A lot of smart people have very different views on Israel. As long as those people are acting in good faith, acknowledging that other peoples’ disagreements with a position aren’t (always) due to a lack of humanity or intelligence, then this should not be a cause for alarm. What bothers me is that this nation that has a lot of wonderful things going for it (technology, education, and economic growth) has a major tactical blindspot, its need for an independent Palestine.
Jeffrey Goldberg, an American Jewish writer who tends to be lean somewhat right on the issue of Israel, makes some excellent points in a recent op-ed. He argues that Bibi, in his rousing speech to congress, continued down a path that could very well lead to the fall of Israel as a Jewish-democratic nation (which is a really dramatic way to say that the status quo is not going to work forever)
The goal of Netanyahu on his recent trip here seems to have been to score political points. And in the United States he was certainly successful. The irony of all of this that the UN vote on Palestinian independence is slated to come up soon and it will most likely pass the General Assembly. The only thing standing between it’s ratification (or official support, really the U.N. ratifies stuff right?) is the U.S.’ veto on the Security Council. Bibi in a short amount of time will have scored political points at Obama’s expense and then will rely on him to avoid a condemnation of Israel’s policy in regards to Palestine by the international community.
I acknowledge that Netanyahu masterfully executed his tactic of charming AIPAC and Congress. Here is my, and Goldberg’s, question for supporters of a democratic, Jewish, Israel: do you agree not only with Bibi’s recent tactics but also what those tactics imply about his overall strategy?
It seems pretty clear that you have to choose between an independent Palestine, or an Israel that is not both democratic and Jewish. What I mean by this is simply that the demographics of Israel, which claims the West Bank and Gaza, are problematic. Obama, in his speech at AIPAC argued,
The number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian territories…This will make it harder and harder, without a peace deal, to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state.
Goldberg goes onto explain that if Israel continues A) its expansion and B) It’s claim on the West Bank and Gaza it will be the minority populace by 2017. Assuming he’s right, and I’m treating him as an expert as he doesn’t cite demographic information, then this leaves Israel in a pretty untenable place. Either there’s a segment of the population in Israel that doesn’t vote or the Jewish people of Israel are a minority in this democracy.
The reason this line of argumentation is intriguing to me is that it is fundamentally pro-Israel while at the same time being against Israel’s current strategy in regards to Palestine. The reality seems to be that Bibi is winning battles in a political war that leads to untenable choices. By spurning Obama he certainly appeals to large segments of both the American and Israeli populations, but loses an opportunity to move towards the only viable solution to the problems facing Israel, a Palestinian state.
-Bo
Ok Bo, let's do this.
ReplyDeleteI am pro-Israel. My reason for being pro-Israel is not something that everyone can understand. It's not logical to everyone and I get that. I am an American Jew with a strong Zionist belief (and I'm not afraid to use that word).
It is hard, because of my liberalism on just about everything else, to explain my pro-Israel stance. I understand the arguments for a Palestinian state. I understand the arguments you made about not being able to be both a democratic and Jewish state. I happen, in this particular case, not to care.
Having been to Israel, I know how long it takes to drive from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River (about an hour just so you know). And when I was last there, the summer of 2000, I could go anywhere in the country without fear. I tubed down the Jordan River, I climbed to the top of the Golan Heights, and I walked through Jericho and Gaza. However, I refuse to admit that giving away land to yet another enemy of the Jewish state, while also reducing tactical territory is a viable option.
For me, the question of Israel being a Jewish state or a democratic state only matters if Israel can continue to exist, which I am not convinced of if the West Bank is lost.
Sure there are many things I would do differently if I were involved with the government in Israel; a lot of them have to do with how the Palestinians are treated. However, in terms of Obama’s recent speech and the call to return to the 1967 boarders, I say no.
Security was the reason for the Six Day War in ’67, and it’s the same issue before us now.
