Open Letter to Anti-Zionists on Twitter
Dear Twitter Anti-Zionists,
For five months, ever since Oct. 7, I’ve read you obsessively. While my current job is supposed to involve protecting humanity from the dangers of AI (with a side of quantum computing theory), I’m ashamed to say that half the days I don’t do any science; instead I just scroll and scroll, reading anti-Israel content and then pro-Israel content and then more anti-Israel content. I thought refusing to post on Twitter would save me from wasting my life there as so many others have, but apparently it doesn’t, not anymore. (No, I won’t call it “X.”)
At the high end of the spectrum, I religiously check the tweets of Paul Graham, a personal hero and inspiration to me ever since he wrote Why Nerds Are Unpopular twenty years ago, and a man with whom I seem to resonate deeply on every important topic except for two: Zionism and functional programming. At the low end, I’ve read hundreds of the seemingly infinite army of Tweeters who post images of hook-nosed rats with black hats and sidecurls and dollar signs in their eyes, sneering as they strangle the earth and stab Palestinian babies. I study their detailed theories about why the October 7 pogrom never happened, and also it was secretly masterminded by Israel just to create an excuse to mass-murder Palestinians, and also it was justified and thrilling (exactly the same melange long ago embraced for the Holocaust).
I’m aware, of course, that the bottom-feeders make life too easy for me, and that a single Paul Graham who endorses the anti-Zionist cause ought to bother me more than a billion sharers of hook-nosed rat memes. And he does. That’s why, in this letter, I’ll try to stay at the higher levels of Graham’s Disagreement Hierarchy.
More to the point, though, why have I spent so much time on such a depressing, unproductive reading project?
Damned if I know. But it’s less surprising when you recall that, outside theoretical computer science, I’m (alas) mostly known to the world for having once confessed, in a discussion deep in the comment section of this blog, that I spent much of my youth obsessively studying radical feminist literature. I explained that I did that because my wish, for a decade, was to confront progressivism’s highest moral authorities on sex and relationships, and make them tell me either that
(1) I, personally, deserved to die celibate and unloved, as a gross white male semi-autistic STEM nerd and stunted emotional and aesthetic cripple, or else
(2) no, I was a decent human being who didn’t deserve that.
One way or the other, I sought a truthful answer, one that emerged organically from the reigning morality of our time and that wasn’t just an unprincipled exception to it. And I felt ready to pursue progressive journalists and activists and bloggers and humanities professors to the ends of the earth before I’d let them leave this one question hanging menacingly over everything they’d ever written, with (I thought) my only shot at happiness in life hinging on their answer to it.
You might call this my central character flaw: this need for clarity from others about the moral foundations of my own existence. I’m self-aware enough to know that it is a severe flaw, but alas, that doesn’t mean that I ever figured out how to fix it.
It’s been exactly the same way with the anti-Zionists since October 7. Every day I read them, searching for one thing and one thing only: their own answer to the “Jewish Question.” How would they ensure that the significant fraction of the world that yearns to murder all Jews doesn’t get its wish in the 21st century, as to a staggering extent it did in the 20th? I confess to caring about that question, partly (of course) because of the accident of having been born a Jew, and having an Israeli wife and family in Israel and so forth, but also because, even if I’d happened to be a Gentile, the continued survival of the world’s Jews would still seem remarkably bound up with science, Enlightenment, minority rights, liberal democracy, meritocracy, and everything else I’ve ever cared about.
I understand the charges against me. Namely: that if I don’t call for Israel to lay down its arms right now in its war against Hamas (and ideally: to dissolve itself entirely), then I’m a genocidal monster on the wrong side of history. That I value Jewish lives more than Palestinian lives. That I’m a hasbara apologist for the IDF’s mass-murder and apartheid and stealing of land. That if images of children in Gaza with their limbs blown off, or dead in their parents arms, or clawing for bread, don’t cause to admit that Israel is evil, then I’m just as evil as the Israelis are.
Unsurprisingly I contest the charges. As a father of two, I can no longer see any images of child suffering without thinking about my own kids. For all my supposed psychological abnormality, the part of me that’s horrified by such images seems to be in working order. If you want to change my mind, rather than showing me more such images, you’ll need to target the cognitive part of me: the part that asks why so many children are suffering, and what causal levers we’d need to push to reach a place where neither side’s children ever have to suffer like this ever again.
At risk of stating the obvious: my first-order model is that Hamas, with the diabolical brilliance of a Marvel villain, successfully contrived a situation where Israel could prevent the further massacring of its own population only by fighting a gruesome urban war, of a kind that always, anywhere in the world, kills tens of thousands of civilians. Hamas, of course, was helped in this plan by an ideology that considers martyrdom the highest possible calling for the innocents who it rules ruthlessly and hides underneath. But Hamas also understood that the images of civilian carnage would (rightly!) shock the consciences of Israel’s Western allies and many Israelis themselves, thereby forcing a ceasefire before the war was over, thereby giving Hamas the opportunity to regroup and, with God’s and of course Iran’s help, finally finish the job of killing all Jews another day.
And this is key: once you remember why Hamas launched this war and what its long-term goals are, every detail of Twitter’s case against Israel has to be reexamined in a new light. Take starvation, for example. Clearly the only explanation for why Israelis would let Gazan children starve is the malice in their hearts? Well, until you think through the logistical challenges of feeding 2.3 million starving people whose sole governing authority is interested only in painting the streets red with Jewish blood. Should we let that authority commandeer the flour and water for its fighters, while innocents continue to starve? No? Then how about UNRWA? Alas, we learned that UNRWA, packed with employees who cheered the Oct. 7 massacre in their Telegram channels and in some cases took part in the murders themselves, capitulates to Hamas so quickly that it effectively is Hamas. So then Israel should distribute the food itself! But as we’ve dramatically witnessed, Israel can’t distribute food without imposing order, which would seem to mean reoccupying Gaza and earning the world’s condemnation for it. Do you start to appreciate the difficulty of the problem—and why the Biden administration was pushed to absurd-sounding extremes like air-dropping food and then building a floating port?
It all seems so much easier, once you remove the constraint of not empowering Hamas in its openly-announced goal of completing the Holocaust. And hence, removing that constraint is precisely what the global left does.
For all that, by Israeli standards I’m firmly in the anti-Netanyahu, left-wing peace camp—exactly where I’ve been since the 1990s, as a teenager mourning the murder of Rabin. And I hope even the anti-Israel side might agree with me that, if all the suffering since Oct. 7 has created a tiny opening for peace, then walking through that opening depends on two things happening:
- the removal of Netanyahu, and
- the removal of Hamas.
The good news is that Netanyahu, the catastrophically failed “Protector of Israel,” not only can, but plausibly will (if enough government ministers show some backbone), soon be removed in a democratic election.
Hamas, by contrast, hasn’t allowed a single election since it took power in 2006, in a process notable for its opponents being thrown from the roofs of tall buildings. That’s why even my left-leaning Israeli colleagues—the ones who despise Netanyahu, who marched against him last year—support Israel’s current war. They support it because, even if the Israeli PM were Fred Rogers, how can you ever get to peace without removing Hamas, and how can you remove Hamas except by war, any more than you could cut a deal with Nazi Germany?
I want to see the IDF do more to protect Gazan civilians—despite my bitter awareness of survey data suggesting that many of those civilians would murder my children in front of me if they ever got a chance. Maybe I’d be the same way if I’d been marinated since birth in an ideology of Jew-killing, and blocked from other sources of information. I’m heartened by the fact that despite this, indeed despite the risk to their lives for speaking out, a full 15% of Gazans openly disapprove of the Oct. 7 massacre. I want a solution where that 15% becomes 95% with the passing of generations. My endgame is peaceful coexistence.
But to the anti-Zionists I say: I don’t even mind you calling me a baby-eating monster, provided you honestly field one question. Namely:
Suppose the Palestinian side got everything you wanted for it; then what would be your plan for the survival of Israel’s Jews?
Let’s assume that not only has Netanyahu lost the next election in a landslide, but is justly spending the rest of his life in Israeli prison. Waving my wand, I’ve made you Prime Minister in his stead, with an overwhelming majority in the Knesset. You now get to go down in history as the liberator of Palestine. But you’re now also in charge of protecting Israel’s 7 million Jews (and 2 million other residents) from near-immediate slaughter at the hands of those who you’ve liberated.
Granted, it seems pretty paranoid to expect such a slaughter! Or rather: it would seem paranoid, if the Palestinians’ Grand Mufti (progenitor of the Muslim Brotherhood and hence Hamas) hadn’t allied himself with Hitler in WWII, enthusiastically supported the Nazi Final Solution, and tried to export it to Palestine; if in 1947 the Palestinians hadn’t rejected the UN’s two-state solution (the one Israel agreed to) and instead launched another war to exterminate the Jews (a war they lost); if they hadn’t joined the quest to exterminate the Jews a third time in 1967; etc., or if all this hadn’t happened back before there were any settlements or occupation, when the only question on the table was Israel’s existence. It would seem paranoid if Arafat had chosen a two-state solution when Israel offered it to him at Camp David, rather than suicide bombings. It would seem paranoid if not for the candies passed out in the streets in celebration on October 7.
But if someone has a whole ideology, which they teach their children and from which they’ve never really wavered for a century, about how murdering you is a religious honor, and also they’ve actually tried to murder you at every opportunity—-what more do you want them to do, before you’ll believe them?
So, you tell me your plan for how to protect Israel’s 7 million Jews from extermination at the hands of neighbors who have their extermination—my family’s extermination—as their central political goal, and who had that as their goal long before there was any occupation of the West Bank or Gaza. Tell me how to do it while protecting Palestinian innocents. And tell me your fallback plan if your first plan turns out not to work.
We can go through the main options.
(1) UNILATERAL TWO-STATE SOLUTION
Maybe your plan is that Israel should unilaterally dismantle West Bank settlements, recognize a Palestinian state, and retreat to the 1967 borders.
This is an honorable plan. It was my preferred plan—until the horror of October 7, and then the even greater horror of the worldwide left reacting to that horror by sharing celebratory images of paragliders, and by tearing down posters of kidnapped Jewish children.
Today, you might say October 7 has sort of put a giant flaming-red exclamation point on what’s always been the central risk of unilateral withdrawal. Namely: what happens if, afterward, rather than building a peaceful state on their side of the border, the Palestinian leadership chooses instead to launch a new Iran-backed war on Israel—one that, given the West Bank’s proximity to Israel’s main population centers, makes October 7 look like a pillow fight?
If that happens, will you admit that the hated Zionists were right and you were wrong all along, that this was never about settlements but always, only about Israel’s existence? Will you then agree that Israel has a moral prerogative to invade the West Bank, to occupy and pacify it as the Allies did Germany and Japan after World War II? Can I get this in writing from you, right now? Or, following the future (October 7)2 launched from a Judenfrei West Bank, will your creativity once again set to work constructing a reason to blame Israel for its own invasion—because you never actually wanted a two-state solution at all, but only Israel’s dismantlement?
(2) NEGOTIATED TWO-STATE SOLUTION
So, what about a two-state solution negotiated between the parties? Israel would uproot all West Bank settlements that prevent a Palestinian state, and resettle half a million Jews in pre-1967 Israel—in exchange for the Palestinians renouncing their goal of ending Israel’s existence, via a “right of return” or any other euphemism.
If so: congratulations, your “anti-Zionism” now seems barely distinguishable from my “Zionism”! If they made me the Prime Minister of Israel, and put you in charge of the Palestinians, I feel optimistic that you and I could reach a deal in an hour and then go out for hummus and babaganoush.
(3) SECULAR BINATIONAL STATE
In my experience, in the rare cases they deign to address the question directly, most anti-Zionists advocate a “secular, binational state” between the Jordan and Mediterranean, with equal rights for all inhabitants. Certainly, that would make sense if you believe that Israel is an apartheid state just like South Africa.
To me, though, this analogy falls apart on a single question: who’s the Palestinian Nelson Mandela? Who’s the Palestinian leader who’s ever said to the Jews, “end your Jewish state so that we can live together in peace,” rather than “end your Jewish state so that we can end your existence”? To impose a binational state would be to impose something, not only that Israelis regard as an existential horror, but that most Palestinians have never wanted either.
But, suppose we do it anyway. We place 7 million Jews, almost half the Jews who remain on Earth, into a binational state where perhaps a third of their fellow citizens hold the theological belief that all Jews should be exterminated, and that a heavenly reward follows martyrdom in blowing up Jews. The exterminationists don’t quite have a majority, but they’re the second-largest voting bloc. Do you predict that the exterminationists will give up their genocidal ambition because of new political circumstances that finally put their ambition within reach? If October-7 style pogroms against Jews turn out to be a regular occurrence in our secular binational state, how will its government respond—like the Palestinian Authority? like UNRWA? like the British Mandate? like Tsarist Russia?
In such a case, perhaps the Jews (along with those Arabs and Bedouins and Druze and others who cast their lot with the Jews) would need form a country-within-a-country: their own little autonomous zone within the binational state, with its own defense force. But of course, such a country-within-a-country already formed, for pretty much this exact reason. It’s called Israel. A cycle has been detected in your arc of progress.
(4) EVACUATION OF THE JEWS FROM ISRAEL
We come now to the anti-Zionists who are plainspoken enough to say: Israel’s creation was a grave mistake, and that mistake must now be reversed.
This is a natural option for anyone who sees Israel as an “illegitimate settler-colonial project,” like British India or French Algeria, but who isn’t quite ready to call for another Jewish genocide.
Again, the analogy runs into obvious problems: Israelis would seem to be the first “settler-colonialists” in the history of the world who not only were indigenous to the land they colonized, as much as anyone was, but who weren’t colonizing on behalf of any mother country, and who have no obvious such country to which they can return.
Some say spitefully: then let the Jews go back to Poland. These people might be unaware that, precisely because of how thorough the Holocaust was, more Israeli Jews trace their ancestry to Muslim countries than to Europe. Is there to be a “right of return” to Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, and Yemen, for all the Jews forcibly expelled from those places and for their children and grandchildren?
Others, however, talk about evacuating the Jews from Israel with goodness in their hearts. They say: we’d love the Israelis’ economic dynamism here in Austin or Sydney or Oxfordshire, joining their many coreligionists who already call these places home. What’s more, they’ll be safer here—who wants to live with missiles raining down on their neighborhood? Maybe we could even set aside some acres in Montana for a new Jewish homeland.
Again, if this is your survival plan, I’m a billion times happier to discuss it openly than to have it as unstated subtext!
Except, maybe you could say a little more about the logistics. Who will finance the move? How confident are you that the target country will accept millions of defeated, desperate Jews, as no country on earth was the last time this question arose?
I realize it’s no longer the 1930s, and Israel now has friends, most famously in America. But—what’s a good analogy here? I’ve met various Silicon Valley gazillionaires. I expect that I could raise millions from them, right now, if I got them excited about a new project in quantum computing or AI or whatever. But I doubt I could raise a penny from them if I came to them begging for their pity or their charity.
Likewise: for all the anti-Zionists’ loudness, a solid majority of Americans continue to support Israel (which, incidentally, provides a much simpler explanation than the hook-nosed perfidy of AIPAC for why Congress and the President mostly support it). But it seems to me that Americans support Israel in the “exciting project” sense, rather than in the “charity” sense. They like that Israelis are plucky underdogs who made the deserts bloom, and built a thriving tech industry, and now produce hit shows like Shtisel and Fauda, and take the fight against a common foe to the latter’s doorstep, and maintain one of the birthplaces of Western civilization for tourists and Christian pilgrims, and restarted the riveting drama of the Bible after a 2000-year hiatus, which some believe is a crucial prerequisite to the Second Coming.
What’s important, for present purposes, is not whether you agree with any of these rationales, but simply that none of them translate into a reason to accept millions of Jewish refugees.
But if you think dismantling Israel and relocating its seven million Jews is a workable plan—OK then, are you doing anything to make that more than a thought experiment, as the Zionists did a century ago with their survival plan? Have even I done more to implement your plan than you have, by causing one Israeli (my wife) to move to the US?
Suppose you say it’s not your job to give me a survival plan for Israel’s Jews. Suppose you say the request is offensive, an attempt to distract from the suffering of the Palestinians, so you change the subject.
In that case, fine, but you can now take off your cloak of righteousness, your pretense of standing above me and judging me from the end of history. Your refusal to answer the question amounts to a confession that, for you, the goal of “a free Palestine from the river to the sea” doesn’t actually require the physical survival of Israel’s Jews.
Which means, we’ve now established what you are. I won’t give you the satisfaction of calling you a Nazi or an antisemite. Thousands of years before those concepts existed, Jews already had terms for you. The terms tended toward a liturgical register, as in “those who rise up in every generation to destroy us.” The whole point of all the best-known Jewish holidays, like Purim yesterday, is to talk about those wicked would-be destroyers in the past tense, with the very presence of live Jews attesting to what the outcome was.
(Yesterday, I took my kids to a Purim carnival in Austin. Unlike in previous years, there were armed police everywhere. It felt almost like … visiting Israel.)
If you won’t answer the question, then it wasn’t Zionist Jews who told you that their choices are either to (1) oppose you or else (2) go up in black smoke like their grandparents did. You just told them that yourself.
Many will ask: why don’t I likewise have an obligation to give you my Palestinian survival plan?
I do. But the nice thing about my position is that I can tell you my Palestinian survival plan cheerfully, immediately, with zero equivocating or changing the subject. It’s broadly the same plan that David Ben-Gurion and Yitzchak Rabin and Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton and the UN put on the table over and over and over, only for the Palestinians’ leaders to sweep it off.
I want the Palestinians to have a state, comprising the West Bank and Gaza, with a capital in East Jerusalem. I want Israel to uproot all West Bank settlements that prevent such a state. I want this to happen the instant there arises a Palestinian leadership genuinely committed to peace—one that embraces liberal values and rejects martyr values, in everything from textbooks to street names.
And I want more. I want the new Palestinian state to be as prosperous and free and educated as modern Germany and Japan are. I want it to embrace women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights and the rest of the modern package, so that “Queers for Palestine” would no longer be a sick joke. I want the new Palestine to be as intertwined with Israel, culturally and economically, as the US and Canada are.
Ironically, if this ever became a reality, then Israel-as-a-Jewish-state would no longer be needed—but it’s certainly needed in the meantime.
Anti-Zionists on Twitter: can you be equally explicit about what you want?
I come, finally, to what many anti-Zionists regard as their ultimate trump card. Look at all the anti-Zionist Jews and Israelis who agree with us, they say. Jewish Voice for Peace. IfNotNow. Noam Chomsky. Norman Finkelstein. The Neturei Karta.
Intellectually, of course, the fact of anti-Zionist Jews makes not the slightest difference to anything. My question for them remains exactly the same as for anti-Zionist Gentiles: what is your Jewish survival plan, for the day after we dismantle the racist supremacist apartheid state that’s currently the only thing standing between half the world’s remaining Jews and their slaughter by their neighbors? Feel free to choose from any of the four options above, or suggest a fifth.
But in the event that Jewish anti-Zionists evade that conversation, or change the subject from it, maybe some special words are in order. You know the famous Golda Meir line, “If we have to choose between being dead and pitied and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image”?
It seems to me that many anti-Zionist Jews considered Golda Meir’s question carefully and honestly, and simply decided it the other way, in favor of Jews being dead and pitied.
Bear with me here: I won’t treat this as a reductio ad absurdum of their position. Not even if the anti-Zionist Jews themselves wish to remain safely ensconced in Berkeley or New Haven, while the Israelis fulfill the “dead and pitied” part for them.
In fact, I’ll go further. Again and again in life I’ve been seized by a dark thought: if half the world’s Jews can only be kept alive, today, via a militarized ethnostate that constantly needs to defend its existence with machine guns and missiles, racking up civilian deaths and destabilizing the world’s geopolitics—if, to put a fine point on it, there are 16 million Jews in the world, but at least a half billion antisemites who wake up every morning and go to sleep every night desperately wishing those Jews dead—then, from a crude utilitarian standpoint, might it not be better for the world if we Jews vanished after all?
Remember, I’m someone who spent a decade asking myself whether the rapacious, predatory nature of men’s sexual desire for women, which I experienced as a curse and an affliction, meant that the only moral course for me was to spend my life as a celibate mathematical monk. But I kept stumbling over one point: why should such a moral obligation fall on me alone? Why doesn’t it fall on other straight men, particularly the ones who presume to lecture me on my failings?
And also: supposing I did take the celibate monk route, would even that satisfy my haters? Would they come after me anyway for glancing at a woman too long or making an inappropriate joke? And also: would the haters soon say I shouldn’t have my scientific career either, since I’ve stolen my coveted academic position from the underprivileged? Where exactly does my self-sacrifice end?
When I did, finally, start approaching women and asking them out on dates, I worked up the courage partly by telling myself: I am now going to do the Zionist thing. I said: if other nerdy Jews can risk death in war, then this nerdy Jew can risk ridicule and contemptuous stares. You can accept that half the world will denounce you as a monster for living your life, so long as your own conscience (and, hopefully, the people you respect the most) continue to assure you that you’re nothing of the kind.
This took more than a decade of internal struggle, but it’s where I ended up. And today, if anyone tells me I had no business ever forming any romantic attachments, I have two beautiful children as my reply. I can say: forget about me, you’re asking for my children never to have existed—that’s why I’m confident you’re wrong.
Likewise with the anti-Zionists. When the Twitter-warriors share their memes of hook-nosed Jews strangling the planet, innocent Palestinian blood dripping from their knives, when the global protests shut down schools and universities and bridges and parliament buildings, there’s a part of me that feels eager to commit suicide if only it would appease the mob, if only it would expiate all the cosmic guilt they’ve loaded onto my shoulders.
But then I remember that this isn’t just about me. It’s about Einstein and Spinoza and Feynman and Erdös and von Neumann and Weinberg and Landau and Michelson and Rabi and Tarski and Asimov and Sagan and Salk and Noether and Meitner, and Irving Berlin and Stan Lee and Rodney Dangerfield and Steven Spielberg. Even if I didn’t happen to be born Jewish—if I had anything like my current values, I’d still think that so much of what’s worth preserving in human civilization, so much of math and science and Enlightenment and democracy and humor, would seem oddly bound up with the continued survival of this tiny people. And conversely, I’d think that so much of what’s hateful in civilization would seem oddly bound up with the quest to exterminate this tiny people, or to deny it any means to defend itself from extermination.
So that’s my answer, both to anti-Zionist Gentiles and to anti-Zionist Jews. The problem of Jewish survival, on a planet much of which yearns for the Jews’ annihilation and much of the rest of which is indifferent, is both hard and important, like P versus NP. And so a radical solution was called for. The solution arrived at a century ago, at once brand-new and older than Homer and Hesiod, was called the State of Israel. If you can’t stomach that solution—if, in particular, you can’t stomach the violence needed to preserve it, so long as Israel’s neighbors retain their annihilationist dream—then your response ought to be to propose a better solution. I promise to consider your solution in good faith—asking, just like with P vs. NP provers, how you overcome the problems that doomed all previous attempts. But if you throw my demand for a better solution back in my face, then you might as well be pushing my kids into a gas chamber yourself, for all the moral authority that I now recognize you to have over me.
Possibly the last thing Einstein wrote was a speech celebrating Israel’s 7th Independence Day, which he died a week before he was to deliver. So let’s turn the floor over to Mr. Albert, the leftist pacifist internationalist:
This is the seventh anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel. The establishment of this State was internationally approved and recognised largely for the purpose of rescuing the remnant of the Jewish people from unspeakable horrors of persecution and oppression.
Thus, the establishment of Israel is an event which actively engages the conscience of this generation. It is, therefore, a bitter paradox to find that a State which was destined to be a shelter for a martyred people is itself threatened by grave dangers to its own security. The universal conscience cannot be indifferent to such peril.
It is anomalous that world opinion should only criticize Israel’s response to hostility and should not actively seek to bring an end to the Arab hostility which is the root cause of the tension.
I love Einstein’s use of “anomalous,” as if this were a physics problem. From the standpoint of history, what’s anomalous about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, as the Twitterers claim, the brutality of the Israelis—if you think that’s anomalous, you really haven’t studied history—but something different. In other times and places, an entity like Palestine, which launches a war of total annihilation against a much stronger neighbor, and then another and another, would soon disappear from the annals of history. Israel, however, is held to a different standard. Again and again, bowing to international pressure and pressure from its own left flank, the Israelis have let their would-be exterminators off the hook, bruised but mostly still alive and completely unrepentant, to have another go at finishing the Holocaust in a few years. And after every bout, sadly but understandably, Israeli culture drifts more to the right, becomes 10% more like the other side always was.
I don’t want Israel to drift to the right. I find the values of Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion to be almost as good as any human values have ever been, and I’d like Israel to keep them. Of course, Israel will need to continue defending itself from genocidal neighbors, until the day that a leader arises among the Palestinians with the moral courage of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat or Jordan’s King Hussein: a leader who not only talks peace but means it. Then there can be peace, and an end of settlements in the West Bank, and an independent Palestinian state. And however much like dark comedy that seems right now, I’m actually optimistic that it will someday happen, conceivably even soon depending on what happens in the current war. Unless nuclear war or climate change or AI apocalypse makes the whole question moot.
Anyway, thanks for reading—a lot built up these past months that I needed to get off my chest. When I told a friend that I was working on this post, he replied “I agree with you about Israel, of course, but I choose not to die on that hill in public.” I answered that I’ve already died on that hill and on several other hills, yet am somehow still alive!
Meanwhile, I was gratified that other friends, even ones who strongly disagree with me about Israel, told me that I should not disengage, but continue to tell it like I see it, trying civilly to change minds while being open to having my own mind changed.
And now, maybe, I can at last go back to happier topics, like how to prevent the destruction of the world by AI.
Cheers,
Scott
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Comment #1 March 25th, 2024 at 2:56 am
A great piece, Scott. Really. And yet the ending seems to imply you haven’t internalized your own arguments. Let’s take this quote:
“Then there can be peace, and an end of settlements in the West Bank, and an independent Palestinian state.”
“end of settlements in the West Bank” – leaving aside that geographically speaking “West Bank” is an entire territory of Israel and substituting more precise “Judea and Samaria” – why would you propose making that area free of Jews while not applying the same reasoning to the Arab inhabitants of Israel? Either we favor culturally/ethnically homogeneous states for all parties, or we don’t – otherwise, it’s the same motivated anti-Jewish reasoning.
Oh and practically we’ve seen that before – the partition of the mandatory Palestine along the Jordan River in 1921. So every iteration cuts a half and makes it Judenfrei. We all know that this sequence converges to zero.
“independent Palestinian state” – independence brings power and a lot of it. Power to build an army, make international agreements, and even invite foreign military assistance. How much time will take for this independence to be used by external hostile actors such as Iran? And what will it be used for, if not for the extermination of Jews in Israel?
It will take the de-radicalization of the masses, not only the elites to credibly defuse that danger. And we haven’t seen examples of mass deradicalization without humanitarian catastrophe (WW2 Germany, Japan).
Tragically, the people now called Palestinians – their very existence was weaponized by the Jew-haters from outside of the region. And until that knot is disentangled, the problem will have no solution.
Comment #2 March 25th, 2024 at 2:56 am
I appreciated reading your thoughts on the conflict. Thanks for taking the time to write this.
However, while reading I felt like you skipped over a few points of discussion that seem very relevant, so, given how in-depth you like to be, I’m hoping you can answer them too:
– Your post repeatedly claims that Hamas/Palestinians are antisemitic (against Jews), but from what I could tell, they are actually antizionist (against Israel, i.e. against the foreign “settlement”/”occupation” in Palestine) (source: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/doctrine-hamas). Which one is true? How does this affect e.g. a one-state solution?
– A sizeable (and growing) fraction of the population is anti-arab in the same way that antisemites are anti-jew. Your post puts much blame on Benjamin Netanyahu. Do you think the rest of the right-wing israeli politicians would be better than him? Are the specific representatives more important than the voting demographic that stands behind them?
– Ignoring the justifications of rescuing hostages and killing Hamas members – do you think the current war in Gaza is productive for the long-term goal of peace? Does the Israeli government have a sensible strategy behind it?
– If you’re interested in adding another headache to this discussion: how bad is the impact of the digital age on this conflict (fake news, polarizing tweets, filter bubbles), and, what can we do to help?
Comment #3 March 25th, 2024 at 3:36 am
ShadowThink #1: It would be great if someday, Jews could live freely in “Judea and Samaria,” subject to the government of Palestine, just like 2 million Arabs right now live freely in Israel subject to the Israeli government. For now, though, the settlements obviously prevent the creation of a Palestinian state, because of the military defense they require—indeed, preventing a Palestinian state has become a central purpose of the settlements!
For now, wherever Jews exist in that part of the world, history shows that they can be secure only under a government that’s organized around defending Jewish existence. But such a government from the Jordan to the Mediterranean really would make Israel the master of a perpetual apartheid system. Hence the idea, which was sound in 1947 and remains sound today, of partitioning the land into a part where Jewish existence will be aggressively defended and a part where it won’t be. The 1967 borders provide a Schelling point that much of the world is behind, and they’re obviously vastly preferable to the alternative that most of the rest of the world wants, which is not to have Jewish existence be defended anywhere.
Beyond that, though, the settlements are not in Israel’s best interest. For more than half a century, they’ve allowed everyone opposed to Israel to dress themselves in the language of liberalism and human rights. Without the settlements, those people would be forced back into the open: they’d either have to accept Israel, or else admit that their real objection all along was to its existence with any border (and, perhaps, to the existence of Jews). More pragmatically, every IDF soldier defending the settlements is one who isn’t available to defend Israel proper, as we were all dramatically reminded on October 7.
Comment #4 March 25th, 2024 at 3:39 am
Thanks for a great piece.
Comment #5 March 25th, 2024 at 3:41 am
Am a Russian Israeli in Germany with grand grandparents who died in the Holocaust and other grand grandparents who fought the Nazi in Germany.
The question to your question in books is quite simple – you live on as a minority in multiple places, just as you did for thousands of years, just as many many other minorities do, until a better option turns up. Maybe a city in the ocean or a network state or whatever. You make it sound too existential.
Herzl had a colonialist solution in an era of colonialism, and by today moral standard it is wrong.
Ben Gurion mad some miserable choices in 1947 removing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes or not letting them back. Yes similar actions were taken against german exiles in 1945, but it doesn’t make it right.
Maybe a confederation like Land for All initiative can work.
I don’t see any personal safety considerations when living in germany that are on par with with what is done in my name in the past decades in Palestine.
Comment #6 March 25th, 2024 at 3:56 am
Shem #2: Good questions! To address a subset of them:
Certainly the original 1988 Hamas charter talked about killing Jews everywhere on earth, even as they hid behind trees, with no euphemisms about “Zionists.” And this makes sense, as Hamas came from the Muslim Brotherhood, which came from the Grand Mufti’s WWII alliance with the Nazis. But it’s true that, as a practical matter, Hamas has little ability to kill Jews in the US (for example), and might be agreeable to the mass transfer of Israel’s 7 million Jews to the US (but see the post for the problems with that).
There are right-wingers in Israel even worse than Netanyahu, like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. But Gantz and Lapid and Gallant all seem amenable to reason, and certainly any of them would be massive improvements over Netanyahu.
I’m out of my depth on questions on military strategy (and it’d be nice if others admitted when they were too! 🙂 ). But I feel confident in this: there can be no peaceful future for Gaza with Hamas in charge of it, and Hamas can never be removed except by war—same as Nazi Germany. And most of the armchair generals on Twitter don’t even begin to understand the difficulty of uprooting a terror government that’s lodged itself in a vast tunnel network underneath a civilian population, while leaving those civilians to starve and also holding hundreds of hostages.
Comment #7 March 25th, 2024 at 4:09 am
Sergei Masis #5: If the survival strategy you advocate couldn’t preserve the lives of your own grandparents, then why should you put any stock in it and why should I? Even here in the US, which has a … better record than Germany, I’d feel much less secure in my existence without Israel as a survival backstop. Are you not a perfect example of those Jews I described in the post: the ones who stare Golda Meir’s “alive and hated vs. dead and pitied” dilemma in the face, and decide that “dead and pitied” actually has a lot to recommend it?
Comment #8 March 25th, 2024 at 4:26 am
Thank you for writing this Scott. Much like you religiously check other people’s opinions (for good or ill), I come to this blog often to see *your* thoughts on Israel, because, to me, the fact that you speak out so forcefully on “my side” of this issue is proof that my side is right.
So to be clear, I agree with almost everything you wrote, and I think you put exactly the correct burden-of-proof question on the “anti-zionist” side – they have to come up with an actual proposal for their ideal outcome, if they’re going to be anti-zionist. Likewise, if someone is against the current war as Israel is waging it, they need to come up with actual proposals for what Israel should do differently, with the only constraint being that it needs to be a solution that keeps Israelis safe to a reasonable degree.
That all said, I’d like to respond a few points from your article that I think are worth mentioning, but please keep it in the above context of us agreeing on most things.
> I religiously check the tweets of Paul Graham […] a man with whom I seem to resonate deeply on every important topic except for two: Zionism and functional programming.
Clearly off to a good start… what’s wrong with functional programming?? 🙂
> that a single Paul Graham who endorses the anti-Zionist cause ought to bother me more than a billion sharers of hook-nosed rat memes.
I likewise share your adoration of Paul Graham, and I’ve been dismayed with his position on Israel since about 2011, when I first encountered it.
But – I don’t think it’s fair to say that Paul Graham endorses the anti-Zionist cause. He is often claimed to be anti-semitic and anti-zionist, but I’ve been following him for years and read most of his Tweets, and I don’t think either is fair. I think he just sincerely believes Israel does a lot of bad things, and needs to be condemned for them. I don’t think he espouses any specific ideas of Israel itself needing to be dismantled or anything.
An interesting side note is that it seems whenever Israel is in the news, Paul Graham is predictably on the anti-Israel side of the issue, which seems to me like bias. (Personally I’m very pro-Israeli compared to the world, very Israeli-left compared to most Israelis, and I think some of my views have changed quite a lot over the years).
> One way or the other, I sought a truthful answer, one that emerged organically from the reigning morality of our time and that wasn’t just an unprincipled exception to it. […] You might call this my central character flaw: this need for clarity from others about the moral foundations of my own existence.
FWIW, I think your central character flaw isn’t seeking the clarity – it’s believing that “the reigning morality of our time” was actually captured in those books you’ve read or academics you studied.
Just like in that previous case, right now, tens of thousands of people write random anti-Israel stuff on Twitter, many join pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel marches without knowing anything about the history, people debate this ad nauseam… and 99% of the world doesn’t think about it. Even most *Israelis* are barely aware or barely care… they just live their lives. Horrible as it is (because some bad things *are* happening), most people just… get on with their lives.
You’re putting yourself in a position where you care a lot more about the theoretical ideas and justifications for your positions than almost anyone else cares, presuming (I think) that theories have any relevance to what most people actually think or do. I think even a majority of people sharing anti-Zionist messages would never come close to pressing a button that actually gets rid of Israel.
> Take starvation, for example. […] Do you start to appreciate the difficulty of the problem—and why the Biden administration was pushed to absurd-sounding extremes like air-dropping food and then building a floating port?
I agree with your main point here. That said, I’m (very sadly) *not* convinced that Israel is doing everything it can or should in order to prevent starvation. I’m also not convinced that Israel isn’t *actively* trying to cause some amount of starvation in order to put pressure on Hamas.
I don’t think Israel will ever allow thousands of Gazans to die of starvation, and people have been saying that this would happen since October 7th. But I don’t think the government’s hands are completely clean here. (And if they are, boy are they doing a bad job of PR right now.)
> The good news is that Netanyahu, the catastrophically failed “Protector of Israel,” not only can, but probably will, soon be removed in a democratic election.
I really hope so. I do worry that the far-right will be more empowered though, and even if they aren’t, there is unfortunately no real viable peaceful left movement in Israel, and probably won’t be one for a while.
> (3) SECULAR BINATIONAL STATE
> […] But, suppose we do it anyway. We place 7 million Jews, almost half the Jews who remain on Earth, into a binational state where perhaps a third of their fellow citizens hold the theological belief that all Jews should be exterminated, and that a heavenly reward follows martyrdom in blowing up Jews.
