Investigating Israeli Criminality at the International Criminal Court (ICC)

45 Responses to “Investigating Israeli Criminality at the International Criminal Court (ICC)”

1. 

   Rabbi Ira Youdovin April 2, 2020 at 12:21 pm #

   Something remarkable is happening in Israel. Driven by a shared realization that the Coronavirus makes no distinctions on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity or political affiliation, Jews and Palestinians are working together to fight it. The Palestinian Authority and Israeli government are coordinating their efforts on a daily basis, struggling to meet the needs of all victims—Jews, Muslims and Christians. This cooperation has received praise from the United Nations, and more importantly, from people on the ground. A recent public opinion poll found that 68% of Palestinians support the Palestinian Authority’s current cooperation with Israeli authorities. Some Israelis have voiced their gratitude on Twitter and television for the Palestinian Arab citizens who make up 17% of Israel’s doctors, a quarter of its nurses and nearly half its pharmacists. A call for volunteers in Jaffa, an ethnically mixed city with severe inter-communal tensions, brought out approximately a thousand responders representing the totality of its ethnic diversity.

   This comes on the heels of Israel’s national election in which 64.7 percent of Palestinian Israelis cast ballots of give a Joint List composed of four Palestinian parties fifteen seats in the 120-seat Knesset (parliament), the third largest total behind Likud and Blue and White. There has been serious talk about bringing the Joint List into the government and/or perhaps appointing one of its leaders to a ministerial position. This hasn’t happened as yet, and likely may not happen this time. But the fact that it’s been on the table reflects a changing Israeli attitude toward its Palestinian citizens, as well as a changing Palestinian attitude toward fuller participation in Israeli society.

   In other words, Israeli Jews and Palestinian Israelis are learning to get along with one another…some more than others, with substantial resistance on both sides. But things are changing. Last time I was in Jerusalem, I stayed in a hotel within walking distance of a friend’s home, especially if one took a shortcut through a public park. All of this geography is in the western part of the city, distant from Palestinian neighborhoods to the east. One day I was late for lunch in my friend’s home and in a hurry. But when I got to the park, entry was blocked by Israeli police officers so as not to disturb that a Palestinian wedding taking place inside.

   Yes, Israel’s Prime Minister repeatedly hurls anti-Palestinian remarks reeking of racism that are red meat for his base. And yes, the Knesset has enacted some draconian laws in recent years. And yes, PA president Abbas gives stipends to the widows and orphaned children of terrorists. And yes, some of the leaders of those parties in the Joint List say and sometimes do things that are deleterious to peaceful relations. One can go on and on citing negatives. But those Palestian doctors and nurses accredited to Israeli hospitals tell another story. And so does the fact that increasing numbers of Palestinian Israelis tell survey takers that they’re proud to be Israeli citizens. And perhaps most revealing was the angry reaction of Palestinian Israelis who constitute an overwhelming majority in the Triangle section of Lower Galilee when told that they might be included in an independent Palestinian state without having to leave their homes and jobs. They condemned the proposal as seeking to send them into exile. Their clear preference was to remain citizens of Israel.

   I raise this now as a reaction to your supporting and contributing to a case being brought against Israel at the ICC. Several times in the past, most notably after Rabin’s assassination at the hands of a Jew, progress toward ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was undermined by Palestinian suicide bombers. I’m not equating a case at the ICC with lethal terrorism, but its destructive impact on a possible pathway to peace could be the same.

   Who benefits from this exercise of lawfare? Certainly not the Palestinians who are making their way into Israeli society while not forsaking their Palestinian identity. Certainly not Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza, who would assuredly benefit from growing Palestinian influence among Israeli decision makers. And assuredly not Palestinians living in refugee camps whose future does not lie with the imagined powers of a powerless United Nations to bring them back to houses inside Israel that no longer exist.

   We could endlessly debate the validity of charges being brought. But that’s not the point. As the Book of Ecclesiastes teaches: there’s a time for every purpose under Heaven. Now is not the time to disrupt the most promising signs of progress seen in years.

   Rabbi Ira Youdovin

   Reply
   • 

     Richard Falk April 3, 2020 at 1:40 am #

     Ira:

     As usual, I appreciate the thoughtfulness and in this comment, the hopefulness of your interpretations of
     developments pertaining to Israel’Palestine relations. Also as usual, we assign differing values to the unfolding
     of events. On the prospects for ‘peace’ I see the agreement of the main political parties in Israel, combined with
     Gantz/Netanyahu unity and joint acceptance of the Trump/Kushner proposals, as de facto embrace of an Israeli/Zionist
     one-state solution. In this context, for Israeli Palestinians, differences in standards of living and overall infrastructure
     may make living in Israel more palatable that living under the PA or occupation. Beyond this, the moves toward further
     annexation seem much more important than these gestures of cooperation in the midst of a health crisis. A sustainable
     peace will only arise when Israel let’s go of its apartheid approach to fragmenting the Palestinian people and repressing
     even expressions of largely nonviolent resistance; as long as Israel practices hegemonic control over Palestinians there
     will be resistance, and as long as there will be resistance apartheid structures (although different than those in South
     Africa will remain), including denials of Palestinian rights of repatriation to refugees, and all sorts of inequalities
     present in Israeli nationality laws and the Basic Law. What you call ‘lawfare’ with derogatory implications I call ‘law’ with positive
     implications. Why should not Israeli policies and practices be tested by relevant international criminal standards? Because
     Israel sets the rules, a nonviolent challenge by way of legal procedures should be welcomed not condemned? During the Oslo
     Diplomacy, the Palestinian negotiators were constantly advised by American officials not to object to settlement expansion
     by invoking the Geneva Conventions because.’it would disrupt the peace process,’ and such issues should be deferred until
     ‘final status’ negotiations, which never came, and were never intended to come. Until Israel is willing to accept the equality
     of Palestinians there will be no peace, although Palestinians in Israel and even in refugee camps, especially women, will try
     to make life a bit better for their families and children. At this point, by law and prevailing mentally, Israel is overwhelmingly
     wedded to inequality and reliance on hegemonic structures to sustain it. If this is so, nonviolent resistance, whether via BDS or
     ICC, are ways of exposing both the Palestinian ordeal and Israeli lawlessness.

     Richard

     Reply
   • 

     Sean Breathnach April 3, 2020 at 3:41 pm #

     “In other words, Israeli Jews and Palestinian Israelis are learning to get along with one another…some more than others, with substantial resistance on both sides.”

     That may be the case but in the West Bank and Gaza it is a completely different scenario. The case been taken in the ICC against Israel, is mainly to do with Israeli war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza.

     “According to B’Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) over the last decade, approximately three-thousand five hundred Palestinians have lost their lives to the Israeli armed forces or paramilitary settler violence. Among those killed have been seven-hundred eighty two minors and three-hundred thirty eight women. According to a data base maintained by Israel-Palestine Timeline, since 2000, approximately 10,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel… including 2,172 children. Another 100,000 have been injured.

     Over the last year, much of the world has watched fixated on the Great Return March in which Israeli snipers have murdered more than 300 Palestinian demonstrators on the eastern edge of Gaza. Another 30,000 have been injured by gunshots or teargas. Nearly 60 of those killed and 7,000 of those injured have been children. Hundreds, including children, have had their limbs amputated as a result of being shot with ammunition designed to tear apart limbs.”

     Let the ICC, based on the evidence put before it, decide if war crimes have been committed.

     Reply
     • 

       Rabbi Ira Youdovin April 4, 2020 at 8:13 am #

       I understand Sean Breathnach’s point. But I have a question for him and also for Prof. Falk: As a hypothetical exercise, what happens if the ICC finds Israel guilty on all counts? How does that contribute to resolving the conflict in a way that opens a better future for the Palestinian people?
     • 

       Richard Falk April 4, 2020 at 9:03 am #

       Until Israel decides to give up ambitions in the WB and the whole of Jerusalem, and accepts some version of
       a right of return for Palestinians (who now need more than Jews), there are good gesture here and there but
       within an essential ideological and behavioral structure of apartheid. The law-oriented hope is admittedly a. forlorn
       long-shot, a sufficient discrediting of Israeli policies and practices to create a recalculation of interests
       and alternatives. The South African political class did not have a change of heart when they decided to release
       Mandela and dismantle apartheid, they made a new calculation. As long as Trump is President it is utterly foolish
       to expect Palestine to work toward some sort of agreed solution. The leadership in Israel & US have accepted, more or
       less, the outlook of Daniel Pipes–diplomacy was tried and failed, now is the time to shift to an imposed solution, and
       the challenge is to make the Palestinian leadership understand that their political ambitions are a lost cause, and the
       best they can hope for is improved living standards. Of courses, Israel is not South Africa, and a. Mandela is not available
       to chart the course to a compromise based on the fundamental recognition of the equality of the two peoples.
     • 

       Sean Breathnach April 4, 2020 at 4:29 pm #

       “I understand Sean Breathnach’s point. But I have a question for him and also for Prof. Falk: As a hypothetical exercise, what happens if the ICC finds Israel guilty on all counts? How does that contribute to resolving the conflict in a way that opens a better future for the Palestinian people?”

       Israel consistently puts the blame on Palestinians for the continuing conflict. If the ICC does find Israel guilty of war crimes, hopefully it will put more pressure on Israel to stop breaking international law and offer to start a genuine peace process, which previously they have never done. Any country who commits war crimes must be held accountable for their actions, Israel should not be the exception.
2. 

   Rabbi Ira Youdovin April 7, 2020 at 10:54 am #

   I want to thank Prof. Falk and Sean Breathnach for their thoughtful responses which facilitate a reasoned conversation among people having a diversity of perspective on Israel-Palestine. In this spirit, I’ll endeavor to address both of them in this post.

   Prof. Falk writes: “The law-oriented hope is admittedly a forlorn
   long-shot…” , which leads me to once again ask, where’s the wisdom of launching an initiative you know will fail? There are times when there’s no alternative to trying a Hail Mary pass. But this is not one of them.

   Which brings us Sean Breathnach’s assessment that Israel has never offered the Palestinians a reasonable pathway to peace. The historical record shows this to be incorrect. Israel accepted the UN’s 1947 Partition Plan which would have created an independent Palestinian state larger that the area currently being contested. The Palestinians rejected it and started a war which they, together with invading armies from five Arab states, lost. During the ensuing negotiations, Israel offered to withdraw to the lines drawn in the Partition plan in exchange for mutual recognition and normalization. The Arabs turned thumbs down, and gave the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt.

   Immediately following the 1967 War, Israel offered to return all the newly occupied territory except Jerusalem in exchange for piece. Several months later, the Arab leaders gathered for their summit in Khartoum issued its infamous “3 No’s” decree: no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel. (Jerusalem was excluded because the Arabs had barred Jews access to their holy sites, including the Western Wall of Solomon’s temple, which had never before been closed to Jewish worshippers.)

   In 2008, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert offered a sweeping peace proposal which would have given the Palestinians as much as 95 percent of the Occupied Territory, the eastern part of Jerusalem, and other concessions. This, too was rejected.

