#NOT TO MENTION PALESTINIAN/ARAB AMERICAN CITIZENS

[coyoxxtl]

also i must add, if you’re still voting biden to keep human rights for american citizens “safe” but don’t think that him ripping rights away from people across the world isn’t worth withholding your vote then you’re selfish and also a big fucking idiot

[jewishbarbies]

https://www.tumblr.com/jewishbarbies/753199765532131328/laughing-through-the-stupid-of-just-how-nuanced?source=share

I 100% agree, as someone who considers myself pro Palestine (as in Palestinians no longer dying as well as Israelis no longer being kidnapped and having whatever done to them by Hamas, I just want all of this death and madness to stop for everyone, both Arabs and Jewish people), I’m so disgusted by the antisemitism I’m seeing towards Jewish people and Israelis and I’m disgusted with myself for not seeing it sooner. I’m seeing people engage in casual antisemitism in the name of “not conflating Israel with Judaism” and saying the most ridiculous things. I’m seeing people bring up ancestry tests to check if Israelis are “actually Jewish” or “actually from the land”, accusing Jewish Israelis of being European colonialists because on 23andme or on AncestryDNA, their results may show something like “Polish Jew” or “Ukrainian Jew” for example. True story, I’m seeing people accuse Benjamin Netanyahu of being a white European man larping as ethnic Jewish man and while I hate to defend politicians, I learnt from speaking to the jewish people that I know that many Ashkenazi hebracised their names similarly to how the Irish did after their independence- English names were changed to Gaelic forms. So I’m assuming that that’s what happened with him.

You know how of TikTok many people like to put their flags in their usernames? I’m seeing people who put the Israeli flag in their username (to showcase nationality) get massive death and… other (you can guess the other) threats for simply being from where they are from. Even if the person hasn’t even mentioned Israel!

I’m seeing people deny that the holocaust was “that bad” to Jewish people. That it was a long time ago and that they (“they” being the Jewish community) should move on. I’m not sure if pretending that the holocaust was not as bad as actually was counts as holocaust denial, but in my opinion it’s definitely teetering on the edge of it.

I’m seeing people say that the only real Jews are the Palestinian Jews because the others (others being the Israeli Jews) are European colonialists with “no ties to the land”. Also picking and choosing who is a “real Jew” based off of some ancestry tests (going back to what I said previously). I’m seeing people talk about Jewish people who support Palestinians as “the good ones” (as a black person, I know very well how disgusting it is to be referred to as one of the “good ones”). And while I do not agree with many of the sentiments pushed by a lot of pro Israel crowd (mainly the Islamophobic stuff and anti Arab sentiment that I see, people saying that Arabs cause trouble wherever they go, etc), I will never be able to understand denying someone of their heritage or religion or antagonising them more than criminals based off of their opinions.

Recently there was some hostages returned to Israel and I think one of them was a girl or a woman named Noa, I think (I’m going off of the top of my head, correct me if I’m wrong) and while I’m glad that she was returned to her family (on her father’s birthday right?), my joy was quickly soured by the wishes of death and rape, etc upon her by a lot of pro Palestinian extremists. What happened to wishing safety and peace upon both Palestinian citizens and Israeli citizens? I thought that’s what we all wanted? If I remember correctly, she as well as the other hostages were held in the home of an Al Jazeera journalist, the amount of DENIAL that I saw on social media???? Denying that she and those other victims were put through horrible circumstances, that the 07/10/23 incident even happened, etc. Denying that Hamas is a terrorist organisation or that they even EXIST, etc. I don’t even know what to say.

I’m also seeing people refuse to read different news sources and only read biased news. They’ll say something like “don’t watch American or British or Jewish news channels/sites, only watch Al Jazeera because Al Jazeera is unbiased”… Al Jazeera… unbiased???? Sure, jan. I prefer to read multiple, just to see different perspectives, but to be so biased as to only read Al Jazeera… I don’t even know anymore.

I live in an area in which a Jewish restaurant owner was recently attacked for supporting his family in Israel. “Funding Israel” as they call it now. I don’t care about his beliefs, that’s not my business, but he literally has an Israeli FAMILY. OF COURSE HE IS SUPPORTING HIS FAMILY.

I just wonder, why are people so comfortable calling Israelis demons and evil and everything under the sun? They’d never say that about Russians, despite what’s happening in Ukraine. Or about the Turkish and the Azerbaijanis despite Armenia. Why are we so comfortable demonising a whole nationality?

People say that they’ve read history and they know the full context of this situation when all they’ve done is hear it from TikTok. If people actually knew history, they’d stop questioning why American politicians are so hellbent on having Israel on their side. They’d know that Israel is a coveted ally to have (geopolitical influence, etc) and that if “Genocide Joe” was to stop aiding Israel, Israel would seek aid from somewhere else… like Russia. Or China. Or any other enemy countries of the US.

If people actually knew history, they’d know that complacency is what got Donald Trump elected in 2016. If people actually knew history, they’d know that Bush vs Gore shows us why we shouldn’t vote 3rd party in presidential elections.

If people studied politics, they’d know that Trump has made known his plans to annex the West Bank, flatten Gaza, and arrest every single pro Palestinian protester if he gets elected, referring to the Israel/Palestine region as “unfinished business”.

If people studies politics, they’d know that a major reason for why majority of European countries are becoming more and more far right and installing Nazi governments (e.g. Germans voting for the AfD and the French voting for far right as well) is due to LACK OF VOTER TURNOUT FROM LEFTISTS WHO YAP AND YAP AND COMPLAIN ON SOCIAL MEDIA BUT NO SHOW AT THE POLLS. Ironically, these are the same Europeans telling Americans to not vote.

IF PEOPLE STUDIED AND/OR PAID ATTENTION TO POLITICS, THEY’D BE TERRIFIED OF PROJECT 2025 AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU, ME, US, AND DEMOCRACY AS A WHOLE. (Speaking of, please do spread awareness of P25, it’s very scary and I’d much rather have rights than live in a dictatorship, thank you).

I’m so sorry for rambling about this in your ask box. I know that you as a Jewish person are probably very sick of the rampant antisemitism and the dog whistles you obviously know more of and about that than I could ever possibly imagine as a non Jewish person or a goyim and I’m sorry for ranting about stuff you probably already know about. I’m 18 and most of the people that I know within my age group are choosing not to vote because of what’s happening. I suspect they weren’t going to vote anyway, but now they have an “excuse” for it. And that sickens me as well. That no one actually gives a fuck about Israel or Palestine. No one actually cares about those civilians. People are just using this whole thing as an excuse to be lazy, to not learn, and to spread more hate and tribalism.

I think maybe social media has desensitised people to the fact that this is REAL and not a GAME. When you’re wishing death and rape upon all Israelis, you’re wishing death upon REAL PEOPLE. When you call jewish people Nazis, do you guys ever stop and think about what you’ve just said? Calling JEWISH PEOPLE NAZIS!!! Why is it so normal to strip people of their humanity the second you disagree with their opinions? Sick. As much as I disagree with the Israeli government, I cannot imagine generalising a whole population based solely on their GOVERNMENT.

