'Hunter Gray' hunterbadbear@hunterbear.org [marxist]
2014-07-30 11:54:00 UTC
----- Original Message -----
From: David McReynolds
To: MrDavidmcreynolds .
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2014 11:31 PM
Subject: Sensible and depressing
This goes to my Edge Left list along with the sober report from Stratfor, sent me by a friend in Canada (with whom I rarely agree on things involving Israel).
David
Donald, this is a very carefully reasoned and depressing piece. It is much worth reading, though in sending it on (and I'm never sure if anyone reads what I send to the SP list but it is also going to the Middle East list) I'd make some observations.
I agree the two state solution is very unlikely. I do not see Israel really granting any Palestinian State the right to control its air space and sea ports, much less permit such a state to develop its own military. The option of a disarmed Israel and Palestine seems impossible at the moment and as I've suggested in other writing, this demands a Gandhi or a Mandela (on either side!). The grand figures of the Israeli past - Ben Gurion - came from a time when weak as Israel might seem, the Arab world was weaker. And at that time Israel had the good will of the world, which it has now pretty much lost. (The current Israeli attacks on John Kerry and Obama are politically very stupid - they may make score political points in Israel but they are resented here and are being discussed in "hostile terms" on what had otherwise been a tame media). And, in fairness, both sides rejected the two state solution the UN proposed in 1947.
But the Arab League has proposed settlements that would involve recognizing Israel, the 1967 borders, East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, etc. and Israel didn't even bother to take them up to see if they might be serious. (And that offer is still on the table).
One reality which is hard to avoid is the deep hatred the Palestinians have of Israel - I fear with very good reason (Gaza being the current example). And on the Israeli side there is a serious problem of racism running through the governing coalition - a willingness to settle for an apartheid and racist Israel.
Whatever one thinks of the founding of Israel (and looking back I now think that the Zionist solution was historically wrong but it is too late to fix that), the Israel we knew as college kids in the late forties and early fifties was a vastly different Israel from the one over which Netanyahu presides.
It doesn't help, but idealists should not let that stop us - the links between NGO-type groups is now more important than ever, the human links between Palestinians and Israelis NOT CONTROLLED BY SOME FACTION ON EITHER SIDE are desperately important. Such links might be found among some of the liberal Zionists who have realized things have reached a dead end. They certainly can be found among some of those getting this, who are already doing this, and are seen as so marginal to Israeli politics they are ignored. Uri Avnery is even older than me (and a lot gutsier) but I think there are young Israelis who can use him as a model and who can reach out to Palestinians. And there are Palestinians who do not want a future based on hatred, terror, and violence.
The most important fact in the Stratfor Report is that Israel will never be stronger than it is now. Time is not on Israel's side. It was true during the Cold War that the US kept saying it could not negotiate from weakness, but then, of course, when it was clearly stronger, no one on the US side felt a need to negotiate. It was Gorbachev, not Reagan, who broke the log jam.
The politics of the Arab world are profoundly tragic but
I reject the concept that the madness of ISIS is the inevitable future of Islam in the Middle East.
Human beings are not automatons. It is true, as Marx observed, that we don't make history as we might like, but in the context that we find ourselves "with the dead weight of the past" upon us (I should find the precise quote - it is so appropriate). The point is, we do make history. Both Israelis and Palestinians should reject the deep "realism" of the Stratfor report.
It is in this context that I continue to push the single demand that the US needs to cut its aid - military and economic - to Israel and "normalize" its relations. That shock might be the "fact on the ground" which would open up Israeli politics. And it might win the US some trust among the Palestinians.
I'll close by saying that I'm going to send all of this also to my own "Edge Left" list because it affects much more than the Middle East and because the current Israeli policy is such folly. The next time the rockets from Gaza (or the West Bank) will be better aimed, carry bigger payloads. Friends of Israel need, as much as friends of the Palestinians, to see the future and realize it is not yet inevitable.
David
On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 10:17 PM, Donald Todd <***@hotmail.com> wrote:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alas, this is the most sensible thing I have read on Israel/Palestine in a long time.
