One has to wonder why right now there is so much loose talk going around about the urgent need to preemptively attack Iran in hopes of halting or significantly delaying their nuclear program. The US war in Iraq is clearly winding down, with US forces withdrawing to their luxury bases and forces being moved out of country. Afghanistan is in worse shape, but Obama is certainly hoping for a similar result there: the key, as in Iraq, is to tone down the conflict, to improve security and improve the functionality of the Karzai government. On the other hand, Israel's real problem is the international backlash against the occupation, especially the cruel siege on Gaza. Meanwhile, Iran has been locked in its own internal political crisis, doing pretty much nothing else. So why all the war hysteria over Iran?

The centerpiece is Jeffrey Goldberg's broadside in The Atlantic, titled The Point of No Return, or as it's touted on the magazine's front cover: "Israel Is Getting Ready to Bomb Iran: How, Why- and What It Means." Some reactions: Glenn Greenwald discusses "how propagandists function," pointing out how Goldberg himself has changed his story according to whatever line he wants to push. Stephen Walt points out that the main thing Goldberg is doing is getting us accustomed to talking about war; he calls this "mainstreaming war with Iran." Paul Woodward focuses on the gamesmanship between Israel and the US here: the Israelis are saying that if you don't do it they will try, but it's really beyond their capabilities to do it right, so if the US wants to save Israel from fucking it up, better for the Americans to throw their greater firepower at it. Tony Karon explores the question, "Why do people talk to Jeffrey Goldberg?". Gary Sick pooh-poohs the entire proposition, mostly by looking at Iranian reality.

Then there's Trita Parsi: A campaign for war with Iran begins, which adds much more than reaction to the debate. In particular:

Two days after President Obama's election victory in November 2008, then-Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni expressed her categorical opposition to U.S. engagement with Iran. "We live in a neighborhood in which sometimes dialogue -- in a situation where you have brought sanctions, and you then shift to dialogue -- is liable to be interpreted as weakness," Livni told Israel Radio. Asked if she supported any U.S. dialogue with Iran, Livni replied in no uncertain terms: "The answer is no."

A big part of the problem with Israel and/or the US bombing Iran is that doing so will almost certainly make the problem worse in the future. A show of force would only harden opinion against Israel and the US, and redouble Iran's efforts to develop better defenses and a deterrent against future attacks. So what would reduce or end the threat? The very thing that Obama's election promised, the one thing that Livni was so emphatic about preventing: diplomatic talks. The only possible conclusion is that Israel is against what might work and in favor of what surely will not. Such disinterest in solving the problem makes one wonder whether Israel even considers Iranian nukes to be a real problem.

Indeed, this is hinted at by quotes in Goldberg's article; e.g., where Ehud Barak admits that the problem he sees is demographic: that Jews would be less likely to immigrate to Israel, and more likely to emigrate from. Of course, a much more sensible answer would be for Israel to agree to one of many reasonable solutions to the Palestinian conflict, which would let the hot air out of anti-Israeli passions and reduce Israel to being a normal state. But that's the problem they really don't want to solve.

PS: This has been heating up for a while. Back in July Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh published an op-ed, characterized by Tony Karon as "a how-to-bomb Iran manual, adding that "The idea that you can bomb a country and then 'make sure the confrontation does not escalate out of control' is, quite simply, bizarre." Of course, people need reassurances to keep from thinking these things through -- like, for instance, how Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq would cost no more than $20 billion and how its reconstruction would be "self-financed."

Karon starts his piece off with a photo of Iraq War-enabler Peter Beinart chatting with Hillary Clinton, and titles his piece "On Iran, Liberals Are Enabling Another Disastrous War." Glenn Greenwald has a follow-up today which starts off with Goldberg's own track record of promoting war with Iraq: his piece is called "Does the past record of jouralists matter?" -- he's responding to James Fallows defending Goldberg's "journalism." The one interesting thing about Fallows's post is the paragraph summing up a 2004 piece on the same recurrent threat:

And then there was the previous Atlantic cover story about bombing Iran, which I did back in 2004. It was based on a mock war-game exercise to see what, in practical terms, it would mean to "take out" Iran's nuclear facilities. The conclusion was that, even then, Iran's facilities were too dispersed to eliminate by an aerial attack; that an attack would likely unify and motivate Iranians behind their government and the drive to become a nuclear power; that even if Israel attacked on its own, the United States would still be blamed; and that even the most "successful" attack would exchange a temporary tactical advantage (temporary delay in Iran's plans) for a major strategic setback, namely lasting complications and vulnerabilities for the U.S. around the world. Last year Anthony Cordesman, of CSIS, laid out a similar analysis of an Israeli strike, which came to similar cautionary conclusions.

Fallows goes on to quote Goldberg doubting that bombing Iran would do any good (and then waffling), a neat little bit of deniability in case it all blows up. Does make me wonder why we even stop to take such fantasies seriously, but Greenwald has an answer:

I'm now finishing up a long article for Harper's about America's War Culture: why war advocacy has been and continues to be the reflexive, required perspective of the nation's foreign policy elite. I don't want to say too much about the piece, but one central reason for this is that those who were most spectacularly wrong in cheering for the attack on Iraq have not only faced no accountability, but have thrived, been rewarded, have seen their positions of influence elevated. Conversely, those who were right continue to be marginalized. That's due in part to the ethos implicit in Fallows' defense of Goldberg: it's so unfair to have their prior behavior affect their current status and credibility. As a result, our war policies -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and now Iran -- are all being shaped by the very same war-hungry political and media elites who performed so disgracefully in 2002 and 2003.

I have to admit I share that frustration, but the core reason is certainly simpler. Any time Israel needs to deflect attention from its own deeds and wants to bolster support from Washington, it drums up its bogeyman, which has been Iran since the fall of Iraq and the Soviet Union. So, Israel taps its usual mouthpieces, like Jeffery Goldberg. That he was wrong on Iraq in 2003 is your opinion; as far as his employers are concerned, his record is spotless, because he's always said what he was supposed to say.

Paul Woodward: A one-state solution from the Israeli right: Every now and then someone from the Israeli right admits a willingness to grant Israeli citizenship to a lot more Palestinians in order to secure the entire West Bank as permanent Israeli territory. (What happens to Gaza is never made clear, but it is already viewed as a wasteland, so presumably would be sloughed off.) All sorts of bad things could be rolled into such a "solution": the return of any Palestinian refugees would be ruled out; even with "citizenship" much of the West Bank could remain under military rule for decades (as happened within the Green Line from 1948-67), curtailing the legal rights of "citizenship"; social and economic discrimination is likely to persist indefinitely; moreover, the right is likely to use the influx of Palestinian "citizens" as an excuse to chip away at the rights that "Palestinian citizens of Israel" already have. Gaza would be orphaned, perhaps still under siege, subject to controls and periodic mass punishment. Lebanon and Syria would still be viewed as hostile states, with Israel holding the Golan Heights and continuing to hold large numbers of Lebanese prisoners while Israel seeks to back Hezbollah down by threatening the whole country. In short, a right-wing "one state solution" is likely to look a lot like the status quo.

This raises a real question. Anyone can think of lots of ways to sort out the conflict, but the only way that is going to happen is one that Israel itself decides upon -- i.e., a settlement that that not only favors Israel over the Palestinians but that indulges Israeli fears and fantasies. So the question is: what's the worst possible settlement that both sides are likely to accept? It's a tough question, mostly because Israel's politicos and security honchos don't really want any solution -- they're quite happy to fight on indefinitely, and in any case would be hard pressed to agree on just what they are fighting for. But it's also tough for the Palestinians, who on the one hand have already conceded an awful lot, and on the other are basing their claims on justice, which sets some minimal standards for what they can accept.

