The priority for advocates of peace between Israelis and Palestinians should focus on the apartheid structures of Israel’s occupation regime, not reviving the sham “peace process”.
Despite all appearances to the contrary, those in the West who do not want to join the premature and ill-considered Israeli victory party are clinging firmly to the Two-State Solution amid calls to renew direct diplomatic negotiations between the parties so as to reach, in the extravagant language of Donald Trump, ‘the ultimate deal.’
Israel has increasingly indicated by deeds and words, including those of Netanyahu, an unconditional opposition to the establishment of a genuinely independent and sovereign Palestine. The settlement expansion project is accelerating with pledges made by a range of Israel political figures that no settler would ever be ejected from a settlement even if the unlawful dwelling units inhabited by Jews were not located in a settlement bloc that have been conceded as annexable by Israel in the event that agreement is reached on other issues.
What is more, Netanyahu, although sometimes talking to the West as if he favors a resumption of peace negotiations, seems far more authentic when he demands the recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people as a precondition for any resumption of talks with the Palestinians, or when he joins in welcoming American pro-Israeli zealots who insist that the conflict is over and that Israel deserves to be anointed as victor.
To top it all off, the Trump decision of December 6, 2017, to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to follow this up by soon relocating the U.S. Embassy, effectively withdraws from future negotiations one of the most sensitive issues—the status and sharing of Jerusalem—despite the language accompanying Trump’s statement on recognition that purports to leave to the future, permanent Jerusalem borders and disposition of the city on a permanent basis that is misleadingly declared to remain open for an agreement between the parties to be achieved at a later date of their choosing.
All in all, it seems time to recognize three related conclusions:
- First, the leadership of Israel has rejected the Two-State Solution as the path to conflict resolution.
- Secondly, Israel has created conditions, almost impossible to reverse, that make totally unrealistic to expect the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
- Thirdly, Trump even more than prior presidents has weighted American diplomacy heavily and visibly in favor of whatever Israel’s leaders seek as the endgame for this struggle of decades between these two peoples.
Despite these obstacles, which seem conclusive, many people of good will who are dedicated to peace and political compromises cling to the Two State Solution as the most realistic approach to peace.
The words of Amos Oz, celebrated Israeli novelist, expressed recently this widely shared sentiment among liberal supporters of a Zionist Israel: “…despite the setbacks, we must continue to work for a two-state solution. It remains the only pragmatic, practical solution to our conflict that has brought so much bloodshed and heartbreak to this land.”
It is also significant that Oz made this statement in the course of a yearend funding appeal on behalf of J-Street in 2017, the strongest voice of moderate Zionism in the United States.
What Oz says, and is widely believed, is that there is no solution available to Palestine unless there is a sovereign independent Jewish state along 1967 borders as the essential core of any credible diplomatic package. All alternatives would, in other words, not be ‘pragmatic, practical’ according to Oz and many others.
Why this is so is rarely articulated, but appears to rest on the proposition that the Zionist movement, from its inception, sought a homeland for the Jewish people that could only be secured and properly proclaimed if under the protection of a Jewish state that was permanently, as a matter of constitutional framework, under Jewish control.
For many years the internationally recognized Palestinian leadership has shared this view, and has given its formal blessings in its 1988 PNC/PLO declaration that looked toward the acceptance of Israel as a legitimate state, if the occupation were ended, Israeli forces withdrawn, and Palestinian sovereignty established within the 1967 borders.
It is notable that this Palestinian conditional recognition of Israeli statehood accepted a territorial delimitation that was significantly larger than what the UN had proposed by way of partition in GA Resolution 181 (that is, Israel would have 78% rather than 55% of the overall territory comprised by the British Mandate, leaving the Palestinians with the remaining 22% for their state).
This type of outcome was also endorsed by the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 and was confidently depicted as the solution during the Obama presidency, and even adapted to meet Israel’s security demands in ways designed to make such a solution appeal to Israel.
