Israel to World: "Suck It."

Another way of saying this is: who will Israel blame from now on? Are they essentially hoping that hardline groups like Hamas will fill the spotlight, lending more justification to their activities? Is cutting off Arafat maybe a way of racheting up the conflict, giving them license to do, well, whatever they want?

And note that I hold a federal government more responsible for those qualities than I do small groups or individuals. An "understandable" militaristic proclivity is one thing psychologically, but quite another politically.

Nitsuh - my assumption would be that Israel no longer cares whether or not it looks good. Sharon has realised he's in a position to call the international community's bluff.

Yeah, hence my thread title. I guess I'm just the slightest bit shocked by this, whereas you've been, if not expecting it, mentally prepared for the eventuality. Shame on you, pragmatist!

A head-on comparison is better, but this is all I could find. Have these two ever been in the same room together?

So Palestinian terrorist organazations are free to kill Israelis but Arafat isn't responsible?

Precisely! It's ludicrous to imagine that Arafat has the clout to control the actions of every Palestinian, considering that he's not even democratically elected as their representative. To hold Arafat responsible for the actions of, say, Hamas -- an organization with is completely at odds with Arafat -- is like trying to hold Bill Clinton responsible for Timothy McVeigh's actions: it is, quite simply, stupid. To assume Arafat has the capacity to reign in dozens upon dozens of groups and thousands upon thousands of individuals is to take a ridiculously reductive view of politics which assumes that Arafat is some sort of Queen Bee whose orders are specifically followed by all Palestinians (which is ludicrous), and pays no attention whatsoever to the pretty precarious position he was, up until recently, in: trying to speak for an inchoate populace, trying to make concessions on their behalf without offending them them enough to lose the very power to make those concessions.

And I don't think my distinction above is a very radical one. The Israeli military is by definition at the command of the Israeli government, thus the government is fairly directly responsible for its actions. The Palestinian populace is certainly not beholded to Arafat in nearly the same fashion.

If Arafat cannot stop these bombings and killings, what is the point of dealing with him?

See my comments above: even if he's not in a position to completely control the entirety of Palestine, he's as close as Israel is going to get to someone who can, and his presence and stature is in and of itself entirely remarkable. To not deal with him is to be content with devolving into outright war -- and if your main concern is "these bombings and killing," that's not the best route to take, is it?

Or greater importance, I think, is Who Comes Next -- a diplomat whom the Israelis don't mind, or a hardliner? Given this, I'm guessing the hardliner.

Sharon is a dangerous capitive of the religious right; one of the aspects of the conflict which especially mystifies me is the lack of empathy between the Likud Right in Israel (most of whom were members of Irgun Levi in the decade before independence, and carried out similar atrocities against the British, eg. the bombing of the King David Hotel in '47) and the Palestinians who have suceeded them as 'terrorists'. Incidently, Israel also funded Hamas as a religious rival to the secular PLO in the 1980s.

at some point over the next year Israel will shut down the Palestinian authority and permanently reoccupy all of the West Bank and Gaza, killing thousands of Palestinians in the process. Arafat will die during this process, as will Barghouti. This may happen before or after elections that put Netanyahu back in power. They will then invite the neighbouring Arab countries to come and have a go if they think they're hard enough. Which they don't, so they won't.

However, the West Bank and Gaza are so awash with arms that resistance will continue. Given the assymetric nature of the conflict - tanks, helicopter gunships, nuclear weapons on one side, machine guns and suicide bombers on the other - resistance will largely take the form of terrorist strikes against soft Israeli targets - civilians inside Israel, pieds noir settlers in the Occupied Territories.

Continuing violence will lead to voices in Israel demanding more and more violent responses. With no Palestinian Authority to kick around the Israelis will engage in ever more draconian acts towards their subject peoples - land confiscations, home demolitions, 24 hour curfews, eventually leading to concentration camps and mass expulsions.

