Tony Judt's Excellent Article on an Alternative Future for Israel

[BurtWorm]

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16671


Israel: The Alternative
By Tony Judt

The Middle East peace process is finished. It did not die: it was killed. Mahmoud Abbas was undermined by the President of the Palestinian Authority and humiliated by the Prime Minister of Israel. His successor awaits a similar fate. Israel continues to mock its American patron, building illegal settlements in cynical disregard of the "road map." The President of the United States of America has been reduced to a ventriloquist's dummy, pitifully reciting the Israeli cabinet line: "It's all Arafat's fault." Israelis themselves grimly await the next bomber. Palestinian Arabs, corralled into shrinking Bantustans, subsist on EU handouts. On the corpse-strewn landscape of the Fertile Crescent, Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat, and a handful of terrorists can all claim victory, and they do. Have we reached the end of the road? What is to be done?

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Extremely good article

it also points to something else.

Over the last 20 years there have been voices in Israel that
have been silenced by the Hawks, on both sides.

Some yeaars back i read an extremely good book detailing the
role of the Holocaust in Israeli Politics and how it is exploited
by the Likud in particular.

To think that it is exploited by our own politicos and as a daughter of a survivor, this is shameful

[lindashaw]

2. Unflinchingly honest, almost brutal in its objectivity. Thank you!

[chimpymustgo]

3. Thanks for posting. Can we handle the truth?

Can any politician speak the truth? How long before he/she is crushed by the Israeli lobby?

An incredible article.

[_Jumper_]

8. How much power does that lobby really have?

?

[Karenina]

4. Kick.

:kick:

[laura888]

5. Israel cannot remain a democracy - ethnic cleansing ahead

"Israel can continue to occupy "Samaria," "Judea," and Gaza, whose Arab population—added to that of present-day Israel—will become the demographic majority within five to eight years: in which case Israel will be either a Jewish state (with an ever-larger majority of unenfranchised non-Jews) or it will be a democracy."

[Muddleoftheroad]

17. Israel remains a democracy

Despite this laughably apocolyptic diatribe.

Sooner or later there will be a settlement and a Palestinian state in some of the West Bank and Gaza. The real problem here, as evidenced by some other threads today, is THAT state, not Israel is the one that is not viable.

For decades the Palestinians have fought to create a state that is independent of Israel. Now they have driven a wedge so deep between the two groups that the nations will not readily coexist. That means, Israel might just well wall them off and tell them to fuck off.

Frankly, it's about time. THEN and only then will the Palestinian people (not the leadership) realize they need Israel and they need to be at peace with Israel. They need Israel for jobs. They need Israel so they can travel between the two entities. They need Israel's technology and its skills. Maybe then they will say no more to the suicide bombers.

[Noordam]

6. Likud is like the far right wing of the Repug party

but as long as they are in power there will be no peace.

[BurtWorm]

7. Kick

:kick:

[ewagner]

9. The One State Solution

has some merit.

When I posted about this the other day I failed to put it in a context of Israel being either a democracy or a state but it makes much more sense to me after reading this article.

I do believe that Likkud and Sharon are following a policy of de-facto ethnic cleansing....

[BurtWorm]

10. Of course it should be one state

and religion should be kept separate from it. Which would mean no more "Jewish state." There's a point at which a nation's behavior toward other nations ceases to be mitigated by whether or not the form of government is a "democracy." I've just finished reading Tariq Ali's The Clash of Fundamentalisms, which concludes with a repront of a 1967 interview with a Jewish British radical--Isaac Deutscher, I think his name was--published in the New Left Review on the meaning of the 1967 war. It was amazngly prescient. Many of the points Deutscher made about the damage to the moral integrity of Israel wrought by its suppressed colonialist history and its military response to it are echoed in Judt's piece. The Israel that bulldozes the homes of the families of Palestinian terrorist suspects is not worth saving, no matter how "Western" its racially exclusionary democracy is.

If the US wants to encourage the building of a model democracy to create the foundations for peace throughout the Middle East, it should abandon Iraq. Then it should abandon the two state approach and forge a real Enlightenment style democracy in which Arab and Jewish Israeli-Palestinians are acknowledged to be created equal and to have an equal say in the way they are governed.

[ewagner]

14. Thanks for the great post Bertworm

I was beginning to think i was crazy for even considering these issues.

[BurtWorm]

16. It's a shame to feel crazy for being rational!

I/P does that to people.

[smallprint]

11. This is a great article

I would only disagree with one point-- that most settlers would refuse to leave and would have to be removed forcibly. Actually, many studies and polls have shown that a majority of settlers are there primarily for economic reasons, and would move back to Israel proper if given the incentive. However there would still be quite a number of armed resisters left, so this is still a massive problem.

Otherwise I thought this was a fantastic article. Thanks to BurtWorm for posting this.

[Lexingtonian]

12. He's right

though all of what he says has now been said many times since 1967. But as Abba Eban himself said, men will admit and do the wise thing only when all other options are exhausted.

I'm still sympathetic to the notion of a Jewish state, though, even if I don't see how it can be binational, and at present it seems to be Jewish in form more so than historical substance- and even the form is doubtful. There has to be willingness to engage in religious/ethnic integration, that is the fundamental matter, and everything else is either an enabling or a hindering of reaching a resolution on that.

[BurtWorm]

13. kick

:kick:

[sushi]

15. Great article

"But sooner or later an American statesman is going to have to tell the truth to an Israeli prime minister and find a way to make him listen."

Let's hope it's soon.

[Lithos]

18. Locking

Article title does not match subject line.

Lithos
FA/NS Moderator
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