I've made several sketches of how this can be resolved, and they've all been unwelcome. For instance, knowing that Jerusalem is a particularly emotional issue for most Israelis, I outlined a scheme whereby Israel could legitimately annex Jerusalem, leaving Gaza and the rest of the West Bank for an independent Palestinian state. (The key here would be for the Palestinians in East Jerusalem to ratify the annexation, which would only happen if Israel assumed its best behavior toward them -- a win-win scenario as far as I'm concerned, although before any such thing happened you'd hear a lot about "the third holiest city in Islam" and all that.)

As I was reading Kai Bird's Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978, I flashed on another even more indulgent scheme. Bird makes a big point about how the conflict would have been reduced had the Palestinians succeeded in deposing King Hussein and turning Jordan into the Palestinian state -- he sees this as a major missed opportunity, given that before 1967 and even after Jordan had a Palestinian majority and that the Hashemite monarchy was nothing more than a British invention later subsidized by the CIA. Lots of prominent Israelis had toyed with the Jordan = New Palestine idea, although they usually wanted it both ways -- a nominal Palestinian state still ruled by trusty old King Hussein. But one reason they never went through with this scheme is that deep down Israel can't abide the existence of a Palestinian state: any such state would memorialize the original sin of Israel's creation. So how about this: Israel turns Gaza over to Egypt as an UN mandate; Egypt assumes responsibility for security and holds the international pursestrings to rebuild Gaza, but otherwise allows Gaza to be run as an autonomous UN-certified democracy; Gaza would in the future (say, ten years) have the option of an independence referendum, but in the meantime Egypt also offers Gazans (including Palestinian refugees) citizenship, freedom to resettle in Egypt, and all such rights as Egyptian citizens have (such as they are). Egypt isn't obligated to become more democratic, although that would be a welcome direction. This way Israel relinquishes its occupation without establishing a Palestinian state. Same thing with Jordan and the West Bank, although it's less clear where Israel draws the borderline -- what is clear is that it will be Israel drawing the border -- perhaps along its notorious "security fence."

So would that be acceptable? Israel would gain a small amount of critical territory, and would get rid of a large number of Palestinians. The resulting Israel could be more equitable and less beligerent, or not. Israel wouldn't be assured of immediate recognition as with the Saudi/Arab League Green Line proposal, but would be in a better position to work those out. Israel already has working security relationships with both Egypt and Jordan, and Egypt has a proven track record of helping Israel to pen up Gaza. One would have to insist that any Palestinians living on land that Israel kept be given full and meaningful citizenship rights. Also that the refugees be given compensation, since they are otherwise screwed -- not that they aren't now anyway. Maybe you could insist on some protocols for dealing with border incidents and acts of terrorism -- which must, by the way, include Israel's assassination networks. Something should be done about Lebanon and Syria. The former is easily resolved by returning Shaba Farms and the Lebanese prisoners Israel holds hostage; the latter involves a more substantial piece of real estate and its watershed. (Perhaps the answer there is for Israel to purchase most of the land and water; Syria would obtain a lot of badly needed cash and get off of America's shit list.)

Or maybe Israel's right insists on keeping all of the West Bank, in which case an acceptable deal would have to safeguard Palestinian rights within a democratic Israel. This is tougher because it gets deeper into Israel's knitting, but there has to be some quid pro quo to get everyone to agree that we have a solution, and that international recognition -- basically the removal of Israel's pariah state stain -- is what Israel stands to gain. For instance, with the Palestinians satisfied, the conflict with Iran -- its alleged nuclear threat, the thing that Israel is supposedly so dreadfully worried over -- goes away.

I can't pretend that these proposals are any better than lots of other proposals. Were I a Zionist, I'm pretty sure that I'd think that the Arab League two-state proposal would be a damn good deal: in particular, there's no need to quibble and no chance of ill feelings if you simply accept the other side's offer. It would allow Israel to go right on being the paranoid racist state it has become yet would extricate itself from a state of perpetual debilitating conflict. Not being a Zionist, and being committed to justice, I'm inclined to be more generous: I'd prefer a secular, multicultural state providing generous support for resettling as many refugees as want to return. And if I were an Arab, I'd support a Law of Return, which inside Israel is a symbol of national discrimination, but outside of Israel undercuts the logic and imputed necessity of an exclusive Jewish national homeland. But the fact is I'd settle for almost anything that reduces conflict and allows all parties to live with respect and dignity.

The best solutions are based on things that at least in principle we can all agree on: equality, human rights, dignity, freedom. The more you carve out special exceptions to universal rights, the more trouble you cause, the more people you leave behind, the more resentment builds. Agreements may be dictated by relative power, but effective agreements are built on mutual respect. If Israel wanted to solve its conflict it would take pains to make its offer as generous as possible, to bind in as much consensus as possible. That hasn't happened for reasons deeply embedded in its national psyche -- Israel has trained itself to trust only its own power, so it sees any compromise as debilitating, and therefore they never offer any solution. Still, everyone else in the world needs to see this conflict come to some sort of resolution. (The Palestinians have offered all kinds of proposals, adjusting them as they grow weary and find force to be useless, but they are never deemed acceptable because they refuse to compromise on the basic issue of dignity; they are left with the one thing Israel cannot take from them, the ability to refuse surrender.) So we're left here, mulling over not just solutions that would do right but all sorts of hackneyed notions that while distasteful might ultimately be considered not so intolerable.

Israel's right has successfully managed to derail the common "two-state solution" that Americans (including Clinton, Obama, and even Bush) fancy, so when they do float a conceivable idea -- anything involving full citizen rights is at least conceivably workable -- it's worth taking seriously, probably not as a coherent proposal but at least as opening a door that until now has remained rigidly shut.

Paul Woodward: One state/two states: rethinking Israel and Palestine: Another vector moving in this same direction, quoting Abu-Zayda on his thinking why the "two states" dogma has become counterproductive. One irony is that it was only a year or two ago when Alan Dershowitz declared that any talk about "one state" should axiomatically be discarded as a non-starter; now we find several scattered instances of people arguing the exact opposite: that "two state" talk is nothing more than a formula for extending the conflict endlessly. (Which, by the way, does seem to be Dershowitz's agenda.)

I've collected a good selection of quotes from Kai Bird's Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 (2010, Scribners) on the book page. It's a rather idiosyncratic book in several respects: the personal interest breaks with the usual sense of balance, although the final third synthesizes balance in a rather unique way; the time frame essentially ignores the last 30 years -- the wars in Lebanon, the Intifada, the Oslo Accords, Ariel Sharon -- which by now is most of what you know about the conflict. (The PFLP hijackings in the 1970s are prominently featured in the book, but compared to the suicide bombings of the Al-Aqsa Intifada seem almost quaint.) On the other hand one tends to forget how tenaciously belligerent Ben-Gurion was, or how poorly King Hussein served the Palestinian cause that he occasionally gave lip service to. Even in working in his wife's family's holocaust stories, Bird sticks with the particulars and avoids generalizations.