Subject: Sensible and depressing
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 16:56:30 -0700
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/gaming-israel-and-palestine#axzz38r5V2UJx
From: David McReynolds
To: MrDavidmcreynolds .
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2014 11:31 PM
Subject: Sensible and depressing
This goes to my Edge Left list along with the sober report from Stratfor, sent me by a friend in Canada (with whom I rarely agree on things involving Israel).
David
Donald, this is a very carefully reasoned and depressing piece. It is much worth reading, though in sending it on (and I'm never sure if anyone reads what I send to the SP list but it is also going to the Middle East list) I'd make some observations.
I agree the two state solution is very unlikely. I do not see Israel really granting any Palestinian State the right to control its air space and sea ports, much less permit such a state to develop its own military. The option of a disarmed Israel and Palestine seems impossible at the moment and as I've suggested in other writing, this demands a Gandhi or a Mandela (on either side!). The grand figures of the Israeli past - Ben Gurion - came from a time when weak as Israel might seem, the Arab world was weaker. And at that time Israel had the good will of the world, which it has now pretty much lost. (The current Israeli attacks on John Kerry and Obama are politically very stupid - they may make score political points in Israel but they are resented here and are being discussed in "hostile terms" on what had otherwise been a tame media). And, in fairness, both sides rejected the two state solution the UN proposed in 1947.
But the Arab League has proposed settlements that would involve recognizing Israel, the 1967 borders, East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, etc. and Israel didn't even bother to take them up to see if they might be serious. (And that offer is still on the table).
One reality which is hard to avoid is the deep hatred the Palestinians have of Israel - I fear with very good reason (Gaza being the current example). And on the Israeli side there is a serious problem of racism running through the governing coalition - a willingness to settle for an apartheid and racist Israel.
Whatever one thinks of the founding of Israel (and looking back I now think that the Zionist solution was historically wrong but it is too late to fix that), the Israel we knew as college kids in the late forties and early fifties was a vastly different Israel from the one over which Netanyahu presides.
It doesn't help, but idealists should not let that stop us - the links between NGO-type groups is now more important than ever, the human links between Palestinians and Israelis NOT CONTROLLED BY SOME FACTION ON EITHER SIDE are desperately important. Such links might be found among some of the liberal Zionists who have realized things have reached a dead end. They certainly can be found among some of those getting this, who are already doing this, and are seen as so marginal to Israeli politics they are ignored. Uri Avnery is even older than me (and a lot gutsier) but I think there are young Israelis who can use him as a model and who can reach out to Palestinians. And there are Palestinians who do not want a future based on hatred, terror, and violence.
The most important fact in the Stratfor Report is that Israel will never be stronger than it is now. Time is not on Israel's side. It was true during the Cold War that the US kept saying it could not negotiate from weakness, but then, of course, when it was clearly stronger, no one on the US side felt a need to negotiate. It was Gorbachev, not Reagan, who broke the log jam.
The politics of the Arab world are profoundly tragic but
I reject the concept that the madness of ISIS is the inevitable future of Islam in the Middle East.
Human beings are not automatons. It is true, as Marx observed, that we don't make history as we might like, but in the context that we find ourselves "with the dead weight of the past" upon us (I should find the precise quote - it is so appropriate). The point is, we do make history. Both Israelis and Palestinians should reject the deep "realism" of the Stratfor report.
It is in this context that I continue to push the single demand that the US needs to cut its aid - military and economic - to Israel and "normalize" its relations. That shock might be the "fact on the ground" which would open up Israeli politics. And it might win the US some trust among the Palestinians.
I'll close by saying that I'm going to send all of this also to my own "Edge Left" list because it affects much more than the Middle East and because the current Israeli policy is such folly. The next time the rockets from Gaza (or the West Bank) will be better aimed, carry bigger payloads. Friends of Israel need, as much as friends of the Palestinians, to see the future and realize it is not yet inevitable.
David
On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 10:17 PM, Donald Todd <***@hotmail.com> wrote:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alas, this is the most sensible thing I have read on Israel/Palestine in a long time.
Subject: Sensible and depressing
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 16:56:30 -0700
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/gaming-israel-and-palestine#axzz38r5V2UJx