I don’t think this is even the most immediate problem. No country on Earth would agree to just almost-double its population with effectively an entire different culture, for good reason.
As just one example – what are the LGBT population supposed to do in such a scenario? Where we’re adding 5m extra voters, who currently live in a state/culture in which gay people are quite literally thrown off rooftops? Even before we get to exterminating Jews from the inside, how are we supposed to prevent the basic liberal values of Israel from being completely torn apart? It’s not like the world has had a good track record of forcing democracy on other people lately (Hamas being elected to rule Gaza as one obvious example).
—
Final point – I think you are basically correct about most things. I think you don’t get into it here, but Israel does have some moral culpability here in not pursuing peace, despite being the far-stronger party, and in some cases actively stopping peace. This has been true for at least the last 15 years. It’s worth acknowledging that. It’s possible there isn’t any path to peace – but I am far from convinced of that, and we must keep trying.
Comment #9 March 25th, 2024 at 4:40 am
If I understand you, it seems like your defense for not allowing food aid to enter Gaza is that if food were allowed in, Hamas would steal/hoard so much of it that it would not benefit the civilian population. Are you sure about this? It seems to me that if you’re going to support a policy of preventing food from reaching a small region where there are millions of starving people, you should be *really* *really* *really* sure that the trucks carrying food are not going to help the starving people. You should be sure you’re not repeating a propaganda line being used to justify the use of starvation as a weapon of war. So given the gravity of your position, given that if you’re wrong then you are supporting a manmade famine, how many impartial, expert opinions in international aid have you consulted? Did they all advise that in cases where some food aid may be diverted by an evil terrorist group, it’s ok not to allow any food at all to reach the area? Incidentally, it seems like most of Israel’s Western allies want more of the aid trucks at the Egyptian border to be allowed in. Are the US, UK etc. trying to help Hamas, or are they all just failing to foresee what you do? It seems to me that if the *adequate* amount of food were allowed in — ie hundreds of trucks per day— it would be sure to feed large numbers of civilians in Gaza (incidentally it would also feed the Israeli hostages, who are also starving, if anyone remembers them). Do you disagree with that, and on what basis? If you don’t disagree and yet still oppose flooding Gaza with food aid, then I see no more charitable conclusion than that you see mass famine as an acceptable, if regrettable, consequence of an effort to deprive Hamas of food for their fighters. Of course, there are less charitable conclusions I could draw if I were as quick as some to impute a desire for genocide.
Comment #10 March 25th, 2024 at 5:16 am
As someone who has existed firmly in the anti-zionist camp for years, I actually really appreciate this post. It’s refreshing to see that once ideology is stripped away and twitter bubbles are exited, we are fundamentally in agreement. For the record, I’d go for Option 2.
I will be sharing this post with my AZ friends, and I’m already looking forward to the (likely heated) discussions it will provoke.
Hans
Comment #11 March 25th, 2024 at 5:40 am
Hi Scott,
thanks for taking the time to write this.
When thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I keep being drawn to the famous Solzhenitsyn quote:
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart”. I think we all make the mistake of placing certain people or groups entirely on one side of this line.
I spent a lot of time thinking about Israel and whether its founding was “fair” to the Palestinians until I visited the place again and saw apartment blocks over apartment blocks of normal people living their lives. It sometimes doesn’t matter what injustices have been committed in the past – there is no way to go back and people have a right to live their normal lives. Anyone who takes (4) seriously is delusional. I don’t think it’s a position that deserves a response.
I agree that (1) or (2) is the way to go. Lots of Palestinians do/did to, but 30 years after Oslo we do need to ask ourselves whether the will is there also on the Israeli side. As far as I know, Netanyahu has been adamant not to allow a Palestinian state. Are you familiar on the reporting on this? – there a couple of quite shocking (leaked) videos for example.
FWIW I blame Israel, not just Hamas, on the unviability of (1). After October 7th, there was widespread shock in the Arab world about what Hamas had done. Then Israel killed 30x as many people on the Palestinian side as were killed on October 7th. And now people can go back to being shocked about the actions of whatever side they choose again. Already in October, there was a great NYT Opinion piece on this, I encourage you to read it: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/israel-hamas-ceasefire.html?smid=tw-share
Here is also an interesting perspective on proprtionality making essentially a similar argument: https://www.philippelemoine.com/p/what-is-the-point-of-israels-operation
This comment has gotten a bit long, but I have one more point, with another quote, this time from Niezsche:”When fighting monsters, take care that you do not become a monster”. I do worry that at least in the international perception, Israel is losing its soul in this war. There are too many videos of people (some of them clearly civilians) being murdered in cold blood. I don’t think the killing of their own hostages by accident was an isolated lapse in standards. Israel is clearly acting for revenge, not justice, and it does not really care, deep in its heart, about non-Israeli collateral damage. If you are not in the position to appreciate or steelman this argument then I don’t think you are reading high-quality sources. The line between good and evil passes through the Israeli side also. And please don’t complain about Hamas as a response to this – anyone who says “but look at the other side” when confronted with an atrocity cannot be reasoned with. Even if the argument were 100% wrong on an object level, the evidence has convinced Paul Graham and so it has certainly convinced 90% of Israel’s neighbors.
Comment #12 March 25th, 2024 at 7:12 am
Maybe I’m mistaken, but I’ve read this Al Jazeera article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/20/gaza-ceasefire-talks-what-are-israel-and-hamas-saying and this says that while Hamas is willing to talk about ceasefire, Israel is not, so for those of us who prefer your option 2, is it not rational to protest against Israel not willing to talk about ceasefire/peace?
Comment #13 March 25th, 2024 at 7:28 am
Edan Maor #8: Thanks so much for all your points, which are well-taken! A few responses:
– Paul Graham is obviously not an antisemite. As for whether he’s “anti-Zionist”: what makes the question hard is that, to my knowledge (and I’ve read him pretty exhaustively), the greatest essayist of Silicon Valley has never published anything on this subject longer than a tweet. And his tweets paint an unremitting, near-daily picture of Israeli evil and Palestinian innocent suffering, sometimes linking to views by others (such as Israeli far-leftists) but never setting out Paul’s own view of why the conflict is happening or how he thinks it ought to be resolved. The aftermath of October 7 could’ve been a perfect opportunity — but then, I’m sad to say, he went completely silent on the subject for days, not managing even a single tweet of condolence to Silicon Valley / YC people who were impacted or anything. The tweetstorm started only with Israel’s response.
– Oh, of course Israel doesn’t have clean hands! Hamas’s hands, meanwhile, are beet-red, just completely covered in gore and entrails, and being proudly waved everywhere to show everyone how many Jews they killed. And the whole world looks past that, interested only in the streaks of blood on Israel’s hands, because Jews. While Hamas is over there shouting: “hey, you want to see bloody hands? Here’s a whole heart, a liver, an intestine!” As they say, it would be funny if it weren’t depressing.
– Yes, of course, I should’ve added: a one-state solution, if governed by the current values of those currently between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, would not only fail to ensure the survival of Israel’s 7 million Jews, it would also plunge everyone living there (including millions of Israeli Arabs, Bedouin, and Druze) into a regime characterized by political dissidents and LGBTQ being thrown from the roofs of tall buildings.
Comment #14 March 25th, 2024 at 7:48 am
Nick #9:
– We ought to be clear that the current Gaza war is probably the first war in the entire blood-soaked history of the world in which the whole world treats it as obvious that the side that was attacked—in something meant to be a second Holocaust, a genocide—is responsible for providing food, water, and electricity to its attackers as they continue their attack. Indeed, this is so obvious that it’s obvious even to me!
– Indeed, I want to see much more food going into Gaza. I think Israel hasn’t done nearly enough. But I also see the difficulty of the problem.
– The core of the problem is that you need some sort of governing authority to distribute the food. But the only available governing authorities are (1) Hamas, which immediately diverts any food to its own fighters, leaving the civilians above the ground to starve and be martyred, and (2) entities like UNRWA that immediately capitulate to Hamas.
– So then we’re left with Israel (or the US, or Egypt?) distributing food. We saw what happened when Israel tried to escort the aid trucks: Gazans were crushed to death in a stampede, and IDF soldiers had to fire to save their own lives, and Israel was vilified even more. And yet there’s probably no alternative except for Israel to do more of this — yes, even if it involves acting as a real “occupying power,” and being condemned by the world for it — if the alternative is that hundreds of thousands of innocents starve.
Comment #15 March 25th, 2024 at 7:56 am
Interested Bystander #12: Oh, of course Hamas is willing to discuss a ceasefire! One where they remain intact, and can rebuild Gaza into the terror enclave it was, and with Iran’s backing, can carry out many more October-7-style invasions until Israel is destroyed, as they’ve explicitly promised to do. Better yet if they can keep the hostages.
Given that it now perceives the stakes as existential, Israel is interested either in a temporary pause in its operations in exchange for hostages, or else in the kind of “ceasefire” that involves Hamas surrendering and laying down its arms.
Comment #16 March 25th, 2024 at 7:59 am
Hans #10: Thank you so much. Your comment made my day, suggesting as it did the bizarre possibility of actual progress in this discussion.
Comment #17 March 25th, 2024 at 8:14 am
Great article, with which I agree.
I think that a lot of people see suffering Palestinians in the news and just want the suffering to end.
They don’t think any further.
They don’t see that Israel’s hand is somewhat forced.
It seems to me analogous to nuclear energy disasters. Events of strong devastation, as the massacre in Israel, as well as the current Gaza war are, capture people just differently.
It’s easy to use them propagandistically.
Comment #18 March 25th, 2024 at 8:18 am
“Believe me when I say we have a difficult time ahead of us. But if we are to be prepared for it, we must first shed our fear of it. I stand here, before you now, truthfully unafraid. Why? Because I believe something you do not? No, I stand here without fear because I remember. I remember that I am here not because of the path that lies before me but because of the path that lies behind me. I remember that for 100 years we have fought these anti-Zionists. I remember that for 100 years they have sent their armies to destroy us, and after a century of war I remember that which matters most… We are still here! Today, let us send a message to that army. Tonight, let us shake this cave. Tonight, let us tremble these halls of earth, steel, and stone, let us be heard from red core to black sky. Tonight, let us make them remember, THIS IS ZION AND WE ARE NOT AFRAID!”
Comment #19 March 25th, 2024 at 8:33 am
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
Do you really think there are “at least a half billion antisemites who wake up every morning and go to sleep every night desperately wishing those Jews dead” ? That seems like a pretty extraordinary claim; do you have extraordinary evidence for it? I usually assume that vanishingly few people in the world are genuinely murderous, despite the fact that almost everybody professes to believe in some silly religion whose holy texts, if you dig deep enough, contain some cherry-pickable exhortations to violence against the outgroup.
To me, it seems unlikely that folks will make much progress with this line of inquiry as long as their worldview is more “the other side is full of animals who want to murder my side” and less “the other side is full of people who are basically good, but has a few bad apples who occasionally get power and start murdering my side”.
Comment #20 March 25th, 2024 at 8:52 am
Adam B #19: I think that, since the Holocaust, the ones who need to bring extraordinary evidence are those who believe there’s not a significant portion of humanity that wants to exterminate all Jews! Luckily, as an American computer scientist, I live my life in a bubble where I pretty much never have to meet that portion (except online!). But my “half billion” came from a desire to be conservative, to give an underestimate. There are 1.9 billion Muslims, and for all the warmth and kindness of all the Iranians and other Muslims who I’m privileged to know, these attitudes about Jews are staggeringly normalized in the Muslim world. If you don’t believe me, look at some polling data, and if you don’t believe the polling data, look at Twitter.
Anyway, I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy. Let’s celebrate the clear majority of the human race (at least 90% of it, I’d wager) that doesn’t want to murder all Jews!
Comment #21 March 25th, 2024 at 9:05 am
This is unclear:
“It all seems so much easier, once you remove the constraint of not empowering Hamas in its openly-announced goal of completing the Holocaust. And hence, removing that constraint is precisely what the global left does.”
How is the Global Left “removing the constraint” of Hamas? Do you mean they’re simply ignoring Hamas and it’s openly-announced goals? Or do you mean they’re somehow removing Hamas itself?
Comment #22 March 25th, 2024 at 9:20 am
Dave K #21: The standard demand on the left is for a unilateral ceasefire by Israel (sometimes coupled with a return of the hostages, but often even that minimal demand gets shouted down and removed), which would leave Hamas in place as the governing authority in Gaza. And it’s for provision of aid with no preconditions, which by default would be confiscated by Hamas and used for its war against Israel. The charitable view would be that this is merely staggering naïveté. But when many on the left talk (as they do) about the evils of the Balfour declaration and the 1948 Nakba, they sort of give their game away: at that point, why not just declare openly that you think Hamas’s aim of annihilating Israel is just, and you support their side of the war and hope that they win?
Comment #23 March 25th, 2024 at 9:26 am
Scott,
“More to the point, though, why have I spent so much time on such a depressing, unproductive reading project? Damned if I know.”
Like so many of us, you’re a dopamine addict. This has been understood for some time.
The way out is simple. Be honest about the truth – dopamine addiction – and give up the Twitter as that seems like the biggest “source” for you now. Delete your account and helpfully Twitter will lock you out so that you can’t even see the tweets that are obsessing you. That’s what I did and happy I did. Of course, Twitter wasn’t my only source of dopamine but it was the the most toxic. Glad I gave it up.
Comment #24 March 25th, 2024 at 9:30 am
Thank you for the clarification, Scott!
Comment #25 March 25th, 2024 at 9:32 am
“We ought to be clear that the current Gaza war is probably the first war in the entire blood-soaked history of the world in which the whole world treats it as obvious that the side that was attacked—in something meant to be a second Holocaust, a genocide—is responsible for providing food, water,
and electricity to its attackers as they continue their attack. Indeed, this is so obvious that it’s obvious even to me!”
Come on, this paragraph is a bit disingenuous to say the least.
Gaza is not a state. It is (and was before 7th October) reliant solely on Israel for it’s electricity, power, water, fuel and most of it’s food supply routes. This is not because Gazans couldn’t be bothered to create this infrastructure, but because Israel (rightly or wrongly) never allowed Gaza to have it’s own infrastructure in this regard.
It’s not like say Jordan, for example, attacked Israel and was entirely self-sufficient for its own electricity, power, water, fuel etc and then subsequently asked Israel to help out when things went awry in it’s war with Israel.
Israel decided to (rightly or wrongly) create a siege in the entire territory, knowing there was no other way any of the civilian population could get this stuff elsewhere.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/
which seems to be sort of illegal.
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2019/06/sieges-law-and-protecting-civilians-0/i-introduction
We can also ask the question if Israel’s response now, after many months of intense bombardment, is proportionate bearing in mind the 2.3 million civilians that live there?
https://lieber.westpoint.edu/proportionality-international-humanitarian-law-principle-rule/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/07/widespread-destruction-in-gaza-puts-concept-of-domicide-in-focus
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/22/obstacles-to-gaza-aid-deliveries-visual-guide
half of which are children
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/18/1206897328/half-of-gazas-population-is-under-18-heres-what-that-means-for-the-conflict
This isn’t to defend Hamas, but at least do try to give a bit of balance to the current situation in the gaza strip as it’s absolutely grim there.
If Gaza was populated entirely by Hamas fighters I’d have no issue with what Israel is doing, but is Israel really prepared to make Gaza resemble 1943 Stalingrad until every last Hamas fighter is eliminated?
Comment #26 March 25th, 2024 at 10:04 am
Scott 14: No, in this instance, the world treats it as obvious that Israel must merely *allow* aid from third parties to enter the Gaza Strip, i.e. basically just give assurances that aid convoys aren’t going to be bombed or shot at by Israel (such are the IDF rules of engagement). In any case, with respect, you haven’t really engaged with my question: If hundreds of trucks per day were entering Gaza, and the food were distributed, say by UNRWA, let us stipulate that Hamas fighters (and their captives) would be the first to be fed. If I allow that stipulation, are you going to deny that those hundreds of trucks per day would also feed the rest of the population? If so, what is the factual basis for that denial? What credible person has said that supplying Gaza, via UNRWA, with the amount of food it requires would do nothing to alleviate the hunger of the population? If you are not denying it, how are you not excusing mass starvation as collateral damage?
Comment #27 March 25th, 2024 at 10:08 am
The irresolvable problem for both sides is that neither wants the other to exist. Both sides want “river to the sea” domination without the residual presence of the other. Both have persued this goal for many years. Both sides are guilty of slaughtering innocents. Hamas on October 7th and Israel in its years of violence and land seizures and in its murderous response to Hamas. Israel in its extreme response has succeeded in alienating the world from its cause.
I have no idea how to “fix” the situation except for recognition of the other side’s right to exist and a two stater solution. Not likely given the mutual hatred and the leadership on both sides.
Comment #28 March 25th, 2024 at 10:14 am
“The good news is that Netanyahu, the catastrophically failed “Protector of Israel,” not only can, but probably will, soon be removed in a democratic election.”
“Probably”, “Soon”, “democratic election”… that’s a lot of wishful thinking.
It’s in his best interest to prolong the military intervention in Gaza as long as possible. Just like Putin will keep feeding his power on all his claims that the existential survival of Russia being threatened by NATO for decades to come and he’s the savior.
Netanyahu and his far right cronies were elected in the first place, over and over. It’s never happened that a far-right government has lost elections after all their prophecies have come to pass.
Before October 7, there’s been a year of Israeli liberals unsuccessfully trying to stop Netanyahu’s anti-democractic reforms… and now the belief is that the thing that will *save* Israel’s democracy are the consequences of the Hamas attack? Really?!?
PS: solution 5) – kick all the Palestinians out of Israel, which is what many of Netanyahu’s enthusiasts are currently aiming for.
Comment #29 March 25th, 2024 at 10:16 am
I don’t particularly like the idea of ethnostates, but given that some people really like killing Jews, a Jewish ethnostate (ignoring the controversy of to what degree Israel is an ethnostate). seems a necessary evil until anti-semitism can go away. If I had a time machine and could go back to the 40s, probably I’d try to get Israel to be located somewhere else and in other circumstances. But it’s 2024, and Israel exists where it exists, so I’d not really be in favor of trying to move a few million Jews somewhere else, for the many great challenges as you point out. So given that, I would say that Israel has a right to exist roughly as it is, and therefore, obviously the right to defend itself.
So do Gazans and West Bankans too have a right to self-defense? I would say yes, and I’d say that the self defense mechanism can be not shooting rockets at Israel constantly and not trying to do more massacres of people. I’m an outsider to the whole situation, but if a neighboring region was constantly shooting rockets at me, I’d be in favor of massive response so that no one dares do it again (e.g. if Quebec decided to shoot rockets into Maine or something, I’d hope that the next day there would be no Quebec). So to be honest, Israel’s response seems extremely restrained and much more than Gaza deserves.
As you say, where is Gaza’s Nelson Mandela? If Gaza wants to continue along the path of war and terror, then so be it. Just as World War 2 Japan chose the path of conquest and expansion until the very end, just as Sodom chose the path of raping strangers (we may not agree on how literal that story is, but we can view it metaphorically), then fine, but there will be consequences. If Gaza wants to keep doing Oct 7 again and again, the buffer zone getting larger each time until there is no Gaza left, then so be it. Gazans can have the path of genocide that they want, and they have the chance to repent at any point and turn away from their path of destruction. And if they never choose that path, then let it not be said that we do not respect their free will to make their own decisions and suffer the consequences of said decisions.
Of course, one of my friends has called me a genocide supporter, so I guess there’s that.
Comment #30 March 25th, 2024 at 10:23 am
Hi Scott,
Thanks for the blog post. I’m still very young and have considered myself an anti-zionist; this post really got me thinking much more about the long-term stability for the area.
However, I’m still uncomfortable with the idea that the only solution to the heinousness of the situation of October 7 is to respond in the way that they did, and that this is the only productive way that will save the Jewish people.
I fully understand and accept Hamas uses the population almost exclusively as human shields, and further cares about them only as pawns in their plot to try and destroy Israel, and Jews as a whole. However, it seems to me that the only way to eradicate Hamas by acts of war, therefore, can only lead to the destruction of _all_ (or a very significant proportion, at least) of the people in Gaza & the West Bank. IDF targeted strikes have very often hit countless civilians, not to mention the very hostages they’re trying to save.
I also agree with Adam B – I don’t think we live in a world where that many people actively wish for the death of Jews. I fully agree that there’s many, many people in religious sects that idolise this idea, but the actual individual people? I would think that the vast majority of them are just trying to live a life, and be the best people they can. Maybe I’m idealistic, maybe I live in a bubble, maybe I’m too young. I also know that there’s a lot of different surveys with different results about Palestinian’s opinions about Oct 7; the one thing I fear is that the more this military action extends, the more these people get more and more enraged towards Israel and make it even harder to lose that grip; every Arab that dies, fighter or civilian, is one more martyr to them, one more mark of the west’s relentless oppression of all the Arab people as a whole.
As I understand it, and I may be wrong, October 7 was also a huge intelligence failure by the IDF, and much more could’ve been done. I wonder what you think about a ceasefire where Israel just tries to turtle for a bit, until (hopefully) a much better government, led by people who want actual solutions instead of Bibi, can try and make some progress. Again, I worry that’s too optimistic of me, to hope that the oppressing forces that oppress both Israel and the people they rule will ever give in to such things. But I also can’t stand and watch these people just die, either – it goes against my every moral fibre.
On a small side-note, I wonder how many of these Twitter anti-zionists are option 2-ers, such as myself.
Sorry for such a long, rambling comment; and thanks again for widening my perspective on such an important issue.
Comment #31 March 25th, 2024 at 10:36 am
Paul #27:
The irresolvable problem for both sides is that neither wants the other to exist. Both sides want “river to the sea” domination without the residual presence of the other.
What that formulation misses completely is that Israel, since the 1960s, has had the physical power to cause the Palestinian side to cease to exist—in a day or two, if it wanted. And yet it’s never done it. Not only that, it’s repeatedly offered the Palestinians a sovereign state, in return for recognition of its own right to exist—offers that were always and without exception turned down.
Alas, this bitter experience moved the Israeli public more and more to the right. And yet even now, the destruction Israel has rained down on Gaza is like 1% of what it had the physical power to do.
Hamas, by contrast, hasn’t completely annihilated Israel solely because it’s lacked the physical power to do so. The instant it had the power, it would (we saw the sneak preview on Oct 7).
I feel like, until someone really deeply internalizes this asymmetry, they haven’t understood the first thing about what’s made this conflict so intractable.
Comment #32 March 25th, 2024 at 10:39 am
To think that the consequences of October 7th and the war on Hamas is what will finally stop and reverse the steady loss of democracy in Israel is just as naive as thinking that the systematic razing and starvation of Gaza is what will make the Gazans see the light and finally turn on Hamas (capture them, bring them to trial, deliver them to the IDF, …) and sprout a thriving democracy in the strip.
Comment #33 March 25th, 2024 at 11:01 am
Eric #30: Thanks so much—after the daily mental assaults of Twitter, you don’t know how much it means to me that this post was actually able to start a conversation with young anti-Zionists.
There might well have been a better response for Israel than this devastating urban war—or at least a better way to conduct the war. If so, though, I’m not sure what it is—and more importantly, my most liberal and enlightened friends in Israel don’t seem to know either, at least once the far left’s “lay down and die” solution is taken off the table.
Yes, Oct 7 was an unbelievable intelligence failure, the worst in Israel’s history. And I’m sure this particular barn door will be secured with multiple layers of steel and titanium now that the horse has bolted from it.
But alas, there’s a single-word answer as to why the “turtling” strategy isn’t going to work: Iran. The mullahs, whose support made Oct 7 possible, are completely committed to Israel’s annihilation and could complete a nuclear weapon right now if they wanted to. And as long as Hamas exists, Iran will continue supplying it with more and more sophisticated weapons. Israel is less than 10 miles wide at the narrowest point. After Oct 7, it can no longer tolerate having an Iran-backed staging ground for its own eradication on its border.
And yes, while the conspiracy theories about Israel secretly masterminding Oct 7 are risible, Bibi did tolerate the Hamas staging ground for more than a decade, as a way of putting off having to engage with the peace process and enrage his base. All the more shame on him.
Comment #34 March 25th, 2024 at 11:23 am
Amy #29: Thanks so much, that’s beautifully put.
Comment #35 March 25th, 2024 at 11:44 am
fred #28, #32: Dana explained to me that it basically comes down at this point to Benny Gantz—when he’s going to man up, dissolve the wartime governing coalition, and force a new election. Polls strongly suggest that, if and when he does so, he can defeat the Netanyahu/Ben-Gvir/Smotrich extremist coalition and become the next prime minister.
So, that’s one silver lining in this terrible time.
A second silver lining is that, at the same time Gantz took over, Hamas could be nearly neutralized in Gaza—if the IDF is allowed to finish the job.
A third silver lining is that, incredibly, Israel has maintained its new and old peace treaties with Muslim countries even while being condemned by the world—perhaps because those countries understand the danger of Hamas’s fanaticism better than most, and are quietly relieved that Israel is fighting it rather than them.
As far as I can tell, the confluence of these three factors could create the best opportunity for peace in decades. Or, of course, it could be squandered like so many previous opportunities were.
Comment #36 March 25th, 2024 at 12:14 pm
A clear issue with the current war is that long-term it benefits neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis. It seems to me like it might end in a right-leaning to far-right Israel, and a vengeful population in Palestine, thus either strengthening or re-creating hamas. Hamas cannot be uprooted by means of bombing civilians, their livelihoods, their homes (more than 50% of Gaza has been razed according to the BBC, others report up to 70-80%). When the war eventually ends or calms down, and if the Palestinians are allowed to return to Gaza city, where will they go and what will they do? Their homes and workplaces do not exist anymore, the infrastructure is nonexistant, their places of worship are destroyed.
Sure besides revolution (either by change in leadership or popular uprising), the only way to get rid of Hamas is by occupation. Only this war is not an occupation, this is genocide (purposefully destroying peoples livelihoods, moving them away for an undetermined period, dropping bombs where you know civilians reside). The real way of uprooting Hamas is by a slow and well planned occupation, building by building, making sure that civilian casualties are as low as possible, while allowing food and other supplies to enter for the civilian population to survive.
Sure the past history and the Oct. 7 attack is reason enough to remove Hamas from power, but not for settlements, not for indiscriminate bombing of cities, not for a blockade that starves people to death.
On the other side, the removal on Netanyahu could be done by vote. This, however, is only somewhat likely, as authoritarian leaders tend to be sticky, especially after having been previously removed from office. We know from the ongoing judicial reforms in Israel that Netanyahu is one of those.
We can see on both sides of the conflict that the other side is being dehumanised, just as was the case between France and Germany during WW1 and WW2, this ended when both sides had the right leadership, had had enough of the fighting and had an outside guarantor for peace (the US). Similarly in this conflict it wont end until similar conditions are in place, with possibly again the US as guarantor of peace (even though politically the US has changed since WW2, and support one side too much for this to happen).
I see this event kind of like the Sept 11 attacks in the US, and their aftermath. The end result being in that case a way more right-wing and divided political landscape in the US, a bunch of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc vengeful towards the US, and that trust between countries has been irrepairably damaged. Meaning that humanity did not win in that situation.
The issue is being addressed similary in this case; people say that Hamas must be exterminated for the peace process to start, but the most important part of the peace process is to convince the people on the ground on opposing sides that peace is a good idea and can be realised, which cannot be done with guns.
Another point is that during this war when the prisoners got exchanged was when the short term ceasefire was in place. Thus not calling for a ceasefire works counter to lasting peace being established. If there is a ceasefire, there can be prisoner exchanges and humanitarian aid, and there can be steps taken on a peace process.
Some other questions to ask are, can Hamas be destroyed? Their leadership is in Qatar, their funding comes from various shady sources notably Iran, their ideas permeate society even more with every civilian casualty. What happens after the war? Last time Israel occupied Gaza then left, Hamas popped up, why would next time be different?
Continuing the war is too short sighted and does not answer all the questions on the road towards a lasting peace.
Another note is that the official 2017 Hamas charter has removed at least some bits about exterminating jews from it’s 1988 charter, however it obviously is not indicative of what the groups real purpose is. Juste like far-right and far-left parties in other countries will embellish themselves to the public, while everyone knows that they hold some extreme positions in reality. Thus I get your point that the Oct. 7 attack shows that Hamas probably has at least some elements in it that want to exterminate jews. I would not go as far as to claim that all of them want it, in large organisations all kinds of opinions get mixed, but it definitely would be the most likely place to find this opinion.
Especially I would not go as far as to say that most Palestinians want to exterminate Jews (this to me sounds like the Russians saying that Ukrainians are nazis that want to exterminate all Russians), the reality is a lot more varied, and I would bet that most Palestinians, just like you and I, want to live a peaceful and prosperous life. It is too simple to claim that most of them want to kill Jews, and simplicity always leads to the wrong choices and policy, and those lead to more conflict and loss to humanity.
However, I also understand the agitation on the Palestinian side after years of blockade in Gaza and settlements in the West Bank. For them, they lost more than half of their land in the 1940s. For them, they have been living under decades of oppression from the Israelis. No amount of war or exterminating Hamas will change their minds about their past.
I don’t care which solution is the one that is implemented in the end. I am neither anti-Zionist nor anti-Arab, or maybe I am both pro-Zionist and pro-Arab, meaning I want all the peoples on the land to coexist peacefully, whichever the name, flag or anthem of the country they live in. My only condition to a peace agreement being that it ceases the wars, the oppression, the blockades, the settlements and forceful evictions, the hate on both sides, the dehumanizing of both sides going on.
Comment #37 March 25th, 2024 at 12:38 pm
> fred #28, #32: Dana explained to me that it basically comes down at this point to Benny Gantz—when he’s going to man up, dissolve the wartime governing coalition, and force a new election. Polls strongly suggest that, if and when he does so, he can defeat the Netanyahu/Ben-Gvir/Smotrich extremist coalition and become the next prime minister.
Just to clarify, even if Gantz decides to dissolve the wartime governing coalition, that *won’t* force new elections, because Netanyahu will still have the pre-wartime government in place.
By default, the next elections are in 2026. The only way that changes is if the government “falls” via a vote of no-confidence, which would happen if iirc 5 ministers who are currently committed to the government decide to leave it and vote against it, since Netanyahu’s block has 65, and a majority is only 60 seats. Gantz adds extra seats to the government on top of this 65 but even if he leaves, those 65 remain.
So no, there is no way for anyone to force new elections, unless we manage to get some of the current people/parties in the government to quit. Unfortunately, many of them know they have lost most support, so they have extra reason to keep the current government together as much as they can.
Comment #38 March 25th, 2024 at 12:49 pm
Edan Maor #37: Oh, that’s really a shame. Well, I hope 5 ministers can be found to put in votes of no confidence. It can’t happen a day too soon.
Comment #39 March 25th, 2024 at 12:58 pm
Hi Scott. You said :
“What that formulation misses completely is that Israel, since the 1960s, has had the physical power to cause the Palestinian side to cease to exist—in a day or two, if it wanted.”
Is that really true? Say Israel actually did want to do that (genocide) and proceeded with it, what would you think the international community would do? Stand aside and let Israel commit genocide, or crush a genocidal Israel with all their might?
If it’s the former, then one might say that Israel is getting preferential treatment even if it were to commit a genocide, wouldn’t you say?
And if it’s the latter, then one might say that Israel actually does *not* have that power unless it wants to commit to suicide; meaning, you could get rid of Palestine “in a day or two” by nuking it (what’s the other way to do it, if you want to do it in “a day or two”), but that would probably hurt Israel a bit too, followed up by a forceful response from the international community.
Comment #40 March 25th, 2024 at 1:20 pm
For a while, I used to be in favor of option 1, with the cynical caveat that, basically, what it would amount to would be to give the Palestinians enough metaphorical rope to hang themselves: they’d do something bad enough that the rest of the world would give Israel their blessing to do Whatever Was Necessary to make sure it didn’t happen again, just like countries rallied around the United States after 9/11, and if Palestinian civilians happened to be collateral damage, well, too bad for them – just fucking END IT the way the Romans finally ended their problem with repeated Jewish revolts. Today, I suspect that even a nuclear explosion in the middle of Tel Aviv (that left the rest of Israel mostly intact) wouldn’t be enough for the world to let Israel go all WWII on their asses.
On a broader note, what I happen to think about options 2 and 3 is basically the same. Either could work in principle, but actually getting one of them to work requires one thing and one thing only: that the people who support the peace agreement have the will to fight and win a literal civil war against those who don’t. In the actual past, Hamas and Fatah did have a small civil war in Gaza, and Hamas won. If any kind of peace is to hold, those Palestinians who want peace will have to be willing to fight *alongside the IDF* until those who want to fight to the death rather than accept the terms of the peace agreement find that their wish has been granted. If the Palestinians that want peace aren’t willing to take up arms against those that don’t, then the only kind of peace possible would be one entirely on Israel’s terms enforced by Israeli soldiers, and Israel alone doesn’t have the moral authority or the practical capabilies to enforce a peace on its own terms without committing atrocities at least as bad as what’s happening in Gaza right now.
Oh, and by the way, for those of you concerned about Palestinian civilian casualties in the current war: there are presumably many Palestinians who “just want to live their lives” and would be perfectly happy to live them somewhere other than Palestine, but lack both the means to leave and a country to accept them. Would you be willing to have immigrants from Palestine settle in your neighborhood? Remember, in the early days of the Nazi government in Germany, they were perfectly willing to let Jews leave Germany if they wanted to, but other countries didn’t take them in.
Comment #41 March 25th, 2024 at 1:23 pm
shtetl-fan #39: Yes, if Israel nuked Gaza, that would surely lead to the US and the rest of the world, at a bare minimum, cutting off relations and turning Israel into a North-Korea-like hermit state. And that’s surely one of many reasons why even the most far-right ministers in Israel don’t want to do that (other reasons being that it’s morally monstrous and batshit crazy, and also the radiation).
But here’s a hypothetical that I notice you never even considered: if Hamas had a nuclear weapon, would they hesitate for one nanosecond to use it against Tel Aviv? Would they be deterred by the world’s condemnation of them? Of course they wouldn’t!
Why is that? You could describe it as Hamas simply not caring—what’s the world’s condemnation compared to infinite rewards promised by Allah? But you could also describe it thus: anyone who’d condemn Hamas for its barbarity in nuking Israel, has already condemned it for its barbarity, while anyone who supports Hamas today, would still support it in nuking Tel Aviv—indeed, with “exhilaration,” as that pro-Hamas Cornell professor put it. So Hamas has a perfectly rational reason to disregard the world’s opinions of its actions.
This asymmetry seems crucial to me, and is what makes the whole conflict (for all its complexity) about as far as can be from a tit-for-tat between two morally interchangeable sides.
Comment #42 March 25th, 2024 at 1:25 pm
@39: Honestly? Israel might get sanctioned and put on the Bad Guys list next to North Korea, but that’s probably the worst that would happen. Nobody is going to take military action against a state with nuclear weapons. Russia is getting away with its invasion of Ukraine, China is getting away with what it’s doing to the Uigurs, Assad in Syria is still in power, North Korea still exists, Saddam repeatedly used chemical weapons against rebels, there are mass murders in Sudan, the Taliban are back in power, and so on.
Comment #43 March 25th, 2024 at 1:30 pm
@41: Great answer, Scott.
Comment #44 March 25th, 2024 at 1:31 pm
Amy #29
“Of course, one of my friends has called me a genocide supporter, so I guess there’s that.”
If only there was just that…
The other elephant in the room is that it’s not just Israeli’s democracy that’s being immensely affected by the consequences of October 7th and the current war.
It’s clear the events will play a significant role in getting Trump re-elected… the irony is that any US president would be unable to please both sides at once, and Biden is the one in this uncomfortable place at the moment, and, given the Dem’s insistence to stick with Biden for 2024, the Hamas-Israel war could be the tipping factor in the election.
The second irony of course is that Trump is the biggest supporter of a far-right Israel (the fact he turned somewhat on Netanyahu lately is because of an ego pissing contest between the two).
A compelling prediction on how Trump will dismantle US democracy, if re-elected:
So, yea, Hamas even managed to play a significant part in bringing down the US republic.
