Carlo Strenger
Excellent piece by Carlo Strenger in Haaretz, “2011 is the year the two-state solution died.” Catching up to truth offered to us by Ali Abunimah and John Mearsheimer and others, Strenger acknowledges the reality and says that apartheid must be crushed; and Israel is here to stay. The wisdom here is the awareness that his society can only be saved and its good parts redeemed through an international multicultural community Strenger has come to rely on via the internet, one that believes all people are created equal. This is the community that will defeat Zionism. This is the community that can help a reactionary society stumble forward into the modern age… And yes, Strenger is locked inside the fear-ridden Israeli head in this piece, but he knows that American Jews have had enough, and so has Europe. The thrust of this piece is an awareness borne by social media: Israel must join the Arab spring, or there will be cataclysm far worse.
If they [the Palestinians] will, as they say, stick to peaceful resistance, they will need a lot of stamina indeed. In the short run, I am afraid, they will, as Sari Nousseibeh predicts, live without full political rights. I say this with shame. But this is the truth
Our long-term task is to develop new models of dealing with the emerging reality. I wish I could say something clear and constructive, but for the time being I can’t. I have not yet seen realistic models other than the two state solution.
The one state solution, at this point, is an empty concept, so is that of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation. For neither case can I imagine how the parliament of the greater Israel-Palestine would function, or how equality of all citizens with respect to security could be achieved: I agree with Sari Nousseibeh that Jewish history from the Pogroms through the Holocaust, from the 1948 war to that of 1973, is too traumatic for Israelis to relinquish control of security for a long time to come.
Yet any solution that looks like apartheid is unacceptable.
Although the two state solution was far from perfect: at least it gave answers to these basic questions of governance and civic rights. But Israel’s citizens and its government have decided: It will not be.
For the “Free World” the end of the two state solution has a number of implications. The charade of trying to get Netanyahu to negotiate with Palestinians can be ended: there is nothing to talk about with Netanyahu, and he is likely to win Israel’s next elections as well. To some extent, this may come as a relief: after all, trying to set up negotiations was a waste of time and energy….
I would like to end this rather somber eulogy for the two state solution on a personal note. Looking back on the entries in ‘Strenger than Fiction’ of 2011, I see how difficult this year was politically. In many ways my motivation to analyze and reflect upon the many negative developments of this year; of trying to maintain hope, and sticking to principles of decency was fuelled by the support of many friends and readers, in Israel and abroad.
This community of like-minded people is varied. It is composed of Jews and Gentiles; of people who clearly belong to the left, and others who are more centrist in their positions; it spreads from Jerusalem through Europe to the U.S. and South America with occasional interesting comments from India and Korea.
It is held together by a set of common beliefs: that all humans are created equal; that we must strive to create societies that protect human rights, and allow individuals and cultures to flourish; and that the task of humanity is to gradually overcome our tribal past and strive towards a world order that reflects out dependence upon each other. I am grateful for this community that is keeping our hopes alive, even in difficult times.
“Strenger has come to rely on via the internet, one that believes all people are created equal. This is the community that will defeat Zionism. This is the community that can help a reactionary society stumble forward into the modern age” Yes, that is the community, including BDS and IJAN and JVP and MW, upon which we must all depend.
But, if “This is the community that will defeat Zionism”, my question is WHY to assume that it will defeat Zionism with the result of establishing 1SS, democratic, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-confessional with return of Palestrinian refugees/exiles and equitable dealing w.r.t. ALL LAND CONFISCATIONS since 11/1947 (do I ask too much?) but without removal of all (or most) of the settlers?
WHY NOT defeat Zionism with the result of initially removing all or most settlers? How else break Zionism’s back, let Israel know that the expansive game is over?
WHO CAN BELIEVE that anyone with the power to establish a fair and just 1SS does not have also the power to establish a fair and just 2SS? Is mixing Palestinians and Israelis INSIDE pre-1967 Israel in a democratic state thought (by ANYONE) to be easier than removing the 600,000 settlers?
I’d like to hear this point argued at length: I don’t agree. I am not sure that the power can be found to compel Israel to do anything at all, but if it can, I think removal of settlers (which is required by international law and UNSC 465 (1980)) is the easier to accomplish. And the more important. THEN, and only THEN, pressure to allow return of the Palestinian refugees can still be applied and a 1SS can follow a 2SS. why not?
And remember: 2SS is “dead” only so long as the decision rests solely with Israel. Anyone who invokes the international community, whether governmental or civil, is looking beyond that,
Well, as the nature of at least a goodly portion of Israelis seems to be increasingly revealed, I wonder just how much faith Strenger ought to give to the idea of outsiders helping Israel.
From another Haaretz story just today as well: A young female IDF soldier is sitting in the front of a bus when a haredi guy started hassling some female who had come to the front merely to have her ticket checked. “You don’t have to come up front to check your ticket,” he chides her, “a woman shouldn’t move to this side of the bus.”