Paul Woodward: 100,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews rally in Jerusalem in support of segregation: Israel takes umbrage when accused of practicing Apartheid, but this story doesn't have anything to do with separation from Arabs -- that's a "fact on the ground" especially in the settlements -- or maintaining separate schools for boys and girls, which seems to be settled practice at least for the ultra-Orthodox. The desire here is to spare Ashkenazi Jews from having to study alongside Sephardi Jews. This is a social prejudice that has existed since the early days of Independence as Ben-Gurion organized Sephardic immigration as a way of bolstering the Jewish majority. (Sandy Tolan's The Lemon Tree has a bit on this.) Still, I would have expected the effect to lessen over time as Israel turned into a "melting pot" (for Jews, anyway), so this story comes as a shock. What I think this shows is that once you build a nation based on one group's superiority and prerogatives over others, you set up a pattern that reproduces that prejudice fractally. Here we see the conflict eating up the masters as well as the slaves. One more data point that shows how far Israeli have regressed from the egalitarian beliefs of the diaspora.

Rich Cohen: Israel: My lost hero: Author of a revealing if somewhat sloppy history not just of Israel but of all of Judaism, Israel Is Real, weighs in on the Gaza Flotilla -- actually, on the occasion of, since nothing more than the timing of the piece has anything to do with Palestinian human rights. What makes the piece noteworthy is the disconnect it shows between American Jews who support Israel and the real Israel they have no grasp of. Consider Cohen's solution:

When it comes to specifics, I suggest a two-step, a double move. Keep the blockade, but make it more traditional, with every Gaza-bound ship stopped, boarded and inspected, and a foreign observer present as a witness. That's Step 1. Step 2, the big one: Israel should unilaterally draw its eastern border, the lack of which has been the cause of much confusion, much trouble. It should follow the green line with adjustment -- because that border was itself the product of the 1948 war, thus provisional; because that border, which left Israel less than seven miles wide at its narrow point, not only endangered the country in the event of war, but actually provoked conflict. (The target was too tempting; Israelis called it the Auschwitz border.) In return for any land taken, Israel should swap its own land east of Gaza, thickening that pinched house of pain. This much has been discussed, even agreed on. Here's where I diverge: Since the withdrawal from Gaza resulted in rockets on Sderot and since any withdrawal from the West Bank would surely result in rockets on Tel Aviv, Israel should pull out its settlements and settlers but leave its bases and soldiers. In other words, return the region to the status quo that existed an hour after the cease-fire that ended the Six Day War, when it seemed, for a moment, the conflict would finally be resolved.

In the meantime, the IDF would hold the territory in trust for the Palestinian government that will rise to govern it in a sane and sensible way. In this way, Israel can circle back to the place where the high road was lost. Israel is worth fighting for, the territories are not.

Where to begin? Israel's 7-mile-wide waist never provoked a conflict, unless you're saying it was a reason Israel expanded the 1967 war to seize the West Bank. In 1948 Jordan respected the UN partition boundaries except for the "international" area around Jerusalem, which Israel was grabbing. Israelis will tell you that while Israel preëmptively attacked Egypt and Syria in 1967, they didn't go after the West Bank until Jordan shot first, but it was a pretty token effort on Jordan's part, like Hussein was waving them in. Only some Israelis ever referred to the 1948 armistice line (the Green Line) as "Auschwitz borders" -- mostly Menachem Begin, who used "Auschwitz" as an all purpose expletive for everything he disapproved of.

But that's just a quibble. There are two much bigger problems in Cohen's proposal. One is that withdrawing your settlers while leaving the IDF in the West Bank wouldn't secure anything. All it does is leave the onus of occupation intact, and therefore begs for armed resistance. We know this because this is exactly what Israel did in southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, when Ehud Barak finally realized that sitting around offering themselves as targets in a country that hated them but that they had no special interest in was an utter waste. When Israel leaves the occupied territories, they simply have to let them be. Israel can use diplomacy to press its security concerns, and Israel can threaten to blow the Palestinians to smithereens if they misbehave, but they can't leave a bunch of soldiers behind to go through people's bags and keep them from importing cilantro.

An even bigger problem is that half or more of all Jews in Israel, unlike Cohen and most American Jews, are unwilling to give up their settlements in Samaria and Judea or pretty much any square inch of Jerusalem or the security umbrella they have erected over the several million Palestinians they regard as squatting on their land. (As long as Israel occupies that land, Jews can seize it whenever Palestinians can be nudged aside, or preferably abroad.) Cohen may be as willing to fight for his idea of Israel as Israeli Jews are for theirs, but the difference between Little Israel and Big Israel is huge: it is literally the difference between peace now and conflict forever, because Big Israel is stuck with all those pesky Palestinians, who can't be absorbed by the Jewish State because they aren't Jewish, where all Little Israel has to do is to accept a deal that's already on the table and bring their people back home.

Moreover, the disconnect is not just about land. It's about the value of peace. American Jews live in peace, in a land of great wealth and opportunity and few hardships, so they put a high value on peace. Israeli Jews live in perpetual war, but they've convinced themselves that it's not only the natural state of being a Jew, they think the conflict has made them stronger and more virtuous: in other words, they thrive on war; conflict is what brings them together and makes them great, and now you want them to give that up, to give up their dominance, their superiority, and the land that God gave them, the land that they won with their blood, for what? For peace?

Of course, not every Jew in Israel is so in love with the conflict or with the land. Some would be happy to back out of the occupied territories. Some would like to do business with neighboring countries, and some just want as much distance between themselves and the Arabs as possible. Some may be tired of living in a garrison state, and some may be annoyed by the privileges given the Orthodox to maintain unity. A large number of Israelis have already voted with their feet, entering (or returning to) the diaspora where they can live in peace and relative normalcy. The problem is that Israeli Jews who might be inclined to go along with a peace deal have been consistently undercut from two critical sources: the political right, who have found foolproof ways to make demagoguery work, and from America, where this disconnect lets us give Israel unconditional support while pretending Israel's ideals are the same as our own, even though they clearly are not. (Of course, I'm talking about US liberals here, many but by no means all Jewish. US conservatives have their own reasons to love Israel: neocons envy Israeli military prowess, while evangelical Christians are looking forward to Armageddon.)

The problem with Cohen's proposal, and with dozens more or less like it from pro-Israel US liberals, isn't that you can't refine it into something that will work. Lots of things could work -- the big advantage of the 1967 borders proposal is that accepting it bypasses a whole lot of potentially complicating haggling. The problem is that Cohen's proposal, or for that matter anything realistic that gets Palestinians with some patch of land out from under Israel's thumb, cannot bring Israel to the table, because Israel -- especially ruled by Benjamin Netanyahu, but really we've seen the same problem with Olmert, Sharon, Barak, Peres, Rabin, Shamir, Begin, and possibly earlier -- doesn't want peace, certainly not on any terms that acknowledge and respect Palestinian rights.

So Cohen's proposal, like all the others, gets us nothing. Israel can always nitpick, find some distraction, and depend on their supporters not to break ranks. Inside Israel this is business as usual: as Moshe Dayan put it long ago, "the Americans give us arms, money, and advice; we take the arms and money, and ignore the advice." As long as this seems to be working, no force within Israel is going to change what they view as a winning strategy. The one thing that might make a difference would be for Israel's American allies to break ranks, to recognize that the Netanyahu government has betrayed their hopes and ideals, and to insist that the US stop subsidizing Israel's programs of perpetual conflict.

