I’ve been thinking for some time about blogging about the concept of “enemies”, and how modern universalist liberalism has trouble dealing with the possibility that in some conflicts there is no mutually acceptable solution (at least not from the subjective perspective of the participants in the conflict), and thus one really has a conflict among enemies, not simply a misunderstanding that can be resolved through negotiations and compromises. [[And sometimes, it should be pretty clear to a liberal of any stripe which side has the reasonable position.] To take an extreme example, if an Islamist extremist insists that violence against the West is necessary until Islam dominates Europe and North America, that extremist is an enemy, regardless of what the West does or doesn’t do. The West can either fight or submit.
Rabbi Daniel Gordis makes a similar point in the latest issue of Commentary, discussing specifically rabbinical students who express hostility to Israel, though his point could be extended to many on the Jewish left:
If you asked a Jew at any other time in the history of our people whether or not he had enemies, the notion that he should consider the possibility he did not have enemies would have occasioned a blast of the mordant humor that has helped keep our tribe alive through the millennia. Today, however, the discomfort with the idea of “the enemy” and the intolerability of being in a drawn-out conflict has led these students to the conviction that Israel must solve the conflict. The Palestinian position is not going to shift; that much they intuit. But having enemies, and being in interminable conflict, is unbearably painful for them. So Israel must change. And if it will not, or cannot, then it is Israel that is at fault. In which case, it makes perfectly good sense for these future Jewish leaders to refuse to purchase prayer shawls manufactured in Israel and to insist on demonstratively remaining seated as the prayer for Israeli soldiers is recited in their rabbinical-school communities. They will do virtually anything in order to avoid confronting the fact that the Jewish people has intractable enemies. Their universalist worldview does not have a place for enemies.
A version of Gordis’s point came up in a recent email discussion I had with a correspondent whose daughter is a left-wing Reconstructionist rabbi, who feels alienated from Israel. The correspondent posited that Israel’s drift to “right-wing” politics is alienated young men and women like his daughter. I responded that current Israeli right-wing politics would have been literally unbelievable to an Israeli leftist twenty-five years ago. A Labor government led by a non-peacenik general withdrew Israeli force from Lebanon and offered to split Jerusalem, and with Yasser Arafat no less! Ariel Sharon withdrew from Gaza! Benyamin Netanyahu accepts a two-state solution! The purported rightist Avigdor Lieberman advocates large-scale territorial exchange with the Palestinians, including parts of pre-1967 Israel! What Israeli leftist circa 1986 could have even dreamed of such progress?
In short, while the Israeli left has largely collapsed under the weight of Oslo, the Israeli right has moved to positions once associated with the center, even the center-left and beyond. The Netanyahu government is far less “right-wing” than Yitzhak Shamir’s twenty years ago.
If young leftist [and let me emphasize yet again that I'm not talking about mainstream liberals, which would be maybe half the Jewish community, but political active "leftists," who are in the single digits but are overrepresented in various places, including, apparently, non-Orthodox rabbinical seminaries] Jews are abandoning Israel, it’s because of their own internal ideological journeys, not because Israel has become increasingly “right-wing,” as one often hears, which is counter-factual. In part, I think, the collapse of the Israeli left leaves the American Jewish left with no one to identify. In part, I suspect Gordis is right and they can’t stand the idea of an enemy, or a potentially intractable conflict. And in part, it’s a matter of heuristics: if you aren’t very learned on the Arab-Israeli conflict, do you take your cues from the Jewish community, which on the whole is highly supportive of Israel, or from the community of American leftists, which, unlike in the past, has made hostility to Israel a defining ideological issue? Which is your primary identity? Who do you trust? Whose views do you implicitly identify with, someone like Gordis, or someone like Noam Chomsky? For many leftist Jews, including rabbinical students, the answer seems clear, for reasons that Gordis may or may not correctly identify elsewhere in his piece.
Theorist says:
Two words: Carl Schmitt. The essence of his point in *The Concept of the Political* was precisely that liberalism had no space for fundamental enmity, which was at the heart of Schmitt’s conception of politics.
May 31, 2011, 11:06 pmSMatthewStolte says:
I think there’s something to this observation, and it is also related to a drive to cast our enemies in war as unambiguously evil. During and before the Iraq war, I was often very surprised to hear opponents of the war insisting on something I never saw put in doubt — that the Iraqi people, by and large, were good and decent folks. It was as though this were all it took to recognize that a military conflict could be avoided.
The tragic reality is that the cause of war is not the conflict of good with evil but the conflict of interests (or, one might say, goods).
May 31, 2011, 11:11 pmKenneth Anderson says:
David: Luckily … a Co-Conspirator has recently posted a short paper to SSRN that addresses that issue … Efficiency Jus ad Bellum and Efficiency Jus in Bello in the Practice of Targeted Killing through Drone Warfare. It takes up a common objection to targeted killing through drones on the basis that drones supposedly make it “too easy” to resort to force, precisely because they (a) decrease civilian collateral damage and (b) reduce risk to one’s own forces. The question is what could “too easy” possibly mean in a situation in which sides have incompatible understandings of “win” and there is no common currency by which to undertake Coasean bargaining to an efficient point. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1812124
May 31, 2011, 11:15 pmdrew says:
As always the argument is in the assumptions, which are wrong. I’m one of the people you criticize in your post. Some percentage of arab foes of israel are intractable and the only way to stop them from doing harm will be to kill them or disarm the palestinians entirely. But what creates a large percentage of those foes is the lack of an independent palestinian state. Yeah, israelis have intractable, implacable enemies. But if Israel grants Palestinians a contiguous, viable state it can marginalize those existing enemies within palestinian politics and drastically reduce the number of palestinians in future generations who irrationally wish harm to israel. Your post, isn’t about accepting the fact that there will be enemies – your post is about using that fact to justify perpetuating the status quo for eternity.
May 31, 2011, 11:20 pmrumpelstiltskin says:
There is no such conflict. If no Pareto improvements can be made, then you are already in the Pareto optimal solution. By definition, however, one always exists.
Kenneth Anderson also perpetually abuses the concept of Coasean bargaining, as we tried to explain to him here.
May 31, 2011, 11:27 pmSasha Volokh says:
Nitpicking, I don’t think you’re using “Pareto optimal” properly: in fact, being in a Pareto optimal solution is almost the same thing as being enemies: you can’t make one better off without making the other worse off; in other words, in Pareto optimality, there are no win-win solutions. Perhaps you mean “Pareto improvement” or “Pareto superior solution” or suchlike.
May 31, 2011, 11:27 pmdrew says:
I think his attitude is the exact opposite of what universalist liberalism espouses – from the article, he bemoans american jews lack “the instinct to protect their own people first, or to mourn our losses first” and later “it actually does mean that Jewish authenticity requires caring about ourselves before we care about others, just as we are to care for our own parents and our own children first.”
Hence, even though individual Palestinians may be enemies of Israel for as long as they live, the Palestinian people aren’t an eternal enemy of Israel – maintaining the “us and them” mindset that denies palestinian statehood is what helps perpetuate that. Palestinian politics are going to go all sorts of directions if they are ever set free, but statehood is the first step in ensuring corrupt and inefficient palestinian leaders can’t blame israel for all of their own shortcomings.
May 31, 2011, 11:28 pmSasha Volokh says:
I see rumpelstiltskin has, about simultaneously, made a similar point.