Comment #45 March 25th, 2024 at 1:59 pm
“Is that really true? Say Israel actually did want to do that (genocide) and proceeded with it, what would you think the international community would do? Stand aside and let Israel commit genocide, or crush a genocidal Israel with all their might? ”
It will do nothing. The same way as it do nothing with Russia now.
I’m shocked how many comments here are about Israel is guilty becouse of it existence. Israel didn’t have right to exist. But Palestine somehow has all rights for there state “from river to sea”…
And some russian Sergei Masis even says jews should live at sea or something … well actually, Russia is biggest colonial empire today, assimilating 100s of peoples and etnicises so I’m not surprised by his great idea
Comment #46 March 25th, 2024 at 2:13 pm
Scott, as someone two degrees of blog-separation from Brett Deveraux (via ACX), I wonder if you’ve ever read what he’s written on the subject. He’s certainly not the kind of person who thinks Israel should cease to exist, but he also definitely has some clear objections to how they’re carrying out this particular war.
Comment #47 March 25th, 2024 at 2:15 pm
Scott #35
“A second silver lining is that, at the same time Gantz took over, Hamas could be nearly neutralized in Gaza—if the IDF is allowed to finish the job.”
That sounds like having your cake and eating it too.
If the IDF is allowed to finish the job, Bibi will naturally get all the credit for it!
When a crisis like 9/11 happens, even if the guys in charge were clearly partly responsible for it through their incompetence, once a strong response is initiated the population just got along and trusted them, because noone wants change and more uncertainty in such situation. To everyone’s surprise, Bush got re-elected in 2004, three years after looking like a total bumbling idiot on 9/11 (then looking again like an idiot with his “mission accomplished” BS) and a year after the invasion of Iraq…
Comment #48 March 25th, 2024 at 2:16 pm
Doug S. #40: Oct 7 marked a turning point for me in precisely the same way! Before, I just wanted Israel to extricate itself from the West Bank as quickly as possible, unilaterally if needed—trusting to the crucial assumption that, if the new sovereign state of Palestine were foolish enough to launch another war against Israel, the world would then finally see that Israel was justified in crushing them, and that this was never about settlements at all, but only about Israel’s existence. But Oct 7 made it clear that there’s absolutely nothing that the Palestinian side could possibly do—including sending Israel’s Jews to brand-new gas chambers and crematoria—that would cause the far-left and the “human rights” organizations to concede that Israel was ever justified in any form of self-defense. And that changes the calculus.
Comment #49 March 25th, 2024 at 2:23 pm
4gravitons #46: No, I haven’t read him but will take a look.
Comment #50 March 25th, 2024 at 2:38 pm
My ideal solution to the Arab-Iraeli conflict would be relocation of millions of American Jews to (from the river to the sea) Israel. The same number of Palestinian Arabs would move to US with generous financial support from the Gulf states. The Arabs would love it and the problem of growing US anti-Semitism would be solved.
Comment #51 March 25th, 2024 at 2:42 pm
I also have a very cynical outlook on Iran and nuclear weapons. I do believe that the United States can live with an Iran that has nuclear weapons the same way it lives with Russia, Pakistan, China, and North Korea having nuclear weapons. On the other hand, I do not know if Israel can survive an Iran with nuclear weapons. Nuclear deterrence only works if both sides prefer mutual coexistence to mutual annihilation, and given the Islamic belief in martyrdom, I honestly don’t know if the current or any future leadership of Iran would decide that, well, if Israel nukes us back we all go to Heaven anyway so we might as well strike first.
I am now going to prove that nobody should trust me with the power to order a nuclear strike. If I were in Isreal’s position, I would immediately make the rational calculation that living as international pariah the way North Korea does is better than being turned into a pile of radioactive ash, and publically declare that Israel will consider Iran enriching uranium to near-weapons grade to be a declaration of an intent to launch a nuclear first strike on Israel, and issue an ultimatum that if Iran does not either cease enrichment or reassure us of their intent to continue to co-exist with us by immediately beginning to negotiate a peace treaty in Jerusalem, we will have no choice but to launch a nuclear first strike of our own on [deadline] as we have no other weapons capable of stopping Iran’s nucleae program. To prove we are serious, in one week, if we have not received an answer, we will demonstrate our nuclear capability by detonating a nuclear device over the open ocean.
Then, when they predictably refuse, I would order a nuclear strike on Iran and let the consequences fall where they may.
You play with nuclear fire, you get burned.
Comment #52 March 25th, 2024 at 3:28 pm
I agree with you in principle, but is victory in Gaza possible for Israel, given the constraints it must operate under? And if victory is possible, is Israel’s current strategy conducive to victory? I’m not sure about the answer to either question.
I worry that actually destroying Hamas and preventing it from reforming would require an occupation that Israel might not have the manpower, money, political will, or international support to carry out. There isn’t much precedent for success in situations like this. (The one “successful” example I can think of is Russia in Chechnya but given how brutal that war was, I fear that it’s the exception that proves the rule.)
I also worry that Netanyahu’s government is not pursuing victory effectively. The fact that Gaza and the West Bank have a large and growing population of Palestinians which aren’t ever going to leave (short of a war with Egypt and Jordan) is something not everyone in his government appears to accept, and this denial is incompatible with good strategy.
Comment #53 March 25th, 2024 at 3:34 pm
Faibsz #50: What a superb idea! To implement your plan, all you’ll need to do is
(1) get millions of Palestinians to agree to exchange their “river to the sea” dream for the Delaware River or Lake Michigan,
(2) get the US to agree to accept millions of Palestinian refugees,
(3) get millions of American Jews to agree to live in the West Bank and Gaza instead of Beverly Hills or the Upper West Side, and then
(4) get the Israelis to agree to live next to millions of out-of-shape, English-speaking American Jews.
Comment #54 March 25th, 2024 at 3:39 pm
If I ruled the world, I would have to try to do something about the situation, and given enough resources and authority, I would propose establishing refugee camps in the West Bank, and call for a halt in the fighting to allow refugees from Gaza to be transported to those camps (where they would have housing, food and medical support), without weapons or explosives, under the control and protection of UN peace-keeping forces. After some period to be determined, the cease-fire would then end, and the Israeli and remaining Gaza forces could fight to the finish.
Probably that plan wouldn’t work either, but it is the best I can think of right now.
The only thing I have actually done is pick a Gaza-involved charity at Charity Navigator and donate to it. I’ll be voting Democrat (as an Independent) in the coming elections, not that I think they’ve done a great job on this issue, but Trump would be worse. I don’t use social media, so this is probably the only place I’ll make any public comments on the mess. (As in, “If it ain’t, it’ll do until the mess gets here.”–Tommy Lee Jones character in “No Country for Old Men”.)
Comment #55 March 25th, 2024 at 3:41 pm
Scott, I think your proposed solution requires some justification as to why it’s not equally unrealistic and idealistic to those who propose the Israeli Jews somehow go back where they came from. You point out that the Palestinians are aggressively indoctrinated into hating Jews and have a strong ideology of the glory of martyrdom instilled from a young age. Yet your solution involves somehow magically the Palestinians implementing a peace-loving liberal leadership with which Israel will suddenly be able to negotiate. How will that come about? Or, how is it more reasonable to propose this as a solution than it is to say, “Jews should go back where they came from (or go somewhere new like the states) and expect not to be persecuted anymore”? In both cases it seems the solution relies on antisemitism magically disappearing, but in the anti-Zionist solution at least there is the argument that there is considerably less hatred of Jews in most other places than there is among Palestinians. Isn’t your solution a pie-in-the-sky too?
Comment #56 March 25th, 2024 at 3:54 pm
Edan Maor #37, the coalition lost 4 MKs today with Saar’s withdrawal. Tomorrow’s draft bill will give more members an excuse to bolt. They say torah magna umatzla and the draft bill might actually save us from Bibi.
Comment #57 March 25th, 2024 at 4:00 pm
Karen Morenz Korol #55: Aha! The key property of the two-state solution is that it can start while the Palestinian side still nurses a lot of hatred for Jews (and for that matter, while the Israeli side nurses a lot of hatred for Palestinians). The Palestinians just have to, as Golda Meir famously put it, “love their children more than they hate us”—to accept a state in the West Bank and Gaza as their best viable option. The pie-in-the-sky stuff about liberal democracy and trade and so forth can happen later (and, ironically, would make the two-state solution largely superfluous once it did happen). In a sense, we know the two-state solution isn’t pie-in-the-sky because it repeatedly came close to happening, and plausibly would have happened, had (say) Rabin not been assassinated, or had the Grand Mufti or Yasser Arafat been swapped out for different individuals.
Comment #58 March 25th, 2024 at 4:14 pm
Scott #57 – but isn’t that kind of what they already did when Israel left Gaza in the early 2000s? Why will it be different now?
Comment #59 March 25th, 2024 at 5:02 pm
Scott #7: one way to answer your survival concern is that if you’d allow this level of aggression for every minority fight for self determination, the world will become a very dangerous place. There must be other way for everybody to live without ethnically cleansing a land, devoting half your budget to military and playing the superpower game with nuclear heads on submarines. The credit to behave this way was given to the Jewish state for the Holocaust and it is running out.
Another answer is that I’m tired hating, being hated, living in fear and machoism. I don’t want my children to grow into this circle of violence, learn how to contain a conflict, how to attack first, how to see the signs. How to lose friends. Why the whole western world deserves to live in the xxi century and I’m stuck with the middle ages? Does it make any sense that only the Jews have to fight so hard for their survival but not other minorities?
I don’t buy this speech of Israel is preventing the next Holocaust. Israel is a post traumatic response for the previous one. The brave dies once and the coward dies every day. I want to live my life not to spend it in a constant survival mode.
Comment #60 March 25th, 2024 at 5:11 pm
Karen #58: Your question is indeed a question. 🙂
With Gaza, immediately after Sharon evacuated the settlements, Dubya pushed for there to be elections, because he liked the idea of spreading democracy. Hamas won the most seats, as mentioned partly by pushing its opponents off of tall buildings, then assumed complete dictatorial power and hasn’t allowed another election since.
So, with the benefit of hindsight, one would … do it differently the next time? 😀 Like, make sure that a peace agreement with Israel is ironed out and the basic institutions of civil society are in place before handing over the keys, even if that might temporarily look like the dreaded “colonialism.”
Comment #61 March 25th, 2024 at 5:13 pm
Scott, I am certain you mean well, but I think your letter needs to be addressed neither to Twitter posters nor to the readers of this blog, for the majority of whom the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is simply a proxy for whatever politico-ideological position they espouse. Shouldn’t you be writing to Palestinians? Shouldn’t you reach out to Palestinians either in the United States or the Gaza Strip themselves? Aren’t they the only people who can answer your questions in any kind of productive manner?
Comment #62 March 25th, 2024 at 5:15 pm
Scott,
I’ve stayed a step away from local AZ activism essentially on trust of your word (and a handful of others). The more I consider the issue, the more AZ I seem to lean, so I appreciate your update. To me, a couple of AZ points are left unanswered, and I’m curious about your thoughts (I presume these are shared on the left, they’re the main arguments popularized from LWT and SomeMoreNews).
The war is more lethal to civilians than… any modern war? I was under the impression this holds true even if you accept strict criteria for who civilians are. This extends to the heinous examples of hospital & church attacks, and clearly unarmed children getting killed. I can’t imagine sufficient evidence that would justify the anecdotes, and I have a hard time explaining them with anything besides “Israel wants to do a genocide.” Do these numbers look bad to you? Do you have a lens on the anecdotes?
Somewhat related – it appears that evacuation orders and what aid Israel does provide are constantly mismanaged (at best) or malicious (at worst)? Things like evacuatees ending up dead at similar rates to those who stay, or shootings where aid is provided. I assume this relates to your comment about ‘IDF self preservation’, but I don’t understand why the IDF should be anywhere near this at any scale.
The IDF appears to be killing journalists beyond the expected background rate? Perhaps journalism isn’t a well gate-kept field, or there are lose definitions being applied… but I don’t see that claimed. The IDF seems to have fired on journalists several times, and has not visibly changed policy or held its soldiers responsible? I find it difficult to sympathize with intentional attacks against the press, seems like something I should oppose on principle.
The war is so destructive to infrastructure… can there be peace after? If Gaza is left as unlivable, how can solution (2) happen? Israel has destroyed a lot of property, already controls much key infrastructure, and last I heard is seizing farmland. If we can’t remove Hamas while leaving gaza livable, then I don’t see what the war is accomplishing.
These make me lean towards demanding a ceasefire, and denying weapons to Israel until it happens – these are the primary asks in my college/town (and how I understand the protests that I see).
To address your core question. I don’t think the war is impossible in principle – if Hamas requires a war, I don’t see what stops a legal, international effort (or just a better run version of today). Until that war can be performed without so many extra war crimes, I think I can ask for a ceasefire with a relatively clean conscience?
Comment #63 March 25th, 2024 at 5:30 pm
Scott P. #61: It seems unlikely to me that someone who’s directly immersed in either side of this conflict wants to read my opinions about it. I’m not an expert … and that’s exactly why I addressed my letter to people who I’m pretty confident are even less expert than I am. I can teach math to my kids for many years without hitting the limits of what I know, but I wouldn’t try to teach math to Andrew Wiles.
Having said that, I do semi-regularly discuss the conflict with my Iranian friends, who (unsurprisingly) tend to have a different perspective than me, but who I’d love to have as negotiators for the Palestinian side in place of who’s actually there! And of course, this blog is out there, and anyone of any background who has an Internet connection and something to say to me can (and does) reach out.
Comment #64 March 25th, 2024 at 5:32 pm
@62: The other explanation for so many civilians getting killed is that Hamas has been using them as human shields, trying to make it impossible for Israel to fight them without *looking* like they were trying to commit a genocide. Mixing civilian and military infrastructure by doing things like building a military base under a civilian hospital is itself a war crime.
Comment #65 March 25th, 2024 at 5:57 pm
Sergei Masis,
You are welcome to live in Germany or anywhere you desire, nothing wrong with that. But, shitting on everyone left behind, most of whom don’t have anywhere else to go (as you well know), nor do they have any moral obligation to abandon their homes and uproot themselves, that’s frankly disgusting.
Comment #66 March 25th, 2024 at 6:30 pm
Vanessa #65 : privet 🙂 anybody else from our class here i wonder?
You were like 5 times smarter than me, don’t you have options?
Anyway – did not intend to shit on anybody, read again, still don’t see. What offended you?
You don’t have to uproot, from your home, but do have to accept the individual right of return of the Palestinians to theirs. E.g. http://www.alandforall.org
Comment #67 March 25th, 2024 at 6:42 pm
Yet another Scott #62, I expect there’s many accidents and errors made in a campaign of this scale. That said I haven’t seen evidence of IDF policy targeting civilians. The specific incidents usually seem innocuous but exaggerated. For example last week Al Jazeera and Turning Points made a big deal about journalists killed after flying a drone, but anyone flying a drone in a modern war zone is a legitimate target, and the IDF released evidence showing that at least one of the journalists seems to be on an Islamic Jihad roster. I can’t rebut every piece of misleading news in this comment but most of the reports of specific atrocities I’ve seen have turned out to be ambiguous, misleading, or downright false (like Al Jazeera’s top story yesterday, about IDF rapes at Shifa, has now been deleted and its writer tweeted that his source lied to him).
Idk on what basis you call this the highest civilian death toll. The ongoing civil wars in Syria and Yemen have each killed multiples of the death toll of all the wars of the century-long Israeli-Arab conflict combined.
Gaza also has some unique factors which should increase its civilian death toll: its Hamas government avowedly takes no measures to protect its own civilians; rather than cooperate with efforts to evacuate civilians as even ISIS sometimes did, Hamas encourages civilians to remain after receiving Israeli evacuation warnings; and no country is willing to accept refugees. Lastly, the Palestinian health ministry has a history of lying about casualty counts. It claimed 900 civilians were massacred in the Battle of Jenin in 2002, but the UN and NGOs found that 50 people had died and a majority were combatants. More recently, watch the nighttime Health Ministry press conference about the “Al Ahli hospital bombing,” and check out the footage of the aftermath at dawn a few hours later. They staged the most dramatic press conference I’ve ever seen, literally holding corpses, and claimed hundreds dead (they later settled on 471) and hundreds missing under rubble in a bombed hospital which turned out to be a half dozen burnt cars near a rocket crater in a small parking lot. (That’s not to minimize the tragedy that real families were killed there, but 20 or 50 isn’t 471, and there was no rubble in sight.)
Something to consider: every time the IDF updates the number of airstrikes, compare it to the number of deaths reported by the Gazan health ministry. So far the airstrike count has been higher than the reported death toll at every juncture. That means that even if you ascribe all Gazan deaths to airstrikes and none to ground forces, the average airstrike kills fewer than one person, including both combatants and civilians. This indicates that at least the air force’s targeting cells are taking measures to reduce fatalities, probably even letting combatants escape to avoid collateral deaths.
Comment #68 March 25th, 2024 at 6:43 pm
@64: I once found the ‘human shields’ argument convincing, but it seems increasing implausible? My understanding from the reporting is that several already-destroyed hospitals had no military use, yet were put to rubble just the same. Likewise, I don’t see how this justifies the anecdata – the unarmed people getting shot in alleged safe zones, or in perfectly reasonable shelters. Especially when so many people are evacuees, it is hard to blame anyone but Israel for their location.
I don’t dispute, or hear anyone disputing, that Hamas uses some hospitals as bases of operation – but they don’t seem to be using all of them? And I would expect very strong evidence to justify each attack against one.
Comment #69 March 25th, 2024 at 6:45 pm
“I want to see the IDF do more to protect Gazan civilians”
As a reserve soldier, I will only say that while we don’t do everything he humanly possible to protect them, we really put quite a lot of effort into it, and there are a lot processes trying to mitigate some of the damage. However, no matter what we do, war is and will forever remain hell.
Comment #70 March 25th, 2024 at 6:49 pm
Thanks for the honest and well-thought-out post Scott. You previously wrote that October 7th radicalized you, so I was expecting to find more to disagree with here, but honestly nothing you wrote here seems that radical to me, just strongly felt.
For whatever it’s worth to add my own perspective, I don’t consider myself either a Zionist or anti-Zionist, I’m probably more closely aligned with Art Spiegelman’s perspective of “a-Zionism”, with Israel as something of an honorable but tragic mistake. Still, it exists, and the millions of people who call it home have as much right as any other people to protect themselves from harm, peacefully at every possible effort, but at last resort by violence. Israel is far from blameless in this conflict, and Netanyahu in particular has earned his share of culpability. However Israel is by far the side with the stronger commitment to pluralistic Enlightenment values, and carries the balance for me so long and insofar as that remains true.
Mostly though, I try to stay out of it, with this comment as a rare exception. The fighting is on the other side of the world from me, and I can see no easy route to peace that doesn’t involve a large dose of wishful thinking and significant chance of derailment. Perhaps my inaction and attempted indifference is the cowardly and callous route, but I have very little confidence that anything I can do would even be directionally helpful, so perhaps I can only do no harm.
Comment #71 March 25th, 2024 at 7:09 pm
Your charity is commendable, though perhaps ineffectually generous for this topic. I’m an Arab immigrant who had no opinion on Israel-Palestine until I started reading about it after October 7th. I wrote about how Wikipedia radicalized me to be firmly on Israel’s side, plus a follow-up post where I discuss the dynamics of the discourse:
https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/the-jewish-conspiracy-to-change-my
https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/follow-up-on-that-jewish-conspiracy
There’s undoubtedly a segment of genuine anti-Zionists who are willing to engage with your questions (as the comments amply demonstrate) but the sad reality is that a serious portion just lack basic knowledge about the conflict. Protestors asked elementary questions about *which* river and *which* sea they wanted to Magic Eraser didn’t know how to respond: https://archive.is/zfHIx
That revelation is hopeful at least, because it helps us realize protestors asking to “globalize the intifada!” are just ignorant, rather than homicidal.
Comment #72 March 25th, 2024 at 10:20 pm
Yovel #69: Thank you for your service and yasher koach. I don’t doubt for a nanosecond that you put a lot of effort into protecting civilians, nor do I doubt that war (in general, and this one specifically) is hell regardless.
What I’ve found especially painful is to see video after video of IDF soldiers mistreating civilians going viral on Twitter, even while I fully understand—from countless other controversies in my life—just how trivial it is for a motivated ideologue to fabricate any narrative they want by cherrypicking examples. And that’s why I resolved, in this post, not to play the dreadful game of “outrageous incident vs. outrageous incident,” but to step back and focus exclusively on the broader questions: what does each side want? how is it pursuing its goals? what would it do if given unlimited power? what might it be willing to settle for? As soon as you ask those questions honestly, the case for the fundamental justice of Israel’s self-defense (if not for everything Israel does) seems to me to become basically impossible to refute.
Comment #73 March 25th, 2024 at 10:33 pm
This is an interesting and provocative post. I am an American of Jewish ethnicity. I strongly condemn the Hamas attacks. I also would describe myself as anti-Zionist. I’ll accede to your request/demand that anti-Zionists give a solution to the problem. I think you give a pretty good description of the shape of possible solutions, and you present many valid objections.
Let me first say that I think the problem is a hard one, and any solution will involve great difficulties; otherwise, it likely would have been solved by now. So the standard should not be that there are zero challenges. You seem to favor the two-state solution, which also seems to be the preferred solution, at least in the “mainstream”, in the US and Europe. To think this viable, you have to believe that Palestinians will be willing to put aside the “right of return”. I think this a fundamental mistake — it goes directly against what most Palestinians say is of highest importance to them. There have been times in the (receding) past when an agreement for two-state solution has perhaps seemed close. But I think that was largely illusory, because of the magnitude of the right of return issue. There might be some Palestinians who are willing to give up the right of return. But even were it 80% (and I imagine it’s much less) with the remainder violently opposed, there could not be peace.
Your solution (4), EVACUATION OF THE JEWS FROM ISRAEL, is the way forward. I praise you for writing soberly about this option. I think most Zionists won’t even consider it, as a consequence of their view that “Israel has the right to exist”. I believe it is wrong to think that states, in contrast to people, have inherent rights. Your objection seems to be more practical; you cite the need to rely on charity of Americans (or Brits or Australians). As an American, I’ll give a concrete proposal of what we could do. We offer Israel to absorb its entire Jewish population (and perhaps Israeli Arabs, Druze, etc) over a period of say 5 years. We commit to spending a substantial amount of money on helping to settle people, say $20 billion/year over that period, and then tapering down to say $5 billion/year indefinitely. The latter is about what we already spend on military aid to Israel. The $100 billion in the first 5 is substantial, but it’s an order of magnitude less than we spent on COVID-19 relief, and on the order of what we spend on food stamps for the poor every single year. That $100 billion amounts to about $14,000 dollars per Israeli Jew.
Now I’m not pretending that moving 7 million people is easy. Of course it’s very disruptive. But these are basically ideal conditions for moving that number of people. We’d have a large, very rich country doing the absorbing, and Americans tend to think well of Israelis. The average age of Israelis is 29, which means that there’d be a lot of kids to educate, but not so much expensive senior care. A lot of the Israeli economy is tech, and so it would be possible (though of course difficult) to relocate much of it. Israelis tend to be well-educated, and would have an easier time finding jobs than many immigrants to the US. America already has around as many Jews as Israeli does, and there are many close ties between Jews in the two countries. A lot of Israelis already strive to come to the US, some overstaying their tourist visas.
Immigration has positive and negative effects on the host country, but I think in this case Americans would be willing to go for it. It hasn’t been seriously proposed, so it’s hard to know. Perhaps we should have done this in the 1930’s and definitely in 1945. But better late than never.
In my proposal, all of the real estate in Israel would be given to the Palestinians. So there would be a significant loss of assets of the Israeli Jews. But given their other capital, both financial and human, and with the assistance described above, I think the people would eventually thrive in the US. In return they would be free of the malignant moral disease concomitant with keeping Palestinians in various cages indefinitely (and also free of the large military cost of doing this). Crucially, unlike the other proposals, this is a “land for peace” plan with the peace part guaranteed. It’s not contingent on internal Palestinian politics, or the appearance of some Palestinian Mandela, or what have you.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Israelis would agree to this, perhaps understandably. But I think the US should give Israel a choice between it, and cutting off all aid and support of Israel. As an American, I think this is the just way forward: we do not abandon the Jews there, but also respect the rights of the displaced Arabs.
Comment #74 March 25th, 2024 at 10:39 pm
For those people who say that Palestinian terrorists can’t be defeated by war, remind them of what Sri Lanka did to the Tamil Tigers in 2009: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Sri_Lankan_Army_Northern_offensive
Not coincidentally, Tamil supporters around the world were also calling for ceasefires as the Sri Lankan government utterly destroyed the terrorists.
As for X, you are making a category error. People on X are not your interlocutors whom you will sway through facts and logic. They are enemies to be fought with hate and vitriol. When someone calls Israel Nazis, ask them what they thought would happen to them when they attacked a “Nazi” state. When they show pictures of dead, wounded, and starving children, ask them what the parents of those children were thinking when they decided to let Palestinian terrorists attack Israel using their home as a base. When they show watermelon slices, say that the seeds represent dead Palestinian terrorists, the red flesh the blood of the dead civilians they were hiding behind, and the rind the walls that will separate Palestinians from humans. When they talk about the Nakba, remind them that Israel exists as it does now, history has no undo buttons, and that Palestinians will never be allowed to move to Israel. Never apologize. Never equivocate. Stand behind Israel, and tell your X enemies that they will stop dying only when the Palestinian terrorists unconditionally surrender.
If nothing else, trolling is fun.
Comment #75 March 25th, 2024 at 10:47 pm
Yassine Meskhout #71: By a crazy coincidence, I became aware of you just last week, through your funny and brilliant essay My Clients, the Liars. I shared the essay on Facebook, and promptly lost a Facebook friend over it—they thought it was “punching down” and therefore offensive, or something.
Having now read your two brilliant and unsparing essays on Israel/Palestine, I feel like I’d be completely fine to lose 100 more Facebook friends over sharing your stuff! Indeed—let me blurt it out—I haven’t had quite the same sense of meeting a kindred blog-spirit, someone who articulates what I wanted to say better than I’d have, since I encountered Scott Alexander a decade ago (and quickly realized that I could only ever be the second-best American-Jewish, 1980s-born Scott A. of rationalist-adjacent blogging).
In your Israel/Palestine essays, you make reaching all the right conclusions—both your indictments of the Israeli side, and your larger indictment of the Palestinian side—seem trivial, just a matter of binge-reading Wikipedia and thinking clearly and posing moral hypotheticals and rejecting obfuscatory answers. You make it seem so easy, in fact, that one easily forgets that you had to renounce a large part of your own upbringing to reach these “obvious” conclusions, and that only a tiny number of us (whatever our backgrounds) ever manage to do the same.
Again and again I’ve asked myself: given, y’know, the accident of my having been born a Jew, isn’t it too convenient that my reason finds the Israeli side to have a stronger case like 85% of the time? But then no matter how much I read and reflect, I can’t bend my reason to reach a fundamentally different place than the one I set out in this post. At least, I tell myself, there are countless others of my background who became either anti-Zionist “AsAJews” or else far-right ultra-Zionists, so I guess I had to do something nontrivial to avoid those outcomes.
Anyway, mad respect, and you’ve gained yourself a loyal reader for years to come.
Comment #76 March 25th, 2024 at 10:52 pm
Professor, I am a long time lurker, first time commenter. I agree, strongly, with everything in your post. I have no special fetish for Jewishness, but I agree that the outsized influence Jews have played in the arts and in science is something to be celebrated, studied, emulated, etc. Something like 90% of my intellectual heroes were/are Jewish.
I used to teach at a large university. The first few courses I taught, I stressed myself out while reading student feedback forms. It was hard to see that people didn’t like me. But one day I thought to myself “Not everyone is going to be a fan.” And that became my credo. I have to do what I think is right, live my life the best I can and not worry about running for office or sharing the good news. Israelis too seem to have learned, long ago, that not everyone is going to be a fan. Being liked, especially by the masses, should be at best an n’th order concern.
The only thing surprising, to me at least, about the post-Oct7 airing of classic antisemitism, is how surprised some people were by it. Even the most blinkered Gentile has had to be stubbornly, athletically oblivious to not notice the strong undercurrent that was there all along.
Comment #77 March 25th, 2024 at 10:59 pm
bringEmAllHere #73: You posit that, even if only 20% of Palestinians continued to insist on the right of return, the two-state solution would still be doomed.
But then you never apply the same argument to your preferred evacuation plan! So let’s do so right now:
Suppose that only 20% of Israeli Jews were totally unwilling to move, to the US or anywhere else. Like their forebears at Masada, they’d rather fight to the death in Israel, commandeering any IDF weapons they could possibly get their hands on, including the thermonuclear ones if possible. Do you expect the outcome to be good for anyone in the region?
And does this not make the much-maligned two-state solution seem a little less bad by comparison? 🙂
Comment #78 March 25th, 2024 at 11:03 pm
Hyman Rosen #74: Err, thanks but no thanks. Given the shockingly thoughtful and civil responses from all sides that this post has gotten—at least so far!—I think I’ll continue with good-faith engagement rather than trolling.
Comment #79 March 25th, 2024 at 11:07 pm
Dear Scott, thanks for this. I am so used to see the memetic warfare and distortions that your post is like a breath of fresh air. I hope it will be a reference point not just for me, but for everyone who want think about the problem seriously.
I’m wondering – have you ever witnessed how someone on the internet got convinced by arguments like yours? I hope that closeness to truth on the abstract level makes arguments more convincing, but it’s really hard to tell.
Comment #80 March 25th, 2024 at 11:14 pm
Oleg S #79: Scroll through this comment section! You’ll find multiple commenters claiming this post caused them to think about the conflict differently, which is beyond anything I expected for it. If so, though, I wouldn’t be sure how to replicate that ‘success’ (such as it is). In my experience, the two Final Bosses of Internet Discourse, on which reasonable consensus seems to remain forever elusive and bad-faith actors reign supreme, are
(1) feminism/dating/incels and
(2) Israel/Palestine.
Comment #81 March 26th, 2024 at 2:59 am
Yet another Scott #68:
I think most of the “anecdotes” you hear from the fighting and, depending on where you’re reading, also much of the *reporting* you hear is simply false. It’s either a deliberate lie, or a non-deliberate obfuscation of reality. Any war will be hell – and in almost any war, you can post a daily picture of a horrible tragedy that befell civilians. The question isn’t whether war is hell – it’s whether this one is specifically worse, for non-legit reasons. And as far as I can tell, it isn’t – most of the reasons things seem bad is because Hamas is acting in a way that disregards its own civilians, which is just not what most “governments” ever do.
Let me take two examples from your posts to show that I think you are simply misinformed, in a way that I think reflects that the “facts” you think are true are simply not:
> My understanding from the reporting is that several already-destroyed hospitals had no military use, yet were put to rubble just the same.
Ok – which hospital was “put to rubble”? Because despite what lots of people think or what some reporting implies – Israel hasn’t bombed any hospital and definitely hasn’t “put to rubble” any hospital. It has bombed *near* hospitals and has surrounded and besieged hospitals.
And if you think there’s no reason to do that – just look at the current siege of al-Shifa hospital, in which hundreds of Hamas militants were arrested. Hamas *knows* that Israel gets condenmed for using hospitals, so they cynically hide in hospitals hoping to escape from the IDF.
> The IDF appears to be killing journalists beyond the expected background rate?
Your contention, and one often repeated, is that the IDF targets journalists, and as proof it is often said that more journalists have died in this war than in any other conflict.
Except that in most of the cases, these journalists died as civilians, not journalists. This fact is often either ommitted or obfuscated. The comparison is between journalists killed “while on duty” in other conflicts vs. just any journalist killed in this war, which makes the count seem very skewed and implies that Israel targets journalists specifically, which is not at all proven by this.
My point doesn’t prove the Israel *doesn’t* target journalists, of course – only that the statistic that you are basing your information on is wrong, and (I contend) is specifically a lie meant to make Israel seem worse.
> The war is more lethal to civilians than… any modern war? I was under the impression this holds true even if you accept strict criteria for who civilians are.
Ok I just can’t let this one go. This is… not at all factual. It depends on what you mean here, but in actual numbers, many modern conflicts have killed orders of magnitude more civilians.
Comment #82 March 26th, 2024 at 7:01 am
Contrapoint’s video about similar body dysmorphia in the trans and incel communities is a classic, and I think it had a good influence. I don’t know of anything else as good.
Comment #83 March 26th, 2024 at 8:27 am
Scott,
Two huge elephants in the room here.
1) Twitter (and other social media). What you see there is not the society. It’s what their rules (I refuse to call them “algorithms” and probably as a theoretical computer scientist you agree) feed you. Those rules have only one goal: keep you stuck in front of the stream of posts, whatever-it-takes. Do not delude yourself to be engaging in conversation, learning things or anything. You are simply being glued to the screens by the “rules”, so that your eyeballs can be sold to advertisers. I understand your dilemma (especially knowing the history of your feminism reading), but the solution is only to quit. I did, I completely deleted all my accounts anywhere.
2) Israel. Well, as a non-anti-Zionist and non-twitter-person your letter is obviously not directed at me, but I will respond anyway, because I think I have an extremely important thing to say, which continues to be ignored because, well, because it has not caught on twitter or youtube. What is my solution to this problem depends on when we are in history: the solution in 1930 would not be the same as the one in 1967 which would not be the same today. Speaking of recent times, I totally agree with you if it were October 5 or 6th. But let me jump to today, or better the close future. Assume the Israeli military has defeated Hamas, and freed the remaining hostages. Gaza is just a civil population and no militants. I believe this is already a stretch of what could happen, but let’s assume it does. Now what? How do we achieve peace? I argue that a peaceful solution has become impossible for the next at least 30 year, perhaps 50. Why? Well, all that civilian population, displaced, orphaned, with their homes destroyed? Do you think they will now happily embrace Israel as their savior from the bad guys in Hamas? No, they will simply call this event Nabka v2 and hate the Jews even more. This war has been particularly hard on kids in their tween or teen years, and they do not have the intellectual possibility to see it as a just war, so in 5 years (when these kids will be in their 20s) a new Hamas-like militant organization will rise and things will continue for the worse.
You have to admit that both Hamas and twitter are quite cunning. They convinced us of doing things that are very bad, basically leaving us no option. I mean, the right response to October 7th? Imagine if a mob from Austin went to Dallas and killed hundreds of people in a mass shooting at a mall or something, but instead of the typical after-shooting-suicide, they manage to escape and go back to Austin and mingle with the population without leaving traces about who exactly they are. Should the Dallas police go to Austin and raid every house, destroy many of them, and kill many innocent people in the process of finding the perpetrators? I know the comparison is imperfect, but still you get the idea. Hamas knew that the response would have been war (especially given the far-right government in Israel right now). And war was exactly what they wanted, and Israel gave it to them. In my opinion, the better response would have been to advertize what happened on October 7th to the Gaza population, and asking THEM for a revolt against Hamas. Offering reward for hostage liberation AND perpetrator capture (so perpetrators themselves not being eligible). Tough sell, I know, but the only road to peace is to stop the spiral of escalation.
On the other topic, I mean, you could ditch twitter, but you don’t, instead you stay attached there (and most people doing that became radicalized, and we get the horrible society we’ve got today).
So we’re doomed, and are doing exactly the reverse or what we should be doing (both on twitter and on war on Gaza), basically giving the other part (the “rules” on twitter and Hamas on Gaza) control of our actions
Comment #84 March 26th, 2024 at 8:40 am
If you are “crushed by the weight of the world’s injustice”, you might be too much entangled with the world. If I understand you right, you managed to disentangle from radical feminist literature and are now beginning to do that with Twitter. Good! Treat xkcd 386 as mental health advice – even when the person being wrong on the Internet is Paul Graham.
Naively pushing the Internet with metaphors like the Global Village may be the great mistake of my generation. Sure, Twitter is some kind of communication – but who communicates with whom? The person who replies with the original poster? I think this is now the exception.
Comment #85 March 26th, 2024 at 8:51 am
Well now you’ve gone way too far. Disagreeing with Paul Graham about functional programming? Blasphemer! Heretic!
