Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[Tonitrus]

Being that many of the arguments for legitimacy in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict go back a couple thousand years, I presumed I had some temporal leeway. 

[Razgovory]

The right to self-determination is not absolute and self-determination can be taken away.  Whether or not a country should have self-determination should be informed by the laws and government of the country.  This is by no means controversial.  Germany lost their right to self-determination during WW2.  The Confederacy never had the right to self-determination.  In both cases the lose of sovereignty was based on the behavior of the state.



*Does any of that make sense?  I feel lightheaded and I'm having a hard time concentrating.  Stupid antianxiety medications.

[Tonitrus]

The right to self-determination is not absolute and self-determination can be taken away.  Whether or not a country should have self-determination should be informed by the laws and government of the country.  This is by no means controversial.  Germany lost their right to self-determination during WW2.  The Confederacy never had the right to self-determination. In both cases the lose of sovereignty was based on the behavior of the state.



*Does any of that make sense?  I feel lightheaded and I'm having a hard time concentrating.  Stupid antianxiety medications.

They might have had...if they won on the battlefield.

[Malthus]

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.

A better analogy would be any one of a number of ethno-nationalist movements extant at the exact same time as the formation of the State of Israel.

For example - the creation of India and Pakistan out of the British imperial holdings in India. That resulted in much the same situation as Israel and the Arab nations - a population transfer in which large numbers of Arabs fled or were forced from what is now Israel, and large numbers of Jews fled or were forced from what is now the Arab nations (plus Persian Iran). In fact, nearly equal numbers went both ways.

This Mizrai Jewish population often gets ignored in the "settler state" narrative, which is, quite literally, a half-truth: even assuming it makes sense to claim all Ashkenazim in Israel are "settlers", local middle eastern Jews (Mizrahim) make up half the Jewish population of Israel.

A big difference of course is in scale. India/Pakistan was orders of magnitude larger, and considerably more violent (something like a million people are said to have died in the process).

[The Minsky Moment]

For better or worse US aid decisions are based more on foreign policy, defense concerns, and industrial policy than humanitarian concerns.

For example, the Iron Dome missile defense system is actually a joint US-Israeli project.  Parts of the system are built and procured in the US; the Israelis are obligated to kick back their own tech and internal evaluations of system performance.  From the US POV, Israel is a useful testing ground for military technologies, hardware, and doctrine.  No big surprise then that another big chunk of aid has been used recently to facilitate Israeli acquisition of the f-35.  The US figures those planes have a decent likelihood to see action in Israel and it certainly wouldn't hurt export sales if Israeli pilots managed to use the planes to useful effect.

[crazy canuck]

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.

A better analogy would be any one of a number of ethno-nationalist movements extant at the exact same time as the formation of the State of Israel.

For example - the creation of India and Pakistan out of the British imperial holdings in India. That resulted in much the same situation as Israel and the Arab nations - a population transfer in which large numbers of Arabs fled or were forced from what is now Israel, and large numbers of Jews fled or were forced from what is now the Arab nations (plus Persian Iran). In fact, nearly equal numbers went both ways.

This Mizrai Jewish population often gets ignored in the "settler state" narrative, which is, quite literally, a half-truth: even assuming it makes sense to claim all Ashkenazim in Israel are "settlers", local middle eastern Jews (Mizrahim) make up half the Jewish population of Israel.

A big difference of course is in scale. India/Pakistan was orders of magnitude larger, and considerably more violent (something like a million people are said to have died in the process).

A modern analogy is perhaps the breakup of Yugoslavia.  The Serbs tried but failed to maintain control over the borders they asserted were theirs by right.  The big difference was the US did not back that claim and instead created the Dayton Accords. 

[garbon]

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.

Cool so we agreed it'd be great if the US could dial down the level of aid it provides Israel.

[Malthus]

Cool so we agreed it'd be great if the US could dial down the level of aid it provides Israel.

Yes. Though I don't think it will be easy to do, as the "aid" mostly favours US defence industries, supporters of the aid are politically entrenched, and the knock-on effects (for example, cessation of aid to Egypt) are likely to be dangerously.

I think the US is likely to be less engaged in the ME in the future. They are already seen as not particularly reliable (witness the recent shameful treatment of the Kurds, for example). This may in part explain why certain gulf Arab states are anxious to make a deal with Israel - they are all frightened of Iran and they know Israel isn't likely to just turn its back on the region if a new President feels the urge to do so. Cessation of aid goes along with a strategy of US disengagement, which may (ironically enough) enhance Israel's status among Iran's (many) enemies. Plus, Turkey is also getting much more assertive (and is also widely feared).