May 31, 2011, 11:29 pmDavid Bernstein says:
What posts like this always ignore is that Israeli offered the Palestinians a viable state in 2000, 2001, and 2008 (or whatever the exact date of Olmert’s offer), and were rejected each time. I have no idea what % of Palestinians are even aware of the details of these offers; I suspect many in Gaza and the West Bank would have been willing to take it, but almost none of the descedants of refugees living in Lebanon, Jordan, etc., would.
One could quibble with the details of Israel’s offers, but I have yet to see a legitimate offer coming from the other side that would actually end the conflict.
May 31, 2011, 11:29 pmDavid Bernstein says:
So as not to further confuse the Pareto issue, I just edited that part of the sentence to de-Paretoize it.
May 31, 2011, 11:31 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Which is, perhaps, why they don’t seem to want statehood, at least not a statehood that results from a peace deal with Israel.
May 31, 2011, 11:33 pmDavid Bernstein says:
And btw, while Gordis started off a bit too left-wing for my taste, he seems to have evolved to a position a bit too right-wing, thought that doesn’t affect the salience of this particular point.
As for the universalist point, in the context of Jewish religious leaders, to be purely universalist in outlook is, as Gordis says, to accept a Protestantized version of Judaism, as traditional Judaism has always been not just about moral value but about “Am Yisroel”. Of course, while Gordis makes this seem like a radical notion, it’s very much in line with classical Reform, which indeed was hostile to the very notion of Zionism.
May 31, 2011, 11:36 pmdrew says:
I think people could quibble about the reasonableness of various offers, but I agree that the failure to accept any of those offers is a black mark on a palestinian leadership who exercises power and authority by rallying resentment against Israel. But i’m not sure how that affects the arguments over the desirability of a viable palestinian state or whether the palestinian people are inherently enemies of Israel such that Israel can maintain its current practices – which is what you and Gordis are arguing.
May 31, 2011, 11:40 pmSteve says:
“You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.” –Yitzhak Rabin
I think when you find yourself arguing that Avigdor Lieberman is a “purported rightist,” it’s time to step away from the debater’s podium.
I would not begrudge DB his right to offer up rhetoric like “leftists have made hostility to Israel a defining ideological issue,” but I would note that personally I have never been asked to give up my liberal membership card even though I am a fan of Israel.
May 31, 2011, 11:41 pmrumpelstiltskin says:
As to the substance of the post, my question is: what’s the alternative? If you really don’t believe there is any potential for a future scenario where both sides come to a mutually acceptable agreement, why not just wipe them out?
I’m sure that’s not what you’re advocating, but what’s the alternative if you really think there’s no possible agreement that could be made?
May 31, 2011, 11:43 pmDavid Bernstein says:
And finally, as far as enemies go, the Japanese people, per se, were not an inevitable American enemy, as the history of the last 66 years shows. But in 1942, Japan as a political entity was an enemy, and it needed to be defeated, and with military force, before it was no longer an enemy.
Right now, to take a relatively uncontroversial example, Gaza as a political entity, being controlled by Hamas, is Israel’s enemy. There is literally nothing Israel could do unilaterally to make Hamas a non-enemy, other than surrender.
May 31, 2011, 11:43 pmKenneth Anderson says:
Re Rumpel’s Coasean bargaining point, I plead guilty, along with Greg Mankiw and many others who loosely use the term for a wide range of things that don’t involve, for example, property rights as such. Mankiw had a post a couple of months ago on Coasean bargaining around briging Libyan generals to defect, for example. It’s taken on a metaphorical meaning, sure, and it’s commonly used as metaphorical shorthand. It’s like saying markets in everything.
Sasha’s point about Pareto-optimality creating enemies almost by definition is much more interesting, because it raises the question of whether the condition of being enemies because one does not share the same fundamental assumptions – e.g., humans and the Borg, to take a genuine hypothetical – is the same thing as tradeoffs in a Pareto-optimal situation. I don’t think those are the same, because the former has no common set of assumptions leading to the possibility of an optimal point, whereas the latter does.
What it points to is two different meanings of “enemy,” finally, and one in which there is quite possibly no possibility of coming to a compromise solution, and one in which there is. Diplomacy, it seems to me, not infrequently involves strategic ambiguity as between these two, or anyway hoping that one can turn into the other. On the other hand, confusing one for the other can also lead to disastrous assumptions about how parties will behave.
By the way, Sasha, I’ve been reading with great interest your writing on CBA, and will eventually have some comments for you. I’m very interested – for the reason that my own work cuts across the very ordinary form of CBA that one finds in ordinary business planning, in which everything is reducible to anticipated cash flows, on the one hand, and national security concerns, in which the commonality question is a genuine one, on the other. I made an early stab at discussing this a couple of years ago, in this law review article, but wasn’t very happy with it. I’d love to talk further about it once I’ve finished digesting your article.
May 31, 2011, 11:45 pmDavid Bernstein says:
I didn’t say there was no future potential. I’m not even sure that there’s no current potential. But one has to recognize at least the possibility that Israel could be as reasonable as any state has ever been, and that might still not satisfy many (enough) on the other side, because their goal is not peace but the replacement of Israel with a Palestinian state, along with the exile of the Jewish population of Israel. Such people are in fact the “enemies” of Israel and its allies. Even then, they could change their minds over time, or die out and not be replaced. This could be in part the result of extraordinary peace efforts by Israel; it could also be the result of overwhelming military and political defeat–at least some on the West Bank seem to have given up on military conflict not because Barak offered peace in 2000, but because Israel crushed the Second Intifada with military force, relatively easily.
May 31, 2011, 11:51 pmMark Field says:
Trust me — if this was ever true (and I doubt it), your side has convinced us to the contrary.
May 31, 2011, 11:52 pmJohn Lynch says:
Read Lee Harris. He did a book length treatment of what enemies are.
May 31, 2011, 11:52 pmDavid Bernstein says:
I’m always perplexed by individuals who identify themselves as liberals, yet think I am talking about them when I refer to leftists. I’ve never met someone who I consider a leftist who would happily refer to themselves as a “liberal.” Note that the one example I gave was Noam Chomsky. Do “liberals” identify with Chomsky?
As for Lieberman, he certainly is a rightist on the current Israeli political spectrum–yet his solution for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in some ways more “leftist” than the Labor Party positions of the 1980s.
May 31, 2011, 11:53 pmbarfo says:
If unrestrained theft of Palestinian land is now at the center of Israeli political opinion, America needs to sever all ties with it as soon as possible.
May 31, 2011, 11:58 pmSteve says:
In an age where President Obama is routinely referred to as the embodiment of the Hard Left, I’m not really sure what a leftist is any more. I am pretty sure that your personal definition is not the only one, however.
May 31, 2011, 11:58 pmChrisTS says:
DB:
‘It’ does? This will be a shock not only to comprehensive liberals but even to adherents of political liberalism.
And, then, we have the self-proclaimed ‘classical liberals.’ I bet they know an enemy when they see one.
May 31, 2011, 11:59 pmJohn Lynch says:
Fantasy Ideology.
Hope that helps. Seems to be what you’re looking for.
June 1, 2011, 12:00 amricky says:
This is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
June 1, 2011, 12:03 amrumpelstiltskin says:
I feel like you’re saying something different here than what you said above. Here, you’re saying that Israel could potentially help change the minds of its enemies. But above you painted a different picture: “fight or submit”, though not literally about Israel, it seemed that’s what you were getting at.
June 1, 2011, 12:04 amdevoman says:
+1 to what Steve said. And among my liberal Jewish friends, no one is hostile to Israel. In fact, I’d say most, if not all, would consider themselves Zionists.
