Comment by rcpt
2 years ago
There is something particularly grating about how Israel acts with impunity on the world stage yet continues to receive unfaltering support from the US government.
They secretly introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East and refused to sign any of the treaties which are responsible for humanities current existence.
According to Snowden the NSA provides them with whatever data they'd like, even that on Americans, without any filtering whatsoever.
Bibi clowned all over Obama for years and yet he still had to agree with nearly every policy he pushed. Biden has been practically begging them to cut back on West Bank settlements. They won't even meet us there and still we send over money for them to do whatever they please.
As an American it's embarrassing.
I would say the US has been limp-dicked in the past few weeks with their admonitions and entreaties that Israel try to avoid killing civilians (as if there isn't a strong case to be made that this is part of Israel's goal, both as a matter of simple revenge and also a strat for getting their hostages back).
However, criticizing our government as weak would require believing it cares about Palestinian lives in the first place, which is a highly questionable assumption at this point.
What would you do if you were running the show in Israel? You’re responsible for a group of people that none of your neighbors want, even if they are the same race, ethnicity and religion, and those people have an ongoing campaign to push you out, which has been unsuccessful for as long as it has been going on. Oh yeah, their population is now many multiples higher than when all this started.
The literal answer is that I would resign and move to another country. Given that I've moved to another country a few times already, I'm fairly sure I would do that in the situation you describe.
Answering more to the spirit of the question: I believe that the situation between Israel and Palestinians is broken and can't be fixed until something unexpected happens. Neither side has an acceptable way forward.
As a rule of thumb, people who talk about right and wrong don't want peace. Those concepts are far more useful for justifying wars than ending them. Peace is achieved by compromises that make both parties lose interest in the war. There was a genuine desire for peace in the 90s, but it failed, because nobody could find an acceptable compromise. The leaders of both parties realized that the sacrifices required to make the compromise acceptable to the other side were worse than status quo.
What would I do? Abandon the racist and outdated ethnostate ideal, which is dying all over the world anyway, and enfranchise "those people". Instead of "two people, two states", choose "one land, one humanity". This is the only way we don't all end up nuking each other.
> one land, one humanity
Now, remember - you are running Israel. And, most people on the right agree with you that there should just be one land, one humanity.
But, the folks in the camps - they don't want to surrender and accept citizenship to your "one land, one humanity" country.
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Yitzhak Rabin had some good ideas, but extremist factions in Israel (now led by Netanyahu) killed him off.
So, what would you do?
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I don't know maybe give me unfettered access to all the NSAs data and I'll get back to you.
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