And then he turned on the IDF girl, telling her to get to the back, after which he was joined by a number of the other men on the bus branding her with various names they obvious equate to the same thing: “Gentile! Prostitute! Shikse!”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-female-soldier-accosted-for-rebuffing-haredi-bus-segregation-1.404158
So anyway, Mr. Strenger, as more and more of this is reported your religion is gonna have a whole lot of trouble rounding up international sympathy from gentile women methinks, or from their gentile fathers, brothers, husbands and sons.
And—just a wild guess—I kinda suspect that arab sympathy is gonna be a hard thing to get too…
I do not think the piece is very good at all, and definitely not exceptional and here’s why:
While under the standards of the Israeli press(and certainly even more so the mainstream American press) he goes a very long way to understanding what is happening.
The problem is that he is saying now, John Mearsheimer was essentially saying almost 3 years ago.
Another part which I noted is his defensive, incessant ethnocentrism and hostile posture. I mean this is one of those liberal Zionists who fantisize of ‘The Other Israel’ that apparently the ‘mainstream’ in Israel is about but that somehow never rears it’s head and allow themselves to be pushed around by a tiny fringe(settlers).
The intellectual bankruptcy of these words were exposed – again – this week as the chief rabbinate of Israel has thus far refused to condemn the haredi extremists that spat on the girl, instead wallowing in language ‘let’s all obey the law’ and other generic talk.
It’s quite simple really; was Barak really serious? It’s hard to believe it, because settlements increased most under Labor in the 90s. Despite what the propagandists claim, settlements are very much so a part of the problem and anybody who says otherwise is flatly against the 2SS. And if Barak was supposedly for it, why did he build like crazy to make it as a hard as possible to make it happen?
Netanyahu, as Strenger points out, attended rallies that had obscene posters on Rabin, as well as bragging that he ‘killed it’. (Netanyahu was also filmed saying that ‘America is something can be easily moved’ but that’s another part of the story).
There just was not any intention for a 2SS, it was never a serious consideration. It was a fantasy. Ben-Gurion wrote even before Hitler came to power to his son that the objective was to expell all the Arabs and claim the land of Israel for the Jews.
From the river to the sea.
Strenger has ignored this and fooled himself otherwise.
He still thinks the situation can be turned around. It cannot. As long as he maintains his fantasy of ‘The Other Israel'(neatly represented by Meretz, about 5 % of the population) is somehow this mammoth sleeping, he is not part of the solution, he is part of the problem.
Mearsheimer’s 2010 speech about the ‘New Afrikaaners and the Righteous Jews’ (with the third, largest, group in the middle, the ambivalents) is much more relevant.
Mearsheimer & Walt, but especially Mearsheimer has been way ahead of the curve the entire time. He essentially says that Apartheid Israel is now a fact, a reality in the Occupied territories and as the creeping annexation comes along, it will become more and more formalized. After that, you have a fullblown civil rights struggle and a bi-national state in the end, although it’s likely most Jews will have fled by then to other western countries, especially America.
I do not think the 1SS is workable, too much bad blood and Jewish history simply doesn’t allow very easily to trust strangers in such a way anymore, at least in the non-Western world.
The next few years will gradually crush the illusions of most so-called ‘liberal Zionists’ but some may never quite understand and will become increasingly bitter.
Then of course you have Finkelstein who started out in a clear path and then have moved further to the right on Israel as the years go by to taking on a position that is easily a ‘liberal Zionist’ position, adding that palestinians should ‘calm down’ in their civil rights struggle.
That Gentiles like Mearsheimer are routinely more correct on Israel than the overwhelming majority of Jews, even the left-leaning ones, is not strange. Outsiders tend to have a more dispassionate eye on morally corrupted socities/communities.
Jews used to have that role, but as a sign of our ascent; no more.
Thus, Gentiles are increasingly more relevant in this discussion, which of course drives some Jews of a certain generation absolutely nuts. Strenger’s muddled column proves this. He is closer than most, but at this point he is several years behind where he should be.
The problem is that the world coddles the Jews in Palestine way too much. Yes, what occurred in their family’s past is terrible, but that is simply no excuse for them to treat the Palestinians in the way they have and the way they are treating them now.
Until such time as the Israelis have redeemed themselves by apologizing to their victims, making amends and establishing full equality and full political, civil and human rights, they deserve no sympathy for their past traumas, as they have pissed away any sympathy by their vile acts.
No person may secure his rights by holding another in bondage. That is what the Jews in Palestine and their supporters all over the world have done to the Palestinians. Any Jew who can only claim his right by suppressing a Palestinian has no right which the world should respect.
well, he’s really wrong about one thing:
Yet any solution that looks like apartheid is unacceptable.
very unfortunately, it is not unacceptable to most of israel’s society. the only thing they seem to be objecting to is the naming of it.