Of course, Israelis might sink into an even deeper, more paranoid funk if the US were to shun Israel's most belligerent and unjust policies, but why should Israel cling to fantasies when the conflict can so easily be resolved. The fact is that Israel has won virtually everything they set out to win. They significantly expanded the UN Partition borders, adding West Galilee, Haifa, and West Jerusalem to what was already a disproportionately large slice of Mandatory Palestine, and they drove into exile most of the native population, ensuring a large Jewish majority. Those 1949-67 borders, along with the permanent existence of the Jewish State, are universally recognized now, and no one seriously expects the refugees and their progeny to repatriate to Israel. The neighboring Arab states that fought Israel in wars from 1948 to 1973 have been tamed and quiescent, and no longer even fantasize of attacking Israel. Some have signed peace treaties with Israel, and the rest have offered to do so once the conflict with the Palestinians has been resolved. The main Palestinian parties -- Fatah and Hamas -- have shifted focus from armed resistance to ordinary politicking, signifying their will to work within a normal political system. There is, in short, no existential threat to Israel, hardly any security threat at all. The settlements are, as intended, a problem, but a little good will can sort them out: some are best dismantled, but the larger ones could be transitioned to Palestine like Hong Kong was to China, far enough into a more benign future that both sides can plan around. And while the refugees can't return to Israel, something needs to be done to move them out of their "temporary" camps and into permanent homes. If Israel was willing, the world would pitch in to help. The conflict began in the wake of WWII and was thrust upon the UN in its early days -- a first and most fateful failure, one the organization, and the world, has never gotten over.

I suppose you could credit Cohen for addressing his proposals to the only people who can do something about it: the Israelis. But I don't see how reiterating their myths and misconceptions, let alone piling on the flattery, helps. The only thing that seems to strike a chord is shame.

Only adding to my analysis above, Paul Woodward reports these testimonies from Israelis:

In a different voice: a letter from Israel: From Ronen Shamir, a professor of sociology and law at Tel Aviv University:

The truth must be said: The present-day Israeli regime is not interested in peace. The Israeli establishment has become prisoner to an ever growing public of Jewish fanatics -- informed by messianic visions of Greater Israel -- who over the years not only irreversibly settled in the occupied West Bank, with state funding, but have also penetrated the ranks of army officers, the civil service and the government. The outcome is that the current Israeli regime is firmly grounded in a religiously guided, ultranationalist and xenophobic worldview, one which is bound to bring calamity to the whole region, including Israel.

Israel's greatest loss: its moral imagination: Henry Siegman.

That intelligent and moral people, whether German or Israeli, can convince themselves of such absurdities (a disease that also afflicts much of the Arab world) is the enigma that goes to the heart of the mystery of how even the most civilized societies can so quickly shed their most cherished values and regress to the most primitive impulses toward the Other, without even being aware they have done so. It must surely have something to do with a deliberate repression of the moral imagination that enables people to identify with the Other's plight.

Are Israel's battles costing the country its soul? Ehud Eiran, a major in the IDF reserves:

It is not only the spread of moral insensitivity I fear. As Dean Acheson observed, there's something worse than immoral policy: erroneous policy. The apparent inability of Israeli leaders to connect our goals and our means puts the country in long-term jeopardy. Our most profound problem is that 130 years after young Zionists began immigrating to Palestine with the hope of creating a safe place for Jews, we're still relying on force to secure our existence. Ironically, more Jews have been killed since 1945 in this "safe haven" than in any other place. A future Iranian nuclear device, which may be hard to stop if Israel can't muster international support more effectively, will take this Zionist failure to new lows.

The Iran reference is another instance of appealing to Israelis by conceding their myths. I thought about mentioning Iran among the list of Israel's minor threats, but in the end couldn't take it even that seriously. A nuclear-armed Iran might cramp Israel's style, or more importantly America's style, in that it would caution against such frequent sabre-ratting as Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech and the neocon quips about "real men" looking past Baghdad to Tehran, but both Israel and the US have highly credible nuclear deterrents, and Iran (unlike Saddam Hussein's Iraq) has never shown any military aggressiveness (although they do have a knack for annoying the US and Israel). It is rather more likely that Iran is just looking for its own deterrent against US and/or Israeli attack, and that desire would wane if the threat were to subside.

Paul Woodward: Israel's national psychosis: Long quote from Anshel Pfeffer, writing in Haaretz. Key point:

None of Israel's arguments -- that the members of the Turkish relief organization IHH were actually murderous jihadis, that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, that Israel was prepared to allow the cargo to go through its own port and that the blockade is justified as the only way to keep more missiles from reaching Hamas -- would have been any more persuasive. Not because they were badly presented or inaccurate, but simply because moral people around the world see almost everything that happens in the region as a result of a deeply immoral situation that the Israeli leadership and the great majority of the Israeli public is doing nothing whatsoever to change.

But then, the Israeli public doesn't see any problem with what Israel does because they've been so trained to obsess on their own hyped up threats. Moreover, this training goes way, way back. The most striking thing about Tom Segev's 1967 is the extreme disjuncture between the cockiness of Israel's military commanders and the dread of Israel's public -- a split that persists even though for decades now the IDF and Mossad have cocked up nearly everything they've attempted, and the threats to the Israeli public are barely more than desperate acts of symbolic defiance. (When you think about it, suicide bombers are a pathetic form of warfare. The rockets that Hezbollah foolishly thought might deter an Israeli attack on Lebanon did even less damage, and the toy rockets fired from Gaza are little more than ploys to remind Israel that there are people locked behind the walls. The number of Israelis killed or injured is infinitesimal, but more importantis that if you look at the chronology you'll find that virtually all attacks on Israel are responses to Israeli attacks on Palestinians and Lebanon, and that during the few periods when there were honest ceasefires there were virtually no such attacks.)

Gal Beckerman: Gaza flotilla fiasco: A Rorschach test for American Jews: One of our local Israeli spokesmen has been circulating this piece, which implies that reaction to the Flotilla event was simply a matter of predeliction:

As the sun rose on the day following the so-called Freedom Flotilla's attempt to breach the Israeli blockade of Gaza, the American Jewish Committee had already sent out an e-mail blast touting its narrative of the bloody denouement that took place. An hour later came talking points from the Jewish Federations of North America.

A succinct storyline had been established even before all the details of the raid that left nine of the activists dead had become clear. [ . . . ]

Here was one more Rorschach test for an American Jewry that has become increasingly factionalized when it comes to Israel, viewing every situation through its various preconceptions on the left and right. Either Israel was beyond reproach and acting in self-defense, or the incident highlighted a growing unease with the blockade itself, which one group of progressive rabbis called "the overall context of oppression."

At one end of the spectrum, the American Jewish establishment heeded the call of the Israeli government to defend its actions in the face of an extremely negative public relations storm.

The author only surveyed the other end of the spectrum as far as J Street, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, and Peter Beinart, but that was far enough to make the point. It is true that people interpret the Flotilla event according to the framework they've already formed, which may hinge on Israel's precarious perch in a region that is deeply hostile to it, or may recognize the massive injustice that Israel's expulsion and occupation have imposed on the Palestinian people. It is also true that your opinion is unlikely to change at this point just because Israel kills some protesters, if only for the pedestrian reason that Israel has been killing off its so-called enemies for decades now -- and increasingly targeting nonviolent protesters.

For more on the spin, see Glenn Greenwald: How Israeli propaganda shaped U.S. media coverage of the flotilla attack.

Matthew Yglesias: Collective Punishment in Gaza: This is the essential background for understanding not what happened with the Flotilla but why the Flotilla was necessary. Quotes Janine Zacharia: "Originally, Israel hoped the closure would put enough pressure on the local economy that Gazans would grow frustrated and oust Hamas." You know, the same strategy the US has used to such fine effect with North Korea, Cuba, and (until we came up with a worse strategy) Iraq, although it should never be forgotten that Israel learned the basics of collective punishment from Britain in the colonial period:

This policy of collective punishment is so indefensible that, as Peter Beinart notes, people inclined to support Israeli policy generally deny that this is what the policy is. Instead, they describe the blockade as some kind of narrow effort to prevent arms smuggling. But this simply isn't what's going on. The objective is to make life in Gaza miserable, while avoiding something newsworthy like a famine.