As for the more politically charged question:
It’s a tough one for sure. If I’ve understood your position corectly, it’s that Israel is needed as a last possible refuge for Jews should the nations they’re in start to turn against Jews. I think this position has some holes in it though.
Israel critically depends on Western nations for its survival, particularly for military gear. The danger to Jews in Israel might arguably be greater if the West sours on Jews and stops supporting them, and now all of those Israeli Jews are running low on supplies and surrounded by people and nations who actively want to exterminate them, rather than being dispersed among a plethora of nations, only some of whom may start to dislike them. The current situation might actually go in this direction if it goes on long enough.
Obviously this is not a great situation, but an Israeli military ethnostate must be self-sufficient to achieve the what you want, and I don’t think Israel as it currently stands meets that goal.
I’m also not convinced that settlements in the West Bank are about protecting Israeli Jews. You wouldn’t move Jews into an area that was dangerous if your objective is actually to protect Jews. If the West Bank were really a strategically important zone that makes Israel vulnerable, you would do exactly what Israel is now doing to Gaza: make it unlivable for anyone and everyone.
Also, yes, Israel should step back and let others distribute food. Your worry that Hamas will also get that food is simply not relevant. Hamas is a small subset of the population. If Hamas hordes the food, that will engender hostility from the rest of the starving people and you’ve won allies among the Palestinians. If they don’t horde the food and distribute it fairly, then we’ve achieved the objective of addressing the starvation. In every conflict your enemy wants to kill you, but we’ve long since decided that some actions against enemies are simply not permitted despite that.
I’m not arrogant enough to think I know the best solution to Jewish survival. Democratic debate is often smarter than one person, so this is a question that’s probably better answered collectively, and your post is a good contribution to that dialog. What I do claim to know is that there is sufficient evidence to conclude that neither Hamas nor the Israeli government can be trusted. Netenyahu is not the only problem in that government.
I generally abhor military intervention in foreign nations, UN backed or otherwise, but since it’s our funding and our weapons driving this conflict, a UN-enforced demilitarized zone and occupation of Gaza might be necessary, along with a thorough investigation of Israel’s politicians and military leadership. If Hamas can be exterminated, captured and tried for war crimes, I’m all for that too. I hate it, but the UN has done similar actions on less evidence in the past.
As a final thought, it’s good to challenge others critical of your position to put forth concrete proposals as you’ve done, but many here seem to be taking the position that until such plans exist, Israel can continue its campaign of effectively slaughtering or starving Palestinian civilians. I don’t think this follows, and of course I don’t think this is your position.
Einstein had another good quote that we should consider here as well, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
Comment #86 March 26th, 2024 at 10:04 am
Chomsky has a reputation as being an extreme anti-Zionist, but he’s in favor of two states. He’s an anarchist opposed to all states, so it’s technically correct to call him an anti-Zionist, but he’s in favor of there still being a state of Israel for the foreseeable future. He’s unusual among people in favor of two states in the amount of blame he puts on Israel and especially the US for it not having happened yet, and I think that’s why he gets so much criticism from the Zionist side and so little from the anti-Zionist side, even though his goal seems more like the former.
Comment #87 March 26th, 2024 at 10:46 am
I think that the principle of the “free world” are very flexible when enough pressure is applied. No one draws Mohammad cartoons these days, although everyone agrees that there’s no reason not to draw Mohammad cartoons. They just don’t think that practicing the right to draw an cartoon of Mohammad is more important than their wish to stay alive.
So really, it doesn’t matter if you debate with intellectuals, or with Harvard rainbow-brown shirts. Just ask them – are you willing to die for Palestine now? After a short thought they will agree that they don’t really know the details of the conflict and they just wanted Jews to die to get laid, or get likes in their Instagram account, or some meaning in their lives. They don’t care about Palestine more than they care about an ant farm. Then, they go back to debating fiercely about the viscosity of their gender.
(sorry, this is just my dispair of mankind talking, I don’t want anyone being hurt)
Comment #88 March 26th, 2024 at 12:09 pm
@scott At the risk of derailing the thread, can you elaborate on your disagreement with Paul Graham regarding functional programming?
Comment #89 March 26th, 2024 at 12:30 pm
Nadbor #88: LOL! It’s less of a factual than an aesthetic disagreement (I wonder how much of our disagreement about Israel/Palestine is the same?). There’s a whole huge family of formalisms that includes lambda calculus in logic, category theory in math, functional programming in logic, and type theory in all of them, which a sub-community in those fields swears by with messianic or evangelical fervor. (Eg, arguing that every other programming language that’s ever been invented, or that ever could be invented in the future, is some more-or-less inferior deviation from the Platonic perfection of Lisp, which John McCarthy invented in 1958.)
And Paul Graham is very much part of that sub-community (note that the name “Y Combinator” comes from lambda calculus), and I’m … very much not. For all the problems I’ve ever wanted to solve, these formalisms just seem to provide fancy, complicated ways to say the same things I could’ve said simply without them. Having said that, I confess that this is probably largely a function of which questions I’ve cared about (e.g., does there or doesn’t there exist a program to solve this problem in that amount of time?). If I cared about different questions, presumably I would fall in love with these formalisms as a subset of my friends and colleagues has.
Comment #90 March 26th, 2024 at 12:40 pm
> It seems to me that many anti-Zionist Jews considered Golda Meir’s question carefully and honestly, and simply decided it the other way, in favor of being Jews dead and pitied. […] And also: supposing I did take the celibate monk route, would even that satisfy my haters? Would they come after me anyway for glancing at a woman too long or making an inappropriate joke? And also: would the haters soon say I shouldn’t have my scientific career either, since I’ve stolen my coveted academic position from the underprivileged? Where exactly does my self-sacrifice end?
I’d say you’re about ready to fully appreciate Atlas Shrugged.
Comment #91 March 26th, 2024 at 1:19 pm
Scott #41
I don’t think the “two sides” exist. That Cornell professor knows they are in no physical danger, and they don’t (I assume) agree with a single Hamas domestic policy. If you put them in an MRI, I bet they’d be indistinguishable from somebody watching TV and sympathizing with a Game of Thrones character. Meanwhile a hypothetical[0] anti-Hamas Palestinian faces from a practical standpoint as much danger from the war as a pro-Hamas Palestinian, in fact they face more because Hamas also kills people. I can think of at least eight sides, some evil beyond measure, others downright insane, and a few others part of a normal political tapestry.
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-footage-purportedly-shows-gazan-civilians-protesting-against-hamas/
Del #83
Israel is not doomed. 100 years pass in the blink of an eye.
Scott #0
I think your list of options is missing one of the most commonly requested means of escape, which is to return to securing the border, but to do it right this time. If anyone’s interested in my forecast, that will have to happen eventually (I refuse to believe Israel and the international community will through action or inaction kill or displace four million people…), either after a lot of suffering (if it happened today) or after an unbelievable amount of suffering (if it happens “eventually.”)
Comment #92 March 26th, 2024 at 2:07 pm
If Paul Graham’s stance disturbs you more than a billion hook nosed rat memes on X (let it go, Scott. The bird is dead.) then why isn’t this essay focused on him and his takes? Instead it reads as a response to the kind of people who’d chant “from the river to the sea”, either out of empty-minded ignorance, or empty-minded ignorance and malice. Which is fine, to be clear. But it doesn’t match the start of the essay and honestly, a discussion between you and Paul on this topic would probably be much more constructive, and likely less frustrating for you, than arguing with the average anti-zionist.
Comment #93 March 26th, 2024 at 2:08 pm
Vladimir #90: Oh, I did appreciate that positive and important message from Atlas Shrugged, and the rest of Rand’s oeuvre. It was the other stuff in Atlas Shrugged—and in the complement of Atlas Shrugged—that was the problem for me.
Comment #94 March 26th, 2024 at 2:23 pm
Concerned #91:
> I think your list of options is missing one of the most commonly requested means of escape, which is to return to securing the border, but to do it right this time.
This is a common sentiment, I believed it myself, but I was convinced it’s wrong.
Hamas are not a villain in a movie, where you thwart them once and they’ll just try the same stupid thing over and over. They’re smart, they’re clearly dedicated, they have a lot of time, and most importantly, they have Iran’s backing.
Imagining Israel could actually secure the border and that Hamas won’t find a way to attack Israel again is naive and presumes they have zero agency. They can continue firing rockets at Israel without ever leaving their territory, and those rockets can get better and better. They can devise new ways of attacking Israel. They can wait for Israel to let its guard down, which it has to do eventually, and attack again. And Iran, having seen the unbelievable success of October 7th, will just be motivated to provide Hamas with even more funds.
And btw, “protecting the border but right” is a huge expense, which is a drain on the economy.
Comment #95 March 26th, 2024 at 2:30 pm
Great essay. I have several nitpicks:
I got a weird sense from you that you see Israel as nothing more than an armed Jewish refugee camp, and that its existence is about Jewish survival only. If we were to wave our hands and have antisemitism disappear from the world, would that be enough for Israelis to declare “mission accomplished” and dismantle the Jewish state?
Specifically, I got this weird feeling by seeing you entertain options 3 and 4. The only objection you gave to option 3 was the danger posed by the large antisemitic population in the new binational state. For option 4, you wrote “Maybe we could even set aside some acres in Montana for a new Jewish homeland. Again, if this is your survival plan, I’m a billion times happier to discuss it openly than to have it as unstated subtext!”.
This extremely disappointing. Both of these options concede far too much to antizionism.
To me (and to most Israeli Jews as far as I know), Israel is more than just a Jewish survival bunker, and it would be very wrong to assert that Zionism is only justified as a response to antisemitism. Even if antisemitism did not exist (or could somehow be made to go away), Israel should continue to exist specifically as a Jewish state as a matter of right. The Jewish people deserve a state of our own for the same reasons that the Greeks, Koreans, Poles, Japanese, Danes, Turks, Armenians, etc. deserve states of their own.
Likewise, Israel’s Jewish population has a right to live in the ancient Jewish homeland, without being evacuated to Montana, and this is not because evacuating to Montana is logistically complicated or that Israel is an “exciting project”. It is because Jews are indigenous to Israel, and have a right to live in the Jewish homeland.
For similar reasons, I strongly disagree with your denunciations of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. You wrote in a comment, “the settlements are not in Israel’s best interest. For more than half a century, they’ve allowed everyone opposed to Israel to dress themselves in the language of liberalism and human rights.” Everyone who is respectable in polite society (ie not Nazis) already dresses their objections to Israel in the language of liberalism and human rights! They do so for issues that would exist even without the settlements, from the Occupation to the wars Israel fights to defend itself to Israel’s very existence. More importantly, Israel should not base internal decisions of where Jews are or aren’t allowed to live based on the world’s opinion.
“Without the settlements, those people would be forced back into the open: they’d either have to accept Israel, or else admit that their real objection all along was to its existence with any border (and, perhaps, to the existence of Jews).” – this is a ridiculous strategy, forcing Jews to not live in Judea just to call our enemies’ bluff. How would Israel even benefit if our enemies were “exposed” in this way? Who would it “wake up”, and what would this crowd do to help Israel? Would the benefits exceed the deep emotional loss of staring just across the Green Line at Judea, the heartland of Eretz Israel, and see it perpetually Judenfrei? Also remember that Israel would still need to station troops in the territories, and the same crowd that condemns the settlements and Occupation would retreat into simply condemning the Occupation, without admitting that they actually just hate Israel (and Jews) except for the millions of times that they let their masks slip (as happened in this timeline in the last few decades).
“More pragmatically, every IDF soldier defending the settlements is one who isn’t available to defend Israel proper, as we were all dramatically reminded on October 7.” – If this is a reference to Netanyahu pulling soldiers from the Gaza border to satisfy Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, then this has less to do with the settlements and more to do with the idiocy of Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir. Consider that the settlements continued to exist before the troops were pulled from the Gaza border. Also consider that the IDF had had troops stationed in the Judea and Samaria Area for decades, and this did not leave a shortage of troops for other fronts. In addition, the settlers could be given permission and training to defend themselves, with Kitot Bitachon militias of townsfolk similar to the one that saved Kibbutz Nir Am on October 7 when the army was not around to help.
“For all that, by Israeli standards I’m firmly in the anti-Netanyahu, left-wing peace camp—exactly where I’ve been since the 1990s, as a teenager mourning the murder of Rabin.”
“And after every bout, sadly but understandably, Israeli culture drifts more to the right, becomes 10% more like the other side always was. I don’t want Israel to drift to the right.”
I know that overall, my opinion is well to the right of yours on the issue of Israel’s security. I don’t see Israel’s drift to the right on this issue as lamentable. Instead, I see it as Israel’s populace finally waking up to what was the truth all along! Namely, Israel did not miss any opportunities for peace in the 1990s (and later), because there were no such opportunities, only wishful thinking and PLO dissimulation.
The political collapse of the Israeli peace camp is a good thing, if it can prevent such catastrophic decisions as the Oslo Accords, the 2000 Lebanon withdrawal, and the 2005 Gaza disengagement. The first let the PLO take over most of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, leading to a spike in the rate of deaths from terrorism during the “peace decade”, and then to the Second Intifata. The second let Hezbollah de facto take over Lebanon; it is now better armed than Hamas-run Gaza ever was, and the threat it poses led Israel to evacuate its northern communities for the current war. The last of these led to several Gaza Wars and international condemnation, and then to the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. This is the legacy of the Israeli peace camp.
As for Israel becoming “more like the other side always was”, I don’t think this is the case, at least not where it counts. If you meant that Israeli society is adopting Palestinian levels of cruelty and bloodlust, then I strongly disagree. If you meant that Israel is becoming more intransigent and less open to negotiation, much like the Palestinians are, then I agree but don’t care. There is no point in negotiating and conceding to people whose greatest wish is to kill you. The Israeli peace camp should have realized this in the 1990s, and Israeli society has come to realize it over the past decade.
I do not support Netanyahu, and like you I very much hope that he loses the premiership and spends several decades in an Israeli prison. However, I also hope that he is replaced specifically by the right-wing opposition (Sa’ar, Lieberman, maybe Gantz) and not by any party in the peace camp.
Finally: Paul Graham is great in everything else, but please no one listen to him when it comes to Israel. This is not even the first case of inverse stopped clock: see for example Linus Pauling on vitamins and Isaac Newton on alchemy.
Comment #96 March 26th, 2024 at 2:38 pm
I #92: An earlier draft of this post was focused on Paul Graham and his takes. But then I ran into a problem: to the best of my knowledge, Paul Graham has never set out any explicit takes on how the conflict should be resolved, how Israel should defend itself differently, or any of the other main questions I care about.
Instead, Graham leaves us to infer his takes through a constant, aggressively one-sided stream of retweets of the IDF outrage-du-jour, plus occasional replies and retweeted takes by far-left Israelis. On no other issue do I find Graham so willing to outsource his thinking to one side of a century-long conflict that even he would have to concede has many thoughtful people on both sides (e.g., Graham often approvingly retweets David Deutsch, Steven Pinker, Larry Summers, and other pro-Israel figures about other issues).
Thus, I realized that I couldn’t debate Graham on Israel/Palestine without running a huge risk of attributing views to him that he didn’t hold—a moral, intellectual, and strategic blunder all at once. And so, ironically, I followed Graham’s own writing advice, threw out my draft, and restarted it from the beginning once the writing process had caused me to discover this fact.
In any case, the unfortunate design of Twitter means that, even if you start with (say) Paul Graham or David Deutsch, you’re only a click or two away from the sharers of hooked-nose rat memes anyway. So I decided to just reply to the whole mass of it—which worked particularly well because my reply takes the form of a challenge (“what’s your Jewish survival plan?”).
I did notify Graham about this post, and of course I’ll be happy to engage him if and when he chooses to reply.
Comment #97 March 26th, 2024 at 3:19 pm
AF #95: Those aren’t “nitpicks”; they’re disagreements about core questions (all the better! 🙂 ). Let me leave settlements, Oslo, etc to a different reply, and focus for now on whether Israel has value beyond that of a “Jewish survival bunker,” whether it still has value even if we wave a wand and remove antisemitism from the world.
For me personally, it absolutely does. Visiting for the first time in 2002 was one of the most moving experiences of my life. And war or no war, I expect we’ll visit again this summer, to bring our kids to their grandparents in Tel Aviv and to some tourist sites and see friends and wipe hummus and eat that ice cream with the fresh fruit blended into it, and I and the kids will practice our terrible Hebrew. I can’t wait.
But if we ask: why does Israel need to be under the control of a Jewish government with its own military, as opposed to a secular binational entity like Einstein and some of the other early Zionists envisioned? — then antisemitism plainly is the answer. I can’t ask the world’s Gentiles to support a militarized Jewish ethnostate so that Jews can visit Masada and the Dead Sea, but I can certainly ask them to care whether you and 7 million other Israeli Jews live or die—and if the latter question is tragically in play anyway, then that’s the one to focus on.
Even though the Zionist project started a half-century before it was urgently needed for Jewish survival, it was the urgent need for survival that caused it to assume its current form, and that’s a crucial thing for the world to understand.
Comment #98 March 26th, 2024 at 3:24 pm
Scott #75:
I heard about the brouhaha my Liars essay caused from a friend! And that is quite an honor to hear that level of praise coming from you Scott; you’re making me wonder whether to drop my poor clients so I can devote more time to writing (kidding?).
I don’t want to exaggerate how much of my upbringing I’ve had to renounce though. Leaving Islam was already the hardest fork for me but that is now almost two decades old, and it was done within the ensconced cocoon of living in the US. So having pivoted so hard from my upbringing already, there just wasn’t much left to lose anymore. I did lose friends over Israel-Palestine issue recently, but it was people who amply demonstrated themselves as not worth fretting about.
I think it’s commendable to examine one’s biases about any issue, but the problem with that exercise is it doesn’t tell us what the baseline should be. The beauty with using bog-standard rationalist tools is that they work regardless of one’s background! I’ve been working on an essay about rationality “red flags” and a big one I’ve noticed for this issue in particular is whenever someone refuses to acknowledge anything inconvenient for their own position. I tried to lead by example as a supporter of Israel by proactively showcasing Israel’s bad acts, and just once I would love to talk to a Pro-Palestinian activist who doesn’t experience an allergic reaction whenever you mention child suicide bombers.
Comment #99 March 26th, 2024 at 3:35 pm
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a multifaceted issue with no easy solutions. By acknowledging the different perspectives and engaging in respectful dialogue, there’s a greater chance of finding a path towards a peaceful resolution.
Comment #100 March 26th, 2024 at 3:39 pm
Glad you were willing to …”get off my chest”
So sad, so true!
Thanks
Comment #101 March 26th, 2024 at 3:48 pm
Scott #75
https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/follow-up-on-that-jewish-conspiracy
“Woke ideology overwhelmingly spawned out of American left-of-center spaces and its core tenet is the Manichean worldview that neatly divides everyone into stark binary categories of oppressor versus oppressed. Because of its origins, the splits generally reflect only the tensions prevalent within U.S. culture wars (cis vs trans, white vs black, colonizer vs indigenous, and so on) and so the parody/reality for how it’s applied to foreign conflicts is to ask: who is the white person in this dispute? Whoever that may be is automatically and permanently adjudicated as the malefactor, and so for the Israel-Palestine conflict, Jews are the ‘white person’ not because of their genetics but because they’re shoehorned as fitting into the white/oppressor archetype (colonizers, imperialists, Western-aligned, successful, rich, etc).”
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7599#comment-1957072
“This is the victory of reductionist Woke dogma, where the details don’t matter and it’s all about skin color, with Palestinians == Brown, Jews == Whites, Whites == Oppressors, White == Guilt, White racism is okay and encouraged, and no-one should feel sorry for the killing of Whites, they all had it coming.
It really doesn’t go any deeper than this…”
Concision is my forte, lol.
Comment #102 March 26th, 2024 at 5:59 pm
For those interested in a possible solution, there is an Israeli-Palestinian proposal:
A Land For All
Two States One Homeland
https://www.alandforall.org/english/?d=ltr
Comment #103 March 26th, 2024 at 6:18 pm
I think I just about could stomach the violence necessary to preserve the State of Israel but I think Israel (or Netanyahu) has gone well beyond that level of necessary violence. I don’t hold Israel to a different standard from other countries I hold it to the same standard. The human values you wish to keep we would all like to keep, even, or especially in a time of war but Israel is not keeping them and that is disappointing to say the least.
Comment #104 March 26th, 2024 at 6:26 pm
ira #102: Did you not see that that was proposal #3 in this very post? How do you overcome the obvious problem, that the Palestinians don’t want it any more than the Israelis do?
Comment #105 March 26th, 2024 at 6:30 pm
David #103: With what factor less of violence could the State of Israel be preserved? A factor of 2? Of 10? By what strategy?
(Yes, I think Israel should stop settlement construction, dismantle settlements that are illegal even under Israeli law, etc. But I’m under no illusions that that will decrease violence, absent a peace deal that the Palestinian side signs in good faith.)
Comment #106 March 26th, 2024 at 7:02 pm
Scott #97: Yes, I used the word “nitpicks” a bit ironically 😉
I’m glad you see Israel the same way I do, as far more than a “Jewish survival bunker”. I hope you and your family have a safe and enjoyable trip this summer. I would personally love to return to Israel someday (I am currently living in the US).
I am not convinced that antisemitism is the sole reason why Israel should not be a binational state. I suppose that I am advocating that Israel be a Jewish ethnostate, but only under a non-derogatory definition of “ethnostate” that basically applies to most of the world’s existing countries. In the hypothetical scenario where antisemitism ends, Israel would probably not even need a military, but it would still be primarily Jewish and one of its functions would be to keep historic sites like Masada as Jewish tourist sites.
For a historical example: centuries of French-German enmity ended in 1945, and part of the peacemaking process involved lots of shared governance agreements like the European Coal and Steel Community and later the EU. However, France and Germany never took the additional step of surrendering their sovereignty and becoming a binational French-German state. Even decades later, where the French-German conflict is fading from living memory, I think most French and German people would object to a binational state. I think their objections would be rooted in things like culture, language, and other aspects of ethnicity, and maybe even things like historical inertia (ie, “things have always been this way”). None of these objections come from Enlightenment humanism, but I still think they are legitimate and worthy of respect. Likewise in the hypothetical scenario where antisemitism goes away, and both Israel and Palestine are wealthy liberal states, they would still be two separate states for two quite different ethnic groups.
To put this into a more forceful version: I think it is just as insulting to tell Jews that they don’t really deserve an “ethnostate” outside of a defense against antisemitism, as it would be to tell the French and Germans that they don’t really deserve France and Germany now that the conflict between them is over.
Likewise with Einstein and early binationalists like Brit Shalom. Obviously, their ideas went nowhere due to the genocidal antisemitism coming from the Arab side. However, if the antisemitism was gone and peaceful partition was genuinely on the table in 1947, I think that the Yishuv would have gone for it rather than pick binationalism.
Of course, antisemitism is a huge part of the reason why Israel needs to exist. It makes sense to keep it front and center given centuries of Jewish history, and because Israeli Jews needed and still need a powerful military for self-protection. The problem is that it really isn’t the only reason, and it serves as a poor explanation for Israel’s actions. Consider what you wrote about relocating Jews to places like Sydney and Austin: “What’s more, they’ll be safer here—who wants to live with missiles raining down on their neighborhood?” This is a legitimate question for an antizionist to ask, and responding with “we want to keep Israel open in case Sydney and Austin become unsafe for Jews” seems absurd. After all, Israel itself is already unsafe for Jews! (one look at Israel’s neighbors, and very recent history, should confirm that). Also, to the extent that the diaspora is becoming less safe for Jews, part of it can be traced to the media circus around Israel’s self-defense, so in a way Israel is putting the diaspora in danger. Why go through all of this?
Again, the reason is that Israelis have an attachment to their homeland, and want a sovereign state for the Jewish people, with a Jewish government, as a matter of right and not just for self-protection. Again, this specific reason is not rooted in post-national Enlightenment humanism (ie, John Lennon’s Imagine). Antizionists love to round it down to racist blood-and-soil fascism. My main response, then, is to ask why this right, usually called “The Right of Self-Determination”, is not banned for other countries like France and Germany. By keeping the discussion about Israel’s right to exist focused on antisemitism and Jewish survival, we inherently concede to the antisemites that Jews lack the right of self-determination, and are thus a lesser ethnic group than all of the others. After all, no one justifies France’s existence by saying that France is needed as a safe haven for the French people. France exists as a matter of right. If France became a battlefield once again, it would be considered insulting to tell the French they should surrender and go live in Montana, even if doing so would be much more convenient than fighting on to defend France. If other countries can exist as a matter of right, even when they are dominated by a single ethnic group, then so can Israel.
That being said, survival really is a salient issue for the Jews in the way that it isn’t for most others, and it is a good idea to challenge antizionists on what they want to happen to Israel’s Jewish population. It is just a poor response to things like the colonialism/imperialism argument, and on its own only serves as a partial explanation for why Israel exists.
Comment #107 March 26th, 2024 at 7:47 pm
AF #106: Your comment reminded me of Theodor Herzl’s line, about how if antisemitism suddenly disappeared, Jews would assimilate into their host societies and cease to exist within a generation or two. But, Herzl added, there’s no danger that that will ever happen, because antisemitism will never disappear.
(You could imagine a world where the founder of Zionism would have excellent PR discipline, sticking to the safest, most palatable talking points for his cause. I’m glad to live instead in the world where it was founded by Herzl.)
Comment #108 March 26th, 2024 at 7:56 pm
Edan Maor #94, Scott #105
Comparing one decade of guarding the border to a few months of urban combat and including only Israeli casualties (to avoid debates about the reliability of the statistics), I get a factor of over 100 for that.
Comment #109 March 26th, 2024 at 8:27 pm
Concerned #108: Of course I agree 10000% that Israel should’ve guarded its border much better, and I hope and expect that it will in the future! But it’s important to notice that, in other contexts, we call this sort of thing “victim-blaming”: “if only you’d seen that guy coming to murder you when he was still some distance away, you wouldn’t have needed to save your life by shooting him first—so if you think about it, his death is really your moral responsibility.”
More to the point, so long as Hamas has power in Gaza, one assumes that Iran will continue to supply it with more and more advanced drones, missiles, and other means of breaching the border. The entire notion that there’s any passive technological solution to the problem of a savage, determined, resourceful fighting force on your border that’s sworn to annihilate you was another casualty of October 7.
Comment #110 March 26th, 2024 at 9:51 pm
Hi Scott,
A question from a right-wing admirer of your blog and staunch supporter of Israel:
Suppose the following assertion is true: “Republican administrations tend to be more sympathetic to the interests of Israel. This includes the Trump administration, which did more to further the interests of Israel than either the Obama administration preceding or the Biden administration after.”
At what point, then, does the Israel-Palestinian conflict become your highest priority issue and you choose to vote for Donald Trump in the coming election? What are the policies and pronouncements concerning the conflict made by President Biden that cause you to make this decision?
I ask this question for the following reasons: 1) I believe the above assertion to be true, 2) I’m aware of your deep animus towards Donald Trump, 3) You’ve previously stated something to the effect that the events of October 7 have radicalized you like nothing before.
Comment #111 March 26th, 2024 at 10:03 pm
Scott #109
Thank you for engaging with people with differing opinions. I respect that a lot.
I’ve always tried to avoid giving specific recommendations, because I know I don’t know that much about military matters. However so much has come to rest on whether or not this is the only way, that I will try to answer.
I would never blame on Israel for the death of the Hamas fighters who had to be removed from the homes of the families they had killed. I am not talking about any Hamas casualties. In fact, I am avoiding mentioning any Palestinian casualties – that all too often starts a debate about whether 1% or 10% of them are secretly Hamas. I’m avoiding anything that might cause disagreement.
I am only concerned with the future, and what the immediate past has to say about it. The lesson of the immediate past is that Israelis, perfectly innocent unlucky kids by the way, are dying in urban combat at over one hundred times the rate that Hamas was able to accomplish before the offensive. I also am aware of the significant, nearly total, disadvantage an attacking force with no armored vehicles has against an entrenched adversary: the position Israel could put itself in instead.
Meeting Hamas on their own terms for an unbounded length of time has been shown to require so great a cost in human life that it could be better to leave and let international forces try their hands at it. Remaining, or pressing further, can either be justified through the emotion that so often accompanies war, or the eternal companion of the free world in its struggle against guerilla forces: the sunk cost fallacy.
You raise the point that future attacks could be greater, and overwhelm an improved border security system just as the previous attack overwhelmed the old one. I’m not advocating for a passive border; that’s something like the situation before the war. However an actively militarized border would be better than the border of 1.7 million doors that could develop if the present course is maintained. Please think about what would be required to occupy the area against the unwilling population.
I cannot think of a single way that the murderers in Gaza are all gotten rid of; in the most extreme situation they might stop calling themselves Hamas. The present US administration has announced a “red line” which could make the whole the discussion moot: if it’s a real red line they’re not going into the last city anyway. Sometimes, the hard-to-swallow “necessary” choice is not the most violent one. They need to leave Gaza behind.
Comment #112 March 26th, 2024 at 10:12 pm
Scott #77: I think this is a somewhat more serious objection than the charity issue you discuss in your post. But I don’t think it’s insurmountable (unlike the 20% of palestinians unwilling to give up right of return scenario).
In my plan, the Israel government would certainly need to be on board. So if the 20% included too much of the ruling elite, obviously it couldn’t work. But granting me that, destroying the nukes, or maybe selling them to US or Britain, seems very plausible . So I don’t think that’s really an issue. More generally, my plan would involve dismantling all Israeli weapons (after civilians had moved to the US). So the die-hards who insisted on staying wouldn’t have much in the way of arms. At this point, as I see it, there would be two options: (1) forcibly evict these die-hards, or (2) let them try their chances against the Palestinians. The Israeli government has demonstrated, in its 2005 disengagement from Gaza, an ability to do (1), albeit at a more modest scale, but it doesn’t seem impossible. For option (2), I think 20% of Israelis without any military would not stand much chance against the Palestinians, and this would be fairly obvious. So hopefully the people would reconsider — they could still immigrate. If they didn’t, I concede this could become morally problematic, especially if there were lots of children staying.
So I think 80% of Israelis agreeing to this, perhaps a bit less, would be enough. But unfortunately, I see getting there as very difficult. This plan is nevertheless a useful thought experiment. To me it suggests that, fundamentally, the issue is really not just antisemitism or safety. The US is not perfect, but I think Jews are pretty safe here. No one is ever completely safe — that just isn’t reality. Oppressing another people generally moves you in the opposite direction. The real obstacle to my plan is the nationalism part of Zionism, both of secular and religious varieties.
Comment #113 March 26th, 2024 at 10:25 pm
“So that’s my answer, both to anti-Zionist Gentiles and to anti-Zionist Jews. The problem of Jewish survival, on a planet much of which yearns for the Jews’ annihilation”
This part is ham-fisted, but had to be added because it’s what was needed to justify all the rest.
“Jews annihilation” is not what is at play here. Are the 7 million Jews in the US in danger of “annihilation”? Were those in israel? The numbers don’t pan out at all there either. Numbers wise it’s the Palestinian annihiliation we witness, in this “war”, but also from the establishment of Israel to today. It takes gal to call the mass colonization (settling) of a place, the displacement of its native population, the establishment of a new state there in 1948, and 80 years of massively outmassacring that population, to the tune of 10 to 1, as a defence.
Wanted to carve out a new state? That would have been justified to be done to the Germans, post WWII. After all, they designed and carried out the Holocaust. Jews have lived together with muslims for millenia, from the middle east to the Ottoman Instabul and Salonica
Comment #114 March 26th, 2024 at 10:53 pm
Dan Park #110: Not only will I unhesitatingly vote for Biden over Trump, I’d vote for AOC over Trump. Probably even for Rashida Tlaib (thank god I won’t have to).
Because of his repudiation of the basic principle of accepting election results, and his promotion of facially insane conspiracy theories and incitement to insurrection instead, Trump is an existential threat to our whole system of government, of a sort the US has never seen since its founding, not even during the Civil War. And I think that a collapse of our system of government would be catastrophic for America, catastrophic for the world, and (incidentally, since we’re on that subject) also catastrophic for the world’s Jews.
If you believe in liberal democracy as firmly as I do, then that one consideration is enough to override everything else—even supposing Trump were otherwise perfect (hahahahahaha).
As it’s done in the past, Israel can survive without American support—just not as easily, and (alas) probably at the cost of much more violence inflicted on the Palestinians. But the US as we’ve known it can’t survive if our elections come to mean no more than Russian elections.
If you wanted me to vote Trump, you’d need to invent an opposing candidate who literally wanted to put my family into an internment camp, or something of the kind.
Comment #115 March 26th, 2024 at 11:10 pm
Concerned #111: I suspect that Israel can’t survive the next few decades with an unrepentant, Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah at its borders … but I might be wrong about that! Let’s be clear that this is an internal strategy dispute, between people who agree that Israel gets to defend its own existence. And I assume that debate is being vigorously conducted right now by the military and intelligence experts in Israel, and I hope it reaches a conclusion grounded in reality rather than one or another inflexible ideology. In any case, though, this is a totally different debate from my debate with the mllions of Twitter anti-Zionists who don’t care about Israeli military strategy, because they believe that Israel’s existence is illegitimate, and they want it to lose its war of survival, though they differ in how plainly they’re willing to say that.
Comment #116 March 26th, 2024 at 11:39 pm
kardona #113:
(1) Do you concede that it’s only Hamas’s current military inferiority, rather than its expressed and demonstrated intentions, that keep it from murdering all 7 million Jews in Israel right this minute? Do you care about the distinction between intentions and capabilities at all? Is someone who sadistically tortures 5 innocents to death just because he can, 100x better than an Allied bomber who kills 500 innocents in the course of defeating Nazi Germany? Also, do you realize that Iran will continue doing everything it can to remedy Hamas’s military inferiority, and thereby render the “argument from casualty-counting” moot?
(2) It seems to me that Jews have just as much claim (genetic, cultural, historical archeological, …) to being “indigenous” to the region as Palestinians do, and arrived there subject to the then-relevant laws of the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate … which is why the UN was entirely reasonable to propose a two-state solution in 1947. As you know, Israel accepted that partition proposal, while the Arab side chose instead to launch a war of annihilation against Israel, which it lost. Certainly, anyone who cites modern anti-Israel UN resolutions as having any binding force, should also consider themselves to be bound by the UN’s original vote to create the State of Israel.
(3) The idea that Palestinians have zero historical responsibility for the Holocaust is taken as an obvious article of faith by anti-Zionists, but it’s false. The people who are now called Palestinians, under the leadership of Amin al-Husseini, were Hitler’s fervent allies during WWII. Al-Husseini worked tirelessly to bring the Nazi Final Solution to the Yishuv (i.e., the Jews of what would soon become Israel), and was stopped only by Rommel’s defeat in North Africa. Did you know that? Now that you know, do you care?
(4) Nearly all of the million Jews living in Muslim lands were expelled from them (on threat of annihilation) immediately following Israel’s creation. Should those Jews, and their descendants, get a “right of return” to Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, and Syria? If you say no, then haven’t you conceded that their existence in those lands was always conditional, that they never had the actual rights of citizens?
(5) Yet in some sense, everything I wrote above is superfluous. Because you were honest enough to admit that your beef goes all the way back to Israel’s founding (for which I thank you!), you’ve told the Israelis that they can either oppose you, or else be exiled at best (to Germany?) or slaughtered at worst. They didn’t say it, you did! Which of course was the whole point of this post.
Comment #117 March 27th, 2024 at 12:54 am
Scott,
I’m sorry to hear that you feel you’re “wasting [your] life” on Twitter and that it’s affecting your scientific productivity. As somebody who has struggled with controlling their time spent on various websites in the past, one hack I’ve found useful is to make a promise to my significant other of the form “I promise I won’t spend more than x minutes on website W today” or “I won’t go to website W for the next week”. That way, if I’m tempted to be on the website when I know I shouldn’t be, I’m not only wasting my time, I’m also violating a promise I made to my significant other, which for me personally is a much stronger motivator.