Even Hamas endorsed the spirit of the two-state approach by proposing over the course of the last decade a long-term ceasefire, up to 50 years, if Israel were to end the occupation of the East Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza. If Israel were to agree, the resulting situation would materialize the Two-State Solution in the form of two de facto states: Israel and Palestine. It differs from the two-state approach only to the extent that it refuses to grant Israel de jure legitimacy or to renounce formally Palestinian claims to Palestine as a whole.
Among the deficiencies of such territorially oriented approaches to peace is the marginalization of the grievances of up to seven million Palestinians living for generations as refugees or involuntary exiles.
There are at least four problems, conveniently swept under the nearest rug by two-state advocates, any one of which is sufficiently serious to raise severe doubts about the viability and desirability of the Two-State Solution:
(1) Liberal Zionism expressed an outlook toward a diplomatic settlement that was not shared by the Likud-led rightest Israeli governments that have dominated Israeli politics throughout the 21st century; the Israeli goal involved territorial expansion, especially with respect to an enlarged and annexed Jerusalem, and by way of an extensive network of settlements and transport links in the West Bank, underpinned by the fundamental belief that Israel should not establish permanent borders until the whole of ‘the promised land’ as depicted in the Bible was deemed part of Israel. In effect, despite some coyness about engaging with a diplomatic process, Israel never credibly endorsed a commitment to a Palestinian state within 1967 borders that was based on the equality of the two peoples.
(2) Israel created extensive facts on the ground that have definitively contradicted its professes intention to seek a sustainable peace based on the Two-State Solution; these developments associated with the settlements, road network linking settlement blocs to Israel, references with Israel to the West Bank as ‘Judea and Samaria,’ that is, as belonging to biblical or historical Israel.
(3) The Two-State Solution as envisioned by its supporters effectively overlooked the plight of the Palestinian minority in Israel, which amounts to 20% of the population, or about 1.5 million persons. To expect such a large non-Jewish minority to accept the ethnic hegemony and discriminatory policies and practices of the Israeli state is unrealistic, as well as being contrary to international human rights standards. In this fundamental sense, an ethnic state that is exclusively associated with a particular people, is by its own proclamations and legal constructions, an ‘illegitimate state’ from the perspective of international law.
(4) Beyond this, to sustain Israel in relation to the dispossessed and oppressed Palestinian people has depended on establishing structures of ethnic domination over the Palestinian people as a whole that constitute the crime of apartheid. As in South Africa, there can be no peace with the Palestinians until these apartheid structures used to subjugate the Palestinian people are renounced and dismantled (including those imposed on Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles); this will not happen until the Israeli leadership and public give up their insistence that Israel is exclusively the state of the Jewish people, with includes an unlimited and exclusive right of return for Jews and other privileges based on Jewish ethnic identity; in effect, the core of the struggle is about people rather than as in two-state thinking, about territory.
If we discard the Two-State Solution as unwanted by Israel, normatively unacceptable for the Palestinians, not diplomatically attainable, and inconsistent with modern international law, then what?
It should be understood that even if a strong political will unexpectedly emerged that was genuinely dedicated to the balanced implementation of the Two-State Solution, it would be highly unlikely to be achievable.
Against this critical background, we are obliged to do our best to answer this haunting question: ‘Is there a solution that is both desirable and attainable, even if not presently visible on the political horizon?’
Following the lines prefigured 20 years ago by Edward Said, two overriding principles must be served if a sustainable and honorable peace is to be achieved: Israelis must be given a Jewish homeland within a reconfigured and possibly neutrally renamed Palestine, and the two people must allocate constitutional authority in ways that uphold the cardinal principles of collective equality and individual human dignity.
Operationalizing such a vision would seem to necessitate the establishment of a secular unified state maybe with two flags and two names, which would have a certain resemblance to a bi-national state. There are many variations, provided there is strong existential respect for the equality of the two peoples in the constitutional and institutional structures of governance.
Said also believed that there must be some kind of formal acknowledgement of Israel’s past crimes against the Palestinian people, possibly taking the form of a commission of peace and reconciliation with a mandate to review the entire history of the conflict.