I have one Jewish friend that lives near me, his name is Eli. He’s Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish. We graduated together last year from high school. We live in a very white suburb and the antisemitism is rising by the day where we stay. I don’t even know what to say to him and his family right now, considering that this is his lived experience. Having to be afraid. Living in fear. How do you even attempt to comfort someone when they’re dealing with this? I can’t say that it will get better, because we both know it won’t. At least not any time soon. How many times are they going to tell us “Never again”’before “never again” actually sticks?

I’m just tired of this. I’m tired of the hatred. I’m tired of random Jewish people and random Arab people getting attacked. I’m tired of the Islamophobia and antisemitism. I’m tired of trying to push people to redirect their attention to the threat at hand which is Donald Trump. And if I’m tired of this, I cannot even fathom how tired the people affected are. Sorry for the long and annoying ask. Feel free to delete this, it’s a bunch of whining.

I don’t mind the rant/vent at all! the state of this world right now is just so disappointing it leaves you hollow. so much unnecessary hatred and death that could be avoided if people just made different choices. I’d say I’m embarrassed to be american but this is not anywhere near an american problem, it’s the entire world.

I just saw a tweet today about the hostage rescue saying the IDF (aka jews) are “demons” for allegedly going in disguised as an aid truck and then shooting people. like they went in disguised and just opened fire at random because they love to kill. so many people were shot as kidnappers. like, these people harbored kidnapping victims, tortured and enslaved them, and I would’ve preferred a life sentence but I’m not going to mourn their deaths.

now, idk how much of citizens helping hamas is from fear of ending up like the jews hamas brutalizes and how much is an actual desire to kill jews. there could very well be some of them who were hiding hostages to save their and their family’s lives. that being said, this has to stop, and we have to do better as a society when we respond to these events. because where we’re at right now and what we’re allowing ourselves to say/do is doing nothing but harming ALL of us.

these morons will say “never again means never again for anyone!” but it’s a phrase coined specifically by and for jews relating to the Holocaust and antisemitic violence. there is no “never again” if it’s still happening to jews. any goy using the phrase outside a context pertaining to jews is not to be trusted, and they’re a fucking idiot.

[hero-israel]

Absolute hacks like Bassem Youssef (who stresses the Deir Yassin massacre but can’t be bothered to mention the numerous pogroms before that) who bring up this idea that the Zionists were considering Uganda or Argentina or Madagascar at first… what are they smoking?

Firstly, borders are not as new of a concept as people think. The Zionist leaders had to contend with a government no matter what land they chose, and they had to immigrate there; a minority of Ashkenazi Jews would be actual citizens of whatever imperial power gave them the land. It was more convenient to think of land that Britain or France colonized, or going to the independent Argentina which like most American states was accepting immigrants from everywhere. None of this was sovereignty in the Jewish Homeland, but it would obviously be easier and simpler for Ashkenazi Jews to negotiate with one of these governments than the Ottoman Empire. ארץ ישראל was always the ideal choice.

Secondly, I see these pro Palestinian thinkers and activists care a lot about decolonization considering their historical analysis amounts to whining “Why couldn’t those stupid Jooz have gone to a country that doesn’t matter? Couldn’t they have gone to a place where anyone who ended up displaced wasn’t a full person in our eyes? What happened to a people without a land to a land without a people? Palestine had people, unlike Madagascar! And Palestine was 1% Jewish, which was already too much!”

I think legally purchasing land from the Ottomans was maybe better than being the colonial tools of the British or French, or Argentina for that matter, who around this time was wrapping up their war of extermination against the Mapuche people?? Can we use our brains? “Immigration is genocide” was, I thought, the rallying cry of white supremacists, oh but it’s radical revolutionary politique when Arabs said it 🤭

"Immigration is genocide, so why don't you do it to countries that matter less than Palestine?" is a good summary, yes.

[matan4il]

To the Nonnie with the cousins...

Hamas controls Gaza. You realize that every "official" number coming out of Gaza is released by Hamas, right?

With the Oct 17 al-Ahli hospital incident, it has been publicly proven that Hamas lies. Within 10 minutes of the explosion, Hamas claimed that Israel struck the hospital, killing 500 people (a number of bodies impossible to count within just 10 minutes). It was later verified by several independent bodies that:

the explosion was caused by a failed Palestinian rocket

it hit the parking lot rather than the hospital

and the number of those killed is far lower than Hamas reported (somewhere between 10 to 50 according to a European source as quoted by AFP, somewhere around 100 according to an American source as quoted by the New York Times)

Hamas is the same antisemitic terrorist organization, which has claimed it hasn't murdered any Israeli civilians:

So, why do you choose to believe any of Hamas' figures or claims?

This is an excellent post on why Hamas' numbers are unreliable.

This is a video from the IDF spokesman where he addresses: continued Hamas attempts to infiltrate Israel, that Israel is doing its best to lower the number of civilian casualties, Hamas lies about the fuel in Gaza, Hamas lies about the number of Palestinians killed and the percentage of civilians out of that, and President Biden's own disbelief when it comes to the numbers provided by Hamas.

So, why overlook that, in addition to inflating the number of civilians killed in Gaza vs the number of terrorists, the number of fatalities reported by Hamas would never reveal how many were killed by Palestinian rockets misfiring, and falling inside Gaza?

Or what exactly do you think Israel is allowed to do to keep its citizens, both Jews and Arabs, safe from another Hamas massacre?

Or why do you think Gazans wouldn't be safer in the long run without Hamas, which abuses them directly, and puts them in harm's way when using them as human shields as it attacks Israel?

Or why overlook that in my posts since Oct 7, I repeatedly mentioned that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live, and to do so in peace and with dignity, that Israel IS making an effort to keep Palestinian civilian casualties down, or that Israel's current military actions aren't "retribution," they're self-defense? Hamas has started firing rockets at Israel on Oct 7, as a part of the massacre, and it hasn't stopped since! That deadly attack is still on going. And you want Israel to do... what exactly? Stop attacking Hamas infrastructure, sit down quietly, and let Hamas continue to target Israeli citizens? I want to believe that your ask is sincere, and I feel like if you truly condemn what Hamas did, if you truly are against the continued slaughter of Israeli civilians, if you do have 3 cousins living not too far from Tel Aviv (whose lives Israel is protecting by acting against Hamas with as much care for civilian Gazans as is possible), you wouldn't be in favor of that.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[eretzyisrael]

by MARK GOLDFEDER AND GABE GROISMAN

Even in her non-apology, Jayapal cannot help but take swipe after swipe at the Israeli government, who "make it extremely difficult" to achieve peace. In the entire "apology" there is not a single mention of any of the actual challenges that the Israelis currently face. Not a single mention or acknowledgement of incessant terror attacks that target innocent men, women, and children, supported by a 'peace partner' (the Palestinian Authority) that literally pays the terrorists to kill Israeli civilians. In Jayapal's statement, and clearly in her mind, there are not two sides to this conflict, just innocent Palestinians who are suffering and racist Israelis who are making their lives miserable.