Comment #118 March 27th, 2024 at 2:17 am
Scott #115
It is precisely the fact that Israel can’t defend itself from its neighbors that makes the qualities of its self-defense important to discuss in the United States, which is the only guarantor against “humanitarian wars of expansion.” That’s why talking to the twitter people who think the UN can launch Tel-Aviv to the moon is perhaps worth a little something, but also why somewhat-well-informed people like you and the person I try to be have to negotiate a version of the facts that involves an aircraft carrier in the right place at the right time, and just enough calls from the Whitehouse to “cool it,” that nothing excessively crazy happens. That second part involves some amount of attention towards what might otherwise be considered internal affairs, and happens to be the thing that keeps me, well, the most concerned. (It is harder to imagine a failure to exercise so-called force projection.)
Comment #119 March 27th, 2024 at 2:41 am
Scott #104:
You write about the “A Land for All” proposal:
> ira #102: Did you not see that that was proposal #3 in this very post? How do you overcome the obvious problem, that the Palestinians don’t want it any more than the Israelis do?
I think you are wrong about this. It’s the same mistake I initially made.
I don’t know *much* about this, but from what I understand, they are *not* proposing a single state, rather a “confederation” of two states. So it’s much closer to your two-state solution, but with the added idea of those two states being in a confederation from the outset, with mutual residency status granted to all the citizens.
This ostensibly solves a few problems – Israeli settlements could remain in the WB without being uprooted, right of return is “solved” in a sense, since any Palestinian who wants to live in their historic location can theoretically do so because they’re non-citizen residents, etc.
I’m not saying I fully buy it, but it’s not obvious to me that something like this approach isn’t better than a plain-ol’ two state solution, both in terms of it maybe being a better long-term approach to peace, and also possibly being an easier sell depending on how it’s handled.
Comment #120 March 27th, 2024 at 2:56 am
Concerned #111:
After the October Massacre, the general opinion in Israel is that this is the Thanksgiving Turkey Fallacy. The Israeli death rate is a thousand times less than 10/7, which Hamas promised it will repeat.
Anecdotally, only yesterday I went to a memorial to a fallen classmate. It was a small gathering, where we the classmates sat in a circle and shared stories about him with his parents (most of us couldn’t attend the Shivaa’ back in December when he fell) . Most present have been fighting since October, and were relatively fresh off the battlefield. There was a lot of PTSD in that room, but no regrets. Everyone felt that we, who swore to protect the country fall in battle, and not innocent children like in October.
Comment #121 March 27th, 2024 at 2:58 am
(note: I’m not an anti-zionist)
I think that historically, the creation of the state of Israel specifically in this location was a big mistake, mainly because of the fact that it’s in close proximity to multiple groups of barbarians and religious fanatics that hate Jews and want to kill them. I am a fan of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s idea that the Jewish state should have instead been carved out of a mostly uninhabited region of Canada. I think that if that were what happened, many things in the world would have gone a lot better.
Do I think that implementing this is logistically feasible at this point? Probably not. There’s also the game theoretic issue of not imposing costs on the better-behaved party in a conflict because they’re the ones that will agree to it. Even if in the long run they would be better off (on a timescale of 50+ years, I suspect that the Israel In Canada plan would ultimately be net beneficial to the Israelis). You simply can’t make bad behavior pay, or you will get more of it.
As for what should happen now, I don’t know. Hamas has to go; that’s the obvious part but other than that it’s really hard to say. What is the solution to violent religion? Humanity has not yet figured that one out. Because any method that I could think of that could concievably successfully divest people or their descendants of particular religious beliefs or culture is extremely easy to abuse.
Comment #122 March 27th, 2024 at 3:03 am
Just to prevent misunderstanding: I wasn’t in combat myself, but had some deep one on ones with my friends who were.
Comment #123 March 27th, 2024 at 3:39 am
One thing that I think is lost in these debates is that Israel is the only advanced country with a healthy fertility rate. This is a very important fact. If the US and Israel had swapped fertility rates, evacuating Israeli Jews to the US for them to converge to the US rate would make much more sense.
Comment #124 March 27th, 2024 at 3:43 am
Why do you not talk about Gaza joining Egypt and the West Bank joining Jordan? After all that worked decently well between 1948 and 1967.
I guess Israel would keep the large settlement blocs near the Green Line where most settlers live, and would keep the Jordan Valley or would at least maintain a security presence there. Allon Plan 2.0. Peres-Hussein Agreement.
Comment #125 March 27th, 2024 at 6:03 am
Scott, I’m not very involved in the conflict (honestly, it lacks interest for me), so I think I can provide a quite unbiased and external point of view. I liked your text, I think it’s a prudent and thoughtful text. However, I feel you are not being completely honest in your writing, particularly regarding the role of Islam in the conflict.
You completely avoid mentioning Islam, despite its undeniable influence on Palestinian culture and politics.
When you suggest turning Palestine into an LGBTQ+ friendly country, you’re not just proposing political changes; you’re advocating for the complete destruction of the Islamic values that form the foundation of Palestinian society and much of the Arab world. This is a crucial point that you fail to acknowledge.
The harsh reality is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t just about land or politics; it’s a clash of fundamentally incompatible cultures and religions. Islamic fundamentalism, which is deeply entrenched in Palestinian society, is a major obstacle to peace and progress in the region.
I understand that, as a born-Jew, you might be hesitant to criticize Islam directly. But by tiptoeing around this issue, you’re weakening your analysis and ignoring a key factor in the conflict.
If you want to have an honest discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian situation, you need to confront the challenges posed by Islamic extremism head-on. This means acknowledging the religious and cultural dimensions of the conflict, even if it makes some people uncomfortable.
Comment #126 March 27th, 2024 at 6:49 am
Scott #96
That sounds quite sensible. And several readers were convinced by your post, so clearly people have found this post informative. Apologies for implying it wouldn’t be productive.
Comment #127 March 27th, 2024 at 7:34 am
Edan Maor #119: Oh sorry, I wish the commenter had explained that! Yes, I’m very open to the idea of a two-state confederation, treating it as a variation on the two-state solution proposal—one that would give the Palestinians full citizenship rights within a framework otherwise not all that different from the one that exists right now. But of course, both sides would need to agree—the Palestinians to making Israeli settlements permanent, and the Israelis that this isn’t just a ruse for Palestinians to move en masse into Israel in order to destroy it. These seem like two extremely nontrivial problems.
Comment #128 March 27th, 2024 at 7:36 am
Yovel #120: I’m very sorry to hear about your fallen classmate. May his memory be a blessing, and may the rest of you live to see Hamas defeated swiftly.
Comment #129 March 27th, 2024 at 7:48 am
Shion Arita #121: It’s worth noting that in the 1930s, European Jews did try to flee to Canada, and Canada turned them away just like every other country did.
Anyway, you can think of Israel’s location as a “mistake,” but you can also think of it as Israel “taking one for the team” (to put it mildly). The day that the Arab world finally fully reconciles itself to Israel’s existence will probably be close to the day that it embraces modernity—a revolution for hundreds of millions of people comparable to the European Enlightenment. One can hope.
Comment #130 March 27th, 2024 at 7:56 am
I posted an essay about the situation being tragic and intractable because there are a lot of people on both sides who are unwilling to accept the presence of the others. I included the suggestion of pressuring Egypt so that aid can get in and people can get out.
I was told firmly that Egypt letting people out would be enabling ethnic cleansing and (I may be exaggerating) that I was a very bad person for suggesting the idea that there are worse things than ethnic cleansing.
This seems morally insane to me, and I can’t figure out the underlying premises. That what happens between nations is more important than what happens to individuals? That Israel must be made to look as bad as possible even if it takes excess Palestinian deaths? Or what? Maybe it’s a game-theoretic belief that ethnic cleansing must not be permitted.
Comment #131 March 27th, 2024 at 8:10 am
Scott #105 I hope the State of Israel can be preserved while also adhering to the Geneva Conventions which after all have been ratified by all member states of the United Nations. Israel would gain international respect if it paid them greater heed and the conventions, which we should all agree are worthwhile, would be preserved and strengthened if it did.
Israel wasn’t founded by military means alone. Like other countries it has the moral authority of the United Nations behind it and still does. When Israel treats the UN with contempt it is undermining its own legitimacy.
Comment #132 March 27th, 2024 at 8:11 am
Eduardo #125: I’m aware, to put it mildly, of the role Islamic fundamentalism has played in this conflict since the beginning. Amin Al-Husseini cited the Al-Aqsa mosque as justification for slaughtering the Jews of Hebron in 1929, and Hamas again cited Al-Aqsa as justification for the October 7 massacre a century later. The idea has consistently been that, if a Jewish state controls such a central part of what’s supposed to be an Islamic caliphate, then Allah cannot be akbar—so, since Allah is akbar, the Jewish state must be annihilated.
Islamic fundamentalism is also the factor that makes the Western left’s unremitting hostility to Israel so morally incoherent—even before one reaches the comical extreme of “Queers for Palestine.” Feminism, free speech, freedom of religion, LGBTQ rights—these are all things that exist in Israel, and would not exist in anything that the people actually working to destroy Israel (as opposed to the resistance fighters of left-wing fantasies) would put in Israel’s place. And (as is often pointed out) the Muslims in the Middle East who have by far the most rights and the highest standard of living, outside of the petro-kingdoms, are the ones who are citizens of Israel.
If I was able to make the arguments in my post without mentioning any of this, doesn’t that only make those arguments stronger? 🙂
Comment #133 March 27th, 2024 at 8:19 am
Egypt and Jordan #124: The problem, for 57 years, has been that Egypt does not want Gaza back, and Jordan does not want the West Bank back. But if that were ever to change, then yes, absolutely, we’d have another solution, and possibly the best one, given that (unlike in 1948-1967) Egypt and Jordan now have peace treaties with Israel that have lasted for decades!
Comment #134 March 27th, 2024 at 8:30 am
David #131: The trouble is that the UN treats Israel with contempt—incredibly and unbelievably, for example, passing more resolutions about Israel than about the entire rest of the planet combined (!).
While Hamas is not a party to the Geneva Conventions, I daresay that Israel has followed their letter and spirit 10,000x better than Hamas has.
Comment #135 March 27th, 2024 at 8:36 am
Well, the jewish survival plan is very straightforward and aligned to a more general human survival plan: stop violence. This would solve not only most disputes in the world, but also wars, murders, assaults, hate crimes, domectic abuse, rapes, kidnapping, bullying and more.
Then we could focus on treating diseases, AI concerns and poverty eradication. A star trek idealistic and enlighted world.
The next valid question is: how? I used to think that technology would solve our problems and drive us to a non-violent world. Now I am not so optimistic. I think that all individual decisions should enforce a non-violence policy, but in a world where 99% is non-violent, a 1% violent is a major threat, unfortunately. This does not mean you should eradicate this 1% using violence yourself, as it would only make the matters worse.
Comment #136 March 27th, 2024 at 8:41 am
Nancy Lebovitz #130: Yes!!! From UNRWA’s eternal and hereditary refugee status to Egypt sealing its Gaza border, there are so many aspects of this conflict that only make sense once you adopt the premise that preserving the drama of millions of suffering refugees on Israel’s doorstep, testifying to Israel’s existential badness and ready on a moment’s notice to invade and retake Israel, is far more important than doing anything whatsoever to improve the condition of those refugees. This, of course, is precisely the opposite of the attitude Israel took toward the 800,000 Jewish refugees expelled from Muslim lands.
Comment #137 March 27th, 2024 at 8:45 am
Isaac Duarte #135:
This does not mean you should eradicate this 1% using violence yourself, as it would only make the matters worse.
So then, complete pacifism? Lay down for Hitler?
I support your sentiments, but one does need a game-theoretic equilibrium.
Comment #138 March 27th, 2024 at 10:55 am
> “I’ve read hundreds of the seemingly infinite army of Tweeters who post images of hook-nosed rats with black hats and sidecurls and dollar signs in their eyes.”
The following quote from your own blog post https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=4129 seems relevant: “The most exciting recent development in my life is … I stopped checking “SneerClub” … Permanently, cold turkey. I won’t even visit to read their sneers about this post. I’ve made progress cutting down on other self-destructive social media fixations as well. Many friends suggested this course to me, and I thank them all, though I ultimately had to follow my own path to the obvious.”
Comment #139 March 27th, 2024 at 11:06 am
Yovel #120
I am roughly in the same position as you but 20 years in the future. Everyone treated the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan like a sacred mission to defend our homeland from terrorists. The few who were clear-sighted enough criticize the factual grounds for the necessity of the wars had daggers glared at them, it was like they were speaking carelessly about the dead. The casualties and expense were thought necessary and people felt good about making the sacrifices. In fact, the sacrifices cemented the attitude. Who wants to think their friend was sniped in the head for no reason at all? Now all of the military propaganda has worn off, the instigators have either tried to distance themselves or retired, and it has turned out the basis for both of them was false, in fact willfully misrepresented by the then-government. Learn from our mistakes! I am seeing the same psychology playing out in Israeli politics: there are even credible rumors circulating that the flaws with the original border are fixable (that’s the positive and constructive way to interpret the idea that serious but identified mistakes were made). Our governments should treat failures in security the same way they treat airplane crashes, with open and methodical investigations that don’t blame individuals. Instead, solidarity and determination are wrung dry for all they’re worth in playing the “Great Game.”
Comment #140 March 27th, 2024 at 11:39 am
So, Scott, how are you interpreting the sudden turn of the Biden administration, calling for a cease-fire at the UN, blocked by China and Russia, and pissing off the Bibi administration?
Betrayal of Israel?
Symbolic BS by the Dems to try and stop the loss of Muslim votes in the US?
Comment #141 March 27th, 2024 at 11:54 am
Concerned #139: Both with Afghanistan (which did play a central role in 9/11) and even with Iraq (which applauded the attack but didn’t play a role in it, and was just Bush’s obsession), the crucial question for me isn’t whether we had a moral right to topple these murderous authoritarian regimes (of course we did!), but rather, what we got in return for the massive investment of blood and treasure. Of course, with the benefit of 20 years’ hindsight, it looks like we got very little at all. But that still doesn’t answer the question: was the failure inevitable, or was it just because we botched the execution? Should we have just stayed in those countries as an occupying power indefinitely, if the alternative was handing over the keys to the Taliban or ISIS? Why, post-WWII, have we never seemed able to replicate our spectacular success at turning Germany and Japan from authoritarian death-cults into beacons of liberal democracy? Is it simply because we’re too squeamish now, and we leave too much the death-cult in place when we invade, or is it something else? Implications for Gaza are left as exercises for the reader.
Comment #142 March 27th, 2024 at 12:01 pm
Scott #141
“Why, post-WWII, have we never seemed able to replicate our spectacular success at turning Germany and Japan from authoritarian death-cults into beacons of liberal democracy?”
To put it bluntly, because ww2 Germany and Japan were not medieval style sh!t holes, but “advanced” societies that could get their shit together on many levels, allowing them to bounce back on their own with some limited level of help.
Comment #143 March 27th, 2024 at 12:16 pm
This is a little off-topic,, but the following article was written by my brother-in-law, and may provide some relief from your twitter agony.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/black-sabbath-kibbutz-alumim-hamas
Comment #144 March 27th, 2024 at 12:26 pm
fred #140: I suspect that Biden simply got worn down by all the protesters screaming that he’s a genocidal monster, plus all the woke staffers in his administration, plus (yes) the very real possibility that he’ll lose Michigan and hence the election to an authoritarian conman if he sticks to his original principles. Honestly, I might’ve been worn down too in his situation. Or maybe Biden simply felt like he already stuck his neck far out to give Israel half a year to destroy Hamas, and if they haven’t managed to do it in that time then that’s on them.
To me, it seems like a complete no-brainer that any call for an Israeli ceasefire needs to be coupled to the return of all hostages. To decouple them, as the UN now has—to say sure, yeah, it’d be nice if Hamas returned the hostages, but since we all know that (being Hamas) they won’t, we demand that Israel lay down its arms anyway, unilaterally and not as part of any hostage negotiation—this is to capitulate to pure evil and to tell the hostages to go rot.
All the same, it’s not clear how much this will affect anything on the ground. Israel, so far, has responded to the UN resolution with open defiance. I would’ve greatly preferred if Netanyahu had said: “yes, of course we’ll comply with the resolution, which we interpret to mean that Hamas releases the hostages and we lay down our arms. Or in other words, that as soon as the former starts happening, the latter happens also.” I.e., I wish he’d called the UN’s bluff on this.
Comment #145 March 27th, 2024 at 12:33 pm
Scott #141: I think you’re forgetting South Korea. I suspect that the 50 million people there who aren’t living in the nightmare China wanted to put them in make all of America’s post-WW2 interventions a net positive. (I would also sort-of count Taiwan too, where there was no war but peace is preserved by America’s willingness to fight.)
Comment #146 March 27th, 2024 at 1:33 pm
So what’s up with QC these days?
But I kid.
Wonderful analytic and personal piece.
You wrote “until the day that a leader arises among the Palestinians with the moral courage of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat or Jordan’s King Hussein: a leader who not only talks peace but means it” is 100% correct. But if it is to happen (and I don’t see it in my lifetime) it will have to be an internal, armed uprising. And when people say to me after I say that, “they’ll be killed”, yes, that is what it will take. And it is not going to happen. I don’t have an answer.
As to why post WWII Japan and Germany can’t be replicated, in those cases the countries accepted their loss, woke from some fevered mania, and said “Let’s make cars”! Rational people at their core. The Pal’s, well I once knew a retired Shin Bet guy, he would shake his head and say sadly “It’s that religion of theirs”. How can you deal with someone who thinks they’re a soldier in a holy war mandated by God himself?
Comment #147 March 27th, 2024 at 1:37 pm
Concerned #139:
The US could afford to leave Afghanistan decades after 9/11, when the fire of revenge for 9/11 had burned out. It was clear that the only options were permanent occupation or letting the Taliban take control of Afghanistan again, and both Trump and Biden calculated that the forever war was not worth the cost anymore.
Israel is faced with the same choice: permanent occupation or letting Hamas take control of Gaza again. In contrast to the US, Israel cannot afford the second option. Hamas has promised to repeat October 7 again and again, and if Israel leaves Gaza alone, then the death cult will surely make good on its promise. This is in addition to the constant rocket fire that Israelis have gotten used to over the last decade and a half. I doubt the US would have gotten out of Afghanistan if American cities were (somehow) under constant Taliban rocket fire.
That is why the end state of the war must be a permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza. It does not matter whether civil affairs will be run by the PA or by COGAT, so long as the IDF has overall security control much like it has in Areas A and B. Like the US in Afghanistan, permanent occupation incurs a heavy cost. Unlike the case in Afghanistan, pulling out incurs a far heavier cost.
Also note: this exact story happened already in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”). After 26 years of military occupation (like the ~20 years in Afghanistan), Israel grew tired and negotiated a deal (the Oslo Accords) that allowed the terrorists to take over. Once the level of terrorism grew too unbearable (the Second Intifada), Israel sent its forces back (Operation Defensive Shield) and now Judea and Samaria are controlled by the IDF. Operation Swords of Iron is basically the Gaza version of Operation Defensive Shield, and like its predecessor it should not end with Israel withdrawing and letting the terrorists back in.
Comment #148 March 27th, 2024 at 2:18 pm
Hi Scott. You said #141
“the crucial question for me isn’t whether we had a moral right to topple these murderous authoritarian regimes (of course we did!)”
That’s a slippery slope argument there … Just wanna say that I think the US government/population did not have the moral/X right, neither do they have it right now, to topple those regimes (any that haven’t attacked them or committed war crimes at genocidal scale), because the fact is that the people in this country have managed to elect some almost comically villain dudes as their president.
So no, US didn’t and doesn’t have the requirements that would make me confident that they would be the right guys to handle this issue.
Maybe I would have given that to some people who have shown over the years that their brain is more or less sane and functional and who elect such people as well (like I don’t know, the Swedes or sth), but I would *never* give it to the US.
“Was the failure inevitable, or was it just because we botched the execution?”
So no, it was never an execution problem, it was always inevitable that those efforts would completely falter because we were (and are) so corrupt from within to begin with that the only result was going to be the enrichment of a bunch of contractors.
I sometimes wonder what’s happening to our brains here … why are we revisiting these questions for which the answer has been hammered 1000 times into our skulls already!?!
Comment #149 March 27th, 2024 at 4:08 pm
Scott, what is YOUR answer to your question? Maybe I missed it? What is your suggestion for what Israel should do? Presumably you say to start with eradicating Hamas, but suppose that happens tomorrow and the IDF frees the hostages — then what?
My own take is that at this point, a military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank sounds reasonable to me. The problem is that Israel should do it without gratuitously harming people — no settlements, for example, no constant indignities. Canned food should be allowed (even if the cans can be used to make weapons; that’s what the military occupation is for), and Gazans should be allowed to leave, including by ship (i.e. no blockade).
Also, if people are on their knees trying to surrender and Israeli soldiers shoot them anyway, this is a bad thing, actually, and should not be the unofficial policy. (We know this is the unofficial policy of the IDF due to the Castleman incident, in which he was shot while on his knees surrendering and then given no medical attention until he died, and the IDF said it will not investigate, hinting this was normal. Only later when there was public outcry because Castleman was Israeli did an investigation begin.)
Comment #150 March 27th, 2024 at 4:26 pm
anon85 #149: Eradicate Hamas, free the hostages, Israeli occupation of Gaza until the PA and/or other Palestinians and/or Arab countries and/or international peacekeeping forces can be put in charge, restart the peace process with the PA, no settlement construction (in Gaza OR the West Bank), no confidence vote in Netanyahu leading to new elections as a prerequisite for much of this to happen.
Comment #151 March 27th, 2024 at 5:02 pm
I still believe that the #1 “Unilateral Two-State Solution” is the best option, with significant UN protection, akin to what was implemented in Cyprus (North and South Cyprus) with the UN and UK acting as guarantors and a blue line demarcation. The next step would be establishing fair Abraham Accords with Palestine, allowing them to recognize their best ally as their neighboring cousins, much like how Israel shares its freshwater resources with them. Palestine cannot solely rely on donations from Islamist states for survival. If they aspire for a decent life, they must envision a future beyond perpetual conflict. Similar to other Arabic nations that have signed the Abraham Accords, the people of the Middle East are weary and are losing tangible support in territories, except for political Islamist states like Turkey and Iran, who exploit the Palestine conflict for their regime propaganda.
Comment #152 March 27th, 2024 at 7:31 pm
Scott #141
US can’t recreate success becouse US and West didn’t believe in itself anymore. They don’t believe in western values, don’t believe they are right. US won military in Vietnam, but than lost politicaly. How can you recreate western civilization if you don’t believe in this civilization? If you think it is imperialistic, racist, sexist, destroys planet and nature…
The same goes with Israel in some way. People here are speaking how Israel will stop exist becouse of Hamas and Iran… and discuss how jews have to live on sea, in US, or in “uninhabited part of Canada”. Somehow only living in Israel needs justification… But there were times when Israel stand strong against Egypt, Syria, and there alies from Cuba, North Korea and USSR. Today Israel is much stronger, and enemies much weaker, but many speak as if it doomed. Why?
Btw, people in Ukraine, and there supporters in Belarus, Russia, etc are much more confident that Ukraine has chances to win, and Russia has some serious probability to lose, even to the point of disentegration.
Comment #153 March 27th, 2024 at 8:17 pm
Scott #136: It seems you would contrast the absence of Palestinians emigrating to the lands of their friends, i.e. Arabs and other Muslims, to Israel taking in Jewish refugees from Arab countries. But that comparison doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The right comparison is to the absence of Israelis emigrating to the lands of their friends, i.e. the Americans and their allies (related to your plan (4)). The situation here is much more symmetric than you allow. Arab and Muslim nations, particularly Iran, do support the Palestinians in some ways, notably with arms. And the dominant US aid to Israel is now also arms.
The primary asymmetry is in which party currently has military control of the disputed lands.
Comment #154 March 27th, 2024 at 8:25 pm
Have you considered adding buttons like Facebook’s “like”, “care”, “love”, etc?
(Please don’t consider adding a “dislike” button.)
I’m sure many of your readers may agree with you, or otherwise wish to express that they care, but not feel like anything they write is worth posting.
(Nerdy people bad at expressing themselves and want a systematic method for doing so? Never…)
Like many others, I hope things go well for you, that the hard times are outweighed by the happy ones.
Comment #155 March 27th, 2024 at 8:36 pm
The other week I overheard the following final solution to the Zionist question: “Elon Musk (who himself is a crypto-Zionist) will remove Zionists from Earth to Mars (where they belong).”
Comment #156 March 27th, 2024 at 8:43 pm
bringEmAllHere #153: Your symmetry makes no sense to me (or rather, it only makes sense if we absurdly regard the US as a Jewish country, rather than only Israel). Can you point me to a historical case where a Muslim country took in hundreds of thousands of refugees the way Israel took in Jewish refugees? The point is that the Jews’ goal, throughout the 30s and 40s, was to settle refugees anyplace where they could survive. Israel was chosen not because it was Israel but because it was available, during a crucial window when the US largely wasn’t. If the Arab world had treated the Palestinian refugees the way the Jews treated Jewish refugees—not as pawns whose suffering is useful for a morality play or a geopolitical struggle, but as human beings to be resettled wherever they can thrive—this conflict would’ve ended generations ago.
Comment #157 March 27th, 2024 at 9:07 pm
kardona #113: All Israelis are at risk of annihilation today, as were Jews across the Arab world in the 1940s.
Palestinian leaders have been encouraging indiscriminate massacres of Jews since the 1920s. Amin al Husseini, the Palestinian leader from 1922-1959, personally incited the first massacre in Nebi Musa in 1920. (Though to his credit he tried to de-escalate another massacre in 1929.) During WWII he moved to Berlin, visited a concentration camp, worked as a Nazi propagandist, recruited Albanian Muslims for the 21st Waffen SS Mountain Division, and told Radio Berlin: “Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor. God is with you.” In 1941, Nazi sympathizers in Baghdad massacred hundreds of Jews in the Farhud. Between 1941-1948 antisemitic Arabs also carried out pogroms in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and Bahrain. In 1947 Arab League leader Azzam Pasha warned in an article in Egyptian paper Akhbar al-Yom that if Israel declared independence the Arab League would launch “a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.” Jews in Palestine and the Arab countries were in danger of annihilation by 1948.
If you doubt that Israelis are in danger today, just look at what Hamas did to every Israeli they encountered on 10/7 (even Muslim Israelis!).
Comment #158 March 27th, 2024 at 9:24 pm
Scott, the Jordanians have taken in tons of Muslim refugees. Palestinian ones (many of whom became citizens, unlike in Lebanon and Syria), Syrian ones, and so on. On that note, Turkey took in tons of Syrians. So did Egypt.
Comment #159 March 27th, 2024 at 10:09 pm
Spot on. It’s frankly disgusting to me that Israel gets painted as genocidal monster when the Hamas terror attack started this, and Hamas shows no willingness to stop it by releasing the hostages. Obviously Netanyahu seems to assign very little value to the lives of Palestinian civilians, but it should be equally obvious that Hamas does even less so.
Of course from the perspective of Hamas the entire project goes swimmingly. They goaded Israel exactly towards the reaction that they wanted. Not that Israel has or had any good options.
A two state solution still seems to be the only viable path forward, but there is a catch. At this point it looks like that Hamas would still come out on top if Palestinians had another election, and this is decidedly not a viable outcome for Israel.
A lasting peace requires de-radicalization, but of course right now we have exactly the opposite happen on all sides. Another win for the terrorists.
The only hope that I can find in this long comment thread is Yassine Meskhout take that the facts paint a clear picture, but unfortunately human rationality is in short supply.
Comment #160 March 27th, 2024 at 10:44 pm
Scott #154: I view the level of affinity between Palestinians and people in other Arab and/or Muslim countries in the region as roughly similar to that between Israeli Jews and Americans (and not to that between “Jews in Israel” and “Jews outside Israel”, which is much closer). This is, among other things, essentially the division in the current Middle East conflict. (In the 30’s and early 40’s the situation was a bit different). I don’t regard the US as a Jewish country, but I also don’t regard Egypt or Iran as a Palestinian country.
The analog of Israel (after 1948) taking in Jewish refugees who were expelled from their home countries would be if Palestinians had won the 1948 war and then took in (hypothetical) Palestinians living outside the region. The Palestinians did not win that war and so did not get a chance to show their compassion for refugees of their ethnicity. But I don’t think you can really hold that against the Palestinians.
Does this clarify the symmetry?
” If the Arab world had treated the Palestinian refugees the way the Jews treated Jewish refugees—not as pawns whose suffering is useful for a morality play or a geopolitical struggle, but as human beings to be resettled wherever they can thrive—this conflict would’ve ended generations ago.”
I would say the US could have (and could still — see my previous comments) ended the conflict by taking in the Jews. The asymmetry is in who won the 1948 war, but I personally don’t think that changes the underlying moral standing of the parties.
It’s already been addressed in another comment, but there are also other historical cases of Muslim nations that took in many refugees. For instance, Pakistan took in millions of Muslim refugees from India upon partition. But I also think it’s better not to make this a debate about the morality of Muslim nations in general.
Comment #161 March 28th, 2024 at 12:00 am
Justin #154: Thanks!! I remember years ago I added upvoting and downvoting of comments to the blog, but then readers quickly wanted it taken away, feeling like needing to spell out arguments was something that made this blog distinctive. Maybe I should bring it back though.
Comment #162 March 28th, 2024 at 2:31 am
#160: What the heck would have happened to the Jews who stayed behind in places like Yemen and Iraq? Iraqi Kurds were gassed by Saddam. What would have happened to Iraqi Jews? Iraqi Jews were an overachieving non-Muslim minority. What would their fate have been?
Comment #163 March 28th, 2024 at 2:50 am
After October 7 when Israel started attacking Gaza, I thought: why do, say, the EU, US & Canada not offer people to leave from Gaza, provide them with a residence permit and a new start in life, all on an entirely voluntary basis. According to Wikipedia, at least 6.7 million Syrians have left Syria (with 3.7 million in Turkey). As for the Ukraine, 4.2 million refugees are in the EU ‘under temporary protection with a residence permit’. I don’t understand why I never heard any discussion about this idea, it does not seem so hard to implement. I understand that Gazans going to Egypt or Jordan is not ideal, as one can easily continue war with Israel from here. Having a safe place and a positive economic outlook helps a lot in setting the mind on a different path (the past and its pain remains, but the future is where we’ll live). The same deal could be offered to Israelis. This does not solve the issue of ‘who lives where in the Middle-East’, but it allows a different opportunity for those who believe that dying over this conflict is ultimately senseless.
Comment #164 March 28th, 2024 at 3:52 am
Scott,
I agree with everything you wrote and perhaps should mention my own peace plan:
Every child in Gaza and the West Bank beginning at the age of 6 would be required to have at least 1 month of school every year in Israel. Learning and playing together with Jewish kids …
After 15 – 20 years a 2-state solution can be implemented.
Perhaps I am naive, but if something like this does not work nothing ever will.
Comment #165 March 28th, 2024 at 9:37 am
The question now is, given the current position and trajectory of Biden, and his administration, attitude and policies toward Israel, which presidential candidate do you support?
Comment #166 March 28th, 2024 at 9:39 am
Sergei #66
> You were like 5 times smarter than me, don’t you have options?
Life is complicated, so no, I actually don’t have options. This is not something I feel like discussing on the public internet. The more pertinent point is, we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about literally every Jew in Israel.
> Anyway – did not intend to shit on anybody, read again, still don’t see. What offended you?
You don’t have to uproot, from your home, but do have to accept the individual right of return of the Palestinians to theirs. E.g. http://www.alandforall.org
I read your comments as advocating for some kind of expulsion of Jews from Israel. But maybe I misunderstood. If all you meant is allowing into Israel the Palestinian refugees of 48 together will all of their descendants, then I’m not offended. My answer to the latter is: On the day they want to come here to live peacefully with the Jews, under a liberal democratic government that respects the rights of women, LGBTQ, atheists etc., on that day I will welcome them with open arms.
Comment #167 March 28th, 2024 at 12:10 pm
Barbara Terhal #163 and wb #164: I love both of your constructive suggestions!
Comment #168 March 28th, 2024 at 12:11 pm
Vanessa Kosoy #166:
On the day they want to come here to live peacefully with the Jews, under a liberal democratic government that respects the rights of women, LGBTQ, atheists etc., on that day I will welcome them with open arms.
That’s the most eloquent response I’ve ever seen to the right-of-return demand.
Comment #169 March 28th, 2024 at 12:32 pm
Okay, hear me out:
What if Israel allows the creation of a Palestinian country, but under the conditions that it adopts Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which forbids Japan from having a military:
> In its text, the state formally renounces the sovereign right of belligerency and aims at an international peace based on justice and order. The article also states that, to accomplish these aims, armed forces with war potential will not be maintained.
(From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_9_of_the_Japanese_Constitution)
And also that Israel’s military is allowed to enforce it, and also is allowed to remove paramilitary forces and terrorists from Palestine.
I think this solution doesn’t fall into any of the ones you listed. What do you think?
Comment #170 March 28th, 2024 at 12:54 pm
Christopher #169: Is that so different from what Israel did offer (pre-Netanyahu), and what Arafat and every other Palestinian leader turned down?
In any case, yes, I think the offer should be a standing one.
Comment #171 March 28th, 2024 at 1:14 pm
Scott #170
What about making it more of an “offer you can’t refuse” *cough cough puppet state* type thing? Kind of like what Mac Arthur did with Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_MacArthur#Occupation_of_Japan
> MacArthur was *ordered* to exercise authority through the Japanese government machinery, including the Emperor Hirohito… Americans chose to *allow* the Japanese state to continue to exist, albeit under their ultimate control.
(emphasis added)
And if the current government doesn’t accept, do just make a new one and go full puppet state.
Comment #172 March 28th, 2024 at 1:18 pm
Scott,
I support your position on this topic and was actually just quickly skimming through the article, not indending to leave a comment but then I encountered this part:
“Some say spitefully: then let the Jews go back to Poland. And if Poles massacre the returnees like they massacred their grandparents, before, during, and even after the Holocaust, that’s not our concern.”
Which got me really sad, I read your blog from time to time and really value your opinions and I wasn’t suspecting you to hold such a xenophobic and unjustified opinion about Poles. I mean, do you even really think like that, that Poles would massacre Jews if they would arrive in Poland? Like, seriously?
And setting aside the contemporary Poland, it looks like we’re here in some strange realm with really distorted version of history, where it was apparanetly Poles who murdered Jews during WW2, not Germans. Jews lived peacefully in Poland for centuries, were integral part of the society. It is Poles who are the most numerous among Righteous Among the Nations, despite the fact that saving Jews was punished by death by German occupying force in Poland, which was not the case in France for example.
Regards
Comment #173 March 28th, 2024 at 1:51 pm
God, I hate wading into this issue, but here goes. And fair warning, I’m a lot more pessimistic than most of you here.
Bona fides first:
1. Israel has an absolute right to exist.
2. The Palestinian people have a right to self determination, in the Palestinian nation (and not, as some have suggested, as Egyptians or Jordanians – they are neither).
3. Both people have a long and historic claim to land. And unless the global community fails catastrophically, and worse than it ever has before, neither people is going anywhere.
4. The Nakba was ethnic cleansing. The expulsion of Jews from MENA countries in response to it was ethnic cleansing. Both were evil, and neither should have happened. But as with most things, we can at least partially blame british imperialism for it.
5. Nothing justifies the nature of the Oct. 7 attack, with the mass murder of civilians.
Now, onto the rebuttal (yes, crappy ICML reviews have me sufficiently rattled this year. This is, by the way, is what therapists call avoidance behaviour on my part, but screw it).
1. The two state solution is dead – the settlement enterprise has killed it. There is no force on earth that will, or even can, move the 6-700,000 settlers to bring back the 1967 borders. A simple glance at a map will show that any fully separate Palestinian state will be functionally unviable, unable to feed itself, let alone offer the basic functions of a state to it’s citizens. As folks like Vanessa Kosoy have pointed out, alandforall might be the way forward.
2. As to any Palestinian state requiring to be demilitarized – I would question that as well, simply because who else will protect them from the settlement enterprise? It’s clear that they are offered no protection in the West Bank from settler violence. So if not them, who? The UN? Good luck finding a country willing to send troops to be peacekeepers in this morass.