Beinart's piece is called Israel's Indefensible Behavior. Yglesias quotes this little gem from Beinart:

When Israeli farmers have surplus supply, they seek loopholes for the goods they wish to sell. Israeli officials allow Gazans to import Israeli products, but not the materials necessary to make those products themselves, since that would threaten Israel's hold on the Gazan market. As the Israeli human-rights group Gisha has noted, Gazans can buy Israeli-made tomato paste, but cannot buy the empty cans necessary to preserve and market their own, which would compete with Israeli suppliers.

I suppose that's kind of like Kansas farmers wanting to sell surplus wheat to Cuba, but even before the embargo Israeli business interests used Israel's control of Gaza (and the West Bank) for all sorts of corrupt and debilitating schemes. Yglesias merely summarized Beinart's conclusion, but it bears repeating:

The Gaza embargo -- as currently constituted -- is indefensible, which is why Israel's American supporters have not so much defended it as pretended it was something other than what it really is. In the name of solidarity, we have practiced denial. In the name of anti-terrorism, we have justified the brutalization of innocents. Now all of us who enabled Israel's callous, reckless policy are reaping what we sowed. Don't blame the Israeli commandos for what happened yesterday on the high seas; blame us.

I should add that Beinart deserves to use we/us there. He seems to have shifted his views, a rare instance of someone being moved past their predelictions by the growing realization of what Israel has done. Even if most people respond as predicted to the Rorschach test, at least some people see something they hadn't expected, and adjust accordingly.

Lawrence of Cyberia: Putting Names to Faces: Pictures and short bits of information on the nine Flotilla members shot to death by Israeli soldiers. All are Turkish, although Furkan Dogan was born in the US so is an American citizen. You may or may not relate, but it is certain that this is being taken very hard in Turkey, which until very recently had been a treasured ally of Israel.

MJ Rosenberg: Associate Editor of The Jewish Week: Torpedo the Next Flotilla, "Just Sink It": Quotes Jonathan Mark:

Next flotilla -- just sink it. Torpedo it. See how many more flotillas follow. The condemnation won't be any different. But you'll stop seeing cowardly western leftists signing up to sail with the terrorists, and you may even dent the number of terrorists who'll want to sail, and you'll see less ship owners willing to lose their boats. Better that than even one more Jew being injured while boarding these floating Jenins.

Mark goes on: "We might as well take out Iran as take out the flotilla." It must be lovely to live in an imaginary world where you can project all of your frustrations into acts of violence with no care or consequences, even for your immortal soul.

Max Blumenthal: The Flotilla Raid Was Not "Bungled." The IDF Detailed Its Violent Strategy in Advance: Some details about Israel's planning, including:

Why didn't Israel's leaders choose to deal with the flotilla in a more judicious fashion? Were they that stupid, or just crazy? From the details of the plan it appears that Netanyahu and his cohorts had envisioned Entebbe Part Deux, a daring anti-terror raid that would lift the sinking morale of the Israeli public while intimidating Iran and the Arab world. Though Israel may be more isolated than ever as a result of the massacre, the Netanyahu administration is reaping considerable political benefits at home.

The day after the massacre, spontaneous celebrations broke out in Ashdod, Tel Aviv, and throughout the country, bringing together right-wing elements with everyday Israelis. Over a thousand Israelis gathered tonight outside the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv to rally against the Turkish government and express their support for the raid. Multiple demonstrators including one man who has lived in Israel for 60 years told me, "What Turkey [the sponsor of the Mavi Marmara boat] has done is great. I have never seen this country more united in my entire life. We are all standing together now."

Nice touch that the leader of Israel's command squad was nicknamed "Cheney." As it turns out, that could just as well have been in honor of Liz Cheney, who had this to say:

Yesterday, President Obama said the Israeli action to stop the flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip was "tragic." What is truly tragic is that President Obama is perpetuating Israel's enemies' version of events. [ . . . ]

President Obama is contributing to the isolation of Israel, and sending a clear signal to the Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis that their methods for ostracizing Israel will succeed, and will be met by no resistance from America.

There is no middle ground here. Either the United States stands with the people of Israel in the war against radical Islamic terrorism or we are providing encouragement to Israel's enemies -- and our own.

Funny thing is I thought he was just parroting Israel's party line. Must be another Rorschach test.

UPDATE: I was all set to post the above on Friday, June 4, when my account was disabled. Of course, given that this was my fourth straight Israel post, my first thought was that I was being muzzled. I finally got the account opened up and rebuilt on Monday, June 7, at which point I was able to post this. Some more things have happened in the interim (not that I've been able to pay much attention). The straggling Irish boat, the MV Rachel Corrie, was also hijacked by Israel's navy, this time without any casualties. I don't feel like doing a fifth Israel post, but recommend the following recent links:

• Sandy Tolan: Israel and the psychology of "never again": Basic psychological background, even if it isn't exhaustive (e.g., no mention of "Auschwitz borders," a term Israeli polticians have used to describe the Green Line). One line that could be explore further: "This psychology is not lost on Palestinians, who experience its impact."
• Tony Karon: What the Gaza Flotilla Tells Us About the Future of the Mideast: Mostly that the US is out of touch and increasingly irrelevant.
• Paul Woodward: "All I saw in Israel was cowards with guns": A statement from Ken O'Keefe, who was on the Mavi Marmara when it was hijacked by Israeli commandos, on his treatment in Israel: "While in Israeli custody I, along with everyone else was subjected to endless abuse and flagrant acts of disrespect. Women and elderly were physically and mentally assaulted. Access to food and water and toilets was denied. Dogs were used against us, we ourselves were treated like dogs. We were exposed to direct sun in stress positions while hand cuffed to the point of losing circulation of blood in our hands. We were lied to incessantly, in fact I am awed at the routineness and comfort in their ability to lie, it is remarkable really. We were abused in just about every way imaginable and I myself was beaten and choked to the point of blacking out . . . and I was beaten again while in my cell." O'Keefe seems like someone particularly good at pissing Israeli guards off, so I doubt if his treatment was anything like as universal as he suggests, but it still sounds like a gruesome abuse of power.
• Alex Pareene: Right wing wins Helen Thomas' scalp: As usual, it took some effort of wading through posts and dispatches raving about what Thomas said before I found anything like an actual quote, and even here all we get is a link to a youtube video that has been edited to obscure the context and make her look like some kind of Holocaust denier. At first all she says is that Jews should leave Palestine, presumably the Occupied Territories, and "go home" -- which could mean Israel but she is only taped as mentioning Germany, Poland, and the US. There are several gotcha there, which may mean she doesn't understand some points, may mean she got edited, or may mean that given recent Israeli outrages she gave up on standing on ceremony. Everyone slips up now and then, but only some people on some issues lose their jobs over it. Also see Gabriel Winant: The right's Helen Thomas hypocrisy.

MJ Rosenberg: Lying About the Gaza Flotilla Disaster: One of the better pieces out, especially about the spin cycle, but also with some background about life, such as it is, in Gaza these days.