As she made clear in her statement, when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict the only "pain and hurt" Jayapal can conceive of as it relates to "Israelis and their Jewish diaspora community" (to contrast with the Palestinian's sense of despair and wish for equal rights) is that they must still be reeling "from the trauma of pogroms and persecution, the Holocaust, and continuing antisemitism and hate violence." Again, there is no mention of the terrorist groups that shoot and bomb Israeli cities incessantly, targeting innocent Israeli and Arab men, women, and children; or of the cold-blooded killers that stalk the streets of the historic Jewish homeland with knives and axes, or ram its citizens with cars.

To be clear, we soundly reject Jayapal's "apology." Her statement is part and parcel of a growing movement within the progressive left wing of the Democrat Party, which no American should support, no matter their race, religion or party affiliation. Jayapal and her friends have a history of reflexively criticizing Israel without actually knowing the facts, or caring about the context. Studies have shown that their brand of inflammatory, discriminatory, antisemitic rhetoric often leads directly to antisemitic violence, yet they continue to try and infuse the national conversation with their reckless and demonstrably dangerous lies.

[sunspira]

this reminded me I feel we need to make clear that settler colonialism is not the same thing as migration and immigration. The difference of which is many but the point being that indigenousness really only matters in terms of violent displacement and genocide. in context of international power dynamics under imperialism colonialism and exploitation. migration can be a natural human thing and not at all immoral or condemnable or deserving of violence.

this is very important in the israel and palestine discussion and in all genocide denialist conversations. being indigenous did not give german gentiles a right to massacre jewish diaspora and other immigrants. because those immigrants got there as normal immigrants. which is entirely different than the kind of casualties that can befall settler colonists who by virtue of their role are not civilians, they are military outposts that very intentionally recruits family units with inadequate military training put in the line of fire on purpose as a PAWN for sympathy and because family units are the most effective way to root a permanent colonial settlement as proven by the genocide of north america. and who may lose their lives when we resist violent colonialism with violence.

perhaps just as importantly, ashkenazi jewish germans WERE and ARE indigenous to germany, because being the oldest and only ethnic group to a land is a bit of an anthropological myth that doesn't exist. ANYONE who got there through the natural and timeless means of human migration is indigenous, at least in the meaningful contexts of imperial violence and stolen land. ashkenazi jewish people were always indigenous citizens of germany.

similarly, palestinian arabs who trace their earliest recorded ancient origins to the middle of the arab peninsula and migrated to the north of the peninsula to the coastal Levant region are considered indigenous. indeed the hebrews of judea were just as indigenous, if not with even older records to the lands along the coast that are now called palestine! many palestinian christians trace their origins as well to the pre-abrahamic phonecian people and the assyrians. during the abrahamic era, the canaanites who were there just as long as the hebrews were likely arab, phonecian, assyrian and SO MUCH MORE in ethnicity. many of which are non abrahamic ethnoreligious groups i failed to mention and perhaps fall beyond the scope of the hebrew jewish vs muslim arab claims. palestinian jewish people and other levantine jewish people matter just as much as the other indigenous ethnicities such as the palestinian/levantine christians and palestinian/levantine muslims.

and while christians jews and muslims born and raised in other lands do not have AUTOMATIC and TOTALITARIAN CLAIM to palestinian land. they do have every right to IMMIGRATE to palestine. to actual palestine. as equals. under the state of palestine and become citizens.

see jewish americans or russian polish jewish people wanting to move to palestine because it was once the home of their hebrew ancestors is NOT wrong in the slightest. people moving to palestine and having ashkenazi jewish communities and enclaves is NOT the problem. it would be wonderful. but that's not what isreal is. dear god i wish that was all that Israel was or is. that's what the first holocaust refugees to the land WERE. regular immigrant civilians seeking a new home under palestinian law. and as such they were welcomed with open arms. but you know, as equals. not as a siege of viking conquerors literally raping and pillaging because like the manifest destiny english before them and the norse seeking valhallah before that, they believed they were given a divine right to do so. that is not immigration that is an act of war. normal immigration is not war. normal immigration is not a problem. least of all to a place your ancestors used to live. that's lovely. it was the decision to enact an american military organized and funded hostile takeover and murder and enslavement of the other civilians that is the fuckijg problem. hello.

[thisismenow3]

I don’t get how people can conflate Hamas with all Palestinians

Unless they’re the same kind of dumb that writes off every citizen of the USA or Canada or UK etc for the often ultra conservative usually imperialist acts of those countries’ governments. There’s a weird skip of the record I usually see for the ones that’re usually deeper thinkers. Suddenly “Hamas brought this on Gaza, the blockade was also in retaliation to the last time they did something.” And I want to point out that they’re conflating a terrorist grouping with an entire people. But they’re also advocating for genocidal group punishment (blockade of Gaza). The next response is usually the false premise of “there are arab communities in Israel! Wouldn’t they be gone if Israel genocidal?” “Fam, do you think Native Americans don’t exist anymore? Do you think aboriginal Australians don’t exist anymore? Genocide doesn’t mean “we killed ‘em all, wasn’t a genocide til we finished the job.” (Nevermind that arab in this context is ignoring that to be Palestinian is to arab what English is to Germanic peoples). Genocide also is never persued in a way that will actually succeed in killing 100%. Cause that’s never the top goal of genocide. Genocide is the tool a group that is in power or favored by the powerful use to steal land and resources from another group. Land and homes and resources have been stolen from Palestinians nonstop since the founding of Israel. All genocides are for settler populations as part of a movement and/or imperialism. The definition of genocide even mentions that mass killings don’t even have to be happening if stealing land, killing culture, forcing people into camps or out of a country, etc are happening. Then it’s a genocide.

But if someone really thinks an American armed elite military curb stomping civilians “in order to get at some terrorists” is a “justified turn of events” then they either agree that American cops can racially profiled and kill on a whim by the same logic or fail to see the direct line. Modern subjugation is the same as it has been for hundreds of years. It’s always been “why are you hitting yourself?!?!?” type bullshit except nowadays there’s war crimes done with bladed person seeking rockets instead of muskets. The famines due to blockades are the exact same though

[mariacallous]

This week’s roundup is on the decline of the west as a force for good in the world. It has been forced on me by the combination of the horrors of the Hamas attack on Israel and the Israeli attack on Gaza, the American threats to abandon Ukraine, and the rise of Donald Trump out of his too-shallow grave.

All point to waning Western power.

By the West I mean the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia together in an alliance which, for all its faults and crimes, stands up for democracy. The US is, of course, the essential partner. The arsenal of democracy, to use the old description, and now an arsenal that is running down its stocks.

One of the least noticed features of the Gaza war is how Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition (which includes the extreme right) have made fools of the Biden administration.

Biden has spent a vast amount of political capital on an ingrate regime. It has armed Israel, and sent out the US Navy to deter Iran from attacking. US bases in Syria have been hit. In the eyes of much of the world, the US has debased its reputation by vetoing motions critical of Israel in the UN Security Council. And then there is the horribly plausible theory that left-wing and Arab-American voters may take out their anger about Gaza on Biden and hand swing states to Trump come November.

Before I go any further, I should make clear that as a “Cohen” I am acutely aware of the prejudices writing about Israel bring out.

I am sick to death of people telling me I must condemn Israel to prove I am a fully paid-up member of the Western progressive tribe (a club I have never wanted to join) or that I must defend Israel and not betray my Jewish roots (my Jewish ancestors were, incidentally, socialists and I cannot see them endorsing support for Netanyahu).

