Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[The Minsky Moment]

I didn't mean Hamas or Fatah. Neither are relevant at all. Palestine could be governed by baby-killing-ultra-Daesh or the super-sound-peace-and-love-great-at-economics-progressives or anything in between. It has absolutely zero bearing on Palestine's right to exist and the wrongness of Israeli settlements and the nation of Palestine steadily being whittled away.

It has a lot of bearing on what it is reasonable to expect Israel to do in the present.
To take your Germany example, the fact that the Third Reich existed did not mean Germany had to be wiped from the nations of the earth.
On the other hand, the Allied powers were not going guarantee to German territory under German control while the war was still going on and Hitler was in power.  They insisted on unconditional surrender as a prerequisite to peaceful settlement.

[Oexmelin]

Alternative analogy suggestion:

US - Indigenous relations. At various points of history. 

[Josquius]

I didn't mean Hamas or Fatah. Neither are relevant at all. Palestine could be governed by baby-killing-ultra-Daesh or the super-sound-peace-and-love-great-at-economics-progressives or anything in between. It has absolutely zero bearing on Palestine's right to exist and the wrongness of Israeli settlements and the nation of Palestine steadily being whittled away.

It has a lot of bearing on what it is reasonable to expect Israel to do in the present.
To take your Germany example, the fact that the Third Reich existed did not mean Germany had to be wiped from the nations of the earth.
On the other hand, the Allied powers were not going guarantee to German territory under German control while the war was still going on and Hitler was in power.  They insisted on unconditional surrender as a prerequisite to peaceful settlement.

Yet Israeli settlement action is in Fatah territory.
The various Israeli infringements on Palestinian sovereignty are against both sides of Palestine.
And it bares mentioning that the modern world is a very different place to that of WW2. Collateral damage these days is not kosher. Sometimes unavoidable for sure. But Israel you get the impression really doesn't do as much as they could.

Overall I really don't think the existence of Hamas matters all that much at all for the actions that Israel draws criticism for. It certainly helps feed the Israeli internal politics that put in power politicians that support these actions. But often its a very indirect link rather than a logical response.

[Duque de Bragança]

Fatah is member of the Socialist International, so vaguely left-wing. The PLO being mostly Fatah these ways. Very far from Daesh. It's not even on the same page as islamo-nationalist Hamas, which keeps his attacks limited to Israel (and Palestine to suppress other factions). Hamas benefitted from Israeli maneuvers leaving it relatively unharmed to undermine the PLO. That has changed, of course.
Besides, their theocratic rule in Gaza makes easy for Israeli intelligence services to get intel on them, given all the disaffected people.

I find this line of argument - i.e. ascribing the genesis and growth of Hamas to Israeli policy - to be interesting on two counts.  On the one hand because (as pointed out by others in the thread) it denies the Palestinian people agency and a role in choosing and shaping their own political expression.  On the other because it ignores the opposite dynamic - that Hamas, its communications, and its tactics - have shaped Israeli politics and the choices that Israeli voters have made over the last few decades.

I mentioned this was mostly in the past, for the first count. As for Palestinian people not being asked what to do, be denied agency, that's not exactly new. From Arab states claiming to speak on their behalf, yet pursuing their own interests, sacrificing Palestinians if need be. Dates from 1947.

Also, Hamas does not leave much agency to the population under its control. Fatah allowed relatively free elections in the past, but not the last ones, being won by Hamas though not necessarily meaning the majority means a majority for a fundamentalist anti-zionist Palestine, but rejecting Fatah's corruption and authoritarian tendencies.

For the second, once the genie is out of the bottle, it's harder to control, though as I mentioned, the reign of terror Hamas imposes on the Gaza strip makes it easy to find some people unhappy with its regime.

Israeli voters have made choices yet but some devious politicians also derailed attempts at finding a settlement. Netanyahu for one.

[Malthus]

Is anyone arguing that Palestine has no right to exist, or that Israel is right to take ever more Palestinian land as settlements?

Anyone here or anyone generally?
Lots of people in the world have made that argument, including the last Israeli prime minister and the current one.

I meant anyone arguing here in this thread. Obviously, the Israelis busy grabbing land for settlements will argue they are right to do so.

[Tonitrus]

Alternative analogy suggestion:

US - Indigenous relations. At various points of history.

Alternative alternative analogy suggestion (Tyr-edition)

Norman - Saxon relations.  At various points of history.

[Malthus]

I didn't mean Hamas or Fatah. Neither are relevant at all. Palestine could be governed by baby-killing-ultra-Daesh or the super-sound-peace-and-love-great-at-economics-progressives or anything in between. It has absolutely zero bearing on Palestine's right to exist and the wrongness of Israeli settlements and the nation of Palestine steadily being whittled away.

