Guillermo: Another thing: I find it staggering that people are still pulling out this absurd canard that we should logically attribute criticism of Israel by default to anti-Semitism, since there is always “country X” somewhere else, near or far, with worse human rights abuses, and so why aren’t the critics over there in country X staring down the bulldozers?

The rarely seen compound straw man with a hyperbolic twist. Big degree of difficulty points.

Dilan Esper: But I certainly don’t see anything immoral about providing military aid to Israel.

And while I agree it’s morally justified, I’d rather end it for Israel’s benefit as well as ours. If I recall correctly, that’s David Bernstein’s view too.

We COULD decide to use the aid to put more pressure on Israel on the peace process. I wouldn’t mind that. But I certainly don’t see anything immoral about providing military aid to Israel.

and later becoming the largest recipient of US military aid on Earth, bar none.

Only if you don’t consider the much greater amount of money the U.S. has spent directly defending Japan, South Korea, and Europe, with large military bases and a nuclear shield, to be “military aid.”

But presumably this “outsider” status applies equally to atheists or others who have renounced their Jewish religious faith but have not converted to another religion.

You presume incorrectly. One does perform the mourning ritual for a relative who adopts Christianity. One does not do so for a relative who merely stops believing. The latter has abandoned belief and practice, perhaps temporarily, perhaps permanently, but the act is passive — he has stopped believing and practicing the Jewish religion. Among other things, he can still be counted in a minyan (prayer quorum). The former has actively attempted to severe his ties to the Jewish people and cast his lot permanently with another. My understanding is that Halaka puts him in the same legal status as a gentile who worships idols, except that if he repents, he does not need to undergo conversion.

Israel is simply incomparable to any other nation in countless ways. There is no other case of a stateless people plunking themselves down all of a sudden in perhaps the most famous world historical location for three major world religions, earning the resentment of a large number of the adherents of one of the three by dispossessing numerous of the indigenous inhabitants of that religion from that place, and later becoming the largest recipient of US military aid on Earth, bar none. If these things taken together are not a logical explanation for the very high profile that Israeli human rights abuses get, I don’t know what is.

I think more and more young people today, faced with the truly staggering problems we face, ecological, economic, social and political, would sooner characterize themselves “pro-human”, whatever their birth identity, than pro-this-or-that ethnic or religious group. More power to them.

Comp Sci Phd: I don’t think you’re right. I believe according to halacha, if you are practicing a different religion, you are on the outside. you always have the ability to return, but you would have to give up the religion and return to judaism and do “teshuva”.

But presumably this “outsider” status applies equally to atheists or others who have renounced their Jewish religious faith but have not converted to another religion. Yet Israeli law makes a distinction between the merely non-religious and those who voluntarily converted. One way or another, that appears to run contrary to the traditions that determine who is or is not a member of the Jewish community.

All I’m saying is that you cannot say that Israel’s nationality law is comparable to the nationality laws of European countries like Germany or Italy since it simply is not due to its restrictions on religious converts. Furthermore, you cannot really say that Israel’s nationality laws somehow derive from the traditional way in which the Jews defined themselves as a nation as they are inconsistent with Halakha law in several significant (and, as I understand it, controversial) ways.

Israel’s nationality law may well be defensible as a matter of public policy. But the claim that it is somehow like the laws of many other countries (and the implication that those criticizing it maintain double standards) is wrong.

see the concept of people who did shiva in the past for children who apostated themselves (unsure if its actively practiced today or not, don’t really have any real world experience with it)

so to some extent Israel’s law of return is very much in tune with halacha, though I don’t think it was really informed by it.

Yankev: Israel may be unique in disqualifying applicants on ethnic grounds based on their having accepted another religion (by the way, can anyone here tell me whether the same disqualification applies to Jews who have adopted non-Jewish religions other than Christianity?), but that’s because Jewishness is unique in being both an ethnicity and a religion.

That’s exactly the point I’m making: this exclusion is unprecedented in the rest of the Western world and even appears to run contrary to Halakha law. As I understand it, traditionally, one would be regarded as a Jew if born to a Jewish mother even if that person converted to or practiced another religion. Under Israel’s Law of Return, voluntary religious converts lose their eligibility for citizenship.