   The dominant thread in this tapestry of nay-saying is Palestinian refusal to accept Israel which drives a persistent impulse to make Israel disappear. To be sure, there are exceptions among the Palestinians and their number is growing. An astonishing number of Palestinians tell pollsters that they are proud to be Isaeli citizens. But thus far, the balance has leaned toward the rejectionists. Where war and terrorism failed, the Arabs turn to lawfare in a relentless effort dating back to the British Mandate era and even before.

   Prof. Falk describes the current Palestinian initiative as endeavoring to create a “sufficient discrediting of Israeli policies and practices to create a recalculation of interests and alternatives.” I’ll get to that in a moment, but first want to suggest that forcing a recalculation of interests and alternatives should be directed at the Palestinians. The century-long military and juridical campaign to first prevent and then destroy Israel has failed. It didn’t work when expressed in appeals to a succession of commissions during the Mandate period and to the UN. It isn’t working now and has little hope of succeeding in the future. Meanwhile, the Palestinians continue to lose time and lose ground, both figuratively and literally.

   Prof. Falk characterizes the Israeli mindset in these words: “Diplomacy was tried and failed, now is the time to shift to an imposed solution, and the challenge is to make the Palestinian leadership understand that their political ambitions are a lost cause, and the best they can hope for is improved living standards.” This is fairly accurate, but by linking it to American Prof. Daniel Pipes, a right wing extremist, he unfairly paints it as an extremist anti-Palestinian view. It is not. To the contrary, it’s a fully understandable consequence of the way Palestinian leaders have acted for more than a century. More than anything else, it is a reflection of fatigue. Diplomacy has failed. Palestinian intransigence has discredited a once vibrant and powerful force in Israeli society that sought peaceful co-existence in the context of a two-state solution, leaving the field open to proponents of Greater Israel expansionism on the ground, and racism in the public square.

   A Palestinian recalculation of objectives and tactics might yield an appreciation of their own culpability in this nightmare. The Israeli center and center-left, which at one time dominated Israeli the political culture continues to call for diplomacy. But with whom can Israel or anyone negotiate when the Palestinian body politic is fractured into competing voices with vastly differing goals? The PA is prepared to recognize Israel, and is already working with Israel on security issues. Hamas persists in its rejectionism, and persists in threatening Israel with a stockpile of rockets provided by Iran. Should Hamas leaders soften their position, even a little bit, Islamic Jihad would escalate its terrorism to disrupt the peace process. The real game changer will come if and when the Palestinians develop a consensus position that recognizes Israel and then goes on to demand whatever concessions they seek. They won’t get all of them, but their initiative would re-activate the masses of Israelis who oppose annexation and would be eager to push back against the religious nationalists who they fear are turning their state into something it was never meant to be.

   Prof. Falk is correct in saying that the Netanyahu-Trump partnership, as well as some very disturbing xenophobic tendencies in the Knesset, make this an unlikely time for advancing the peace process. My point in questioning an initiative in the ICC is not that it would preclude a peace process which is not currently operating, but that it would impair the chances of re-starting one, this time in an environment that may be more conducive to progress than in prior times.

   There’s much more evidence to present, but this post is already overly long. I’ll close by again thanking Prof. Falk and Sean Breathnach for their thoughtful posts and adding one final thought: I want to be perfectly clear that my citing Palestinian culpability for their role in the impasse is not playing the blame game. There’s much about Israel’s role that warrants harsh criticism, but I’ll leave that to Prof. Falk and those who share his views. I cite errors, misdeeds, misstatements and flawed policies not to cast blame but because understanding failures on both sides of the conflict is the only way to move toward reconciliation. This is already happening, albeit slowly. Palestinian-Israeli cooperation in combating coronavirus may prove to be an important step in the right direction.

   The rise of Palestinian status in Israeli society is not a matter of Israel granting “favors”, as Prof. Falk disparages it. It’s the result of two very different peoples learning to live together in a space they both claim. Resorting to the ICC would have the same negative impact as would happened when one of the two parties seeking reconciliation sues the other in court. It’s a road is best not taken

   Rabbi Ira Youdovin

   Reply
   • 

     Richard Falk April 8, 2020 at 3:29 am #

     Rabbi Youdovin:

     Once more you advance your interpretations of the situation with clarity, conviction, and familiarity.
     On the basis of our genuine effort to have a meaningful dialogue, or even a useful debate, we fall short,
     I believe, for one principal reason: you insist on treating Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs as living
     side by side in a condition of conceptual equality, therefore holding both sides more or less equally accountable
     for the impasse that has blocked peace; in contrast, I regard the two sides as unequal to such an extent that
     it places the primary burdens for the suffering of the Palestine people initially on the Zionist Movement and since
     1948 on the State of Israel. From this perspective, it was reasonable to refuse a partition proposal that lacked the
     consent of the resident majority population and derived from a colonialist pledge made back in 1917 when the Jewish
     population of Palestine was in the neighborhood of 8%. Further, the Israeli fragmenting of the Palestinian people
     for purposes of control is based on systematic inequality as acknowledged by the Basic Law of 2018, and in my view
     has the features of an apartheid regime, which blocks any move toward sustainable peace. The analogy to South Africa
     is helpful–only when the leadership changed its mind was it possible to produce racial peace between blacks and whites.

     I would welcome your comments on the relevance of inequality to our respective modes of understanding and advocacy.

     Reply
     • 

       Rabbi Ira Youdovin April 10, 2020 at 12:06 pm #

       Richard,

       Thank you for thoughtfully framing our conversation and posing a precise question which facilitates its continuation.

       I do not think of Palestinians and Israelis as having equal responsibility for the impasse. Quantifying guilt inevitably leads to the blame game with both sides having ample ammunition to hurl at one another. To what purpose? Who judges the game and how does it impact facts on the ground? Does each point scored translate into a dunam of land conceded or not conceded? One refugee allowed to return or not? In my experience, real life doesn’t work that way.

       What I’ve said is that Israelis and Palestinians have a shared responsibility for the impasse. The conflict is transactional. For example, Arab rejection of Israel’s offer to return the entire West Bank after the 1967 war in exchange for peace created a political vacuum which was exploited by a newly emerging Israeli right wing advocating the new concept of building a Greater Israel. In turn, the brutality of Israeli occupation strengthened the influence of forces within the Palestinian community who advocate eliminating Israel by any means available. This, in turn, strengthened the hand of Israelis who advocate annexation and suppression. So it goes.

       The transactional nature of the conflict receives little or no attention in your analysis. Your core thesis, which apparently obviates any analysis of the Palestinians’ role other than being blameless victims, is that Zionism has always sought to establish a Jewish state of divinely ordained dimensions so that everything that happens, on both sides, is a consequence of Israeli determination to complete this agenda. This thesis runs contrary to the historical record. Zionism is a sometimes confusing amalgamation of differing perspectives and objectives that coexisted within the movement from its very inception in the late 19th century. Theodor Herzl, an assimilated Viennese Jew whose primary motivation was rescuing Jews from European anti-Semitism, once flirted with the notion of establishing a Jewish state in what is now Uganda. He was outvoted by a large majority who believed that the Jewish people’s historic ties to Palestine made Palestine essential. In the 1930’s Z’ev Jabotinsky wanted to set Israel’s borders on both sides of the Jordan. The World Zionist Organization rejected the notion and Jabotinsky left the movement.

       This is not to suggest that the Bible wasn’t on the minds of Zionist activists. It assuredly was. But their attachment was historical not religious (Ben Gurion was a prime example of this.) Most of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews who accepted biblical writ as binding rejected Zionism as usurping a role God had intended for the Messiah.

       Nor was there anything approaching unanimity in making independent statehood the movement’s objective. Both Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann told the Peel Commission that they hoped Britain would continue its mandate after partition so that the Jewish entity that emerged would be a member of British commonwealth. Sentiment didn’t swing decisively toward statehood until 1942, after the British had cut off Jewish immigration, condemning masses of European Jews to Nazi extermination while the rest of the world, including the United States, did nothing to help them. This convinced the Zionist that they had to become masters of their own destiny.

       The list of cause-effect-cause, etc. episodes is too long to even begin recounting here. One example will have to suffice: the current situation. There are a significant number of Israelis who oppose annexation for a variety of reasons whose position is undermined by the fragmentation of Palestinian leadership which leaves nobody able to negotiate an agreement that can stand against internal pressure. This strengthens the hand of Israeli hawks who argue that there’s no partner for peace among the Palestinians, which in turn, strengthens Palestinian rejectionists. This dynamic explains the Blue and White party’s unexpected embrace of the Trump plan: why risk offending the world’s most powerful leader when there’s no possibility under current circumstances for progress toward negotiating peace.

       N.B. Explaining why something happens does not necessarily justify it. I very much like your idea of fostering a new calculation. But that objective must be undertaken by Palestinians and Israelis alike. Unless the Palestinians develop a workable consensus abandoning their determination to reverse the nakba by eliminating Israel as a Jewish ethnocity, progress toward a resolution of conflict, which must entail reconciliation, is impossible.

       I have the utmost respect for the ICC. During my years in Chicago, Cherif Bassiouni (of blessed memory) and I became good friends. He invited me to be part of a small group accompanying him of a sentimental trip to Egypt following his wife’s death. I spent hours sitting with him on one of those Agatha Christie style boats cruising up (or was it down?) the Nile listening to him talk about the ICC, making me a true believer. But the ICC is not a one-size-fits-all thing. There are times when resorting to the Court are counter-productive for the plaintiffs. In this case, going to the ICC continues a Palestinian pattern of looking to outsiders to achieve gains that they, themselves, could very well achieve with a new calculation. That tactic dates back to the early years of the Mandate beginning with the Shaw, Lofgren and Peel Commissions, and continuing after partition with numerous appeals at the UN. Chances are that the ICC gambit, like its predecessors, will serve only to delay a new calculation that could produce a better future their people.

       Richard, I close with a question or two for you. What are the chances of the Palestinians uniting to the extent of being able to bring a consensus position to the negotiating table?

       Ira
     • 

       Richard Falk April 11, 2020 at 3:50 am #

       Ira:

       I write conscious of this holiday moment, and it makes me consider my identity as a Jew with
       ecumenical leanings that incline me toward opposition toward hegemonic state/society arrangements
       and sympathy with those so victimized. From this background, I write about the Israel/Paalestine
       relations, and realize that our different points of departure lead us to dwell on different aspects
       of the conflict, as well as to adopt views that strike each other as highly partisan.

       In this spirit, I do not feel that you answered my underlying question, which I can put in the form
       of an assertion that you might find dogmatic, but for me it is integral to progress toward genuine peace:
       peace will come to Israelis and Palestinians only when Israeli leadership is persuaded, coerced to
       abandon current apartheid structures of control and fragmentation. In my view, negotiations are a dead
       end so long as Israel on the basis of this fundamental multi-dimensional foundation of inequality, especially
       as reinforced by the US as geopolitical partner and faux intermediary. I regard these flaws as dooming past
       negotiations.