Apart from telling people to go to hell, the best way out of tribalism I know is to read the journalists on Harretz.

They are Israelis, and are not about to engage in antisemitic conspiracy theories. But they are also progressives, and will report the crimes of the Israeli state straight.

There may be a ceasefire, we shall see. And it will bring temporary relief to the citizens of Gaza.

But once it is over what will happen?

The US wants a two-state solution and to begin with it wants Palestinian state to take control of Gaza.

Netanyahu will not have either. Writing in the British Spectator  Anshel Pfeffer, one of the best correspondents in the region, explained how the Israeli government was shutting Biden out as it described its thinking on the future of Gaza in a document that went to  a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.

“There is a reason Hamas has controlled Gaza with an iron fist for more than sixteen years. It is a homegrown organization that was founded in Gaza nearly four decades ago. Only a Palestinian alternative can take its place, but not once in the document is there mention of the only viable candidate for the job: the Palestinian Authority.”

The US might want it. But US concerns are of no concern to Netanyahu.

“The reason it doesn’t mention a role for the Palestinian Authority is because that would push out the far-right coalition members who are hoping to eliminate any semblance of Palestinian sovereignty. It doesn’t specifically mention a permanent Israeli presence in Gaza either, for fear of pushing out the moderates. Above all, it’s not designed to end the war in Gaza. It is about Netanyahu’s own political survival.”

I know it is an extreme possibility, and American readers in the comments section here have warned me in the past about the dangers of excessive pessimism (although I must confess throughout my life excessive pessimism has served me very well) but Biden’s support for Israel could destroy him.

The Israeli government is behaving almost as if what the West wants no longer matters.

Nowhere is this truer than in the crisis on the Ukrainian front line.

Luke Harding of the Guardian sent a desperate dispatch last week on the consequences of the US right’s determination to stop the flow of aid to Kyiv

“Two years after the full-scale invasion, Russia is close to achieving a strategic breakthrough in the east. It is happening in a rustic landscape of brown fields, wispy yellow feather grass and pyramid-like slag heaps…Locals say decisions being taken far away – or not, in the case of US Republicans blocking a crucial $61bn (£48bn) package to Ukraine – are existential for them. Their homes and communities are being swallowed up. “We are on our knees, begging the US and the UK for help,” one woman told the Guardian. She added: “I’m from Avdiivka. I believed the city would hold. We lost it because our guys didn’t have planes or enough ammunition.”

The abandonment of Ukraine, if it materialises, bears comparison with the appeasement of Hitler, and an unfavourable comparison at that.

When Neville Chamberlain abandoned Czechoslovakia to the Nazis in 1938, he was trying to prevent a war the UK was not in a condition to fight. The American right is not preventing a war between the US and Russia by betraying Ukraine. It betrays out of spite

I am far more understanding of isolationism than most pro-NATO commentators. Most people in most countries most of the time do not want to spend blood and treasure on foreign causes.

Yet the hostility of the US right to Ukraine goes far beyond that.  The Democrats negotiated tougher measures at the American border with Mexico, which conservatives say they want, in return for aid. Republicans would not accept a deal that helped Kyiv.

After more negotiation the Senate passed another bill, including aid for Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, and the civilians of Gaza, But in order to avoid having to vote on that legislation, the right wing House speaker, Mike Johnson, sent the House on vacation for two weeks, and has made it clear he will do all he can to block it when its members return.

Anne Applebaum of the Atlantic wrote of the consequences

“Donald Trump, who is not the president, is using a minority of Republicans to block aid to Ukraine, to undermine the actual president’s foreign policy, and to weaken American power and credibility. For outsiders, this reality is mind-boggling, difficult to comprehend and impossible to understand. In the week that the border compromise failed, I happened to meet a senior European Union official visiting Washington. He asked me if congressional Republicans realized that a Russian victory in Ukraine would discredit the United States, weaken American alliances in Europe and Asia, embolden China, encourage Iran, and increase the likelihood of invasions of South Korea or Taiwan. Don’t they realize? Yes, I told him, they realize. Johnson himself said, in February 2022, that a failure to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine “empowers other dictators, other terrorists and tyrants around the world … If they perceive that America is weak or unable to act decisively, then it invites aggression in many different ways.” But now the speaker is so frightened by Trump that he no longer cares. Or perhaps he is so afraid of losing his seat that he can’t afford to care. My European colleague shook his head, not because he didn’t believe me, but because it was so hard for him to hear.”

Why?

Maybe Trump wants Russia to help him win the 2024 presidential election as it helped him in 2016. Maybe he has a crush on autocrats: he admires them and wants to be like them.

Last week the former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said, “When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he’s like the 12-year-old boy who goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team. ‘My hero’. It’s really creepy.”   

“The scary thing is that for countries like Australia and many European countries, we may find ourselves not dealing just with two autocracies in Russia and China, but what is Trump’s America going to look like?” Turnbull continued.

“This is a guy leading a party that is no longer committed to democracy as we understand it.”

I believer the Western far right instinctively clings to homophobic illiberal nationalists.

But the ​"whys​" of the US right’s betrayal of the West matter less than the ​"whats​" of the what are we going to do about it.

I am writing this piece from London, as it says on the tin. Here in the UK, we have not begun to think about what happens to the West if Trump wins again and pulls the US out of the alliance. It’s high time we contemplated the possibility of a West without America.

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Israeli-American journalist Caroline Glick gives her take on the recent controversy concerning Yad Vashem director Dani Dayan. In this video, she explains the key role that Jerusalem Mufti Hajj- Amin al-Husseini played in the Nazi Holocaust and subsequently as a leader of the Palestinian national movement.

Caroline Glick points to Dani Dayan's refusal to hang a picture of al-Husseini meeting with Adolf Hitler in 1941 in the Yad Vashem museum, as he confirmed during an interview with Haaretz in 2022. This refusal, she argues, is political-- even though Dayan claimed he would not hang the picture because that request was political.

This is information that western pro-Palestinian self-described allies will never mention (nor will the mainstream media), as it exposes precisely why Palestinian terrorists and leaders (who are often one and the same) have consistently rejected peace in favour of war, even if their own people suffer as a result.

When you understand the depth of al-Husseini's hatred for the Jewish people (he condemned groups of European Jewish children to death by preventing them from being transferred to Mandatory Palestine) and the admiration with which he is held by subsequent Palestinian leaders, there's simply no way to heap the blame on Israel, or even the territorial dispute over the West Bank, for there being no Palestinian state. There's also simply no way to separate anti-Zionism from antisemitism either, once you understand why al-Husseini is revered to this day by Palestinian leaders and presumably many Palestinian civilians.

And, unfortunately for UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, there's no way to equate Arab suffering during the 1948 War with the Holocaust by claiming they are both defining events. The displacement of Arabs between 1947-1949 came as a direct result of the Arab desire to destroy the Jewish State and kill its citizens, and al-Husseini was one of those who urged that desire, which is precisely why he was supportive of Hitler's extermination plan in 1941.