If the liberal Zionist approach seems impractical and unacceptable, is not this conception prescribed as a preferred alternative ‘an irrelevant utopia’ that should be put aside because it would be a source of false hopes? If the Palestinians were to propose such a solution in the present political atmosphere, Israel would undoubtedly either ignore or react dismissively, and much of the rest of the international community would scoff, believing that the Palestinian are living in a dreamland of their own devising.
This seems like an accurate expectation, despite my insistence that what is being proposed here is a relevant utopia, the only realistic path to a sustainable and just peace. There is no doubt that the present constellation of forces is such that an initial dismissal is to be expected. Although if the Palestinian Authority were to put such a vision forward in the form of a carefully worked out proposal, it would constitute fresh ground for a debate more responsive to the actual circumstances faced by Israelis, as well as Palestinians. It would also be a step toward unity, overcoming the current political fragmentation that has weakened the Palestinians as a political force.
The primary political and ethical question is how to create political traction for a secular state shared equally by Israelis and Palestinians. It is my view that this can only happen in this context if the global solidarity movement presently supportive of the Palestinian national struggle mounts sufficient pressure on Israel so that the Israeli leadership recalculates its interests.
The South African precedent, while differing in many aspects, is still instructive. Few imagined a peaceful transition from apartheid South Africa to a constitutional democracy based on racial equality to be remotely possible until after it happened.
I envisage a comparable potentiality with respect to Israel/Palestine, although undoubtedly there would also be present a series of factors that established the originality of this latter sequence of development. In politics, if political will and requisite capabilities are present and mobilized, the impossible can and does happen, as it did in South Africa and in struggles against the European colonial regimes in the latter half of the 20th century.
Further, without such a politics of impossibility there is no path to genuine peace and justice for both Palestinians and Israelis, massive suffering will persist, and the normalcy of an existential peace based on living together on the basis of mutual respect and under a mature, humane, and democratic version of the rule of law, underpinned by checks and balances, and upholding constitutionally anchored fundamental rights.
Only then, could we as citizen pilgrims dedicated to the construction of human-centered world order give our blessings to a peace that is legitimate and existentially balanced as between ethical values and political realities.
This article was originally published at RichardFalk.WordPress.com on January 7, 2018. It is a modified version of an article originally published at Middle East Eye on January 1, 2018.
This article certainly outlines the basic problem and possible solution. To carry it forward means speaking the truth to power. “an ethnic state that is exclusively associated with a particular people,
is by its own proclamations and legal constructions, an ‘illegitimate
state’ from the perspective of international law”I suggest it is effectively a neo-nazi-state, since there is no suggestion of any serious evolution of self-governing ethnic components, unlike the Basuto, Swaziland and possible Zulu nations of RSA. In Gaza we have in effect a ‘concentration camp’ where Jewish State controls on funds, water and development will render life increasingly impossible.
We need to support a unified democratic Palestine, which is what this proposed ‘secualr state’ could amount to.
An alternative, tried by UK in Central Africa, isFederation. But this broke down once the preponderance of wealth and political influence were felt to be conventrated in mainly one of the Federated areas.
It requires considerable redistribution ion this case.
THE BEST FORMULA FOR PEACE IS THAT ALL THE FAKE JEWS GO BACK TO RUSSIA AND REAL JEWS CAN STAY IN PALESTINE!!!! PACK YOUR BAGS NUTINYAHOOHOOHOO GET OUT OF PALESTINE !!!!!!!!!
It is illmanners to shout at us in capital letters, and puts you on the side of the crazies! Jewishness is inherited down the mother’s side only strictly, and Jews have long preserved their separate existence as the ‘chosen race’ granted dominion over all by god- we have the word ‘shibboleth’ for example. Judaism does not seek converts, and the Book of Ruth is read annually to remind them to be kind to such converts as there may be (‘thy god shall be my god etc.), and so men’s hands have been generally raised against the ‘chosen race’ down the centuries for their impudence.