       At the same time, I am not lauding Palestinian failures–to develop their own proposals, to establish sufficient
       unity to create credibility as legitimately representing the Palestinian people as a whole including refugees and
       exiles. As you must know, these flaws of Palestinian leadership were often encouraged by Israel, including even
       the assassination of moderate voices. Overcoming these flaws would not make any difference so long as Israel regards
       its security and political project bound up with retaining its structures of domination.

       Also, I believe the tactical brilliance of the Zionist Movement, almost from the beginning, was a kind of situational
       opportunism–take what is available without losing sight of the overriding goal of recovering ‘the promised land,’ if
       not in its entirely, at least mostly, while neutering any Palestinian remnant via border control and demilitarization,
       the model of control evolved since 2005 for Gaza under the banner of ‘disengagement.’

       I think one can learn a lot by the apartheid struggle in South Africa, which only made progress after making use of external
       means of pressure including 4 separate appeals to the World Court, BDS, and the UN Campaign Against Apartheid. Of course, the
       Africans made made many mistakes in mounting their struggle, and also had deep divisions, and were frequently told by apologists
       for the regime that blacks in South Africa were better off than in most other parts of Africa, and from some points of view
       this was true.

       A final point, the remarkable perseverance of Zionism in establishing Israel at a time of collapsing colonialism meant that the
       natives would not be quiet, would resist by all means, which would produce repression by all means. In my view, this is the essence
       of what has happened over the course of a century.

       I know that this way of seeing will not convince you, but perhaps it will help you understand our differences. To
       me, asking the Palestinians to negotiate under present conditions is a death warrant, but seeking validation of their
       grievances is a nonviolent assertion of continuing resistance. Your question to me at the end can be answered in
       two ways: first of all, Israel does not want Palestinian unity, and had taken and will take all means to prevent it.
       and secondly, if somehow unity was achieved, negotiations would produce another failure blamed on the Palestinians,
       as the Israeli political consensus it aligned with Trump in proposing what amounts to an Israeli one-state ‘solution.’

       Again, I appreciate your care and thoughtfulness in preparing such detailed explanations of your views. I know my
       ‘stubbornness’ must be a disappointment.

       Respectfully, Richard
   • 

     Sean Breathnach April 11, 2020 at 2:46 pm #

     “Which brings us Sean Breathnach’s assessment that Israel has never offered the Palestinians a reasonable pathway to peace. The historical record shows this to be incorrect. Israel accepted the UN’s 1947 Partition Plan which would have created an independent Palestinian state larger that the area currently being contested. The Palestinians rejected it and started a war which they, together with invading armies from five Arab states, lost. During the ensuing negotiations, Israel offered to withdraw to the lines drawn in the Partition plan in exchange for mutual recognition and normalization. The Arabs turned thumbs down, and gave the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt.”

     Professor Falk in his reply has given the reason for the rejection of the 1947 Partition Plan and so I will not elaborate.

     “Immediately following the 1967 War, Israel offered to return all the newly occupied territory except Jerusalem in exchange for piece. Several months later, the Arab leaders gathered for their summit in Khartoum issued its infamous “3 No’s” decree: no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel. (Jerusalem was excluded because the Arabs had barred Jews access to their holy sites, including the Western Wall of Solomon’s temple, which had never before been closed to Jewish worshippers.)”

     In Henry Siegman’s article in the London review of books ‘Grab more hills, expand the territory’.

     “He states that the story that Israel offered to return all the newly occupied territory, is a lie. Israel’s military and political leaders never had any intention of returning the West Bank and Gaza to their Arab residents. The cabinet’s offer to withdraw from Arab land was addressed specifically to Egypt and Syria, not to Jordan or the Palestinians in the territories. The cabinet’s formal resolution to return the Sinai and the Golan in June 1967 said nothing about the West Bank, and referred to Gaza as ‘fully within the territory of the state of Israel’. With only a murmur of dissent, the cabinet, led by Yigal Allon and Moshe Dayan, and the then prime minister, Levi Eshkol, committed itself to policies that would allow only local forms of autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza, an arrangement they believed would in time allow them to establish the Jordan River as not only Israel’s security border but as its internationally recognised political border as well.”

     “The decision to retain control of the territories was taken days after the end of the 1967 war, and was not a response to Palestinian terrorism, or even to Palestinian rejection of Israel’s legitimacy. Zerdal and Eldar cite a report by Mossad officials, prepared at the request of the IDF’s intelligence division and presented to the IDF on 14 June 1967, which found that ‘the vast majority of West Bank leaders, including the most extreme among them, are prepared at this time to reach a permanent peace agreement’ on the basis of ‘an independent existence of Palestine’ without an army. The report was marked top secret, and buried.

     “In 2008, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert offered a sweeping peace proposal which would have given the Palestinians as much as 95 percent of the Occupied Territory, the eastern part of Jerusalem, and other concessions. This, too was rejected.”

     I don’t know enough about the 2008 peace offer to make a comment at this time.

     Reply
     • 

       Rabbi Ira Youdovin April 13, 2020 at 9:59 am #

       Sean Breathnach is correct in noting that Israel’s 1967 offer to return lands taken in the Six Day War was made to Egypt and Syria, omitting Jordan. I accept responsibility for my error, and thank Sean Breathnach for pointing it out. This being said, I take issue with the conclusions drawn by the two sources cited: Zerdal and Eldar in their 2007 book “Lords of the Land”, and Seigman in his review of the book in London Review of Books:

       “The decision to retain control of the territories was taken days after the end of the 1967 war, and was not a response to Palestinian terrorism, or even to Palestinian rejection of Israel’s legitimacy. Zerdal and Eldar cite a report by Mossad officials, prepared at the request of the IDF’s intelligence division and presented to the IDF on 14 June 1967, which found that ‘the vast majority of West Bank leaders, including the most extreme among them, are prepared at this time to reach a permanent peace agreement’ on the basis of ‘an independent existence of Palestine’ without an army. The report was marked top secret, and buried.”

       It defies credulity to claim that security issues had no role in determining Israeli policy in the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War, which many Israelis feared would lead to their annihilation. To the contrary, security was foremost in the minds of its post-war planners. Regarding Jordan, while it’s certainly possible that West Bank leaders were prepared to make peace, fact is that they didn’t control the situation. Beginning in the late 1960’s the PLO had been using Jordan as a base for staging terrorist attacks inside Israel. Because the Jordanian government was unwilling—or unable or both!—to stop them, Israel needed to create a buffer zone along its entire border with Jordan. (n.b. When the Jordanian government finally moved to interdict the terrorists in the early 1970’s, the PLO launched a civil war which Jordan narrowly won and drove them out.)

       What Israeli leaders actually intended for the West Bank is best ascertained by examining what they did in real time. In 1968, the government adopted a plan which bears the name of its developer, Yigal Allon, a cabinet minister and hero of the 1948 war. It called for an establishing an Israeli presence along the Jordanian border, thus avoiding areas of dense Palestinian population in the center of the West Bank, thus achieving some measure of protection against attack from the outside while leaving the indigenous Palestinians free to live their lives as they wished to.

       I worked with Yigal Allon in the mid-1970’s and gained some insights into his thinking. He lived on a kibbutz amid Palestinian villages in the Galilee, spoke fluent Arabic and counted many Arabs among his friends. His thinking in proposing the plan was that Palestinian autonomy in a geographically contiguous area with a wide corridor connecting to Jerusalem would evolve into an independent Palestinian state encompassing most of the West Bank. This hope lasted for some years before the rise of a Messianic settlement movement following the 1973 Yom Kippur War. This story is best told by Gershom Gorenberg in his book, “Accidental Empire” and Yossi Klein Halevy in his book, “Like Dreamers”. The Zerdal and Eldar book, “Lords of the Land” is well researched and worth reading, although I disagree with its slant and many of its conclusions.

       Rabbi Ira Youdovin
     • 

       Sean Breathnach April 14, 2020 at 6:06 am #

       Rabbi Youdovin:
       Rabbi Youdovin:

       I would like to thank you for contributing to a civil debate on the Israel/Palestine conflict.

       I would like to invite you to read an article by Yarden Katz (link below) or even look at the video of a panel that took place in December 2018 in Tel Aviv, in Hebrew, for an audience of mostly Israeli Jews. The panel’s title was “Do Good Fences Make Good Neighbors?” – or as some panelists bluntly put it, are “divorce” and “separation” the appropriate metaphors for thinking about the future of Israel-Palestine? The panelists were Yael Barda, a sociologist and activist from Hebrew University, Jafar Farah, a Palestinian civil rights activist and founder of Mossawa center, and Shaqued Morag, Executive Director of the Israeli NGO Peace Now. The moderator was Israeli journalist Meron Rapaport.

       The discussion lasted nearly two hours and touched on many issues, but one exchange in particular stood out. At one point, an Israeli man in the audience made a comment that’s familiar from dominant discourses on Israel-Palestine. The man’s narrative – about Palestinians rejecting the U.N. Partition Plan, and Jews’ right to the land based on a two-thousand-year history – represents a generic Zionist Israeli perspective.
       Jafar Farah, the only Palestinian panelist, delivered a piercing, comprehensive, and inspiring response.

       I was struck by Jafar Farah’s honesty and willingness to offer the hand of friendship to Israelis in spite of how Palestinians have been treated for over 70 years.

       https://mondoweiss.net/2019/08/stole-people-willing/
3. 

   Rabbi Ira Youdovin April 14, 2020 at 11:28 am #

   Richard,

   Once again I thank you for taking time to continue this conversation.

   Obviously, I disagree with much of your narrative, as you disagree with much of mine. For that reason, I won’t proceed with a point-by-point refutation, which produces only frustration and sometimes anger. We can co-exist peacefully, each of us with his own truth. Besides, while the past may be prologue, it is the past which doesn’t change no matter how many versions are proposed. Instead, I want to focus on the present and future, which are still in the making.

   You wrote, “[P]eace will come to Israelis and Palestinians only when Israeli leadership is persuaded, coerced to abandon current apartheid structures of control and fragmentation.” What does that mean? One possible reading is that peace will come only if Israel stops being Israel. In your sweeping definition of apartheid, a Jewish ethnocity is an apartheid structure no matter how well it facilitates integration of its Palestinian citizens. If that’s the case, we really have nothing to talk about. My objective is improving Israel, not eliminating it.

   If, on the other hand, you seek a resolution of conflict that enables the Palestinians to achieve the core aspirations in the context of peaceful co-existence with and in the Jewish state of Israel, it’s fair to ask whether going to the ICC at this time is the best way for pursuing this objective.

   Our neighbor and my friend Steven E. Zipperstein has recently published an academic study entitled “Law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict”. In it, he traces a pattern of Arab attempts to achieve—in appeals to a series of British commissions, the UN and ICJ and even the Israeli High (aka Supreme) Court– what they were unable to achieve on the ground, largely through terrorism. Attorneys representing the Arabs often repeated (almost verbatim) arguments first presented in the early 1920’s by Haj Amin Al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and attorney Ani Bey Abdul Hadi. Resort to the ICC would continue this pattern, likely with the same result of doing nothing to further the Palestinian cause.