There's also no way to accuse European Jews of colonialism, either. While al-Husseini was in Iraq, he incited a massacre of the Jews in Farhud in 1941, the very year Hitler planned his 'Final Solution'. Glick says that around 900 Iraqi Jews were murdered. Over the next few decades, over 800 000 Jews would be persecuted and violently expelled from Arab lands in plain violation of the Balfour Declaration. Many of those Jews naturally moved to Israel. This is why today, a slight majority of Israelis are descendants of Jewish exiles to neighbouring lands.

Holocaust education can only succeed if the whole truth is told. While we live in an age where people are constantly demanding that such-and-such a history be re-examined in light of modern views, it's strange to see the director of Yad Vashem conceal vital facts for fear of causing offence.

Glick says that Dayan isn't even a scholar of the Holocaust; it appears his appointment was political.

Perhaps it is time for Yad Vashem to find a director who will tell the truth without fear.

[nonotetextposts]

having some thoughts and want to post them somewhere so they aren't just swirling around in my head

i was raised reform jewish and learned a bit of hebrew and attended our synagogue regularly until i got bar mitzvahed at 13 and then pretty much dropped it altogether, but i always felt generally connected to like, judaism as a cultural identity i went to israel on birthright with my sister in 2017, and so i feel like my opinion on the current conflict is at least marginally more well-educated than the average american's

first and foremost it absolutely is an apartheid state, there is no doubt about it, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either a useful idiot or is lying to you. they have 20 ft high walls topped with barbed wire surrounding the palestinian territories, literally an open-air prison the israelis can freely go to palestinian territory if they want, but not vice versa, and the palestinians who are allowed into israel are there as manual laborers and paid low wages (the analog i thought of was how we treat migrant workers in the us), and this was portrayed as a positive thing to our tour group because see look we don't mind them so much, as long as they're being subservient to us under threat of violence or starvation

one thing that stood out to me that i think was probably lost on people not actively looking for it is that our tour guides only ever referred to them as "arabs," never palestinians, or even muslims etc, because that would validate them as citizens or human beings, whereas instead the word arab has basically become shorthand for "them" in the us vs. them dynamic ironic coming from the same group that's on the receiving end of the echo parentheses also that the tour guides talked a lot about how israel has to defend itself ("herself") from the arabs, and all of this is because we're constantly under attack from the arabs, and this is all because of the arabs. and i noticed that they never mentioned or even acknowledged why they might be so angry, like they just conveniently never mentioned what exactly it was that they were so upset about like. if you did something bad and you're like yeah we're not perfect but we tried to make amends and made changes to our foreign policy to accommodate and prevent it from happening again, then it shows that you're willing to be transparent and move forward but they literally never did that, the narrative was very much that israel is perfect and has never done anything wrong, which is uhhh i think even in the most generous interpretation just blatantly not true, and that's something that you would say when you're trying to hide and sweep under the rug the bad deeds that you've done, which tells me that they are very much aware that they're the bad guys here and trying to lie to my face about it because i'm an impressionable american tourist

couple more thoughts bc this is getting long already but it is worth mentioning that the hate goes both ways, they really do not view each other as people, like if you tell the average israeli that what they're doing is genocide they'd be like. yeah that's why we're doing it and palestinians do not seem very fond of israel either, and part of me thinks that they would genocide them right back if they were the ones in the position of power unfortunately i don't think a 2-state solution is really possible because like. they hate each other, in a way that i don't think we really have a reference point for in the us

gonna take a pause here to clarify that israel absolutely is evil and committing genocide against a group of people over whom they have power having said that i also think that a lot of propaganda is floating around social media, obviously the mainstream narrative from both the right and the (center-)left is pro-israel, but i feel like a lot of people get wrapped up in trying to do the right thing (and/or impress their mutuals by being socially conscious as visibly and conspicuously as possible) that they forgot about the wisdom of garfield

you are not immune to propaganda

and when you see a picture of a little palestinian girl with bows in her hair and big sad eyes. that is also propaganda, and throughout the last few decades and even as recently as the last few years, there have been a not-insignificant amount of pro-palestinian groups that have done some horrifically fucked up shit and killed and maimed a lot of innocent people, and i feel like it's disingenuous to act like the situation is entirely black and white, and to claim otherwise would basically be doing the same thing my tour guides were doing

and all of this is to say that i've noticed an uptick recently in discourse about genocide joe etc and how voting is useless and you shouldn't vote because you're voting for genocide if you vote for biden which is driving me fucking nuts because that is literally the same discourse that was floating around in 2015-16 that is at least in part responsible for t///p getting elected, and i think maybe because it's been almost a decade and there's a new generation of voters who weren't like, aware back then. but like… the people who were saying those things are the same ones who turned out to be either literal russian bots or unknowingly signal boosting them like. y'all. have we learned nothing??? and unfortunately no, i think we did not

ok im done thanks for reading or at least skimming through. my jewish mother's best friend is a muslim woman from egypt and they have been very close for a very long time and our families are very close and i am thankful to live in a world with so much beauty in it

[floppycaterpillar]

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This is the guy who’s supposed to be the lesser of two evils? He’s outright saying the same argument every liberal does, “yeah I killed a bunch of Palestinians but the other guy wants to ban Arabs from america”. He’s delusional if he thinks any Arab or Muslim is going to vote for him after everything he’s done. I have never felt more unsafe in america than during his presidency. He released a statement marking 100 days of the hostages and mentioned that some were American citizens when there are 100s of Palestinian Americans who have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank. The fact that he still expects Arabs and Muslims to vote for him is ridiculous and frankly insulting. The audacity he has to claim he care about the Arab population is ridiculous. Good luck getting Michigan this time around genocide Joe

[menalez]

About the removing citizenship, what some politicians are is that committing antisemitic crimes could be used as an argument against an immigrant receiving German citizenship when they want to undergo the process of naturalization. And some people are also discussing antisemitic crimes to be a reason for deportation if you are not a German citizen. I do not know though how severe these crimes have to be. If chanting “from the river to the sea” would turn out to be a reason for deportation pt. 1

i’m actually referring to this suggestion, which seems to be specifically targeted to people with dual citizenship. to my knowledge, the only groups who can have dual citizenship currently are: israelis, german-born ppl who have a non-german parent (for example a german mother and an american father), and people from the EU.

as you said, it’s really not clear where they’ll draw the line here and what they’ll deem antisemitic so far. i’ve literally witnessed with my own eyes police in germany assaulting arabs for no reason and punching civilians repeatedly, i’ve seen videos of jewish journalists being pepper-sprayed for recording the brutality, they were even shoving and pushing my relative for doing her job as a journalist, among other things.. i heard the police at protests saying not to use “forbidden slogans” otherwise you can get arrested with the forbidden slogans being “free palestine” & “from the river to the sea, palestine will be free”. there’s even a student who got punched by a teacher for wearing a kuffiyeh! so it’s really unclear what they’ll consider antisemitic, would it be supporting terrorist groups like hamas where the line would be drawn? would it be supporting palestine publicly where the line would be drawn? would it be even acknowledging the existence of palestinians? palestinian flags & cultural symbols? even slightly questioning israel? so far we have no idea where this line is because the police have been so brutal and extreme in their suppression that it looks like simply opposing the genocide is antisemitic to them. the reason i bring up neo-nazis is that they are the primary perpetuators of antisemitism in germany. they are the biggest danger to jewish people in germany. and yet there are literal nazi merch stores and nazi villages and people with nazi tattoos!! i’ve witnessed the nazi clothing stores and people with nazi tattoos and ppl with nazi clothing walking around without fear or disturbance in germany. there’s even the AFD party which is blatantly racist, antisemitic, and xenophobic and yet they’re allowed to exist.

