Edit 12/22/2023: I wrote a follow-up! I never had much of an opinion on the whole Israel-Palestinian affair, because — true to my brand — I avoid opining on what I know nothing about. My horrified reaction to Hamas’s attacks morphed into existential despondency when I saw others cheering on the massacres with
Thanks for this post! You’ve articulated very well a perspective I’ve come to over the last few weeks. I’m a Canadian Jew (non-religious) and never felt a particularly strong connection to Israel. The fashionable thing to say in my very secular Jewish community was that a country like Israel of course ought to exist, but [insert a list of things you don’t like about Israel as it currently exists].
As I’ve dug more into the conflict, I’ve increasingly felt like Israel truly is held to a different standard than any other nation. There is no outcry among the pro-Palestinian left when China sends Muslims to concentration camps; there is no outcry among the pro-Palestinian left when Assad or other neighbouring governments kills thousands more Palestinians than Israel ever has; there is no outcry among the pro-Palestinian left when Egypt enthusiastically blockades Palestine along its border with Gaza.
Not only that, but the history of Israel’s conflict with surrounding nations has been repeated attempts to exterminate the Jewish population therein. The war for independence was a war of survival, as was the 6-day and Yom Kippur wars. At any point along this history, neighbouring nations could have stopped, recognized Israel as a nation, and formed mutually beneficial partnerships -- which Israel was certainly open to! But with each loss, Israel claimed more and more land, and suddenly they’re the bad guy for doing so.
I think one potential additional would be the Palestinian reaction to Israel pulling out of Gaza. Israel did exactly what people want them to do in the West Bank: all israelis were moved out of Gaza, some of them even forced by the military. They even went so far as to remove their own cemeteries to completely exit the region. Finally, the US oversaw a democratic election to establish some sort of legitimate government of Gaza.
Immediately, the people voted in Hamas, and the new government began a campaign of terror attacks against Israel. It’s extremely hard to say this was merely a response to oppression; Israel became LESS oppressive, and the answer was to attack them even harder. I find it very hard to say that Israel ought to do the same for the West Bank if this seems to be the likely response.
(I apologize for the length -- I’ve been very frustrated at what feels like widespread historical illiteracy among the twitter leftist class, and have become quite jaded about all of this)
Yes, that's a really good point about the Gaza withdrawal. I felt so insane when I started reading up on this, just constant "wait, am I missing something?" over and over again. My old impression of anyone pro-Israel was that they had a chip on their shoulder, and incessantly complained about anti-semitism phantoms lurking around because everyone is picking on Israel. Now I *totally* understand why they're so fed-up with overall world perception.
The one addition I’ll add is that everything I hear about the West Bank sounds super fucked, and frankly I think the IDF or other Israel law enforcement needs to get settlers out of there ASAP. Settlers truly can’t be allowed to kick innocent Palestinians out of their homes with the tacit endorsement of the Israeli government.
Nov 1, 2023·edited Nov 1, 2023Liked by Yassine Meskhout
Agree. I was always a bit on the fence on the issue of Israel/Palestine largely because I cannot and will not defend these settler practices, Netanyahu's power-grab and ghouls like Itamar ben Gvir (albeit leaning slightly pro-Israel because I appreciate Jewish culture. Yay, Seinfeld) . I've been moving in a more pro-Israeli direction but even so I'm not going to pretend that that shenanigans in the West Bank is going to lead to anything postive for anyone.
As much as I don’t love the settlement enterprise, did you ever think about the effect that the second intifada had in hardening Israeli attitudes against a Palestinian state on the West Bank?
According to pro Palestinian propagandists the Palestinians have no autonomy, so they can't be blamed for choosing several years of suicide bombings in the middle of peace negotiations. Apparently that's a valid negotiation tactic.
And the recent events in Gaza may harden them much further.
Imagine the carnage next time if Gaza or a radicalized West Bank were sovereign nations, able to freely import and use any weapons without restriction.
In a large country like the US or Australia, it's hard to imagine what it's like to have your capital and population center within artillery range (much less rocket range) of a sworn adversary, willing to have their own combatants and civilians die in greatly disproportionate numbers (as venerated Martyrs), so long as they can inflict some serious damage on the enemy.
I both feel an idealism that says that Palestinians deserve their own state, and recognize that in practice having one in this context might be devastating to both Israeli and Palestinian populations, and then to the world. Believing that having a Palestinian state would bring peace or at least less conflict could be disastrously naive, and I can understand why it might not be something Israelis feel they can afford to risk, UNTIL the radical Jihadist takeover of such a state seems less likely.
It's a quandry, choosing between an aspirational idealism and a pragmatic realism with unacceptable outcomes.
There was a time, like 20 years ago, that illegal settlements would be bulldozed by the government and were considered by the Israeli leadership (in addition to international judicial bodies). But under Netanyahu the government now protects these illegal settlements and even encourages them; Netanyahu was attempting a takeover of the judiciary in Israel just before the Oct 7th attacks in order to help settlers in spite of their illegal practices (as well as help the orthodox communities avoid IDF service and other priorities). Netanyahu is directly responsible for the escalation of violence and yet (surprise surprise) has shown zero accountability for any of this.
Yeah. Just as I won’t hold every American accountable for Trump, I wouldn’t hold every Israeli accountable for Bibi. But goddamn a lot of them voted him in, and he’s destroyed a ton of credibility. The protests over his Supreme Court change attempt were a good sign, but it’s pretty awful that it even got to that point.
I understand the need for unity among Israel’s political class right now, but I hope that immediately post-war Netanyahu faces consequences for 1) all he’s done to exacerbate the conflict, and 2) his intelligence failures leading to Oct7.
Nov 8, 2023·edited Nov 8, 2023Liked by Yassine Meskhout
Mr Security is currently polling at 20%, thanks to the complete failure of his "talk like Churchill, appease like Chamberlain" shtick, him being ultimately responsible for the security outcome of the policy he got to champion between 2008-2023 with a 1.5 year hiatus (talk tough, yet give Hamas Qatari money, electricity, internet, mobile phone spectrum, work permits, and very limited response to terrorism). The complete failure of his yes-men filled government to respond in the weeks following October 7th is on his head. Also, in a country where security is the absolute top concern, him shitting his pants is beyond unacceptable.
I've never voted for that scum, I've protested him, but it's encouraging that my brother-in-law and best friend, both serious Likud voters, have written him off for good. I don't need to pick any political fights with them, they just come out and say it. On their end they've marked Gallant as their obvious better option.
Not talking about the political side, I don't know enough to have a firm opinionthere, but the people *directly* responsible for the Simchat Torah attacks are Hamas and their soldiers. At best Netanyahu is *indirectly* responsible, because (from what you say/imply) he did a Thing which encouraged other people to attack. Proximal vs distal cause.
Let's say for the sake of argument the "settlements are illegal," although I personally don't believe that a person's religion should be the reason they are forbidden to live anywhere. Does the presence of largely peaceful communities that also happen to provide employment, recreation and public services to the local Arabs justify the kind of violence perpetrated by Hamas, who rule over Gaza where there are exactly zero settlements?
That is one of the hard problems there (disclosure: I have a son in the IDF; I am not a Jew, but my ex wife is a secular Jew, and our son is a Jew; they did alyah 23 years ago; we always remained close).
Israel is a democratic state, but religious fundamentalism has been growing there too, under the pressure of continuous threat and probably because it is just a tilt of the times (as it seems to be happening all over the world). Religious fundamentalism among the Jews of Israel manifests as a belief in the right of the Jews to own the entirety of the old land of the Roman Protectorate of Judaea that was Jewish land until the time of the destruction of the Second Temple and the expulsion of most Jews from Jerusalem; in the belief that the state of Israel should be an ethno-nationalist state in the strictest of terms, and ruled by Halakhah, the Jewish religious law. They are often divided about how they would like to deal with non-Jewish or irreligious inhabitants, but many envision some sort of etno-religious cleansing, forcible removal if needed. They have no wish to expand Israel beyond the confines of Palestine, nor to dominate the region, but they aspire to sit in their exclusive enclave, becoming increasingly pure as they wait for the coming of the Messiah.
Fundamentalist Jews in Israel (who are in majority among the Haredim, the Middle Eastern Jews) are a distinct minority, but very vocal and active. Their ideology constitutes the backbone of what drives the West Bank settlers. Others in the Settlers movement advocate settlements and the claiming of occupied land for reasons of security, and often just in the hope to grab cheap land, to be honest.
The governments in the last years have endorsed the Settlers not even all that tacitly. For the Settlers have always been supporters of the political Right in Israel, and the conflict with the Palestinians has increasingly strengthened the Right, which has traditionally been more inclined to military solutions of the conflict (even if the man who forcibly removed over 10000 Jews from Gaza in the unilateral withdrawal was Ariel Sharon, head of Likud). The rise of the hard right has been helped by the terrorism of Hamas, which in turn has been helped in claiming to be justified by oppression by the illiberal and oppressive policies of rightwing goverments in the last 15 years.
There has been a fierce political struggle in Israel in the last few years, until the Hamas attack. Half of the country does not support the settlements policies, nor the actions of the settlers, nor the illiberal policies of Netanyahu who for the first time brought the far right into the government. Netanyahu will not survive, politically, this last event. And perhaps afterwards a new avenue for peace will open. But for the while everything is frozen by the war. The Hamas attack hit the kibbutzim belt where the communities are the most progressive -- but Israel clings up together when it is attacked. Internal reconing must wait, and you will see no changes in the policies in the West Bank until this war is over.
Personally, aside for the anguish at the loss of life on each side, I am truly worried at the international situation around this. There are big international players that are blowing on the coals -- and what the reaction to the events reveals about the blind susceptibility to propaganda in the countries outside of the West is appalling, but what it has uncovered within the West is even more appalling.
If I believed in a god who intervenes in the world, I would pray.
Here's one point that needs to be corrected- Israeli "settlers" do not kick Arabs out of their homes. In a small number of cases Jews legally purchase property in Arab neighborhoods. There are no laws prohibiting Arabs from selling to whomever they please, or Jews from buying, nor should there be. The "settlements" are built on uninhabited land and people who move to them purchase or rent just like anywhere else- this includes Arabs by the way, who also live in many of the settlements, although in smaller numbers. Any Arab who claims that a settlement has been built on their property has the right to take their claim to court. In many many cases the courts support those claims, even when the evidence is minimal at best.
Because Israel has a sizeable contingent of far right religious zealots who believe they have a holy mandate to annex the West Bank, and Israel’s current far right government is sympathetic to their cause.
I don’t think even the Israeli government would say the West Bank is part of Israel. West Bank is technically occupied territory behind armistice lines from Israel’s war with Jordan, but the population therein are not considered Israeli citizens. Even some of the settlements popping up there are illegal by Israel’s own laws, and previous governments have prosecuted past West Bank settlers.
Jared Kushner’s proposed partition plan isn’t super relevant to that, because it was never implemented.
The West Bank was never Palestine. It was Trans Jordan and then after Jordan and Israel signed a Peace agreement Trans Jordan became Jordan, and West Bank became Israel. There are few places on Earth where ownership of land could be less disputed. All of Canada is under territorial dispute with First Nations, for example. European boundaries gave changed 100 times, etc.
Give me a break. It was never a part of the original UN map of Israel. It's the largest portion of Palestinian land in any two-state solution. Palestinians live there and the move of Jewish settlers there is a recent political project. It's not recognized as disputed land by anyone besides radical settlers and their supporters.
One of the reasons why I was so happy with this post is that so much I'm seeing right now seems like veiled anti semitism. He is really trying to be thorough and balanced here
Well tbf I assume that a country which claims to be Western and Civilized like Israel follows the civilizational norms that the West has had for the longest of times. Israel bombed hospitals and is mercilessly killing civilians and is conducting a medieval siege all the while claiming to be the good side. Despite the fact that they can pursue other routes which could lessen civilian death. I mean Israel has the ability to kill Iranian nuclear scientists with precision in Iran and can bring dying Nazis all over the world to stand trial. So this isn't a question of a nation with resources or ability not to act barbaric. Furthermore since it claims to be a part of the West( on top receiving billions of my country's tax dollars), I will hold them to a higher standard than despotic countries like China or Syria. Like what a stupid point, we have a different standard for a country that states to be a civilized Western country? Unless you claim that Syria and China are like Israel, which you seem to suggest. And to further reiterate, they take billions of taxes from America, so I definitely want them to act a certain way when they're taking the money of my country. If Israelis don't like that, then we can mutually agree that Israel shouldn't be receiving the dollars of hardworking Americans. All in all, if Israel was just some other country I would view it similar to every other conflict in the world, however because Israelis claim to be a civilized Western country I will hold it to the standard of one. Furthermore, many Americans are quick to point out flaws in our military actions( war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan) so Israel isn't a special case. Just like I would speak out against America's evil foreign policy, I want a country which treats America as paypiggy because of similar values to be called out too.
What are these obviously less barbaric ways to destroy Hamas? Do you think Hamas should be destroyed? You mentioned comparing Israel to China and Syria. Why should I care about this comparison, and how is Israel like them?
Hamas slaughtered innocents. Israel said they would respond and the entire world begged both sides to stop fighting!! Israel had not yet done anything. Now you repeat MSM talking points. At what point are you going to say ‘I have no idea what actually is happening. All I have heard is MSM and Sub Stackers making reasoned guesses.’
In that entire screed I didn't see you mention once that this war started with a savage massacre of Israelis by Palestinian right-wing death squads. Do you even know what Israel's goals are for this war, that wouldn't have started without the Hamas atrocity?