But this is beside the present point: it is not the number of the true faith that matters in Palestine, but their domination through claims to an exclusive racial homeland based on their myths and legends, an essentially nazi claim with all the destruction and denial of rights to others which that entails.There was a tradition of accepting others under Jewish rule, as long as they subscribed to a more limited code of prayer and obeservance and so were known as ‘god fearers’ which hardly embraced humanitarian democracy! So the existence of Israel at present denies the respect for the rights of indigenous people, in the same way as the attack by claims of ‘racism’ does in England regarding the respect for claims of the English of ancient origin.
Hence widespread opposition to current Israeli policies, among Jews themselves as well as many others, and support for a united democractic Palestine.
Utter nonsense. The Jews are the indigenous people and the Arabs (modern day Palestinian Arabs) invaded in the 7th century and created a very large empire throughout the Middle East. Using your logic, the Romans are indigenous people of Israel because they conquered it in the first century.
You are plainly an atheist so it is not clear why you side with Muslim claims which you must find as fantastic as you do for the Jewish biblical claims.
If the ‘Jews’ are indigenous, why do their texts record the genocidal conquest of the area as the ‘promised land’? The Romans destroyed the temple and city, and replaced it by Aelia Capitolina. There weren’t many of tjews left there. By the 1890’s they started a policy of settlement as Rothschild bought up strategic places, and the Jewish State now represents Power, not Truth..
Anyway a democratic Palestine would not and could not be aJewish racial state, which at best is a nazi idea, but would of course be secular. You are blinded by your racism that prevents you from seeing anythig but muslims, jews etc. but wedo not have to take sides in such irrational claims.Much better to say ‘I am a human’ and then privatise your religious hankerings.
I never said the Jews were original indigenous people 3,000 years ago. Obviously, the Canaanites and others existed but those people are long extinct. As of today, if you want to find the people with the best historical claim to the land as the indigenous people, that would be the Jews, predating the Arabs by 1700 years. Further, if you want to look to see what distinct people have had a nation or state centered around Jerusalem in the last 3,000 years, that would be the Jewish people. No Palestinian Arab state ever existed in that region.
Because even the Arabs know these truths, in desperation they make the absurd claim that Arabs are Canaanites. They are not. Arabs came from Arabia and conquered Palestine (renamed from Judea by the Romans) in the 7th Century.
Also, there is no actual evidence of any genocide of the Canaanites. To the contrary, the Bible makes it very clear that Canaanite cults continued throughout the Jewish Kings of Israel and Judah. However, there is no trace of the Canaanite people by the time of the Romans.
Your ridiculous accusations of racism are hypocritical. The Palestinians or Arabs are not a “race.” This is a matter of nationalistic beliefs of Arabs and Jews. You imagine a “democratic Palestine” with a large Muslim Arab component and dream there would not be endless conflict with the Jewish component. That of course is a utopian dream and not the real world. There are no Muslim Arab democracies and Jews would not be treated well.
Moreover, not all cultures are identically. Some are superior than others in some ways. America’s culture is superior to that of El Salvador which is why El Salvadorans want to come here and no one wants to go there. The Palestinian Arab culture is inferior in many ways which is why it would be a downgrade for Israel to accept millions of Palestinians into its country, just as it would be downgrade for the USA to accept 100 million Haitians (if so many existed).
The fact is there is little history of successful and peaceful bi-national countries. Belgium is one. Canada is not really as the French component is not that large. The USA is not really as it has long been dominated by certain groups although in 50 years we can see how we are doing then.
Why are the ‘canaanites’ extinct? Bible says nothing must bremain that cannot pass through fire?
As for Palestine, this is named after the Philistines – a group siubject to savage propaganda attack by the Jews: ‘Ph’ was of cpurse a sort of breathy letter ‘p’ and so the change to our pronunciation. Wasn’t Jerusalem a ‘city of refuge’ forbidden to Jewish occupation, a ban broken by David? I suggest any Canaanites who survivved didso in spite of Jewish attacks.
If Arabs come from Arabia etc. where have all these Jews come from? Not Palestine at anyrate, we might as well invade Saxony on the grounds that Anglo-Saxons lived there!