Can't wait.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/189

While the Shoah does not justify more evil, I think it's incredibly short-sighted to dismiss the issue of anti-semitism as a "card" - as if it's some kind of underhanded trick even to mention it. And to acknowledge it as a defining feature of Israeli policy does not mean that one condones those policies - nor can it be used to somehow outweigh Arab suffering. But how can you even discuss the issue without addressing the religious conflict and history ?

How is it that the Hamas doesn't represent the Paelstinian people except when Israel threatens to "roll over" them?

I haven't said that Hamas ever represents the Palestinian people. I just thought you might have noticed that every Isreali action in Palestine -- assassinations, town occupations, etc. -- winds up killing almost as many civilians as the average suicide bomb. It's not as if they stride in, arrest these people, and leave: they bulldoze through entire towns or rocket out entire intersections. Last week's assassination took out a toddler.

What boggles my mind is not Palestinian discontent, but your acceptance of it at the level of consitently and intentionally killing innocent civilians.

And I've never said that I "accept" those actions -- only that I grasp the motivation behind them. And yes, I'm not going to be quite as morally upset at a people living under military occupation in an apartheid system as I am at a recognized nation with a powerful military. Would the Palestinians -- and everyone else on Earth -- have been better off if they'd framed their struggle peacefully, as black South Africans more or less did? Undoubtedly. But isn't that near-saintly behavior to expect?

As for being helpful and reasonable, where doessuck it fall into that?

Here is where you're quite obviously not paying attention, because you're agreeing with me! (And I'm not trying to be rude -- I just don't understand the statement at all.) My whole point in starting this thread is that Israel's big "suck it" to diplomacy is neither helpful or reasonable, so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

Equating McVeigh with the Hamas is quite a stretch.

Again, I'm not "equating." Simply an example of how in no other situation do we hold a political figure responsible for the actions of every member of his constituency! (Doubly so with Arafat in that he's not a proper "leader" of the Palestinian populace, and triply so with Arafat in that most of the groups organizing such attacks are entirely opposed to Arafat and the PLO.) If the man had a state, and he were its leader, there'd be a little more grounds to criticize his police work.

Having the Hamas continue to kill people with no culpability was just unaceptable to the Israeli government.

I should think assassination without trial constitutes some culpability, doesn't it? And I feel like you're thinking Hamas is a tool of Arafat's, which simply isn't the case: the very reason Arafat can't reign in groups like Hamas is that they are his competitors!

I mean, Israel should talk about concessions while the Hamas is blowing up buses?

See, I think you have to stop viewing the situation by looking at terrorism first. Someone could just as easily say: Palestine should talk about concessions while Israel is blowing up buildings? Palestine should talk about concessions while Jewish-only settlements continue to exist? It's as if you're pretending that the sole problem to be solved is Palestinian terrorism, and everything Israel does is just a response to that -- but both history and the present are a lot trickier than that.

The thing is, I just can't morally justify the segregation and oppression of an entire populace simply because portions of it are violently hostile to you. It comes down one group depriving another of liberty simply to guarantee its own -- Israel segregating, restricting, and occupying the lands of Palestinians simply because they (legitimately) don't think they can feel safe if Palestinians have the rights of full citizens either in Israel or in a Palestinian state*. And I'm sorry -- this is untenable, and only feeds on itself, as the longer you deprive a group of liberty, the more hostile they'll grow toward you. I think that is my central problem here.

* And note that it was Israel who initially decided this with their mass expulsion of Palestinians who were, by and large, living peacefully within Israel proper -- and note that of all the attacks on Israel carried out during the past few years, only two, IIRC, have been conducted by Israeli Arabs. Both of these things hint that the liberty-for-safety trade was not only a bad one but an unnecessary, counter-productive one.

REMEMBER THE ALAMO!

I still think there's a difference between going after militants then going after people sitting in a cafe.

Sure, there's a difference. A huge one. But when "going after militants" repeatedly results in the death or dislocation of basically innocent bystanders -- as innocent as the folks in those cafes -- it becomes a little harder to justify, morally speaking. And I stick with my point, above, which is that it's really difficult to start applying general consequences to the actions of individual, non- representative groups, whereas it's a lot easier to do so for the regimented military of a sovereign nation. I.e., you can't say that one side attacks the other, or vice versa, because in the case of Palestine there is no "other" -- just a mass of individuals without a state, without a leader, etc.

