Hard Mideast Truths

[dtotire]

Hard Mideast Truths



By ROGER COHEN
Published: February 11, 2010

NEW YORK — For over a century now, Zionism and Arab nationalism have failed to find an accommodation in the Holy Land. Both movements attempted to fill the space left by collapsed empire, and it has been left to the quasi-empire, the United States, to try to coax them to peaceful coexistence. The attempt has failed.President Barack Obama came to office more than a year ago promising new thinking, outreach to the Muslim world, and relentless focus on Israel-Palestine. But nice speeches have given way to sullen stalemate. I am told Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have a zero-chemistry relationship.

Domestic U.S. politics constrain innovative thought — even open debate — on the process without end that is the peace search. As Aaron David Miller, who long labored in the trenches of that process, once observed, the United States ends up as “Israel’s lawyer” rather than an honest broker. The upside for an American congressman in speaking out for Palestine is nonexistent.I don’t see these constraints shifting much, but the need for Obama to honor his election promise grows. The conflict gnaws at U.S. security, eats away at whatever remote possibility of a two-state solution is left, clouds Israel’s future, scatters Palestinians and devours every attempt to bridge the West and Islam.

Here’s what I believe. Centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust created a moral imperative for a Jewish homeland, Israel, and demand of America that it safeguard that nation in the breach.

>b<But past persecution of the Jews cannot be a license to subjugate another people, the Palestinians. Nor can the solemn U.S. promise to stand by Israel be a blank check to the Jewish state when its policies undermine stated American aims.>b<

more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/opinion/12iht-edcohen.html?ref=opinion

[ncguy]

1. Sometimes

I just wish that religions were not so concerned with geography.

For instance, America has a hugh amount of land. We could easily have given the Jews a homeland with better farmland and better water somewhere in Oregon or Washington after WWII.

I think the thing that those on the Palestinian side don't realize, that if that is what happened, the Palestinian would be still be poor and miserable, it is just that no one would care. The other Arab states would not be able to use them for political purposes, and without Israel there would be no economic growth in that area.

[T Wolf]

2. I think a Solomon-type of remedy needs to be suggested. Threaten to glassify the entire area. Then

whichever side is the more "moral" would offer to move so that innocents (on both sides) would be spared.

That side gets the land and the other side gets thrown out.

If neither will be cooperative, make it uninhabitable for a couple of hundred years and force the warring sides to find somewhere else to continue their sandbox fight.

Above all, the US must stop financing the atrocities committed by (primarily the Israelis) both sides.

[ncguy]

3. heck

We are financing both sides, just in different ways.

[dark forest]

7. My God!

Maybe I'm missing something. Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting genocide and mass murder? 'Cause that's the way I read it.

[TomClash]

4. The slow death of the two state solution

Assuming it was ever alive . . .

Note that Cohen says "Centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust created a moral imperative for a Jewish homeland . . ."

[ncguy]

5. my thoughts

I'm no expert on the problem, by any means, but is the two state solution really a solution? Or does this fight continue forever? i don't say that to be overly pessimistic, (although it sounds like it) just that I do not see the Palestinians becoming satisfied with any rational solution.

Let's imagine for a second that Israel (and every citizen) gave up. They all picked up and left and became citizens of some other nation. They take all of their movable infrastructure with time, and likely burn the rest out of spite.

Where does that leave the PA? My thought is: doomed to poverty. They have subsided on two things, working for Israeli industry, and charity. If the Israeli's were to leave, the US isn't going to give them anymore money, because there is no more conflict. The Arabs won't give them anymore money, because there is no political advantage. So what would Palestinians do if they had everything they claim to want - all of the land?

Can they build industry? Agriculture? Will they become a trade center? I think it is all very doubtful.

With that in mind. A two state solution tells me that Israeli will have every right to have 100% closed borders. No matter what those borders are, (pretend that Israel gives them all of Jerusalem) without the Israeli economy, the Palestinians are desperately poor. Their existence seems based around political instigation. Since they do not want to cease to exist, they instigate.

[pelsar]

6. thats a pretty dark view point...

if the jews left they would do just fine.....they have agriculture experience and knowledge, they do have factories in the westbank and are educated. It probably wouldnt be a democracy by any stretch of the imagination, given the PA corruption and hamas theocracy, but neither would be the cause for a failed state like zimbabwa....

[Mosby]

8. Roger Cohen And Wishful Thinking, Part 974

As readers of this blog know, Roger Cohen is not a wise man. His latest column in the New York Times gives further evidence of this.

Domestic U.S. politics constrain innovative thought - even open debate - on the process without end that is the peace search.


Open debate constrained, eh? Come on Roger, don’t be a tease. You mean the evil and oh so long tentacles of the Israel lobby are reaching into campuses, news rooms and the very halls of Congress to prevent people saying what they really think, and you know, you’re really sure, that what they’d say if the evil Zionist manipulators would only let them, bears a striking resemblance to what you think yourself.

Centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust created a moral imperative for a Jewish homeland, Israel, and demand of America that it safeguard that nation in the breach.

And if Jews had never been persecuted and never been victims of genocide I guess that would mean that they would have no right to self determination? Let’s try thinking about this another way. During the 19th century the idea began to gain traction among Jews in Europe that they were as entitled to their own nation state as anyone else. The same idea started to gain presence among many other peoples without states at the same time. Eventually the Jews got their state. Not all were so lucky.

The second part of the quote above is just risible. The United States was so concerned to safeguard the new state that it placed it under an arms embargo and jailed those of its own citizens who broke it and it didn’t start selling weapons in serious quantities to Israel until after the Six Day War.

And then there’s this peach of an observation:

… the “existential threat” to Israel is overplayed. It is no feeble David facing an Arab (or Arab-Persian) Goliath. Armed with a formidable nuclear deterrent, Israel is by far the strongest state in the region.

The existence or otherwise of an existential threat to a nation can’t be assessed solely on the basis of whether or not it is better armed than its neighbors. If that were the case we’d have to accept that there existed an existential threat to Canada from the United States and to Ireland from the United Kingdom. The threat to Israel arises from the refusal of many of its neighbors to recognize it and the participation by some of them in attempts to destroy it, and all this from the first day of Israel’s existence.

So it’s a very good thing that Israel is well armed, if it weren’t its neighbors would have destroyed it long ago. And it’s also a good thing that it has nuclear weapons but they’re only of use in deterring other states that conduct themselves in something approaching a rational manner. Their existence ought to be giving the ayatollahs pause for thought about the likely consequences of an open brawl with Israel but they aren’t keeping its border with Lebanon quiet, for that conventional deterrence, otherwise known as the Dahiya Doctrine, suffices for now.

snip

http://blog.z-word.com/2010/02/roger-cohen-and-wishful-thinking-part-974/