   Another constant in this history is that appeals to outsiders has served to shield Arab leaders from the onerous task of re-evaluating their objectives and tactics, which has caused them to miss or reject opportunities for peace. You write: “[Israel’s] overcoming these flaws would not make any difference so long as Israel regards its security and political project bound up with retaining its structures of domination.” I agree insofar as the statement means that Israel must change its attitude toward the Palestinians (which is already in progress) and also its behavior, especially in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. (The refugee issue is of a different nature which would take too long to discuss.)

   But missing from your assertion is recognition that the conflict is transactional so that modification on one side is contingent on modification on the other. To be specific: Israel’s loosening its grip on Gaza is impossible so long as Hamas maintains its stated intentions to destroy Israel and stockpiles thousands of Iranian built missiles to do the job. The same can be said about Israeli withdrawal from enough of the West Bank to accommodate an independent Palestinian state. That’s why I believe that quantifying blame is misleading, especially when the calculation is based on military might. That calculation might have reasonable for millennia. But we’re now in an age of asymmetrical warfare where terrorism can punch well above its weight.

   I appreciate that I’m ignoring many relevant items. But this post has gone on long enough, so I’ll leave them to another day. However, one point needs to be made in closing: your thesis, indeed the entire Palestinian narrative, is based on the misconception that Zionism, from its very outset, has sought to establish a Jewish (more or less) theocracy of a dimension ordained by God and reported in the Hebrew Bible. That was not true in 1882 or 1898 or 1917 or 1947 or 1967 or 2020. I’m interested in seeing your evidence for drawing this conclusion.

   Has COVID19 invaded Turkey? If so, stay inside and stay safe.

   L’Shalom,

   Ira

   Reply
   • 

     Richard Falk April 15, 2020 at 9:05 am #

     Ira:

     Once again you have thoughtfully raised a series of key issues in a non-polemical way
     that invitees dialogue, although as you suggest we disagree on how to understand the interaction
     of the two peoples. Let me concentrate on just of a couple of points.

     I don’t feel you come to terms with the degree to which the imperatives of Israeli security induced the construction of
     a sophisticated form of apartheid that was premised on the need to dispossess Palestinians to solve the demographic problem
     (of being Jewish and democratic), to complete the acquisition of ‘the promised land’ (Jerusalem,Judea/Samaria), while coping
     with inevitable resistance to the basic Zionist project of establishing a Jewish homeland in what had been the Palestinian homeland.
     The importance of the historical/biblical claim of Israeli legitimacy is to sidestep basic post-WW II international law & morality reliance on
     the logic of self-determination. An imposed partition arrangement was a flagrant refusal to respect Palestinian rights of self-determination
     as no effort was made to assess the views of the majority resident population even after the end of the British mandate. Against this background
     the two sides had opposite justifications for their claims, and neither side was able to prevail altogether, although the Zionist side managed to
     get the upper hand, but not without facing a permanent challenge of Palestinian resistance and global solidarity based on the perception that
     the native population was being subjugated and denied basic rights. Such inequality was accentuated by the unlimited Jewish right of return and the denial of any comparable right to non-Jews, remembering that when the Zionist project got its big international push by the Balfour Declaration the Jewish population was no more than 8%. Given the further perception of Jewish settlement as primarily European, it was inevitable that there would
     be violent resistance, and that to achieve success superior force would have to be used to keep control. In essence, I am arguing that apartheid is
     a necessity given Zionist goals, but that its existence entails gross inequality on all dimensions of collective existence premised on ethnic identity, and this makes the relations between the peoples non-transactional and based on force and counter-force. Any effort to impose a solution given these
     realities is bound to be challenged by the underdog, and because of this expectation, the dominant side will reasonably insist on one-sided security guarantees, which will make the challenge inevitable, without end. This is where the South Africa experience is relevant–peace could not come so long as apartheid was the basis of political order, but once dismantled peace could emerge on the basis of ethnic equality. So long as Israel maintains a structure of domination, which must be maintained if it insists on the exclusive rights of the Jewish people to self-determination, the only alternatives for the Palestinians is surrender, resist forcibly, or have recourse to delegitimizing tactics (the logic of the ICC case).

     Let me end on a personal note. I cannot reconcile the Zionist project with my ethical beliefs, at least as it has played out, although I understand its strong impetus based on the history of anti-Semitism, and the rise of Fascism, but to the extent that its realization required the dispossession and subjugation of another people in a foreign country (despite the continuous Jewish connections) it seems to embrace contractions that require war not accommodation. A political compromise would be possible, including two homelands for two peoples, but within one state, combined with a liberal non-ethnic immigration policy that was based on a right of asylum administered without ethnic bias. Can you imagine such a curtailed Zionist agenda? I can imagine a Palestinian embrace of such an approach.

     We have a fairly strong dose of the pandemic here in Turkey, but so far our village is relaxed, andd we have been careful and okay, and hope the same goes for you and loved ones in. SB.

     Greetings from Yalikavak,

     Richard

     Reply
     • 

       Rabbi Ira Youdovin April 18, 2020 at 5:01 am #

       Richard,

       I thank you once again for continuing our conversation. Although we’re unlikely to reach agreement on anything significant, exchanging views with cordiality and mutual respect is a most welcome development.

       While I appreciate that your opposition to Zionism is rooted in what you see as its incompatibility with your ethical standards, I believe your perception of Zionism is flawed and question your methodology in reaching conclusions about the conflict. You say that early Zionist activity in Palestine made armed resistance “inevitable”. I employ the same approach in saying that Arab refusal to accept Israeli offers to return land captured in the 1967 War created a geographical and political vacuum on the West Bank that made Israeli expansionism “inevitable”. Both of us are right. Both of us are wrong.

       Many things in life are inevitable. If you’re out skiing and get caught in an unexpected avalanche, it’s inevitable that you’ll be covered by masses of snow and may be suffocated to death. But the Palestinians were not compelled to wage armed conflict against the Jewish newcomers. They chose violence. And the Israelis were not compelled to build West Bank settlements. It, too, was a matter of choice. In both instances, and many others like them, there were other options that would have made for a better future.

       I make this point not to play word games but to raise an issue that has ethical and pragmatic repercussions. Central to the Palestinian narrative is a view of themselves as being helpless victims of European colonialism and Zionist imperialism. This mindset, which has persisted for more than a century, impairs their ability and/or willingness to make an honest assessment of themselves, and make course corrections that put them on a pathway toward attaining reachable goals. Instead, they have reached out to external actors to deliver favorable outcomes that their negative self-perception renders them incapable of achieving for themselves. Resort to the ICC perpetuates an unfortunate history that dates back` to the Shaw Commission (1929).

       If you will permit a personal reference, your persistent reference to the Balfour Declaration illustrates this pattern. Yes, Britain made a unilateral commitment without consulting the indigenous Arab population at a time when Zionist pioneers were a very small minority in Palestine, and perhaps in violation of an earlier pledge to an Arab sheik based in Damascus that may or may not have included Palestine. But that was more than a century ago. In the ensuing years, the legitimacy of a Jewish national presence in Palestine has been affirmed and reaffirmed by a series of British commission during the mandate period (Shaw, Lofgren and Peel, among others), and by international forums (San Remo, Versailles) and bodies (League of Nations and United Nations). On these occasions, the Palestinian case was well represented by very competent advocates, including the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini. At this late date, challenging the Balour Declaration’s legitimacy draws attention from the primary challenge of creating a peaceful co-existence between Palestinians and Jews.

       In this regard, I believe your proposal of a bi-national state, while well intentioned, is unworkable. I say this without reference to ideological considerations, which are daunting, but rather to the pragmatic impossibility of a successful marriage uniting two parties whose mutual hostility and suspicion of the other’s motives precludes their agreeing on terms for a divorce. How does one go about creating a single legal systems from two very different ones, etc.? The bloody record of mash-ups carved from the cadaver of the Ottoman Empire should ring the alarm bells. Moreover, one state encompassing two homelands describes a federal system. It took the founders of the United States thirteen years to move from the Declaration of Independence to a Constitution…and these were men who had fought side-by-side against the British. A new bi-national state would not survive its formative years in a neighborhood filled with hungry predators.

       You have asked me to consider the feasibility of a bi-national state. I now ask you to do the same in regard to a slight modification of your proposal. How about two independent states united in some sort of a regional arrangement (something like Benelux) with the possibility of including Jordan. Each participant would be a sovereign state with its own laws, traditions, anthem, flag, etc. The regional grouping would address shared concerns including defense and refugees. I believe many Israelis would support the concept. What about the Palestinians?

       Stay safe,

       Ira
     • 

       Richard Falk April 18, 2020 at 10:45 am #

       Ira:

       It is encouraging to me that we have elevated our conversation to a higher level. Being able to
       respect the otherness of perceptions and experience is a step toward possible accommodation even
       in the most intractable situations.

       I understand your sense that Zionism can be reasonably construed in ways different than my understanding,
       but I remain unconvinced that if the Palestinians had accepted the partition proposal put forward by the
       UN that would have been the end of the Zionist project. I believe the weight of evidence is that Zionism
       was determined to have sovereign control over Jerusalem and was, at best, divided as to the disposition of
       the West Bank, and its inclusion in the vision of ‘the promised land.’ The other fundamental Zionist dilemma
       was how to be Jewish and ensure a Jewish electoral majority, and this was not seen as achievable except by
       the expulsion and denial of a right of return to 700,000+ Palestinians permanently uprooted from their place
       of residence. And finally, the normative context of post-WWII was different than post-WWI where soft colonialism
       was still legitimate; the establishment of Israel, however motivated, was perceived as violating the dominant
       norm of self-determination.

       In this respect, the Palestinian tragedy and ordeal was a result of external factors of the very sort that you
       suggests have hurt the Palestinians from the early days of the British mandate. The mandate itself, the partition
       proposal, the injection of foreign money and geopolitical leverage, even the training and supplying of the Zionist militias
       were all externally imposed elements that shifted the balance of forces in favor of the Zionist project. To complain about
       the symbolic recourse to the ICC to vindicate Palestinian grievances seems trivial by comparison and a small step toward
       achieving a more level playing field for a negotiated solution.

       I do not disagree that a bi-national state, for reasons you state and some others, might be almost impossible to realize
       in practice, although if Jews and Palestinians were to accept the essential premises of comprehensive equality I believe it
       could happen, and might bring produce a sense of spiritual renewal for both peoples. I believe the sort of confederal arrangement
       that you envision would I think be acceptable to many Palestinians, but I have serious doubts as to whether Israel or Jordan
       would want such a political arrangement. At this point, and certainly as long as Trump is president and the Saudis/Egyptians
       have other priorities, there seems almost no motivation on the part of the overwhelming majority of Israelis on working out
       what I would consider a sustainable peace. Hopefully, this will change.