And the analogy with dual citizenship falls flat. First, the State of Israel has no problem with literal dual citizenship: any Jewish American who qualifies under Law of Return can keep his or her American passport after immigrating is Israel. Second, under Halakha law (such as I understand it), one does not lose one’s place in the Jewish nation by converting to another religion. I stand by my original statement: Israel’s nationality law is highly unusual.

So are modern gentiles. You see, we all have lots and lots of common ancestors from 2,000 years ago, and lots of cultural practices have spilled over and melded into other practices.

We’re all much more alike with each other and much more different from people from 2,000 years ago. It’s fine to talk about cultural heritage and things like that in an anodyne fashion, but any argument that is based on there being a group of people who are the “same” as people who lived 2,000 years ago is one that is blind to how culture changes and assimilates over time. And it is also silly to argue that wherever anyone was 2,000 years ago should have any bearing at all as to where anyone has a right to be now.

This is idiotic too. I guess the claim is that anywhere where a handful of Jews congregated is Jewish land.

This conflict doesn’t get solved until everyone– Jew and Arab alike– learns that you don’t get to live in places just because some predecessor group to yours lived there.

I don’t believe in “ties to the land”. The people who lived there thousands of years ago are the ancestors of a heck of a lot of people, Jews and non-Jews alike, and nobody’s modern culture is the same as any ancient culture either.

Indeed, part of the reason we have a middle eastern conflict is that way too many people, on all sides, either believe in fairy tales about supreme beings giving them land or believe that things that happened 2,000, or 700, or 100 years ago determine the state of things now.

The beauty of “West Bank” is it is GEOGRAPHICAL, and thus neutral. If we want to call it Judea and Samaria, than I am sure that Jews would have no problem calling Jerusalem “Al-Quds”, right? Oh, that’s right, it only applies to names that emphasize JEWISH ties and not names that emphasize ARAB ties!

By staying away from “Judea”, we stay way from stupid arguments that say that 2,000 year old alleged “land grants” are valid.

I do get irritated when media sources say that “Judea” and “Samaria” are the “Biblical names.”

Sort of like NPR’s favorite “traditionally Arab East Jerusalem”, which more accurately would be “the Old City of Jerusalem which was the Jewish Quarter from the 1300s or so until Jews were killed or driven out at gunpoint by the Arabs in 1948, who kept it free of Jews for 19 years in violation of international law until Israel recaptured it to Israel’s surprise as much as anyone else’s in 1967, and to which Jews have returned, sometimes to the same properties their families owned before 1948,” but then again, that does take a while to say, and radio time is expensive.

But while we’re taking issue, I take issue with this whole “today’s Jews aren’t the Jews of the Bible” shtuyot. I just don’t see any need to match Dilan by getting scatological about it; being scatological tends to get in the way of being logical.

It’s the West Bank. Anyone who calls it anything else loses credibility.

I call it the West Bank because that’s how it’s commonly known. But I do get irritated when media sources say that “Judea” and “Samaria” are the “Biblical names.” No, they are the Hebrew names, and the geographic names. Outside of the events of 1948, there is no such geographic entity as “the West Bank,” whereas Christians and Jews (I don’t know about Muslims) have known these areas as Judea and Samaria for centuries.

as an aside, how can you argue that modern jews aren’t the a direct, unbroken continuation of the jews who lived 2000 years ago?

And in today’s other hot breaking news stories, Dilan reveals that modern-day French are neither Franks nor Gauls, modern day Greeks are not Ionians, and modern day Spaniards are not Visigoths.

Rabbi Mordechai Berger observed during a lecture he was giving that Jews are the only people in the world who are granted no credibility when describing their own customs and rituals. Dilan wants to expand that to include identity and descent.

I really take issue with this Judea / Samaria crap.

Take two, they’re small.

I really take issue with this Judea / Samaria crap.

So do I. The actual geographic names, used by the locals for thousands of years, are Yehuda and Shomron. But I use the Greek equivalents because they are easier for English speakers for some reason.

The territory is called the West Bank because it sits on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Then why isn’t Jordan called the East Bank? And why was it referred to on maps as Judea and Samaria for centuries, until the Jordanian invasion of 1948?