It has a lot of bearing on what it is reasonable to expect Israel to do in the present.
To take your Germany example, the fact that the Third Reich existed did not mean Germany had to be wiped from the nations of the earth.
On the other hand, the Allied powers were not going guarantee to German territory under German control while the war was still going on and Hitler was in power.  They insisted on unconditional surrender as a prerequisite to peaceful settlement.

Yet Israeli settlement action is in Fatah territory.
The various Israeli infringements on Palestinian sovereignty are against both sides of Palestine.
And it bares mentioning that the modern world is a very different place to that of WW2. Collateral damage these days is not kosher. Sometimes unavoidable for sure. But Israel you get the impression really doesn't do as much as they could.

Overall I really don't think the existence of Hamas matters all that much at all for the actions that Israel draws criticism for. It certainly helps feed the Israeli internal politics that put in power politicians that support these actions. But often its a very indirect link rather than a logical response.

That cannot be right - the recent Israeli actions that have attracted international attention and criticism is the mini war they just had with Hamas in Gaza. How can that be rationally evaluated without reference to the existence, policies, and actions of Hamas?

[Malthus]

Fatah is member of the Socialist International, so vaguely left-wing. The PLO being mostly Fatah these ways. Very far from Daesh. It's not even on the same page as islamo-nationalist Hamas, which keeps his attacks limited to Israel (and Palestine to suppress other factions). Hamas benefitted from Israeli maneuvers leaving it relatively unharmed to undermine the PLO. That has changed, of course.
Besides, their theocratic rule in Gaza makes easy for Israeli intelligence services to get intel on them, given all the disaffected people.

I find this line of argument - i.e. ascribing the genesis and growth of Hamas to Israeli policy - to be interesting on two counts.  On the one hand because (as pointed out by others in the thread) it denies the Palestinian people agency and a role in choosing and shaping their own political expression.  On the other because it ignores the opposite dynamic - that Hamas, its communications, and its tactics - have shaped Israeli politics and the choices that Israeli voters have made over the last few decades.

I mentioned this was mostly in the past, for the first count. As for Palestinian people not being asked what to do, be denied agency, that's not exactly new. From Arab states claiming to speak on their behalf, yet pursuing their own interests, sacrificing Palestinians if need be. Dates from 1947.

Also, Hamas does not leave much agency to the population under its control. Fatah allowed relatively free elections in the past, but not the last ones, being won by Hamas though not necessarily meaning the majority means a majority for a fundamentalist anti-zionist Palestine, but rejecting Fatah's corruption and authoritarian tendencies.

For the second, once the genie is out of the bottle, it's harder to control, though as I mentioned, the reign of terror Hamas imposes on the Gaza strip makes it easy to find some people unhappy with its regime.

Israeli voters have made choices yet but some devious politicians also derailed attempts at finding a settlement. Netanyahu for one.

The point that often gets overlooked, though, is that Israeli political choices are made against a backdrop of Palestinian responses.

There certainly was a considerable support for a settlement among the Israeli side (PM Rabin was assassinated for supporting this, at a rally to support the Oslo accords). Why did that tend to be supplanted by hard right wing populists like Bibi? In large part, because the Palestinians appeared to reject any Israeli proposals. That, and the reaction to Israeli unilateral pull out from Gaza. This demoralized and discredited those Israelis looking for a settlement - the feeling grew that a settlement simply was not possible.

Worse, people like Bibi argued it wasn't really necessary. They could just wall off those parts they want, and leave the rest. The cost of this policy is a punitive repression of the understandable Palistinian outrage. Being right wing populists, this naturally spilled over into an exacerbation of ethnic tensions generally - thus rioting between Jewish and Arab Israelis.

The latter really affected the public, and the recent political response in that respect is encouraging - while the New PM remains a hard rightist, he leads a small party in a coalition that includes leftists and even an Islamic party. The ultra orthodox Jewish parties are out. One can expect that this will lead to a significant improvement in the lot of Arab Israelis - indeed there are already some moves to thus effect (much as in the US with its Black population, Arab Israelis are theoretically equal but often subject to systemic discrimination, which was naturally worse under Bibi).

However, it appears certain this coalition will not engage in any searching reconstruction of the nation's relationship with non-Israeli Palestinians. They are simply too fragile for that, holding power by the narrowest of margins, and made up of partners that agree on nothing but that Bibi had to go.

[garbon]

I'd settle for the US reallocating some of its foreign aid. Surely, there are more productive uses of those funds.

[Josquius]

I didn't mean Hamas or Fatah. Neither are relevant at all. Palestine could be governed by baby-killing-ultra-Daesh or the super-sound-peace-and-love-great-at-economics-progressives or anything in between. It has absolutely zero bearing on Palestine's right to exist and the wrongness of Israeli settlements and the nation of Palestine steadily being whittled away.

It has a lot of bearing on what it is reasonable to expect Israel to do in the present.
To take your Germany example, the fact that the Third Reich existed did not mean Germany had to be wiped from the nations of the earth.
On the other hand, the Allied powers were not going guarantee to German territory under German control while the war was still going on and Hitler was in power.  They insisted on unconditional surrender as a prerequisite to peaceful settlement.

