Why are newspapers dying? One reason: because original thinkers are coming out of the academy and sharing their learned ideas on-line, and their journalism is better than the journalists'. Steve Walt today says that Netanyahu's expansionist policy is national suicide. And then he comes out for a blueprint to save the Jewish state. It's what I've said here before, Walt and Mearsheimer are the Israel lobby's best friends right now, they're realists who support the two-state solution. (Oh but for how long!) Walt:
My question is this: What is Netanyahu thinking? Doesn't he realize that time has nearly run out for the two-state solution, and that failure to achieve it is by far the most serious threat facing Israel? The prime minister and his allies keep harping about an "existential" threat from Iran, but this bogeyman is mostly nonsense. Iran has zero -- repeat, zero -- nuclear weapons today, and even if it were to acquire a few at some point in the future, it could not use them against nuclear-armed Israel without committing national suicide. Let me say that again: national suicide.
And could someone please explain to Netanyahu that a group of devout Muslim clerics aren't likely to fire warheads at a land that contains the third holiest site in Islam? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said some remarkably foolish things about the Holocaust and repeatedly questioned Israel's legitimacy (as in his oft-mistranslated statement about Israel "vanishing from the page of time"), but he's never threatened to murder millions of Israelis (and Palestinians) with nuclear weapons. Just last weekend, he even told ABC's George Stephanopolous that if the Palestinians reached an agreement with Israel, then Iran would support it...
The real threat to Israel's future is the occupation, and the conflict with the Palestinians that it perpetuates....
two-state solution is not an ideal outcome; it is merely the best available alternative. If Netanyahu wants to safeguard Israel's future, therefore, he would not spend his time inventing new conditions and doing his best to make the peace process a charade. Instead, he would get on the phone to the White House and urge them to get moving as soon as possible to establish a viable Palestinian state, and he'd ask Obama to commit the resources necessary to make it work. He'd also be on the phone to Abraham Foxman of the ADL, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, and Howard Kohr of AIPAC, urging them to pressure the White House and especially Congress to broker a two-state solution before it's too late. While he's at it, he'd denounce false friends like the Reverend John Hagee of Christians United for Israel and he'd invite Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street to come to Jerusalem and help him map out a strategy to turn the Titanic around before it hits the approaching iceberg.
There would still be lots of hard bargaining to do, of course, and Netanyahu would have to make sure that a final-status agreement protected Israel's legitimate security concerns. But by acting in this way, Netanyahu would be helping preserve Israel's future instead of putting it in jeopardy.
If Netanayahu can't figure this out, then Barack Obama and George Mitchell are going to have to sit him down and explain the situation to him. And if they do, one can only hope that Israel's supporters here in the United States abandon their usual modus operandi and back Obama and Mitchell up. If they don't, they may someday have to explain to their grandchildren why they watched Israel drive itself off a cliff and did nothing to stop it.
The real danger and the real intent is the "death of a thousand cuts", the Iranian nuclear umbrella for the long-range Hezbollah missiles, perhaps gas-tipped, that are intended to slowly undo the State of Israel. Perhaps Israeli-Palestinians will enjoy the benevolence of their new masters, the fanatics of the hill country of the West Bank, and Israeli-Palestinian-Christians will learn to veil their daughters, lest they be seen as "uncovered meat."
It's not just about Israeli Jews, or even a Jewish state. These are my countrymen you're talking about here.
Unfortunately it seems that Zionist arrogance(especially that of the right wing Zionists) has no boundaries. Many Zionists(with the exception of the far left Leftists) have somehow convinced themselves that their expansionist, racist Zionist ideology is invincible, and have not yet recognized that they are in the process of committing suicide of their own making…
This is the self-destructive arrogance of the Zionist leadership which Ahmedinijad has spoken about, which will vanish from the pages of time…
@ Eurosabra
Your countrymen? What country is that? Shouldn't your handle be Sabra, not Eurosabra?
These are my countrymen you're talking about here.
So? Hezbollah isn't out to destroy Israel. It wants to preserve Lebanon. That's why it was created, and it looks as if they are going to win a lot of votes there. Apparently, someone told Clinton last week that Hezbollah does not want to win a majority, however, because the win will be too disruptive to Lebanese society.