The only reason to call it Judea / Yehuda is to emphasize that Israelites (who, by the way, are not the same thing as modern Jews) lived there thousands of years ago

And the only reason to call it the Est Bank is to spin the Arab-inspired fiction that Jews had nothing to do with the land before 1948 or 1917 or whatever arbitrary date you choose to apply. use.

that Israelites (who, by the way, are not the same thing as modern Jews)

Duh. And the Britons of today are not the same as the Britons, Celts, Saxons or Normans who lived in England centuries ago. For that matter, today’s Americans are not the same as those who fought the revolution. Sorry, I fail to see the relevance, though this same argument is popular among a wide audience including Soviets, Arabs and Christian supercessionists.

thousands of years ago before they were kicked out.

Not just ancient Israelites, who were exiled ca 586 BCE (hope the BCE doesn’t offend you, too). Also Jews, who returned about 100 years later or so, and called themselves Jews (actually, Yehudi or Yehudim, which translates into Judean or Jew), until they were exiled by the Romans not quite 1940 years ago. Despite that exile, some Jews (no one called them Israelites by then) remained. Others returned, some sooner, some later. Some of them could trace their families back to the exile or earlier. Their descendants are still there, and were there at the beginning of the Zionist immigration of the 19th century. They saw themselves and the modern Jews who returned as the same people as each other; they did not tell the Jews who came later “Sorry, we are descendants of those who were exiled and you are some other people.”

In other words, it’s classic spin– if we just change the name of the place, we win the argument.

Now you’ve got it — that was exactly the Jordanian’s purpose in changing the name in 1948. People who ignorantly buy that spin are helping them. It’s worked pretty well for them so far, but I don’t see any need to help them.

hence while you want to argue that calling them judea and samaria is to try and show an inauthentic jewish tie to that territory, it would appear the truth is just the opposite. that those who insist that it must be called the “West Bank” are trying to sever a jewish tie to that land.

A quick cursory search leads me to believe that the area was regions called Judea and Samaria under the british mandate and possibly under Ottoman rule as well.

as an aside, how can you argue that modern jews aren’t the a direct, unbroken continuation of the jews who lived 2000 years ago? That’s like saying that someone isn’t the same type of american as his great-great…-great grand daddy who might have signed the constitution or deceleration of independence.

It’s the West Bank. Anyone who calls it anything else loses credibility.

That said, you miss the forest for the trees. I concede that the occupation is legal– it’s only the settlements are illegal. But to the extent that Palestinians are being oppressed, it is no defense to that oppression to say that it is all legal because of some complicated finagling of 100 year old actions by British colonizers dealing with the detritus of the Ottoman Empire. As justifications for oppression go, that’s an incredibly weak one. Not really any better than claiming God gave you the land.

Dilan Esper: And saying “well, the territory isn’t really occupied because of some convoluted things that happened with the British at the end of the Ottoman Empire” is stupid.

Not to any lawyer,jurist, philosopher or for that matter anyone concerned with the rule of law. To someone concerned with the rule of law, arguing “ignore the facts when determining whether a given legal test has been met because the facts are too remote and too convoluted for me to want to bother with” might well be considered as stupid.

Dilan Esper: Yankev:1. The Six Day War was preemptive, not defensive. That matters a lot when it comes to self-defense arguments.
First, Egypt has already committed acts of war by its blockade of Israeli shipping, but let’s leave that aside. Israel did not attack Jordan until AFTER Jordan attempted to invade Israel. Whether or not the war was preemptive as to Egypt, Syria or other belligerents, it was reactive as to Jordan. Israel asked Jordan to stay out of it. Check your facts.

The rest of your post deals with Israel’s rights and obligations while in control of the captured territory. I take issue with some of your characterizations and assumptions, but in sum, it has nothing to do with whether Israel’s exercise of dominion over Yehuda and Shomron (or Judah and Samaria if you prefer the Greek names) meets the definition of occupation under international law, which was the topic of my response to Iolanthe.

> Even if we accept your characterization of the Six Day War,

Typical progressive … no awareness at all of history except what comes premasticated from some dishonest revisionist.