3. Any talks about permanently evacuating either the Palestinian or the Jewish populations stink to me of ethnic cleansing. Moreover, it is a completely impractical solution, and even talking about it in this relatively private corner of the internet is a waste of time.
4. Hamas are rotten, they are evil, and they are stupid. But, to paraphrase the old saying: “You kick a dog long enough, that dog is going to bite you”. The truth is, the Palestinian Authority has been totally discredited, much to the delight of the right wing in Israel (and perhaps a certain nepo-baby real estate developer from new jersey who so desperately wants to be a real boy). The Palestinian people have been shown that the PA will not fight for them, and that the PA’s ways have lead to a slow-motion ethnic cleansing via the settlements.
5. I think the best that can be said of IDF’s conduct in this war is that they are taking international humanitarian law as a suggestion as opposed to a guide, let alone a law. Aside from the constant calls for massacring Palestinians by media figures and politicians, there’s also the issue of the complete destruction of Gaza’s universities, the uncommon rate at which Gazan educators and scholars are being killed, the seemingly systematic targeting of journalists, and more.
6. It is clear that Israel is actively hampering the delivery of aid – see Smotrich’s outrageous delays on US flour, or David Cameron (hardly an antizionist!) commenting on his frustrations regarding aid.
7. I understand the focus on Israeli security, particularly for those, to put it lightly, who have family there. But Israel’s only possible existential threats are from an expanded war – which fanatics on all sides want, and every one else on the planet wants to avoid. Having said that, what is the solution to the Gaza question? There’s nothing left – no functioning schools, no functioning public health, more child amputees than anywhere else on earth (https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-pediatricians-two-weeks-inside-a-hospital-in-gaza), no roads, no public sanitation, nothing. What is to happen to these people? Who will foot the bill for rebuilding at least a small fraction of what once was? What will that bill even look like? What will happen to all the kids for whom the acronym ‘WCNSF’ was invented? What will happen if famine takes off, as every public health official on earth seems to think it will? I think these are much more pertinent – and much more challenging – questions to ask than
10. I think framing the Palestinian motivations as Islamic is fundamentally flawed. While Hamas is a fundamentalist terrorist organization, it’s worth remembering that the struggle for them is fundamentally about the land, and the culture they developed there. I mean, you can call Edward Said many things, but to call him a fundamentalist islamist would be a bit much. The same for the likes of Munther Daleh (who you probably knew at MIT). And even the PLO was a nationalist organization, and was by and large secular (and actually, rather left wing in much of it’s politics).
11. Lastly, any solution that doesn’t fundamentally ensure internalize the fact that there are two peoples on a tiny, tissue-sized piece of land who aren’t going anywhere – without the vilest of crimes being committed – is useless. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians must recognize this, must feel it, viscerally, in order for any hopes for real peace. Olmert and Abbas were too late in 2008. Bibi, well, the less said about him the better. The Abraham accords were a pretty, but grotesque lie. The idea that the Middle East’s issues could be solved without addressing the fundamental problem of the Palestinian’s lack of self-determination was stupidity, and essentially guaranteed a violent response. And now here we are, set back by at least a generation or two. But as bleak as things are, and as pessimistic as I am, I can’t help but respect the courage and conviction of left wing solidarity movements like StandingTogether and so on.
Also, Scott – if you’ve made it this far, allow me a tiny digression. Do you have any papers out on your watermarking of LLMs work? If not, what do you think is really worth reading?
Comment #174 March 28th, 2024 at 2:22 pm
“If you want to change my mind, rather than showing me more such images, you’ll need to target the cognitive part of me: the part that asks why so many children are suffering, and what causal levers we’d need to push to reach a place where neither side’s children ever have to suffer like this ever again.
[…]
I’m heartened by the fact that despite this, indeed despite the risk to their lives for speaking out, a full 15% of Gazans openly disapprove of the Oct. 7 massacre. I want a solution where that 15% becomes 95% with the passing of generations. My endgame is peaceful coexistence.”
I probably don’t have to tell you, it’s all about conditioning! The historical Buddha figured this out over 2500 years ago and modern day neuro and cognitive science is backing it up empirically. And the big problem as I see it is, the violence and hatred is cooked in to these Abrahamic religions since forever! I tried to express this to another Jewish -Ashkenazi also, I believe, Professor at Rice University, but I don’t think I did very well. But I was raised in the Christian religion and, to my knowledge, there is nothing even remotely similar to, say, the Buddhist practice known as Tonglen meditation, where you actively exchange self with other; this, by the way, being one of the primary meditative tools the molecular biologist turned monk, Matthieu Ricard, used to become “the happiest man in the world”. I’m sorry to say, but there it is! The divisions in the Abrahamic religions BEGIN with Cain and Abel! You’re not going to mitigate that deep conditioning overnight. Okay, what to do until then?
Well, your post got me to mulling over this situation. A big problem here, I think, is that you all are ignoring the Christian contribution to the Holocaust. I think I already told you about that book I read, Apocalypse 2012, written by the second-generation immigrant from Lebanon who also has, or had, a Muslim father and a Catholic mother. In his book he explains why the former President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, denied the Holocaust. The basic argument:
Take as your fundamental axiom, God exists and God is just, and then suppose the Holocaust actually happened. Then this represents a grave sin against a just God and that God would not allow that to go unpunished. But what happened historically? You had the Nuremberg trials in which less than 20 people were executed for the slaughter of 8 million Jews, Gypsies, and Gays; the Western Allied powers funneled monies into Germany, enabling it to rebuild and become the economic powerhouse it is today; these same powers covertly assisted the Jewish people in the creation of Israel, forcing some Muslim Palestinians from lands they had been living on for thousands of years. Hence, the Muslim Palestinians ultimately paid for the sins of the German Christians, and a just God would not allow such an unjust thing to happen. Therefore, the Holocaust was fabricated by the Western Allied powers as an excuse to justify the creation of Israel – something that very much conforms to Christian Biblical prophecy, I might add. Of course, according to that prophecy, Jews are still incapable of salvation until they all convert to Christianity – Wank!
Now, of course you can attack that argument logically, starting with the fundamental axiom, but that’s the argument and it makes a lot of sense to certain folks. And I find just a little bit of truth to it anyway, in spite of its logical weaknesses. Joseph Lawrence, the author of the Apocalypse book, goes on to say, you want peace in the Middle East, embrace a two-state solution based on the boundaries of 1967 and give the Jewish people all of Bavaria! Well, he’s a Catholic, so he conveniently fails to mention the Christian contribution to the Holocaust in the form of thousands of pages of anit-semitic writings, both Catholic and Protestant, the actions of Pope Pius, etc. I mean hell, just recently the Pope Benedict, a German, stated with self-congratulatory zeal that not all Jews were guilty of deicide in the death of Christ, but only the Rich Jews! I don’t know how all you Jewish folks feel about that, but I was kind of offended!
Okay, so with that groundwork, here’s my alternative reality: a two-state solution with the Palestinian State combosed of those lands currently referred to as Bavaria and Rome! Surely there’s enough wealthy Jews in the world, they should be able to take care of the logistics! And then, of course, we should try to convince all the world’s people to take up a Tonglen practice, and on a daily basis exchange self with other in their own meditative contemplations, hence, developing a great sense of empathy!
You can thank me later . . .
Comment #175 March 28th, 2024 at 3:14 pm
Robert #173
I generally share your pessimism, but I disagree with you on several key points. Going one by one:
1. The settlement enterprise did not kill the viability of a Palestinian state, and not for lack of trying on the part of the settlers. The big settlement blocs hug the Green Line, and further beyond are tiny villages and outposts whose total population is only a few tens of thousands, surrounded by millions of Arabs. A fully Palestinian state in the land outside of the settlement blocs is perfectly viable given the right infrastructure.
2. The Palestinians would not need protection from the settlers in this hypothetical scenario, for the same reason people living in Be’eri and Kfar Aza and Nahal Oz would not need to worry about what their Gazan neighbors are up to. If we do want to pretend that peace is possible without the end of mutual hatred, then even without a military, village protection units and police forces have a lot to recommend for themselves.
4., 10. Hamas are most emphatically not doing what they are doing because Israel was mean to them once. They are doing what they are doing out of theological hatred, and their predecessors like the Mufti were doing much the same thing in the British Mandate period, before Israel’s alleged crimes in 1948 and 1967. Yes, they are separate from secular antizionists like Said and the PLO, whose motives are leftist and secular Arab nationalist. However, it is the jihadists who are currently Israel’s biggest threat right now, not the PLO.
5., 6. A lot of this sounds like Hamas propaganda, which admittedly is very fashionable to spread right now. For a contrary view, see https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286
7. You would be surprised how quickly a war-torn area can bounce back. Look at Europe and Japan after WWII for some examples. If nothing else, the massive amounts of international aid sent in to rebuild Gaza can actually be used to rebuild Gaza, once Hamas is no longer able to divert it to building tunnels and rockets.
11. The Abraham accords were not a lie. Israel knew that there could be no progress on the Palestinian front: Hamas cannot be any sort of peace partner, and the PLO refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist and has rejected tons of extremely generous peace offers in the 30 years before the Abraham accords. October 7 was not a response to the Abraham accords, it was an attack of opportunity by an organization that would have done it at any time in its existence if it could. (I know about the theories that the attacks were done to forestall a Saudi deal, but I doubt that this is even close to the main motive. I think Hamas above all wanted to murder Jews).
Comment #176 March 28th, 2024 at 3:23 pm
Wes Hansen #174: Leaving aside many points of Christian and Buddhist theology on which I don’t feel competent to express an opinion … if Germany and Italy wanted to offer the Palestinians a new state in Bavaria and Rome and the Palestinians were amenable to it, I can’t imagine that a single Israeli would object. Nor would they object if Donald Duck created a new Palestinian homeland on clouds floating above the Mediterranean (as long as the floating duckland didn’t then attack Israel).
Comment #177 March 28th, 2024 at 4:07 pm
Scott #176
Well, of course I realize that my alternative reality is about as likely as Donald Duck flapping his magic wings and making it all go away, but that was kind of my point!
A) Nobody wants to lie in the bed THEY made – they don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions. Or do you think Western Christians covertly helping the Jewish people establish Israel at considerable cost to Palestinian Muslims is somehow taking responsibility for 2,000 year’s worth of spreading claims of deicide and the anti-semitism based on those claims?
B) Everyone wants a solution provided that solution doesn’t impinge on their own creature comforts, i. e. there’s no energetic cost to them. You can say all you want about Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood joining the Nazis, but at the end of the day it was German Christians who lured people – humans, men, women, and children, into gas chambers, sealed the doors, and dropped in the cyanide canisters! I purposely didn’t mention anything about asking the Germans in Bavaria or the Christians in Rome their opinion as to my alternative reality, assuming that, provided it maintains the New Testament prophecies, they would be willing to sacrifice a bit. Or maybe I just realize on some deep level that inquiring as to their opinion on the Jewish situation would be tantamount to asking this guy his opinion on reparations for the descendants of slavery!?! (spend a little time with it, go deep)
C) Did you happen to read Del #83? There’s a lot wisdom in that comment! I reproduce the relevant portions here for your convenience:
“1) Twitter (and other social media). What you see there is not the society. It’s what their rules (I refuse to call them “algorithms” and probably as a theoretical computer scientist you agree) feed you. Those rules have only one goal: keep you stuck in front of the stream of posts, whatever-it-takes. Do not delude yourself to be engaging in conversation, learning things or anything. You are simply being glued to the screens by the “rules”, so that your eyeballs can be sold to advertisers. I understand your dilemma (especially knowing the history of your feminism reading), but the solution is only to quit. I did, I completely deleted all my accounts anywhere.
2) Israel. Well, as a non-anti-Zionist and non-twitter-person your letter is obviously not directed at me, but I will respond anyway, because I think I have an extremely important thing to say, which continues to be ignored because, well, because it has not caught on twitter or youtube. What is my solution to this problem depends on when we are in history: the solution in 1930 would not be the same as the one in 1967 which would not be the same today. Speaking of recent times, I totally agree with you if it were October 5 or 6th. But let me jump to today, or better the close future. Assume the Israeli military has defeated Hamas, and freed the remaining hostages. Gaza is just a civil population and no militants. I believe this is already a stretch of what could happen, but let’s assume it does. Now what? How do we achieve peace? I argue that a peaceful solution has become impossible for the next at least 30 year, perhaps 50. Why? Well, all that civilian population, displaced, orphaned, with their homes destroyed? Do you think they will now happily embrace Israel as their savior from the bad guys in Hamas? No, they will simply call this event Nabka v2 and hate the Jews even more. This war has been particularly hard on kids in their tween or teen years, and they do not have the intellectual possibility to see it as a just war, so in 5 years (when these kids will be in their 20s) a new Hamas-like militant organization will rise and things will continue for the worse.
You have to admit that both Hamas and twitter are quite cunning. They convinced us of doing things that are very bad, basically leaving us no option. I mean, the right response to October 7th? Imagine if a mob from Austin went to Dallas and killed hundreds of people in a mass shooting at a mall or something, but instead of the typical after-shooting-suicide, they manage to escape and go back to Austin and mingle with the population without leaving traces about who exactly they are. Should the Dallas police go to Austin and raid every house, destroy many of them, and kill many innocent people in the process of finding the perpetrators? I know the comparison is imperfect, but still you get the idea. Hamas knew that the response would have been war (especially given the far-right government in Israel right now). And war was exactly what they wanted, and Israel gave it to them. In my opinion, the better response would have been to advertize what happened on October 7th to the Gaza population, and asking THEM for a revolt against Hamas. Offering reward for hostage liberation AND perpetrator capture (so perpetrators themselves not being eligible). Tough sell, I know, but the only road to peace is to stop the spiral of escalation.”
The only road to peace is to stop the spiral of escalation! Amazing! I mean, we all should know that this entire ordeal is intimately connected to Russia and what’s going on in Ukraine! Russia and Iran are in bed together and Russia wanted to spread America’s arms thin. The whole goddamn world is playing Putin’s game right now. But the only reason Putin is able to do this is because . . . ?
That new rapper and poet from Wales, Ren Gill, watch his three part YouTube videos called the Money Game, watch his response to the King Dotta Diss (watch Dotta diss either before or after). That young guy gets it, probably because he suffered from undiagnosed Lyme disease for 8 years, leading to psychosis eventually, before stem cell therapy cured him.
It’s a real stretch to attribute a theology to Buddhism, especially when the only relevant aspect I directed attention to is thoroughly supported by multiple empirical studies, one of which I conveniently linked to.
Comment #178 March 28th, 2024 at 4:33 pm
I think there is an important point missing in the discussion.
70% of Palestinian support Hamas according to a poll in November 23 (Hitler only got 30% support). Hence, the separation between the Palestinian people and Hamas is a fantasy.
In a sane world, the Palestinians would be treated like Germans in WW2. Fought by the international community until the last man standing.
Instead, their actions are justified, Israel is blamed for genocide (very slow and inefficient one), while the Palestinians who openly call for genocide “will never be forgotten by the international community” as UN chief said. They are getting aid, money for rebuilding Gaza is promised by many nations (no one offered to help rebuild the burned down Israeli villages). Some of that money would be used for remilitarization, just like every other cycle of violence in the past two decades. It is very profitable to start wars when the world covers your expenses and provides for the population.
I don’t understand why people de-humanize the Palestinians by assuming they don’t want the 7.10? They are very intelligent people, who want to kill every non-Muslim in the world. Hamas said that explicitly. Please respect them enough to treat them as enemies.
Two state solution – does anyone think of giving aid to Russia or give Russia parts of Ukraine would de-radicalize them? Or does this trick only work in the middle east? Do we need to wait for the Palestinians to be a threat to Israel and the world before acting as if they are the enemy of mankind?
Would the International community ever stop fooling these poor souls, giving them hope they can win? Because THIS is the real fuel of the conflict. When the Palestinians would lose international support, there will be peace.
Comment #179 March 28th, 2024 at 5:29 pm
In your post — which I found insightful — and in some comments, “progressive left anti-Israelis” or the “worldwide left” are mentioned, and sometimes I feel the authors might talk about people like me.
I was called blindly pro-Israel in the past, and now I am called anti-Israel. I don’t agree with either label, but my opinion about Israel, Palestine, and the conflict changed a lot in the last two decades. I thought it might help someone understand why lots of people don’t support Israel — if I’m wrong, please stop reading here.
(To avoid misunderstandings: I hope there will be peace, I hope no more innocent people will die, I hope the kidnapped return home, I was horrified by the Oct 7. massacre, I am horrified by the consequences of the war, I think the world should weaken and destroy Hamas, I believe that Israeli and Palestinians should live in Israel/Palestine with power over part of the land.)
Some things that let me to change my opinion.
1.I don’t like the way Israel has acted in the last decade
I think Israel’s government and Hamas (no full symmetry implied) are actively opposing any peaceful solution, and I believe that both could do a lot to unilateral improve the situation. But both have worked hard during the last decade to make a peace almost impossible.
E.g. I would change Scotts first condition to “1. the removal of Netanyahu and the settlers”. I try to be optimistic, but it seems completely impossible to ever remove them from the Westbank. Perhaps harder than removing Hamas. So independent of all the talk of peace, Israel’s actions make it more and more impossible. There is nothing much to win for Palestinians at this point. Palestinians know that they cannot have a state or more freedom if they don’t vote Hamas (see Westbank).
I think that Israel has become a “bad actor”, and that the world needs to put pressure on Israel — I have lost hope that things will get better without it.
2. I lost hope that reasonable people in Israel will prevail.
With “reasonable people” I mean people who oppose mass-killings, mass-deportations, autocracy, racism and 1000-year old historical claims etc. I’m not an expert in politics, but even the biggest scandals could not get reasonable people to power.
I also feel disconnect from reality among Israeli colleagues (not representative). I appreciate their fight for good. But unfortunately, Israel is now a state led by not-nice, incompetent people. Some high-ranking Israeli officials want to nuke Gaza, completely eradicating millions of people. I don’t think it will happen, but I understand that Palestinians take this seriously. Israel has the capability to kill all residents of Gaza (more so than vice versa), and this stuff does not come from some twitter-people, but from high members of the government.
3. I have more and more disagreements with reasonable Israelis (again, not representative).
E.g. about the war. To avoid misunderstandings: I understand that people have the right to use force to avoid massacres, I understand that a war kills civilians even if one tries to avoid it, and I understand that people think about their own killed families before thinking about killed people further away. But I cannot understand how one can support the war at this point! I hear statements like “we need to destroy Hamas”, or “we don’t know the intel on the ground”, or “some civilians casualties are unavailable”. Let’s start with the last one. Israel makes decisions based on priorities. One might have the priorities:
— do the best for Israel’s future
— do the best for Israeli’s next few years
— avoid casualties
— increase one’s electability
— do the best for one’s family
Judging by the past decade, I think it’s quite clear what Netanyahu and many of his colleagues have as their highest priority. I also think it’s clear what’s low on Netanyahu’s list. So given that I do not know the intel on the ground, it appears clear that I should strongly oppose the war! Nothing good is high on the priority list, but the prize to pay is incredibly high! So many innocent lives. And even Netanyahu had good intentions: nobody should let people that are so incapable decide on whether to go to war or not. Look how these failed to protect Israel against the attack. And we let them decide whether bombing all of Gaza makes Israel safer? As opposed to targeted strikes? Better walls (for God’s sake)? Economic development? A “protector” agent? Note that I don’t know the answer, but I’m fairly sure that the people in charge don’t either.
I also think it’s strange to use “Hamas is evil” as an excuse for anything. Of course they are, but whether the war will make them stronger or weaker in 10 years remain to be seen. Perhaps smart, reasonable people could judge, but they are not in power. What we know for sure though, is that the price for many innocent people is very very high.
Comment #180 March 28th, 2024 at 5:51 pm
Hieronim #172:
I mean, do you even really think like that, that Poles would massacre Jews if they would arrive in Poland? Like, seriously?
For you, I removed that sentence. I’m sure there are many Poles, yourself included, who would welcome Jews back to Poland, and I’m grateful to you and them.
Nevertheless I can explain my thinking:
– While Poland indeed had more Righteous Gentiles than any other nation, that’s partly down to the fact that Poland also had also more Jews who could be (and were) murdered than any other nation. And, country by country, the success or failure of the Holocaust seems to have had more to do with local attitudes than with any other factor: did that country’s populace defy demands to round up the Jews for extermination, as in Denmark and to a lesser extent Italy? Or did it eagerly volunteer to help? In Poland, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe, more than 90% of Jews were wiped out.
– The 1946 Kielce pogrom was a huge signal to the remnant of Polish Jews who’d survived the Holocaust that they could have no possible future in Poland, as even after the defeat of Nazi Germany and the revelation of its crimes to the world, a critical mass of ordinary Poles still wanted the Jews dead.
– Poland’s current far-right government has criminalized claims of Polish complicity in the Holocaust (!), despite those claims being mainstream in Holocaust scholarship. This doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that a government would do if it either knew its forbears to be innocent, or (like the German government) knew them to be guilty but was ready to accept historical responsibility.
Comment #181 March 28th, 2024 at 6:10 pm
M # 179
I completely don’t understand your worldview.
Yes, Israel basically gave up on peace over the past decade, but that was after 20 years of bending over backwards to accommodate Palestinian demands. Every peace offer proposed was rejected by the PLO, which never responded to any proposal with counteroffer. Given the widespread anti-Israel incitement in PA and Hamas controlled areas, and the spikes in terrorism whenever the IDF left Palestinians in the territories to their own devices, it seems perfectly reasonable for the Israeli populace to give up on peace in the near future and focus on other things. I also see no reason to ethnically cleanse Judea and Samaria of Jews, just because one personally disagrees with the politics of most of those particular Jews.
Palestinians cannot vote Hamas anymore because the PA (wisely) refuses to hold elections. Hamas would win elections not because the Palestinians lost hope for peace, but because they never wanted peace in the first place.
Yes, I agree that Israel’s current government is terrible, but the war against Hamas has broad support among the Israeli populace, from both supporters of the government and supporters of the opposition. Also, if you think that the moronic minister’s wish to nuke Gaza should be taken seriously, even though it will never happen, then why not also take threats made by the Palestinians towards Israel seriously? Palestinians tend to actually make good on their hateful threats when given the opportunity. This on its own demolishes the case for “peace” (ie, for giving the Palestinians the opportunity).
Your case for opposing the war makes no sense. Yes, Netanyahu has skewed priorities (to put it mildly), but the war itself is being fought for the correct aim: to dismantle Gaza’s terrorist groups. The war itself is managed by the career officers of the IDF, not by Ben-Gvir. They definitely failed to protect Israelis before and during October 7, but they are the only defense Israel has. Judging by the way the war has progressed so far, with 3/4ths of Hamas’s battalions destroyed, I say that the IDF is competent enough despite its earlier failures. Finally, ending the war without a victory means letting Hamas continue to rule Gaza, which is not an option after October 7.
“And we let them decide whether bombing all of Gaza makes Israel safer? As opposed to targeted strikes? Better walls (for God’s sake)? Economic development? A “protector” agent?”
The IDF decides, not the ministers. If bombing Gaza kills terrorists, then that does make Israel safer. Same with targeted strikes. Better walls are a stupid idea, since a determined enemy like Hamas would always find a way to breach passive defenses, plus walls do nothing against rockets. Economic development was exactly the strategy Israel used before October 7. It turns out that Hamas was happy to pretend to care about Gazans and their economic development, since it helped to lull Israel into complacency while Hamas prepared the attacks. Economic development and a third-party “protector” ruling Gaza might be good ideas after the war, but not while Hamas is in power.
“whether the war will make them stronger or weaker in 10 years remain to be seen”
Hamas’s power came from owning a piece of land where they could do as they pleased. They will definitely be much weaker if they have no bases from which to make weapons and prepare attacks on Israel. See for example the lack of rocket fire and October 7 scale attacks from Judea and Samaria. Therefore, if Israel wins the war, Hamas will definitely be weaker. That is the main reason why Israel needs to win the war. So why oppose it?
Comment #182 March 28th, 2024 at 7:26 pm
PG if you’re reading this, mind unblocking me on Twitter (@liron)? Like Scott, I don’t understand the what and why of your position on the situation in Gaza, and I’ve been posting pro-Israel takes. But I’ve always been a fan of yours, never called you an antisemite or tweeted anything uncivil in this discourse.
Comment #183 March 28th, 2024 at 8:11 pm
Scott Says:
Comment #168 March 28th, 2024 at 12:11 pm
Vanessa Kosoy #166:
On the day they want to come here to live peacefully with the Jews, under a liberal democratic government that respects the rights of women, LGBTQ, atheists etc., on that day I will welcome them with open arms.
That’s the most eloquent response I’ve ever seen to the right-of-return demand.
@Scott and @Vanessa, who are you to tell others how they should govern their people? I guess when far right Christians government in the US we should all boycott America right? When pro-settler parties who are against the very things you want others to follow have power we should all boycott Israel right? If Israelis have the freedom to choose from the far right to the far left then others should have the same freedom. Or perhaps it is that very same freedom you want to keep for yourself?
Comment #184 March 28th, 2024 at 8:13 pm
Liron #182: PG also blocked me a few months ago. He seems to have simply mass-blocked anyone who “hearted” any tweets pushing back on his anti-Israel tweets. Then, having had pleasant exchanges with PG in the past, I emailed him basically to say “you can’t be serious,” and he apologized and unblocked me. Maybe the same would work in your case.
Comment #185 March 28th, 2024 at 8:15 pm
Scott #180
Thank you for modifying the text!
There was antisemitism in the Polish society before, during and after WW2 and there were also pogroms, and no one is denying that. Two Polish presidents officially apologized for the Jedwabne pogrom, the biggest one to my knowledge, where several hundred Jews were murdered. But the scale of things is important, and I do not agree that this was instrumental to the “success” of Holocaust. The industrialized killing in death camps of 6 million of Jews was organized and run by the German state – they segregated and hunted the Jews, forced them into ghettos, transported with trains to the camps which they run. Locals instead of helping were in fact also murdered in those camps where 240k non-Jewish Poles died with further 560k murdered in other prisons and mass executions – Germans treated “locals” quite differently in Poland and in Denmark.
BTW, we voted out the previous right-wing government in the last elections 5 months ago.
Comment #186 March 28th, 2024 at 9:37 pm
Souciance Eqdam-Rashti #183: Not to put words in Vanessa’s mouth, but while she wouldn’t be thrilled about it, she’d probably agree to the existence of a Palestinian state, next to Israel and at peace with Israel, that nevertheless was a patriarchal theocracy that persecuted atheists, LGBTQ, etc, at any rate as better than what we have right now (which is all that and also no peace with Israel). We were talking instead about a hypothetical future binational state that would “swallow up” present-day Israel—and of course Vanessa, being Israeli, would like a say in that!
Comment #187 March 28th, 2024 at 9:41 pm
Hieronim #185: Thanks for sharing your perspective. There’s no question that Polish Gentiles also suffered terribly during WWII, and were regarded by the Nazis mostly as a source of slave labor.
On a different note: huge congratulations on the election of Donald Tusk!
As for the law that criminalizes talking about Polish complicity in the Holocaust — is that still on the books?
Comment #188 March 28th, 2024 at 9:54 pm
WB #164
There is an old saying, ‘you don’t get rid of darkness by picking up a shovel and shovelling out the darkness. You turn on a light.’ (ie you introduce a completely new element into the situation)
Yours is a great example of that.
Comment #189 March 28th, 2024 at 10:04 pm
AF # 181
Thanks for your reply.
Here some reactions:
> Yes, Israel basically gave up on peace over the past decade, but that was after 20 years of bending
This is a good point. I was hoping that a large fraction of Israelis still has lasting peace as a goal, but I might be wrong. Probably depends on the definition of peace in this case.
> I also see no reason to ethnically cleanse Judea and Samaria of Jews, just because one personally disagrees with the politics of most of those particular Jews.
Using the term “ethic cleansing” seems very inappropriate, but I assume it’s not meant in the way I understand.
In principle, one could divide the land differently, but why make it much more complicated? Otherwise, one had to negotiate about Tel Aviv 🙂
Or do you mean that Settlers should stay under Palestinian control? Or that Israel should control the land (an one-state solution)?
> Also, if you think that the moronic minister’s wish to nuke Gaza should be taken seriously, even though it will never happen, then why not also take threats made by the Palestinians towards Israel seriously?
I said that I understand that it should be taken seriously. And looking at the development in Israel, and opinions I read, then at least the thread of removing all Palestinians and/or taking their land should be taken seriously. As for whether to take Hamas’ threads seriously: of course, anyone should!
> The war itself is managed by the career officers of the IDF, not by Ben-Gvir. They definitely failed to protect Israelis before and during October 7, but they are the only defense Israel has. Judging by the way the war has progressed so far, with 3/4ths of Hamas’s battalions destroyed, I say that the IDF is competent enough despite its earlier failures.
Well, I’m not an expert. If indeed all decisions related to war are made without the current government, then I have to at least partly change my opinion.
> If bombing Gaza kills terrorists, then that does make Israel safer. Same with targeted strikes.
That is the “common sense” politicians like so much, but it’s a simplification. One could argue that if war is so effective, then we would not have the problems at this point, it’s not the first time, after all.
> Better walls are a stupid idea, since a determined enemy like Hamas would always find a way to breach passive defenses, plus walls do nothing against rockets.
Stupid? I thought that no expert disagrees that the fortification and defense of the border was completely inadequate, and that simple measures could have prevented many deaths.
> Economic development was exactly the strategy Israel used before October 7.
I think this is where we disagree. At least in the last ten years, Israel did nothing to help Gaza and the West bank. You might say that it is hard (as you want to prevent weapons to flow etc), but in the last years, things were decided to large extend by people who want to prevent peace.
> Therefore, if Israel wins the war, Hamas will definitely be weaker. That is the main reason why Israel needs to win the war. So why oppose it?
Again, this is a simplification. There was war before, and Hamas is at its peak. Note that I don’t generally oppose military force, but from competent people, with a plan for afterwards that can lead to a good life of all people living in the region. Ironically, I tend to think that when it comes to avoid total destruction of Israel, the key are American aircraft carriers and overwhelming support from American people. That might change.
Comment #190 March 28th, 2024 at 11:49 pm
Thank you for posting this. It’s well-written, clear, and more ripe for productive discussion than the last post. That being said, there were a few contentious claims that I don’t think should be taken for granted as fact:
> Hamas, with the diabolical brilliance of a Marvel villain, successfully contrived a situation where Israel could prevent the further massacring of its own population only by fighting a gruesome urban war
Is the claim here that Hamas outsmarted the Geneva Conventions and the UN and the ICJ? If so, that’s pretty disheartening in terms of mankind’s thus far greatest efforts to prevent war crimes.
> UNRWA, packed with employees who cheered the Oct. 7 massacre in their Telegram channels and in some cases took part in the murders themselves
The number of confirmed UNRWA employees who participated in Oct 7 is 12, or less than 1 out of every 1000 employees. The Telegram group chat was not created by UNRWA and was open to anyone who wanted to join, so while it looks very bad, it’s not conclusive proof that allowing Palestinians to distribute aid amongst themselves would be a disaster.
> And the whole world looks past that, interested only in the streaks of blood on Israel’s hands, because Jews.
I really hope that you’re being facetious here. People in the US focus more on Israel’s crimes because the US gives weapons and aid (i.e., taxpayers’ money) to Israel. If the US was giving weapons and tax dollars to Hamas and not Israel, I think (hope?) that the situation would look very different.
Once again though, really good piece; by far the most thoughtful I’ve seen from the pro-Israel side.
Comment #191 March 29th, 2024 at 12:20 am
AF #106:
> I am advocating that Israel be a Jewish ethnostate
I applaud your bravery here in taking this stance, but I think it’s going to be a hard sell among liberal-minded folk. Anyways, for the record, do you think that Afrikaners have the right to an ethnostate? Why or why not?
Comment #192 March 29th, 2024 at 1:15 am
M #189
Glad I helped change your mind on some points 🙂
Reply to your reply:
“Using the term ‘ethic cleansing’ seems very inappropriate, but I assume it’s not meant in the way I understand.”
I understood you wanted the settlements to be dismantled, which means forcibly expelling the settlers to the west of the Green Line.
“Or do you mean that Settlers should stay under Palestinian control? Or that Israel should control the land (an one-state solution)?”
Assuming that several centuries worth of moral progress happens in Palestinian society, such that they no longer hate Jews and not longer seek to destroy Israel, then a two state solution might be possible. Under such circumstances, I would be OK with transferring control over the smaller settlements away from the Green Line to Palestine, knowing that their Jewish residents will be safe and have full rights. Given the fact that such moral progress is not occurring, I am in favor of the status quo in Judea and Samaria and against any Israeli withdrawal (remove neither settlers nor troops). I am against the one-state solution (unless it involves the vast majority of Palestinians leaving Eretz Israel, which I don’t think will happen). The status quo, which seems like the best possible scenario for now, does not involve Israel annexing the land.
“I said that I understand that it should be taken seriously.”
Sorry, I missed that.
“thread of removing all Palestinians and/or taking their land should be taken seriously”
Maybe, but these calls are coming from extremists who have little power, even with several government ministers belonging to their ranks. Notice how the current government did not even propose expelling the Palestinians as a policy during its term so far. I just don’t think it will ever happen, given the lack of support for this policy across half the coalition, the entire opposition, and just about every country that has relations with Israel.
“That is the ‘common sense’ politicians like so much, but it’s a simplification. One could argue that if war is so effective, then we would not have the problems at this point, it’s not the first time, after all.”
My explanation was incomplete. Bombings and targeted airstrikes are effective, but not nearly as effective as troops on the ground. The previous Gaza wars were fought to weaken Hamas in Gaza, not end its rule. This war is being fought to end Hamas rule in Gaza, which is why it has taken longer and is far deadlier than the previous Gaza wars. Also, wars can be effective in stopping terrorism, see for example Operation Defensive Shield, which after several years ended the Second Intifada.
One important thing to note is that there is no moment of final victory over terrorism, and as seen in Afghanistan, if the anti-terrorism side retreats, the terrorists will come back and take over. An important reason why Operation Defensive Shield worked is that the IDF never left Judea and Samaria, and to this day the army is engaged in terror-suppression operations in places like Jenin.
“Stupid? I thought that no expert disagrees that the fortification and defense of the border was completely inadequate, and that simple measures could have prevented many deaths.”
Better defenses might have helped, but they might also just been a few more obstacles for Hamas to bulldoze in the early morning of October 7. These border fortifications in particular were built to be passive, with obstacles and automated turrets but none to very few soldiers on patrol. I was told that this was on purpose, since it would be a crushing economic burden for Israel to station the large number of troops needed to guard the border and seal it tight. Given the weakness of passive, unmanned fortifications, and the high cost of properly guarding the border, I think it is better to just occupy the territory directly. This way, the terrorists are denied a base of operations, it is much easier to gather intelligence, and Israel already did it successfully in Gaza in the decades from 1967 to 2005.
“At least in the last ten years, Israel did nothing to help Gaza and the West bank.”
Not true. The economy of the latter is highly dependent on trade with Israel. For the former, Israel provided electricity and enabled a constant flow of foreign aid. In both cases, tens of thousands of Palestinians were given permits to work in Israel, where salaries are much higher than what they could get at home. Those permit holders in Gaza spied for Hamas, giving it detailed knowledge of the local Israeli kibbutzim which it used to perpetrate the October 7 massacres. See https://www.jns.org/israels-work-permits-for-gazans-enabled-the-hamas-attack/.
“Again, this is a simplification. There was war before, and Hamas is at its peak.”
Hamas has been greatly weakened as a result of the war, but it is still a viable fighting force and thus Israel needs to continue fighting until Hamas has no forces left.
“with a plan for afterwards that can lead to a good life of all people living in the region”
I prefer the pre-2005 status quo (or even better the pre-Oslo status quo). It is possible to make adjustments here and there, but the IDF must retain control of security and the terrorists must be suppressed. The lack of a plan for afterwards should not deter Israel from fighting, since after the war Israel should not be withdrawing from Gaza anyway.
“Ironically, I tend to think that when it comes to avoid total destruction of Israel, the key are American aircraft carriers and overwhelming support from American people. That might change.”