Why don't you hold your Pals Hamas to account for what they did? Why don't you call on Hamas to immediately release all the civilians it kidnapped, after allowing the ICRC to visit and account for all of them? Why don't you call on Hamas to surrender unconditionally for a war crimes trial at the ICC? If Hamas did those things this war would be over immediately, but you prefer to yammer about how you hold Israel to a standard no other democratic country is held to, and definitely no Arab country.
Did the Palestinian people actually vote in Hamas? I was under the impression that Palestine Authority was who was voted in and organizes foreign relations, but is totally unable to control the ground itself and was forced out by Hamas, which is using the people there mostly as meat shields.
My understanding is that Hamas won a plurality of the popular vote (~45%), and Fatah won just under that (42%). However, this was an electoral college-type situation, so Hamas won a majority of seats in the new legislature (>55%) and was thus the winner. They proceeded to have a civil war with Fatah where they killed a lot of their opposition
Hmmm. I can believe that, which then makes the question: is this violence actually what the Palestinian people voted for, or did Hamas lie about their intentions.
Hamas has declined to hold another election since 2006. Given the average age of Palestinians, <10% of them probably voted for Hamas at all. However, opinion polls I’ve seen suggest ~50% approval rating for Hamas; for context, Joe Biden has a 39% approval rating among Americans.
Hamas is not democratically legitimate, but the Gazan culture as a whole seems net-supportive of them. I could be wrong though -- there may be internal pressures to feign a higher level of support so as not to be labelled an Israeli collaborator.
To summarize -- no, they didn’t vote for this, but that’s not for lack of general agreement.
A 2022 poll of Palestinians showed that Hamas has lost a lot of support thanks to their massive corruption, but at the same time 70% of those polled support terrorism and admire Palestinian terrorist organizations that are nearly as bad - Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Lion's Den. So Palestinians are quite into terrorism over negotiations, but we'll have to see what happens after Hamas has most of its military capability destroyed.
"I can’t fathom the countervailing scenario where Muslims are willing to prohibit prayers at Al-Aqsa."
On this point: you might have added that, when Muslims *did* control the Temple Mount (Jordan, 1948-1967), Jews were not permitted even to visit, despite agreed-to armistice provisions that called for such access.
Nor where there any Jews left in any territory conquered by Arab armies in 1948 - completely ethnically cleansed. This is at the same time that the 21% of Israel that were Palestinians became Arab Israeli citizens.
this may be slightly pedantic, but the kingdoms of israel and judah are not even close to being "the only cogent jewish political entities to have ever existed." for one, the religion they practiced isn't really recognisable as judaism, but something scholars call "yahwism," which was maybe closer to a pagan polytheistic cult with a particular focus on one local canaanite storm-god, yahweh, and his wife, asherah. the emergence of judaism proper was slow and mostly took place in exile; the religion in its modern form doesn't fully emerge until after the destruction of the temple in 70 ad with the compilation of the talmud.
but there were plenty of other jewish polities! there was a jewish kingdom called adiabene in northern mesopotamia under the parthian empire, and another, briefer jewish state nearby in mahoza. the jewish himyarite kingdom ruled yemen in late antiquity; a huge swathe of russia and ukraine was under the jewish khazar khaganate. there may have been a jewish state in northern ethiopia, and some historians have even proposed a (very contentious) jewish princedom around narbonne in present-day france under the carolingian empire. and while it might be tiny, a figment of stalin's megalomania, and on the far side of the world, there was (and still is!) the jewish autonomous oblast...
anyway, i don't really agree with a lot of what you've said here. on several points, but i'll restrict myself here to your preference for israeli governance and culture. yes, israeli political institutions are more democratic and seem to generate more general prosperity than palestinian political institutions - but only *if you're israeli.* this is not a conflict between states! israeli political institutions are the ones that ultimately determine all outcomes for both sides, including the relative poverty of the palestinians of the west bank and the absolute poverty of the palestinians of gaza. every international observer recognises that the israeli state holds sovereign authority in the west bank and gaza, but the palestinian population is not represented in that state.
israeli politicians are fairly open about the fact that the relative wealth and freedom of israel directly depends on the suppression of the palestinians. there's even a separate israeli law code for west bank palestinians! a palestinian in area c lives under the same direct authority as their israeli neighbours, but if they commit a crime they face very different systems. the israeli will be tried in a civil court under ordinary israeli law. the palestinian will be tried by a uniformed army officer in a military court. these courts prosecute acts that are only criminal for palestinians, and not israelis. they will try 16 year olds as adults, while israeli civil courts set the age of majority at 18. they almost never grant bail, even for traffic offences, and the conviction rate is a very democratic 99.7%. this, more than the position of the israeli arabs, is why israel can be accurately defined as an apartheid state.
i don't think it's a question of choosing to support israeli or palestinian institutions as they presently exist, like these are football teams. as far as i can see, the only possible just solution, however distant it might seem right now, is one in which these (as you note, superior) israeli governance models are expanded to democratically represent the palestinian population, even if it means that the state loses its specifically jewish character. there have been other jewish states in the past. there will, i'm sure, be other jewish states in the future. but this one - frankly, it isn't worth it.
Sam, I'm a big fan of your writing in part because of your historical pedantry, so please don't ever be shy about flying your freak flag here.
I wasn't at all aware of Judaism/Yahwism's history, or the various other polities (Jewish Khaganate wtf!). I did the thing where you squish "Jewish" into a ball by eliding the distinction between ethnicity/religion, so I guess it depends how you draw the contours of the category here.
I didn't articulate my point about the comparative benefit of Palestinian institutions as well as I should've. Under the best hypothetical circumstances, there's no reason to think it would surpass neighboring Arab institutions, and Israel is already miles above those. I don't understand how it could be worth the bloodshed to become on par with mediocrity.
I agree that Israel holds sovereign authority over the territories. I concede I don't know enough about the civil prosecution system, and don't find anything you're saying to be implausible. But I don't fully understand the connection about how Israel's relative wealth and freedom is predicated on Palestinian suppression. The security apparatus, the vigilance, and the constant turmoil would seem to only be a net drain on Israel's bourse no?
I personally don't value Jewish character so I think an expansion of Israeli democracy would be a worthwhile trade-off. The only question would be if the democracy would survive that expansion, given the ever-present noxious ideologies in play.
Nov 2, 2023·edited Nov 2, 2023Liked by Yassine Meskhout
yeah the jewish khaganate is an amazing quirk of history, but what i love about history is that when you start looking closely at it, it's practically nothing but quirks. sixteenth-century african kingdoms adopting european coats of arms, samurai touring aztec pyramids; everything is much closer and weirder than we think.
anyway, the less fun bit: yeah, i see no reason to think that a truly independent palestinian state in gaza and the west bank wouldn't be roughly as dysfunctional and sclerotic as most arab states. this is not such a bad thing, depending on your tastes; i think i would much rather live in a dysfunctional but gregarious mediterranean state like italy than a highly functional but autistic state like finland or south korea. but i find it very hard to imagine that a palestinian state would have anything like israel's gdp per capita, scientific and consumer innovations, obnoxious dance culture, genuinely excellent fine dining scene, etc etc etc. (it would, however, have much, much better poets.)
but i really don't see the value in comparing this hypothetical palestinian state to israel itself; you have to compare it to the actual present-day palestine under israeli occupation. the unemployment rate in the west bank is 24.4%; compare 7% in egypt and 10% in syria. there's very little private capital in palestine, and much of that actually ends up being invested in jewish settlements, since that's where the growth is and they're less likely to be capriciously torn down by israeli bulldozers. the palestinian authority's public funds, meanwhile, are often unavailable; israel has a habit of withholding the taxes it collects on the pa's behalf. in much of the west bank, it's virtually impossible for palestinians to acquire a building permit, accentuating a massive artificial housing crisis. the checkpoint regime means that there's absolutely no freedom of movement within the west bank for palestinians, who are also forbidden from driving on many of its arterial roads. there's also the fact that settlers now routinely enact "price tag" pogroms against palestinian homes and villages, destroying crops, vandalising homes, and sometimes burning them with children inside. plus there are frequent idf raids in which ordinary people, including children, are shot and killed, and israel's systematic targeting of palestinian civil society figures for arrest and extrajudicial execution, and the general indignity of living in a state of calculated unfreedom. and this is only in the west bank: in gaza, meanwhile, the unemployment rate is 45% and gdp per capita is, according to some estimates, lower than anywhere else on the planet. also in gaza, as i write, israel is wiping out entire families, three generations exterminated with a single bomb. children are collecting the tattered body parts of their siblings in plastic bags. you can watch footage of mohammed al-ran, the head of surgery at gaza's indonesia hospital, discovering that his family had been targeted in an israeli airstrike. the israeli military knows exactly who lives in which houses. they killed his family deliberately. what i can't get over is the fact that al-ran simply has no recourse. his family was killed by a democratic state, but there's nobody to ask why, nobody who will ever need to explain the decision, nobody who will ever be held accountable for pushing the button that incinerated his entire life. this is what it means to live under occupation: under a state that has total power over your life, but is not in any sense responsible to you.
i don't think it's ever going to happen, and it's not my preferred solution, but i think, for most people, an ordinary, mediocre, dysfunctional arab state would be preferable to that.
obviously we're at an extreme point in a long-running cycle of violence, and palestinian factions have also done their part in getting us to where we are. but i don't think the choice was ever between relative peace and prosperity under israel, and violence and dysfunction if the palestinians kept pushing for their own state. israel in its pre-1967 borders was never a fully viable, defensible state. the distance between tel aviv and the west bank is less than the length of manhattan, and the palestinians now inhabit the high ground overlooking the coastal plain. i've been to hebron; you can literally see the skyscrapers of tel aviv from there. israel is simply never going to allow this land to pass to a genuinely independent and sovereign palestinian state. but simply absorbing the palestinians into israel isn't an option without sacrificing the jewish identity of the state. which means that the palestinians must be kept from full self-determination through a continual state of surveillance, repression, and terror. this is why i say that israel's wealth and freedom is predicated on palestinian suppression. (although, in fact, the occupation is also big business. you say net drain on the public bourse, i say constant rolling state stimulus to the israeli security industry, much of it financed with american aid.) agan, israeli politicians are very open about this. they have no preferred solution to the conflict; their preferred solution is to just keep things exactly as they are, in the eternal grey limbo of an interminable peace process as settlers slowly swallow up more palestinian land and a few kids are periodically splattered in gaza. the hamas attack last month was an attempt to break out of that limbo, and i suppose it worked. we're in something else now. something worse, but something else.
You make several points I readily concede. I have no reason to question the calculated unfreedom you describe in lurid detail. Perhaps I should have spent more time outlining the Palestinian's repression as relevant context, but I am not sure how it would have changed my overall analysis.
The core thesis here remains the need to critically evaluate the self-professed motivations behind the Palestinian cause, to see which ones hold up with the facts. The problem is genuine valid grievances like the untenable life under occupation get shoved into the same overflowing laundry hamper to provide cover for objective insanity, like suicidal rage over stolen family land someone's grandparents never set foot on.
I already described how the Israeli camp is full of bad actors who are intent in maintaining/escalating the conflict and annexing more dirt. But if we average each respective side, I'm more likely to believe that Israel is the one that would be content with being left alone.
I’m sure the Palestinians would be content with being left alone, unfortunately that option was taken away from them by a combination of British imperialists, neighboring Arab nations, militant Zionists, Israeli politicians, the U.S. military-industrial apparatus, and their own sclerotic leadership.
Can we start with you giving the Khazar story a rest? It's a well known myth, mainly used by pro Palestinians to try and sever a connection between Jews (especially Ashkenazi ones) and Israel. Unfortunately for the antisemitic asses who love to point to it, DNA shows a strong connection between all Jews, and to a pre-diaspora origin in Israel.
Next, what an amazing thing to say that Israel's wealth is predicated on Palestinian suppression. Are you aware how much of Israel's GDP goes into its military and security, and the tax burden that funds it? At 5.3% it's far higher than any western democracy, and that's without the military assistance Israel had secured (along with Egypt) at the signing of peace with Egypt. Your skipping right over Israel's massive high-tech industry, which I'm quite sure is not built on the backs of the Palestinians is also very odd. No, despite a progressive urge to tie every damn thing in the universe with the Palestinians, the innovation and energy of Israel's tech sector has little to do with 'occupation'.
Who exactly are you to rewrite history? "Israel would never give up the West Bank" is a crock of shit, friend. Take a look at the many maps sincerely discussed since Oslo I accords. Take a look at maps from the 2008 Annapolis conference. Israel was absolutely planning to trade nearly all that land for peace. However, the Gaza disengagement in 2005 does raise some serious concerns, not due to 'economics' as you try to suggest (those greedy Jews, eh?), but purely security related once (shocking, Israelis don't like being massacred, tortured, raped and kidnapped by islamist terrorists. Such bad Zionists!). It took Hamas less than two years to snatch Gaza from the Palestinian Authority. It's hard to trust the PA with securing the entire West Bank in return for that land. So personally, while I believe in a two state solution, and having very little trust in the Palestinian's desire for peace, I wouldn't accept any land-for-peace deal that didn't require a demilitarized Palestine. This massacre lost Palestinians the right to have a military.
Cool blood libel about Israel murdering specific doctors, and knowing where every person lives. Considering Israel is trying to eliminate the military leadership, that imaginary knowledge would have been really useful. Maybe end your personalized spy info to the IDF, to hurry up the war with less casualties.