As a member of a reform congregation for many years, the idea that they were “hostile to the very notion of Zionism” is simply jaw-dropping.
Prof. Bernstein, I must tell you, you often make statements about liberal (or “leftist”) Jews that are completely outside of my experience. Perhaps prominent “leftist” Jews such as Chomsky hold the views you suggest (or maybe some college kids?), but I don’t think the vast remainder of us common-folk do. In fact, I don’t think I personally know a single Jew who is “hostile” to either Israel or Zionism.
Perhaps we just define our basic terms (liberal, leftist, hostile, etc) differently.
June 1, 2011, 12:07 amDavid Bernstein says:
I also said that that was an extreme example.
June 1, 2011, 12:08 amElliot says:
If Israel hadn’t been making concessions for the last 40 years, nobody would be asking for more.
June 1, 2011, 12:12 amNick056 says:
This paragraph is open to so many interpretations it gets the OP off the rails. In what sense does “universalist liberalism” not recognize that there is no “mutually acceptable solution” to some conflicts? In the example you’ve given, are you actually saying that liberalism can’t recognize that, between a violent, intractable Islamic extremist and Western interests, universalist liberalism cannot grasp that one solution won’t please both parties?
That would be wrong, assuming I understand what you mean by “universalist liberalism.” I read through the Gordis column and found it deflating and depressing: an honest and educated man dealing with generational shifts and feeling a little bemused about why engagement has become central in some contexts. The mention of Memorial Day was strikingly sad: first, the holiday essentially has its origins in a 19th century “cult of the fallen soldier” that honored the dead of both armies in the Civil War, setting aside the larger moral framework of the war to engage the common suffering. But maybe that feels too remote or inapt an example (I don’t think it should, for many reasons), so I’ll tackle Gordis’s own example, FDR. It might have been strange for FDR to take a universalist point of view in 1943, but if the conflict had continued for decades, universalism, in part, is just naturally what evolves, because it becomes evident that the fates of both peoples are intertwined. (Even though extremists can’t be appeased, that is not the goal of universalist libertarianism as I understand it.) I would expect people to be universalist about the war dead in the 1980s and thinking about engagement and resolution rather than victory.
June 1, 2011, 12:14 amDavid Bernstein says:
First off, re Reform, I was talking specifically about classical Reform, which barely exists anymore, and its hostility to Zionism didn’t survive 1945, 1948, and 1967. You can google classical reform judaism if you don’t know what I’m talking about, but please don’t accuse me of misrepresentation until you do so.
Also, I’ve blogged before about how it doesn’t seem to be true statistically that liberal Jews are more hostile to/less engaged with Israel than conservative Jews. But there does seem to be a subset of very left-wing, politically active Jews that are an exception. They are too small in number to affect the statistics, but are causing consternation in the organized Jewish community, in part because they are especially active and vocal politically, and in part because, as some of these comments reflect, mainstream liberal Jews seem to think that the far left is a natural ally.
I’m still not getting this confusion between mainstream liberals and leftists. It’s the difference between Pacifica and NPR. Between the New York Times’s and the local alternative weekly’s editorial politics. Between Paul Krugman and Noam Chomsky. Between the Huffington Post and Counterpunch. Between thinking that Israel could be more forthcoming in peace negotiations and blathering about “Zionist hegemony.” And so on.
That’s painting with a broad-brush, of course, but it’s pretty easy to differentiate the groups overall.
June 1, 2011, 12:15 amrumpelstiltskin says:
Well that’s part of my confusion; I don’t see how you can have an “extreme” enemy versus a “casual” enemy. If it’s possible to improve relations to a more mutually acceptable position, then they’re not your enemy. If you’re fighting them and no mutual improvement is possible, then by your definition they’re your enemy.
There might be degrees of uncertainty about if someone is our enemy (and thus, if we have any true “enemies” at all), but you seem to be indicating definitions where either, someone is your enemy, or they aren’t. Negotiation is either possible, or it isn’t.
And if it’s possible for them to change from enemy to non-enemy by a means other than military submission, I don’t see how they were ever really your enemy before. If you can convince someone not to be your enemy… they’re not really your enemy, are they?
June 1, 2011, 12:16 amDavid Bernstein says:
I think Gordis’s point, which I agree with, is (a) that certain people are not willing to recognize even declared enemies–i.e., those who frequent bars in Ramallah where the graffiti calls for the murder of Jews–as enemies; and (b) some of those same people aren’t willing to even contemplate the possibility that the reason peace hasn’t worked out is not because one’s own side hasn’t been sufficiently forthcoming, but because the other side is taking an “enemy” political posture, holding positions that it knows your side won’t/can’t accept, and doing so because it doesn’t actually want to settle the conflict, but to achieve a different goal–victory.
June 1, 2011, 12:25 amSteve says:
You can prove that any individual or party has moved far to the left or far to the right if you cherry-pick isolated positions on sub-issues from decades ago. You can simultaneously prove that the Democrats are left of FDR on unions and that the Republicans are right of Reagan on unions. This form of argument is a fallacy.
June 1, 2011, 12:29 amStating The Obvious says:
David,
Isn’t that we ought to think? Conflicts should be based on things that can be reasoned. The forces that cause us to act irrationally should be discussed. In this case, that’s religion and ideology. Unfortunately, the two sides (and many of the external influence) are themselves inflicted by this irrationality and refusal to look objectively at the situation. We have contributed greatly to Israel, and have a responsibility to be more involved. Israel is in a place where waiting and postponing ending their occupation is a threat they don’t weigh heavily enough – their subjective perspective is dangerous to both them and us.
What I think would be just and fair, though I recognize will never happen, is for us to apply our principles and create one democratic state that we and our allies help form. It’s in line with what we believe is good and just and it empowers individuals to determine their lives.
The likely future is the Palestinians recognize what works – peaceful protests, and attempt them. If the world sees hundreds of thousands of impoverished people demonstrating peacefully, how will Israel respond? How should they?
June 1, 2011, 12:29 amDebrah says:
David–
Thanks for this post.
So superior to most commentary on the subject.
“….modern universalist liberalism has trouble dealing with the possibility that in some conflicts there is no mutually acceptable solution (at least not from the subjective perspective of the participants in the conflict), and thus one really has a conflict among enemies, not simply a misunderstanding that can be resolved through negotiations and compromises.”
June 1, 2011, 12:30 amKen Arromdee says:
By this reasoning Iran should be no threat to Israel, since Iran is a contiguous, viable, state and therefore any enemies in it should be marginalized.
June 1, 2011, 12:31 amdevoman says:
…but please don’t accuse me of misrepresentation until you do so.
Really! I hardly accused you of misrepresentation. My point was simply your descriptions are outside of my experience.
And the fact that I did not distinguish between “common Reform” Judaism and “classical Reform” Judaism (a movement that according to you “barely exists anymore”) certainly isn’t a basis for charging that I accused you of misrepresentation. And please note that I ended my post with the caveat that perhaps we define our terms differently.
And on that note, I’m going to get some work done.
June 1, 2011, 12:34 amDavid Bernstein says:
“We and our allies” could barely create a barely functioning democracy in Iraq after a trillion plus dollars, half a million soldiers, etc., when there was already a preexisting multiethnic state composed primarily of two different Muslim sects, but “we and our allies” our somehow going to create a (functioning, peaceful) unitary democratic state in Israel/Palestine? I suggest that’s well beyond “our” competence, even if “we” were inclined to do it. Maybe “we” should try to get the Czechs and Slovaks back together first, that seems like a much easier test case.
