Israel Against the World
It’s been a while since my last podcast or blog. I hope you all don’t think I’ve abandoned you. As I’ve mentioned over the years, I have a new appreciation of professional authors, journalists, musicians, and general content creators because my dabbling in all of these pursuits has illuminated me of the difficulty of creating and distributing content that is regularly relevant and high quality, Combine this effort with the desire to say something new and interesting and you can maybe understand why you’ve seen nothing from me since last November. There is so much going on that is incredibly important to the future of our world, there’s no shortage of stuff. I will talk about some of that stuff in future posts but my goal going forward is to talk less about politics and more about music and food and other things that unite us. It is not to say that we don’t have serious challenges that will be resolved one way or another. However, it is important to laugh and have fun a little to remind us that being human isn’t all bad.
However, my pivot to less politics will have to wait for another time as I want to address a geo-political issue that has been around for hundreds of years and now seems to be hurtling towards some kind of resolution. I am talking about The Jewish Question. The Jewish Question was a wide-ranging debate in 19th- and 20th-century Europe that about the status and treatment of Jews. The debate, which was similar to other "national questions", dealt with the civil, legal, national, and political status of Jews as a minority within society, in Europe during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Historically, the Jewish people were a diaspora culture that was spread across various parts of the middle east and Europe where they mostly assimilated with their host nations (or conquerors). History also shows that most of those host nations like the Roman empire, Russia, Eastern Europe and Germany, violently suppressed or tried to cleanse their societies of Jews. The pinnacle of these pogroms was Nazi Germany.
The Zionist political movement that began in the late 19th century lobbied the British Empire to make a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, their biblical homeland. After the horrors of the Holocaust during WW2, there was overwhelming sympathy for Jews and Britain, which was the colonial ruler of Palestine, simply established the new state of Israel and Jews poured in from around the world. The problem is that they displaced a few million native Palestinians who were denied their own homeland. Such are the often-unfortunate consequences of war where the victors get to write the rules, and such was the case in WW1 and WW2.
One could understand how the Palestinian people and their Muslim brothers would be more than a little pissed off. The 1917 Balfour Declaration announced the Jews were special and deserved their own homeland. Why didn’t the Palestinians, who represented 90% of the population at the time, not deserve their own homeland? And so it was that a coalition of much larger Arab states tried to destroy Israel in major wars in 1947 and 1967 which resulted in decisive victories for Israel. Since then, there have been numerous Palestinian uprisings (or intifadas) and acts of terrorism which Israel has also survived. So, Israel passes one of the most important tests any sovereign state: The ability to defend itself.
This quick jaunt though history gives us context with which we can evaluate the current conflict in Gaza. Israel is probably the most capable military power in the Middle East. It is surrounded by enemies who are bent on its eradication and are playing the long game. They cite all sorts of well-worn antisemitic tropes to justify their hatred of Jews, but I think they are fundamentally jealous of Israel’s success in turning what was once a desert dotted with various Bedouin and Jewish tribes for centuries, into a major economic and military power. Israel is also the only true democracy in the region, something that has made it a staunch US ally for decades. It is also worth mentioning, that 21% of Israeli citizens are Palestinians who enjoy all the benefits of that citizenship. It is also worth mentioning that at about half of Israeli Jews favor a two-state solution.
With this as a background, I joined retired US Diplomat, David Hunter on the Rhett Palmer Show this past Wednesday. David is a friend and has also been a guest on my podcast. The topic for the show was reviewing the events in the Gaza war of the past couple weeks and David had a list of topics including:
1. Why is the Biden Administration shipping additional fighter jets and bombs to Israel in defiance of the recent UN Security Council demand for a cease fire in Gaza?
2. Israel’s second raid on the Al Shifa hospital.
3. Israeli jets destroyed Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria killing at 5 people including Iranian General Zahdi, who was responsible for Iran’s coordination with Hezbollah, another sworn enemy of Israel.
4. Israeli jets destroyed several vehicles with relief workers from the World Central Kitchen. Israel has since admitted this was a mistake and is taking new steps to ensure that mis-targeting is prevented in the future.