It's fantastic that you're are digging up excuses for the Hamas massacre. We're definitely in something else now - Hamas getting charges lowered into their tunnels, burying those war criminals inside them.
no, the khazar khaganate is not a myth. there really was a jewish polity on the southern pontic steppe during the early middle ages. i'm aware that some people use the existence of the khazar khaganate to argue that ashkenazi jews are unrelated to the historical israelites. (the first person to make that argument was, incidentally, himself a jew; he wanted to defang antisemitism by removing the notion that jews were collectively responsible for the crucifixion of jesus.) as far as i can tell, that argument is untrue and genetic studies have concluded that ashkenazi jews are more or less levantine and not pontic in origin. as an ashkenazi jew myself, none of this genetic pedantry is particularly interesting to me; i don't believe it's valid to make moral claims on the basis of distant ancestry. but the khazar khaganate is real, and it's interesting. a lot more interesting than you.
i'm not really going to respond to the rest of your post, because it's all more of the same. you don't actually know anything about the khazars, but you know they're something the people you don't like bring up sometimes, so when i bring it up you just say that they're a myth. you're not responding to what i actually said, you're pecking the "blood libel" lever like a trained pigeon. you try to insinuate i'm a hamas supporter and an antisemite. well, you can go and read what i wrote about the hamas massacre, it's right here on substack. please be less tedious in the future.
We see what your Palestinian liberation looks like, Sam. You're the one trying to ignore reality. You're not into claims on the basis of ancestry, but you're also cool denying refugees the right to purchase land and build a life on it, apparently. You're into denying Jews the right to escape virulently antisemitic Europe and Arab World and arrive as refugees to where their religion and history is based, to live a life alongside another native people. You're into denying the right of Jews to defend themselves when attacked during a civil war. Alrighty, very British of you.
Just to be clear: the democratic one-state solution Sam dreams of here is basically nonsense. Israelis have every right to suspect that, if Palestinians are given equal rights in a single state, the end result will be Jews exiled from that single state or worse. A two-state solution is the valid alternative to today -- though it's a dim possibility with little support by either side.
ps: i feel like it's probably a very bad idea to try to get any kind of factual information about anything from chatgpt. i just got it to provide a list of the kings of yareach shelanu, a ninth-century jewish polity on the moon, which begins with a medieval jewish astronaut called king miriam ii.
Yes, I would never claim that chatGPT should be relied upon exclusively. I never take anything it tells me at face value and use it only to more efficiently island hop across other sources (my most common question was "what's a good wikipedia page for this"). Sometimes you get very pressing but minor questions, and it's a much more efficient lodestar to finding the answer than cracking open a 326-page PDF.
It's much much much faster at getting at the core of the issue. I found this out when I was watching Narcos: Mexico, where digging wells was a central plot point. I got curious about that topic and quickly realized that googling "mexico 1980s digging wells law" was going to be an absolute slog, whereas chatGPT pointed me in the right direction immediately.
Well, is the West Bank part of Israel, or is it “illegally occupied territory” that by rights should be an independent state? Hasn’t the UN ruled that the West Bank is “occupied” rather than actually Israel?
I think this puts Israel in a Catch-22 - on the one hand, they are not allowed to actually exercise sovereign authority over the West Bank and Gaza, or they are condemned as “occupiers”. On the other hand, you want to hold them responsible for the crappy conditions in places where Israel has mostly ceded sovereign authority to the Palestinians, and that gets labeled “apartheid”.
You seem to be saying that Israel ought to basically absorb Gaza and the West Bank and make everyone there an equal Israeli citizen. But in addition to the practical integration concerns, wouldn’t that be met by extreme howling rage by the “international community”?
Sam Kriss, I have followed you since the time of Idiot Joy. You are a great and amazing writer of poetic literature.
As a commentator on social events and politics, you are the despicable child of privilege that has always delighted in spitting in the silver spoon from his mouth. I remember the numberless articles in which you prostituted your exquisite prose to the service of all the latest illiberal fads produced by a certain type of maximalist left -- you called yourself a bolshevik-in-your-youth, for being a revolutionary is posh. You have embraced every new anti-racist-colonialist-imperialist-patriarchal-heteronormative trend that has come up, and yet you have never become Owen Jones. And that is very likely a point to your credit. (But I have a strong suspicion that you resent not being Owen Jones).
You speak of a situation and a conflict of which you know very little -- oh, you have visited Israel, what am I saying! -- with the condescending manner of those who know, and begin with erudite attempts at discrediting the very racial identity of some Jews in order to discredit the fact that the Jews are indigenous to Palestine -- an old antisemitic ploy. It is painful to watch you play with words (oh so beautifully, because you can work beautifully with words) and make the blood of people, 100 years of blood, both Jewish blood and Arab blood, into an abstraction of theoretical power relations that shows how clever you are.
You are the very kind of intellectual of which we could truly do without in this type of discussions.
look i'm aware i had the misfortune to be acting out my slightly embarrassing and jejune maoist period in public, but anti-heteronormativity? give me a break.
i've responded to the khazar thing above, but basically if you think any mention of the khazar khaganate is antisemitic, you are very tedious and i'm not interested in talking to you. similarly, you seem to think i'm trying to reduce the conflict to abstract power relations, when everything i've written about the current phase was written precisely against that kind of reduction. i don't expect everyone to read everything i write, but if you're going to pull this creepy i've-been-following-you shtick it might help to reacquaint yourself with the material! and yes, it's true that i have visited israel. does it change anything that on my first visit, i didn't arrive through ben-gurion airport, but through a birth canal?
what's the basis of your scepticism? i know some historians are iffy on the authenticity of the khazar correspondence but there's also the schechter letter in the cairo geniza, plus the fact that archaeologists have found stones inscribed with menorahs and hebrew letters in sarkel, and khazar coinage inscribed with reference to moses. obviously we don't know if the conversion to judaism was a mass phenomenon or restricted to the elite and i'm always willing to hear out alternate theories but as a historical event it seems pretty incontrovertible!
Well, we've arrived at Sam laying out his pro Hamas credentials - I did see that charming note that you're going protesting along with all the good people raising "from the river to the sea" and "by any means" and similar genocide supporting slogans.
I have minor patience arguing with disingenuous people who are looking to ethnically cleanse Israel of Jews by any means, but since you raised the absurd "apartheid" claim of the pro Hamas universe, I'll put out some resources.
Sensible reasoning while avoiding statements of things taken from granted is what we all need more of. Or at least, it is what relieves some of the terrible weight from my heart in this moment in time.
As a side note, much is to be said for the Nazi propaganda in North Africa during the 1930s and 1940s, all mainly aimed at stirring Arab animosity against the Jews and promote the extermination of the Jews. The pogroms against the Jews (of which many hundred thousands, Haredi Jews, had been living in Palestine and the territories of surrounding now Arab countries since the expulsion from Palestine by the Romans in 71 CE, that is, 600 years before the conquest of North Africa by the Arabs) increased manyfold over those two decades of the past century. Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, from which Hamas has spawned, was an ardent Nazi sympathiser; the imperialist nationalist aspirations, together with hatred of modernity and of Western capitalistic corruption, resonated between the two, and it found its natural symbol in hatred of the Jews.
This is a strain, in Islamist thought, with which the world continues to deal today. And it is the strain that is most evident in the unrelenting, apparently irrational hatred of ideologised Muslims against Israel.
And this is also the reason why the Palestinians have never been allowed to settle either in Egypt when it controlled Gaza nor in Jordan when it controlled the West Bank, but kept in eternal refugee camps: so that the cause against the existence of Israel could be maintained and forwarded.
Both Egypt and Jordan did later come, as states, to much more moderate terms and formally recognised the State of Israel. But the radicalisation of the Palestinians, and in particular the link to Iran of the main terrorist organisation among them, have been first among the more recent reasons of the refusal of both Egypt and Jordan to allow Palestinian refugees on their territory: they fight Islamist terrorism within their borders and dread the influx of more militants among the civilian population.
I have several secular or moderate Muslim friends in Egypt, who all are terrified at the prospect.
And just in case you want a further insight in the reasons why Israel is hated so much by a certain part of the progressive Left, I can offer you a couple articles. The first is an examination of the reasons of the particular antisemitism that plagues the Left, and which stems beautifully from the ideological discourse of oppressor vs oppressed, anti-capitalist maximalism, anti-imperialist ahistorical moralism, and identitarian ideologies all bunched together with old, never dead anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.
The second is the explanation, from within and without a iota of self criticism, in pure Marxist-Leninist terms, of why a certain Left can justify and even celebrate things like the Hamas attack of 10/7 and the practices of Islamist terrorists, or deny genocides like in Rwanda or in Bosnia.
Can I not just call you a Colonialist Nazi, and be done with it? Do I have to be reasonable? .....good history. If I were to add anything I would re-emphasize earlier in your essay Israel was a legal land purchase as legal as Louisiana from France, or Alaska from Russia. Also, Trans-Jordan lost the West Bank to Israel because it was used as a military staging area. Used to kill Israelis. After Trans-Jordan ceded West Bank to Israel by legal treaty West Bank became Israel and Tans-jordan (had its side surgery) became Jordan. West Bank is Israel.
Yes those are valid points, but I wanted to specifically avoid any "it's ok because it's legal" arguments as I don't find them persuasive and wouldn't expect others to either.
No one purchased the territory from the Ottomans in a manner analogous to the Louisiana Purchase, etc. The Ottomans in fact repeatedly declined offers to establish a Jewish autonomous region under Ottoman suzerainty in exchange for assistance with debts to European powers. They also attempted to limit Jewish settlement but lacked the state capacity to enforce their policy. The purchases were private rather than public, though they were used with the goal of displacing the cultivators to make room for settlers hoping to establish an ethnic enclave there (and their functioning depended on official corruption and illegal immigration). I don’t believe that anyone would be receptive to a separate ethnic group buying up land, with whatever degree of legality, with the purpose of displacing them in order to establish an ethnic enclave. I don’t think the Israeli’s, e.g., would accept this. Not would anyone else, because it would be suicidal. If the Fukienese started legally buying up all the land in Oregon with the goal of setting up a Fukienese homeland away from CCP oppression and started kicking out all the white people, I would not be amused.
My town has gone from 80% non-hispanic white to about 20% non-hispanic white in 40 years, entirely through voluntary buying and selling of housing. There may be a few old-timers who are upset by it, but most people really don't care. And the ones who do are likely the ones who sold their houses and left.
Were the Hispanic people part of a concerted movement to settle the area for a Hispanic homeland, funded by the Hispanic Colonization Association and associated with the Hispanic Homeland Organization? Did they adopt an ideological commitment to using only Spanish Labor? Did they create overarching organizations to prevent private property from leaving Hispanic hands? Did they buy up apartment complexes and evict all the tenants to make room for Hispanic settlers?
Primarily uncoordinated economic forces can cause major demographic shifts and the associated tensions and conflict (Prague, the Croatian coastal cities, etc.), but it’s a distinct phenomenon.
Failed metaphors, so let's try another one. Palestinians now have a track record of more than 100 years of massacring Jews. The British accounts of the 1920, 1921, 1929 massacres sound almost the same as the descriptions of what Palestinian right-wing death squads did to Jewish parents, children and grandparents in 2023. So when Palestinians were the then-majority in British Mandate Palestine, and there was never a Palestinian state that was taken over - this was British empire territory preceded by Ottoman empire, preceded by various non-local Arab empires, their lynching and massacring and ethnically cleansing of the Jewish minority was exactly like the Tulsa massacre. In Oklahoma at the time neither white nor black residents were native to the land - it was native American land 'opened up' for settlement, with migration by both. The white majority was outraged at a successful black section of Tulsa (Black Wall Street) and massacred its residents, ethnically cleansed that space, just like Palestinians did to Jews in Hebron and other places. Only difference is that Jews were the other native people of the land that was neither Arab nor Jewish.
Try harder to find excuses for the Palestinians. The main catastrophe of the Nakba, from the Palestinian perspective, is that they failed to ethnically cleanse Israel of Jews, as they explicitly intended during the civil war of 1947 and the Arab armies invading in 1948. While Israel took the 1948-1967 period to turn any Palestinian remaining on the Israeli side into Arab Israeli citizens, the West Bank was completely ethnically cleansed of Jews - they weren't even allowed to pray in the old city, despite UN resolutions. The old city of Jerusalem was majority Jewish before it got conquered by the Arab Legion. Nothing is more clear about intent than juxtaposing that period of 19 years, during which neither Jordan nor Egypt created a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
I don’t condone massacres or Hamas. In case it’s not clear, I’m not a fan of Islam. My point is that the whole situation was actively created out of a sense of entitlement to already-inhabited land on the part of a minority movement of (primarily) Ashkenazim. I don’t agree that Ashkenazim were ‘native’ to the region. Even if they were majority Levantine in origin, which they are not, they had been absent for more than a thousand years. Their communal identity and memory of the region (even for the many, many participants who were non-religious) was based on their religion. I don’t agree that this constitutes a reasonable claim to inhabited territory. I don’t think even religious Judaism at the time tended to support this, but if it did it would just make me think worse of religious Judaism (just as Muslim and Catholic claims to the right to rule everywhere don’t endear those religions to me).
No part of my position depends on Palestinians having reacted to the situation admirably. I prefer actually-existing Israel to Hamas or Fatah. I’m not one of the people complaining about civilian casualties in Gaza in the present war. My primary complaint is against the 19th-early 20th century movement, composed almost entirely of people who are long dead.
I know several of those people intimately - my grandparents and their friends. Every single one of them was a refugee, none for economic reasons. None of them were British citizens. They weren't emigrating to a Palestinian state that they then took over, because such an entity never existed. They were emigrating to either the Ottoman empire hinterland or British Mandate Palestine, where actual economic development also drew Arab migration.
You have a problem with my grandparents? We may have beef.
The Ottoman Empire was an empire, spanning the most diverse lands, all conquered violently like is the case with the formation of most empires. Very little existed under the Ottomans of nation states similar to what formed the beginning of the modern concept of state in the Western world: there was no ethnic, political or cultural unity, except for the religion of Islam, aside from the bulk of Egypt, Turkey itself, and Persia. Most of the rest was a patchwork of lands ruled by tribes and families that often fought with other tribes and families for predominance in a territory, and recognised the authority of the central Imperial power when it was pushed, rebelling often.