June 1, 2011, 12:35 amDavid Bernstein says:
If we were talking about labor unions, this would be a perfectly valid point. Here we are talking primarily about whether Israel’s positions on the Palestinian issue have gotten more “right-wing.” On that issue, if not on domestic minority rights, I don’t see why Lieberman wouldn’t have been a fit member of Labor Party governments going back to 1967.
June 1, 2011, 12:38 amDavid Bernstein says:
OK, sorry.
June 1, 2011, 12:56 amStating The Obvious says:
Like I said, I recognize it will never happen. My point to those who don’t have a vested stake in either subjective perspective is that it’s useful to remember our values when influencing these things.
P.S. we didn’t go to Iraq to create a democracy.
June 1, 2011, 12:56 amStating The Obvious says:
Aren’t there Palestinian (Arab) citizens in Israel? Why not make all Arabs in the occupied land citizens? Why can some Arabs live in in Jerusalem, and not others?
June 1, 2011, 1:01 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
The “should” in your second sentence is doing an awful lot of work. But in any case, I don’t quite get how the third sentence follows. Who says that either side is “acting irrationally”? If I want X more than anything else in the world, and you want X more than anything else in the world, then it’s perfectly rational for us to fight each other for it.
June 1, 2011, 1:02 amNick056 says:
David,
Describing the “local alt weekly” as generally leftist according to your criteria might be a symptom of why you can’t get your point across.
Incidentally, Ron Paul is apparently a fan of antiwar.com. He’s a kind of special case in that he clearly has a huge problem with Israel, but is he also a leftist? A lot of people seem to like his schtick: maybe they take his recommendations regarding antiwar.com and Israel more broadly. Are they leftists too?
I can anticipate you’ll say that “leftist” wasn’t meant to be all-inclusive and that of course there are people who don’t like Israel but couldn’t be described as leftists. So of course the idealogical composition of this group with animus toward Israel is more complex than purely “leftist,” even if only at the margins. And yet that admission, made up front, would’ve changed your OP — perhaps significantly.
But whatever. I’m talking with the guy who blithely throws it out there that the local alt-weekly is probably an organ of the “community of American leftists” that make hostility to Israel a defining issue.
June 1, 2011, 1:02 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
Come on, Prof. Bernstein. You’re not fooling us. This is a straw comment that you put up just to illustrate the phenomenon described in the post.
June 1, 2011, 1:06 amSteve says:
Except you’re not talking about Lieberman’s position on the Palestinian issue, you’re talking about what he’s said about one sub-component of that issue and trying to extrapolate a sweeping point about the movement of the overall political consensus. Like I said, you can prove anything by cherry-picking one sub-issue.
June 1, 2011, 1:13 amdrew says:
Well, that’s nice of you. No, i’m not a sock puppet. I’m not sure if you didn’t read what I say or what – the people he criticizes, by and by large, are comfortable with fighting or killing people when it’s unavoidable. But that doesn’t mean the palestinians are by their essential nature enemies of Israel, locked in an eternal twilight struggle where the options are either A) Israel doesn’t give one more inch to palestinians or B) Israel is destroyed.
June 1, 2011, 1:16 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
Are you arguing that alt weeklies aren’t leftist? Or that they are, but aren’t anti-Israel? Your end paragraph seems to suggest the latter, but raises other questions:
Are you arguing that leftists aren’t hostile to Israel? Think of the derisive phrase “PEP” — Progressive Except on Palestine. That is, to be progressive means to be anti-Israel.
June 1, 2011, 1:20 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
If “essential nature” means “genetically,” then of course not. If it means “nothing Israel can do will change it,” that’s a different story. (*)
I think you’re continuing to illustrate the point. Nobody said that A and B were the two options; Israel could “give one more inch to Palestinians” without being “destroyed.” But the issue is what happens then; Israel giving an inch won’t end the conflict. (You imply that if Israel just keeps giving up more and more “inches,” eventually there will be peace, and therefore the onus is on Israel to keep giving up more and more inches until it reaches the magical happy place.)
(*) Nobody said that there are no Palestinians who want a reasonable peace. Of course there are. But Israel doesn’t get to negotiate with individual Palestinians. And you seem unwilling to consider that the percentage who do is too small to matter.
June 1, 2011, 1:30 amRich Rostrom says:
If you asked a Jew at any other time in the history of our people whether or not he had enemies, [it] would have occasioned a blast of … mordant humor
Or to put it another way – there is no such thing as a paranoid Jew.
June 1, 2011, 1:49 amNick056 says:
David,
I was saying it’s absurd to generalize about local alt weeklies such that it’s reasonable to call them “leftist” according to David’s own criteria, i.e. they are likely an organ of a movement that makes hostility to Israel a defining ideological issue or that has a naive view of conflict and enemies. So I’m saying they are certainly leftist or liberal or whatever, but they are not generally bastions of hostility to Israel, from what I’ve read.
David’s was a sweeping assertion which I guess is self-evident to people who see what they want. Maybe he’s not wedded to it and he’ll concede it wasn’t the best example. I tend to think that hostility to Israel — as I perceive it — comes from leftists and rightists, because it’s basically shaped by anti-semetism and extremist isolationism, neither of which is local to any ideology.
I think Bernstein’s entire framework of universalism, ideology, and activism is fundamentally flawed, so it’s necessarily going to produce bad appraisals of who believes what, and why.
June 1, 2011, 1:52 amStating The Obvious says:
Right, but it’s irrational to want X more than anything else in the world, unless X is more important than everything else in the world including life, peace, and happiness, etc. It’s irrational to launch a thousand ships to get back Helen – even though Menelaus wanted her more than anything else in the world.
June 1, 2011, 2:51 amNo Theory of Jurisprudence says:
Isn’t the same true of the Falkland Islands, Argentina, and Britain? Life will surely go on, there.
Until Israel is willing to nuke Palestinians, I’m not sure where your analogy goes. World War 2 didn’t end with us occupying Japan indefinitely. The idea that there is “literally nothing Israel could do unilaterally to make Hamas a non-enemy, other than surrender” is probably untrue. We made Japan non-enemy, and we did it (mostly) unilaterally. I suspect Israel can do the same to Palestine, if it had the courage to do so. It doesn’t, so maybe Israel should surrender.
June 1, 2011, 3:06 amRicardo says:
That was an aside from Bernstein but this is a correct observation. One of the people who runs antiwar.com is Justin Raimondo who is a member of a rather kooky group of libertarians (which Ron Paul apparently also affiliates with). Libertarian Cato scholar Tom Palmer used to rattle these guys’ cages every once in a while with pretty amusing results — they aren’t leftists at all.
June 1, 2011, 3:27 amUrsus Maritimus says:
What was the potential gains and losses: If he succeeded he would prove that he could get all the other Greek states to send ships and men to help him with his personal issues. He would also demonstrate that he would respond to personal slights with unprecedented military force and extermination. He would appear to be the most powerful man in the (Greek) world.
The potential losses were of course huge, but less than one twentieth of the force came from Sparta. He would be known as someone who got the Greeks to embark on a disastrous military misadventure, but Sparta wouldn’t be fatally weakened relative to its neighbours.
Astronomical potential gains, mostly internalized. Huge potential losses, mostly externalized.
Whether its irrational or not depends on the odds.
June 1, 2011, 3:44 amTJ says:
It is funny how the “kooky” libertarians were the first to correctly call the housing bubble and predict that Fannie, Freddie, and many of the largest banks would all and up getting bailed out.
Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com and Ron Paul were both influenced by Murray Rothbard.
Rothbard had some interesting things to say about Israel and its enemies:
http://original.antiwar.com/rothbard/2010/03/02/war-guilt-in-the-middle-east/
David Bernstein, have you considered the simpler examination for why many Jews do not support Israel: That they have looked at the facts and concluded that Israel is unjust and unworthy of support. Or that they might be deeply offended when the name of Judaism is stolen to defend injustice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947%E2%80%931948_Civil_War_in_Palestine
http://themenorah.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/bnai-brith-1897-utter-irrationality-of-zionism/
June 1, 2011, 4:15 amFreeMind says:
Isn’t it chutzpah of some Jewish Americans to complain about Israel when most of them are: 1. not Israeli citizens 2. don’t pay Israeli taxes 3. don’t know much about Israeli life/culture?
June 1, 2011, 5:23 amDavid Bernstein says:
I was actually thinking of Counterpunch, which does share some contributors, and have edited accordingly. But the Rothbardian wing of libertarians has often adopted “left-wing” views of foreign policy, following Rothbard himself, who, e.g., relied on various leftist historians for his conclusion that the U.S. and not the USSR was primarily responsible for the Cold War (and who, not coincidentally, was hostile to Israel).
June 1, 2011, 6:39 amDavid Bernstein says:
I don’t think Israel is willing to do to the Palestinians what the U.S. did to the Japanese. Even if it was willing, the rest of the world wouldn’t allow it. But yes, if Israel acted with the relative level of force against Hamas that the U.S. used against Japan, Hamas would be utterly defeated and therefore would no longer be an enemy.
June 1, 2011, 6:43 amPassing By says:
Prof. Bernstein -
Your post, as written, is a bait and switch.
It starts by tearing into “modern universalist liberalism”, making wild accusations of naivete. My first thought was — That makes no sense. America’s iconic “universalist liberal” is Franklin Roosevelt … who presumably grasped the notion of implacable enemies, since he made “unconditional surrender” the US aim in the Second World War. Then, by the end of the post, it develops that you’re not talking about “universalist liberalism” at all; you’re talking about a tiny ideological fringe.
Is this bait-and-switch a key part of your thesis? I don’t know. Would you have bothered writing a post that started: I’ve been thinking for some time about blogging about the concept of “enemies”, and how a few political flakes have trouble dealing with the possibility … [etc. etc.]
June 1, 2011, 6:55 amAnderson says:
This thread should’ve been over after the first comment. It’s telling when the go-to source for the topic one’s been musing upon is a Nazi.
June 1, 2011, 7:48 amJEB says:
David, you write, “But there does seem to be a subset of very left-wing, politically active Jews that are an exception. They are too small in number to affect the statistics, but are causing consternation in the organized Jewish community, in part because they are especially active and vocal politically, and in part because, as some of these comments reflect, mainstream liberal Jews seem to think that the far left is a natural ally.”
I guess many of us are quite confused about this assumption, which seems to underlie many of your posts about Israel. The idea that Chomsky and like-minded “leftists” hold significant influence in the day-to-day politics of Israel or the United States seems problematic, so your frequent attempts to point out their flaws and shortcomings of those views seem beside the point, since as you yourself point out we’re talking an incredibly small percentage of people who hold those views. You think they’re dangerous because they’re so vocal and active politically, but it doesn’t feel that way to others. So to use them as the baseline for all of your commentary feels like an overly defensive position, and ultimately a too convenient position, from which to reflect.
June 1, 2011, 7:59 amJoseph Slater says:
I had pretty much the same reaction.
June 1, 2011, 9:05 amDavid Bernstein says:
Yet Peter Beinart caused a huge stir last year by writing an article about how young Jews are abandoning Israel, when the phenomenon he was talking about was largely limited to a small % of vocal, very left-wing Jews, and an also-small number of more conventionally liberal fellow travelers. But it does seem such individuals are way overrepresented at rabbinical colleges, as Hillel rabbis, in Jewish theater circles (as with the DCJCC showing the anti-Semitic, and I use that term advisedly, Seven Jewish Children, because it liked its anti-Gaza War message), among public intellectuals, and so forth, so it’s seen as a significant problem for organized Jewish community. There has already been controversy in various communities from coast to coast over the insistence from the “Left” that they be permitted to use communal resources to publicize explicitly anti-Israel messages, as with Seven Jewish Children and “My Name is Rachel Corrie.”
And to the extent it is a problem, communal leaders, in my view, have not correctly diagnosed the source of the problem.
I think one thing that’s confusing you and others is perhaps the assumption that I take a hard-line, “right-wing” view of the conflict, and therefore am just as hostile to, say, someone who advocates going even a bit further than Barak’s 2001 Taba offer as to a leftist who thinks Israel is the devil incarnate. As I’ve mentioned before, my views are in fact quite moderate, at least by American or Israeli political standards, and therefore you can assume if there is any doubt that I am not, and have no particular interest in, attacking the more dovish side of the mainstream pro-Israel debate. Here’s something I wrote a few years ago:
June 1, 2011, 9:19 amNo Theory of Jurisprudence says:
Thank you for responding Professor Bernstein.
Given that Israel lacks the will or the ability to defeat its enemy (Hamas), and assuming that Hamas is a true enemy that Israel either will not or cannot defeat, then isn’t the only sensible solution surrender, as we did in Vietnam?
June 1, 2011, 9:55 amSlugger says:
If Professor Bernstein is right, then Israel is doomed. Imagine the IDF launching a radical attack on Gaza that kills every single Hamas supporter. Would they have to kill a quarter of a million people? Maybe more? Does anyone think that such an action would end the “enemy”? If they bombed every locality that has more than ten Palestinians, would that bring peace?
June 1, 2011, 11:08 amEternal war, limitless death, killing without remission. That is not a viable solution for any nation.
epeeist says:
I only read this post, not the entire Rabbi’s comment, but there seems to me to be an oversimplification.
To take a more personal (to me) example, I agree the U.S. has enemies. I agree some of them should be locked-up or otherwise dealt with indefinitely even in the absence of proof by a criminal standard. I strongly disagree, however, with both the current and past practice (how it’s been done and how decisions have been made) for multiple reasons (legal, moral, practical) in multiple areas, and for that reason strongly criticize the U.S.’s (current and past) detention policies, rendition, etc. I don’t generally bother to criticize terrorists for their murderous behaviour both because that’s obviously (to me) wrong and I very much doubt my criticisms would carry much weight nor do I have a vote…
Similarly with Israel, it’s quite possible for a Jew (or non-Jew) to think that Israel (the country) is doing bad/stupid/impractical things and to be critical of it for that reason. That does NOT necessarily mean blindness re Israel’s enemies, it means taht (for instance) one may think that Israel’s current behaviour increases the number of such enemies and that a different behaviour would reduce the number of enemies without a concomitant reduction in security. To take an obvious example, so-called “settlements” seem to decrease security (need to protect them) and increase the number of enemeis/degree of hatred or dislike, so at least on a purely practical level, I don’t see the point.
June 1, 2011, 11:13 amgooners says:
If you really want to see ideological hostility to Israel you should check out stormfront.com and its affiliates. They don’t seem to have a problem with enemies, though. They’re also big Ron Paul fans. Hey, maybe a good topic to explore would be the libertarian fringe and their opposition to Israel.
