Time to rethink Israel
Disclaimer. All essays published on this web page are solely the opinions of their authors.
Yes, there is only one country in the Middle East with anything approaching a democracy.
Yes, Hamas and Hezbollah have nothing whatever to do with the territorial aspirations of the Palestinian people.
Yes, the long-term human tragedy in Gaza is at least as much due to the cynicism of Arab states, who for 75 years have preferred to keep 2 million people locked up in a prison camp rather than allowing them to move on.
Yes, Israel was the victim of a brutal terrorist attack on October 7.
Yes, Hamas undoubtedly co-locates its facilities in civilian areas and uses innocent civilians as human shields.
None of those facts does a thing to justify either killing thousands of Gazans or widespread Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
It’s time for the United States to rethink its knee-jerk support for Israel. Or at least Israel as long as the Netanyahu government remains in place.
Actually, it’s long past time.
To be eligible for “we’ve got your back, no matter what” status, it’s been understood since 1948 that Israel would be a nonpartisan cause. And since at least the mid-80s, its been understood that Israel must adhere to the “two state solution” and support an independent Palestinian state.
The Netanyahu government knows the ground rules and has shown contempt for both. The Israeli people know the ground rules and have continued to return this corrupt and incompetent man to office.
Netanyahu abandoned any pretense of non-partisanship when he openly decided to align with the conservative right of the Republican Party and campaigned against Obama’s re-election.
Worse, he’s made his contempt for a two-state solution evident – and has worked hard to make it all but impossible to achieve that solution. Let’s say it plainly: Israel without a two-state solution (Greater Israel) is South Africa, c. 1970, without the Dutch accents. An international pariah.
It’s simple demographics, no policy at all. If Israel incorporates what their hard liners call “Judea and Samaria,” and what the rest of the world calls “The West Bank,” there are only two possibilities. One is that Jews become a minority in their own country and “the Jewish State” no longer exists; the other is permanent occupation of several million people. As I said, South Africa, 1970.
But their conduct of the current war is the worst. They have no plan to win the war and they have no plan for what happens if they do win. Their idea that they can “destroy Hamas” is delusional; nobody has ever been able to destroy an ideology with military means. “Kill the last one” isn’t a strategy, it’s a recipe for permanent war.
Yes, the Israel-Palestine conflict has deep roots and the leadership of the Palestinians has been corrupt and incompetent. But as long as both sides’ strategy is “hit back in the same place, but harder,” there will never be peace.
The US has tried to sand off the rough edges of Israel’s war – calling for more surgical methods, calling for passage of humanitarian aid into Gaza, calling for temporary ceasefires to facilitate hostage exchanges. None of those are good enough. When asked about the massive apparent Israeli intelligence failure, Secretary Blinken gave an answer that perfectly encapsulates what’s wrong with the U.S. response: He acknowledged there would be time for an accounting, but said, “Right now, our priority is to make sure they can do everything possible to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” That is the furthest thing from what Israel is doing now.
Israel’s campaign is based on two huge moral and logical fallacies. First, the self-righteous claim, repeated endlessly by Netanyahu government spokespeople ands apologists, that because Hamas did something unspeakably evil (which thy did) that any retaliation is justified. No. It isn’t. Second, the ludicrous notion, disproven by every major military power fighting a semi-organized insurgency since Britain in our Revolution, that military force can solve insurgencies.
There IS a possible route to a solution. There used to be another apparently intractable ethnic conflict that “went back centuries.” Protestants and Catholics had been killing each other in Northern Ireland for decades, perhaps centuries. And one day, both sides decided, we don’t need to like them, we’re just tired of burying our sons. South Africa less successfully but still to an extent took the “truth and reconciliation” path to peace; Rwanda did something somewhat similar. Nobody was 100% happy with these processes, but the killing stopped and life moved on. Does anyone think Benjamin Netanyahu is the man to lead this territory into that process?