The American aircraft carriers are there to deter war between Hezbollah and Israel. The support of the American people is definitely a good thing, and Israel would be in a far worse state without it. However, I think that even without American support Israel might still survive. This is definitely something Israel should plan for, since between MAGA threatening to end American democracy and wokeness capturing the minds of Gen Z, the end of American support seems like a very real possibility for the future. Either way, it is crucial for Israel to control neighboring territories that would otherwise be terror bases, and to build a bigger domestic arms industry and to strengthen alliances with rising powers like India.
Comment #193 March 29th, 2024 at 2:01 am
Scott Says:
Comment #186 March 28th, 2024 at 9:37 pm
Souciance Eqdam-Rashti #183: Not to put words in Vanessa’s mouth, but while she wouldn’t be thrilled about it, she’d probably agree to the existence of a Palestinian state, next to Israel and at peace with Israel, that nevertheless was a patriarchal theocracy that persecuted atheists, LGBTQ, etc, a tot any rate as better than what we have right now (which is all that and also no peace with Israel). We were talking instead about a hypothetical future binational state that would “swallow up” present-day Israel—and of course Vanessa, being Israeli, would like a say in that!
You spoke in hypothetical terms let me speak in more realistic terms. I am myself an Iranian living in Sweden. Proof that you can be against the despotic Iranian regime and the policies of Israel.
I will not comment on all the stuff in the long post. But you speak of pogrom. So what should the Palestinians call this event? Virtually entire Gaza is obliterated. People are starving. Tens of thousands dead and still no end.
I was once optimistic but after seeing what is happening now and the extreme lack of reaction from the world there is only one way this violence will end. That’s when all current Palestinian land is taken by Israel and all Palestinians are pushed out somewhere. That’s the only thing the current state of Israel cares about. Settlers are back in west bank. And please don’t act like it’s Netanyahu. How much land has Israel occupied and annexed over the decades to them give away to settlers…like the white Europeans settlers back when north America was taken over.
You speak of some hypothetical Palestinian state trying to kill Jews yet WHEN has a Palestinian state ever existed? For you to them theories what such a future state would want..
And you speak of elections. Yes people in Gaza did back in the day vote for Hamas. Just like people in Israel vote for extreme right wing settler parties. The difference being, nobody boycotted Israel after that. But everyone blamed Palestinians.
People in Israel don’t actually want a Palestinian state near them. That would mean they would actually have to respect that Palestinians have autonomy in their elections and free to choose whatever they want. That’s not gonna happen and that’s not theory.
By the way, you mention everything being Hamas fault yet not once have you mentioned what are the problems with the current action or Israel. The top court in UN has demanded Israel let in food but no that’s Hamas fault. IDF obliterating Gaza hospitals..that’s Hamas fault. So I guess when everyone piece of land is taken by the Israeli state and everyone Palestinian is forced out, that’s Hamas fault too right?
Oh and to remove Hamas. Did the US remove the Vietcong in Vietnam despite the war and atrocities? Did the Russians do the same in Afghanistan? Or the US remove the Taliban? You cannot remove an ideology through military means. You really think the Palestinian children who have lost their parents are thinking, oh wish we had more LGBTQ rights now. Because that’s what’s missing. Not food and safety.
This will only end after the Palestinian home is taken and given to some settler , and When that happens I look forward reading a blog post on how this whole thing was Hamas fault.
Comment #194 March 29th, 2024 at 3:36 am
Thank you for writing this all out. I hope this is the launch of your campaign for the next prime minister of Israel!
Comment #195 March 29th, 2024 at 4:38 am
FFS someone quickly introduce functional programming into Gaza.
Comment #196 March 29th, 2024 at 4:52 am
For people who believe mistakenly that Abbas accepted the Clinton Parameters around 2008 (or that Arafat also accepted them), it’s important to realize that the Palestinian leadership still did not give up on an open-ended “right of return”, not in 2000-2001, not in 2007-2008, not in 2014, not ever:
https://thirdnarrative.org/palestinians-still-reject-clinton-parameters/
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/the-pa-rejects-clinton-parameters-20-years-later-opinion-658864
Even a Palestinian leader who was willing to give up those things would not be able. Case in point is that Abbas said this https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-says-he-has-no-right-to-live-in-safed-and-has-no-demands-on-pre-1967-israel/ but then was walked it back under pressure from his people. A great demonstration of why even a relatively moderate Palestinian leader like Abbas will not sign a peace deal.
See https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/05/world/middleeast/in-palestine-abbas-spurs-right-of-return-uproar.html and https://www.timesofisrael.com/hard-line-speech-from-abbas-marks-turn-from-position-in-talks/
and https://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2012/11/04/abbas-i-did-not-give-up-on-the-right-of-return/ and https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/analysis/abbas-relinquished-the-palestinian-right-of-return-to-please-israeli-voters-e1keudhg for instance.
From the last link:
The angry reaction from Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza, who burned effigies of Mr Abbas, was automatic, as was Mr Abbas’s own retractions. He said afterwards that the interview had been “edited and skewed” and that he had been expressing his personal views, since no-one could give up the right of return.
Comment #197 March 29th, 2024 at 6:24 am
Wait… didn’t the EU countries just accept 8 million people from Ukraine without much of a fuss? I don’t see why they wouldn’t accept 7 million people who are even more educated than the Ukrainians and who would have an even better integration rate into local society.
I’m an Israeli citizen and a Jew who lives in the U.S. I think that realistically the only two options are a full expulsion of Arabs to Arab nations or a full expulsion of Jews to Western nations. Everything else is a distraction and would never work due to the genocidal intents of the Arabs.
Comment #198 March 29th, 2024 at 7:02 am
The other side of Israel having no reason to expect good will from Hamas is that, especially now, Gazans have no reason to expect good will from Israel. Blockading food, water, and medical supplies is deadly.
It seems very plausible that even if Hamas is destroyed, whatever that means, there will be successor organizations, and this attack on Gaza will be convenient for recruiting.
It may not be possible for Israel to make things better, but it can still be possible for Israel to make things worse.
Comment #199 March 29th, 2024 at 7:27 am
Richard M #191:
Anyways, for the record, do you think that Afrikaners have the right to an ethnostate? Why or why not?
Here’s a different question for you: do the Japanese have the right to an ethnostate?
(Or, uh … suppose they’d been expelled from Japan, and then genocided in the countries they were exiled to and denied entry to other countries. And suppose that one part of Japan were grudgingly given back to the surviving remnant of Japanese, as a sort of ‘ethnostate,’ with the rest of Japan still for the people who had displaced the Japanese. Would it be of overriding importance to you to dismantle the new Japanese ethnostate, because ethnostates are always bad? What if the neighbors promised to complete the genocide of Japanese people on the day that happened?)
Comment #200 March 29th, 2024 at 9:47 am
Souciance Eqdam Rashti #193: I guess my question for you is, do you acknowledge that the Israelis wanted to leave the people of Gaza in peace and be left in peace by them — in 1948, in 1967, in 2000, and as recently as October 6, 2023, when there was no starvation and no Israeli settlers or occupation in Gaza? Do you acknowledge that it was the Gazan side, not the Israeli side, that rejected all this and launched a war of annihilation instead—holding, as the Western protesters now put it, that “we don’t want no two states, we want all of ‘48”?
Depending on your answer to this, there are two different conversations to have: either one about history, or else one about how the Gazan side can ever become convinced that peace is in its best interest and the Israeli side can become re-convinced of it, so that neither side’s children ever have to suffer like this again, the goal that both of us share.
Comment #201 March 29th, 2024 at 10:21 am
Nancy Lebovitz #198:
“The other side of Israel having no reason to expect good will from Hamas is that, especially now, Gazans have no reason to expect good will from Israel. Blockading food, water, and medical supplies is deadly.”
The only reason the October 7 attacks weren’t deadlier is that Israel stopped them. Hamas would have killed every Israeli if it could. Israel can kill every Gazan, but has decided not to do so. See the asymmetry?
“It seems very plausible that even if Hamas is destroyed, whatever that means, there will be successor organizations, and this attack on Gaza will be convenient for recruiting.”
So what? Recruitment and “hearts and minds” type stuff are useless to this analysis. Hamas already has maximum support among Palestinians, who celebrated October 7 basically everywhere. The key variable is whether or not the terrorists have bases from which to arm, hide, train recruits, fire rockets, and prepare attacks. If they have no bases, then it is easier for the army to arrest the terror recruits before they can organize. It should also be clear that there is no “final victory” against terrorists, in the same way that the Taliban, crushed in 2001, easily retook Afghanistan in 2021. The key is to never withdraw troops, so that the terrorists can remain at the insurgency level (as opposed to the de facto state level) indefinitely.
Comment #202 March 29th, 2024 at 10:25 am
myst_05 #197:
Assuming that neither side is going anywhere, I have a third option: the pre-Oslo status quo. Israel can counter the genocidal intents of the Arabs by ensuring that they never again gain the means to conduct massacres against Jews.
Comment #203 March 29th, 2024 at 11:15 am
Richard M #191:
“Anyways, for the record, do you think that Afrikaners have the right to an ethnostate? Why or why not?”
I am not sure. Unlike Jews in Israel, Afrikaners are actual settler-colonists on someone else’s land. On the other hand, I think they underwent an ethnogenesis in the 19th and 20th centuries, and are now distinct from Dutch people and would not be at home in the Netherlands anymore. Obviously, South Africa would refuse to partition itself and give the Afrikaners a revived Orange Free State-Transvaal Republic (a “two state solution”, rather similar to giving Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians).
When an ethnic minority cannot enjoy the right of self-determination, the usual solution is the poor man’s substitute: an autonomous zone. I doubt that the Afrikaners will get that either, and obviously no one would support them if they tried to advocate for it. After all, Afrikaners were perpetrators of the notoriously brutal Apartheid system. Even then, these days I do feel somewhat sorry for the Afrikaners, because they probably have nowhere else to go, because of the post-Mandela ANC ruining South Africa, and because I am furious at Ramaphosa for his stunt at the ICJ. I suppose my position is that I am weakly OK with autonomy or partition in South Africa, but I don’t feel nearly as strongly about it as I do with more clear-cut cases, like Greece, Armenia, Kurdistan, Japan (thanks Scott #199 :-)), and of course Israel.
Comment #204 March 29th, 2024 at 1:30 pm
Dear Scott,
Thank you for the having the courage to post your opinion on this controversial topic. I write this comment anonymously.
Your post lacks a discussion about the power dynamics of the situation. I believe (correct me if this is wrong) that Israel has far greater wealth, military and stability than Palestine, and that the casualties have been far greater on the Palestinian side. This seems like an important factor to address.
When you write, “Maybe I’d be the same way if I’d been marinated since birth in an ideology of Jew-killing, and blocked from other sources of information.” I believe you are omitting the important factor of poverty and occupation in shaping beliefs.
Do you agree that there is a stark power differential? Do you think that this is a relevant factor to consider?
All the best, and I hope you remain safe.
-Anon
Comment #205 March 29th, 2024 at 2:12 pm
Thank you so very much for this. I was confused. Now, less so. I’m very sad that you’ve had to do this thinking, but I’m very glad that you did.
Comment #206 March 29th, 2024 at 4:59 pm
Anon #204: From my perspective, the reason why there’s a power differential is that, from a similar starting point (of mostly abject poverty, in their respective parts of the region granted them by the UN), the Israelis built up a country that prioritized human flourishing and education and technological innovation, whereas the Palestinians built up a society that prioritized the destruction of Israel through martyrdom and jihad. So yes, there’s a power differential, but it means the exact opposite of what the protesters think it does.
Comment #207 March 29th, 2024 at 8:26 pm
A liberal single state solution is the only one that can simultaneously satisfy the desire of many Palestinians to be free from the river to the sea, and the desire of many Jews to have Judea and Samaria as part of their native country. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is long-standing, but under the right circumstances, human minds can change quickly. Germany denazified quickly. Rwanda returned to normalcy after its genocide relatively quickly; and though Arab-Jew reconciliation will be hard, it is not impossible.
The Palestinians may decide that with the ability to live and work anywhere in Israel, social and political inclusion, and a responsive government, their struggle for the Palestinian state is complete. It will feel as their state rather than as some sort of occupier. (By contrast, the occupation narrative is bolstered by Israel saying that it is an occupier, for that is how it denies Palestinians independence without giving them political or movement rights.) With the settlement, a majority of previously violent anti-Semites may decide that their struggle was against Jewish oppressors rather than Jews per se (and point to the 2017 Hamas Charter to support that), and that the people of Israel are no longer the oppressors; and in any case, expulsion of Jews from Israel would not make sense economically. And with Palestinians being an underprivileged minority suffering from prejudice, it will be in their interest to support an Israeli leader with a commitment to tolerance and freedom, and to helping underprivileged persons thrive. In turn, such leaders are likely to be pro-freedom on gay rights and other issues.
Comment #208 March 29th, 2024 at 11:30 pm
“Israelis would seem to be the first “settler-colonialists” in the history of the world who not only were indigenous to the land they colonized, as much as anyone was, but who weren’t colonizing on behalf of any mother country, and who have no obvious such country to which they can return.”
Your use of the term indigenous seems rather questionable. Putting that aside, there are certainly “settler-colonists” who satisfy the latter conditions. For instance, Huguenots and Anabaptists coming to North America. They were fleeing often brutal religious persecution in Europe. It does not justify the oppression of the Native Americans in which they took part.
Comment #209 March 30th, 2024 at 12:05 am
Scott #206
This is a very interesting reply, and I would like to hear more about how you came to this perspective. It is definitely a narrative, in the general sense of the word. How do you know that your narrative is not propaganda?
What you are saying sounds analogous to the argument that systemic racism in America doesn’t exist. The argument is that more black people are in prison and poor because of their gangster culture. The propaganda lies in intentionally omitting systemic injustices like redlining.
I worry that you are falling for propaganda in believing that the Palestinians chose Jihad and barbarism of their own accord, and their occupation is a result of their choices.
Are there experts on the history of the conflict that you recommend?
-Anon
Comment #210 March 30th, 2024 at 7:02 am
bringEmAllHere #208
“Your use of the term indigenous seems rather questionable.”
Nothing of the sort. As a matter of fact, almost all Jews, Christians, and Muslims of the region carry noticeable Bronze Age/Iron Age Levantine ancestry. See the following:
https://twitter.com/MiroCyo/status/1712259003080966396
Regarding the rest of your post, your attempt to assert a victim-oppressor frame has already been repudiated by Scott in Post #206.
Comment #211 March 30th, 2024 at 9:36 am
Anon #209: Anyone can accuse anyone else of being in the grip of a “narrative” or “propaganda.” That’s too easy; I can do it too! As an example, the entire concept that Palestinians (who look barely distinguishable from Israelis) are like Blacks in Apartheid South Africa or the Jim Crow South, was invented by Soviet propagandists in the 60s and 70s, back when they had whole teams dreaming up new ways to demonize Israel, and was then taken up by the modern anti-Western left.
An obvious disanalogy between the cases is that Israelis not only never enslaved Palestinians, but were willing from the beginning to be equal to them in the two-state solution proposed by the UN (the 1947 partition plan). It was the Palestinian side that rejected this, and joined the Arab nations’ war to annihilate Israel instead. Do you acknowledge this?
Separately, while no sane person denies the appalling legacy of racism in the US, there is an argument that the victims or former victims of racism can still choose better ways (e.g., education) or worse ways (e.g., violent crime) of playing the unfair hand they were dealt. This is of course an argument that leading Black intellectuals like Thomas Sowell have made for decades.
To my mind, the most racist way to regard Palestinians would be as wild animals who just deterministically respond to their circumstances: “well, what did you expect? of course they’re going to strap suicide vests to themselves and blow up teenagers in pizza parlors; they’re upset about Israeli settlements in the West Bank.” The legacy of Dr. King (a committed Zionist, incidentally) reminds us that even in the face of injustices, there’s still choice. Again, where is the Palestinian Dr. King?
I’m egalitarian and non-racist enough toward the Palestinians to be angry about the culture of death and of sanctified Jew-killing—anger being an emotion that’s appropriate only to full human beings who have the power to make a better choice. (I’m also, of course, angry at the Israeli extreme right—but even today, you have to go very, very far to the right to reach the equivalent of “the October 7 massacre was great,” a statement to which ~75% of Palestinians assent.)
I need to watch my kid now, but will put together a list of writers and resources I recommend about the conflict in a future comment.
Comment #212 March 30th, 2024 at 9:58 am
Dan Park #210:
I don’t dispute that there’s evidence that Jews have some Levantine ancestry. (However, I didn’t find the twitter link you sent very helpful — it’s a screenshot of a table without any indication of what the data means or where it came from.) This seems to be a fascinating area of research, with notable differences in the story of male (Y chromosome) vs female (mitochondrial) DNA.
But would you say that all humans are indigenous Africans, since according to our current best understanding, humans evolved in Africa? Maybe you do, which is fine, but then it’s clearly not a very useful categorization. Maybe you’re willing to go back a few thousand years, but not more. With that definition, one could argue, say, that the Japanese are indigenous to the Korean peninsula. This is the sort of thing I mean when I call Scott’s use of the term questionable.
Zooming out a bit, the Israeli-Palestinian case really does have many similarities to other instances of “settler-colonialism”. (There is a separate debate about should be done in the present to rectify past settler-colonialism.) In North America, the main colonial powers were the British, French, and Spanish, but as I pointed out many of the actual settlers were not from the dominant ethnic/religious group of the colonial power, and were fleeing persecution (one could also mention the significant number of Jewish immigrants to New Spain). In Australia, the colonial power was the British, but many of the settlers were Irish who were either transported there forcibly, or who moved in response to British subjugation of Ireland. In the British Mandate period in the Levant, the British were the colonial power, while the settlers were Jews escaping persecution in Europe.
Each of these historical situations of course has unique aspects, but including Israel-Palestine among them seems rather reasonable, no? Just because the settlers are fleeing oppression doesn’t mean it’s not settler-colonialism.
Comment #213 March 30th, 2024 at 10:01 am
Scott #211
> Again, where is the Palestinian Dr. King?
Not to play the game blame, *but…*
Where is the Israeli Douglas MacArthur?
Comment #214 March 30th, 2024 at 10:08 am
One thing to remember is that this isn’t just about Israelis and Palestinians. At a minimum, Iran, American Evangelicals, and the USSR have had considerable influence. People can still make choices, but it’s harder when well-financed, skillful organizations are pushing people to behave badly.
Comment #215 March 30th, 2024 at 10:19 am
Thanks Scott for a great post.
There are a few more things that can be added, I wii just raise one, I am not sure that many Arab – Israelis and other non Jewish minorities, like christians or the 25 percent of Arab students at the Technion, Druze… would prefer Hamas rule and while thinking of a plan B for Jews, people with a moral high ground should think about them and their well being as well, not all Palestinians are Hamas supportes and theocracy is generally speaking, not fun.
Comment #216 March 30th, 2024 at 10:21 am
bringEmAllHere #212: It’s not “settler colonialism” because Israel is not a colony of any other country, and because the Jews who settled there have no mother country to which they can return. This is a crucial difference that completely shatters the analogy with French Algeria or any place like that.
And Jews clearly are indigenous to Israel. It’s not just that (as we now know) they share roughly the same percentage of DNA with the people living there 2000 years ago as the modern Palestinians do (the Palestinians are also, in part, “colonizers” from elsewhere in the Arab world).
Rather, it’s that when the place first emerged as a coherent political entity, it had the names Judea, Israel, and Samaria: the lands of the Jews and Samaritans. The Romans renamed the province from Judaea to Syria Palaestina (“Palaestina” after the ancient Philistines, who are not related to modern Palestinians) as a punishment after they put down the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 AD.
Comment #217 March 30th, 2024 at 10:28 am
Christopher #213: Are you referring to MacArthur’s administration of postwar Japan? If so, then while I’d love to see such a figure in Gaza, a crucial prerequisite to the emergence of one would seem to be the unconditional surrender of Hamas.
Comment #218 March 30th, 2024 at 10:49 am
bringEmAllHere #212:
“With that definition, one could argue, say, that the Japanese are indigenous to the Korean peninsula”
First, the majority of Jews were absent for Eretz Israel for a far, far shorter period of time than the ancestors of today’s Japanese were absent from the Korean peninsula. Second, and even more important, indigenous status is a matter of cultural ties, not just genetic ties.
Jews as a people and as a culture originated in Eretz Israel, the vast majority of the Bible takes place in Eretz Israel, and whenever Jews lived in exile, the culture and religion were centered on a yearning to return to Eretz Israel (see for example Judaism’s instructions to pray towards Jerusalem, and the toast of “Next year in Jerusalem” every Passover).
Palestinians, on the other hand, are Arabs and Muslims, and both of these identities are tied to Arabia. Their foundational story (the life of Muhammad, basically) takes place in Arabia, and Islam instructs to pray towards Mecca.
You leave out an important detail in your settler-colonialism comparison. First, the various actual settler-colonists, even if they were escaping persecution, still consented to live as citizens and/or subjects of the colonial power. Their communities even in the Thirteen Colonies lived like that for centuries, and in many countries (ie Canada, Australia, etc.) they did not rebel and remained loyal colonists until given independence (without a fight) in the 20th century. In contrast, the Zionist Jews agreed ahead of time that British rule must be temporary, and that the goal is a Jewish state. When Britain started acting against the interests of the Jews (ie by restricting Jewish Aliyah), the rebellions started immediately.
The actual similarity between Israel’s case and the settler-colonialism cases is that all involved a group of people coming in from elsewhere, eventually displacing the inhabitants who lived there previously, and taking over the land. This is, admittedly, what makes the anti-Israel narrative stick. I would support it myself if that was the whole story.
However: the first big missing piece is that the Jews were returning indigenous people, with millennia of both genetic and cultural ties to the land they were returning to, while the European colonists had in most cases just found out about the existence of the lands they were colonizing. The second big difference is that the inhabitants who lived there previously belonged to a culture that had itself conquered and settler-colonized the land well within historical memory (the 7th century CE).
Thus, the “Jews are settler-colonists” narrative only holds up if you pretend that nothing really happened in the land before the 19th century (ie it was Arab and Muslim since time immemorial), or if you erase the connection between modern Jews and ancient Jews.
It also gives a “get out of moral culpability free” card to any empire that wants to conquer and displace an indigenous population, since if the exiles want to return to their land and re-establish sovereignty there centuries later, then the colonists can use their centuries of prior habitation to claim indigenous status and call the returning indigenous people colonists. If, say, the Hopi or the Lakota got strong enough to beat the US army and expand their reservations to include ancestral Hopi/Lakota lands, would the white ranchers and miners get to complain that they are indigenous people threatened by Hopi/Lakota settler-colonialism?
(This is quite separate from the fact that none of the anti-Israel types are marching on the streets to force whites living in America/Canada/Australia/etc. back to Europe. There is even a claim going around that Israel is the last example of imperialism and settler-colonialism in the world, which would be absurd even if Israel really was an imperialist settler-colony. Really, the entire leftist “against settler-colonialism” enterprise just seems like another excuse to pick on Jews.)
Comment #219 March 30th, 2024 at 10:49 am
Scott #216
After 1776, the US was no longer a colony of Britain. That didn’t mean that settler-colonialism ended. Many of the settlers who came to North America (eg Huguenots) also couldn’t just return where they came from. Seems pretty analogous. (I didn’t mention French activities in Algeria — I’d have to read more about the situation there before discussing it).
I think you overstate the quality of the DNA evidence. What you say seems consistent with our knowledge, but we don’t have a good enough historical DNA to really justify such a strong claim. Your point about names is interesting. Altogether your notion of indigeneity seems much broader than the way most people use it. But putting aside the semantic question, to me the crucial difference between Israelis and Palestinians is that the latter had been living in the Levant continuously in large numbers.
Comment #220 March 30th, 2024 at 11:55 am
AF #218
My understanding is that the ancestors of modern day ethnic Japanese (not including Ainu) are thought to have come to the islands around 3rd century BCE. So the timeframe seems roughly similar to the Jews and Israel situation. In both situations, it’s a long enough time that things are quite foggy.
I agree that indigeneity can also be based on cultural factors, but of course this is highly subjective. I agree with you and Scott that Jews have some historical and cultural association with the Levant, but I don’t think this automatically invalidates a comparison to settler-colonialism in other contexts.
The “important detail” you mention doesn’t seem relevant at all to me. If the British had told the Irish who moved/were moved to Australia that they would have their own independent state within a few decades, it still would have been setter-colonialism.
I can only speak for myself, but I wouldn’t claim that just because a situation falls under the category of settler-colonialism, it’s immediately clear who’s morally culpable or what the correct way of addressing it is. In particular, I don’t think it gives the victims an automatic “get out of moral culpability free” card. But it can be a helpful way of thinking about things (Scott was arguing that settler-colonialism is not applicable; I’m just arguing it is).
“If, say, the Hopi or the Lakota got strong enough to beat the US army and expand their reservations to include ancestral Hopi/Lakota lands, would the white ranchers and miners get to complain that they are indigenous people threatened by Hopi/Lakota settler-colonialism?”
If the Hopi go to Europe now (forcibly or otherwise), and then come back in ~2000 years, I might say so.
“none of the anti-Israel types are marching on the streets to force whites living in America/Canada/Australia/etc. back to Europe”
I mean there’s definitely overlap between anti-Zionist and e.g. Land Back movement. Unlike the Israel-Palestine situation, the population of white people in US is too large to move, but there are certainly ideas like expanding Indian reservations.
Comment #221 March 30th, 2024 at 12:38 pm
bringEmAllHere: The case for exiling or murdering all the hundreds of millions of white people (and Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians) in the US, so that the entire territory could be given back to the Native Americans, seems stronger to me than the case for doing the same to the Israelis. Unlike the Israelis, the American colonists had no ancient link to the American continent. They were fleeing persecution in some cases, but not the literal threat of extermination. And most importantly, Americans never agreed to a two-state solution in which the Natives would get half the territory of the current US in perpetuity. And the Natives never rejected such a compromise to launch a war of total annihilation against the colonists’ men, women, and children instead.
But enough of this nonsense. The US exists, and Israel exists, and outside of fantasies in blog comment sections and the like, neither of them will ever be uprooted by anything short of total war against their current populations. The Hamas theory, that if they keep up their attacks the Jews will eventually flee, rests on the risibly false assumption that the Israelis have some other country to flee to. Because, in the Israelis’ own self-understanding, they are already home and have no other place to go, in reality they would fight to the last man, woman, child, and thermonuclear weapon if it came to that. And crucially, every discussion of how Israel is illegitimate and needs to be dismantled, will just help convince the Israelis that the whole world is against them and the “peace process” is a chimera, and will empower the hardliners and strengthen Israelis’ resolve to fight to the end even more. It will have the opposite of its intended effect.
That’s why I think anyone who wants peace, or who cares about the welfare of Palestinians, ought to take any “solution” involving the exile (or, of course, mass-murder) of Israel’s 7 million Jews off the table entirely, and talk exclusively about a two-state solution or a confederation or the like.
Comment #222 March 30th, 2024 at 1:05 pm
bringEmAllHere #220:
I think you might be right about Japan. From reading Wikipedia, it seems like the people I was talking about are the Jomon culture, who might still be genetic ancestors of today’s Japanese, but the Japanese have linguistic, cultural, and genetic ties with the Yayoi peoples who immigrated at about the time you said they did (or maybe a few centuries earlier). Even so, today’s Japanese people do not have any claims to the Korean peninsula (and I think that during the Japanese occupation of Korea, the Japanese did not claim indigenous status).
As for everything else, I generally agree with what Scott wrote in comment #221.
Scott #221: Does this mean you agree that option 4 is a non-starter? Maybe add a note about it in the main post?
Comment #223 March 30th, 2024 at 1:18 pm
AF #222: It’s a non-starter unless and until someone does something real to start it—e.g. sets up a specific other homeland to which Israelis get unlimited immigration visas. Until then, it’s just a rhetorical move, invoked because it sounds better than the Final Solution that Hamas wants and that’s much more likely to be the result if the global left got what it wanted and Israel were dissolved tomorrow.
Comment #224 March 30th, 2024 at 1:27 pm
@Scott #211
Thank you for your detailed reply.
Yes, I agree that anyone can accuse anyone else of falling for propaganda. But we should be able to sort out what is propaganda and what is truth by checking the narratives against facts. This is difficult because there are many facts and they can be difficult to verify.
When you say that analogies with Apartheid were cooked up by Soviet propagandists, can you explain how you came to this conclusion, and how can I verify it? Are there experts that say this and can produce examples The fact that propagandists have said something doesn’t make it false. Propaganda can consist in framing truths divisively.
I guess it’s true that the Palestinians were never enslaved. What you said about the Israelis wanting to be equal is a fact, and I assume that it’s true. It sounds like they should have taken the deal, because might makes right. I don’t think it’s a fair deal, and the reasons that it was rejected that are listed on the Wikipedia page make sense to me. It was a mistake to not take the deal and prioritize fairness over human lives, assuming that the deal would be adhered to.
This isn’t about intent or morality. My impression is that conditions are much harder for the Palestinians than for black Americans since the 60’s, so there has been a more extreme response. Do you think that’s true?
The term “racist” is loaded, which is why I avoided it in my previous comment. Yes, I believe that humans are animals, and that any animal, (wild or not) will start to lash out when backed into a corner. It’s only when you get out of a corner that you can regain agency and answer an appeal to reason. Of course, the Israelis also feel cornered, and I think this is why many believe the problem to be unsolvable.
We should hold Israel to a higher standard than Palestine because they are less desperate and therefore more likely to take the first step in deescalation. You yourself said that Israel is more likely to change leadership than Palestine. In the Foundation series, Hari Seldon posited that individual people have choice, but groups of people behave deterministically. Leaders are individuals that can direct a group so that it breaks free from the laws of psychohistory.
As far as asking for the Palestinian Dr. King, I’m not sure. There are groups like Palestinians for Peace. Does that not qualify?
I don’t agree that you can only be angry at things that have rational choice. Yes, you can get mad at the weather. I see it all the time. Anyway, there is a gradation of choice, with less choice as people become more desperate and run out of options.
Finally, let me acknowledge that you are responding to very many long comments. It is commendable.
Comment #225 March 30th, 2024 at 2:11 pm
bringEmAllHere #220:
OK, I think I should add a note about settler-colonialism.
It seems like we all agree on the basic timeline from ancient Israel and Judea up to the present. The only questions are whether having a prior link to the land allows one to be acquitted of the charge of settler-colonialism, and whether or not settler-colonialism is itself a charge of moral culpability. I think that the answer is yes on both counts, and that throwing around accusations of settler-colonialism is tantamount to saying: “You don’t belong here. Get out.”
Even if you personally don’t subscribe to this definition, it is the way the term “settler-colonialism” is used more widely. This is why antizionists tend to ignore ancient history or lie about it, and shout that modern Jews are unconnected to ancient Jews. The first part of the definition (prior link to the land) is why they don’t treat Palestinian displacement of Jewish Israelis (ie their goal) as itself settler-colonialism, even though it would be in your definition (much like the Hopi returning to their lands in force after 2000 years would be).
I think that the charge of settler-colonialism as more commonly used does not apply to Israel.
Comment #226 March 30th, 2024 at 2:14 pm
I appreciate the essay Scott, but I’m left shaking my head at the framing, present in the title, that overlaps somewhat with your feelings for Feminism. You explicitly focus on anti-zionist leftists online, and feminism online, and I just can’t help but roll my eyes at the fact that you seem compelled to ask questions of people with no political power, now or in the past, or even in the future.
Netanyahu and Biden have power, as do Hamas and their leadership in Qatar, etc. You can (and you do) ask better of them, protest their actions, etc. But this relentless focus on college students, people with lots of twitter followers, etc that their anti-zionist slogans and plans are not up to sniff is just…premature? I understand the fear – the Holocaust is very recent, people seem to think it was ancient history. But right now, people are protesting the war because 30,000+ people have died, and I personally, am not this concerned that among these shouting voices are incoherent, anti-semitic, racist, etc voices. I fail to see how Greta Thunberg advocating for anti-zionism leads to the next holocaust – she just wants the killing to end jfc!
I ask this seriously: Are you really afraid that the ferment anti-zionist voices on Twitter that you call out are going to gain power to such an extent that they will discard all the jews? Are you really afraid of ‘radical feminists’ in the style of Andrea Dworkin are going to ensure that straight men are denied sex or the ability to process and talk about their sexual frustrations as teenagers? If you are, then I think you need to recalibrate.
As for the conflict itself, and the questions you raised, I do think the points you raise are important. This is a hard problem that won’t go away just with a ceasefire, and ‘solving’ it, whatever that means is even harder. The immediate problem is to stop senseless killing, and Israel has a responsibility to do that, because it claims to be a liberal democracy. Hamas is explicitly genocidal, and will continue to kill and hurt Israel as they claim. That does not give Israel the right to indiscriminately bomb Gaza – that’s just how being moral works.
Comment #227 March 30th, 2024 at 3:26 pm
People are not rational all the time.
The way I think about that situation is that most of people are reacting emotionally to the horrors that Palestinians are going through.
Most of them don’t even understand the contours of the problem, and have pretty naive reactionary understanding.
Shall all Europeans and Africans and Asians be expelled from the Americas? Shall all non-celts be expelled from UK? Shall arrange be expelled from lands they concurred over the centuries? What about Russians from East North Asia?
This kind of anti-semitism picks up whenever there is a tragedy about Palestinians. Same was people around the world started to hate Americans after the invasion of Iraq and half a million dead.
Netanyahu is harming Israel by overuse and indiscriminate usage of military power over civilians. I am not sure Israel will be able to recover from this.
Of course there are also haters whose existence is based on hating something. That is not majority of the people.
I believe if the violence against Palestinian civilians is cut, and their situation and prospects of self-determination improves, the way that Israel is treated will also change dramatically.
Unfortunately, with the current climate of radical extremists on both sides, that doesn’t seem to be close. Maybe it is not for this generation to see the peace in the Middle East and between Palestinians and Israelies, maybe we need to wait for the next one. Peace in Northern Ireland only came after both sides realized violence will not lead to a desired future.
Comment #228 March 30th, 2024 at 3:47 pm
Venkat #226: I’m glad you agree that I’ve raised important points and that this is complicated.
You’re absolutely right that there’s a strong parallel between my reaction to the anti-Zionist activists and the radical feminists. In both cases, I see no choice but to respond, not to whomever has the “most power” in some global sense (but doesn’t care what I think anyway), but to whomever is actually there, screaming in my face (literally or figuratively), in the university and online discourse environments where I actually spend my life. That would be the radfems and the anti-Zionists.
But there’s another commonality also: these movements, which seem like they could’ve been tailor-designed to deny any place on the planet to me specifically, never stay confined to the academic or Twitter bubbles where they originate. In Canada, where (unlike in the US) this is legal, tenure-track faculty searches in computer science now standardly, openly announce that white men need not apply. And if you’ve been following the news, just this week the US allowed a ceasefire resolution to pass at the UN, not tied to any demand for the release of hostages—and this happened in large part because of the “powerless protesters” who’ve shut down streets and bridges and university buildings and screamed at President Biden. While (like I said earlier) the effect on the ground is uncertain, it’s possible that this has already led to the collapse of ceasefire-for-hostages negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and hence to many more deaths on both sides.
As for Greta: as someone who admired her 4-5 years ago, she is dead to me now. I’d like humanity to transition to nuclear and other carbon-neutral energy as quickly as possible, not because of Greta and her supporters and everything they represent but in spite of them. I can’t make common cause with anyone whose message to the world’s Jews, after October 7, amounted to “lay down and die.”
So, you’re right that October 7 caused a major realignment, and a major shift in my own views. I feel more alone in the world, like for the first time I really viscerally understand what Einstein in the 1930s called the Jews’ “precarious place among the nations.” Many people who I might’ve expected to be allies, turn out to be nothing of the kind. But I also feel a lot of resolve to stand up for myself. If those who’d just as soon have me dead—either because I’m a straight white male STEM nerd, or because I’m a Zionist Jew—have finally shown the world who they are, the least I can do is to show them who I am.
Comment #229 March 30th, 2024 at 5:38 pm
Anon #224: Here’s a good recent article (one of several) that explains the origins of “Zionism is settler-colonialism” in Soviet propaganda.