The Middle Eastern states that we know today were mostly created after WWI by the Western Powers, after the fashion of nation states which the West was used to. There were hundred of thousands of Jews living in the Middle East since the times of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. The Ottomans took censuses for over 500 years. The Jewish communities were regularly attacked, expelled, and pogroms happened in many places every time a scapegoat was needed, just like in Europe -- even under the Ottomans, who had one of the most enlightened policies of religious tolerance for most of the Empire.
Between 1870 and 1920, the Jews were not, for the fellahin, strangers or foreigners (there was very little difference in customs between middle eastern Jews and East European Jews), but a separate ethnic group that had always existed at their side. And which they had been taught or grew to hate.
The comparison with Oregon would make more sense if the Native tribes of Oregon, and others from North America, should have started buying land that 600 years ago was tribal land to create an autonomous homeland of the Native Americans. I am sure many Oregonians would object. But it would not look so outrageous.
What people like you, and so many others, do not realise, is that the Jews were not natives of Europe fleeing from oppression. The Jews were, and are, the Indigenous people of Palestine, deported and expelled from their homeland. Nobody can deny that.
One can surely contend that the Arab settlers that came and conquered North Africa in 600 CE, displacing the rule of the Byzantine Empire, also have a right to the land in which they lived for 1400 years (alongside Jews that had never moved away and who lived first under Arab then Ottoman rule). But nobody can say, with an understanding of history, that the Jews were foreigners and strangers to Palestine.
The question of the Jewish state could have been and was open to negotiation. But neither it nor the land purchases were preposterous notions.
I agree with everything in the first two paragraphs. I don’t actually care about indigineity as such (not progressive), but if I did I think there would be a figurative statute of limitations somewhere before the 1000 year mark. If I moved ‘back’ to Europe, I’d still be a stranger and a foreigner despite having 100% recent European ancestry and speaking a European language. The Ashkenazim had similar religious customs to Mizrahim - but they spoke a different language and were heavily Europeanized in culture. Culturally, they were much closer to, e.g., Poles than to any near easterners except in religion. I understand that many European nationalists viewed them as non-Europeans, I just think they were full of shit (even if Ashkenazi ancestry were full Levantine, which it very much is not).
This post was amazing. Thank you for rolling out your exploration and thought processes in such an understandable way. Most of it was familiar to me but knowledge I've acquired very differently. In the '90s I argued against my mom's advocacy of US support for Israel (I thought they should stand on their own two feet); toward the end of her life, we had completely switched sides. In-between I was out and about measuring results (or lack thereof) of policies and programs in low- and middle-income countries, including Lebanon, Jordan, and (very briefly) West Bank, and including being in Dar when the US Embassies in Kenya/Tanzania were bombed, among a long list of other adventures. I learned a few things about people, history, and political economy along the way.
One point I'd like to add is that exploitation of the concept of dispossessed Palestinian people can only occur because their brethren refuse to assimilate them into their countries. It has less, or nothing, to do with Israel but is a deliberate construction of the Israel-scapegoating powers-that-be who instrumentally maintain Palestinians as stateless people to be perpetually trapped in 'refugee' camps, generation after generation, so they can distract and bait the unruly masses to hate the Jews instead of noticing their own rulers suck.
And a final digression: I appreciate the history and the lead-up, which is certainly useful to know and understand in great depth. At the same time, what happened before the 1948 war seems largely irrelevant to understanding the here-and-now -- because it would not have to matter if those so passionate about the Palestinian cause gave a damn about the Palestinian people in their midst. It (the history) is merely part of the mechanism being transparently manipulated to demonize Israel.
Throughout human history, political entities that win wars get to decide what to do with any territories and peoples they conquer, for as long as they can (or choose to) maintain control. There is no such thing as persisting private property rights qua rights after a foreign entity takes possession of your (former) government's territory, because those rights were secured by a legal and judicial system that no longer pertains (your defeated former government's). The territory and its uses are now subject to the laws, contracts, courts, and even the whims of the conquering people. At different times and in different places, what's acceptable to do with the spoils of war varies, but an interpretation different from the one the winner imposes will have to be enforced through levers of policy or... another war.
If Hamas rampaged through Israel and killed every last Jew from the river to the sea, does anyone think the kids of those people could come back and say, "hey, that's my factory, my farm, my tech innovation, so give it back and leave"? No, that is not the way anything has ever worked. Israel should remember that after they win this war, for a more lasting peace.
> exploitation of the concept of dispossessed Palestinian people can only occur because their brethren refuse to assimilate them into their countries
Yes exactly. Turkey (population 85M) has accepted 3.3M Syrian refugees in what is functionally a permanent state of affairs. It's not believable for the Arab countries, if they really do care as much about the Palestinian *people* as much as they say they do, to not bend over backwards to accommodate this stateless population. Instead, the relevant ideologies need them to stay exactly where they are to maintain the casus belli against Israel.
> what happened before the 1948 war seems largely irrelevant to understanding the here-and-now
You can say that about pretty much any event from more than a year ago. I covered it not because I personally think it's important, but because others clearly do and I didn't want to make it seem like I was glossing over anything.
I rather disagree with respect to the dismissal (too strong a word but I'm on my first cup of coffee) of the last 75 years of history (less one) on the same level as situations and events approx 75-125 years ago. My point would be that the 2nd-75th past years matter about as much as last year; the proximate years leading up to 1948 are relevant; and generally the rest is "largely irrelevant". Perhaps we're of different opinions regarding the extent to which an incident or event can be a turning point that truly shifts a paradigm (or worldview or framework within which people understand the world).
To sum up differently, I don't think the preceding span of history doesn't matter in and of itself; obviously it does, and people care on both sides, etc., etc. Yet it barely weighs in the balance against the facts and factors driving the functional dynamics of actors and choices in the more-or-less current decision-making context. Political entrepreneurs around 1948 reshaped the landscape into irreconcilable p and !p (Israel MUST exist; Israel must NOT exist), in a dramatic way everyone had to recognize. Since then Middle East politics has been maneuvering in the space between "I'm sure there's some compromise we can reach" and "No, every Jew must die" -- and who (really) farmed which hectare under what circumstances just does not play into that calculus at all.
I hope that restatement makes my position clearer. I think I have another point in the back of my mind about the impact of the Abraham Accords on that (unstable) equilibrium, but I'll leave it here for now.
Yassine: I know you said at the outset you're no expert and you just read up here-and-there on this conflict, but you did a REALLY amazing job here. Yes, details were left out, yes, certain people would characterize various events differently, but you really pressed on all the pressure points with a lot of clarity and wit and I loved reading your article.
Please, please, PLEASE write a book. I will buy copies for all my friends, I promise. If you won't do this, could you (or any other readers) point me to a book that takes the same balanced approach and hits as hard and as honestly as you do? I have a read a few books, but so far they're all very biased.
I'm flattered! Sadly for you I would not write a book on this topic as I would never be able to devote the years of work it would take, both to address the topic appropriately, and to quench what would be my heightened perfectionism. I wish I had something else to recommend and I know it's a low-brow opinion, but I don't think nonfiction books are the most efficient conduit of information. They're either way too short or way too long, and you'll always be siloed within one person's perspective.
Your post finally inspired us to start our own substack complaining about bad arguments & rhetoric about this issue (https://thosewhotremble.substack.com/p/gerrymandering-power). Thanks for giving us the final push to actually start something.
I think your conclusion is pretty reasonable, but the words used for it are overly broad. I find very little to sympathize with for Hamas, but plenty to for Palestinian civilians. Israel is definitely not behaving as ethically as they can be, there's quite an extensive history of human rights abuses on their Wikipedia page. One vague metaphor might be Israel as US and Hamas as Al Qaida. Sure it's justified to kill and destroy a terrorist organization, but not in also doing indiscriminate detentions, kidnapping, killing, and torture of civilians, as both the US and Israel are doing/did in their wars.
The phrasing "Ultimately, I find very little to sympathize with on the Palestinian cause" is probably what tripped me up. I mean, i see your point about their cause not being valid in terms of taking back the land, but their "cause" of being treated as valid indigenous people with human rights and freedom of movement is certainly valid.
Rewording it to "Ultimately, I find very little to sympathize with on the side of Palestinian aggression" probably makes it most clear, since it's the Palestinian aggression/military force that you're opposing.
Perfect feedback! I thought the context of the paragraph made it clear I was talking about aggression when I said "cause" but it doesn't hurt to clarify.
One big difference is that Al Qaeda weren't living in a Long Island terrorist-run quasi-state when the Twin Towers massacre happened. Hamastan Gaza was 2 miles from Israeli villages and towns, and magically Hamas is still at that distance, and will remain within rocket attack and death squad infiltration range until blown up inside their tunnels. For that reason the gap between the US on 9/11/2001 and Israel on 10/7/2023 is immense, and the comparison falls apart. It's much easier to go about your day after major terrorism when the organization carrying it out is on the other side of the globe.
I'm not even falling for your absurd attempt to claim Israel is "kidnapping civilians" because WTF are you talking about - it is Hamas that is still holding 239 civilians hostage, 30 of them children including a 10 month old, a 2 year old and 3 year old, without letting the ICRC check if any of them are alive and not being tortured.
I'm actually hoping this attracts some good counterarguments. The usual realms I inhabit have all been pretty strongly pro-Israeli, and the counterarguments I've seen have all been covered here (aside from some specific critiques of Netanyahu's policies and plans, but I'm already on board with "fuck that guy").
Wow. This was absolutely incredible. A tour de force. Thanks so much for putting the work into this and laying it out so clearly. I hope you follow-up with any credible challenges and further points that impact your thinking on the matter.
Ok I don’t like settlements in West Bank either. But if you drew a regression line to put in factors which lead to this conflict, the settlements would contribute very slightly to this ongoing conflict. It’s the perpetual grievance culture of Palestinians and their annihilationist philosophy. For them a settlement is Tel Aviv.
Just a little memory of what the PLO did. Look up the Achille Lauro incident in which they took an American Jewish man, Leon Klinghoffer who was on a cruise on the boat with his family, captured him and threw him off the boat in his wheelchair to die. Thd antisemitism is a feature. Not a bug.
As someone who believes anti-Jewish bigotry motivates a significant amount of the Palestinian cause, I'm going to object to drawing such conclusions from individual anecdotes. Otherwise consistency would require drawing countervailing conclusions about individual actions by Israelis.
I think you missed my point. Terror acts are systemically part of Palestinian National movements for a long time. Plane hijackings. The 1972 Olympics. The Coastal Road Massacre. Ma’alot. The horrors of the second intifada. It’s systemic.
Israel is numerically far more multicultural than any country in the middle east. If it's a supposed ethnostate, I'm not sure how to describe the Hamas governed territory of Gaza with a 99% Sunni Muslim population. Their ambition of ethnically cleansing the rest of what was British Mandate Palestine from the "river to the sea" by "any means" intends to create more of the same.
That's a valid critique of Arab countries in the region; they may not be an ethnostate explicitly but they are practically. And I fully acknowledged that Israel has demonstrated itself as much more tolerant of other ethnicities than its Arab neighbors, though it's also fair to wonder if cosmopolitan tolerance would survive if Israeli-Jews were to become a minority in their own country.
None of that refutes the fact that Israel was founded as and continues to be a Jewish ethnostate. It's not possible for a country to have a Law of Return for a specific ethnicity and *not* be an ethnostate, and I don't understand why people object to the term (except for the theory that it's uncomfortable to be reminded of something true but distasteful).
Sure, as long as we acknowledge that if that’s the test of ‘ethnostate’ then so are other countries that frothing at the mouth anti Zionists never mention.
Israel is a haven for Jews expelled (for example Polish Jews 1967) driven out by pogroms (Iraqi Jews, Polish Jews 1946, too many to list otherwise), legal persecution (Algeria 1963, Libya 1961, 1970, too many to list otherwise). Israel’s Law of Return ensures that Jewish refugees don’t become stateless through the many such incidents across the 20th century. Considering the deep, vicious antisemitism of anti Zionists we see around the world today, the people who shout ‘ethnostate’ prove the necessity of an open door to Jewish refugees with their own violent hostility to Jews.
Thanks for this post! You’ve articulated very well a perspective I’ve come to over the last few weeks. I’m a Canadian Jew (non-religious) and never felt a particularly strong connection to Israel. The fashionable thing to say in my very secular Jewish community was that a country like Israel of course ought to exist, but [insert a list of things you don’t like about Israel as it currently exists].
As I’ve dug more into the conflict, I’ve increasingly felt like Israel truly is held to a different standard than any other nation. There is no outcry among the pro-Palestinian left when China sends Muslims to concentration camps; there is no outcry among the pro-Palestinian left when Assad or other neighbouring governments kills thousands more Palestinians than Israel ever has; there is no outcry among the pro-Palestinian left when Egypt enthusiastically blockades Palestine along its border with Gaza.
Not only that, but the history of Israel’s conflict with surrounding nations has been repeated attempts to exterminate the Jewish population therein. The war for independence was a war of survival, as was the 6-day and Yom Kippur wars. At any point along this history, neighbouring nations could have stopped, recognized Israel as a nation, and formed mutually beneficial partnerships -- which Israel was certainly open to! But with each loss, Israel claimed more and more land, and suddenly they’re the bad guy for doing so.
I think one potential additional would be the Palestinian reaction to Israel pulling out of Gaza. Israel did exactly what people want them to do in the West Bank: all israelis were moved out of Gaza, some of them even forced by the military. They even went so far as to remove their own cemeteries to completely exit the region. Finally, the US oversaw a democratic election to establish some sort of legitimate government of Gaza.