David and I spent a good deal of time debating each of these topics with me as a Zionist who supports Israel’s right to exist and David as an anti-Zionist, a position he shares with a good chunk of the US State Department and UN countries. To be crystal clear, being an anti-Zionist doesn’t necessarily mean a person is antisemitic and David is not antisemitic. Anti-Zionism means that a person doesn’t believe that Israel has a special right to a homeland in Palestine that supersedes the rights of other non-Jews living there. Again, this debate has been going on for more than a century in Europe and around the world. Neither David nor I are Jewish or Palestinians, but I think this gives us the ability to be more objective about the issue. I also need to qualify my Zionism as being a version that supports a two-state solution. Despite coming from different directions, David and I meet in the middle as we both support a two-state solution. However, the devil is in the details.
It took me a while to rise above all the minutia in David’s 4 topics. I chalked all of it up to war, an unfortunate feature of humanity. History is replete with different kinds of wars. There are internecine conflicts where people die, sometimes a lot of people but the conflict ends in a cease-fire with both sides still intact. All out wars of determination are rarer thankfully, but that is where one side unconditionally surrenders, and the victors get to write the rules of the new world order. WW1 and WW2 of the bloody 20th century were two such wars, the results of both created the situation we have now in the Middle East. As horrible as all wars are, humanity has never experienced a war of determination where all combatant nations are armed with nuclear weapons. WW2 ended with the only nukes ever used. It was horrible. As humans we all have a stake in avoiding a nuclear conflict that could end us. Sadly, America’s steady decline as a world power and toxic political divisions are creating a dangerous incentive for our motivated adversaries that makes an nuclear war more likely than it has ever been in my lifetime. Nuclear war dwarfs all other social and political issues we fight about now and yet most Americans have their heads in the sand. That’s what keeps me up a night. But I diverge.
Nearing the end of the show I asked David the retired diplomat this question: “If you were king for a day, how would you solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?” His first option is to rescind the Balfour Declaration of Israel’s right to exist and move their 7 million Jewish citizens to another country. He suggested Texas or Montana. After I recovered by breath, I objected strongly on the basic grounds that history has shown clearly that the Jews were persecuted everywhere they’ve been, and the mechanized extermination of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust is prima facie evidence that the only place they could be safe is in their own country. David replied that 5.8 million Jews thriving in the United States make it second only to Israel as a home and is proof that not all countries are unwelcoming. To that I said, have you not seen the dramatic rise of antisemitism on college campuses and the Democrat members of Congress like the Squad who are virulently anti-Zionist and pro-Hamas. It’s disgusting. But getting back to David’s option one, which is completely unrealistic: I replied to him that allowing immigration of 7 million smart, hardworking, successful Jews who already share many aspects of our American culture, would be a great thing for America. I countered that I could accept that only if we deported and equal number of illegal immigrants on a First in- First out basis. Just like accounting inventory valuation best practice. How draconian and utilitarian are we getting now?
But any sovereign nation has the duty to protect its borders and the right to choose who gets to emigrate to its country and become citizens. Those are basic rules for nation states. Tell that to the Democrats whose open-border policies are unconscionable. Anyway, as long we were going to be king for a day, that seemed like a decent solution, as long as you ignore the fact that we have now elevated the rights of non-Jewish Palestinians over Israeli Jews. It would be a prime example of reverse discrimination, reverse racism. Then again that seems to be all the rage now with DEI and Critical Race Theory being forced into all institutions and aspects of American life by the authoritarian Marxist polices of the new Democrat party. OK, I got that off my chest. No, you don’t cure discrimination with more discrimination. This is common sense and thankfully a majority of the American people see this fraud for what it is. Again, I diverge.
David and I finally agreed that his “resettlement” Option 1 was completely unrealistic. I pointed out that the tactic of presenting an obviously unrealistic option among realistic ones is an ancient diplomatic sleight of hand that tries to coerce the other side into taking your preferred option. However, it can also be viewed as a threat, and in my business career, it has never proved to be an effective way of getting deals done. So, David then presented his option 2, the two-state solution which he qualified with his belief that Israeli President Netanyahu would never allow it under his watch. I pointed out that he was a very unpopular leader who will likely be gone soon with a more liberal president who will be open to the two-state solution. Afterall, Israel is democracy. Hamas is not a democracy. Their mission statement calls for the destruction of Israel and cannot be allowed to persist. The Israeli public would never support a two-state solution that allows Hamas to survive.