Yes, of course the Palestinians should’ve taken the two-state deal in 1947! Crucially, it wasn’t merely the Israelis who thought the deal was fair (well, substantially less than the Israelis had hoped for, but they accepted it). The UN voted on and proposed the deal—the same UN that relentlessly bashes Israel now! And still it wasn’t enough.
The Palestinians again should’ve accepted the two-state deal when it was on the table in 2000—and it wasn’t merely the Israelis who thought so; it was President Clinton (architect of the failed deal) and pretty much every liberal commentator.
In short, the anti-Israel cause has a sort of Alice-in-Wonderland quality to it, where Palestinians get unlimited free retries at “genocide instead of peace”—and if they succeed even once, the Jews are all dead, but if they fail, they still get maximum sympathy the next time around and all the previous attempts get memory-holed. That really is completely different from Native Americans vs colonists or the other cases people always try to analogize it to.
Comment #230 March 30th, 2024 at 7:00 pm
Dear Scott, AF, and other commenters,
This has been an interesting conversation, and I appreciate your willingness to engage in debate at a high level on Graham’s hierarchy. It seems unfortunately rare to be able discuss the Israel-Palestine issue like this. I think we actually have a pretty similar understanding of the basic facts of the situation, yet still come to rather different conclusions. Anyways, I have some other commitments, so the comments below will be my final part in the debate.
Re Scott #221:
I think the moral argument for expelling white people from the US is about on par with expelling Jews from Israel. (On the other hand, murdering the population is completely wrong in both situations.) But because of the large difference in elapsed time and in the (related and more consequential) number of people, the former would be several orders of magnitude more difficult than the latter. I think we agree that there are some significant practical challenges in absorbing all Israeli Jews into the US, but I still hold that the major obstacle is the attitude of the Israelis. Unlike the two-state solution, which has been formally proposed many times, always failing miserably because of its essential disconnect from the position of the Palestinians, my plan has not been seriously discussed by the parties, to my knowledge. Yes, there is a rhetorical aspect to my position: it serves to highlight that a key difficulty is the desire for a Jewish ethno-state in the Levant, rather than just a desire for prosperity and survival. But I am serious that the US should propose this plan to the Israelis, and if it is rejected cut off all aid. As an American citizen and taxpayer, I am most concerned with what this country should do. We should not expel the Jews from Israel. But if we give them a better option we also need not continue supporting the oppression of the Palestinians.
Re AF #225:
I can only speak for myself — I don’t have a good sense of exactly how the term “settler-colonialism” is used by others (I would imagine there’s some variance). The important thing is the comparison to other historical situations. I think the charge of settler-colonialism makes liberal supporters of Israel uncomfortable because they tend to have much less sympathy for the colonizers in the parallel situations. I don’t think an old “link to the land” invalidates the comparisons. All humans have a “link to the land” of Africa, but I think we would agree there was still settler-colonialism there. The strength and temporal characteristics of the link matter a lot. I would say the Jewish link to Israel is stronger than the link of all humans to Africa, but not so strong that it invalidates comparison with other instances of what are generally called settler-colonialism. Palestinians displacing Jewish Israelis might be settler-colonialism if the Palestinians leave and come back in 2000 years, but it would not be today.
Now lets turn to moral culpability in settler-colonialism. I think it’s helpful to focus on situations where settlers were in some way at odds with the colonizing country; Israel-Palestine, and Huguenots in the British colonies are examples. I would say that the colonizing country always has lots of culpability. In the Levant case, that country would be Britain (but I would also apportion quite a bit of blame to the US, since they were really the power behind Britain). Next, as for the settlers themselves, in the Levant case, these are the Israeli Jews. I would say that their culpability, at least initially, was on the lower side relative to general settler-colonial situations (maybe roughly analogous to Huguenots). And then there are the prior inhabitants, in this case the Palestinians. They are not culpable for the settler-colonialism itself, but I also don’t think it gives them free moral rein. I believe certain Native Americans were morally culpable for the torture and murder of white captives, and Hamas is morally culpable for the heinous October 7 attacks.
Anyways, good debating!
Comment #231 March 30th, 2024 at 7:40 pm
Scott #229: USSR was instrumental in securing the adoption in 1975 of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 which determined that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination” (this resolution became a cornerstone of the late Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda). One outgrowth of this line of reasoning is the analogy, prevalent in the current anti-Zionist discourse, between Hamas October 7 massacre and Nat Turner’s rebellion of enslaved Virginians in 1831.
Comment #232 March 30th, 2024 at 8:22 pm
Scott #180: “And, country by country, the success or failure of the Holocaust seems to have had more to do with local attitudes than with any other factor: did that country’s populace defy demands to round up the Jews for extermination?”
The degree to which the country’s sovereignty was compromised played an extremely important, often determinative role. About three-quarters of French Jews survived, whereas about three-quarters of Dutch Jews and Greek Jews were killed.
Comment #233 March 30th, 2024 at 9:01 pm
AG #231: Great, a proud legacy of antisemitic lies.
Comment #234 March 30th, 2024 at 9:03 pm
AG #232: And there were other factors too, including the competence or incompetence of the local Jew-liquidation operation (eg, the one in the Netherlands was unfortunately all too competent).
Comment #235 March 30th, 2024 at 11:20 pm
Incidentally, for those who asked for expert commentary: will Benny Morris do?
Israel’s most famous radical left-wing historian, the Wall Street Journal yesterday to explain the survival necessity of destroying Hamas.
Comment #236 March 31st, 2024 at 8:15 am
I am somewhat surprised at the type of reasoning in this thread. As someone who thinks they understand both sides of the dispute, many of the comments fail to understand even their own side, let alone the other side.
What is left is an attempt to reduce the problem to first principles, which fails catastrophically because there are no first principles to reduce to. This is a situation involving about 20 million people. Anyone who thinks this is black and white is wrong.
Take for example:
>Yes, of course the Palestinians should’ve taken the two-state deal in 1947! Crucially, it wasn’t merely the Israelis who thought the deal was fair (well, substantially less than the Israelis had hoped for, but they accepted it). The UN voted on and proposed the deal—the same UN that relentlessly bashes Israel now! And still it wasn’t enough.
Setting aside the fact that the UN of 1947 is not even close to being the UN of 2024 – which would be enough to doom this entire line of reasoning in itself – this line of reasoning would get you absolutely nowhere with someone who understands the “anti-Zionist” (for lack of a better word) position. Only the pro-Zionist camp thinks the UN is against them, for the anti-Zionists the UN has always been on Israel’s side (they just point to the Security Council, whereas the pro-Zionists point to the General Assembly. Given that the former is legally binding and the latter is not, on the object level they might even be right, though that would again lack nuance because even here there is no black and white).
This attempt to reduce the complex situation to something simple and rational really makes for rather ridiculous arguments that sound good but are absolute nonsense, such as:
– The idea that somehow Jews should go back to living as a dispora because that would be fair (#5. #73)
– The fact that famous people from one people group (Einstein,Spinoza, …) are somehow relevant to what is “worth preserving” (actual Enlightement values, and those from before, including from Jewish thinkers, stress that *all* human life is worth preserving. The conclusion is valid, but the reasoning is bad. One does not need to try to prove from first principles why the survival of people is good, that is a first principle already.)
– The idea that because the Holocaust happened, we should assume that anti-semites and palestinians are willing and able to annihilate Jewish people again. This is actually a motte-and-bailey, the motte is a single person (or “Hamas”) who would push the button to kill all Jews, the bailey is giving any power to the Palestinians is dangerous. Take e.g. this sentence: “Hamas, by contrast, hasn’t completely annihilated Israel solely because it’s lacked the physical power to do so. The instant it had the power, it would (we saw the sneak preview on Oct 7)”, and this argument is advanced ad nauseum. Not only is this conjecture, do you think none of the relatives of the Oct.7 attacks would push a button that would annihilate all Palestinians? Do you think that no Israeli MPs would? What if they got plausible deniability? What about some of the settlers in the West Bank? Just as the existence of Israelis who hate Palestinians doesn’t give Hamas the right to to mistreat or kill even those Israelis (let alone their relatives, children, or friends), the reverse is equally true.
– This rather ignoble sentence, which completely flies in the face one of the major advances of the Enlightenment, the idea that wars have rules, and civilians should not be lumped in with combatants regardless of whether the civilians support the combatants: ” the side that was attacked—in something meant to be a second Holocaust, a genocide—is responsible for providing food, water, and electricity to its attackers as they continue their attack.” I am reminded of the memoirs of Viktor Frankl, who admonishes his friend for trampling on the field of a German after they had been freed from a concentration camp saying that bad things being done to you do not give you the right to do bad things yourself.
I could go on and on. But at some point one does need to ask whether all of the bad arguments are from a common source or not. And my conjecture here would be that the conclusions came first, then the arguments to “prove” them were sought. This works well in mathematics. it works even better in real life, because there are fewer restrictions on the kind of statements you can prove this way.
Comment #237 March 31st, 2024 at 9:38 am
Matty Wacksen #236:
I think you’re somewhat cherrypicking specific sentences and not giving them their proper context. Also:
> The idea that because the Holocaust happened, we should assume that anti-semites and palestinians are willing and able to annihilate Jewish people again. This is actually a motte-and-bailey, the motte is a single person (or “Hamas”) who would push the button to kill all Jews, the bailey is giving any power to the Palestinians is dangerous.
No, it’s not at all a motte-and-bailey. You say “a single person (“or Hamas”)”, but those are very different things. Hamas is the actual government of Gaza, with a fighting force estimated at 30k strong, and the “giving any power to Palestinians” that you’re referring to is allowing this group to stay in power. This is a completely different situation to “there are some Israelis who would be willing to push a button to wipe out Gaza”. This is a group that has shown the will and the ability to slaughter many Israelis (and has been firing rockets into Israel for years, btw).
Also, it’s not just that the Holocaust happened – Arab states attacked Israel, with intent to wipe it out, multiple times throughout history. And while even if left alone again, Hamas doesn’t have the means of taking out Israel, it is backed by Iran, which has multiple times said will wipe Israel off the face of the Earth, and is well on its way to getting an atom bomb.
And btw, as a more immediate threat, Hezbollah is trading rockets with Israel every day. 100k Israelis are internally displaced and can’t go to their homes because it isn’t safe.
The threat of annihilation, or in the near future, just mass Israelis casualties in war, isn’t an idle threat for Israelis, it’s an all-too-realistic scenario, and I can’t imagine why you think it’s only “conjecture”. What more must Hamas (or Iran) do to prove that it would slaughter far more Israelis if it could?
I mean, let’s ask it like this – had the IDF (or brave civilians) not responded as quickly, had they taken an extra day to respond for whatever reason, do you doubt the death toll would just have increased to the largest extent that Hamas could’ve gotten away with?
The only reason more Israelis aren’t dead is that Hamas was physically stopped. The only reason so many Palestinians are dead was that Hamas invaded Israel. Do you think one of those statements is wrong?
Comment #238 March 31st, 2024 at 11:07 am
Matty Wacksen #236: We actually agree that this conflict is not “black and white”! I was provoked into writing by what I find to be a terrifyingly large consensus, among the left-wing activists at universities and on Twitter, which holds that Israel alone is to blame, and that the only appropriate remedy is Israel’s dissolution, via “resistance by any means necessary.” Of course refuting that is going to involve pointing out instances where universal moral principles not only fail to support the activists’ conclusion, but in some cases seem to come down overwhelmingly on Israel’s side.
To add a couple points to what Maor #237 already said:
– I completely agree that the physical survival of the world’s various peoples should never need to be argued for. And yet, in the special case of the Jews, we find that it does—it always does. Incredibly, even sometimes among Jews themselves! Of course, even Hitler never argued publicly and explicitly that all Jews should be killed; he just said other things that seemed to point inexorably toward that conclusion—and today’s Twitter antisemites do the same. I mentioned Einstein, Spinoza, et al just to indicate that, if that’s the argument that the world’s antisemites want to have, then I’m unafraid to have it.
– No doubt there are individual Israelis who would press a button to kill all Palestinians if they could. The difference is, this has never been a policy of the Israeli government, not even of its most deplorable right-wing governments—and we know that because they’ve effectively had the button since the 1960s and haven’t pressed it. By contrast, killing all Jews whenever possible is precisely the policy of Hamas, which is the sole government of Gaza—and it’s the policy not only in theory but in practice. Even the PA never really repudiated that ideology, as we see for example from its payments to the families of terrorists. This, more than anything else, is what makes peace so difficult, making it all the more important that those of us who yearn for peace and coexistence face it without illusions.
Comment #239 March 31st, 2024 at 11:35 am
Scott #238:
> Even the PA never really repudiated that ideology, as we see for example from its payments to the families of terrorists.
Just an interesting side note that the US is trying to get the PA to stop that policy, presumably as part of a push to make the PA more acceptable so it can be placed as the new government of Gaza.
Comment #240 March 31st, 2024 at 11:53 am
I detect a paradox in your Zionism.
So you say:
“Even if I didn’t happen to be born Jewish—if I had anything like my current values, I’d still think that so much of what’s worth preserving in human civilization, so much of math and science and Enlightenment and democracy and humor, would seem oddly bound up with the continued survival of this tiny people.”
But: don’t you hate the enlightenment, and modernity in general for that matter—precisely because modern, liberal, western society denied you women/sexual opportunities? Haven’t you often longed for the old days, when you’d be set up with an arranged marriage/bride instead of having to navigate a modern, unstructured dating environment? Isn’t it precisely BECAUSE of the Jews and the modern enlightened world they helped to create that you struggled so much with the opposite sex?
Alternatively, your disaffection with modern culture is PRECISELY the reason why so many people are antisemites! They have a vague feeling that the modern world is more challenging or lonely or isolating than it used to be, and that Jews are, if not entirely responsible for this modernity, at least disproportionately involved in its creation. In the West, many alt-right anti-semites are incels who feel like they can’t get women because of modernity, which they imagine was created by Jews. In much of the Middle East, antisemitic young men feel like their culture of arranged marriages is under threat by “degenerate” western values that promise sexual freedom for women, which were masterminded by Jews. On a practical level, many young men in Islamist terrorist organizations, including Hamas, are effectively incels. That’s a big part of how these terrorist organizations recruit in fact—they search for unmarried disaffected young males. Martyrdom promises 70 virgins in the afterlife.
All of which is to say: you could easily say that the other side of this conflict is the “incel” one.
Comment #241 March 31st, 2024 at 12:26 pm
Sam #240: I’ll answer your comment despite its trollish nature. If there’s been a more consistently pro-Enlightenment, pro-liberal-democracy blog than this one anywhere on the Internet, I’d like to know what it is. I’ve never wavered once from my commitment to modernity and universal human rights, not even during the darkest periods of my life—and if you actually read it, the whole point of “comment 171” was to explain that.
Yes, of course there’s some overlap between incel ideology and right-wing antisemitism (left-wing antisemitism less so). My interest, of course, has always been providing a social environment that would keep people from falling into incel ideology in the first place.
More broadly, though: yes, I’m extremely interested in understanding and ameliorating bad effects of the Enlightenment, which many people take to include social atomization and a collapse of the mechanisms that used to lead to family formation. But this no more makes me “anti-Enlightenment,” than an obsession with reducing humanity’s carbon footprint (eg via nuclear power, GMO crops, and electric cars) makes someone “anti-civilization” or “anti-technology.” Please reflect on that analogy, which I actually think is pretty exact.
Comment #242 March 31st, 2024 at 1:33 pm
Annnnd … now that the trolls are starting to appear (“Sam” has now left responded with an even more openly trollish comment, which I won’t let up), and also now that all the usual arguments have been laid out, I think it’s time to wrap up this thread by tonight. Get in any final comments before then.
Of course what’s surprising is how long the troll takeover took! Most commenters here, whatever their views, have been great.
This morning, as it happens, a fan of this blog of Muslim background emailed me a message of support about this post, sending “love and care” my way. Seeking an appropriate sign-off as I returned his well-wishes, I ended up with:
May everyone who shares the goal of peace and coexistence talk to each other openly about how to get there.
I share that desire for every sincere participant here.
Comment #243 March 31st, 2024 at 1:50 pm
Edan Maor #236:
>but those are very different thing
Yes, they are different, which is why included Hamas as part of the motte. Hamas having a fighting force of 30k would be 1.5% of the population of the Gaza strip. October 8th was commited by the militant arm of Hamas, so presumably those are a (proper) subset making this an upper bound.
>that you’re referring to is allowing this group to stay in power.
No, I’m referring to e.g. comment #31
>Arab states attacked Israel, with intent to wipe it out, multiple times throughout history.
I feel like we should probably be very precise here, because who attacked whom is very much in dispute, with Israel firing the first shot in many cases. What the Arab states would have done had they won is a hypothetical we can’t know about. Rhetoric and action are two different things, see e.g. the wikipedia article here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_and_massacres_during_the_1948_Palestine_war if you are interested in the non-Israeli point of view. However, regardless of this I won’t dispute that many of Israel’s neighbors hate it, often irrationally. That said, if Israel is threatened in its existence by its neighbors then the right move isn’t to piss its neighbors off. There is nothing that makes people hate Israel more than watching it kill Palestinians. Whether the killings are “justified” in some sense often does not matter.
>Do you think one of those statements is wrong?
Yes, the “only” in the second statement is quite obviously wrong. If A does something and B responds, it doesn’t make A responsible for B’s actions. That would be ridiculous. Imagine we applied it the other way, and said something stupid like “the only reason so many Israelis died from Hamas terror is that Israel provoked them”.
Comment #244 March 31st, 2024 at 2:33 pm
Scott, thanks for this considered post and engaging. I’ll put in one thought, as someone torn by this issue, since it quickly leads to very scary places. I’m quite bothered by an aspect here which might be put in terms of constructing a Utility Monster. The programming rule it follows is something like “Actions are moral if their intent is to fight Hamas, and the effects in any way further this goal – crucially, no other considerations apply.”. Whenever anyone argues with the Monster about civilian destruction, it says “I’m *fighting Hamas*. They are bad! They are evil!! They KILL JEWS!!! They’d cause another Holocaust if they could!!!! What is your solution, apart from the complete and utter destruction of Hamas as fast as possible, which is my utility-function? Anything which interferes with that goal harms Jews”.
Thus it proceeds to execute: “Bombing any building is moral if there is a Hamas tunnel underneath. The intent is to destroy the Hamas tunnel, this fights Hamas – destroying an entire civilian apartment building, or even a hospital, is not the intent. Blocking food aid is moral, as Hamas would eat, this fights Hamas – starving the civilian population is not the intent. …”.
[Talk about AI destroying humanity – this is very close to the SF story cliche of telling an AI “protect us” and so it kills everyone else.]
I refer you to the following article from years ago, which essentially discusses a similar real Utility Monster, with scenarios which would seem like wild thought-experiments, but are (allegedly) true, for example:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2018-01-24/ty-article/idf-ordered-to-shoot-down-passenger-planes-to-kill-arafat-in-1982/0000017f-e02d-db22-a17f-fcbd118e0000
“During his term as Israel’s defense minister, Ariel Sharon ordered the Israeli army to shoot down a passengers plane if it was confirmed that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was on board. In one instance in 1982, he plane in question was carrying 30 wounded Palestinian children, survivors of the Sabra and Shatila massacre.”
I want to stress this, since it sounds so much like a crazy hypothetical: Israel has information that Arafat is (likely? probably?) on a civilian flight carrying *wounded children*. Should the plane be shot down?
The Utility Monster says:
“Shooting down the plane is moral. The intent is to kill Arafat, this fights terrorism – killing a planeload of children is not the intent. Any moral blame should be put on Arafat, for being on a plane with children, he’s using them as human shields.”
Scott, if you were asked as member of the Cabinet, would you approve shooting down that plane? (again, this sounds like a trick reductio ad absurdum argument, but it’s an actual case)
Comment #245 March 31st, 2024 at 2:41 pm
Scott #238
> if that’s the argument that the world’s antisemites want to have, then I’m unafraid to have it.
No real disagreemenet, but I’m sure you’re familiar with the old adage that one shouldn’t wrestle with a pig – first it drags you down to its level, then it beats you with its experience 🙂 A bit like the principle of explosion in logic – once you start from a fatally flawed premise, it’s hard to get anything good.
>The difference is, this has never been a policy of the Israeli government, not even of its most deplorable right-wing governments—and we know that because they’ve effectively had the button since the 1960s and haven’t pressed it
Just for the sake of completeness: They have never had the button in a real sense. I mean look at the difficulty Israel is having in Gaza. Of course in terms of military capability in some sense maybe they have the button, but what comes after they press it?
But actually we can skip the argument above: Ultimately I don’t buy that it matters all that much. Whether or not the Israeli side hates Palestine as a whole or not, the facts of the matter are that they just killed 30 thousand people as a response to the killing of about a thousand. With all the talk there has been about the banality of evil, do you fault those who tally up the numbers and sympathise with the Palestinian side? Is it somehow better to kill children if you do it by pressing a button “meant” to kill their parents instead of holding a knife? I think one is talking about the wrong thing if one speaks about what the other side “would” do as opposed to what they actually do. But of course your point that it is hard to negotiate with someone who hates you stands. And yes Hamas has done many many evil things. But the fact that Israel is morally superior should make this process easier, usually when people negotiate in situations like this they both hate each other.
>Even the PA never really repudiated that ideology, as we see for example from its payments to the families of terrorists.
See this kind of “reducing everyting to a single gotcha” is what I really don’t like. The PA is a political organization catering to its supporters. They see the “terrorists” as freedom fighters. The fact that they pay some money to their families does not mean they could not be negotaited with any more than the fact that *gestures wildly at everything right-wing on the Israeli side*.
Comment #246 March 31st, 2024 at 3:15 pm
bringEmAllHere #230:
While I still strongly disagree with the way you use the term “settler-colonialism”, and several other things you wrote, I am also glad that we were able to have a civil debate, and that we narrowed things down to the high-level generators of disagreement (Scott Alexander’s term).
Comment #247 March 31st, 2024 at 3:52 pm
Hi Scott,
Maybe it is a mistake to post this. I am not sure. In any case, I hope you do not take offense. I have the greatest respect for you as well as the Jewish people as a whole. However, I am probably closer to Paul Graham than to you on this issue. I would not describe myself as an anti-zionist. I suppose I agree with Richard Dawkins’ view of the issue: “It is reasonable to deplore both the original founding of the Jewish State of Israel & aspirations now to destroy it.” Practically speaking, I am in favor of a negotiated two-state solution with the hope of a secular binational state in the distant future. However, I do believe, even in the absence of Palestinian cooperation, that it is morally obligatory to implement the unilateral two-state solution. In my opinion, it would be fully morally acceptable for Israel to wage war to defend itself against any further provocation after that point.
I am Hindu and Indian-American, and so the way I think about this issue is inevitably colored by that background. I would like to briefly sketch out three (increasingly inexact) analogies which help me think about this issue.
The first is to compare Jews to Hindus, and Israel to India. Two ancient, complex religions misunderstood by outsiders (and by a fair number of insiders). Neither proselytizing. Both persecuted by Christians and Muslims on the basis of faith at various points in history (although Jews have clearly been persecuted far more, the Goan Inquisition and 1971 Bangladesh genocide are two examples for Hindus). Both states founded with strong socialist ideals (even the kibbutzim have parallels in Gandhi’s idealistic village communes) but drifting rightwards over the decades due to terrorist attacks and demographic reasons (more educated and liberal people having lower fertility). Both shaped by botched British partition plans. Both having a belligerent entity to the left (Gaza/Pakistan) and a tamer yet semi-problematic one to the right (West Bank/Bangladesh) ruled by a quasi-dictator (Abbas/Hasina). Both having a large minority (Israeli Arabs/Indian Muslims) which is on the whole treated well and integrated into society but faces much discrimination as well. In both cases, that minority being treated far better than the Hindu/Jewish minorities in e.g. Pakistan/Iran. Both Jews and Hindus succeed and assimilate seamlessly in the West, are thus beloved by the center right and left, and are disliked (due to envy and xenophobia) by the populist left and right. In both cases, there are numerous Jewish/Hindu far-left activists who seem to have utter contempt for their coreligionists and whose principal goal seems to be seeking absolution for the sin of their birth rather than to advocate constructively for the betterment of their communities. Legitimate issues like caste discrimination or the treatment of women in Haredi communities are highlighted excessively in order to villainize the respective religions. Meanwhile, Islam gets a pass amongst leftists (and recently, far-rightists) either due to latent Islamophilia, guilt over GWOT, or fear of consequences for criticism. Perhaps this is a bit of a stretch, but I believe there is even an analogy between the mathematical traditions they inspired. I read a book once claiming that Jewish mysticism inspired the creation and development of the theory of infinite sets. While Ramanujan claimed inspiration from the Hindu gods for his infinite sums. In any case, I think all of this helps me empathize to a substantial extent with the plight of Jewish people today. I am also clearly not alone in seeing the analogy, as social media and polling seems to indicate that India is the most pro-Israel nation on the planet.
The second is to compare Israel to Pakistan. Both Herzl and Jinnah were animated by a romantic ethnonationalism, wanting to isolate their respective communities (Jews, Subcontinental Muslims) in their own state so as to be safe from the depredations of surrounding communities, ignoring centuries of history where they mostly did live together peacefully. Both were secular, interested more in the politics stemming from ethnic identity rather than the ideas that were propagated by their respective religions. The respective national movements looked back to past eras for inspiration — the ancient Jewish kingdoms from 2000 yrs ago vs. the Mughal empire (especially under Aurangzeb). For both Israel and Pakistan, the groups that drove the respective nationhood movements initially (Ashkenazim and upper-class ‘Muhajirs’ or immigrants from India (excluding Punjab) to Pakistan) later tended to become dovish and far more circumspect about nationalism. While Mizrahim who were forcefully expelled from Arab nations, and Muslim Punjabis who were expelled from the Indian side of Punjab in the violence of partition, tended to become hawks. In both cases, right wing Israeli/Pakistani politicians act violently, spurring backlash, xenophobia, and violence abroad (towards Jews in the West and towards Indian Muslims in India), causing these politicians to further claim that only Israel/Pakistan are safe for Jews/Subcontinental Muslims and call for more immigration (which was one of their political goals to start with), thus incentivizing them to continue acting similarly. I personally feel that all of these dynamics are counterproductive. There is no point in relitigating the past– Israel and Pakistan both exist, and so should continue to exist. But in both cases, a forced separation was unnatural and imo the only lasting solution in the long term is to seek a united India + Pakistan, as well as a united Israel + Palestine, as secular binational states. Both would be suicidal endeavors if attempted now, but it does not hurt to hope for their eventual fulfillment.
The third is to compare Zionism to the British colonization of India. Some of the early zionists did see themselves as racially superior to the Arabs living in the area. It is hard not to draw a comparison to a similar underlying sentiment that contemporaneously drove European colonization worldwide. In both cases, the process was viewed as a good thing for the natives. The British felt that they had the mission to civilize the natives, and proclaimed outwardly that they would allow Indian independence once the Indians had demonstrated that they had developed enough to be suited for it. I do feel that there is a similar sentiment when it comes to Israel and the Arab world. The idea that Israel is showing the Middle East the way to progress; that the Palestinians are only entitled to statehood on Israeli terms, once they develop a political culture that is equally sophisticated as that of Israel. (To be clear, I am not a pure moral relativist. I genuinely do believe in enlightenment ideals and, given that the past is fixed, am glad that India and Israel both have political systems shaped in part by those ideals. However, I do not believe that such political systems are sufficient reason to justify prior British conquest/Zionist settlement. Even if the respective regions were in far greater turmoil today in the counterfactual world where those events had not occurred.) One last comparison I would like to make is between the events of 10/7 and the Indian sepoy mutiny of 1857. Sepoys did have some legitimate grievances but were largely driven to mutiny by anti-Christian animus, much as Hamas terrorists were driven by anti-Jewish animus. The rebellion was brutal– the sepoys killed 6000 British people including civilians, women, and children. They killed Indian Christians as well. One of the most gruesome incidents is the Bibighar massacre, in which the sepoys hired Indian butchers to kill 200 British women and children confined to a house with cleavers. Both the rebellion and the events of 10/7 were horrifyingly, disgustingly atrocious, and should be condemned in the strongest terms. Regardless of one’s ethics or political beliefs, targeting civilians is and always should be beyond the pale. However, when such events reached the British press, they were embellished (e.g. with reports of mass rape that later could not be corroborated) and inflamed public sentiment to the point of demanding genocide. e.g. Charles Dickens, in reaction to these events, wrote “I wish I were Commander in Chief over there [India]! I would address that Oriental character which must be powerfully spoken to, in something like the following placard, which should be vigorously translated into all native dialects, ‘I, The Inimitable, holding this office of mine, and firmly believing that I hold it by the permission of Heaven and not by the appointment of Satan, have the honor to inform you Hindoo gentry that it is my intention, with all possible avoidance of unnecessary cruelty and with all merciful swiftness of execution, to exterminate the Race from the face of the earth, which disfigured the earth with the late abominable atrocities’.” The British reaction, as one might expect, was brutal. 150,000 Indians were killed in retaliation in one city (Oudh, now Lucknow) alone, 2/3 being civilians. The total death toll was probably around 800,000. With more dying afterwards due to famine and disease. I cannot help but see the parallel to the current events unfolding in Gaza. The inciting event was horrible, but the following rhetoric and disproportionate response has been nothing short of abominable.
Comment #248 March 31st, 2024 at 4:37 pm
Seth Finkelstein #244: I completely agree that the values of preserving Jewish life, and dismantling genocidal terrorist cults like Hamas, don’t get to trump every other value, utility-monster-style. That’s why I would never support (for example) destroying Gaza with thermonuclear weapons, even if you promised me that that wouldn’t have terrible consequences for Israel (which it would). It’s important that the IDF has maintained a combatant-to-civilian fatality ratio better than most other nations have achieved in comparable urban wars. A good rule of thumb for me is that when my most liberal, enlightened, anti-Netanyahu friends in Israel tell me that the IDF’s destruction of Gaza has become totally random and vengeful and disproportionate and superfluous to the goal of eradicating Hamas … well, I’ll listen to them carefully! But the claim can’t possibly mean the same when it comes from protesters whose military advice to Israel has always just been “lay down and die.”
The question about Arafat is clouded by Arafat’s whole subsequent history. Maybe a better question is, should Israel shoot down a passenger plane that’s carrying Sinwar? I’d say probably not … but if most of the other passengers were Sinwar’s confederates, and analysts estimated that killing Sinwar would end the war and save thousands of Palestinian lives? What if it was Hitler on the plane? These are not obvious decisions.
At the very least, for Israeli neurosurgeons to have saved Sinwar’s life by removing a brain tumor, while he was Israel’s prisoner — and for Sinwar to then be released as part of the Gilad Shalit deal — now look like two of the worst mistakes in Israel’s history.
Comment #249 March 31st, 2024 at 5:01 pm
Matty Wacksen #245: Israel has had so much trouble in Gaza for the past 6 months precisely because it’s trying not to kill civilians indiscriminately! If you removed that constraint, everything would’ve been much easier (but also, 10% or 50% of Gazans would now be dead rather than “merely” 1%). What I keep trying to get you to see is that there’s nothing even remotely analogous on the other side, and that this is the central asymmetry of the whole conflict. Can you imagine Hamas holding strategy sessions about ways to minimize (rather than maximize) the number of Israeli civilian dead, to give them evacuation warnings and so forth? It’s a sick joke.
You dismiss the idea that the Palestinian side would’ve murdered all Jews in 1948 or 1967 as “hypothetical.” But you just need to look at the leaders’ explicit statements, and their actions consistent with those statements! It’s your side that needs to engage in constant “gotchas,” eg plastering bloodthirsty statements by this or that IDF soldier all over Twitter. My side has the luxury of just looking at what the Palestinian leadership explicitly says it wants, in order to understand what it would do if given unlimited power—from the Grand Mufti to Hamas’s founding charter to the justifications for Oct 7 today.
Comment #250 March 31st, 2024 at 7:22 pm
Thank you very much for this thread, and in particular for support for the idea that Palestinians should be allowed to escape, rather than be trapped to prevent ethnic cleansing.
I think there was someone who thought general principles shouldn’t be applied, but to my mind, you need general principles for handling complex situations. The challenge is finding appropriate general principles and then not following them over a cliff. (Normally I’d track that comment down, but now I’m up against a time limit.)
I find “indigenous” to be a somewhat dubious approach, and “home” to be a stronger idea. It only takes a generation to turn a place into home for at least some of the inhabitants.
SR, thank you for the detailed comment comparing Israel’s situation to various Indian groups.
I think there’s a reason there are so many Jews in AI safety– it’s an effort to bind God with a chain of logic.
Comment #251 March 31st, 2024 at 7:43 pm
“It’s been exactly the same way with the anti-Zionists since October 7. Every day I read them, searching for one thing and one thing only: their own answer to the “Jewish Question.” How would they ensure that the significant fraction of the world that yearns to murder all Jews doesn’t get its wish in the 21st century, as to a staggering extent it did in the 20th? I confess to caring about that question, partly (of course) because of the accident of having been born a Jew, and having an Israeli wife and family in Israel and so forth, but also because, even if I’d happened to be a Gentile, the continued survival of the world’s Jews would still seem remarkably bound up with science, Enlightenment, minority rights, liberal democracy, meritocracy, and everything else I’ve ever cared about.”
I agree with this, but isn’t this also an argument in favor of keeping Israel’s Law of Return in its current form, if not even expanding it even further? After all, not all people who are at risk of suffering from anti-Semitism are actually halakhically Jewish or even the children of people who are halakhically Jewish. There are many grandchildren of Jews–and even some great-grandchildren of Jews, et cetera–who have Jewish last names, for instance.
Comment #252 March 31st, 2024 at 8:09 pm
X #251: While that’s a very different topic from the one in this post, I’m strongly in favor of liberalizing the Law of Return. I believe those who are not halakhically Jewish, but who the Nazis would’ve considered Jewish enough due to ≥1/8 Jewish ancestry, already qualify.
Comment #253 March 31st, 2024 at 8:18 pm
The reason that I mentioned Israel’s Law of Return here is because, at least until October 7, some right-wing ultra-nationalistic jackass Jewish politicians in Israel wanted to repeal or at least amend the Grandchild Clause of Israel’s Law of Return, thus preventing people with one or two Jewish grandfathers but no Jewish grandmothers from immigrating to Israel by themselves (while of course continuing to allow people with just a single Jewish grandmother and three gentile grandparents to immigrate to Israel by themselves). This effort on their part was an extremely massive spit in the face to the half a million Israelis who mostly identify as Jewish but aren’t actually halakhically Jewish, including an Israeli-American such as myself who only has a Jewish paternal grandfather but was raised Jewish during the entire time (until almost age 9) that we have lived in Israel (before moving to the US in March 2001).
I’m glad that they finally shut up about repealing the Grandchild Clause of Israel’s Law of Return by now. I’m just extremely sad that it literally required an act of the Devil (Hamas) to actually get them to shut up about this.
Comment #254 March 31st, 2024 at 8:23 pm
“X #251: While that’s a very different topic from the one in this post, I’m strongly in favor of liberalizing the Law of Return, to encompass (for example) Conservative and Reform conversions. I believe those who are not halakhically Jewish, but who the Nazis would’ve considered Jewish enough due to ≥1/8 Jewish ancestry, already qualify.”
Yes, but there was a huge effort by ultra-nationalistic right-wing Israeli Jewish politicians to repeal or at least amend the Grandchild Clause of Israel’s Law of Return before October 7 caused them to shut up about this topic, hopefully for an extremely long time.
And AFAIK, Israel accepts any conversions to Judaism for immigration (Law of Return) purposes. What its Chief Rabbinate is unwilling to do is accept Reform and Conservative Jewish converts as Jewish for the purposes of marriage and burial in Israel. But they can still immigrate to Israel at all because Israel’s immigration policy isn’t determined by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate.
Comment #255 March 31st, 2024 at 9:49 pm
Incidentally, for the commenter who asked for experts to read—one who I recently discovered and strongly recommend is Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, who grew up in Egypt, was disowned by his family when he started becoming pro-Zionist, and now resides in the US. He’s especially good for understanding the history of ideas in the Arab world, and how the annihilation of Israel became (non-inevitably!) fixated on as an almost metaphysical goal.