Immediately, the people voted in Hamas, and the new government began a campaign of terror attacks against Israel. It’s extremely hard to say this was merely a response to oppression; Israel became LESS oppressive, and the answer was to attack them even harder. I find it very hard to say that Israel ought to do the same for the West Bank if this seems to be the likely response.
(I apologize for the length -- I’ve been very frustrated at what feels like widespread historical illiteracy among the twitter leftist class, and have become quite jaded about all of this)
Yes, that's a really good point about the Gaza withdrawal. I felt so insane when I started reading up on this, just constant "wait, am I missing something?" over and over again. My old impression of anyone pro-Israel was that they had a chip on their shoulder, and incessantly complained about anti-semitism phantoms lurking around because everyone is picking on Israel. Now I *totally* understand why they're so fed-up with overall world perception.
The one addition I’ll add is that everything I hear about the West Bank sounds super fucked, and frankly I think the IDF or other Israel law enforcement needs to get settlers out of there ASAP. Settlers truly can’t be allowed to kick innocent Palestinians out of their homes with the tacit endorsement of the Israeli government.
Totally agree.
Agree. I was always a bit on the fence on the issue of Israel/Palestine largely because I cannot and will not defend these settler practices, Netanyahu's power-grab and ghouls like Itamar ben Gvir (albeit leaning slightly pro-Israel because I appreciate Jewish culture. Yay, Seinfeld) . I've been moving in a more pro-Israeli direction but even so I'm not going to pretend that that shenanigans in the West Bank is going to lead to anything postive for anyone.
As much as I don’t love the settlement enterprise, did you ever think about the effect that the second intifada had in hardening Israeli attitudes against a Palestinian state on the West Bank?
According to pro Palestinian propagandists the Palestinians have no autonomy, so they can't be blamed for choosing several years of suicide bombings in the middle of peace negotiations. Apparently that's a valid negotiation tactic.
And the recent events in Gaza may harden them much further.
Imagine the carnage next time if Gaza or a radicalized West Bank were sovereign nations, able to freely import and use any weapons without restriction.
In a large country like the US or Australia, it's hard to imagine what it's like to have your capital and population center within artillery range (much less rocket range) of a sworn adversary, willing to have their own combatants and civilians die in greatly disproportionate numbers (as venerated Martyrs), so long as they can inflict some serious damage on the enemy.
I both feel an idealism that says that Palestinians deserve their own state, and recognize that in practice having one in this context might be devastating to both Israeli and Palestinian populations, and then to the world. Believing that having a Palestinian state would bring peace or at least less conflict could be disastrously naive, and I can understand why it might not be something Israelis feel they can afford to risk, UNTIL the radical Jihadist takeover of such a state seems less likely.
It's a quandry, choosing between an aspirational idealism and a pragmatic realism with unacceptable outcomes.
There was a time, like 20 years ago, that illegal settlements would be bulldozed by the government and were considered by the Israeli leadership (in addition to international judicial bodies). But under Netanyahu the government now protects these illegal settlements and even encourages them; Netanyahu was attempting a takeover of the judiciary in Israel just before the Oct 7th attacks in order to help settlers in spite of their illegal practices (as well as help the orthodox communities avoid IDF service and other priorities). Netanyahu is directly responsible for the escalation of violence and yet (surprise surprise) has shown zero accountability for any of this.
Yeah. Just as I won’t hold every American accountable for Trump, I wouldn’t hold every Israeli accountable for Bibi. But goddamn a lot of them voted him in, and he’s destroyed a ton of credibility. The protests over his Supreme Court change attempt were a good sign, but it’s pretty awful that it even got to that point.
I understand the need for unity among Israel’s political class right now, but I hope that immediately post-war Netanyahu faces consequences for 1) all he’s done to exacerbate the conflict, and 2) his intelligence failures leading to Oct7.
Mr Security is currently polling at 20%, thanks to the complete failure of his "talk like Churchill, appease like Chamberlain" shtick, him being ultimately responsible for the security outcome of the policy he got to champion between 2008-2023 with a 1.5 year hiatus (talk tough, yet give Hamas Qatari money, electricity, internet, mobile phone spectrum, work permits, and very limited response to terrorism). The complete failure of his yes-men filled government to respond in the weeks following October 7th is on his head. Also, in a country where security is the absolute top concern, him shitting his pants is beyond unacceptable.
I've never voted for that scum, I've protested him, but it's encouraging that my brother-in-law and best friend, both serious Likud voters, have written him off for good. I don't need to pick any political fights with them, they just come out and say it. On their end they've marked Gallant as their obvious better option.
Not talking about the political side, I don't know enough to have a firm opinionthere, but the people *directly* responsible for the Simchat Torah attacks are Hamas and their soldiers. At best Netanyahu is *indirectly* responsible, because (from what you say/imply) he did a Thing which encouraged other people to attack. Proximal vs distal cause.
Let's say for the sake of argument the "settlements are illegal," although I personally don't believe that a person's religion should be the reason they are forbidden to live anywhere. Does the presence of largely peaceful communities that also happen to provide employment, recreation and public services to the local Arabs justify the kind of violence perpetrated by Hamas, who rule over Gaza where there are exactly zero settlements?
That is one of the hard problems there (disclosure: I have a son in the IDF; I am not a Jew, but my ex wife is a secular Jew, and our son is a Jew; they did alyah 23 years ago; we always remained close).
Israel is a democratic state, but religious fundamentalism has been growing there too, under the pressure of continuous threat and probably because it is just a tilt of the times (as it seems to be happening all over the world). Religious fundamentalism among the Jews of Israel manifests as a belief in the right of the Jews to own the entirety of the old land of the Roman Protectorate of Judaea that was Jewish land until the time of the destruction of the Second Temple and the expulsion of most Jews from Jerusalem; in the belief that the state of Israel should be an ethno-nationalist state in the strictest of terms, and ruled by Halakhah, the Jewish religious law. They are often divided about how they would like to deal with non-Jewish or irreligious inhabitants, but many envision some sort of etno-religious cleansing, forcible removal if needed. They have no wish to expand Israel beyond the confines of Palestine, nor to dominate the region, but they aspire to sit in their exclusive enclave, becoming increasingly pure as they wait for the coming of the Messiah.
Fundamentalist Jews in Israel (who are in majority among the Haredim, the Middle Eastern Jews) are a distinct minority, but very vocal and active. Their ideology constitutes the backbone of what drives the West Bank settlers. Others in the Settlers movement advocate settlements and the claiming of occupied land for reasons of security, and often just in the hope to grab cheap land, to be honest.
The governments in the last years have endorsed the Settlers not even all that tacitly. For the Settlers have always been supporters of the political Right in Israel, and the conflict with the Palestinians has increasingly strengthened the Right, which has traditionally been more inclined to military solutions of the conflict (even if the man who forcibly removed over 10000 Jews from Gaza in the unilateral withdrawal was Ariel Sharon, head of Likud). The rise of the hard right has been helped by the terrorism of Hamas, which in turn has been helped in claiming to be justified by oppression by the illiberal and oppressive policies of rightwing goverments in the last 15 years.
There has been a fierce political struggle in Israel in the last few years, until the Hamas attack. Half of the country does not support the settlements policies, nor the actions of the settlers, nor the illiberal policies of Netanyahu who for the first time brought the far right into the government. Netanyahu will not survive, politically, this last event. And perhaps afterwards a new avenue for peace will open. But for the while everything is frozen by the war. The Hamas attack hit the kibbutzim belt where the communities are the most progressive -- but Israel clings up together when it is attacked. Internal reconing must wait, and you will see no changes in the policies in the West Bank until this war is over.
Personally, aside for the anguish at the loss of life on each side, I am truly worried at the international situation around this. There are big international players that are blowing on the coals -- and what the reaction to the events reveals about the blind susceptibility to propaganda in the countries outside of the West is appalling, but what it has uncovered within the West is even more appalling.
If I believed in a god who intervenes in the world, I would pray.
Here's one point that needs to be corrected- Israeli "settlers" do not kick Arabs out of their homes. In a small number of cases Jews legally purchase property in Arab neighborhoods. There are no laws prohibiting Arabs from selling to whomever they please, or Jews from buying, nor should there be. The "settlements" are built on uninhabited land and people who move to them purchase or rent just like anywhere else- this includes Arabs by the way, who also live in many of the settlements, although in smaller numbers. Any Arab who claims that a settlement has been built on their property has the right to take their claim to court. In many many cases the courts support those claims, even when the evidence is minimal at best.
And you think this is happening, why?
Because Israel has a sizeable contingent of far right religious zealots who believe they have a holy mandate to annex the West Bank, and Israel’s current far right government is sympathetic to their cause.
They aren’t annexing the West Bank. The West Bank is Israel. Didn’t Jared Kushner have a partition plan put forward that linked parts of WB and Gaza?
I don’t think even the Israeli government would say the West Bank is part of Israel. West Bank is technically occupied territory behind armistice lines from Israel’s war with Jordan, but the population therein are not considered Israeli citizens. Even some of the settlements popping up there are illegal by Israel’s own laws, and previous governments have prosecuted past West Bank settlers.
Jared Kushner’s proposed partition plan isn’t super relevant to that, because it was never implemented.
The West Bank was never Palestine. It was Trans Jordan and then after Jordan and Israel signed a Peace agreement Trans Jordan became Jordan, and West Bank became Israel. There are few places on Earth where ownership of land could be less disputed. All of Canada is under territorial dispute with First Nations, for example. European boundaries gave changed 100 times, etc.
Give me a break. It was never a part of the original UN map of Israel. It's the largest portion of Palestinian land in any two-state solution. Palestinians live there and the move of Jewish settlers there is a recent political project. It's not recognized as disputed land by anyone besides radical settlers and their supporters.
One of the reasons why I was so happy with this post is that so much I'm seeing right now seems like veiled anti semitism. He is really trying to be thorough and balanced here
Well tbf I assume that a country which claims to be Western and Civilized like Israel follows the civilizational norms that the West has had for the longest of times. Israel bombed hospitals and is mercilessly killing civilians and is conducting a medieval siege all the while claiming to be the good side. Despite the fact that they can pursue other routes which could lessen civilian death. I mean Israel has the ability to kill Iranian nuclear scientists with precision in Iran and can bring dying Nazis all over the world to stand trial. So this isn't a question of a nation with resources or ability not to act barbaric. Furthermore since it claims to be a part of the West( on top receiving billions of my country's tax dollars), I will hold them to a higher standard than despotic countries like China or Syria. Like what a stupid point, we have a different standard for a country that states to be a civilized Western country? Unless you claim that Syria and China are like Israel, which you seem to suggest. And to further reiterate, they take billions of taxes from America, so I definitely want them to act a certain way when they're taking the money of my country. If Israelis don't like that, then we can mutually agree that Israel shouldn't be receiving the dollars of hardworking Americans. All in all, if Israel was just some other country I would view it similar to every other conflict in the world, however because Israelis claim to be a civilized Western country I will hold it to the standard of one. Furthermore, many Americans are quick to point out flaws in our military actions( war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan) so Israel isn't a special case. Just like I would speak out against America's evil foreign policy, I want a country which treats America as paypiggy because of similar values to be called out too.
What are these obviously less barbaric ways to destroy Hamas? Do you think Hamas should be destroyed? You mentioned comparing Israel to China and Syria. Why should I care about this comparison, and how is Israel like them?
,
Hamas slaughtered innocents. Israel said they would respond and the entire world begged both sides to stop fighting!! Israel had not yet done anything. Now you repeat MSM talking points. At what point are you going to say ‘I have no idea what actually is happening. All I have heard is MSM and Sub Stackers making reasoned guesses.’
On point 👉
In that entire screed I didn't see you mention once that this war started with a savage massacre of Israelis by Palestinian right-wing death squads. Do you even know what Israel's goals are for this war, that wouldn't have started without the Hamas atrocity?
Why don't you hold your Pals Hamas to account for what they did? Why don't you call on Hamas to immediately release all the civilians it kidnapped, after allowing the ICRC to visit and account for all of them? Why don't you call on Hamas to surrender unconditionally for a war crimes trial at the ICC? If Hamas did those things this war would be over immediately, but you prefer to yammer about how you hold Israel to a standard no other democratic country is held to, and definitely no Arab country.
Did the Palestinian people actually vote in Hamas? I was under the impression that Palestine Authority was who was voted in and organizes foreign relations, but is totally unable to control the ground itself and was forced out by Hamas, which is using the people there mostly as meat shields.
My understanding is that Hamas won a plurality of the popular vote (~45%), and Fatah won just under that (42%). However, this was an electoral college-type situation, so Hamas won a majority of seats in the new legislature (>55%) and was thus the winner. They proceeded to have a civil war with Fatah where they killed a lot of their opposition
Hmmm. I can believe that, which then makes the question: is this violence actually what the Palestinian people voted for, or did Hamas lie about their intentions.
Hamas has declined to hold another election since 2006. Given the average age of Palestinians, <10% of them probably voted for Hamas at all. However, opinion polls I’ve seen suggest ~50% approval rating for Hamas; for context, Joe Biden has a 39% approval rating among Americans.
Hamas is not democratically legitimate, but the Gazan culture as a whole seems net-supportive of them. I could be wrong though -- there may be internal pressures to feign a higher level of support so as not to be labelled an Israeli collaborator.
To summarize -- no, they didn’t vote for this, but that’s not for lack of general agreement.
A 2022 poll of Palestinians showed that Hamas has lost a lot of support thanks to their massive corruption, but at the same time 70% of those polled support terrorism and admire Palestinian terrorist organizations that are nearly as bad - Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Lion's Den. So Palestinians are quite into terrorism over negotiations, but we'll have to see what happens after Hamas has most of its military capability destroyed.