Glenn Greenwald: The Israeli flotilla attack: victimhood, aggression and tribalism: More on the spin, especially how effective it has become in the mainstream press and in Washington political circles. Some of it is even breathing down Greenwald's neck:

I can't express how many emails I've received over the last week, from self-identified Jewish readers (almost exclusively), along the lines of: I'm a true progressive, agree with you on virtually every issue, but hate your views on Israel. When it comes to Israel, we see the same mindset from otherwise admirable Jewish progressives such as Anthony Weiner, Jerry Nadler, Eliot Spitzer, Alan Grayson, and (after a brief stint of deviation) Barney Frank. On this one issue, they magically abandon their opposition to military attacks on civilians, their defense of weaker groups being bullied and occupied by far stronger factions, their belief that unilateral military attacks are unjustified, and suddenly find common cause with Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard, and the Bush administration in justifying even the most heinous Israeli crimes of aggression.

In one sense I'm not surprised by the ease with which Washington fell into line: the obsession with destroying Hamas has, ever since the elections they won, been primarily an American -- i.e., a Bush and Elliott Abrams -- affair, based on the neocon faith that Hamas is a key target of the Global War on Terror, and on the visceral belief most conservatives have in force. That doesn't explain everyone who snapped to salute the Israeli flag, but it's a big piece of the background: lots of Americans like that Israel used excessive force. That an American is one of the dead won't faze them. They can think of lots of Americans they'd like to see dead.

Joe Conason: Why Israel should have known better: Mostly quotes Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, blaming Israel's "siege mentality" for the losing grip on reality. There is something to this, but it's mostly the result of the way Netanyahu and Lieberman have locked themselves into a position that makes it impossible to do anything constructive or ameliorating.

Naomi Klein: Blinding the witness: Not related to the Flotilla incident, an American woman attending a protest in the West Bank was shot in the face with a tear gas projectile, putting out her eye. This is one of a long list of cases where Israel has responded violently to peaceful protests, and actually more typical than the Flotilla incident.

Jerry Haber: George W Obama and the Israeli Spin Machine in America: Ouch! Lots of people have observed that Obama has maintained an unseemly lot of continuity with the previous administration -- you know, the one he campaigned so hard to "change" -- but this name merger has to hurt. In words and tone, I think it is clear that Obama wanted at least to change course from Bush, but in practice he has utterly failed to do so, and now we even see the words and tone reverting to previous form. He runs the risk of exonerating Bush, not of being the worst president in American history but of having done so of his own free will. If Obama can't change course, maybe Bush too was just a helpless passenger on a deranged ship of state.

Haber writes:

My fear is that Obama sees the Flotilla business as one of his "distractions," something to get by in order to advance the peace process. Well, Mr. Obama, THERE IS NO PEACE PROCESS NOR WILL THERE EVER BE ONE IN THE CURRENT CONSTELLATION OF PARTIES. It is past time to say that human rights of the Gazans trump peace; that holding those rights hostage to a never-ending process, in which absolutely no progress has been made, is a scandal.

In a subsequent post, Haber quotes arch-hawk Moshe Arens as proposing that Israel simply annex "Judea and Samaria" and make the Palestinians living there Israeli citizens. (Presumably this also means occupied Jerusalem and Golan Heights, which have already been annexed, although without any extension of Israeli citizenship, but not Gaza.) Doing so would increase the Muslim minority in Israel to 30 percent, which would still allow a proportional democracy to maintain all the trappings of a Jewish State. It also isn't clear that this would immediately mean equal rights: in 1951 Israel officially granted citizenship to the Palestinians who stayed within its borders, but kept them under military rule until 1967. Nor would it necessarily mean independence for Gaza, but Arens wants no part of it, and keeping it under siege isn't a viable solution to anything.

Arens' solution won't make many Palestinian leaders happy, and as such will most likely extend the conflict but at a much lower level -- whereas an Israeli withdrawal to 1967 borders has been signed off by pretty much everyone significant who's had a beef with Israel: the Arab League, Iran, Hezbollah, Fateh, Hamas. The only source of terrorism left would be Israel's own settlers, which is a big one. I'd try to smooth them over by providing long-term (30-50 year) leasebacks of settlements to Israel, for which Israel would pay increasing rents. But for someone like Arens, holding that ground satisfies the settlers and feels like victory. Moreover, it gives Israel's security forces something to keep doing, and it's not like they really care whether the Arabs or Iran recognize them; what does matter is keeping the US and Europe more/less on their side, and they can likely sell such a solution there.

I'm personally sympathetic to such a deal. I've said all along the necessary solution is that everyone enjoys equal rights in whatever country they live in. A Gaza-only Palestine wouldn't be much of a country, but it would be a big improvement over the last 43 years (or for that matter, much longer). Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem might be better off in their own country, but as a minority within Israel they'd be plugged into a much more affluent economy. Sure, they'd start at the bottom, and the political system would be stacked against them, but both factors would mitigate over time -- probably faster than has been the case within Israel if the conflict is truly defused. It could be done Gaza-first, and might be simpler that way.

One thing that I think should be emphasized is that the present Gaza crisis is the direct result of the US decision not to recognize that Hamas won the last round of Palestinian Authority elections. The US (meaning Bush, or more specifically Elliott Abrams) then lined up Israel and Europe to overturn the elections, including a coup in Gaza which backfired leaving Hamas in sole control on the ground in Gaza (but, alas, not of the airspace or borders). Hamas had won for the simple reason that Fateh had failed ever since Oslo in 1994 to negotiate a final status treaty with Israel, something that was almost entirely Israel's fault. If Israel truly wanted to reduce the influence and popularity of Hamas, they could do so easily by cutting a real deal with Fateh. Instead, they've enacted the cruel fantasy of trying to break Hamas by starving Gaza, and thus far the US and Europe have played along. Obama's weakness may keep US support subverient, but Europe is showing signs of getting fed up with this whole runaround. (I generally lament any loss of the political left, but the Tory win in the UK sure looks like an improvement -- for the world, if not necessarily inside Britain.)

In any case, I think now is the time to put as much pressure on Israel as possible to break Gaza free. It's an interim step, but a necessary one.

Stephen M Walt: Israel's latest brutal blunder: Reaction is coming in to Israel's hijacking of the Free Gaza Flotilla, which reports now say resulted in nine deaths of protesters on a Turkish ship (down from reports of 16-19 deaths yesterday). Walt's first question was "What could Israel's leaders have been thinking?" Then:

My second question is: "Will the Obama administration show some backbone on this issue, and go beyond the usual mealy-mouthed statements that U.S. presidents usually make when Israel acts foolishly and dangerously?" President Obama likes to talk a lot about our wonderful American values, and his shiny new National Security Strategy says "we must always seek to uphold these values not just when it is easy, but when it is hard." The same document also talks about a "rule-based international order," and says "America's commitment to the rule of law is fundamental to our efforts to build an international order that is capable of confronting the emerging challenges of the 21st century."

Well if that is true, here is an excellent opportunity for Obama to prove that he means what he says. Attacking a humanitarian aid mission certainly isn't consistent with American values -- even when that aid mission is engaged in the provocative act of challenging a blockade -- and doing so in international waters is a direct violation of international law. Of course, it would be politically difficult for the administration to take a principled stand with midterm elections looming, but our values and commitment to the rule of law aren't worth much if a president will sacrifice them just to win votes. [ . . . ]

In short, unless the Obama administration demonstrates just how angry and appalled it is by this foolish act, and unless the U.S. reaction has some real teeth in it, other states will rightly see Washington as irretrievably weak and hypocritical. And Obama's Cairo speech -- which was entitled "A New Beginning" -- will be guaranteed a prominent place in the Hall of Fame of Empty Rhetoric.

I'm not aware of Obama or anyone in his administration rising to this challenge in a principled way. Meanwhile, the spin cycle is running at gale force, and seems to be rallying the pro-Israel hawks in the US without having much effect anywhere else. Again this shows how out of step the US remains with world opinion, even with Obama replacing Bush.