>And saying “well, the territory isn’t really occupied because of some
> convoluted things that happened with the British at the end of the
> Ottoman Empire” is stupid.

Some great argumentative skills there (not).

1. The Six Day War was preemptive, not defensive. That matters a lot when it comes to self-defense arguments.

2. Even if we accept your characterization of the Six Day War, it doesn’t get you where you want it to get you to. Essentially, a nation-state is entitled to occupy territory as part of a war. I don’t doubt that, and I criticize critics of Israel who claim that the occupation is illegal. Indeed, I don’t know any principle of law that limits this to non-aggressive wars– if you win territory in an aggressive war, you are permitted to occupy it as well, and many countries have conquered territories in this fashion. In other words, you can argue that Transjordan had no right to invade Israel, but any territory seized in that conflict could be occupied.

The problem is, once you occupy territory, what do you do with it? You can annex it, as Israel did with Jerusalem. You can hold it until the cessation of hostilities. You can build military garrisons within it and fortify it.

What you can’t do with it is colonize it and then grant your colonists rights of citizenship while denying any rights to the people who already lived there.

And saying “well, the territory isn’t really occupied because of some convoluted things that happened with the British at the end of the Ottoman Empire” is stupid. You don’t get to oppress and discriminate in favor of Jewish colonists and against Arabs already living on the West Bank based on 100 year old technicalities.

Very interesting post. I began my journey away from the left in 1969 when it became clear that left meant anti-Israel. I wonder if Yglesias might have the same epiphany?

Dilan Esper: Transjordan had no right to “illegally invade and annex” the West Bank for precisely WHAT reason? I thought you said that nobody has had sovereignty over there since the Ottomans!
Or is it only OK when ISRAEL does it?

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the distinction between aggression and self-defense. If you see no legal or moral distinction between (a) invading with the announced goal of not only preventing formation of a state (or in fact, two states) and exterminating the members of a given ethnic group inhabiting either of them, actions that international law condemns, as Transjordan did in 1948, and (b) invading land during a defensive war against a state that has twice invaded you, each time after being entreated not to and each time with the announced goal of ending your state and exterminating all members of an ethnic group found within that state, and retaining possession of the land in order to keep it from being used as a base for further aggression and for genocide, an act permitted by international law, as Israel did in 1967, then I can’t help you. If you consider that a double standard, it says a lot more about you than it does about me. It is not the application of a double standard on my part; it is the application of a depraved and immoral standard on your part.

Nice double standard there, Yankev. Transjordan had no right to “illegally invade and annex” the West Bank for precisely WHAT reason? I thought you said that nobody has had sovereignty over there since the Ottomans!

Or is it only OK when ISRAEL does it?

Jews, today’s Hebrews, are a nation/religion/ethnicity unlike, for example, Christianity which is merely a religious faith.

Here in the US we tend to think of being Jewish as a matter of religion, and think of ethnicity as a matter of where our families emigrated from. But by that standard, many US Jews would not be considered Jewish, though ironically, the laws of the Orthodox Jewish religion DOES consider them to be Jews. The definition applied by the Law of Return is both over-inclusive and under-inclusive as compared with Torah Judaism’s definition.

In Europe, being Jewish was more a matter of ethnicity than in the US.

Benjamin Disraeli’s parents adopted Christianity and raised him as a Christian, but he was still taunted as being a Jew, and members of Parlement tried to deny him a seat in the commons on the ground of his being Jewish. Cardinal Lustiger is still considered by Catholics to be a Jew despite his undeniably being Catholic.

In the early 1980s I met Jews who had escaped the USSR and who were amazed that anyone would think being Jewish was anything but ethnicity, or that there was any religious component at all.

As Isaac Bashevis Singer observed when some newspaper referred to him as a Polish nobel prize winner, “The Poles did not consider us Polish, and neither did we.”

Israel may be unique in disqualifying applicants on ethnic grounds based on their having accepted another religion (by the way, can anyone here tell me whether the same disqualification applies to Jews who have adopted non-Jewish religions other than Christianity?), but that’s because Jewishness is unique in being both an ethnicity and a religion.

Don’t dare tell me it’s a religion only– I do not take kindly to people telling me that my parents, brother and extended family are not Jews. According to Torah law they are.

