Mastodawn

This from Yossi Klein Halevi is so depressing. Ezra Klein picked him to represent the reasonable Israeli, and he considers the possibility of a minority Jewish state, even if peacefully attained, equivalent to the mass murder of Jews. I don't doubt most Israelis agree, but it means no peace ever.
#israel #palestine https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-yossi-klein-halevi.html

Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Yossi Klein Halevi

The Nov. 10, 2023, episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.”

The New York Times

Philip N Cohen Nov 14, 2023

Is there any other ethnic group that can only ever continue its existence on earth by having an ethnic majority state? It is either a 19th century conception of nationalism, or an eternal uniqueness of Jews. I don't accept either.

Rich Stein (he/him)Nov 14, 2023

@philipncohen 78+ yrs since end of Holocaust, 75+ yrs since founding of Israel (antidote) — non-linear timeline of peace efforts w/ neighboring countries ever since. There are plenty of countries w/ ethnic majority pops. Whether that is right or not, it's today's world. Maybe this outbreak of violence yields anothr Sadat-Begin moment (frm grief, exhaustion frm war... who knows...) Maybe Abraham Accord countries play a role. Maybe we — you, me — don't live to see it. Peace may still happen.

Rich Stein (he/him)Nov 14, 2023

@philipncohen I think as intractable as the problem may seem, it still needs to be thought about with efforts to solve/resolve. Otherwise no peace ever, for sure.

Alon Nov 14, 2023

@philipncohen The issue is that the clear demands of the Palestinians are not at all "a state with equal status and protection for the Jews." Fatah has been vacillating on this but "one secular state" was always meant to be an Arab and not a binational state; Hamas is clear that it has no such interest. It's not like the ANC's demand for an egalitarian state going back to its 1950s charter, or even Jabotinsky's demand in the Iron Wall article that the Zionist state have equal rights for Arabs.

oatmeal Nov 15, 2023

@Alon that’s was meant to be possible only after a “test” period which will show they gave up any national aspirations, as far as I recall.

Cc @philipncohen

Alon Nov 15, 2023

@oatmeal @philipncohen In the Iron Wall? It was for after the Jewish state was founded. Jabotinsky died in 1940 so figuring out what he would have thought about 1948-present is fanfic, but the guy who actually led the movement afterward, the terrorist and ethnic cleanser Menachem Begin, opposed Ben Gurion's policy of military rule over the Arab citizens who remained in Israel and demanded equal citizenship (achieved 1966, a few months before the Occupation began).

oatmeal Nov 15, 2023

@Alon yes … I’ve posted a quote recently in English on my feed

David Manheim Nov 14, 2023

@philipncohen His objection is not that it's a minority Jewish state, it's that it would be a majority Muslim Arab state.

Jews do fine today as minorities in western countries. But try to find an example of Jews living in an Arab state as a safe minority in the past 50 years, and you'll fail.

Philip N Cohen Nov 14, 2023

@davidmanheim He could have said that, but he didn't. But I understand that's your opinion.

oatmeal Nov 15, 2023

@davidmanheim define safe. Is the USA currently safe for Jews with all the whitesupremacist attacks? Jews still live in Iran today and are protect by the state and are relatively safe. Jews lived in Morocco into the 1970s. Jews managed quite well before 1948 clearly, especially in Iraq, where they were integrated fully, until the Farhud (which some historians claim is a pattern of state violence not specific only towards the Jews) and elsewhere too, at least until the Deir Yassin massacre and escalation in violence in Palestine that followed.

cc @philipncohen

Philip N Cohen Nov 15, 2023

@oatmeal @davidmanheim people who think Jews are only safe in Israel have a metaphysical conception of safety, unmoored to earthly statistics. Or what they really mean by safety is ethic/religious domination.

oatmeal Nov 15, 2023

@philipncohen or which groups of Jews we’re talking about…

The Zionist movement increasingly tried to universalize Jewish suffering and extend the European experience everywhere, but it’s not true factually. As a minority Jews lived safely in Muslim majority territories for centuries for very particular reasons.