and if you look at the motives of antisemitic hate crimes in germany, more than half could not be attributed to an ideological motive, but of the ones that are known most common reasons are far-right ideology and conspiracy theory ideology (similar to that of AFD) whereas the christian fundamentalist & islamist justifications are significantly lower. and then when u look at their closer reports into antisemitism relating to israel u find stuff like this:

this is all from the same organisation btw, they have the clearest overview of antisemitism in germany but they also include saying “free palestine” as an antisemitic attack alongside statements like “fuck the jews” (so pro-palestine positions alongside blatantly antisemitic positions). when official and reliable organisations consider “from the river to the sea” a call for the annihilation of jewish people, or mentions of the apartheid as a “antisemitic demonisation and delegitimisation” then you can imagine what the german govt may consider antisemitism that warrants removing citizenship from people. this is despite the fact that the report mentions blatantly violent and extreme antisemitism which is tied to far-right & conspiracist ideologies, which for some reason they’re not prioritising similarly from what i’ve seen.

i find it very concerning that the country with the genocide of 6 million jewish people as a part of its history is seemingly more, or at least equally, lenient towards neo-nazi beliefs than they are to mentioning the apartheid system in israel or saying “from the river to the sea, palestine will be free” tbh. and i find the conflation of the two in discussions about removing people’s citizenships equally concerning.

[makiruz]

Wait, wait, "And then you go on say 'we', by which you mean gentiles, 'must be wary' of jews (red flag) who use Zionism- the understanding that our homeland is the levant- as 'a shield' against 'antisemitism' (red flag)"

I meant Nazis you moron! Nazis use Zionism as a shield to hide their antisemitism! Oh my god. Are you troll or you cannot read? And "we" was everyone, but sure, go off

Oh my god, and this is someone who clearly needs to learn the history of Liberia (you guys should look into it, it's very revealing)

Oh and since we're ranting, gotta love people trying to claim that because Israel is racially diverse it's not an ethnostate; like first off let's ignore the racism against black Jews in Israel, and then remember and I'm Latina so I know race and ethnicity aren't the same, like you can be white and Latinx, you can be black and Latine, you can be Asian and Latinx; so racial diversity doesn't change the fact that Israel is based on Jewish ethnic identity.

Shit, forget what I just said! They do mention Latin America! So they don't know who they're talking to; and what is this bullshit? "Does the state religion and mostly latino makup of every south american country, formed from actual imperial colonialism make them catholic ethnostates?" "mostly latino makeup"? What the hell is "latinx make up"? Like, being vaguely brown? a Mestizx? Mestizxs look like anything because genetics are funny like that! Like the triplets from Encanto, one is super white and red head, and the other 2 are notably brown and that's totally realistic (maybe not with triplets, but siblings); holy shit what the hell are you talking. And by the way, no country in South America has a state religion, some like Argentina and Peru recognize the Catholic Church's as important, but it's not the state's religion; the only country in America with a State Religion is Costa Rica (where I happen to be from, yay), which is in Central America (well, Dominican Republic, also in Central America, has Catholicism as "official religion", but no state church); and even here with our State Religion, the discrimination is de-facto not legal, you can't legally deny citizenship to someone based on their religion, and you can't legally give different rights to people based on their religion or ethnicity; which isn't the case in Israel.

The next part of this dumbass post is more "I don't know about Liberia" nonsense.

"'ancient' arab palestinians never existed" what?; it's KGB propaganda, apparently; and anyway, I don't give a fuck about "ancient", nobody cares about ancient, only Zionists trying to justify the oppression of the Palestinians care about ancient peoples; we care about the Palestinian people who currently live there as second class citizens and the Palestinian people who were already there 70 years ago and got ethnically cleanse; that's it, nobody care about ancient fucking times

"fact free opinions" that's why it's called a "rant" dumbass. And I never said that most Jews I run into are Zionists, that's projecting. Most Jews I run into here are normal, it's just that I have twice provoked the Zionists accidentally; but that's okay, I blocked everyone so it's not gonna happen again

[n0oble]

The Pro-Israeli and anti-Arab propaganda machine is big in Hollywood, because it's big in America.

Here are two examples:

Image: poster for 2019 Netflix movie Red Sea Diving Resort, starring Chris Evans and Ben Kingsley

Example one, The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019) directed by Israeli director Gideon Raff.

The Red Sea Diving Resort frames Mossad and the CIA as bleeding hearts liberals (White Savior Cinema at its core), and seems more interested in focusing on 'amusing' spy capers than what happened to the Black Ethiopian Jews they dumped into Israel, an Apartheid state.

Israel took refugees who were largely from rural and farming communities, who couldn't speak or write Hebrew, and dumped them into an industrialised society that was new to them.

Racism and anti-Blackness is still a problem for Ethiopian Jews today.

The State of Israel also preys on these communities by giving them only one option to learn skills: the Israeli Armed Forces.

It is as bad as the American Armed Forces sending their recruitment officers into poor Black communities in America, where young Black people have little other options.

But that's the side of history these White film makers don't want you to know.

➖

Example two, Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) directed by American director Patty Jenkins

Image: poster for Warner Brothers' 2020 movie Wonder Woman 1984 starring Gal Gadot and Chris Pine.

This movie, set in 1984, is simply a hot mess for several reasons.

The overt racism and anti-Arab theme throughout is impossible to ignore. As is the reframing of historical events and making up terms that don't exist: "The Oil Community" is the most ridiculous phrase in recent cinema, reframing The Middle East as peaceful if you're White, and evil if you're Arab or brown skinned.

It's the worst cartoon-like racism onscreen since True Lies (1994). WW84 is bad, bad, bad.

Not to mention Gal Gadot is openly Zionist herself and has never hidden the fact:

One major criticism of Wonder Woman 1984 was the choice for her character Diana to swing in and 'rescue' two little Arab boys playing soccer in the street, which many felt was far too similar to real life events in 2014 where Israeli rockets killed 10 Palestinian children playing soccer (and Gal Gadot shared a tone deaf post on Facebook praising Israel and using such hashtags as "love IDF" and "we are right".)

As you can see from the now deleted Facebook post she shared, Gal Gadot has a bias toward Israel. She co-wrote and starred as the lead in WW84, of course the movie has bias.

Gadot recently made more tone deaf remarks about Palestine which led to the trending hashtag "recast Wonder Woman".

➖

Chris Evans (Red Sea Diving Resort lead actor) has remained quiet on Palestine. Given that Evans has an interest in politics himself (see his website A Starting Point) it seems odd he's remained quiet on the political and humanitarian crisis many other celebrities are now speaking up on.

It does beg the question, is Chris Evans also Zionist? He did star in a Zionist ideal movie after all. 🚩

➖

As America sends the most funds and arms to Israel right now, if you're an American citizen will you please help Palestine by putting pressure on your reps.