-Emily
I am a 72 year old Jew. My family was involved in the founding of the State of Israel. I have been an unqualified supporter of the State of Israel for over 60 years. That said, I believe that every settlement outside the Green Line is bad for Israel. This includes the large ones like Ariel. Israel exits because of the support of the US government and world Jewry. The blatant immorality of the settlements undermines this support and, in addition, saps the moral fiber of the rational (non fundamentalist) portion of the population.
ReplyDeleteI believe that a two state solution is impossible because the Palestinians are a rabble—they cannot form a state. There is plenty of evidence for this view. The Palestinians have never had a institution which can perform a basic function of government which is to enforce its own laws.
Because of these two beliefs I believe that Israel should withdraw completely to the Green Line (with a special status for Jerusalem) and build a lethal wall along the Green Line and forget the West Bank . Let the Palestinians kill themselves if they want to.
The argument that the 1967 borders are not secure is about 50 years out of date. Millitarily there is no question of a sucessful invasion of Israel. The only question regards non-millitary acts of terrorism. That can be solved with money and technology. Israel would have to give up its acess to cheap Arab labor, but consider the cost of the occupation. In the unlikely event the Palestinians formed a responsible government, the wall could be torn down and the governments could cooperate on many projects like electricity generated by the Jordan River. But provision would have to be made for cleaning up the poo-poo left by the flying pigs.
Emily,
ReplyDeleteCorrect me if I am wrong, but it seems you are essentially arguing that Jewish lives are more important than non-Jewish lives, so Israel should not worry about the effects its self-defense have on the surrounding non-Jews. These effects are devastating to the Arab populace, as I'm sure you're aware, given your vague sympathetic reference to Palestinians at the end of your post. From a Utilitarian standpoint, which does not grant special significance to a particular ethnic group's lives, Israel's actions are completely immoral, because they lead to far more suffering and death than they prevent. Worse, as Bo suggests in the post and Len explains above, these actions are not even furthering Israel's security, but rather putting them in an ever more tenuous position! I would add that the real primary purpose of the Netanyahu government's foreign policy is not security, but to "reclaim" all of Biblical Israel, even if it means lot of Arabs have to suffer and die. If you agree with that theo-imperialistic goal, you have no business calling yourself "liberal," because it violates all liberal, humanist values.
In refusing to do the difficult intellectual work of questioning your admittedly non-logical Zionist belief, you lend the Israeli government moral cover to commit acts that I would argue are textbook war crimes. Israeli hawks love to dismiss any criticism of their policies as "anti-Semitic," but in reality, their stance, and yours, is implicitly anti-everyone else. Do you really believe that the lives of Jewish human beings have greater moral significance than the lives of far higher numbers of non-Jewish human beings, to the point that Israeli security confers moral carte blanche? That Israel's need for "tactical territory" that many people argue is not actually territory is more significant than the right of the people who live there to live there, without roadblocks and checkpoints and hellfire missile attacks that kill one terrorist and 50 civilians? Does THEIR security, or Lebanon's security for that matter, not matter at all if there is a possible threat against Jewish life?
Please realize I am interested in discussing this. I'm arguing from a Utilitarian standpoint, but I would eagerly engage in a discussion about how that perspective is inadequate for evaluating this issue.
Justin,
ReplyDeleteWhile I still proudly call myself a liberal (politically speaking) I'm not arguing that my stance on Israel is Utilitarian or even liberal in itself. We all have issues that don't necessary jive with the rest of our beliefs, Israel is mine.
I have an emotional reaction to the issue. I do not have an emotional connection to the Arab population (good or bad). All lives are important. But if it's really one life vs. another, I'm taking my emotional reaction and running with it. I do believe, although Len does not, that diminishing what little land Israel has, and giving it to a hostile population is dangerous. I do not mean do any militarily minded thing deemed “necessary” but it is still what my opinion boils down to. The argument is far more complex than action and effect.
I'm wary of getting into "hellfire missile attacks that kill one terrorist and 50 civilians." That's a lose/lose argument for us. I would hope you might agree. Reactionary language is not a constructive way to go about a discussion.