Paul Woodward: It's up to Obama whether the siege of Gaza continues: Echoes Walt's concerns, including a long quote.

Paul Woodward: The Mavi Marmara and the Exodus -- May 31, 2010 and July 18, 1947: Strange thing how Palestinian history keeps recapitulating Jewish history -- the Holocaust and the Nakba, the elevation of terrorists like Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat to statesmen (admittedly, not very good ones), and now the return of the Exodus. Admittedly, the Palestinians keep coming up with weaker and more flawed symbols, but the main lines are remarkably similar. Given the way Israel turned out, this is a cycle someone needs to break.

Rev. Michael Poage wrote a letter about this incident that seems about right -- some friends passed it on to me:

In the middle of the night, May 31, the Israeli Defense Forces launched an attack by sea and air on an international flotilla of six ships carrying humanitarian aid for the 1.5 million people imprisoned within the Gaza Strip. This attack occurred in international waters. The death toll as this letter is written is 19 civilian peace-makers. The six ships carried hundreds of peace-makers representing over 50 nations, 10,000 tons of aid, and a determination to end the illegal blockade. What took place on May 31 was a continuation of the punitive violence against the mostly Palestinian population in Gaza. The United States needs to do more than just "regret" the deaths or ask Mr. Netanyahu to "get the facts." The U.S. needs to joint the international OUTCRY against Israel's actions, recall the U.S. ambassador to Israel, send the Israeli ambassador back to Tel Aviv, end the $3 billion in aid that helped pay for the weapons used to kill the peace-makers, and join in sanctions against the state of Israel. It is past time that Israel be removed from "favored-nation" status and that the U.S. join the international community in holding Israel accountable for its violence and disregard for human rights.

Poage went to Egypt and Jordan last winter to participate in an international protest in Gaza, but was denied entry by Israel and its Egyptian allies, so he must have a sense of déjà vu. My reaction at the time was that maybe the BDS (boycott, divest, and sanctions) movement should expand its target list to include Egypt. The most interesting and promising reaction to Israel's hijacking has been demonstrations in Cairo against Egypt's collaboration in starving Gaza, and the reports that Egypt has at least partially opened its border to Gaza. Egypt can at least take the blockade off the table if it decides to stand up to the US and Israel on the issue.

Sure, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was meant to provoke a reaction from Israel. Few if any actually thought that Israel would stand aside and allow humanitarian aid to directly flow from Europe to the barricaded patch of ground that serves as an open air prison to 1.5 million Palestinians. Had Israel failed to stop the flotilla they would have surrendered their goal to reduce the Palestinians to "an utterly defeated people." Why they feel so strongly that their security depends on Palestinian misery is something of a mystery.

When Israel dismantled their settlements in Gaza in 2005 one might have thought that they were breaking their links, allowing Gaza at least -- the West Bank and Jerusalem were still tangled webs of Israeli settlements and reduced Palestinian enclaves -- to exist as a rump Palestinian state. But Israel continued to maintain its control over Gaza's borders, and with the absence of Israeli settlements started using sonic booms to terrorize the population -- something they ultimately discontinued as it was still annoying to nearby Israeli towns. In 2006 and 2008 Israel sent troops into Gaza, and frequently in between they bombed and/or shelled the territory. Throughout they've used their control over the borders to restrict trade and aid.

Now they've not only hijacked the flotilla, they killed 16 (or so) people in the process. Israel has developed a nasty habit of killing peaceful protesters, but this has usually occurred in isolated incidents before -- Rachel Corrie is the most famous. It's rarely clear whether such incidents are sloppy mistakes or a deliberate tactic to intimidate would-be protesters, but either way it has a chilling and scarifying effect.

Paul Woodward has been covering this story at War in Context. Some (by no means all) of his posts:

• May 25: Freedom Flotilla carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid to Gaza.
• May 26: Israel: ineffective siege of Gaza must not be broken: "Israel has vandalized Gaza in every possible way in a calculated effort to try and drive this society rip itself apart -- to disarm Hamas by making Gaza implode."
• May 28: Israel's botched propaganda on life in Gaza.
• May 28: Masked Israeli commandos ready to capture Gaza-bound human rights activists: "Israeli foreign ministry spokesmen Yigal Palmor told the Wall Street Journal that in dealing with the Freedom Flotilla, Israel faces the choice of either looking stupid or like brutes -- or like pirates!"
• May 29: EU Calls for immediate end to Israel's siege of Gaza.
• May 30: Masked Israeli gunmen ready to hijack Freedom Flotilla.
• May 30: Gaza flotilla drives Israel into a sea of stupidity: link and quote to Gideon Levy.
• May 30: Israeli navy approaching Freedom Flotilla.
• May 31: Up to 16 killed in Freedom Flotilla massacre.
• May 31: Ehud Barak blames the victims of Israeli violence.
• May 31: Facing armed attack in international waters: "In the eyes of much of the world, this was a massacre, the dead will be seen as martyrs, and the moral bankruptcy of the Jewish state revealed in sharper clarity than ever before."

Some further comments:

• Helena Cobban: Flotilla: Israel's customary lethality now changes everything: "The Freedom Flotilla organized by an international group of nonviolence activists and humanitarians has all along pursued textbook rules of nonviolent action. In particular they allowed their ships to be inspected by governments before they took them to sea, they continually announced their intention of taking the humanitarian supplies to Gaza, and they worked hard to make their action as visible as possible. None of that stopped Israel from using deadly violence against them."
• Juan Cole: Israeli Commandos Kill as Many as 10-16 Aid Activits, wound over 50 as they Board, Capture Gaza Aid Flotilla: "As I noted early last week, the World Health Organization vigorously contests Israeli officials' protestations that their siege of Gaza lets through enough food and materiel. In fact, there is widespread unemployment, poverty, lack of medicine and medical equipment, and hunger in Gaza, and 10 percent of residents (a majority of them children) are physically stunted from malnutrition."
• Glenn Greenwald: Israel attacks aid ship, kills at least 10 civilians: "It is appropriate that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with President Obama on Tuesday in Washington, because -- as always -- it is only American protection of Israel that permits the Israelis to engage in conduct like this. [ . . . ] So complete is the devotion of the U.S. Congress to the mission of serving and protecting Israel that it even overwhelmingly condemned the Goldstone report, which found that Israel and Hamas had both committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity during the Israeli attack on Gaza." And: "Regarding the blockade of Gaza itself -- about which 'Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister [said when it was first imposed]: "The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger"'." And: "What's so odd about that is that the U.S. has been spending a fair amount of time recently condemning exactly such acts as 'piracy' and demanding 'that those who commit acts of piracy are held accountable for their crimes.' When exactly did Isarel acquire the right not only to rule over Gaza and the West Bank, but international waters as well? Their rights as sovereign are expanding faster than the BP oil spill."
• Richard Silverstein: Free Gaza Flotilla: Turkish Ship Attacked, Ten Killed by Israeli Navy: A lot of updates as the story unfolds. Also: Demand Obama Cancel Tuesday Meeting with Bibi, EU Nations Summoning Ambassadors Home in Protest.
• Jerry Haber: The Attack on the Free Gaza Flotilla: "In order to have a humanitarian crisis, you have to consider people human. Israel for a long time has treated Gazans as animals that ought to be kept alive because Israelis are not cruel to animals. The Israelis will recite the daily totals of humanitarian aid that they let in (which, of course, they don't pay a penny for.) The jailer considers himself a "humanitarian" if he lets the inmates eat. So, as animals, the Gazans are allowed to eat. But humans need more than food in order to be human."