       You too, stay say, and as we are doing, keep enjoying what remains enjoyable under stressful circumstances.

       Richard
4. 

   Rabbi Ira Youdovin April 18, 2020 at 11:53 am #

   Many thanks to Sean Breathnach for calling attention to a Mondoweiss article reporting on what I assume was a recent meeting in Tel Aviv. There is much to learn from it if one understands its context.

   The article doesn’t identify the sponsoring organization (which is a serious violation of journalism’s ethics). But judging from the panel’s composition and the bit of signage visible in the photo, it must have been a left-wing dovish group. The article notes that Jafur Farah was the only Palestinian on the three-person panel, but fails to note that the two other panelists and the moderator are Israeli activists for enhanced Palestinian rights in Israel and Palestinian independence in the context of a two-state solution. This was not a massacre in which Mr. Farah was ambushed. To the contrary, the audience was anything but hostile. Israeli and Diaspora Jews who attend gatherings like this one—and they happen frequently—come to support the Palestinians.

   Moreover, while the article identifies the audience member(AM) who challenged Mr. Farah as an Israeli, (s)he clearly states that (s)he’s a visitor from overseas brought to the meeting by his/her host. I believe these errors and omissions are not accidental. They are designed to support the reporter’s spurious lauding of Mr. Farah for his courage in speaking truth to a hostile audience. (n.b. The Mondoweiss article was written by a Jew on the extreme left of the American Jewish political spectrum. It would be a mistake to characterize it as objective reporting.)

   Mr. Farah’s audience likely supported most of his views. But instead of emphasizing points of agreement to build greater support among Israelis, he chose to pick a fight over points of disagreement by advocating the classic Palestinian narrative, thus provoking angry controversy that drove the meeting to a quick and unhappy adjournment with at least some of the Israelis likely wondering whether they could continue supporting the Palestinians. Chalk it up as a unexpected victory for the Israeli annexation bloc!

   Mr. Farah began by challenging what he said was the AM’s claim that God gave the Land to the Jews. The AM responded that (s)he had made no such claim (the transcript printed in Mondoweiss validates this), but had based his/her claim on history (the Jewish people’s age-old connection to the land.) Mr. Farah proceeded as if he hadn’t heard the disclaimer, and went on with his recital of the Palestinian narrative.

   AM stated that Israelis feared Palestinian threats to annihilate them, especially as they are backed up by stockpiles of lethal rockets and missiles manufactured in and shipped from Iran. Mr. Farah interjected that the people Israelis really fear are the Germans, a key thesis in the Palestinian narrative which portrays Palestinians as being made to pay a steep price for a Holocaust in which they did not participate. There’s certainly some truth in this. Netanyahu and his bloc make frequent references to the Holocaust to support their hard line treatment of the Palestinians. But fear of Arab terrorism and Iranian nuclearism is very real and justifiable.

   Mr. Farah then tacks in a direction that might have astonished some:

   “I’m not willing to let [Iranian leader] Ahmadinejad take advantage of me as he tells the world he’s protecting the Palestinian people. He is not…There was not one Arab leader in the last 100 years who used us and was truly committed to the Palestinian cause.”

   This denunciation, together with the rest of Mr. Farah’s remarks, reveals much of how Palestinians view of their reality. Despite hugely exaggerated claims of global solidarity and the success of BDS and other anti-Israel initiatives, they are haunted by a sense of being utterly alone. They see themselves as having been colonized and then betrayed by the British, invaded and persecuted by the Jews, abandoned by fellow Arabs and Muslims, and frustrated when repeated recitals of their unchanging narrative gets them polite applause but nothing substantial.

   In his important book “Catch ‘67”, the Israeli philosopher Micah Goodman suggests that each participant in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is responding to its own history.

   Once acclaimed as one of this planet’s greatest civilizations, the Arab/Muslim world has descended in recent centuries into the ignominy of being perceived as a backsliding entity torn by age-old tribal conflicts and misogyny. Like many other Arabs, Goodman concludes, Palestinians suffer from a sense of humiliation. That would explain why Mr. Farah concludes his remarks with a dramatic cri de couer demanding an apology.

   Israelis, for their part, are unable to free themselves from the grip of fear nurtured and reinforced by more than two millennia of exile and persecution. The world’s silence as the Nazi’s slaughtered six million Jews, along with a series of one-sided anti-Israel UN resolutions, fuels a sense that “all the world is against us.” This, in turn, fuels a defensive hard line go-it-alone policy. Going to the ICC would accelerate this downward spiral.

   These two fears—annihilation on one side, humiliation on the other—creates a dynamic propelling a race to the bottom. Last year, the Knesset adopted the “Nation State Law” which, for the first time in Israel’s seventy year history, unambiguously and de jure relegates the state’s Palestinian citizens to second class status. Why now? Because several years earlier, a group of young Palestinian intellectuals published papers advocating support for a one state solution in order to gain a foothold from which they could overwhelm the Zionists with huge numbers of refugees brought in under a Palestinian law of return, thus creating a state dominated by Palestinians.

   To put it crudely, the Nation State law flips the bird at these aspirations. But in turn, it weakens the already shaky position of Palestine moderates seeking accommodation with Israel, which in turn, hastens the demise of a once powerful Israeli peace camp.

   The lesson to be learned from the Tel Aviv meeting is that those on both sides who seek peace must be sensitive to what drives the other. Pro-Israel activists in both Israel and the Diaspora must engage their interlocutors with empathy, and avoid appearing arrogant. Palestinian activists must come to understand that trying to impose guilt trips on people who want to help is counterproductive.

   I write as an American Jewish Liberal Zionist who advocates for Palestinian Israelis and for an independent Palestinian state living in peaceful co-existence with the Jewish ethnocracy of Israel. I do so because I’m committed to achieving freedom and human rights for all, and also because I believe that the futures of both Palestine and Israel are inextricably entwined.

   Shalom,

   Rabbi Ira Youdovin

   Reply
   • 

     Richard Falk April 19, 2020 at 12:43 am #

     Ira:

     I am impressed once more by the civility and care taken in this response to Sean Breathnach’s comment, although I wish that you would take
     more account of the radical disparity of leverage, status, and circumstances of the two side seeking accommodation.
     Put more crudely: ‘must the slave appease his/her master when seeking a release from bondage?’

     Your last paragraph prompts me to comment. Is there any evidence that Israel would live with the admitted risk
     of political equality with a neighboring Palestinian state? The Palestinians are asked to live with the risks
     of vulnerability to Israeli intrusions. All the proposals have rested the security of the two ethnically delimited states on a
     demilitarized Palestine and Israeli border control, besides retention of settlement blocs. I regard the scope
     and subsidization of the settlement movement as an indirect way of rejecting the creation of a Palestinian
     state, particularly since making real peace with the Palestinians is no longer seen as a priority, whereas
     consolidation of expansion via de facto, and possibly de sure, annexation is increasing viewed as a way of
     completing the victory scenario approach embedded in Trump/Kushner proposals more or less endorsed by both
     Likud & Blue & White.

     I have a question for you: what becomes of ‘liberal Zionism’ if there is no serious prospect of accommodation
     along lines that allow ‘peaceful co-existece’ to be more mutual than Israel as the enforcer and Palestine as
     a polity as vulnerable as, say, Gaza? Past proposals projected inequality into the future in the guise of ‘security,’
     and did not offer an autonomous political space that even quasi-collaborative Palestinian leadership could accept.

     On another note, I would like to believe that we are groping toward a model of blog civility in accordance with the
     wisdom of John Dewey and others who insist that democracy can only flourish if those with drastically diverse views
     listen to one another with attentive respect. Dewey’s words “To take as far as possible every conflict which arises—and they are bound to arise—out of the atmosphere and medium of force, of violence as a means of settlement into that of discussion and of intelligence means to treat those who disagree—even profoundly—with us as those from whom we may learn, and insofar, as friends.” Dewey adds a passage which could have been written by Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr: “A genuinely democratic faith in peace is faith in the possibility of conducting disputes, controversies and conflicts as cooperative undertakings in which both parties learn by giving the other a chance to express itself, instead of having one party conquer by forceful suppression of the other—a suppression which is none the less one of violence when it takes place by psychological means of ridicule, abuse, and intimidation instead of by overt imprisonment or in concentration camps.” [I borrow these quotations from a communication with my friend, Fred Dallmayr,
     on a quite different concern).

     Greetings, Richard

     Reply
   • 

     Richard Falk April 22, 2020 at 7:18 am #

     Ira:

     In further reply: I came across this article by Ian Lustig a longtime supporter
     of the two-state solution and liberal Zionist who has lost confidence in this
     path to peace. I would welcome your response, which really involves reasons for
     believing that this approach is viable and better than alternatives:

     Ian Lustig gave up the “false belief” in the two-state solution and acknowledged the struggle for equal rights in a one-state reality. He spoke at the Middle East Institute last December and I caught up with the videos during isolation this week. (Part 1 and Part 2).

     Lustick, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, long a Washington insider was an “avid and early supporter” of the two state solution, for nearly 50 years, but in the last decade, he accepted that he and other two-state advocates were being “played for a sucker” by the messianic Israeli right as it swallowed the West Bank and Jerusalem, territories no Israeli government will ever withdraw from.

     The Israeli right has dominated Israeli politics and defied the peace process for three reasons, Lustick said: it was able to convince Israelis of the partial effectiveness of the “Iron Wall” idea of crushing Palestinian resistance; it exploited a “Holocaustia” culture promoting mistrust of non-Jews; and it used the American Israel lobby to destroy its rivals.

     The lobby gained a political power that George Washington warned of in his farewell address: a “passionate attachment” to a foreign country to which there would be no countervailing domestic influence in Washington. A grotesque power, Lustick said:

     “That fact about the Israel lobby has allowed it to grow grotesquely in influence so it holds a veto and has held a veto over decades, over American foreign policy when it might get effective.”
     The “superabundant power of the lobby” arose to protect Israel from criticism from Washington, but the unintended consequence was that it “radically shift[ed] Israeli democracy to the right,” Lustick said. The lobby helped to “destroy” the careers of moderate Israeli politicians who might have come to power if the United States had played a “realistic,” “national interest” role and told Israel to stop the settlements.

     “What impact did the unquestioned and unprecedented flood of aid and political support from the United States that was due to the lobby vetoing wiser more rational and realistic or more national interest-oriented policy– what effect did that have in Israel? What it did was systematically disadvantaged positions, arguments and programs of people like Yossi Sarid, Yossi Beilin and Shulamit Aloni, Yigal Allon, or even Moshe Dayan in his time, and systematically supported those who were willing to indulge in messianic expansionist dreams… That’s how you got Begin and Shamir and Netanyahu…. their ability to say we can have the whole land and American support — the lobby made that possible thereby undercutting the left and subsidizing the right.”
     Lustick said that he had himself advised Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush to take a strong stand on settlements so as to drive a wedge inside Israeli politics and build a constituency for a two-state solution. Bush’s opposition to loan guarantees in 1991 actually did lead to the Oslo process, he said.