Surely all this ‘Israelite’ drama is just obfuscation covering a giant and cruel land grab
from people who have been settled their for millenia, and who welcomed Jews as peaceful incomers. Come to think of it, when did Abraham’s tribe become Israelites? And what claim can the one remaining tribe – Juda – have to the whole area? What about the other ten, plus Benjamin destroyed in Judaic war? The myths of ‘israelites’ as inheritors of Palestine parallel the tale of ‘Aryans’ who should inherit Europe and parts of India: except there is at least linguistic and physical eveidence of Indo-european Aryans. So we are back again to the nazi roots of a ‘jewish exclusive’ State, and its roots in similar fears and racial;ist claims of a superior Jewish culture that you make.
The Canaanites are extinct, go find one. Judea was renamed Palestine by the Romans to mock the Jewish people by naming it after their ancient enemies. The Philistines were also long gone by then. The Jews came from Judea (thus the name) and the Arabs came from Arabia.
The other Jewish tribes (the “lost tribes”) are equally entitled to return to Israel but there is no way to identify them at this point in time. Some people try to link current groups with the lost tribes.
The Nazi myths of the Aryans had no historical basis. Never were any “relics” of ancient Aryan people found in Germany; it was pure myth. Every year relics of the ancient Jewish people are found in modern Israel including the West Bank.
Thus, I have easily disproven your statements using logic and facts.
One final point, it is quite possible that some Palestinians may in fact be descendants of the ancient Jews. If that can be established they have every right to reclaim that heritage. I don’t see a ton of Arabs wishing to renounce their Arab heritage and accept a Jewish one.
The ‘jews’ if Abraham’s story is followed came from Ur of the Chaldees, on their own account, and later migrated from Egypt to Palestine under the leadership of a murderer called Moses, where acting under the genocidal orders of their supposed god they did their best to exterminate the inhabitants and thereafter engaged in an on-off war with them; and still celebrate that Exodus to this day – and have a feast called ‘passover’ to celebrate the killiing of Egyptian first-born by their cruel god – your ‘refutation by facts’ seems counter-factual to say the least, but accords well with the spiteful jewish propaganda against Philistines etc.
Aryans are not quite the myth you suggest – people across Europe to northern India identify as such, and Indo-European or Aryan language is the root of the whole family of languages spoken over that area ( Basque and I think Finnish being the exception).
The jews made a forced entry into the forbidden ‘cityof refuge’ called Jerusalem, certainly did not originate there. All this set of stories you muddle up and think you know still do not have any relevance to a middle-east land grab called ‘Israel’ except perhaps to suggest a general backgrpound of Jewish intrusion and violence and racial arrogance.
Blah Blah. Why don’t you go bash Islam, a religion that actually called for genocide and under which actual genocide happened? Or how about all the genocides that were actually committed by atheists? Jews are in last place in terms of being murderers. Ultimately, you are just a senile old Jew hater who can and should be ignored.
Abuse is no reply! Presumably this means you cannot gainsay my latest post, which is my way towards disabusing ‘believers’ of the faiths that cause conflict and denial of the views of others.. The interminable wars recorded in Jewish history are one of three sets of destructioin followig from the claims of the Abrahamic religions that each is the One And Only True: – Judaism, Chrisatianity and Islam. It seems there will aways be wars but polytheism would at least remove those religious promptings to crusades and separation from the ‘unclean’ that result in trhe walls round Gaza, or in Belfast, for eample.. You would do better to join me and work on devising a therapy to ease minds of the torments of ‘one true path’.
Sorry but somehow you forgot all the people butchered by the Pagan Greeks and Romans, the Huns, Mongols, etc. Then let’s move to the modern atheists in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, etc. The Indians of North and South America slaughtered each other. Seems to be something about humanity, and not tied to a particular religion. But TODAY, it is not hard to find most of the violence centered around one religion (Islam). If you are looking for analogies to the Nazi’s the one about Jews is pathetically erroneous.
There are always power struggles not religious in origin. But the attack on Iraq was fired by Evangelical Christian zeal; and as for Israel, how would we describe an England that declared itself an English State and Homeland, and invited all English to return, seizing property and land from any others to do so? and did so on ethnic grounds claiming superiority and denying recognition to others as equal? Like Israel.