[The Minsky Moment]

Cool so we agreed it'd be great if the US could dial down the level of aid it provides Israel.

What we agree on here sadly has little impact on the world.

Most foreign aid programs are wildly unpopular and Americans (when interviewed on the question) regularly overrate the amount of foreign aid the US gives by a multiple of 10-100. Compared to its resources and outside need, the US is very stingy with foreign aid.

Aid to Israel, however, is the exception as the Israelis have convinced enough Americans that they are fighting RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM and are doing so OVER THERE.  No one worries about $ signs when RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM is in play.   Of course, the Israelis do fight terrorists from time-to-time, some of whom are radical and/or Islamic; they just aren't really the same ones threatening America.  But those are details.

In the absence of significant domestic political pushback, the aid will keep flowing because the Iron Triangle is still alive and well in Washington and the policy works for all the legs.

[Oexmelin]

A better analogy would be any one of a number of ethno-nationalist movements extant at the exact same time as the formation of the State of Israel.

It's an interesting analogy. I am not sure it's a better one. The formation of India and Pakistan indeed led to the creation of two states. It was a bloody affair, to be sure - and tensions continue to run high. Much like, say, the invasion of Northern Cyprus.

My point is not that we should use historical analogies to argue the legitimacy of Israel itself, or to understand the origins of the tensions, but rather to re-frame the narrative a bit.

The issue about Israel is that it currently occupies territories, colonizes them, regulates the movement of the occupied population and exerts considerable power over whatever authority is delegated to Gaza and the West Bank. It is an occupation. And it comes with colonization. A movement that began with the creation of Israel, but - and this is the key - that continues, and even has increased in recent years. Regardless of all of the historical precedents, that is the current situation now - and it elicits a lot of the same sort of rhetoric that was produced about the frontier in the US - about the untrustworthy character of Indigenous nations, about the violence on the frontier and inflicted upon settlers. About the right of the US to exist, and the necessity to contain the others. And it clearly mobilized a sense of sympathy for the US against the barbarians on the other side - which would perhaps help reframe the issue beyond the shrugging that may be produced for more distant analogies like Cyprus, or Kashmere, or the Greek Islands, or German Sudeten, or even the ongoing colonization of Tibet.

We can certainly find a ton of excuses for Israel, but at the end of the day, they are occupying land, they are colonizing land, they are governing a population that will never be counted as its own citizens. For how long still? The population transfers of the past don't provide good analogy because that population transfer hasn't happened yet. The Palestinians live in refugee camps and reservations. We may decry the Arab states all we want - it just hasn't happened yet, and Israel hasn't annexed the territories. So we are left with a situation much more akin to those of settler-colonialist states.

[The Minsky Moment]

A movement that began with the creation of Israel

Not really.
1947-48 is really more like the India-Pakistan situation and it did lead to the formation of two states. It's just that the putative Palestinian state was swallowed up the Hashemite successor state monarchy.

The occupation/colonization process doesn't get underway until 1967 but even then it proceeds in gradual phases.  At first Israel committed itself to withdrawing from the occupation and refrained from settlements except for designated exceptions in East Jeruslem, Gush Etzion and Golan in each case for which some justification was proposed. Whether one agrees with the justice of the exceptions the point was that the government believed such justification was needed because it accepted the general principle against settling the occupied territories.

Over time the future withdrawal became more and more speculative and more and more cracks began to appear in that principle.  When Likud came to power in 1977, the rhetoric shifted towards claims over rights to settle, and at that point salami slicing pieces of territory runs pretty continuously, with only occasional halts and suspensions.

The numbers show this - by 1977 West bank settlement populations were still negligible - but hit 5 figures by the late 70s then 100K by the 90s, 2000K by the oughts, 300K by 2010 and over 400K now.

[Malthus]

A better analogy would be any one of a number of ethno-nationalist movements extant at the exact same time as the formation of the State of Israel.

It's an interesting analogy. I am not sure it's a better one. The formation of India and Pakistan indeed led to the creation of two states. It was a bloody affair, to be sure - and tensions continue to run high. Much like, say, the invasion of Northern Cyprus.

My point is not that we should use historical analogies to argue the legitimacy of Israel itself, or to understand the origins of the tensions, but rather to re-frame the narrative a bit.