My point about "suck it" was directed at your interpretation of what Israel cutting off Arafat means. I'm saying your choice of terminology reveals an obvious bias towards the situation.

In one sense yes, but in one sense, no: I was originally going to use "fuck it," but decided to try and keep the boards a little cleaner. Maybe I should have stuck with "fuck," because what's going through Sharon or his coalition's heads can't really be that far from throwing up their hands and saying, "Fuck it -- we give up on talking to you." That's quite clearly the message, and I think it can describes that way even if you believe Israel is entirely justified in doing this.

[W]hat Israel contends is that Arafat was never doing all he could.

Define "could." Seriously. Because this is what I'm getting at above. It's undeniable that Arafat physically and politically could have tried more. But my point is that he could have done so without gradually abandoning his own clout and losing support to groups like Hamas -- which would, in the long term, have been a lot worse of a situation if peace were the end goal. He essentially had to walk a very fine line between making progress with Israel and pissing off militants in Palestine -- and sure, it's open to debate whether he walked that line close enough, but I'm just saying we should keep in mind that he was never really in a position to utterly subdue the entire Palestinian populace.

I don't believe the South African analogy is particular fair because it fails to acknowledge how Israel has been forced to become a military state due to constant attacks on its existence by neighboring Arab states.

I can't claim to be an expert on this history, but I think you'll find that black Africans did their fair share of attacking in colonial South Africa. Apartheid didn't stem simply from racism, but partly from the same thinking that seems to be in operation in the mid-East -- that a particular group of people pose a danger of rebellion or violence and thus must be pre-emptively subdued. I mean, look at your statement above: Israel becomes militaristic because of attacks by neighboring Arab states. The only sense in which this justifies their attitude toward Palestine is that Palestinians are also Arabs, and are thus ideologically disposed to be hostile toward Israel. From there it just becomes a matter of "We will segregate and suppress Arabs as a whole," which, however logical it may be, doesn't strike me as morally tenable. It's not just "militants" who are having their lands seized or their roads blocked in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip -- it's the vast majority of Arabs within greater Israel, including many who were expelled from Israel proper and are not allowed to return, based not on their activities but on their potential activities. Would a better analogy be the US's internment of Japanese during WWII?

I think it is a large element in the Israeli mindset of trying to provide safety first. I think where we also disagree is in gauge of how much terrorism Israel is going to have to suck up, in order to get the peace process back on track.

"Safety first" may trump a lot of other concerns, but for me -- and this may be personal -- it doesn't trump basic human rights. The internment apparently struck people as a perfectly reasonable safety measure at the time, but I hope we'd all agree that even if some of those interned would have been more loyal to Japan than the US, the greater cost wasn't worth it. As far as sucking up, well, someone has to do some sucking up here, and thus far it's Palestinians who are sucking up being tenth-class citizens of the nation they ostensibly live in, plus progressive settlement. Put another way: given the choice to be an Israeli citizen or Palestinian, wouldn't you choose to be Israeli? And doesn't that hint that the threat of death by terrorism is significantly less onerous than the situation of the average Palestinian?

From the AP: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who negotiated interim peace deals with Arafat, said he told Sharon that the decision to shun the Palestinian Authority was short-sighted. "I asked him, 'Suppose Arafat disappears, what will happen then?'" Peres told the Yediot Ahronot daily in an interview published Friday. "If we chase Arafat out of here, we will get into problems with the Arab world, and Egypt and Jordan will sever ties with us."

The question, which is moral and not logistical: Israel undertakes massive sweep in the West Bank, arresting several, killing several Palestinian policemen in armed confrontation. What do we think, morally, about a sovereign nation arresting and imposing its own justice system on (leave alone assassinating) individuals who don't likewise enjoy the full rights of citizenry in that nation? I stress that this is not specific or logistical, but a general moral question.