"I can’t fathom the countervailing scenario where Muslims are willing to prohibit prayers at Al-Aqsa."
On this point: you might have added that, when Muslims *did* control the Temple Mount (Jordan, 1948-1967), Jews were not permitted even to visit, despite agreed-to armistice provisions that called for such access.
That's a great point, I'm embarrassed I didn't think about it.
Nor where there any Jews left in any territory conquered by Arab armies in 1948 - completely ethnically cleansed. This is at the same time that the 21% of Israel that were Palestinians became Arab Israeli citizens.
They weren't even allowed to pray by the Western Wall.
this may be slightly pedantic, but the kingdoms of israel and judah are not even close to being "the only cogent jewish political entities to have ever existed." for one, the religion they practiced isn't really recognisable as judaism, but something scholars call "yahwism," which was maybe closer to a pagan polytheistic cult with a particular focus on one local canaanite storm-god, yahweh, and his wife, asherah. the emergence of judaism proper was slow and mostly took place in exile; the religion in its modern form doesn't fully emerge until after the destruction of the temple in 70 ad with the compilation of the talmud.
but there were plenty of other jewish polities! there was a jewish kingdom called adiabene in northern mesopotamia under the parthian empire, and another, briefer jewish state nearby in mahoza. the jewish himyarite kingdom ruled yemen in late antiquity; a huge swathe of russia and ukraine was under the jewish khazar khaganate. there may have been a jewish state in northern ethiopia, and some historians have even proposed a (very contentious) jewish princedom around narbonne in present-day france under the carolingian empire. and while it might be tiny, a figment of stalin's megalomania, and on the far side of the world, there was (and still is!) the jewish autonomous oblast...
anyway, i don't really agree with a lot of what you've said here. on several points, but i'll restrict myself here to your preference for israeli governance and culture. yes, israeli political institutions are more democratic and seem to generate more general prosperity than palestinian political institutions - but only *if you're israeli.* this is not a conflict between states! israeli political institutions are the ones that ultimately determine all outcomes for both sides, including the relative poverty of the palestinians of the west bank and the absolute poverty of the palestinians of gaza. every international observer recognises that the israeli state holds sovereign authority in the west bank and gaza, but the palestinian population is not represented in that state.
israeli politicians are fairly open about the fact that the relative wealth and freedom of israel directly depends on the suppression of the palestinians. there's even a separate israeli law code for west bank palestinians! a palestinian in area c lives under the same direct authority as their israeli neighbours, but if they commit a crime they face very different systems. the israeli will be tried in a civil court under ordinary israeli law. the palestinian will be tried by a uniformed army officer in a military court. these courts prosecute acts that are only criminal for palestinians, and not israelis. they will try 16 year olds as adults, while israeli civil courts set the age of majority at 18. they almost never grant bail, even for traffic offences, and the conviction rate is a very democratic 99.7%. this, more than the position of the israeli arabs, is why israel can be accurately defined as an apartheid state.
i don't think it's a question of choosing to support israeli or palestinian institutions as they presently exist, like these are football teams. as far as i can see, the only possible just solution, however distant it might seem right now, is one in which these (as you note, superior) israeli governance models are expanded to democratically represent the palestinian population, even if it means that the state loses its specifically jewish character. there have been other jewish states in the past. there will, i'm sure, be other jewish states in the future. but this one - frankly, it isn't worth it.
Sam, I'm a big fan of your writing in part because of your historical pedantry, so please don't ever be shy about flying your freak flag here.
I wasn't at all aware of Judaism/Yahwism's history, or the various other polities (Jewish Khaganate wtf!). I did the thing where you squish "Jewish" into a ball by eliding the distinction between ethnicity/religion, so I guess it depends how you draw the contours of the category here.
I didn't articulate my point about the comparative benefit of Palestinian institutions as well as I should've. Under the best hypothetical circumstances, there's no reason to think it would surpass neighboring Arab institutions, and Israel is already miles above those. I don't understand how it could be worth the bloodshed to become on par with mediocrity.
I agree that Israel holds sovereign authority over the territories. I concede I don't know enough about the civil prosecution system, and don't find anything you're saying to be implausible. But I don't fully understand the connection about how Israel's relative wealth and freedom is predicated on Palestinian suppression. The security apparatus, the vigilance, and the constant turmoil would seem to only be a net drain on Israel's bourse no?
I personally don't value Jewish character so I think an expansion of Israeli democracy would be a worthwhile trade-off. The only question would be if the democracy would survive that expansion, given the ever-present noxious ideologies in play.
yeah the jewish khaganate is an amazing quirk of history, but what i love about history is that when you start looking closely at it, it's practically nothing but quirks. sixteenth-century african kingdoms adopting european coats of arms, samurai touring aztec pyramids; everything is much closer and weirder than we think.
anyway, the less fun bit: yeah, i see no reason to think that a truly independent palestinian state in gaza and the west bank wouldn't be roughly as dysfunctional and sclerotic as most arab states. this is not such a bad thing, depending on your tastes; i think i would much rather live in a dysfunctional but gregarious mediterranean state like italy than a highly functional but autistic state like finland or south korea. but i find it very hard to imagine that a palestinian state would have anything like israel's gdp per capita, scientific and consumer innovations, obnoxious dance culture, genuinely excellent fine dining scene, etc etc etc. (it would, however, have much, much better poets.)
but i really don't see the value in comparing this hypothetical palestinian state to israel itself; you have to compare it to the actual present-day palestine under israeli occupation. the unemployment rate in the west bank is 24.4%; compare 7% in egypt and 10% in syria. there's very little private capital in palestine, and much of that actually ends up being invested in jewish settlements, since that's where the growth is and they're less likely to be capriciously torn down by israeli bulldozers. the palestinian authority's public funds, meanwhile, are often unavailable; israel has a habit of withholding the taxes it collects on the pa's behalf. in much of the west bank, it's virtually impossible for palestinians to acquire a building permit, accentuating a massive artificial housing crisis. the checkpoint regime means that there's absolutely no freedom of movement within the west bank for palestinians, who are also forbidden from driving on many of its arterial roads. there's also the fact that settlers now routinely enact "price tag" pogroms against palestinian homes and villages, destroying crops, vandalising homes, and sometimes burning them with children inside. plus there are frequent idf raids in which ordinary people, including children, are shot and killed, and israel's systematic targeting of palestinian civil society figures for arrest and extrajudicial execution, and the general indignity of living in a state of calculated unfreedom. and this is only in the west bank: in gaza, meanwhile, the unemployment rate is 45% and gdp per capita is, according to some estimates, lower than anywhere else on the planet. also in gaza, as i write, israel is wiping out entire families, three generations exterminated with a single bomb. children are collecting the tattered body parts of their siblings in plastic bags. you can watch footage of mohammed al-ran, the head of surgery at gaza's indonesia hospital, discovering that his family had been targeted in an israeli airstrike. the israeli military knows exactly who lives in which houses. they killed his family deliberately. what i can't get over is the fact that al-ran simply has no recourse. his family was killed by a democratic state, but there's nobody to ask why, nobody who will ever need to explain the decision, nobody who will ever be held accountable for pushing the button that incinerated his entire life. this is what it means to live under occupation: under a state that has total power over your life, but is not in any sense responsible to you.
i don't think it's ever going to happen, and it's not my preferred solution, but i think, for most people, an ordinary, mediocre, dysfunctional arab state would be preferable to that.
obviously we're at an extreme point in a long-running cycle of violence, and palestinian factions have also done their part in getting us to where we are. but i don't think the choice was ever between relative peace and prosperity under israel, and violence and dysfunction if the palestinians kept pushing for their own state. israel in its pre-1967 borders was never a fully viable, defensible state. the distance between tel aviv and the west bank is less than the length of manhattan, and the palestinians now inhabit the high ground overlooking the coastal plain. i've been to hebron; you can literally see the skyscrapers of tel aviv from there. israel is simply never going to allow this land to pass to a genuinely independent and sovereign palestinian state. but simply absorbing the palestinians into israel isn't an option without sacrificing the jewish identity of the state. which means that the palestinians must be kept from full self-determination through a continual state of surveillance, repression, and terror. this is why i say that israel's wealth and freedom is predicated on palestinian suppression. (although, in fact, the occupation is also big business. you say net drain on the public bourse, i say constant rolling state stimulus to the israeli security industry, much of it financed with american aid.) agan, israeli politicians are very open about this. they have no preferred solution to the conflict; their preferred solution is to just keep things exactly as they are, in the eternal grey limbo of an interminable peace process as settlers slowly swallow up more palestinian land and a few kids are periodically splattered in gaza. the hamas attack last month was an attempt to break out of that limbo, and i suppose it worked. we're in something else now. something worse, but something else.
You make several points I readily concede. I have no reason to question the calculated unfreedom you describe in lurid detail. Perhaps I should have spent more time outlining the Palestinian's repression as relevant context, but I am not sure how it would have changed my overall analysis.
The core thesis here remains the need to critically evaluate the self-professed motivations behind the Palestinian cause, to see which ones hold up with the facts. The problem is genuine valid grievances like the untenable life under occupation get shoved into the same overflowing laundry hamper to provide cover for objective insanity, like suicidal rage over stolen family land someone's grandparents never set foot on.
I already described how the Israeli camp is full of bad actors who are intent in maintaining/escalating the conflict and annexing more dirt. But if we average each respective side, I'm more likely to believe that Israel is the one that would be content with being left alone.
I’m sure the Palestinians would be content with being left alone, unfortunately that option was taken away from them by a combination of British imperialists, neighboring Arab nations, militant Zionists, Israeli politicians, the U.S. military-industrial apparatus, and their own sclerotic leadership.
Can we start with you giving the Khazar story a rest? It's a well known myth, mainly used by pro Palestinians to try and sever a connection between Jews (especially Ashkenazi ones) and Israel. Unfortunately for the antisemitic asses who love to point to it, DNA shows a strong connection between all Jews, and to a pre-diaspora origin in Israel.
Next, what an amazing thing to say that Israel's wealth is predicated on Palestinian suppression. Are you aware how much of Israel's GDP goes into its military and security, and the tax burden that funds it? At 5.3% it's far higher than any western democracy, and that's without the military assistance Israel had secured (along with Egypt) at the signing of peace with Egypt. Your skipping right over Israel's massive high-tech industry, which I'm quite sure is not built on the backs of the Palestinians is also very odd. No, despite a progressive urge to tie every damn thing in the universe with the Palestinians, the innovation and energy of Israel's tech sector has little to do with 'occupation'.
Who exactly are you to rewrite history? "Israel would never give up the West Bank" is a crock of shit, friend. Take a look at the many maps sincerely discussed since Oslo I accords. Take a look at maps from the 2008 Annapolis conference. Israel was absolutely planning to trade nearly all that land for peace. However, the Gaza disengagement in 2005 does raise some serious concerns, not due to 'economics' as you try to suggest (those greedy Jews, eh?), but purely security related once (shocking, Israelis don't like being massacred, tortured, raped and kidnapped by islamist terrorists. Such bad Zionists!). It took Hamas less than two years to snatch Gaza from the Palestinian Authority. It's hard to trust the PA with securing the entire West Bank in return for that land. So personally, while I believe in a two state solution, and having very little trust in the Palestinian's desire for peace, I wouldn't accept any land-for-peace deal that didn't require a demilitarized Palestine. This massacre lost Palestinians the right to have a military.
Cool blood libel about Israel murdering specific doctors, and knowing where every person lives. Considering Israel is trying to eliminate the military leadership, that imaginary knowledge would have been really useful. Maybe end your personalized spy info to the IDF, to hurry up the war with less casualties.
It's fantastic that you're are digging up excuses for the Hamas massacre. We're definitely in something else now - Hamas getting charges lowered into their tunnels, burying those war criminals inside them.
no, the khazar khaganate is not a myth. there really was a jewish polity on the southern pontic steppe during the early middle ages. i'm aware that some people use the existence of the khazar khaganate to argue that ashkenazi jews are unrelated to the historical israelites. (the first person to make that argument was, incidentally, himself a jew; he wanted to defang antisemitism by removing the notion that jews were collectively responsible for the crucifixion of jesus.) as far as i can tell, that argument is untrue and genetic studies have concluded that ashkenazi jews are more or less levantine and not pontic in origin. as an ashkenazi jew myself, none of this genetic pedantry is particularly interesting to me; i don't believe it's valid to make moral claims on the basis of distant ancestry. but the khazar khaganate is real, and it's interesting. a lot more interesting than you.
i'm not really going to respond to the rest of your post, because it's all more of the same. you don't actually know anything about the khazars, but you know they're something the people you don't like bring up sometimes, so when i bring it up you just say that they're a myth. you're not responding to what i actually said, you're pecking the "blood libel" lever like a trained pigeon. you try to insinuate i'm a hamas supporter and an antisemite. well, you can go and read what i wrote about the hamas massacre, it's right here on substack. please be less tedious in the future.
I read it. I even responded to how many fucking words it took you to wrench out a condemnation of Hamas. https://substack.com/@arrrbee/note/c-41610862?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=1mebvk
We see what your Palestinian liberation looks like, Sam. You're the one trying to ignore reality. You're not into claims on the basis of ancestry, but you're also cool denying refugees the right to purchase land and build a life on it, apparently. You're into denying Jews the right to escape virulently antisemitic Europe and Arab World and arrive as refugees to where their religion and history is based, to live a life alongside another native people. You're into denying the right of Jews to defend themselves when attacked during a civil war. Alrighty, very British of you.
i asked you to be less tedious and you haven't. bye
Just to be clear: the democratic one-state solution Sam dreams of here is basically nonsense. Israelis have every right to suspect that, if Palestinians are given equal rights in a single state, the end result will be Jews exiled from that single state or worse. A two-state solution is the valid alternative to today -- though it's a dim possibility with little support by either side.