     But in 2009, Rahm Emanuel gave the same advice to Barack Obama– oppose settlements and you will build that party in Israel– and the stance was an utter failure, and Obama backed away from it. “The difference is that when Rahm Emanuel gave that advice to Obama, not only was the lobby much stronger, but there was no shadow government [inside Israel], no government capable of winning an election on that issue.” So Netanyahu could just play America, as he did throughout the Obama administration till the end.

     So Netanyahu has used liberal Zionists to proclaim that a two-state solution is possible when it is a delusion, Lustick said; and he urged policymakers to stop proclaiming:

     “Entertaining that possibility is actually playing a sucker’s game into what the right wants, which is a constant feeling of that carrot, that maybe we get two states, and meanwhile you send the whole thing into decades and decades and decades of apartheid.”
     But a call for equal rights in one state is not possible in U.S. politics because politicians will get “killed” by the lobby. So politicans perpetuate the delusion. Even Bernie Sanders hides behind the two-state solution.

     What I want in Israel Palestine is something that Jews and Arabs can live with and that honors the principles of democracy, equality and non-exclusive rights to self determination for all peoples. That’s not a position that any of the candidates have taken, even Bernie Sanders, who are still hiding within the idea of a two state solution because they can get away with that politically and that’s all that matters at that level of American politics. Because they know they’re not actually going to get anything in the Middle East and if they did none of their constituents would care. But what does matter is are they going to get killed domestically politically– that’s always– so right now the two state solution is nothing but a safe harbor, something you can attach yourself to to look respectable– and safe from the Israel lobby.
     Lustick expressed shame about using the “red threat of demography” argument to get Israel to give up the territories– i.e., the threat of a Palestinian majority. This is an argument that even Elizabeth Warren used recently; and Lustick said it’s racist, his own mother would not approve; but he did it anyway.

     Progessives like me used the demographic argument for decades to try to address Israelis who were afraid of Arabs, who despised them, who feared them. “So why are you supporting settlements, so why are you supporting Begin and Shamir and the attempt to keep the territories. You don’t want to live with Arabs, do you? You want Arabs involved in the country? Don’t you want a Jewish state?” That’s people like me talking– we were using the demographic argument for what we thought were progressive purposes. And it was a deal with the devil. It didn’t work. OK– it didn’t work. And all of us probably felt, many of us felt, this is not a very nice thing to be doing, my mother would not approve. But we did it.
     That racism goes to the heart of Zionism. “It really was for Zionism the heart of the argument, it always was, and it never goes away– this fear of demography. Guess what, folks, there are more Arabs than Jews west of the Jordan.”

     And the consequences of making that argument is you are counseling Jews who should be in political alliances with Palestinians that they could never do so. “You are undercutting the very mechanism that in the future could democratize the country and bring about the kind of country you want.”

     Jews need to understand that with a one-state reality there will be no Jewish state. The Jewish democracy hoax is over.

     “Here’s the hard truth for many Israeli Jews. No it’s not going to be a Jewish state… What that meant for most Israelis is a state that operates in order to help one section of society against the other, to help Jews as opposed to Arabs, and to do so with the capability to front itself as a democracy. That’s what “Israel is both a Jewish and a democratic state” means. That will not be possible. If you try to look within that, where a state dominates Arabs at their expense for the sake of Jews, you are going to subsidize the domination of the country by the clericalist right. That’s what it really means. So the demographic argument that used to be progressive is actually very regressive.

     Reply
5. 

   Fred Skolnik April 19, 2020 at 8:32 am #

   Not that I wish to get involved here, but “conversations” in which you habitually slander an entire people and nation and accuse Israelis of Nazism are neither “civil” nor “elevated” but malicious.

   Reply
   • 

     Richard Falk April 19, 2020 at 8:50 am #

     I call that ‘involvement,” indeed hyper-involvement.

     I would point out that my criticisms of Israel are directed at official polices and practices, and not directed
     at the people or nation except to the extent that such behavior is explicitly endorsed as in the 2018 Basic Law.
     Besides, you are dredging up and misrepresenting an article written more than a decade ago. Typical smear tactic.

     Reply
     • 

       Fred Skolnik April 19, 2020 at 9:07 am #

       Then tell us you repudiate that article written a decade ago and apologize for it.

       The 2018 Basic Law, as superfluous as it is, reiterates the simple fact that Israel is a Jewish national state and the Arabs living in it are a national minority, with everything this entails, which is not so intolerable after all as the overwhelming majority of this minority would refuse to live under Palestinian sovereignty on the same land they now inhabit in any exchange of territory, as polls have shown.
     • 

       Richard Falk April 19, 2020 at 12:51 pm #

       I haave no intention to repudiate the article as you misrepresent what was said, which was a warning,
       not an allegation directed at the Jewish people.
     • 

       Fred Skolnik April 19, 2020 at 9:41 pm #

       Misrepresenting what was said? Like hell I am. Take another look:

       http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19365

       (“Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not…. If this kind of situation [Israel and Gaza] had existed for instance in the manner in which China was dealing with Tibet or the Sudanese government was dealing with Darfur, I think there would be no reluctance to make that comparison [with the Nazis].”

       Not even Sudan, to your mind, with half a million massacred measures up to the Nazilike way that Israel is dealing with the Palestinians. Of course.
     • 

       Richard Falk April 20, 2020 at 9:01 am #

       I stand by that statement, especially if properly read in the context of the whole article. It was
       more a warning than an indictment.
     • 

       Fred Skolnik April 20, 2020 at 9:59 am #

       You are a despicable and shameless creature. Even to suggest – and you do considerably more than that – that Jews are capable of mass murder is the worst kind of slander, and irresponsibly provides a very nice rationalization for Jew haters to deal with us accordingly. Here on Holocaust Memorial Day I am watching some of the Nazi films, which I’m sure you stay away from. Maybe you should refresh your memory.
   • 

     Sean Breathnach April 19, 2020 at 12:50 pm #

     Now that you are here Fred:
     The children of Palestine
     Are taken under the cover of darkness
     Their homes invaded
     Dragged from their beds
     It’s the soldiers of the IDF

     The children of Palestine
     Brutalised by the occupation
     50 years of humiliation
     Convicted by the military courts
     It’s the soldiers of the IDF

     The children of Palestine
     They see their parents beaten
     Their land confiscated
     Their dignity stolen
     It’s the soldiers of the IDF

     The children of Palestine
     Nothing to look forward to
     No hope in sight… Till…
     A young girl dared to say no more
     It’s the soldiers of the IDF

     Reply
     • 

       Fred Skolnik April 19, 2020 at 9:43 pm #

       And now that you’re here, Sean, how about a poem about the Israeli women and children blown up in buses and restaurants by your barbaric terrorists.
6. 

   Sean Breathnach April 20, 2020 at 3:47 pm #

   Fred,

   The last suicide bombing that an Israeli was killed was on Feb 4 2008.
   Three more suicide bombings resulting in 34 Israelis been injured have occurred since 2008.

   Israel bombed Gaza indiscriminately in 2008, 2012 and 2014, resulting in thousands of Palestinian civilians, men, women and children been killed.

   Over the last year, much of the world has watched fixated on the Great Return March in which Israeli snipers have murdered more than 300 Palestinian demonstrators on the eastern edge of Gaza. Another 30,000 have been injured by gunshots or teargas. Nearly 60 of those killed and 7,000 of those injured have been children. Hundreds, including children, have had their limbs amputated as a result of being shot with ammunition designed to tear apart limbs.”

   It is not difficult for anyone to see that Israel uses more violence against Palestinians than the other way around.

   Nobody deserves to be killed by a suicide bomber or by a bomb dropped on them by Israeli planes, everybody is equal in my eyes.

   Reply
   • 

     Fred Skolnik April 20, 2020 at 10:31 pm #

     Israel did not bomb Gaza indiscriminately, If it had there would have been 100,000 dead after every clash as in Dresden after two days of Allied bombing. Half the people killed in Gaza were Hamas “fighters.” The rest were killed because Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel’s civilian population from in and around schools, playgrounds, hospitals, clinics, mosques and residential buildings and did not even allow its own civilian population to evacuate these areas when Israel warned them of impending attacks on rocket launchers via flyers, emails and phone calls.

     As for your Great Return, whose declared aim was to overrun Israel’s border and murder as many Israelis as possible, 80% of the Palestinians killed were arned members of the terrorist groups as Hamas quickly boasted until advised to tone down that aspect of things. When mobs riot, innocent people are going to get hurt.

     Reply
     • 

       Sean Breathnach April 21, 2020 at 5:31 am #

       Fred,

       Your statement that Israel did not bomb Gaza indiscriminately is incorrect. This article in the Middle East Monitor is a more accurate assessment of the build up and attack on Gaza.

       https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180708-remembering-the-2014-israeli-offensive-against-gaza/

       Again, your statement on the Great Return March is incorrect. This article by Jim Kavanagh ‘Sacrificing Gaza: The Great Return March of Zionist Hypocrisy’ is a truer picture of events.

       https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/04/sacrificing-gaza-the-great-march-of-zionist-hypocrisy/
     • 

       Fred Skolnik April 21, 2020 at 7:16 am #

       Second- and third-hand English-language articles that you are unequipped to evaluate or verify should not be your basis for determining what is a true picture of events. Are you actually saying that Hamas did not fire thousands of rockets from in and around schools, etc., prevent Palestinians from leaving the area after Israeli warnings, call for the murder of Israelis in their march, send thousands of its armed men into the mob, proudly list its martyrs in the march? I’m sure you’ll know how to find the aerial photographs and testimonies of journalists leaving Gaza telling you just where the launching sites were located as well as Hamas statements about their intentions and losses.
7. 

   Sean Breathnach April 21, 2020 at 1:35 pm #

   Fred,

   You continue to defend the indefensible. Here are the casualties from rockets and airstrikes, from September 29, 2000 to the present.

   30 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian rocket attacks.

   5,851 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes.

   The figures speak for themselves.

   Reply
   • 

     Fred Skolnik April 21, 2020 at 10:17 pm #

     No they don’t. Few Israelis are killed because Israel protects them by building shelters. Many Palestinians are killed because Hamas intentionally exposes them, and around half the killed are Hamas “fighters.”

     Reply
     • 

       Sean Breathnach April 22, 2020 at 7:23 am #

       Fred,

       “Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a shock. For most of Israel’s existence, the majority of Israelis have allowed the state, in the name of Jewish sovereignty and security, to violate Palestinians’ basic human rights — including access to water and the freedom of movement and assembly. The state has killed unarmed protesters and then failed to carry out investigations; it has allowed settlers and soldiers to act with impunity; and it has systematically discriminated against non-Jewish citizens. After so many years of repressing those who stand in the way, the transition to targeting “one of your own” isn’t so difficult. Now it is the few Jewish Israelis who speak the language of human rights who are branded as enemies.”

       This is the truth and anyone with a little fairness knows that. You Fred, don’t speak the language of truth or human rights, you just continue to defend the indefensible.