If Arafat cannot offer any concessions, as in the Camp David talks, without pissing off the militants, then what does that say about the people of Palestine?

You're absolutely right -- it says a whole lot of them consider Israel's very presence to be an affront (and I think there's a reasonable case to be made in this regard), and it says that a whole lot of them are stuck enough on this point that they're not content to co-exist. Absolutely. The question is how this situation -- which isn't going to be changed simply by telling them they're wrong -- would best be handled. Having normalized relations with a figure like Arafat seems the best available way to steer things in a less oppositional direction; Arafat has as much clout in Palestine as any single figure could reasonably be expected to have, he's somewhat beholden to appease the requests of the West, and his line is soft enough that organizations like Hamas are outright opposed to him. I think what I'm saying is that if you're dealing with a populace that's largely hostile to you, the logical route to changing this is to deal with the least hostile figure that populace can deliver, right?

Also, I think Israel would contend that Arafat should be pissing off militants.

This is where I think you're ignoring the point I tried to make above. For Arafat to have pissed of militants would have meant weakening of his support, and quite possibly his assassination. This would leave us with practically nothing but the very militants you're talking about, not even a weak check on those militants -- plus they would be, as you say pissed off. Surely this was part of Arafat's thinking -- that he could do more good alive and in power than otherwise. You're saying that Arafat should have served as a tool to certain ends, but what if too strenuous use would only have broken the tool?

The quote you provide is yet another example of this: no Palestinian figure could accumulate any support or maintain any power without such posturing.

Pre-emptive? If I can't use the cause and effect argument then neither should you. I could just as easily state that Israel is there because of terrorism. There also seems to be an overlooking of the Six Day War.

Here's where I'm really bothered, because you're using a sort of Palestinian Queen Bee reasoning that's simply not applicable. A child born in Palestine today is born into a situation where his home is occupied and open to seizure, his movements are curtailed, etc. That child did not fight in the Six Day War. Thus any treatment of that child that is in any way different from that of an Israeli child is essentially pre-emptive suppression -- pre-emptive in that the suppression is contingent on the idea that this child may be hostile toward Israel. I'm not saying it's pre-emptive in the sense that "Israel started it" -- just that their military oversight of the Palestinian populace is not based on every single Palestinian having done something to warrant it. Hence the internment analogy: it's not that they've individually done something, just that the entire population is viewed as a threat and suppressed accordingly.

For what its worth, Arabs (or Muslims might be more fitting) are citizens in Israel. They receive the same rights, and can vote.

"They receive the same rights" is the most laughable thing I've ever heard in my life. To name one thing: Jewish-Only Settlements.

I think the first priority of a government is to protect its citizens.

C'mon -- certainly some moral boundary must be put on this. Citizens of the US would theoretically be much safer if we just killed everyone who was ever involved in a violent crime, but would you find this morally defensible? We'd theoretically be safer if we could just nuke the entire eastern hemisphere, but surely there's the quibbling little concern of destroying half of the world's population to think about.

Way, way one sided. Palestinians = victims. Israel = opressors. Come on, you know it isn't that simple.

I'm sorry, but at this point, it basically is. The only "oppression" Palestinians have been able to visit on Israel is the fear of possible terrorist attack, which is not so much "oppression" as just plain "threat." In turn, even the most peace-loving Palestinian lives under a similar threat of death-by-reprisal (see that toddler, above), plus a systematic removal of rights, which is precisely what "oppression" means.

Nah, more so because Israel has more of a Western lean i.e. its a capitalist Democracy.

I'm not sure how you reconcile this with your contention, above, that Palestinians are Israeli citizens who enjoy all the rights and privileges of any other Israeli citizens. "They vote," you say ... but here you say that Israelis enjoy democracy and Palestinians don't.

Still, you make it seem as if Israel does not want to recoginize Palestine as a state.

Well, define "want." They don't want to -- something like 56% of Israelis think it's either a good or a necessary or an unavoidable idea, but it still remains a concession that's being made. And, as I said above, I understand why. But it's the same as the suicide bombers -- I understand the motivation, I just don't think it's morally tenable.