What do you mean by "I personally don't value Jewish character "?
"Jewish character in a *state*" in response to Sam's comment.
ps: i feel like it's probably a very bad idea to try to get any kind of factual information about anything from chatgpt. i just got it to provide a list of the kings of yareach shelanu, a ninth-century jewish polity on the moon, which begins with a medieval jewish astronaut called king miriam ii.
Yes, I would never claim that chatGPT should be relied upon exclusively. I never take anything it tells me at face value and use it only to more efficiently island hop across other sources (my most common question was "what's a good wikipedia page for this"). Sometimes you get very pressing but minor questions, and it's a much more efficient lodestar to finding the answer than cracking open a 326-page PDF.
What's the advantage of using ChatGPT for a wikipedia page rather than google?
The only use I've had for it is editing, including code.
It's much much much faster at getting at the core of the issue. I found this out when I was watching Narcos: Mexico, where digging wells was a central plot point. I got curious about that topic and quickly realized that googling "mexico 1980s digging wells law" was going to be an absolute slog, whereas chatGPT pointed me in the right direction immediately.
Good point. It's also helpful for summarizing an article.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/technology/chatbots-hallucination-rates.html
I'm not denying this risk. Like I said, never take anything it tells you at face value.
Would it be better if we got information from on-campus pro Palestinian propaganda?
Well, is the West Bank part of Israel, or is it “illegally occupied territory” that by rights should be an independent state? Hasn’t the UN ruled that the West Bank is “occupied” rather than actually Israel?
I think this puts Israel in a Catch-22 - on the one hand, they are not allowed to actually exercise sovereign authority over the West Bank and Gaza, or they are condemned as “occupiers”. On the other hand, you want to hold them responsible for the crappy conditions in places where Israel has mostly ceded sovereign authority to the Palestinians, and that gets labeled “apartheid”.
You seem to be saying that Israel ought to basically absorb Gaza and the West Bank and make everyone there an equal Israeli citizen. But in addition to the practical integration concerns, wouldn’t that be met by extreme howling rage by the “international community”?
Only one thing to all of this drivel.
Sam Kriss, I have followed you since the time of Idiot Joy. You are a great and amazing writer of poetic literature.
As a commentator on social events and politics, you are the despicable child of privilege that has always delighted in spitting in the silver spoon from his mouth. I remember the numberless articles in which you prostituted your exquisite prose to the service of all the latest illiberal fads produced by a certain type of maximalist left -- you called yourself a bolshevik-in-your-youth, for being a revolutionary is posh. You have embraced every new anti-racist-colonialist-imperialist-patriarchal-heteronormative trend that has come up, and yet you have never become Owen Jones. And that is very likely a point to your credit. (But I have a strong suspicion that you resent not being Owen Jones).
You speak of a situation and a conflict of which you know very little -- oh, you have visited Israel, what am I saying! -- with the condescending manner of those who know, and begin with erudite attempts at discrediting the very racial identity of some Jews in order to discredit the fact that the Jews are indigenous to Palestine -- an old antisemitic ploy. It is painful to watch you play with words (oh so beautifully, because you can work beautifully with words) and make the blood of people, 100 years of blood, both Jewish blood and Arab blood, into an abstraction of theoretical power relations that shows how clever you are.
You are the very kind of intellectual of which we could truly do without in this type of discussions.
Arr Bee above says the rest better than I.
look i'm aware i had the misfortune to be acting out my slightly embarrassing and jejune maoist period in public, but anti-heteronormativity? give me a break.
i've responded to the khazar thing above, but basically if you think any mention of the khazar khaganate is antisemitic, you are very tedious and i'm not interested in talking to you. similarly, you seem to think i'm trying to reduce the conflict to abstract power relations, when everything i've written about the current phase was written precisely against that kind of reduction. i don't expect everyone to read everything i write, but if you're going to pull this creepy i've-been-following-you shtick it might help to reacquaint yourself with the material! and yes, it's true that i have visited israel. does it change anything that on my first visit, i didn't arrive through ben-gurion airport, but through a birth canal?
If you think anything about Khazar crap is true you have a reality problem.
what's the basis of your scepticism? i know some historians are iffy on the authenticity of the khazar correspondence but there's also the schechter letter in the cairo geniza, plus the fact that archaeologists have found stones inscribed with menorahs and hebrew letters in sarkel, and khazar coinage inscribed with reference to moses. obviously we don't know if the conversion to judaism was a mass phenomenon or restricted to the elite and i'm always willing to hear out alternate theories but as a historical event it seems pretty incontrovertible!
Well, we've arrived at Sam laying out his pro Hamas credentials - I did see that charming note that you're going protesting along with all the good people raising "from the river to the sea" and "by any means" and similar genocide supporting slogans.
I have minor patience arguing with disingenuous people who are looking to ethnically cleanse Israel of Jews by any means, but since you raised the absurd "apartheid" claim of the pro Hamas universe, I'll put out some resources.
* The Apartheid Accusation Against Israel is Baseless – and Agenda-Driven (definitely Sam has an agenda here too): https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-apartheid-accusation-against-israel-lacks-is-baseless-and-agenda-driven/
* Why Allegations that Israel Is An 'Apartheid' State Are False under International Law: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4343950
* Injecting 'Apartheid' Into the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Will Make It Worse : https://www.newsweek.com/injecting-apartheid-israeli-palestinian-conflict-will-make-it-worse-opinion-1588559
Thank you for this, Yassine.
Sensible reasoning while avoiding statements of things taken from granted is what we all need more of. Or at least, it is what relieves some of the terrible weight from my heart in this moment in time.
As a side note, much is to be said for the Nazi propaganda in North Africa during the 1930s and 1940s, all mainly aimed at stirring Arab animosity against the Jews and promote the extermination of the Jews. The pogroms against the Jews (of which many hundred thousands, Haredi Jews, had been living in Palestine and the territories of surrounding now Arab countries since the expulsion from Palestine by the Romans in 71 CE, that is, 600 years before the conquest of North Africa by the Arabs) increased manyfold over those two decades of the past century. Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, from which Hamas has spawned, was an ardent Nazi sympathiser; the imperialist nationalist aspirations, together with hatred of modernity and of Western capitalistic corruption, resonated between the two, and it found its natural symbol in hatred of the Jews.
This is a strain, in Islamist thought, with which the world continues to deal today. And it is the strain that is most evident in the unrelenting, apparently irrational hatred of ideologised Muslims against Israel.
And this is also the reason why the Palestinians have never been allowed to settle either in Egypt when it controlled Gaza nor in Jordan when it controlled the West Bank, but kept in eternal refugee camps: so that the cause against the existence of Israel could be maintained and forwarded.
Both Egypt and Jordan did later come, as states, to much more moderate terms and formally recognised the State of Israel. But the radicalisation of the Palestinians, and in particular the link to Iran of the main terrorist organisation among them, have been first among the more recent reasons of the refusal of both Egypt and Jordan to allow Palestinian refugees on their territory: they fight Islamist terrorism within their borders and dread the influx of more militants among the civilian population.
I have several secular or moderate Muslim friends in Egypt, who all are terrified at the prospect.
And just in case you want a further insight in the reasons why Israel is hated so much by a certain part of the progressive Left, I can offer you a couple articles. The first is an examination of the reasons of the particular antisemitism that plagues the Left, and which stems beautifully from the ideological discourse of oppressor vs oppressed, anti-capitalist maximalism, anti-imperialist ahistorical moralism, and identitarian ideologies all bunched together with old, never dead anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.
The second is the explanation, from within and without a iota of self criticism, in pure Marxist-Leninist terms, of why a certain Left can justify and even celebrate things like the Hamas attack of 10/7 and the practices of Islamist terrorists, or deny genocides like in Rwanda or in Bosnia.
https://forward.com/opinion/393107/how-anti-semitisms-true-origin-makes-it-invisible-to-the-left/
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/jenkins/2006/xx/terrorism.html
I really appreciate the reading links. I agree with your overall analysis about what drives this vendetta. If you didn't already, I highly recommend Hussein Mansour's article on this subject: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/liberation-arabs-global-left
I had not seen that. Thank you so much for pointing it out.
Yascha Mounk's "The Deep Roots of the Left’s Deafening Silence on Hamas" is excellent too.
https://www.persuasion.community/p/yascha-the-deep-roots-of-the-lefts
Can I not just call you a Colonialist Nazi, and be done with it? Do I have to be reasonable? .....good history. If I were to add anything I would re-emphasize earlier in your essay Israel was a legal land purchase as legal as Louisiana from France, or Alaska from Russia. Also, Trans-Jordan lost the West Bank to Israel because it was used as a military staging area. Used to kill Israelis. After Trans-Jordan ceded West Bank to Israel by legal treaty West Bank became Israel and Tans-jordan (had its side surgery) became Jordan. West Bank is Israel.
Yes those are valid points, but I wanted to specifically avoid any "it's ok because it's legal" arguments as I don't find them persuasive and wouldn't expect others to either.
That is reasonable.
No one purchased the territory from the Ottomans in a manner analogous to the Louisiana Purchase, etc. The Ottomans in fact repeatedly declined offers to establish a Jewish autonomous region under Ottoman suzerainty in exchange for assistance with debts to European powers. They also attempted to limit Jewish settlement but lacked the state capacity to enforce their policy. The purchases were private rather than public, though they were used with the goal of displacing the cultivators to make room for settlers hoping to establish an ethnic enclave there (and their functioning depended on official corruption and illegal immigration). I don’t believe that anyone would be receptive to a separate ethnic group buying up land, with whatever degree of legality, with the purpose of displacing them in order to establish an ethnic enclave. I don’t think the Israeli’s, e.g., would accept this. Not would anyone else, because it would be suicidal. If the Fukienese started legally buying up all the land in Oregon with the goal of setting up a Fukienese homeland away from CCP oppression and started kicking out all the white people, I would not be amused.
My town has gone from 80% non-hispanic white to about 20% non-hispanic white in 40 years, entirely through voluntary buying and selling of housing. There may be a few old-timers who are upset by it, but most people really don't care. And the ones who do are likely the ones who sold their houses and left.
Were the Hispanic people part of a concerted movement to settle the area for a Hispanic homeland, funded by the Hispanic Colonization Association and associated with the Hispanic Homeland Organization? Did they adopt an ideological commitment to using only Spanish Labor? Did they create overarching organizations to prevent private property from leaving Hispanic hands? Did they buy up apartment complexes and evict all the tenants to make room for Hispanic settlers?
Primarily uncoordinated economic forces can cause major demographic shifts and the associated tensions and conflict (Prague, the Croatian coastal cities, etc.), but it’s a distinct phenomenon.
Failed metaphors, so let's try another one. Palestinians now have a track record of more than 100 years of massacring Jews. The British accounts of the 1920, 1921, 1929 massacres sound almost the same as the descriptions of what Palestinian right-wing death squads did to Jewish parents, children and grandparents in 2023. So when Palestinians were the then-majority in British Mandate Palestine, and there was never a Palestinian state that was taken over - this was British empire territory preceded by Ottoman empire, preceded by various non-local Arab empires, their lynching and massacring and ethnically cleansing of the Jewish minority was exactly like the Tulsa massacre. In Oklahoma at the time neither white nor black residents were native to the land - it was native American land 'opened up' for settlement, with migration by both. The white majority was outraged at a successful black section of Tulsa (Black Wall Street) and massacred its residents, ethnically cleansed that space, just like Palestinians did to Jews in Hebron and other places. Only difference is that Jews were the other native people of the land that was neither Arab nor Jewish.
Try harder to find excuses for the Palestinians. The main catastrophe of the Nakba, from the Palestinian perspective, is that they failed to ethnically cleanse Israel of Jews, as they explicitly intended during the civil war of 1947 and the Arab armies invading in 1948. While Israel took the 1948-1967 period to turn any Palestinian remaining on the Israeli side into Arab Israeli citizens, the West Bank was completely ethnically cleansed of Jews - they weren't even allowed to pray in the old city, despite UN resolutions. The old city of Jerusalem was majority Jewish before it got conquered by the Arab Legion. Nothing is more clear about intent than juxtaposing that period of 19 years, during which neither Jordan nor Egypt created a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
I don’t condone massacres or Hamas. In case it’s not clear, I’m not a fan of Islam. My point is that the whole situation was actively created out of a sense of entitlement to already-inhabited land on the part of a minority movement of (primarily) Ashkenazim. I don’t agree that Ashkenazim were ‘native’ to the region. Even if they were majority Levantine in origin, which they are not, they had been absent for more than a thousand years. Their communal identity and memory of the region (even for the many, many participants who were non-religious) was based on their religion. I don’t agree that this constitutes a reasonable claim to inhabited territory. I don’t think even religious Judaism at the time tended to support this, but if it did it would just make me think worse of religious Judaism (just as Muslim and Catholic claims to the right to rule everywhere don’t endear those religions to me).
No part of my position depends on Palestinians having reacted to the situation admirably. I prefer actually-existing Israel to Hamas or Fatah. I’m not one of the people complaining about civilian casualties in Gaza in the present war. My primary complaint is against the 19th-early 20th century movement, composed almost entirely of people who are long dead.
I know several of those people intimately - my grandparents and their friends. Every single one of them was a refugee, none for economic reasons. None of them were British citizens. They weren't emigrating to a Palestinian state that they then took over, because such an entity never existed. They were emigrating to either the Ottoman empire hinterland or British Mandate Palestine, where actual economic development also drew Arab migration.
You have a problem with my grandparents? We may have beef.
