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Sullivan forces American attention on the settlements

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Israeli settlers al-Shuhada street, Hebron  (Photo:Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty)
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Andrew Sullivan

I’m ecstatic about this new post by Andrew Sullivan.  He’s got a firm grip on the main artery of Israel’s relentless expansion and he’s not backing down, he’s doubling down, driving it home and not letting go. He clenches their argument by  the throat, shakes it til the bones starts to rattle, and then strangles unmercifully. In this must-read 25-plus paragraph piece, he takes it all the way.

Let’s pick up where we left off a few days ago  Sullivan unmasks Goldberg:

I repeat: What would be a very good way to remove those settlements?

And now in his favorable review of Peter Beinart’s book, the Crisis of Zionism, titled Why Continue To Build The Settlements? Sullivan continues to place the settlements center stage, where they belong.  In his previous interrogation of Goldberg he didn’t use Netanyahu’s Goldberg’s own analysis to make his points, this time he does several times over:

The answer is that the settlements are there because the current Israeli government has no intention of ever dividing the land between Arabs and Jews in a way that would give the Palestinians anything like their own state; and have every intention of holding Judea and Samaria for ever. Netanyahu is, as Beinart rightly calls him, a Monist. He is the son of his father, Ben Zion, as Jeffrey Goldberg has also insisted on. But what Peter does is spell out one side of the Netanyahu vision that Goldberg elides.

Vladimir Jabotinsky was a huge influence on Netanyahu’s father and Netanyahu himself. He’s a complicated figure, as Beinart readily concedes. For Jabotinsky, what it all came down to in the end was “the single ideal: a Jewish minority on both sides of the Jordan as a first step towards the establishment of the State, That is what we call ‘monism’.” My italics. The Revisionist Zionists (whence eventually Likud) envisaged a Jewish state that would not only include the West Bank but the East Bank as well, i.e. Jordan.

Ben Zion Netanyahu followed Jabotinsky’s vision, and his willingness, even eagerness, to use violence to achieve it: “We should conquer any disputed territory in the land of Israel. Conquer and hold it, even if it brings us years of war … You don’t return land.” Ben Zion Netanyahu even favored the “transfer” of Arabs living in Palestine to other Arab countries.In 2009, Netanyahu Sr, put his position this way to Maariv:

“The Jews and the Arabs are like two goats faing each other on a narrow bridge. One must jump into the river.” “What does the Arab’s jump mean?” asked the interviewer, trying to decipher the metaphor. Netanyahu explained: “That they won’t be able to face the war with us, which will include withholding food from Arab cities, preventing education, terminating electrical power and more. They won’t be able to exist and they will run away from here.”

Suddenly, the situation in Gaza and much of the West Bank makes more sense, doesn’t it? It’s a conscious relentless assault on the lives of Palestinians to immiserate them to such an extent that they flee. And if you do not think that Bibi Netanyahu’s father isn’t easily the biggest influence on his life and worldview, read Jeffrey Goldberg. Money quote:

By all means do read the money quote. Sullivan’s taking on the rotten core of Zionism using Netanyahu’s dad to drive home the argument:

“withholding food…. preventing education, terminating electrical power ….They won’t be able to exist“.

Sounding very very ugly indeed.

So yes, it’s a review of Beinart’s book. But more importantly it’s an evisceration of Israel’s expansion policies, a further unmasking of Zionism, via Goldberg. The very same Goldberg who’s assured us that he will be getting back to us very shortly on two fronts:

a) Netanyahu’s perspective on Israel striking Iran (off the table for now, as of this week) and

b) Having accused Sully of being a “scapegoater of Jews” and claiming he would disengage from the spat, Goldberg changed his mind (cornered) and promised readers he would provide them with: “the specific examples” of Sully’s intransigence.

Goldberg is traveling, he hasn’t written a stitch since then, nothing I’ve run across anyway. And since the war’s off til next year, filling us in on Bibi’s perspective of why an Iran strike would be successful is a moot point.