We talk about our countrymen here. So I guess we're even.
What do you expect, the only US news they can watch is Fox News.
I disagree that there are no conditions in which Iran would use nuclear weapons on Israel, or on other Muslims.
Hezbollah in 2006, willingly shelled cosmopolitan Haifa, and killed Muslims in the process.
But, I agree that Netanyahu is driving off a bridge at 30 mph. Slow enough to turn around, but relentlessly as if he didn't see the road ahead of him, but solely has an automatic speed gauge functioning.
@Just Ask,
If "Blogger from Lebanon" can be who he/she is, I can be who I am. I certainly regret trying to force him/her to pin down her identity. But yes, Israelis–in the broadest sense, citizens of Israel–are my countrymen. By family, I am a religious Jew, by trade, an emergency medical worker turned dragoman, a Hadash voter (can't do Balad/Ra'am-Ta'al as that would mean dictating their interests to Israeli-Palestinians) and a multi-lingual assimilé into foreign European cultures. A Jerusalemite, and a Zionist.
"The real danger and the real intent is the "death of a thousand cuts", the Iranian nuclear umbrella for the long-range Hezbollah missiles, …"
Actually, Eurosabra inadvertently spoke some truth. For Israel to have its dominance over the region neutralized by a nuclear-capable Iran would effectively be its death — or at least the death of the Israel we all know. It would die not by a thousand cuts but by a thousand reverse-aliyahists.
This tiny colony in the middle of the Arab world, already rejected by two-thirds of the world's Jews, has to keep expanding or die. Think of all the issues, not just land but water sharing, trade terms, pipe line access, cultural exchanges, etc. that it will have to begin compromising on once it can no longer beat its neighbors over the head. An innocuous, insignifcant, compromising good neighbor — a Belgium, so to speak — is not the image of masculine Jewishness that most potential aliyahists have in mind. (As an aside, has anyone besides me noticed Eurosabra's own masculinity issues?)
There are reports that Israel's Jewish population is already shrinking. It can't afford to make peace.
Certainly Israel and the UN did not do enough to stabilize the situation, but 2000-2006 was the quietest since pre-'72. Syria also does not recognize Israel, and the Golan/Hauran border situation, while a hardship for very many people, is not an active military front the way the Blue Line is. It would be interesting to see what could be done to make the Blue Line more like the Purple Line. And of course Hezbollah does not want to give up its state-within-a-state deniability and flexibility.
Perhaps the Kurds can talk to you about what it's like to be the Arabs' Poland.
I know Palestinians are unhappy about the relative powerlessness of a West Bank statelet, and their masculinity issues are all over the web. I don't know if Iran really WOULD try coercive state-deformation under a nuclear umbrella, or what leverage it would have on Israel other than pure violence and the not-insignificant nostalgia of the Israeli-Persian community. Carrot/stick. On the other hand, there were plans to stabilize Israel within the '47 borders, so I think it more likely that Israel would have been MORE likely to be the good neighbor had it been allowed peace within the minimal, initial statelet.
@ D: "For Israel to have its dominance over the region neutralized by a nuclear-capable Iran would effectively be its death — or at least the death of the Israel we all know. It would die not by a thousand cuts but by a thousand reverse-aliyahists."
This simply isn't true. There are lots of scenarios whereby Iran gets nukes or nuclear capability and Israel survives as a non-expansive Jewish state. One scenario is imposition of the two state solution, which truncates the Zionist's natural orientation towards expansionism and land greed. Another scenario is one whereby the Jewish state exists in the Levant as a Jewish block in line with the way regions of Lebanon have evolved into different political, ethnic and religious blocks jostling against one another.
Also, I have a hard time believing that solving the I-P conflict (more or less) won't take the wind out of the sails of Islamism — which will blunt the Islamic-extremist desire for the destruction of Israel. At that point, it's just a waiting game for the forces of technology and modernity to moderate Islam further.
I have concluded that a major component of this whole Zionist problem is the too-commonly-Jewish all-or-nothing state of mind, which applies to both the anti-Zionist Jewish Left and the Zionist Jewish Right.
"a major component of this whole Zionist problem is the too-commonly-Jewish all-or-nothing state of mind"
I thought I was saying something very like this. But you say it so much better.