Um.. correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this thread about the modern state of Israel? (kinda post 1945?)

Secondly, i never asked anyone to shut up about the holocaust. The link i posted above was for the discussion of a book called the Holocaust and Collective Memory by Peter Novick (published by Fourth Estate), in which he examines the history of the way the Holocaust has been cited by Israel and american Jewish organisations since 1945. it's interesting in the sense that it shows there's always been a contemporary political agenda to using the holocaust as a moral imperative - like you do - and that until the 1960s, the holocaust was played down, and manifestly NOT pushed as central to the "jewish character" / justification for Israeli military action.

I should have said all this when i originally posted, but I assumed people would follow the link I pasted in.

And also that questioning the logic of it as a moral imperative that justifies the military occupation of parts of the west bank is really just building a straw man and setting it alight, in a pointless and potentially offensive way.

What I'm saying applies more to the US industry of holocaust rememberance that -sadly- all seems ultimately to say "never again will we allow Jews to be massacred by Nazis in central europe in 1945" without looking at the mechanics of genocide elsewhere or the current problems of the middle east, but still generating tacit emotional support for Israel to act however it chooses. So sorry if what i said caused any offence.

The interesting thing about the Holocaust is that even if we do take it as central to the Jewish experience and character, and not just posturing or an attempt at justification, it's a rather unpretty argument, and a bit of another "suck it": the subtext is that Jews have historically been so threatened that they now have no qualms about steamrolling anyone who stands in their way. Certainly that's not an admirable thing?

Also -- and I tried to make this point when we did the "State of Israel: Classic or Dud" thread, I still don't understand how anyone justifies the necessity of a sovereign state of Israel. Without getting into the "what was worse than the Holocaust" argument, which is totally irrelevant, we can find countless other diasporas who have historically been massacred, enslaved, and scattered from their "homelands" in a similar fashion, but it tends to be agreed that we should strive to live pluralistically, not dislocate masses of people simple to return people to ethnically homogenous or ethnically restricted "homelands."

Out of curiousity, bnw, how do you feel about the violent seizure of white-owner farms in Zimbabwe?

Alex Fishman is the main commentator on security matters for Israel's largest mass circulation paper, Yediot Achronot, a publication with right-of-center politics. Fishman is known for his excellent contacts in the military. On Sunday, Nov. 25, Fishman issued a prediction based on the recent assassination on Nov. 23 by Israel's security services of the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud. It was featured in a box on the newspaper's front page.

It began, "We again find ourselves preparing with dread for a new mass terrorist attack within the Green Line (Israel's pre-'67 border)." Since Fishman was entirely accurate in this regard, we should mark closely what he wrote next. "Whoever gave a green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he is thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman's agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line, of the kind perpetrated at the Dolphinarium (discotheque in Tel-Aviv)."

Fishman stated flatly that such an agreement did exist, even if neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas would admit it in public. "It is a fact," he continued, "that, while the security services did accumulate repeated warnings of planned Hamas terrorist attacks within the Green Line, these did not materialize. That cannot be attributed solely to the Shabak's impressive success in intercepting the suicide bombers and their controllers. Rather, the respective leaderships of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas came to the understanding that it would be better not to play into Israel's hands by mass attacks on its population centers."

In other words, Arafat had managed to convince Hamas to curb its suicide bombers. This understanding was shattered by the assassination of Abu Hunud. "Whoever decided upon the liquidation of Abu Hunud," Fishman continued, "knew in advance that that would be the price. The subject was extensively discussed both by Israel's military echelon and its political one, before it was decided to carry out the liquidation. Now, the security bodies assume that Hamas will embark on a concerted effort to carry out suicide bombings, and preparations are made accordingly."

Why, yes, of course. We all know if you can find racism in other countries, it excuses it in your own.

well wait he said it was an ethnostate though

is that different from ordinary racism?

Late Great is otm. Remember, the Swedish ambassador to the UN killed Oluf Palme.

tbf our conservative pols in government in the uk are a bit more circumspect in their being racist and evil. no fomenting racial pogroms, more deporting british residents because they're black

Late Great is otm. Remember, the Swedish ambassador to the UN killed Oluf Palme.