Sullivan is not on holiday though, we’re very certain of that. He’s got Goldberg boxed in.

The best part of all this is the placement of settlements on the front burner during an election cycle. Americans need to understand the ugliness of Israel’s expansion policy, they need to fully grok how the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is happening every single day.

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Phil has quipped in the past that this is a conversation Jews must have. For me, I am content watching Sully pound Goldberg. -N49.

the settlers are actual terrorists and once the world coalesces around that idea the focus shifts to their terror activities and how to stop them

RE: “And now in his favorable review of Peter Beinart’s book, the Crisis of Zionism, titled “Why Continue To Build The Settlements?” Sullivan continues to place the settlements center stage, where they belong.” ~ Annie Roberts

SEE: How Israel Is Like an Alcoholic Mother, by Noah Millman, The Atlantic, 3/22/12

(excerpt)…To be a bit more serious for a moment, though, Chesterton famously quipped: “My country, right or wrong is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying: My mother, drunk or sober.” Well, yes, but she is your mother, drunk or sober, right? Similarly, it is your country, whether your country is right or wrong. The question is what that entails. If your mother is a drunk, and begs for another drink, are you obliged to give it to her? Presumably not.
But are you obliged to devote yourself to getting her to dry out? That, it seems to me is the real heart of the question. I think many of Beinart’s critics — like Jeffrey Goldberg — would say: that’s exactly how they think about Israel and the settlements. They are against them. . . They think they were and are a grave and historic mistake…
. . . So they are doing what they can to convince their mother to check herself in and dry out. But she’s their mother. If it takes her a long time to convince, they’ll keep trying. If she slips a drink on the sly, they’ll try to hide the liquor better, but they’ll forgive her. [In other words, they will act as “enablers”. ~ J.L.D.] And, whatever she does, they certainly aren’t going to call the cops on her, and give the neighbors (who never liked her, even have tried to get her evicted) the satisfaction of seeing her humiliated by her own son in public. After all, she’s their mother. [Let’s call this “constructive engagement”! ~ J.L.D.]
Well, talk to a few children of alcoholics, and you’ll discover that “my mother, drunk or sober” is not always a tenable proposition. Sometimes, for some people, the sense of obligation to one’s mother is trumped by a sense of obligation to oneself, and to protect oneself from her disease. And that, in a nutshell, is what Beinart is saying. She may be my mother, yes, but if she keeps carrying on, I don’t care what the neighbors say, and I don’t care if she never speaks to me again afterward: I’m going to call the cops on her. . .

ENTIRE COMMENTARY – http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/how-israel-is-like-an-alcoholic-mother/254939/

Thanks Annie- great post & bravo to Sullivan. I hope as you say that the settlements can become part of the public discussion leading up to the fall 2012 election- Obama may want to avoid the subject but maybe Santorum as an opponent (Santorum who says the West Bank is already Israel- a One-Stater) would flush the issue out before the American public.

“He’s got a firm grip on the main artery of of Israel’s relentless expansion and he’s not backing down, he’s doubling down, driving it home and not letting go”

Good for Andy but it’s 40 years too late. Every non zionist looking at this for decades has recongized that Israel was and is carrying out a deliberate slow motion ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Now that Israel has taken 85% of Palestine they finally start saying something?
Totally meaningless in terms of stopping Israel. Maybe it makes some people feel better about themselves to condemn it after the fact. ..but that’s about all it does.
The millions of words and articles and endless Jewish ‘conversations’ and zionist naval studying can’t paper over the fact they supported this right up to the last minute.
Where were they all these years? Sorry, I’m not into forgiving or praising them — too little, too late.
All this back and forth crap between zionist anbd soc alled liberal zionist is just that —crap.
If any of the Sullivans were actually serious about ‘change” they would writting about and going after the Israel firsters in congress and elsewhere and exposing the Israel-US political corruption that keeps Israel I/P going. But they don’t do that do they? And we know why. Well, they made their choice. May they live to regret it.