Andrew Sullivan is forgetting his Establishment training. He argues that European Unionists overreached by pressing for a common currency, the Euro– and so Israel has overreached too with its West Bank expansion, and is imploding:
The other political construct designed in a noble experiment to right the wrongs of the past, and specifically the hideous wrongs of the Second World War, was the state of Israel. Grafting an entirely new concept onto a land even more steeped in history than Europe was, in retrospect, as inspiring as it was based on denial. And like the EU, the project seemed possible for a while – even a smashing success. But also like the EU, Israel over-reached in pursuit of a more perfect union. The annexation of the West Bank is, in some respects, like the adoption of the euro. It made the concept purer at the expense of making it implode. But Israel, unlike the EU, was far more tenuous. From the beginning to now, it can only sustain itself through massive military superiority. It has far less legitimacy in its neighborhood than the EU, for all its profound flaws, has in its.
Which, one wonders, will survive the longest? The EU or Israel?
I think there is one major difference between the 2 situations.
There is enough capital in the Eurozone to get through the debt crisis but
Israel doesn’t have enough political capital to make YESHA work.
Oh God. You realize Witty is going to write a comment entry that is at least twice as long as this article, without addressing ANYTHING of substance in it?
Israel’s creation was greatly facilitated by the fact that many of the Jews that survived Hitler’s genocide left Europe for Palestine because they did not want to stay on the continent where the Holocast took place. However, Israel was not meant as compensation for the Holocaust. The Zionist movement existed earlier and the support for Israel by the governments with seats in the UN in 1948 sprang from other sources. In the UK it was largely Zionist terrorism that convinced the government to turn over the mandate to the UN. In the US it was organized Zionist groups putting pressure on the government that made Truman support the creation of Israel. In the USSR it was the chance to undermine British Imperialism and their Arab lackeys in the Middle East. It is only after 1967 that the Holocaust features prominently in Zionist propaganda. Peter Novick has written a good analysis of the rise of the Holocaust in American Jewish life. What is amazing is how small a role it played in the 1950s and early 1960s compared to later.
Israel is a homeland. It will not disappear, easily.
The EU is a monetary arrangement. It probably also won’t disappear.
Greater Israel is an over-extension. Enough Israel is just right.
The EU is artificial, but essentially voluntary. Presumably the pain of the USA’s civil war can be avoided if it comes apart.
The amalgamation of Palestine into a (before 1900 purely notional) Israel has been essentially involuntary. It has been manufactured by a single continuous war, begun by pre-Israel as terrorism in 1945 or earlier and continued by never-ending over-the-top usually-unjustified violence started by Israel.
Does the world ever let the victor retain the spoils? Often. Will it here, where the robbery continues without end, spills over, is blatant, embarrasses the USA and those arm-twisted into lock-step with it? Well, we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?