England conquered half the world and seized property all over, so I don’t know what you are talking about. England is no one to judge Israel.
I don’t have a problem with the Jewish people seizing their land BACK from the Arabs who seized it on ethnic and religious grounds and claimed Islam is superior to all other religions.
The attack on Iraq is completely irrelevant to our discussion.
By your own showing it was not ‘arabs’ who took land from Israel, since the religion and land of Israel ceased long since with the destruction of the secod temple- and had been acquired by bruital conquest to start with. The illegal attack on Iraq was a at best part-motivated by supposed claims of religious and political superiority (US ‘exceptionalism’ ) and is a disaster – like Israel. So not enitirely irrelevant. I can’t claim to speak for England, nor do I know on what authority you can for ‘israel’, but in a world of black pots and kettles we might at least try some cleaning, don’t you think?
The barbaric conduct of Israel and their god is established completely by, and all attempts to mitigate or tone down, this command to totally
wipe out the population are ruined on the clear instructions of
texts like Exodus 23:32-33, 34:12-16, Deuteronomy 7:1-5, and 20:15-18.
The presence of the term herem in the sense of “forced
destruction” constantly was applied to the Canaanites and
thus they are marked for extermination.
There is no suggestionnthat the Canaanites are bespecially evil compared to the israelites – it is sijmply the amoral command of their god to wipe them out – a different kettle of fish from England’s ‘pacification’, or colonisation in all cases except Tasmania where ‘biblical christians’ seem to have taken the idea to heart, both for people and the so-called ‘tiger’.
Hardly justified conduct is it?
There is no evidence any genocide was committed of the Canaanites. The Biblical account deals with specific circumstances not general conduct. The Canaanites were extremely evil in the eyes of the scribes etc. who wrote the various parts of the Old Testament. It is also very clear the Jews did NOT carry out the exhortations to wipe them out because the Canaanite cults continued to be a problem for hundreds of years after Joshua.
By contrast, we know for a fact of the millions killed by the English and other European conquerors.
Wriggle wriggle! So the divine ordinance was jus for that moment, a very expedient god indeed: Thou shalt not murder this week, but hang on for a while, anything can change.
The ‘English and other etc.’ were not motivated by a divine instruction to slaughter the supposedly ungodly! which of course makes the whole basis of Israeli settlement morally revolting. Even the Conquistadores were restrained by franciscans eytc. and conversion rather than extermination was their abhorrent religious goal! and occupation an economic, not genocidal, motivation. Golod, not souls.
In fact of course the Africans, for example, conquered by England tended to multiply and increase under colonial administration which is why (unlike the ‘evil’ Caananites) there are now so many of them; and England stopped, not started, the slave trade at some military cost. Extermination – for example of aborigines and red indians- was not a religious and racial act such as proclaimed by the israelite god, whose dreadful motivations are literally out of ths world. As for the failure of the Jews to eliminate the Canaanites quickly, accounts suggest that was due to their military failure, rather than want of trying, even losing the ‘ark of the covenant’ in open battle. Unlike the conflicts in the Balkans now, Israel had no historical claim and was trespassing on other’s homelands by force of arms – as it seems they are now.
There are many cultures and civilization that no longer exist even though no one committed genocide on them. Many of them are in Africa. Where are the Sumerians and Akkadians? Or the Hittites? The Canaanite culture disintegrated over time with the people assimilated into other cultures including the Jewish one. Long before the Arabs showed up in the 7th century, there were no Canaanites left.
You also keep mixing up the Philistine and Canaanites, who were two unrelated people. The Philistines (not the Canaanites) had the misfortune to capture the Ark of the Covenant (according to the tale) for which they suffered greatly. This event is even depicted in famous artwork.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistine_captivity_of_the_Ark#/media/File:The_plague_of_ashdod_1630.jpg
Bottom line: There is no historical evidence the Jewish people have committed mass murder or genocide of any group of people in the 5000 year history of Judaism. There is plenty of evidence of mass murder by Pagans, Christians, and Muslims. I cannot comment about Buddists and Hindus. Of course atheistic regimes of the right (Hitler) and of the Left (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot) have also killed millions with even less compunction.