The issue about Israel is that it currently occupies territories, colonizes them, regulates the movement of the occupied population and exerts considerable power over whatever authority is delegated to Gaza and the West Bank. It is an occupation. And it comes with colonization. A movement that began with the creation of Israel, but - and this is the key - that continues, and even has increased in recent years. Regardless of all of the historical precedents, that is the current situation now - and it elicits a lot of the same sort of rhetoric that was produced about the frontier in the US - about the untrustworthy character of Indigenous nations, about the violence on the frontier and inflicted upon settlers. About the right of the US to exist, and the necessity to contain the others. And it clearly mobilized a sense of sympathy for the US against the barbarians on the other side - which would perhaps help reframe the issue beyond the shrugging that may be produced for more distant analogies like Cyprus, or Kashmere, or the Greek Islands, or German Sudeten, or even the ongoing colonization of Tibet.

We can certainly find a ton of excuses for Israel, but at the end of the day, they are occupying land, they are colonizing land, they are governing a population that will never be counted as its own citizens. For how long still? The population transfers of the past don't provide good analogy because that population transfer hasn't happened yet. The Palestinians live in refugee camps and reservations. We may decry the Arab states all we want - it just hasn't happened yet, and Israel hasn't annexed the territories. So we are left with a situation much more akin to those of settler-colonialist states.

I don't think thinking in terms of "reframing the narrative" on the one hand, or "excuses" on the other, is terribly helpful. Both appear to me to lead to distortions of history, only in opposite directions.

For example - the idea that the present-day settlements are merely an extension of the process of nation-building that started with the creation of Israel in 1948 is such a distortion (and, note, both sides indulge in it - the one side to delegitimize Israel ab initio, the other to justify the settlement process).

The population transfer indeed occurred, in the years following 1948. The difference lies in the fate of the transferred populations. Those Mizrai Jews transferred into Israel were (with a great deal of ethnic tension, as at least at first the two main factions of Jews did not get on) accepted into the Israeli population. They are no longer "displaced" and have no wish to return to, say, Syria or Yemen, where they came from (and if they did, they would not be safe). The Palistinians "transferred" in the other direction were in large part not accepted into the general Arab population. Indeed, this created lots of problems - see for example the "Black September" incident in Jordan (in which some thousands of Palestinians were massacred in a failed uprising, and the PLO exiled to Lebanon).

To use the India/Pakistan analogy, it is as if the nation of India kept Hindus who fled from what is now Pakistan in refugee camps up to the present day.

The israelis are not "occupying land" within their own borders. They are "occupying land" they seized in the 1967 war - land that originally belonged to Jordan. They had also occupied land that belonged to Egypt, but returned the bulk of it in a peace deal. The intent all along was to return the rest, again in return for a peace deal.

The problems began with the apparent impossibility of arranging such a peace deal. The deadlock discredited those in Israel heavily committed to such a deal. It emboldened the reactionaries who wanted to carve off bits of those lands for themselves.

In short, looking at the creation of Israel in the same light as the present day settlements on the West Bank is not a good way of "reframing the narrative", as it does considerable violence to history. The two are quite different creatures.

[garbon]

Cool so we agreed it'd be great if the US could dial down the level of aid it provides Israel.

What we agree on here sadly has little impact on the world.

Most foreign aid programs are wildly unpopular and Americans (when interviewed on the question) regularly overrate the amount of foreign aid the US gives by a multiple of 10-100. Compared to its resources and outside need, the US is very stingy with foreign aid.

Aid to Israel, however, is the exception as the Israelis have convinced enough Americans that they are fighting RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM and are doing so OVER THERE.  No one worries about $ signs when RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM is in play.   Of course, the Israelis do fight terrorists from time-to-time, some of whom are radical and/or Islamic; they just aren't really the same ones threatening America.  But those are details.

In the absence of significant domestic political pushback, the aid will keep flowing because the Iron Triangle is still alive and well in Washington and the policy works for all the legs.

So like everything we say on Languish?

[Berkut]

Mom: Johnny, why are you sitting on your little brother!!! You are hurting him!
Johnny: Yeah, but the little shit keeps kicking me! Everytime I let him go, he kicks me again!
Mom: Billy, is that true???
Billy: Damn right! I hate him!
Johnny: See!
Mom: Let him go!
Johnny: If I do, he is going to kick me again!
Mom: No he won't! He is a nice kid!
Johnny: I think he is going to kick me again!
Mom: Billy, if Johnny let you go are you going to kick him again? You wouldn't do that would you?
Billy: Damn right I will! If I could, I would do a lot worse!
Johnny: Yeah, I am not letting him up.

[Syt]