With that said, if this is even possible in a Muslim majority modern “nation state”… I don’t know. Strangely, Iran shows it’s sort of possible, with caveats.

Dave Spector Nov 14, 2023

@philipncohen
These two things are true and define the whole of the conflict, both said by Golda Meir:

“If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.”

and

“Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”

Philip N Cohen Nov 14, 2023

@Dhmspector I see, so you're saying you're ethnic group is better. Interesting point.

Dave Spector Nov 14, 2023

@philipncohen nope, not at all. Just stating a point that is history has borne out for 2,000+ years that if Jews don’t defend themselves they’ll be killed. And that all that’s required for this to stop is people, in this case, many Arab nations is to decide to stop killing Jews. You know, maybe decide the future of their children was more important than endless generational hatred against people they don’t know but merely hate.

oatmeal Nov 15, 2023

You’re talking about Europe’s Jews. Question is why the solution for those Jews was in Palestine? Without going into the territorialist vs the rest in the Zionist movement to deeply, Zionism didn’t see Palestine as the one and only solution for Eastern European Jews, at least not while Hertzl was alive.

Ethnic Jews lived as a minority in Palestine since the 7th century, and survived evidently, until first immigrants/refugees from Russia/Ukraine started exploring farming in tiny numbers. The fact that the two groups had nothing much in common and lived separately is even more interesting, but a different topic.

The point of many Palestinian nationalists is Jews of Palestine vs Jews from Europe. They don’t seem to mind the first, so it’s not religion that’s a problem, on the face of it.

Dave Spector Nov 15, 2023

@oatmeal @philipncohen

no, I am talking about all Jews. But to your informed point — what about the Mizrahi — 80% of Israel’s Jewish population are the millions of Jews who lived in, were persecuted in, and then expelled from all over the Arab world. But I guess they don’t count or something.

This fucked up belief that the Jews are the only people in the world not allowed to have national sovereignty, be allowed to live in peace, or even defend themselves is really telling.

oatmeal Nov 15, 2023

This narrative of persecution of Arab Jews has no support in research. Again, highly recommend reading prof Sadoun’s research (at YBZ research center of North Africa Jewry). I can paste later some slides from a recent lecture with some data on who left, from where, and why, in Hebrew though.

In many places the local authorities tried to prevent Jews from leaving. Either because of long lasting relationships, or in fact, to prevent them from migrating to Israel and further aiding the Zionist movement’s growing demographic advantage.

Philip N Cohen Nov 15, 2023

@Dhmspector @oatmeal ethnically defined national sovereignty is useful for mobilizing national liberation movements and yet inconsistent with democracy in governing states. For Jews and everyone else.

oatmeal Nov 15, 2023

Golda. Sigh. A singularly horrible person.

I’m surprised you’re so oblivious. Golda is the embodiment of everything wrong with the Zionist movement, as these quotes show, and her legacy is the tragedy she and her generation left us with.

Bilal Barakat 🍉Nov 15, 2023

@philipncohen One point I'm surprised I never see articulated is that any purported "right to live in a Jewish majority state" is automatically inconsistent with the individual freedom of religion of every Israeli. If any Israeli has an unconditional right to convert to Zoroastrianism (for the sake of argument) regardless what anyone else wants, then all do and no-one can have any kind of bizarre right that a majority *of everyone else* must not do that. How can anyone have a right to stop others from changing their religion? And obviously any attempt to get away from this by trying to make it about some kind of innate identity that you are prevented from self-identifying out of will unavoidably have to establish some kind of “Rassengesetze" to figure out who's what independently of what they want to be.

Philip N Cohen Nov 15, 2023

@bifouba what this boils down to is that ethnic/religious definition of statehood are not truly compatible with democracy

Bilal Barakat 🍉Nov 15, 2023

@philipncohen Well yes, but my point is that this is trivially and irrefutable obvious by elementary logic, no deep philosophical debate required. So I just don't understand why so many people fail to put 1 and 1 together.

Philip N Cohen Nov 15, 2023

@bifouba ya. It's not about failure to put 1 & 1 together, it's about motivation to pull 2 apart. I think the trick is rejecting the modernist conception of individual rights that is your (and my) underlying premise