I spend too much time on Facebook; I wanted to hit the "like" button. Settling for this cryptic post.
"like"
@ D.,
Sorry, I guess I was reading between the lines that what you were saying is that given the nature of the Jewish Zionist, a neutered Israel is an impossibility, hence the elimination of Israel is a good thing. My point was that due to its own extremism, the anti-Zionist Jewish Left seems to be taking this approach.
God knows I consider the Jewish Zionists to be irrational, paranoid and belligerent beyond all reason. But at the same time, I recognize the reason they have deteriorated to the extent they have is because the West has been remiss in its duties to set strong limits, to force the issue of borders, and to force the issue of humane treatment of the Palestinians. Due to their nature, the Jewish Zionists are going to interpret this as license to continue their ways until the West steps up and says "NO MORE!"
It seems to me this is what Ha'aretz editor David Landau was saying in so many words when he told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2007 that Israel "wants to be raped by the US."
The problem is, the panty-waists running Washington and Europe are so scared to death of the Israel lobby and the anti-semitism accusation, they won't even make a pass.
BTW, it is the Left's own perpetual victimist demagoguery that for years set the Jews up as untouchables who should be able to do whatever the hell they want and anybody who said different was a racist. So I think its more than a bit hypocritical for the hard Left to now point to the Right as the root of the Zionist problem, or suggest the whole problem could be eliminated with the elimination of Israel. If Israel had been treated like everyone else, this whole issue would have been resolved years ago. But the Left is big on affirmative action and letting certain historically persecuted groups run amok and have their own way regardless of behavior, so such an outcome was predictable.
Great post, Steve Walt.
"..Hezbollah in 2006, willingly shelled cosmopolitan Haifa, and killed Muslims in the process."–Witty
Witty,
Are there any key military installations in or near Haifa, which was the likely reason for Hezbollah's missile targeting of Haifa….
It is Islamically haram(forbidden) to purposely target civilian populations, even those that are not Muslim. It would be interesting to know where Israel's military installations and bases are located to know if Hezbollah was attempting to target them with their crude rockets and missiles, which is what I think they were trying to do….How else do you explain the much higher number of Israeli soldier causalities, if they were primarily targeting civilian populations?
I am actually out of things to say about Israel and I-P and the zionist..cause I have said the same things over and over for 7 years. Everything I originally said and predicted about Israel's madness has proven true right down the line…including saying back then, as Walt says now, that time is not on Israel's side.
I have zero confidence that the jewish zionist here in the US or there in Israel will do anything but continue on their greed, revenge and hubris driven path. They will continue to give the world the finger and keep right on thinking they can jerk the US around forever because they have our congress in their pocket.
So all I say now is bon voyage Israel…" Suicide is painless… It brings on many changes.."
For a little realism on Hizbollah's rockets (fired from a country then under active destruction and invasion by Israel at the time) see Jonathan Cook's two 2006 articles:
http://www.jkcook.net/Articles2/0269.htm
http://www.jkcook.net/Articles2/0272.htm
"It would be interesting to know where Israel's military installations and bases are located to know if Hezbollah was attempting to target them with their crude rockets and missiles…"
I'm sure it would be, Marion.
"How else do you explain the much higher number of Israeli soldier causalities, if they were primarily targeting civilian populations?"
We are talking about the targeting of population centers within Israel. Within Israel, there were 30 civilians killed as opposed to 14 soldiers. Israeli civilians were not in Lebanon, Marion. The bulk of the over 2,000 wounded were civilians, as well.
As far as Jonathan Cook's article, the lead to the first article cited talks about Nazareth, where, he claims, "The real target of the strike was known to Nazarenes: close by the city are a military weapons factory and a large military camp." Hey Jonathan, I've got news for you. There's also a bisquit factory near Nazareth. The fact is that this is a weak excuse. It is not enough that there be a military (or even quasi-military) target nearby when a force, such as Hizballah, fires highly inaccurate weapons on the off chance that they might hit one of these targets.
And BTW, if Israel is such a "police state", why is it that Mr. Cook has been allowed to report from here for so many years? I mean you'd think that he would have gotten the Philip Caputo treatment a long time ago.