Image text: Send the text code PTFDZN to 50409 to send a prewritten letter to your reps in support of The Palestinian Children and Families Act.

[nickyhemmick]

Hi, be careful what information you post on the conflict as it’s not as one sided as you’re making it out to be. Israel is being attacked as well. I’m not saying everything Israel is doing is correct, by no means is that true. But innocent people are getting hurt on both sides and that’s not okay. A lot of the posts I’ve seen have just been thinly valid antisemitism, so be careful the ones you reblog as well. You can be anti Israel without being vitriolic to the innocent people who live there. Palestine is not as innocent as everyone claims they are, but they don’t deserve to be kicked out of there homes either. Israel is complicated but innocents don’t deserve to be killed either. A lot of people post about Palestine blindly, I just encourage you to look into both sides a bit more and not make it out to be a situation with one right answer. If it was then this problem would have been solved a long time ago.

~ A Very Stressed American Jew

blah blah blah both sides blah blah blah Palestine isn’t innocent blah blah.

For the stuff about anti-semitism: yeah I agree. People can be posting things that are anti Semitic while pretending to be anti-Israel. I’ve reblogged stuff abt that fact, too. And I always try to make sure what I’m reblogging is talking abt Israel’s cruelty and doesn’t mention anything anti-Semitic. If you see something that I’ve reblogged and you feel it’s anti-Semitic, then let me know.

Second of all: the only 2 sides there are is the oppressor and the oppressed. Palestinians are the fucking oppressed, and I say this as a Palestinian (and an American!) If you want to see how “complicated” this problem is then go onto Twitter and watch the videos Palestinians are sharing and THEN tell me we aren’t innocent. Like bro, throwing rocks or rockets in SELF DEFENSE is 1000000% justified and something I will always defend. Don’t go to Israeli media (which, anyway, doesn’t mind showing you the gang beat-ups of Palestinians lol)

Also, while you are saying there are Israeli citizens that are innocent (which yes, 100% true) you seem to ignore the Israeli citizens out in the streets calling for lynching of Palestinians, entering homes to kill fathers in front of their children, raping the women, forcing themselves into Palestinian homes, and calling for the death of all Arabs, all with the help of the IDF and police. Don’t fucking tell me the citizens are all innocent, many of them are part of this and have been for generations. They are just as complicit as their government in this. I don’t care if they were brainwashed into all the hate they feel, they still are out there adding more fire to the problems. (And NO, I am not referring to IDF soldiers who are forced into duty in this).

The US has brainwashed you into thinking that Palestinians are horrible, that there are two equal sides, that it is a very complicated mind-boggling situation that can’t be solved! That’s all false. I implore you to look at Palestinan sources, both videos, pictures and websites like decolonizepalestine dot com. You already have some awareness of the reality from your ask, but you telling me there’s “both sides” is telling me you have some more work to do. This has been a 73 year old war. Simple. Israel, when attacked, has the Iron Dome, their citizens have bomb shelters, they have a million other protections Palestinians don’t. Palestinians, when attacked, have none of that. They suffer. They die. They get raped. We always pay the larger cost in whatever rocket fire is expelled. Netanyahu said he will bomb Gaza until there is silence. Yeah, that totally sounds like a complicated situation!

No. That simply won’t do. And if you do want to do your readings, do not read Zionist powered publications like the New York Times and the New York post and the like. I repeat that I agree that there is a lot of anti-Semitism in anti-Israel posts, but none of my posts have reflected that, and if they have let me know and I will take them down. This isn’t a religious matter and I understand that, there are Palestinian Jewish ppl as well! They are also suffering under this racist colonial rule

But Palestinians are innocent. We are. We one MILLION percent are. Just because we are fighting back after generations of colonialism, abuse, murder and rape doesn’t make us any less innocent. It makes us fucking fighters for our rights, because a lot of people don’t give a fuck about us and haven’t for 7 decades. Don’t forget that Israel is the instigator of the violence, all the way from 1948. Israel is being attacked because we’re fed up, and it’s not like we’re making much damage anyway, so don’t try to make it out to be that there are both sides that are equal here. Because that isn’t true.

[girlactionfigure]

The Deal

First, divest yourself from the idea that this plan is just a trick to divert attention from Trump’s impeachment or Bibi’s indictment. The document describing it is 181 pages long. It is not a diversion. I am not interested in the question of whether its release now will help Trump (I suspect it won’t matter) or Bibi (it’s unclear). Also, if you are one of my readers who hates Trump – if I still have any, after proposing that he get the Nobel Peace Prize – please put that aside. This paragraph is the last one in this post that will mention him. I want to focus on the proposal itself.

I will not pretend to have read all 181 pages yet. But the broad outline of the proposal, including maps, is contained in the first 40-odd pages. It is a thoughtful attempt to arrive at a solution, and it takes into account the failure of previous efforts. There is a huge amount of material here, and I could write essays about the presuppositions and the implications of every page, but I will try to limit myself to describing the proposal in general terms and discussing its significance in the long and depressing saga of the “peace process.” In recent years, proposals have centered around the ideas first expressed in the Clinton parameters of 2000-1, which envision most of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza as a Palestinian entity, with swaps to allow the large settlement blocs to continue to exist. The new proposal diverges sharply from these plans.

Summary of the plan

The plan (the official name is “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People”) is a two-state solution which preserves the original intention of UN Security Council Resolution 242, in which Israel withdraws from some of the territory taken in 1967, while keeping secure boundaries. The Palestinian “state” here is more like Rabin’s vision of something “less than a state,” because Palestine will be demilitarized, and its borders and airspace will be controlled by Israel for an unlimited time.

The plan is intended as a statement of concepts, although it is a pretty detailed one. It calls for an Israeli-Palestinian negotiation whose product will be a final “peace agreement” with all the details worked out. During the period of negotiations, Israel will freeze construction or expansion of settlements (for a maximum of four years) in those areas that are defined as Palestinian in the plan.

The agreement would create a “state” of Palestine that encompasses most of today’s Areas A and B and some of Area C. Israel will receive most of Area C, including the Jordan Valley. 97% of Palestinians will find themselves in Palestine and 97% of Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria will be in Israel. The remainder will be in Palestinian enclaves in Israel, or Israeli enclaves in Palestine. Enclaves will be under civil control of their respective governments, but Israel will be responsible for security in both cases. Israel will provide land swaps (attached to Gaza along the border with Egypt) which will give Palestine roughly the same area as the pre-1967 “West Bank” and Gaza. There will be a high-speed rail link (on the map it is shown as a tunnel) between the eastern part of Palestine and Gaza, and special roads across the Jordan Valley to the Allenby Bridge with Jordan. Infrastructure will be built to ensure that Israeli and Palestinian enclaves are not isolated. It’s possible that some Israeli Arab communities in the “Arab Triangle” near Umm al-Fahm might be included in Palestine.

In no case will any Jews or Arabs be required to move from their homes, a principle that diverges significantly from previous plans which included the removal of Jewish settlements.

I’ve included the two “conceptual maps” from the proposal at the end of this post. They show the borders and other features envisioned by the proposal.