June 1, 2011, 11:25 amAdam says:
The trouble with concluding that you have real “enemies” with whom you are in an insoluble conflict is the assumption of stasis. Ask Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley whether a lack of mutually acceptable solution is permanent in the face of practical impossibility of either side’s goals.
The other obvious problem is the lack of benefit in assuming that stasis. If there is no room for things to change, how do you hope to resolve the conflict short of Roman-style suppressive violence that is unacceptable in today’s world? All one can do is remain vigilant in defense and keep trying to reach compromise.
Finally, I don’t follow this topic nearly as closely as Prof. Bernstein, but my read of the framework for “two states” that Netanyahu recently layed out sounded an awful lot like one state and one territory occupied on agreed terms.
As for what “right wing” means over time, I don’t think you can really separate the label from the context of it’s time.
June 1, 2011, 11:28 amAdam says:
So what policy does that lead to? Give up on trying to make peace because it hasn’t worked yet?
June 1, 2011, 11:32 amOrenWithAnE says:
It is aspirational, not factual, to believe that the person currently bent on enmity will come around to the position that it’s a non-zero-sum game and that he will gain more by cooperating (on terms, naturally) than by opposing.
While it’s not always true, it is a laudable goal and one that we ought to take seriously.
June 1, 2011, 11:34 amAdam says:
Did that happen long ago?
June 1, 2011, 11:38 amyankev says:
Really? It never stopped Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, or Syria, even after they had their own state. It never stopped the USSR, Tsarist Russian, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary or Germany, decades or even centuries before there was a State of Israel or a Palestinian Arab people.
June 1, 2011, 11:43 amAndrew J. Lazarus says:
If it weren’t for the seriousness of the issue, I’d be ROFL. The problem isn’t that Jewish liberals have identified serious problems with Israeli policy in the West Bank, but that they don’t understand the concept of enemies.
Here’s a thought. Maybe there are limits to how one treats even one’s enemies? For example, it wasn’t just Jewish liberals who decided that torture was out-of-bounds, even against one’s enemies. It was pretty much the whole world.
And here’s another thought. Maybe the gradual despoliation of one’s enemies, all the while pretending it’s just their own fault, doesn’t make the ethical grade either.
And +1 for Anderson.
June 1, 2011, 11:46 amyankev says:
Either you have not read Gordis’s article in full, or you did not understand it. The article is worth reading in full, and then re-reading, rather than drawing unwarranted conclusions from a brief excerpt.
Gordis says that someone who wants to kill you is your enemy. He does not say that every Palestinian (or every Arab,or every Muslim) wants to kill Jews.
June 1, 2011, 11:48 amtomemos says:
Anyone who pays US taxes is essentially paying Israeli taxes too, considering how much US aid goes to that country. So I’d say that buys us license to criticize.
As for ignorance of “Israeli life/culture”—I’ll remember that defense the next time someone criticizes the cultural practices of the Muslim world as barbaric.
June 1, 2011, 11:49 amyankev says:
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say “exile or extermination”? Or for that matter, simply “extermination”?
June 1, 2011, 11:50 amAdam says:
Huh? We did it by forcing Japan’s unconditional surrender in armed conflict. Or, more accurately, Japan’s government’s unconditional surrender, thus undermining that government’s legitimacy with the people.
Maybe Hamas is now close enough to a government in Gaza that the option that Bernstein seems to be suggesting – complete military defeat – is possible. I kind of doubt it though.
June 1, 2011, 11:50 amyankev says:
Pace Phil Ochs.
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say “exile or extermination”? Or for that matter, simply “extermination”?
June 1, 2011, 11:51 amAultimer says:
Well, they have t-shirts that humorously suggest otherwise.
June 1, 2011, 11:55 amAdam says:
I’m not sure why you think that. Hamas isn’t really a state or an army and it’s not clear that it can be defeated, rather than reinforced, by oppressive violence.
June 1, 2011, 11:56 amyankev says:
And it’s irrational to spend scarce public resources in solving crimes, convicting criminals and punishing them. Think how much more efficient it might be to simply tolerate the occassional theft, murder or — in the case of Helen – rape and kidnapping.
It’s even more irrational to think that every human on the planet will suddenly adopt your standards of what is or is not rational in terms of desire, behavior and consequences.
June 1, 2011, 12:01 pmyankev says:
Which might also deter military raids or banditry against his polis, whereas tolerating the offense might show that he is weak and would encourage them. Just as in certain neighborhoods during certin eras, the best way to stay out of fights was to have a tough rep on the street.
As far as this being a personal slight only, did Greece have no laws against abduction, rape and kidnapping? Was this an offense against Menelaus only, against him and his polis, or against all of Greek society?
June 1, 2011, 12:05 pmyankev says:
Feel free to leave any time.
June 1, 2011, 12:06 pmyankev says:
We had the option of going back to the US. The Israelis (despite Arthur Kirkland’s generous offer), like the South Vietnamese, do not have that option, and have figured out by now that surrender would mean a fate considerably worse (and shorter) than the South Vietnames or even the Cambodians suffered.
Polotical Zionism developed because Jewish history has taught us the risk of always relying on the kindness of strangers. When those strangers have spent decades saying they want to kill you and backing up their words with actions at every opportunity, one can be forgiven for taking them at their word. One cannot be forgiven for saying that they are only posturing.
June 1, 2011, 12:12 pmyankev says:
If you had read the article, you would see that you are arguing against a position that Rabbi Gordis did not take. There is a huge difference between disagreeing with this or that policy or tactic, on the one hand, and — to take two instances cited by Rabbi Gordis — of a rabbinic student insisting that his prayer shawl be made elsewhere than in Israel, or another who saw nothing strange in celebrating his birthday in a bar in Ramallah festooned with posters calling for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews. Rabbi Gordis is taking issue with the latter. Despite the mythology of the anti-Israel mob, very few supporters of Israel think that Israel never makes mistakes.
June 1, 2011, 12:26 pmyankev says:
Your obvious example is flawed for two reasons. First, many of the ‘settlements’ (especially the early ones) were built at strategic high points so as to make it more difficult to launch land invasions, mortar or artillery shells, or sniper attacks against pre-1967 Israel. If you do not know this, you have never been to Israel and have no idea what the terrain is like. Second, the Arabs launched 3 wars, at least two of which were wars of extermination, and countless terror attacks, in the 19 years after Judea, Samaria, the Golan, Gaza, the old City’s jewish Quarter and Jerusalem’s eastern suburbs had been forcibly cleansed of Jews. In fact, they began the seige of the Jewish Quarter as soon as the UN voted on partition, some six months before Israel declared independence. During all that time (and continuing after the 1967 and 1973 wars) they demanded Israel’s destruction, and refused to negotiate. Many of the security measures that are pointed to as a cause of resentment were instituted in response to the first or second intifadas.
“Justification” can mean an excuse, an actual and sufficient causative factor, or a condition that makes an action or situation morally proper.
Confusing the first one with the second two can can be a deadly mistake.
June 1, 2011, 12:36 pmAdam says:
And the other and later ones that are not part of your “many?”
June 1, 2011, 12:42 pmNo Theory of Jurisprudence says:
I disagree that there is something so unique about the opposition to Israel that the opposition cannot suffer a complete military defeat, especially if Israel has access to nuclear weapons.
June 1, 2011, 12:59 pmDavid Sucher says:
Professor Walzer of Dissent has a troubling perspective:
“Palestinian leaders would be happy to accept an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, but they are in no way ready to end the conflict…Their strategic goal is what I am afraid it has always been: the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state that they don’t recognize and with which they are not reconciled.”