       I’ll give you the last word, that’s if you want it.
     • 

       Fred Skolnik April 22, 2020 at 8:21 am #

       No, it is not the truth. You are engaging in rhetoric. The truth is that Jordan attacked Israel in 1967, lost a war, refused to make peace, as did the Palestinans afterwards, and as a consequence they have been living under military occupation since that time, with all that entails. All security measures are responses to terrorist activity with the sole aim of stopping terrorist attacks.
8. 

   Rabbi Ira Youdovin April 23, 2020 at 10:28 am #

   Richard,

   The neighborhood has gotten a bit noisier of late. Hopefully, we can maintain our conversation which is rooted in mutual respect for each other’s views although these remain divided and likely will remain so.

   You ask if there’s evidence of Israel’s willingness to live with the risk of political equality with a neighboring Palestinian state? I’ll do a very Jewish thing by answering your question with a question: what do you mean by political equality? I assume that your criteria for an independent Palestine are not radically different from the norm: an independent Palestinian state would be a Palestinian ethnocracy enjoying sovereignty within its own borders, security, realistic prospects for prosperity, full membership in appropriate international organizations and peaceful co-existence with the Jewish ethnocracy of Israel.

   To be sure, some Israeli Jews would object to establishing Palestinian sovereignty over any portion of the land the Bible designates for the Jewish People. But their numbers are small and their influence marginal without the support of a larger group who fear that an independent Palestine without an Israeli presence to control terrorism would go the way Gaza went when Israeli Prime Minister Sharon removed every Israeli settler and soldier. Hamas moved in swiftly and turned Gaza into a base for stockpiling and launching rockets into Israel. But polls suggest that a majority of Israelis would be willing to take the risk on condition that Jewish settlers are treated fairly and security issues are resolved. You apparently have concerns. I’d appreciate your sharing a few.

   You are correct that Israel will insist on retaining a Jewish electoral majority wherever it establishes its sovereignty. (The Palestinians would be a majority in Palestine.) This concept is not embedded in some dark secret conspiracy. On the contrary, it’s been fundamental to Zionism since its inception, responding to nearly three millennia of political impotence. In a perhaps ironic way, it serves as a strong argument against annexation. Many Israelis affirm the inadmissibility of annexing land while denying its inhabitants full citizenship with franchise, thus creating a Palestinian majority. Faced with having to choose between Palestinian statehood or imposing a permanent apartheid regime, Israeli is likely to choose the first option.

   You ask: ”what becomes of ‘liberal Zionism’ if there is no serious prospect of accommodation…?” Our sages cautioned that “prophecy is best left to children and idiots”—but I’ll give it a try. If the fragmented Palestinian political landscape continues to be dominated by ideologically driven rejectionists, I fear that the already weakened Israeli peace camp will be totally discredited, leaving the Palestinian issue completely in the hands of right-wing extremists. This is not good for the Palestinians and possibly even worse for Israel.

   This is why I participate on this blog. I’m not playing the blame game to build support for Israel and antipathy toward the Palestinians. To the contrary, my message to both sides, and their overseas supporters, is that the conflict can be resolved to their mutual benefit only if both make an honest and painful self-appraisal, and abandon strategies the have created and maintain the impasse.

   I agree that with Trump, Likud, Hamas and a corrupt and impotent PA on the scene this is probably not a propitious time for negotiations. But it is a time for not moving backwards. As I’ve posted previously, going to the ICC promises, at best, a small symbolic victory, as they have won repeatedly through nearly a century of juridical combat while gaining next to nothing substantial. Reconciliation entails diminishing the strength of rejectionists on the sides. As I’ve posted in the past, seeking assistance from external actors serves to camouflage the Palestinians’ resistance to making course corrections that might actually help them. And a favorable ruling from the ICC, while essentially meaningless, would strengthen the hand of Israeli rejectionists who argue that “the entire world is against us!”, which entitles them to do what please because anything they do will be condemned.

   I end on that happy note, hoping to receive your thoughts on what I’ve written.

   Respectfully,

   Ira

   Reply
   • 

     Richard Falk April 24, 2020 at 5:31 am #

     Ira:

     I greatly appreciate your tone and the clarity of your responses on crucial issues. You
     have given me a hefty assignment, but I will do my best, although somewhat pressed by deadlines.
     At some point we should try to understand why we interpret the same reality so differently although
     more or less exposed to the same sources.

     On the question of equality, I do not mean the formal equality of two sovereign states, but the acceptance
     of the substantive equality that does not ever seem to have been part of the Israeli ‘peace consensus.’ Unless I am wrong
     Israel has always insisted on three elements of inequality that made it unreasonable to expect the Palestinians
     to go along with past proposals, and certainly not the recent Trump/Kushner plan: Israeli border control in relation
     to an independent Palestine, permanent demilitarization of P, with no restraints on I; nationality laws that give
     Jews an unconditional right of return, and deny Palestinians any right of return even if family roots are deep. There are
     other issues, including the future of Jerusalem, water diversion.

     I regard the Sharon ‘disengagement’ from Gaza in 2005 much more problematic than you do. True, all soldiers were withdrawn
     and settlements dismantled, but Israel imposed from the outset strict border control over imports/exports, and entry/exit. As many have observed,
     Gaza after disengagement was subject to numerous military incursions and interferences, and the timeline for action & reaction
     is controversial and hard to distinguish cause and effect, e.g. re rockets. Hamas’ success in Gaza was partly electoral, and partly
     a power struggle with Fatah. Recalling that the US had exerted pressure on Hamas to shift tactics from armed struggle to a political
     track, and when they did, and prevailed, there were efforts to reverse this political outcome and to insist that Hamas be treated as
     a terrorist organization. Also, it is well-documented that Hamas
     tried by quiet diplomacy and by open proposals to reach a long-term ceasefire arrangement, warning that otherwise there would be violence.
     From my experience, I believe this was the real intent of the Hamas leadership, or at least the most influential leaders. From a Palestinian
     point of view, post-2005 treatment of Gaza is a warning as to what to expect with a similar Israeli withdrawal with security provisos in relation
     to the West Bank.

     The logic of seeking a Jewish homeland with the safeguards of state power, but it could only be implemented in a period when colonialism was
     declining, nationalism rising, by coercive means of dispossession & repression, because it meant overwhelming the homeland claims of the resident
     majority population. Only the erasure of the Palestinians could envision a Jewish state in Palestine without the prospect of determined resistance,
     and the cycle of violence that has ensued.

     On suggesting that ‘liberal Zionism’ remains the best alternative, I find your suggestions that the Palestinians forego possible remedies for their grievances by recourse to the ICC, and law generally surprising. Seeking to resolve disputes by law is a core liberal value in most settings. Israel’s defiance of IHL and other sources of international authority creates a situation where Palestinian frustrations seem justified, e.g. the refusal to adhere to the ICJ 2004 advisory opinion on the separation wall, which had been supported by all 15 judges except the US judge is indicative of the unwillingness by Israel to accept any assessments of rights except by its own institutions. To suggest then the Palestinians are doing themselves harm by following the lead of ‘ideologically driven rejectionists’ seems puzzling to me when what is offered to them is so meager.

     If liberal Zionism wants to remain relevant it should at least put forward some vision of how a two-state plan could be implemented given the continuing expansion of the settlements, imminent plans to annex Area C, and the general enthusiasm with which the Trump plan was accepted by both Netanyahu & Gantz. Israel’s failure to freeze settlement expansion ever since the 1990s seems a strong signal of not seeking a political compromise on territory along the lines that has been projected ever since 1967, and in the Arab Initiative, as a reasonable starting point for a genuine peace process. I admit that even if this had been done, it would have failed to achieve Palestinian assent because of my belief that without equality on matters of security and human rights, no sustainable agreement can be reached, and even if reached, would collapse. In this sense the merger of a Zionist effort to achieve a Jewish homeland with Israeli statehood is the final nail in the coffin of accommodation as it could only be maintained by force as it would be continuously challenged by force–hence, the emergence and persistence of apartheid structures of fragmentation and subjugation.

     I fear that we may understand our divergent views better, but not come any closer to convergence, or even a preferred way forward. I wait for you to prove me wrong! With greetings, and my hopes for your health and safety.

     Richard

     Reply
     • 

       Rabbi Ira Youdovin April 28, 2020 at 10:56 am #

       Richard,

       I appreciate your invitation to discuss the question of whether a One State or Two State format offers better prospects for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

       Like Ian Lustick, many of us liberal Zionists have been frustrated by Israel’s increasingly rightward turn. We’ve channeled our disappointment in different ways. Some have walked away. Others have become hostile. And many, like myself, have remained involved, understanding that political currents can and do shift, especially when nudged.

       Aaron David Miller, a liberal Zionist who served as the #2 man on the US State Department’s Middle East desk under four presidents and is currently a Senior Fellow at The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has a personal history that in many ways parallels Lustick’s. His essay, “The False Religion of Peace,” caused a stir when published in the April 19, 2010 issue of FP as it cautioned against optimism in assessing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But unlike Lustick— who pays no attention to Palestinian policy and activity, thus making it appear that they are totally innocent victims—Miller blames both sides, lamenting that progress toward resolution will be unattainable so long as the current leadership remains in power. That was written in 2010. A decade later, the leadership on both sides remains largely unchanged.

       Lustick lays much of the blame for the impasse on the Israel Lobby, whose power he characterizes as “grotesque”. What is the Israel Lobby? As used by Israel’s critics, it’s a massive and monolithic force singularly intent on defeating Palestinian national aspirations and denying them basic human rights wherever they live. This is simply inaccurate. The Israel Lobby embraces a broad diversity of views united by a shared commitment to protecting Israel’s secure future. It includes organizations that unambiguously oppose Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians: JStreet, Americans for Peace Now, T’ruah and others, including the three largest American synagogue movements which comprise a majority of American Jews.

       How did the Israel Lobby acquire its power? The standard answer from Israel’s critics is Jewish votes and Jewish money. But Jews comprise only a miniscule percentage of the American population, so the so-called Jewish vote doesn’t count for all that much. Besides, American Jews tend to support liberal candidates regardless of their position on Israel. More than 70% of Jewish voters supported Obama, including for his second term after his differences with Netanyahu became apparent. It can be anticipated that the Jewish vote in November will be overwhelmingly for Biden no matter what the Democratic party’s platform says about Israel.

       As regards money, Jews are generous in making political contributions. But major political donations come from a variety of sources, especially since Citizens United.

       In my opinion, and the opinion of others, the Israel Lobby’s success derives from three sources:

       1. Experience. Living under the thumb of anti-Semitic rulers for more than two millennia, we Jews have become adept at the art of political persuasion.

       2. Shared values. While Israel is far from being a perfect democracy, its admittedly flawed system resonates more comfortably with Americans than anything else in the Middle East, including the Palestinians.