Yes. Only funded by the Dems and driven to the border by NGOs.
I agree that’s bad
The Ottoman Empire was an empire, spanning the most diverse lands, all conquered violently like is the case with the formation of most empires. Very little existed under the Ottomans of nation states similar to what formed the beginning of the modern concept of state in the Western world: there was no ethnic, political or cultural unity, except for the religion of Islam, aside from the bulk of Egypt, Turkey itself, and Persia. Most of the rest was a patchwork of lands ruled by tribes and families that often fought with other tribes and families for predominance in a territory, and recognised the authority of the central Imperial power when it was pushed, rebelling often.
The Middle Eastern states that we know today were mostly created after WWI by the Western Powers, after the fashion of nation states which the West was used to. There were hundred of thousands of Jews living in the Middle East since the times of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. The Ottomans took censuses for over 500 years. The Jewish communities were regularly attacked, expelled, and pogroms happened in many places every time a scapegoat was needed, just like in Europe -- even under the Ottomans, who had one of the most enlightened policies of religious tolerance for most of the Empire.
Between 1870 and 1920, the Jews were not, for the fellahin, strangers or foreigners (there was very little difference in customs between middle eastern Jews and East European Jews), but a separate ethnic group that had always existed at their side. And which they had been taught or grew to hate.
The comparison with Oregon would make more sense if the Native tribes of Oregon, and others from North America, should have started buying land that 600 years ago was tribal land to create an autonomous homeland of the Native Americans. I am sure many Oregonians would object. But it would not look so outrageous.
What people like you, and so many others, do not realise, is that the Jews were not natives of Europe fleeing from oppression. The Jews were, and are, the Indigenous people of Palestine, deported and expelled from their homeland. Nobody can deny that.
One can surely contend that the Arab settlers that came and conquered North Africa in 600 CE, displacing the rule of the Byzantine Empire, also have a right to the land in which they lived for 1400 years (alongside Jews that had never moved away and who lived first under Arab then Ottoman rule). But nobody can say, with an understanding of history, that the Jews were foreigners and strangers to Palestine.
The question of the Jewish state could have been and was open to negotiation. But neither it nor the land purchases were preposterous notions.
I agree with everything in the first two paragraphs. I don’t actually care about indigineity as such (not progressive), but if I did I think there would be a figurative statute of limitations somewhere before the 1000 year mark. If I moved ‘back’ to Europe, I’d still be a stranger and a foreigner despite having 100% recent European ancestry and speaking a European language. The Ashkenazim had similar religious customs to Mizrahim - but they spoke a different language and were heavily Europeanized in culture. Culturally, they were much closer to, e.g., Poles than to any near easterners except in religion. I understand that many European nationalists viewed them as non-Europeans, I just think they were full of shit (even if Ashkenazi ancestry were full Levantine, which it very much is not).
Good comment.
Ulysses, I was referring to.
This post was amazing. Thank you for rolling out your exploration and thought processes in such an understandable way. Most of it was familiar to me but knowledge I've acquired very differently. In the '90s I argued against my mom's advocacy of US support for Israel (I thought they should stand on their own two feet); toward the end of her life, we had completely switched sides. In-between I was out and about measuring results (or lack thereof) of policies and programs in low- and middle-income countries, including Lebanon, Jordan, and (very briefly) West Bank, and including being in Dar when the US Embassies in Kenya/Tanzania were bombed, among a long list of other adventures. I learned a few things about people, history, and political economy along the way.
One point I'd like to add is that exploitation of the concept of dispossessed Palestinian people can only occur because their brethren refuse to assimilate them into their countries. It has less, or nothing, to do with Israel but is a deliberate construction of the Israel-scapegoating powers-that-be who instrumentally maintain Palestinians as stateless people to be perpetually trapped in 'refugee' camps, generation after generation, so they can distract and bait the unruly masses to hate the Jews instead of noticing their own rulers suck.
And a final digression: I appreciate the history and the lead-up, which is certainly useful to know and understand in great depth. At the same time, what happened before the 1948 war seems largely irrelevant to understanding the here-and-now -- because it would not have to matter if those so passionate about the Palestinian cause gave a damn about the Palestinian people in their midst. It (the history) is merely part of the mechanism being transparently manipulated to demonize Israel.
Throughout human history, political entities that win wars get to decide what to do with any territories and peoples they conquer, for as long as they can (or choose to) maintain control. There is no such thing as persisting private property rights qua rights after a foreign entity takes possession of your (former) government's territory, because those rights were secured by a legal and judicial system that no longer pertains (your defeated former government's). The territory and its uses are now subject to the laws, contracts, courts, and even the whims of the conquering people. At different times and in different places, what's acceptable to do with the spoils of war varies, but an interpretation different from the one the winner imposes will have to be enforced through levers of policy or... another war.
If Hamas rampaged through Israel and killed every last Jew from the river to the sea, does anyone think the kids of those people could come back and say, "hey, that's my factory, my farm, my tech innovation, so give it back and leave"? No, that is not the way anything has ever worked. Israel should remember that after they win this war, for a more lasting peace.
> exploitation of the concept of dispossessed Palestinian people can only occur because their brethren refuse to assimilate them into their countries
Yes exactly. Turkey (population 85M) has accepted 3.3M Syrian refugees in what is functionally a permanent state of affairs. It's not believable for the Arab countries, if they really do care as much about the Palestinian *people* as much as they say they do, to not bend over backwards to accommodate this stateless population. Instead, the relevant ideologies need them to stay exactly where they are to maintain the casus belli against Israel.
> what happened before the 1948 war seems largely irrelevant to understanding the here-and-now
You can say that about pretty much any event from more than a year ago. I covered it not because I personally think it's important, but because others clearly do and I didn't want to make it seem like I was glossing over anything.
I rather disagree with respect to the dismissal (too strong a word but I'm on my first cup of coffee) of the last 75 years of history (less one) on the same level as situations and events approx 75-125 years ago. My point would be that the 2nd-75th past years matter about as much as last year; the proximate years leading up to 1948 are relevant; and generally the rest is "largely irrelevant". Perhaps we're of different opinions regarding the extent to which an incident or event can be a turning point that truly shifts a paradigm (or worldview or framework within which people understand the world).
To sum up differently, I don't think the preceding span of history doesn't matter in and of itself; obviously it does, and people care on both sides, etc., etc. Yet it barely weighs in the balance against the facts and factors driving the functional dynamics of actors and choices in the more-or-less current decision-making context. Political entrepreneurs around 1948 reshaped the landscape into irreconcilable p and !p (Israel MUST exist; Israel must NOT exist), in a dramatic way everyone had to recognize. Since then Middle East politics has been maneuvering in the space between "I'm sure there's some compromise we can reach" and "No, every Jew must die" -- and who (really) farmed which hectare under what circumstances just does not play into that calculus at all.
I hope that restatement makes my position clearer. I think I have another point in the back of my mind about the impact of the Abraham Accords on that (unstable) equilibrium, but I'll leave it here for now.
Yassine: I know you said at the outset you're no expert and you just read up here-and-there on this conflict, but you did a REALLY amazing job here. Yes, details were left out, yes, certain people would characterize various events differently, but you really pressed on all the pressure points with a lot of clarity and wit and I loved reading your article.
Please, please, PLEASE write a book. I will buy copies for all my friends, I promise. If you won't do this, could you (or any other readers) point me to a book that takes the same balanced approach and hits as hard and as honestly as you do? I have a read a few books, but so far they're all very biased.
I'm flattered! Sadly for you I would not write a book on this topic as I would never be able to devote the years of work it would take, both to address the topic appropriately, and to quench what would be my heightened perfectionism. I wish I had something else to recommend and I know it's a low-brow opinion, but I don't think nonfiction books are the most efficient conduit of information. They're either way too short or way too long, and you'll always be siloed within one person's perspective.
Your post finally inspired us to start our own substack complaining about bad arguments & rhetoric about this issue (https://thosewhotremble.substack.com/p/gerrymandering-power). Thanks for giving us the final push to actually start something.
I'm beyond honored to have been the inspiration for such a insightful essay!
I think your conclusion is pretty reasonable, but the words used for it are overly broad. I find very little to sympathize with for Hamas, but plenty to for Palestinian civilians. Israel is definitely not behaving as ethically as they can be, there's quite an extensive history of human rights abuses on their Wikipedia page. One vague metaphor might be Israel as US and Hamas as Al Qaida. Sure it's justified to kill and destroy a terrorist organization, but not in also doing indiscriminate detentions, kidnapping, killing, and torture of civilians, as both the US and Israel are doing/did in their wars.
I'm not disagreeing with anything you said here. If my verbiage gave a different impression I'm open to suggestions on what to reword.
The phrasing "Ultimately, I find very little to sympathize with on the Palestinian cause" is probably what tripped me up. I mean, i see your point about their cause not being valid in terms of taking back the land, but their "cause" of being treated as valid indigenous people with human rights and freedom of movement is certainly valid.
Rewording it to "Ultimately, I find very little to sympathize with on the side of Palestinian aggression" probably makes it most clear, since it's the Palestinian aggression/military force that you're opposing.
Perfect feedback! I thought the context of the paragraph made it clear I was talking about aggression when I said "cause" but it doesn't hurt to clarify.
One big difference is that Al Qaeda weren't living in a Long Island terrorist-run quasi-state when the Twin Towers massacre happened. Hamastan Gaza was 2 miles from Israeli villages and towns, and magically Hamas is still at that distance, and will remain within rocket attack and death squad infiltration range until blown up inside their tunnels. For that reason the gap between the US on 9/11/2001 and Israel on 10/7/2023 is immense, and the comparison falls apart. It's much easier to go about your day after major terrorism when the organization carrying it out is on the other side of the globe.
I'm not even falling for your absurd attempt to claim Israel is "kidnapping civilians" because WTF are you talking about - it is Hamas that is still holding 239 civilians hostage, 30 of them children including a 10 month old, a 2 year old and 3 year old, without letting the ICRC check if any of them are alive and not being tortured.
I'm actually hoping this attracts some good counterarguments. The usual realms I inhabit have all been pretty strongly pro-Israeli, and the counterarguments I've seen have all been covered here (aside from some specific critiques of Netanyahu's policies and plans, but I'm already on board with "fuck that guy").
Wow. This was absolutely incredible. A tour de force. Thanks so much for putting the work into this and laying it out so clearly. I hope you follow-up with any credible challenges and further points that impact your thinking on the matter.
Thanks! I have a demonstrated track record of transparently divulging things I get wrong or instances where my mind is changed, so you betcha.
Ok I don’t like settlements in West Bank either. But if you drew a regression line to put in factors which lead to this conflict, the settlements would contribute very slightly to this ongoing conflict. It’s the perpetual grievance culture of Palestinians and their annihilationist philosophy. For them a settlement is Tel Aviv.
Just a little memory of what the PLO did. Look up the Achille Lauro incident in which they took an American Jewish man, Leon Klinghoffer who was on a cruise on the boat with his family, captured him and threw him off the boat in his wheelchair to die. Thd antisemitism is a feature. Not a bug.
The savagery is a feature. Not a bug.
As someone who believes anti-Jewish bigotry motivates a significant amount of the Palestinian cause, I'm going to object to drawing such conclusions from individual anecdotes. Otherwise consistency would require drawing countervailing conclusions about individual actions by Israelis.
This was the PLO. this was a planned action. Not an individual action.
Sure, and the IDF exonerated the commander who shot and killed Iman Darweesh Al Hams.
I think you missed my point. Terror acts are systemically part of Palestinian National movements for a long time. Plane hijackings. The 1972 Olympics. The Coastal Road Massacre. Ma’alot. The horrors of the second intifada. It’s systemic.
I agree! Which is why I think you undercut your point by drawing a broad (but correct) conclusion from a single (but horrible) instance.
Israel is numerically far more multicultural than any country in the middle east. If it's a supposed ethnostate, I'm not sure how to describe the Hamas governed territory of Gaza with a 99% Sunni Muslim population. Their ambition of ethnically cleansing the rest of what was British Mandate Palestine from the "river to the sea" by "any means" intends to create more of the same.
That's a valid critique of Arab countries in the region; they may not be an ethnostate explicitly but they are practically. And I fully acknowledged that Israel has demonstrated itself as much more tolerant of other ethnicities than its Arab neighbors, though it's also fair to wonder if cosmopolitan tolerance would survive if Israeli-Jews were to become a minority in their own country.
None of that refutes the fact that Israel was founded as and continues to be a Jewish ethnostate. It's not possible for a country to have a Law of Return for a specific ethnicity and *not* be an ethnostate, and I don't understand why people object to the term (except for the theory that it's uncomfortable to be reminded of something true but distasteful).
Sure, as long as we acknowledge that if that’s the test of ‘ethnostate’ then so are other countries that frothing at the mouth anti Zionists never mention.
For example Germany has its own Law of Return that naturalized millions of ethnic Germans (such as Volga Germans) expelled from the sphere of Influence of the Soviet Union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_return?wprov=sfti1#Germany
Israel is a haven for Jews expelled (for example Polish Jews 1967) driven out by pogroms (Iraqi Jews, Polish Jews 1946, too many to list otherwise), legal persecution (Algeria 1963, Libya 1961, 1970, too many to list otherwise). Israel’s Law of Return ensures that Jewish refugees don’t become stateless through the many such incidents across the 20th century. Considering the deep, vicious antisemitism of anti Zionists we see around the world today, the people who shout ‘ethnostate’ prove the necessity of an open door to Jewish refugees with their own violent hostility to Jews.
That's fine, I'm not allergic to the word. And I already acknowledged the basis of the Zionist movement to be sound.
This was by far the most brilliant, spot-on text I have read on this matter. Thank you so much for sharing it!
Bravo!