Your cherry picking and bashing of the Jewish people and Israel is absurd. You have no moral right to judge either and your opinion is meritless. Since you are way too old to change.
Wisdom comes with my age? And since when has documented refereence been mere opinion?
Of course peoples have disappeared or been destroyed – the dreadful toll continues, as can be seen by the rapid reduction in the number of languages still spoken, down to something like 3000 from 6000 perhaps.
But all this does not exonerate the the genocidal instructions given by the Jewish deity, which I do nt think were parallelled eleswhere. Foirced conversion maybe, but outright elimination? No Even in Burma the islamics who commenced attacks on government outposts are driven out, not ‘passed through the fire in OT fashion.
Interestingly, if god is Lord of Hiostory and if Israel was punished and destroyed (eg the 10 tribes) by Him, using the Assyrians, Babylonians etc as His instruments, then by such theology Hitler would have also been his instrument too, dealing with the jews according to his will (how could it be otherwise?) for whatever transgressions the almighty had in mind.
Apart from this jewish religious imperative, I would go along rather with Hegel: history is the sl;aughter bench of peoples.
Why don’t you take up your issues with God with God. I’m not your Priest or Rabbi or confessor, nor can I help you understand the mind or will of God or solve the mystery of why evil exists in the World. Better minds than mine are available to help you. My understanding of them is that God permits evil because it is the only way for Man to have free will. But I see little value in a philosophical discussion of this nature with an atheist.
Well I can see from this you are sincere and kindly disposed and have no wish to belittle that. From our interchange so far however it would appear that evil- such as exterminating indigenous races in Palestine – resulted not because God allowed it but because he ordered it!
My own view is that of nescience, which I suppose you could see as an impudent denial of the function of words as nouns. The nominative correspondence between words and things named belongs to the dream world of Eden and was given to Adam: ‘and as he named them so they were’. For us words can only refer to other words – context is all – the world is sung into existence by the supreme poet which all poetry partakes in: ‘Let there be … and behold there was..’ But that’s philosophy.
If you take Genesis seriously we might argue that being Almighty faces two impossibilites or self-contadictions; He can’t be ignorant and he can’t find anything impossible – can’t build a wall too high for Him to jump over, and so can’t be Almighty. So He seeks to participate in ignorance by talkng with Adam whose mind is a blank; and achieve the impossible by building Eden, which together with man begins to look very much like a mistake.
But to get back to your point: the evil we were discussing resulted not from god’s permission but his command, and as the Almighty he can and must bof course also deceive and trick us since nothing is impossible for him and he must do everything he can imagine.
“The South African precedent, while differing in many aspects, is still
instructive. Few imagined a peaceful transition from apartheid South
Africa to a constitutional democracy based on racial equality to be
remotely possible until after it happened.”
The author is wrong. South Africa is a horrible country, much much worse than it was under Apartheid. The plight of whites in South Africa is grim, they might as well pack their bags before it is too late.
However, unlike the Dutch or English settlers who came to South Africa with no historical connection to the land, the Jews are returning to their ancestral homeland which they lost through violence directed against them and which is occupied by Arabs, one of the greatest imperialists of history.
Somehow the Arab colonization of ancient Israel is okay but the Jews return to their own land is condemned as European colonization. That is just insane. In order to engage in such mental distortions, you have to create a fictional Palestinian people who existed at the time of Jesus, even though no such people existed.
Israel is not going to let Muslim Arabs have control of the government and then trust in their good will. The Jews have suffered horribly for more than 2,000 years when they were a powerless people without a nation of their own. Israel owes nothing to “international law” or “international organizations” that did nothing to save the Jewish people in their greatest hour of need. There is no choice but to take whatever steps are necessary to use what power they have to protect themselves.
While a certain percentage of Muslims can be tolerated in the Israeli democracy, it is not possible to have that percentage be above that threshold without threatening the very existence of that democracy. Maybe one day it will be, in the far future, but not in the today’s world of Islam. This applies to Israel, England, France and every other Western Country.