       3. American self-interest. Lustick, like Mearsheimer/Walt before him, alleges that America’s support for Israel undermines its status in the region. Just the opposite is true. Like all other nations, America’s foreign policy is designed to serve its own interests. In the aftermath of World War 2, Washington’s fear of antagonizing the numerous and oil rich Arabs dictated a policy that was at best lukewarm to partitioning the British mandate and establishing a Jewish state. The U.S. did vote for partition and was the first nation to recognize Israel, ten minutes after it declared independence. But Washington provided no military assistance during the 1948 war, forcing the newborn state to smuggle in weapons purchased in Czechoslovakia.

       Then came Israel’s stunning victory in the 1967 war and Israel became America’s primary strategic ally in the Middle East as it grappled with the Soviet Union in a Cold War contest for regional influence. By comparison, the Arabs offered little in the way of political stability and technological know-how. And to make matters worse, they entered into alliances with Moscow. When the U.S. helped Israel develop a nuclear arsenal in the mid-late 1960’s, it was protecting its own base in an area of extreme political turbulence. Ditto for its on-going financial support for Israel’s military. Seen in the light of these realities, Lustick’s applying President Washington’s warning to the present situation is absurd.

       Along the way, American diplomats noticed that despite their expressions of anger and threats, Arab leaders didn’t much care about how Israel was treating the Palestinians. Their calls for jihad in defense of oppressed Palestinian brothers was nothing more than lip service intended to draw the Arab Street’s attention away from injustices their own rulers were inflicting on them. The Arab Spring blew away this camouflage and Israel’s place as a significant piece in the American sponsored Sunni alliance against Shiite irredentism became one of the contemporary world’s open secrets.

       Needless to say, whether one believes that this policy is good or bad for the United States depends on one’s view of Iran. But to say that Israel is the tail that wags the American dog is simply wrong. In fact, when one considers American foreign policy since the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, it should become apparent that this conclusion is not only wrong but strains credulity.

       Richard, I wonder if you were not misquoting Lustick in saying that “he and other two-state advocates were being played for a sucker by the messianic Israeli right as it swallowed the West Bank and Jerusalem.” It’s a helluva admission. Any analyst who admits to believing it possible that Israel’s messianic right would surrender one inch of what they hold to be the Jewish People’s God-given patrimony should hang up his crystal ball and look for another line of work.

       But only a small portion of the settlers are there to collect on God’s promise. A majority are motivated by concern for national security, or suburban style convenience to jobs in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, or because the West Bank is a nice place to live. Moreover, popular support for the Greater Israel movement that would preclude Palestinian statehood is by no means absolute. Current survey findings reported by Dr. Tamar Hermann of the Israel Democracy Institute reports that 64% of Israelis who self-define as “centrist” and 80% of those who self-define and “leftists” favor establishing an independent Palestinian state. And somewhat startling, only 50% of self-defined “rightists” oppose it.

       Likud could be voted out of power in the next Knesset election. It almost happened this time.

       An even more revealing snapshot of public opinion among Israeli Jews came in response to an optimism vs. pessimism question asked shortly after details of the Trump plan were announced. There was a sharp upturn in the number of people who felt more optimistic about Israeli security but more pessimistic about Israel’s democracy.

       At day’s end, Israel will have to choose between taking the risk of allowing a base for rocket attacks on its eastern border which— combined with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbolla in Lebanon—would surround it with well-armed and hostile enemies. Or establishing Israeli sovereignty which, in turn, forces a choice between radically changing its political demographics or imposing a form of apartheid.

       Palestinians living in the occupied territories have a significant influence on Israeli elections. Netanyahu won by waging a vicious campaign of loathing and fear casting Palestinians as being irreversibly committed to destroying Israel. Palestinian bellicosity—i.e. rockets fired and attack tunnels in Gaza—gives credence to these allegations. By renouncing terrorism, the Palestinians likely could tip the vote in the direction of a bloc of centrist and left centrist parties, possibly in coalition with the Palestinian Joint List. It almost happened this time.

       As to how the Palestinians should address the Trump proposal (which I agree is unacceptable), I’ll refer to a recent essay by Salaam Fayyad, formerly vice president of the Palestinian Authority, which was published by Brookings. After offering a compelling list of reasons for rejecting the proposal he writes:

       “All of this provides a compelling basis for a Palestinian rejection of Trump’s vision. It is well to keep in mind, however, that, by itself, such rejection does not render that vision inconsequential. Nor should it, therefore, be conflated with a rejection strategy, with the latter requiring a clear-eyed assessment of the existential risks the Palestinian national movement faces, an informed identification of available policy choices, and the willpower needed to pursue them.

       “Such would be an act of leadership whose absence at several inflection points over the past century better explains the causes of Palestinian failures than the mere rejection of past visions or plans. Needless to say, the Palestinian effort going forward should not at all be encumbered by the heavy weight of the false narrative underlying the adage “every time Palestinians say ‘no’, they lose…”

       This is not a matter of “the slave singing its master’s tunes”, as you have characterized it. To the contrary, it’s a savvy, albeit courageous, game plan for staying in the game.

       Which brings me—at long last!—to your question: why do I continue to support a Two State solution? Because with all its flaws, it’s the best solution available. A bi-national state is a non-starter. Both sides reject it, and there is no even remotely reasonable pathway for creating one and making it function effectively. Indeed, the prospects of two actors who can’t agree on terms for divorce living in matrimonial bliss are dismal.

       A One State solution draws its most enthusiastic support from extremists on both sides who see it as an opportunity to gain superiority over the other. It’s a prescription for escalating violence until the winner either subjugates or drives out the loser.

       In a Two State solution, both sides are winners, although the prize is a scaled down version of their national aspirations. But accepting comprise is preferable to risking total defeat.

       In closing, I’d welcome your response to Salaam Fayad, or to anything else in this overly long post.

       Stay well and stay safe,

       Ira
     • 

       Richard Falk April 28, 2020 at 9:50 pm #

       Ira:

       I need to find time to study your comprehensive and reaches persuasive
       conclusions on the basis of a string of coherent interpretations of the
       relevant realities. Our differences flow mainly from radically different
       characterizations of relevant facts: how we perceive AIPAC and the Jewish Lobby;
       settlers and settlements; sincerity of mainstream Israeli Zionists in pursuing
       an equitable two-state solution; and the de facto reality of an Israeli one-state
       solution composed of occupation, settlements, militarization of control, apartheid,
       fragmentation.

       I will see whether I have anything more useful to add as I see our differences as
       based not on values but on interpretation–or what we see and don’t see. For example,
       you regard assertion of excessive Jewish influence on governing authority or, say, Hollywood,
       as an anti-Semetic trope, while I regard it as a fact.

       Greetings from Yalikavak,

       Richard
9. 

   Rabbi Ira Youdovin April 23, 2020 at 11:27 am #

   Fred,

   This is difficult for me to write. We’ve participated side-by-side on this blog for a long time. I’ve enjoyed and learned from you posts, which display your scholar’s knowledge and understanding of events as well as your published author’s graceful and effectove use of language. I’ll admit that I’ve sometimes been put off by your use of ad hominem attacks which, while often provoked, produce more heat than light. And, as happens with all of us in the heat of verbal warfare, some of it is simply wrong.

   My friend, not everything Israel and Israelis do on the West Bank is done for the sake of security. Burning olive trees is an example. And things that are done for legitimate security reasons are sometimes done with malice and cruelty. Is it really necessary to bulldoze the homes of a terrorist’s family?

   If we’re to call out instances when pro-Palestinian “analysis” is actually propaganda, shouldn’t we judge our own comments by the same yardstick? The case for Israel is strong enough to stand without enhancement.

   I look forward reading subsequent posts and hope that your civility will be reciprocated.

   Meanwhile, Shabbat Shalom and Yom ha-Atzmaut sameach, virtual or otherwise.

   Ira

   Reply
   • 

     Fred Skolnik April 24, 2020 at 3:37 am #

     Dear Ira, nice to hear from you and I hope you’re all in good health.

     It is not of course government policy to tear up olive trees and the matter of blowing up houses was stopped by the Israeli courts though it has apparently crept back into use. It may be cruel but it is not done with malice but as a deterrent. As in all armies, however, individual soldiers will sometimes exceed the bounds, though I think less than in other armies, and in view of the nature of the conflict the authorities will sometimes be lenient with them. In any case, rules of engagement are very clearcut, as I can tell you from personal experience, and certainly do not encourage cruelty in any form.

     Shabbat Shalom

     Fred

     Reply
10. 

    Rabbi Ira Youdovin May 3, 2020 at 10:21 am #

    Richard,

    Yes, I’m disappointed by your stubbornness. But I shouldn’t be. There have been clear signals that I didn’t fully comprehend.

    Your unchanging narrative depicts the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as slave v. master, which supports an airtight system of extreme moral relativism in which Palestinians can do no wrong and Israel can do no right. The system provides apologetics to justify Palestinian misdeeds, and alleges cynical motives to discredit Israeli good deeds. It serves as a protective shield blocking any contrary evidence, however credible it may be. It also serves to undermine an exchange of ideas except among people united by their shared belief in Israel’s total and exclusive culpability. Having followed your blog for some years, I should have understood that, but didn’t. It’s now time to throw in the towel.

    You’ve been very respectful of my views, even praising my thoughtfulness. I appreciate that. But my ideas have made no impact on your thinking which persists in resisting change even as the world inside and outside Israel/Palestine changes, offering new challenges and new opportunities. I also appreciate that folks who had previously assaulted me and others with slanderous ad hominem attacks remained on the sidelines this time. But we’re going in circles which means going nowhere. I’ll miss the cordiality of our conversation, but it’s time to stop. I may drop in from time to time, but not with the same frequency of these recent months.

    Stay safe. Stay well. Shalom

    Respectfully,

    Ira

    Reply
    • 

      Richard Falk May 3, 2020 at 10:45 am #

      Ira:

      I understand your frustration, but to some extent it is mutual as I feel also to have
      made no impact on your thinking. And on one matter you misjudge my views. I have been
      quite critical of Palestinian behavior, both tactically and strategically, as well as
      recourse to certain forms of resistance that target those who are innocent. My point,
      maybe misleading borrowing from Hegel’s use of master/slave interaction, is not to dismiss
      gestures on either side, but to suggest that if sustainable peace is the objective then
      account must be taken of their multi-dimensional inequality, and that Israel has to signal
      its willingness to embrace a peace process that accepts the equality of the two peoples, their
      basic rights and their mutual needs for security.

      My lingering question to you is whether Zionism is compatible on either doctrinal or existential
      levels with such an embrace of equality. The current push toward annexation and embrace by the
      leadership of Trumpets approaches seems to suggest a win/lose logic of instutionalizing and
      living with the insecurities of inequality.

      I feel I learn from our exchanges even if I doubt that we will alter our major premises. I consider
      my efforts to be seeking to depict the true path to peace, and I have come to appreciate that you are
      doing the same. You must decide whether our exchanges are worth the effort at this stressful time.

      With greetings from Yalikavak, and hopes that while safe, you are able to enjoy what remains enjoyable.

      Richard

      Reply