Yet Israeli settlement action is in Fatah territory.
The various Israeli infringements on Palestinian sovereignty are against both sides of Palestine.
And it bares mentioning that the modern world is a very different place to that of WW2. Collateral damage these days is not kosher. Sometimes unavoidable for sure. But Israel you get the impression really doesn't do as much as they could.

Overall I really don't think the existence of Hamas matters all that much at all for the actions that Israel draws criticism for. It certainly helps feed the Israeli internal politics that put in power politicians that support these actions. But often its a very indirect link rather than a logical response.

That cannot be right - the recent Israeli actions that have attracted international attention and criticism is the mini war they just had with Hamas in Gaza. How can that be rationally evaluated without reference to the existence, policies, and actions of Hamas?

Even looking just at the most recent violence I am not sure that is right. Was it not Israeli seizures and throwing their weight around in Jerusalem that set it off?
It's also very believable that the coming Israeli election and the need for the government to show off and boost their numbers was a major factor rather than anything hamas did.
Regardless this action was interesting in it brought pretty widespread condemnation of Israel.
The overall backdrop against which this rose however was one where Israeli settlements and the border Walls, both Israeli actions, are the rallying cries.

[Malthus]

I'd settle for the US reallocating some of its foreign aid. Surely, there are more productive uses of those funds.

The primary concern is not the funding provided to Israel - the US could remove that without too much impact on Israel (it is mainly a subsidy to US defence manufacturers). It would probably be a good idea to withdraw that, though politically difficult.

The primary concern, which I do not hear mentioned much, is that the aid is paralleled by aid provided to Egypt (they both originate in the Camp David Accords, by which the US brokered a deal which saw a permanent peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, with Israel giving the Sinai back to Egypt).

Egypt really needs that aid, it is in a terrible economic, political and military state. Withdrawing aid from Israel, but not from Egypt, may be an impossible sale, politically. Yet withdrawing aid from Egypt may exacerbate a disaster in the making - if Egypt falls apart, the current refugee crisis in Europe will become exponentially worse (in addition to being a horrendous humanitarian disaster in its own right).

That disaster may already be very likely. For example, Egypt depends entirely for its existence on the Nile, yet there is a plan underway by African nations upstream to divert the waters of the Nile:

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2020/08/05/the-controversy-over-the-grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam/amp/

[garbon]

I'd settle for the US reallocating some of its foreign aid. Surely, there are more productive uses of those funds.

The primary concern is not the funding provided to Israel - the US could remove that without too much impact on Israel (it is mainly a subsidy to US defence manufacturers). It would probably be a good idea to withdraw that, though politically difficult.

The primary concern, which I do not hear mentioned much, is that the aid is paralleled by aid provided to Egypt (they both originate in the Camp David Accords, by which the US brokered a deal which saw a permanent peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, with Israel giving the Sinai back to Egypt).

Egypt really needs that aid, it is in a terrible economic, political and military state. Withdrawing aid from Israel, but not from Egypt, may be an impossible sale, politically. Yet withdrawing aid from Egypt may exacerbate a disaster in the making - if Egypt falls apart, the current refugee crisis in Europe will become exponentially worse (in addition to being a horrendous humanitarian disaster in its own right).

That disaster may already be very likely. For example, Egypt depends entirely for its existence on the Nile, yet there is a plan underway by African nations upstream to divert the waters of the Nile:

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2020/08/05/the-controversy-over-the-grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam/amp/

This suggests we give double the aid to Israel as we do to Egypt.

https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd

[grumbler]

Alternative analogy suggestion:

US - Indigenous relations. At various points of history.

Alternative alternative analogy suggestion (Tyr-edition)

Norman - Saxon relations.  At various points of history.

Better yet, Saxon-Briton relations.  At various points in history.

Or Iroquois League -  Souixan speakers in the Ohio Valley.  At various points in history.

[Malthus]

This suggests we give double the aid to Israel as we do to Egypt.

https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd

Yes, and if you look at the details, you will see that the lions share of that "aid" to Israel is defence allocations, for the purchase of US defence supplies. See the "top activities" in your link.

This money goes from the US taxpayer straight to US defence industries. Removal of that stuff from Israel would hurt (a bit), but would hardly be an existential threat to them. It probably would be a good idea for the US to remove it. Israel has a pretty developed economy, its enemies are no longer as significant an existential threat.

On the Egyptian side, the story is very different. They have lots of enemies who pose an existential threat (such as, cutting off the water they depend on). Their economy is a shambles. They need the support far more than Israel does.

[Oexmelin]

Norman - Saxon relations.  At various points of history.

The nature of medieval relations may provide one with some interesting thought experiments - though what they would be I am not sure.

However, the dynamics of a settler state, with considerable difference in power, and eliciting different levels of sympathy, in the modern era, strikes me as a more useful analogy.