in Mandatory Palestine would be by jumping-jack competitions and foot races, but he would still be wrong. He could have said Jews could only acquire land by constructing nuclear missiles and launching them into the ocean. Again, he would be wrong. That he can be quoted saying things that are wrong doesn't help any discussion except about Jabotinsky himself.
Secondly, Jews were acquiring land peacefully prior to the War of Independence, and after that, the land transfers were what happens in war, rather than Israel's fault per se, as the Arabs did not agree to the partition agreement and Israel could not simply stop on a dime where land ownership demanded while also winning the war.
The use of force was not a necessary condition to provide Israel with the land it rests upon today. This is a claim that can never be justified, because all land transfers can, in principle, be done peacefully.
The counterfactual to Israel's winning the War of Independence and its expulsion and expropriation-related effects is far bloodier than what really happened. Had the Israelis lost, they would have been wiped out. The bloodletting that occurred across the Middle East that motivated so many to flee to Israel during and after the War of Independence wouldn't have had an escape valve, and the tragedy of the Holocaust would have been repeated again on a smaller scale.
Israel today faces the prospect of elimination at all times, and that must always be considered when discussing what is right about Israel's governance and various claims that end up being window-dressing for rewarding people who want a genocide of the region's Jews—a genocide that, mind you, will never have any equivalent committed *by* the region's Jews.
> I don't think it says anything about it, but I will note that 72% is not the correct denominator
Yup! I took care to note in my earlier comment that the 72% number is not implied by my claim.
> Secondly, Jews were acquiring land peacefully prior to the War of Independence, and after that, the land transfers were what happens in war, rather than Israel's fault per se, as the Arabs did not agree to the partition agreement and Israel could not simply stop on a dime where land ownership demanded while also winning the war.
But would you accept this logic when applied to, say, Russia's invasion of Ukraine? To be more concrete, let's imagine that the following conditions held:
1. The UN negotiated a partition plan such that Ukraine would cede the Donbas region to Russia in exchange for peace.
2. If Ukraine didn't accept the UN partition, they would be unable to stave off Russia and would lose even more land and lives as a result.
If Ukraine rejected the partition plan and lost almost all of its land as a result, would you then say that "land transfers happen in war and Ukraine didn't agree to the partition plan, so it's not Russia's fault"?
> The counterfactual to Israel's winning the War of Independence and its expulsion and expropriation-related effects is far bloodier than what really happened. Had the Israelis lost, they would have been wiped out. The bloodletting that occurred across the Middle East that motivated so many to flee to Israel during and after the War of Independence wouldn't have had an escape valve, and the tragedy of the Holocaust would have been repeated again on a smaller scale.
I view this as the most robust argument in defense of Israel: namely, that the consequences of Israel's absence would be far more devastating than the consequences of its presence (in that Jews would be decimated in the former condition but not the latter).
But I do think that making this kind of argument requires an acknowledgement that the establishment of Israel was a decision to choose between the lesser of *two* evils. In other words, one must recognize that the creation of Israel did inflict a serious toll on the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, even if that cost was outweighed by the benefit of avoiding a second Holocaust. Benny Morris made this acknowledgement, albeit incredibly crudely, when he stated in [1] that "You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs."
[1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2004/01/16/an-interview-with-benny-morris/
> But would you accept this logic when applied to, say, Russia's invasion of Ukraine?
I wouldn't, since they are very different scenarios, so the logic isn't directly applicable. In the case of Russia and Ukraine, Russia is an aggressor. They're not coming forth with an agreement that's generous to the other side, nor is their independence contingent on some form of agreement or conquest.
If we modified the scenario so that it was more comparable, as in something like Tatarstan if it included Ufa and Orenburg and bordered Kazakhstan, then I would perhaps apply it in the scenario where Tatarstan is capable of winning the war. I think I'd definitely accept that ruling in favor of the Tatars.
Or maybe better, if the original Russia-Ukraine scenario were modified so that Donbas legitimately voted to join Russia and the UN approved that and every major power agreed it was good and should happen, except Ukraine, I would think that'd be fine too.
But as it is, I don't think it's similar enough to the Israel-Palestine scenario to treat it similarly. The more similar it gets to the Israel-Palestine situation, it's likely the more I'll think it's alright, regardless of the specifics parties involved.