David then pointed out that over the years, there are 750,000 Israeli’s who have moved to new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a semi-autonomous region that is supposed to be run by the Palestinians. These settlers are big part of Netanyahu’s political base for obvious reasons. This is viewed (rightly in my opinion) as a hostile act by the Palestinians. Keep in mind, both Jews and Muslims have recognized “an eye for an eye” as a moral pillar in their societies going back millennia. This stuff goes back to ancient times so there ultimately needs to be bigger fish who impose a solution that keeps the peace.
So as any good negotiator does at various points in the process, I repeated what I heard as the anti-Zionist conditions for a workable two state solution.
1. Cease-fire.
2. All hostages released and accounted for.
3. Hamas is dismantled militarily and politically.
4. Netanyahu is gone and replaced with a liberal Israeli administration serious about peace.
5. The 750,000 Jewish settlers are removed from the West Bank.
I said this seems like a lot of concessions by Israel but that the two-state solution would have to obviously have some guarantees for their security, to which David replied “of course”, though I don’t know how anyone can guarantee Israel’s security given the history. Then David pointed out that a key reason the Palestinians rejected the two-state proposal that came out of the 1993 Oslo Accords, was that it didn’t include the “right of return” for diaspora Palestinians living in other nations. This represents 5-8 million new Palestinians which, together with Gaza and the Westbank, would significantly exceed the existing Israeli Jewish population of the entire region. Lots of new mouths to feed but David said that Gaza would become like one of the small uber-wealthy Arab Emirate countries because of the massive natural gas reserves off the coast of Gaza in the Mediterranean. That’s a new twist I didn’t know that makes the negotiation more interesting. I said that at least this guarantees lots of economic activity to feed the new mouths in the new Palestinian state which would overnight become one of the most densely populated places on earth. I thought with all that new oil and gas money, the Palestinians could afford a real military that could challenge Israel, maybe with nukes from Iran. But I tried to keep in mind that we are assuming Israel has some kind of vague security guarantee from… what? The international community. This is how we left the Rhett Palmer show yesterday. A potential two-state deal on table and noble prizes for Jim Fini and David Hunter.
When I got back to my office, I was curious about the “right of return” issue that caused then PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to reject the two-state deal in 2000. Why did Arafat not say a resounding yes when presented with the opportunity to give his people the liberty and dignity of political independence? And why did he face no criticism whatsoever from his people for doing so? What did the Palestinians actually want if not an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in east Jerusalem? As always, the devil is in the details. Further research shows that the seemingly innocuous “right of return” didn’t mean to return to the new Palestinian state as I assumed. Arafat was demanding that millions of Palestinians, descendants of those who fled or were expelled in the 1948 war, to be recognized as possessing each a “right” to settle inside the state of Israel. This right overrules Israeli sovereignty and would have the effect of transforming Israel into an Arab state. What??
And this demand for a massive collective right to enter Israel has always been inseparable from the larger negotiations from the Palestinian side. What this means is that when Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, spoke of their support for a two-state solution, they actually envisioned two Arab states: one in the West Bank and Gaza, and another one to replace Israel.
This is the only two-state solution Palestinians have ever agreed to. There has never been a Palestinian vision of peace where the sovereign state of the Jewish people is allowed to remain as is, because there has never been a Palestinian vision that didn’t include the right of return for millions of Palestinians. Neither in 2000 nor to the current day, has there been criticism of Abbas for depriving Palestinians of a state, no WAPO or NYT Op-Eds saying that this was a great opportunity that should have been grabbed with both hands, and no United Nations or NGOs calling on Palestinians to move on from their fixation on “right of return.” And as long as the price of having a Palestinian Arab state in the land was going to be that the Jewish people would have their own state in the land as well, the answer is going to be no, no and — to quote Mahmoud Abbas — “a thousand times no.”
That settles it for me and just makes this semi-Christian American libertarian a more resolute Zionist than ever. It’s only once you see the game within the game, the “inside baseball” version of what’s really going on, can you make an informed decision. Unfortunately, there is so much agenda-driven propaganda that passes for news, it makes it nearly impossible for us average folks to get the information we need to just vote, the most important power each of us has.
I’ll be back next Wednesday to present this to my friend David and see if we can reach some compromise. Should be interesting.