Jerusalem will continue to be the capital of Israel, and Israel will continue to provide security for the holy sites of all the religions. The city will not be re-divided along the 1949 armistice line, but the areas east and north of the existing security barrier (“including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis”) will become the capital of the State of Palestine, and may be renamed “Al Quds” or whatever the Palestinians decide. Arabs living in Jerusalem inside the security barrier will have the option to become citizens of Israel or Palestine, or retain the status of Permanent Resident of Israel (most Jerusalem Arabs chose this status after 1967 rather than becoming citizens).

The “Vision” provides for an economic plan to provide for a viable Palestinian state rather than one that relies on international donors. I won’t discuss this here.

Overall security for both states will be Israel’s responsibility from Day One, “with the aspiration that the Palestinians will be responsible for as much of their internal security as possible, subject to the provisions of this Vision.”

Israel will retain control of airspace and electromagnetic spectrum from the river to the sea. Special arrangements will be made to protect Ben-Gurion airport from nearby Palestinian areas.

The State of Palestine will be expected to take serious measures to prevent terrorism, which should be evaluated in terms “no less stringent” than those applied to Jordan or Egypt.

The Israeli Navy will be able to block the import of “prohibited weapons and weapon-making materials” to Palestine, including of course Gaza. Palestine will be demilitarized, and Israel will have the right to destroy any Palestinian facility used for hostile purposes. There is a list of weapons and systems that the Palestinians are forbidden to procure. Palestine will not be allowed to make agreements with any state or organization that threatens Israel’s security. Any expansion of Palestinian security capabilities will require Israel’s permission. Israel retains the right to “engage in necessary security measures” to maintain demilitarization and fight terrorism, including incursions into Palestinian territory. There will be “early warning stations” manned by Israeli security personnel in Palestine.

Gaza has always been problematic, and with the Hamas takeover in 2007, it became a hostile enclave which has caused several small wars. The plan explicitly calls for the removal of Hamas, saying that Israel will not be required to meet any of its obligations under the agreement unless the Palestinian Authority is in control of Gaza, Hamas and other terrorist factions are disarmed, and Gaza is demilitarized. If Hamas will “play any role” in the government of Palestine, it must first agree to “explicitly recognizing the State of Israel, committing to nonviolence, and accepting previous agreements and obligations between the parties, including the disarming of all terrorist groups.”

The plan calls for Israel to release Palestinian (not Israeli Arab) prisoners held in Israeli jails, except those convicted of murder or conspiracy to commit murder.

There will be no “right of return” to Israel for people with Palestinian refugee status. Those registered as refugees with UNRWA will have the option of absorption into the State of Palestine or their present host countries, or to a limited extent, to other Organization of Islamic Cooperation states that agree to take them. Once the agreement is signed, Palestinian refugee status and UNRWA will cease to exist.

The Palestinian state will not necessarily be created upon the signing of the agreement; the transition from the Palestinian Authority to the State of Palestine will occur only after the Palestinians have created a Western-style democracy and legal and banking systems, and have stopped incitement and education for hatred in its schools and other institutions. Palestinians will be required to “create a culture of peace” which will not glorify terrorism or martyrdom, and will not deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.

The agreement will include mutual recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and Palestine as the nation state of the Palestinian people. It will end all claims between the two, and this will be proposed as Security Council and General Assembly resolutions in the UN.

During the period of negotiations or for a maximum of four years, Israel will commit not to build or expand settlements in those areas of Judea and Samaria that are proposed to become part of Palestine. This “settlement freeze” does not apply to settlements in the Jordan Valley, eastern Jerusalem inside the security barrier, or other areas that are expected to become part of Israel. It does apply to Israeli enclaves in Palestinian areas. This is different from previous “freezes” which were applied to the entire area across the Green Line.

At the same time, Palestinians will agree not to join international organizations without permission from Israel, will end its legal actions (e.g., in the International Criminal Court) against Israel, and end the “pay-to-slay” program.

The US will agree to reopen the PLO mission in Washington and provide various kinds of aid.

What do the Palestinians think?

Of course they vehemently reject it. They couldn’t possibly accept the plan without almost as many caveats are there are items in it. The proposed Palestinian “state” is no more a state than Vatican City. The requirements to end what we consider incitement (and they consider education in the fundamental principles of the Palestinian Movement) will be unacceptable to them. Pay-to-slay is inviolable. The “right of return” has always been sacrosanct. Hamas will never disarm. And Palestinians have never been prepared to admit that Israel belongs to the Jewish people, not one inch of it.

What does the Left think?

Leftist organizations in Israel and the US oppose the agreement because of the small size of the proposed Palestinian state and the limitations on its sovereignty, and – in the case of the American Left – because they hate the president and have to oppose anything he does.

What does the Right think?

Many members of the Israeli Right oppose any Palestinian state, because they believe that the restrictions on sovereignty and militarization ultimately aren’t maintainable, and the result of allowing its creation would be another terror entity on our border. They also disagree in principle with any concession of territory that’s part of the Land of Israel. But some think it’s worth the gamble in order to restart building in at least part of Judea and Samaria, and to obtain sovereignty in the Jordan Valley and other parts of Area C.

What do I think?

The plan can’t possibly be translated into an agreement that the Palestinians would agree with, even as a pretense. It pays lip service to the idea that Palestinians want normal lives in a well-run, economically flourishing state. Certainly there are those that do want this, but the leadership and what Barry Rubin, z”l, used to refer to as “the young men with guns” who determine what happens on the street do not feel this way. In Palestinian politics and culture, nothing overrides the prime objective, which is the removal of the Jewish presence from the land that Palestinians believe belongs to them alone. Anyone who says different may be held accountable by the young men with guns. To accept the plan would be to betray their Palestinian identity and their Islamic religion in return for an attenuated, emasculated “state” that would be dependent on the hated Jews.

Having said that, I think the authors of the plan understand Palestinian political culture, and what they want to do is help the West to stop appeasing it. The proposal breaks the sterile consensus that has developed since Oslo, in which the conflict is seen as entirely Israel’s fault, nothing is expected from the Palestinians, and “solutions” are just different approaches to forcing Israel to make concessions. One example of this is that for the first time since 2000, the proposal rejects the holiness of the 1949 armistice lines, and calls for secure borders instead. In my opinion, the paradigm shift embodied in the proposal is its most important and worthwhile feature.

The objection that a Palestinian state, once created, would not remain benign and demilitarized is definitely a concern, but it will not become relevant for some time. Judging by the conditions placed on the Palestinians before they will be granted whatever bit of sovereignty they will have, it’s hard to imagine that it will actually come into being. Accepting the deal now would allow to Israel to take actions immediately, like building in areas that are expected to be part of Israel, annexing the Jordan Valley, and applying Israeli law to existing Jewish communities.

The significance of the deal, therefore, is not that it will ever be fully implemented. It is that it will change people’s thinking about the conflict, and free Israel from the chains of the Oslo/Clinton paradigm.

Israelis, therefore, should welcome the change in direction and take the opportunities offered, even if they have problems with specific parts of the program.

The PM promised to bring the program to the Cabinet for approval on Sunday, and I will be happy to see this.

Maps

How the proposal views the final configurations of Israel and Palestine:

Abu Yehuda