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=461
June 1, 2011, 1:17 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Agreed. But although Raimondo calls himself libertarian, he’s really a paleocon, not a libertarian at all. (For instance, rather than supporting the Libertarian Party candidate for president, he has repeatedly thrown his support to Pat Buchanan.)
(He’s also a rabid anti-semite, finding Jewish conspiracies everywhere, and barely even pretending to hide behind plausible deniability with the word “Zionist” or “Israeli.”)
June 1, 2011, 1:36 pmAdam says:
Oh, it’s not unique to Israel. It was the case in Northern Ireland as well. Almost certainly also in what’s now the Republic of Ireland in early 1920s. Perhaps also the Basque region now. Maybe it was so in Viet Nam.
Guerrilla movements with popular support are different than wars wages by state militaries. Or perhaps a different way of looking at it is that the level of violence needed to defeat them is greater and generally beyond what Israel or the rest of the world views as acceptable.
June 1, 2011, 1:37 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Solution to what? Conflict? If one’s goal is to end the fighting, sure. You’re mistakenly assuming that to be the top priority, however.
June 1, 2011, 1:44 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
Try the “Arab Peace Initiative“. It may be offered in bad faith, and it isn’t acceptable to much of the Israeli electorate, especially the right, but I don’t see how you deny its legitimacy out of hand.
June 1, 2011, 1:48 pmChris Travers says:
Part of the problem here is in defining “viable state,” and in defining “The Palestinians.” I don’t think a “viable state” has been offered nor has any offer been given to “The Palestinians.” I don’t think a viable state is much desired by most Israelis if it means the state can actually and effectively defend itself (meaning inflict substantial casualties on an invading force). And it is certainly not in the interest of the
political partiesterrorist organizations which run the PA.Unfortunately, saying this also means I suggest that no such offer is possible at the moment too. The conflict is so rife with perverse incentives on every side, including those only barely involved (such as the US but also Arab countries) that it can’t be solved at present.
My advice, along the lines of your post: Wait for the next regional war. When it happens destroy the PA, retreat to the 1967 borders in terms of settlements, but use the occupation to create a real state with a real army and real infrastructure to defend. Give the Palestinians an ability to stand on their own and a stake in stability.
June 1, 2011, 2:54 pmM. says:
Actually, the vast majority of guerilla movements in the modern era have been defeated by simple military force. The Viet Cong, for example, were largely wiped out in the Tet Offensive; South Vietnam was ultimately conquered by a conventional mechanized invasion, not scrappy bands of telegenic freedom fighters.
Of course, if you’re operating under the modern principle that the mere ability of the guerillas to launch an attack, never mind said attack being crushed with huge guerilla losses, means they’re winning… well, I can’t help you there.
But the fact remains that guerilla forces aren’t remotely the unstoppable force some want to believe they are.
June 1, 2011, 2:55 pmM. says:
If it was offered in bad faith, then why not deny its
June 1, 2011, 2:59 pmArgo says:
No Theory of Jurisprudence said:
Thank you for responding Professor Bernstein. Given that Israel lacks the will or the ability to defeat its enemy (Hamas), and assuming that Hamas is a true enemy that Israel either will not or cannot defeat, then isn’t the only sensible solution surrender, as we did in Vietnam?
I think the sensible solution is the one that Israel has followed — basically unilaterally withdrawing from the conflict in a way that makes it impossible for Hamas and the Palestinians to meaningfully continue it.
I remember for years I would see reports on the news about Palestinian suicide bombers slaughtering Israelis in pizza parlors, ice cream shops, hotel restaurants, market places, etc. It all blends together but it seemed like an attack would happen every couple of weeks or so — it was disaster.
After trying fruitlessly for years to negotiate an end to the attacks, the Israelis built their wall to great international condemnation. But now I never seem to hear about these attacks — the wall appears to have stopped them for all practical purposes. Israel has engaged in other unilateral strategic withdrawals (eg. Gaza) that have transformed Palestinian attacks from a constant material threat into effectively a nuisance.
As far as I can tell, Israel can continue pretty much indefinitely with the status quo without suffering significant inconvenience. The Palestinians, on the other hand, seem to be kind of screwed — a wrecked economy, corrupt leadership, the occasional outbreak of civil war among factions as they fight over what was left behind.
Sometimes the sensible solution to apparently intractable conflict is to just decline to engage with your opponent. In some cases you can then watch him destroy himself in frustration.
June 1, 2011, 3:01 pmyankev says:
I don’t claim to be an expert on every Israeli ‘settlement.’ Some of the later ones are also at strategic points. Others are suburbs of major Jewish population centers. Still others impair the flow of terrorists and arms into pre-1967 Israel. All of those might be better described as security assets rather than liabilities. And still others may in fact be a burden from a security standpoint.
June 1, 2011, 3:18 pmyankev says:
They would need to be very clean and low powered nuclear weapons given the proximity of the targets.
June 1, 2011, 3:21 pmyankev says:
And the Saudis blasted the PA for refusing to endorse it. So it depends by who ‘the other side’ is. Even if the Fatah-dominated PA accepted it, they lack the will and the means to control Hizbollah, Hamas and similar factions.
June 1, 2011, 3:26 pmAdam says:
Yeah, I don’t think I said only “guerrilla movement.”
They may not be winning, but if they still have the ability to launch attacks they haven’t lost, and Israel hasn’t won in a way that necessarily does it much good.
But my point wasn’t about tactics. My point is that defeating the Japanese military by gaining its and its government’s unconditional surrender is rather different than invading Gaza and killing every member of member of Hamas you can find. The latter brings a conflict to an end. The former just changes the conflict.
June 1, 2011, 3:52 pmAdam says:
I’m no expert either. But here is a map of settlements (and a proposal for negotiated land swaps). Eyeballing them doesn’t suggest to me that they are primarily security assets, but obviously it’s difficult or impossible to tell.
June 1, 2011, 3:58 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
So it is not legitimate because the Palestinian Authority can not (by itself) impose it on Hamas and Iran. How convenient that those painful concessions Bibi talks about (but never specifies) have to wait for Hezbollah and Hamas to fart rainbows. That sound I hear is goalposts moving.
Sari Nusseibeh is co-author of a similar plan. He’s generally thought of as connect to the most moderate parts of Fatah.
It isn’t always easy to see whose plans are illegitimate.
June 1, 2011, 5:14 pmyankev says:
At least not without a topographic map showing major roads. The map does rather debunk the idea that ‘settlements’ are the major obstacle to a peace agreement. But then again so does even an elementary familiarity of the history of the region from the mid-19th century to the present date.
June 1, 2011, 5:38 pmChris Travers says:
Bolstering Yankev’s view here is the actual pattern of Israeli settlement and the fact that settlements are often disbanded when security concerns dictate, such as when sending Suez back to Egypt, or disengaging from Gaza. It’s also clear that a lot of them serve the purpose of defining control lines for the IDF when trying to lock down the West Bank.
Doesn’t this suggest that the settlements then can be ignored as bargaining chips, because they will be dismantled when Israel disengages from the West Bank?
June 1, 2011, 5:43 pmyankev says:
There is no obligation to negotiate peace with someone who cannot or will not deliver on the promises. The PA has a history of both.
One of the recognized prerequisites for statehood is the ability to control the territory within the borders of the putative state.