And then your analogy falls apart. many countries say that if you accept the citizenship of a foreign country, you lose their citizenship.

Yankev: Except that as you point out, religion “contingent” only insofar as it is used as a negative screening factor, not as a requirement. Ethnic Jews who are agnostic, atheist, or who subscribe to a heterodox form of Judaism are still eligible; religion is relevant only insofar as the Law of Return does not except those who ethnic Jews who have voluntarily attempted to renounce their Jewish ethnicity by taking baptism or otherwise joining Christendom.

Of course, my only point was that no other Western country and maybe only few non-Western countries do anything comparable to this. Ethnic Italians who convert to Islam don’t lose their eligibility for citizenship, ethnic Greeks who convert to Methodism don’t lose their eligibility for Greek citizenship, etc. Israel is quite unique in this regard.

Yankev: What you call the “West Bank” are those parts of the land that Transjordan invaded in 1948 and held after the 1949 armistice

iolanthe: Why the quotation marks around “occupation”? Obviously whether or not Israel occupying the West Bank (Judea and Samaria if you like) is a good thing is the subject of much debate but, given that a) Israel took it over b) has not annexed it and c) controls the place surely there can be no question that there is an occupation?

Many of the VC bloggers have discussed this before. I claim no familiarity with international law, but among those who do, there is a respectable body of opinion law that Israel’s possession of Judea and the Shomron (which were never called the “West Bank” until Transjordan illegally invaded and annexed them in 1948)is not an occupation in the legal sense of the word because various prerequisites of occupation have not been met, chief among them the requirement that the territory in question is that of another state. It should be noted that Jordan’s attempted annexation was never recognized by international law, that Jordan rescinded the annexation some time in the 1980s, and that the most recent recognized sovereign over those territories was the Ottoman Empire, which designated them part of South Syria. When Turkish sovereignty over the area ended with Turkey’s defeat in the World War, Britain controlled the area under a League of Nations mandate to create a Jewish homeland. After WWII, the UN partitioned the area into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Transjordan, along with the rest of the Arab League, unlawfully invaded both and was repelled from parts of both. What you call the “West Bank” are those parts of the land that Transjordan invaded and held after the 1949 armistice and that Jordan then lost after being defeated in 1967 after its renewed attempt to invade and destroy the Jewish state. I am told by those who know much more than I about international law that it is far from clear that Israel’s possession of these territories meets the definition of occupation, and that indeed the better (though politicially less popular) opinion is that it does not.

Ricardo: Israel’s Law of Return is very unique. It allows for any “ethnic Jew” to claim citizenship but forbids those ethnic Jews who voluntarily converted to another religion. Agnostics and atheists are OK but not baptized Catholics. Aside from some Muslim countries, I think you would be hard pressed to point to another country where citizenship is contingent on religion. Converts to Judaism who are not “ethnic Jews” are also eligible for Israeli citizenship.

Except that as you point out, religion “contingent” only insofar as it is used as a negative screening factor, not as a requirement. Ethnic Jews who are agnostic, atheist, or who subscribe to a heterodox form of Judaism are still eligible; religion is relevant only insofar as the Law of Return does not except those who ethnic Jews who have voluntarily attempted to renounce their Jewish ethnicity by taking baptism or otherwise joining Christendom.

Also, I think the argument about there being so many other nations that have their own states go somewhat far afield. There are certainly plenty of countries which are historical homelands for particular ethnic groups, but none of them take the concept as far as Israel does. For example, Italy does not extend citizenship to any Catholic in the world.

No, but it extends citizenship to any Italian in the world, which is sort of more to the point, don’t you think?

I don’t really think it’s crazy to oppose things like that. Nor is it crazy to oppose established state religions.

Israel is a secular state. (They don’t have complete separation of church and state, U.S.-style, but neither does just about any other country in the world.)

Your Canada and Belgium examples are a little far-fetched as well. Neither is anywhere near dissolving. Moreover, there’s a pretty big example of a multi-ethnic state with substantial regional cultural divisions that’s swimming along fine. It’s called the United States.

Quebec came within a few percentage points of voting for secession in the not-too-distant past.