Listen, the situation is next to impossible. Someone's going to get screwed; I just care if it's Israel. Perhaps it is lucky then that I currently have no bearing on the issue. My opinion doesn’t change a thing. And I am truly grateful of that because I understand the complex nature of the issue. But I think too many people take advantage of this and make this issue simpler than it is. This is emotional to a lot of people; it is not black and white, pro or con.
Again, I know this isn’t a popular stance, especially with those I would usually agree with politically. However, I can still believe in other liberal issues like workers and women’s rights, equal access to health care, government sponsored social programs, and humanitarian aid. Honestly, I resent anyone telling me I can’t self-identify. Also I don’t appreciate being told that I haven’t done the “difficult intellectual work,” I have thought about this issue, more than most, perhaps more than you. Just because I didn’t come to the same conclusion you or some others have, doesn’t mean it wasn’t thought out. Perhaps my conclusion is too overly simplified for you, that is understandable, the nature of this forum promoted such a response. But my thinking about it more doesn’t change my opinion or my emotion.
-Emily
Just,
ReplyDeleteI’m with you on most of this, and I agree that – morality aside – Israel often does things that are detrimental to its own long-term security.
But let me offer three general critiques of the kind of strict Utilitarian approach that you’re advocating. (It’s late, so this may not be coherent.)
First, I think standard Utilitarian ethics is largely inconsistent with contemporary liberalism, which is a fundamentally rights-based ideology. Sometimes people on the left try to have it both ways by adopting some sort of hardline Rule Utilitarianism (equality ALWAYS maximizes utility), but I think we can both agree that that’s dumb. At some point, your principle runs into conflict with your moral calculus. When this happens, people generally seem to stick with their principle.
Second, there are different ways of applying Utilitarian ethics. Do we focus on preferences? Do we assign each individual equal worth, or do we look at the overall level of happiness? No matter what version of Utilitarianism we choose, we can always find hypotheticals that are intuitionally troubling. For example, what if we could maximize the happiness of the majority by enslaving a small group of Americans and subjecting them to constant torture? Or, alternatively, what if we were to find that that growing economic inequality in the United States increases the happiness of five extremely wealthy Americans so much that it effectively cancels out everyone else’s misery? Would the happiness disparity matter?
Third, you and I have the same consequentialist impulse when confronted with Trolley Problem variants: Choose the option that results in less overall suffering. But I think we would both have a hard time acting on that impulse if we were forced to choose between, say, a loved one and several strangers (assuming they would all suffer equally). Utilitarianism in practice is hard, and that practical reality has its own ethical implications.
I would also say that the general point that you’re making – that all lives have equal moral worth – is really a deontological argument upon which Utilitarian ethics may or may not be premised, depending on which version you adopt. But I’m already straying pretty far off-topic, so I’ll stop here.
-Jeremy
Emily, I apologize for any offense. I just meant that attempting to reconcile conflicting values is difficult intellectual work. A lot of what I wrote came across as unfair, probably due to my own strong feelings on this subject, but I didn't mean it like that. I don't condemn your beliefs, but I condemn the actions of the people who set the Israeli policies that I believe are both immoral and completely impractical for all concerned. I don't think anything I said was "reactionary" though - Israeli forces DO unleash missiles and kill civilians. Did you approve of what happened in Lebanon? I hope you can understand that, while I now agree with Jer that my argument was far too black and white, I still think the fundamental point is sound: you can't deny that Palestinian suffering exists as a result of disproportionate Israeli force. I don't want anyone to get screwed, but if someone does, it should be the extremists on both sides who benefit from this conflict politically and refuse to relax their ideology even when it creates an "impossible" situation. I have sympathy for the Israeli people, who I believe are victims of an extremist government ideologically devoted to promoting the interest of the settler population and the Greater Israel crowd, even though it puts their people in ever more danger. I just can't see why you think holding all this land is in Israel's interest. Why do you support those policies when they fuel the anger against Israel that drives the terrorism? Why not just build a wall and save billions of dollars, plus thousands of lives?
ReplyDelete