As to Nussibeh’s statement of principles: who is the Ami Ayalon who co-signed it? Is the statement even still on the table? Abu Mazzen recently reaffirmed that he and the PA do not accept point #1 and the idea of land swaps (#2), and Jewish sovereignty over the Western Wall (#3).
I note that the plan calls for all Jews to be expelled the new state of Palestine. Arabs will not be expelled from Israel (nor do most Israelis want to expel them.)
Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem to be under Arab sovereignty — that one may not be as popular with the Arab residents of those neighborhoods as you may think it would.
June 1, 2011, 5:46 pmneurodoc says:
It’s not hard to believe that you don’t personally know Jews who are “hostile’ to either Israel or Zionism.” It is, however, hard to believe that you get out much and read/hear what is written/said by a great many “progressive” Jews. We could fill this page listing the blogsites and publications where they give full-throated voice to that hostility. And Phil “Mondoweiss” Weiss, who Professor Bernstein has called out quite appropriately on several occasions as somebody who sounds very much like an antisemite, coined the phrase “Progressive Except on Palestine,” which others have adopted after him, to express the expectation that “Progressives” will be “pro-Palestinian,” which almost always means “anti-Israel.”
If you wish to inform yourself, there are a great many sources you could turn to, one of them a book co-edited by Edward Alexander of the University of Washington, Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765803275/thevolocons0d-20/
June 1, 2011, 5:49 pmneurodoc says:
It’s not hard to believe that you don’t personally know Jews who are “hostile’ to either Israel or Zionism.” It is, however, hard to believe that you get out much and read/hear what is written/said by a great many “progressive” Jews. We could fill this page listing the blogsites and publications where they give full-throated voice to that hostility. And Phil “Mondoweiss” Weiss, who Professor Bernstein has called out quite appropriately on several occasions as somebody who sounds very much like an antisemite, coined the phrase “Progressive Except on Palestine,” which others have adopted after him, to express the expectation that “Progressives” will be “pro-Palestinian,” which almost always means “anti-Israel.”
If you wish to inform yourself, and not sound foolish on this subject, there are a great many sources you could turn to for enlightment beyond the many blogs, newspapers, magazines, etc., one of them a book co-edited by Edward Alexander of the University of Washington, Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765803275/thevolocons0d-20/
June 1, 2011, 5:52 pmChris Travers says:
Unfortunately I think this inability is by design, both of Israel at the time of Rabin, and also the PLO. It provides a false sense of security for Israel, as well as perpetual power for terrorists.
One important question is whether Settlers should become Palestinian Jews or remain Israelis when this happens. I would suggest on this question, even if the option was available to remain in the Palestinian state, few Jews would accept jurisdiction by a Palestinian government, though perhaps some would. For the record, I think such an option needs to be available for those who wish to stay.
As to the Arabs in Jerusalem….. It’s a pretty stunning indictment of the PA, isn’t it?
June 1, 2011, 6:52 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
Ayalon is the former head of Shabak (aka Shin Bet), the Israeli General Security Service. Next question?
June 1, 2011, 7:09 pmleo marvin says:
As did I, though, to be fair, I found it more bothersome before he added the parenthetical in the final paragraph.
June 1, 2011, 7:19 pmyankev says:
Thank you.
What position or title did he hold when he signed the statement, and on whose authority?
June 1, 2011, 7:22 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
He was retired, a private citizen. I can hardly imagine an active head of Shabak promoting his own peace plan on government time. Several other retired Shabak heads hold similar views [same link]. I submit this only as evidence that the Ayalon-Nusseibeh plan is not way out on the fringe, not that I think it is best, or even good. That is a different debate.
June 1, 2011, 7:50 pmBrowsing Catharsis – 06.02.11 « Increasing Marginal Utility says:
[...] Bernstein hits upon a point I think is very damaging to anarcho-capitalism, though he doesn’t say as much. There are many conflicts where people will never agree to a [...]
June 2, 2011, 8:05 amAdam says:
How so? Perhaps not “the” major obstacle, but I read the map as strongly suggesting a major issue. There are settlements scattered throughout the West Bank, many of which will need to be abandoned. Others if retained will be essentially surrounded by Palestinian territory and therefore inherently vulnerable.
June 2, 2011, 12:06 pmOrenWithAnE says:
All of them are certainly a burden on the road construction budget whose excess traffic fatalities far exceed the numbers killed by our enemies.
The haft of the arrow is feathered with the eagle’s own plumes.
June 2, 2011, 12:39 pmyankev says:
Good point, Oren — why worry about making it more difficult for terrorists to commit their murders or for infantry and armor to invade; after all, there are still traffic accidents to worry about. Not to mention the number of smokers in Israel.
June 2, 2011, 2:39 pmChris Travers says:
I wouldn’t take it that far. However, I think it is worth taking some rational perspective about personal risk. For example, why should *I* be afraid of terrorists, if I am not afraid of driving my car? Why should an average Israeli be afraid of terrorists if they are comfortable driving?
That doesn’t mean avoiding a sensible security policy. It does mean avoiding becoming terrorized by a few deaths.
June 2, 2011, 3:03 pm“Death to X” Marchers are Bad People «ScrollPost.com says:
[...] my faith.People who march around calling for the “slaughter” of others are bad people. David Bernstein wants to talk about recognizing “enemies”, well, that works as a pretty good definition [...]
June 2, 2011, 4:26 pmyankev says:
Sorry, that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in a while. Maybe I should tell our mayor to save tax money by disbanding the police department. After all, my chances of being killed in a car crash are much greater than the chances of a home invasion.
June 2, 2011, 7:35 pmTGGP says:
I’m going to quote another GMU prof, economist Robin Hanson: Prefer Peace. I’d probably hit the spam if I linked more, but also check out “Total Tech Wars”, “Let’s Not Kill All the Lawyers” and (explaining why we are prone to perceiving a future of inevitable war against a monolithic group with irreconcilable values) Abstract/Distant Future Bias.
June 4, 2011, 12:18 amLast Days News | A Crooked Path says:
[...] in the Volokh Conspiracy (a website you really ought to bookmark for its many fine contributions, especially on the law) [...]
June 5, 2011, 5:07 pmYou Did Not Learn All You Needed to Know in Kindergarten « Cliftonchadwick's Blog says:
[...] in the Volokh Conspiracy (a website you really ought to bookmark for its many fine contributions, especially on the law) [...]
June 7, 2011, 12:26 amDebbie Sherman says:
You’re dating yourself with Noam Chomsky as the boogey-man who would lead young Jews astray. For one thing, Chomsky likes to pretend there’s no Jewish Lobby. May I suggest a better and more irresistably efficacious critic of Israel would be Canadian Professor Michael Neumann. To this date his 2003 essay “What’s So Bad About Israel?” remains the best broadside against The Land Of Milk And Honey anywhere. It’s neither tendentious nor over the top. It’s tone is temperate, its logic Aristotelian.
June 22, 2011, 7:55 pmPinchas Giller says:
The abhorrence of the idea of having an enemy does, to some extent, ring true in my experience teaching in a liberal Rabbinical Seminary. Anecdotally, I would like to contrast it to another contemporary phenomenon, exemplified by an exchange that I had with a gay friend. I recommended an on-line store, with the caveat that they were evangelicals. He replied, “You must never by from such a place, they are our existential enemies. Make a choice.” So for him, and I might assume for gays in general at the moment, there was no sugar coating their position in American society and they did not conform to this model of “modern universalist liberalism;” he knows that he does have enemies, and close at hand. It’s just one incident, but perhaps indicative.
June 23, 2011, 10:44 am