― Frederik B, Monday, June 24, 2019 12:44 PM (twenty seconds ago) Bookmark

eh?

When you specifically call yourself "a Jewish homeland", then you may as well accept that people might identify you as an ethnostate.

lost me w the scandinavian politics inside baseball

oh that’s a different argument to the riots thing though

unclear how it relates to danon’s argument though?

but jewish isn’t an ethnicity?

i am curious about what is so bad and wrong about danon’s op ed in particular? leaving aside the question of whether israel is literally worse than nazi germany or whatever

fuck me

whatever man here’s your chance to speak truth to power as it were

You have got to be kidding me

jewish isn’t an ethnicity?

there seems to be a lot of confusion around that question, even among jews

don’t forget, i am a literal white supremacist

it’s natural i wouldn’t understand these subtleties

just someone explain it to me already, i swear i’ll restrict myself to just asking faux-naif questions

Saying the Palestinians need to 'surrender' and that they need a 'national suicide of the Palestinians’ current political and cultural ethos' is not something someone says who is willing to actually compromise. It's the words of, well, imperialists. The comparisons he makes are 1) to Germany and Japan after WWII, which are obviously offensive and idiotic, and 2) to Egypt, which is not an example to emulate.

hm. ok, i can’t see how you’d draw those conclusions. why is egypt not an example to emulate?

"A national suicide", that's quite a turn of phrase. But it's coming from a racist, so maybe we're expecting too much.

well y’all were pretty hot on the palestinians committing literal suicide by charging the gaza fence, what changed?

Who is y'all?

like he’s just using their own language anyway

the fence killed the Palestinians?

forget it

no, then it would have been murder by fence, not suicide

come on guys, he’s not calling for literal suicide

Oh man, not wasting any more time on you, you're like the anti-palestinian version of comrade alphabet.

i’m pro palestinian though

don’t waste time thinking through or articulating your positions and statements, to the barricades instead! lol

Is this the first time you've encountered Frederik B?

i think it would be quite good for the palestinians to take some of the steps suggested in the op-ed

but i’ll concede it’s a provocative and possibly ill-advised choice of words on danon’s part

c'mon, late great, "literal suicide" requires that one's death be entirely self-administered

hmmm ... true

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jVLEq6vmnI

*must not post Limmy sketch*

Israeli justice system to Netanyahu: "Suck it."

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/netanyahu-charged-bribery-fraud-corruption-israel-election-1.8137771

nice

Netanyahu, who has denied any wrongdoing and said he’s a victim of a witch hunt

lol

eat shit fucker

Doesn't a witch hunt by definition mean you are accusing lots of different people, not "wrongfully" targeting a single person? I know Trump brought this usage to popularity but I have to think Netanyahu is smarter than that.

Also a witch hunt by defintion means searching for something that doesn't exist.

https://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/1342cbCOMIC-trump-in-the-crucible.jpg

Also a witch hunt by defintion means searching for something that doesn't exist.

― fetter, Thursday, November 21, 2019 3:28 PM (fifty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well yeah that obviously. But also the idea is that a witch hunt STARTS OUT with the goal of finding bad guys before you even know that there are any or who you're going to accuse (think McCarthyism). I guess I'm being pedantic, but even falsely accusing a specific person is not necessarily a "witch hunt."

While the world is distracted, Israel tears down a whole Palestinian village, giving people 10 minutes to leave. https://t.co/YO3qMlT5MK

— Chris (@0wnowzz) November 5, 2020

Knesset dissolving AGAIN, new elections in March. Israeli politics is so fucked up right now. Netanyahu is living Trump's dream, using an entire national government as an adjunct to his schemes to avoid prosecution for dime-store corruption.

a psephologists dream mind you

Likud splitting could produce a right-wing coalition govt without Netanyahu. I'd like to see ol Bibi wriggle his way out of THIS jam!

40+ dead in syria, israeli air strike while the world is looking at
something else. typical.