Admittedly, these links come from the usual suspects -- the first places I've come to trust on this issue. I did run across one site, Elder of Ziyon, with a vast stream of free-spinning posts like Free Gaza lies caused the deaths, which argues:

Because the IDF foolishly believed them, they dropped onto the Turkish ship armed with just riot-dispersal paint guns, plus personal handguns as a last resort.

And they fell into a well-planned ambush. [ . . . ]

I do not know if Free Gaza knew that the Turkish Islamist ship would do what it did. Clearly they are supporting the violence after the fact.

Even this spin is meaningless if you don't accept the right of Israel to blockade and starve Gaza. It may well be that Palestinian political leaders would react negatively to carving Gaza off as an independent state, but that is the least that should be done, and that is something that could be done very easily now (or could have been done very easily in 2005 when Sharon dismantled the Gaza settlements). That would still leave a big mess in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but it would end the siege and strangulation of Gaza, international attempts to break it, and Israel's bloody defense of a stance which is indefensible legally or morally.

Peter Beinart: The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment: The intended subject here is the growing disconnect between younger, secular-leaning Jews in America (and most likely in the rest of the Diaspora) from Israel, as opposed to the reflexive identification and intensive support the older generation. A lot of things factor into this, but the big one is that it's become harder and harder to whitewash Israel's illiberalism. The most useful part of this is Beinart's survey of Israel's internal political dialogue, which has evolved from the chauvinistic variant of socialism of Mapam and Mapai to the militarism and virulent anti-Arab racism of Likud and other parties vying to see which can be the most demagogic.

The situation strikes me as far more chilling than Beinart concedes: he maintains that there is still an ideological divide within Israel, with a "liberal-democratic Zionism" struggling against the demagogues, but he carves the cake so carefully he includes Netanyahu's Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, among the more enlightened. Still, he writes:

Israeli governments come and go, but the Netanyahu coalition is the product of frightening, long-term trends in Israeli society: an ultra-Orthodox population that is increasing dramatically, a settler movement that is growing more radical and more entrenched in the Israeli bureaucracy and army, and a Russian immigrant community that is particularly prone to anti-Arab racism. In 2009, a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 53 percent of Jewish Israelis (and 77 percent of recent immigrants from the former USSR) support encouraging Arabs to leave the country. Attitudes are worst among Israel's young. When Israeli high schools held mock elections last year, Lieberman won. This March, a poll found that 56 percent of Jewish Israeli high school students -- and more than 80 percent of religious Jewish high school students -- would deny Israeli Arabs the right to be elected to the Knesset. An education ministry official called the survey "a huge warning signal in light of the strengthening trends of extremist views among the youth."

Actually, the real disconnect isn't between young American Jews chosing their liberalism (or radicalism) over their parents' allegiance to Israel, but within their parents who still try to pretend that the Israel they love is a nation worthy of their support. One of the most annoying things about Israel's defenders in America is how they keep advancing claims about Israel's democracy, liberalism, desire for peace, hopes to end the occupation, advocacy of a Palestinian state, etc., when Israel's actual policy and behavior is utterly opposed. Beinart touches on this a bit, but Stephen Walt brings this out more clearly in this comment:

[Beinart] writes that "the heads of AIPAC and the Presidents' Conference should ask themselves what Israel's leaders would have to do or say to make them scream 'no.' After all, [Avigdor] Lieberman is foreign minister, Effi Eitam [who openly favors ethnic cleansing in the West Bank] is touring American universities, settlements are growing at triple the rate of the Israeli population; half of Israeli Jewish high school students want Arabs barred from the Knesset. If the line has not yet been crossed, where is the line?"

It's an excellent question, but Beinart does not answer it and he should. Nor does he say what policies he would advocate once Israel crossed his red lines (wherever they are). In subsequent interviews, in fact, he has acknowledged the tension between his own liberal convictions and his Zionist beliefs, and said that he is willing to compromise the former (somewhat) in order to preserve the latter. He ought to say more, however: Just how far is he willing to sacrifice the one to preserve the other? More importantly, he does not tell us where he stands on the "special relationship"; nor does he identify the circumstances, if any, where he would recommend that the United States either distance itself from Israel or put strong pressure on it to change its policies.

It's clear that the need to maintain U.S. support has often acted as a moderator on Israel's policies: withdrawing from the Sinai in 1956, accepting cease-fires in the 1967 and 1973 wars, backing down from their intervention in Lebanon in 1978, agreeing to return the Sinai to Egypt in the 1979 accords, refraining from attacking Iraq in 1991, completing Sharon's cynical withdrawal from Gaza, and (most likely) holding off from bombing Iran today. On the other hand, the assurance of U.S. support has encouraged Israel to adventurism, as in the 1982 and 2006 invasions of Lebanon. Given this, it's natural to wonder whether a serious U.S. effort at resolving this conflict wouldn't work. But it's never been tried, in large part because the major Jewish lobbies in the U.S., which could give a well-meaning president some room to maneuver, have never asserted any independent views -- rather, they've always insisted on giving Israel a blank check, which has had the effect of indulging Israel's far right. (Admittedly, the neocons had their own reason for favoring Israel's far right, so a president under their influence, like the second Bush, was pleased with the blank check approach.)

One more small point that Beinart brings up but doesn't do much with. He points out that while secular-leaning Jews in America have deserted Israel, orthodox Jews have increasingly embraced Israel, and often very militantly. This is actually a huge shift, given that orthodox Jews have traditionally been anti-Zionist. The trend here seems to be following that in Israel, where the most militant settlers have come out of Rabbi Kook's Gush Emunim to form a new and distinctly more reactionary religious nationalism, one that has increasingly since 1967 held Israel's polity hostage. Their numbers have always been so small that they were easy to discount, but their impact has been profound, not just in the political arena but through such violent acts as the assassination of Rabin and the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre -- the latter the act of an American-born settler, Baruch Goldstein, now widely revered on Israel's far right. Those two acts are widely acknowledged to be the turning points against the Oslo Accords, which is to say that they were more/less responsible for extending the conflict 15 (and counting) years. No doubt Beinart and most liberal Zionists consider them atrocities, but we still have to ask, where is the backlash against such atrocities? What AIPAC et al. have insisted is that Israel bear no consequences for these or any other acts undertaken directly or in its name. That such hypocrisy has lost the allegiance of many younger Jews is unsurprising. What is scandalous is that it still commands obeissance from virtually all American politicians, not least Barack Obama.

Reading a lot today about how we should remember those who died in defense of freedom. Thinking, in particular, of Rachel Corrie.

Harold Bloom: The Jewish Question: British Anti-Semitism: Who knew that the greatest existential threat to Israel isn't the dead-ender Palestinians or the fanatical Iranian ayatollahs or even Barack Hussein Obama; it's the British intelligentsia, who carry on the anti-semitic wiles of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dickens. Bloom figured this out while reviewing an 811 pp. book by Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England, which he praises effusively:

With a training both literary and legal, Julius is well prepared for the immensity of his task. He is a truth-teller, and authentic enough to stand against the English literary and academic establishment, which essentially opposes the right of the state of Israel to exist, while indulging in the humbuggery that its anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. [ . . . ]

Early in this book, Julius links anti-Semitism to sadism. He might have done even more with this, since sado­masochism is something of an English vice, and is so much a school-experience of the upper social class. And yet his chapter on "The Mentality of Modern English Anti-Semitism" shrewdly relates bullying to the puzzle of what appears to be an incessant prejudice, never to be dispelled.

At his frequent best, Julius refreshes by a mordant tonality, as when he catalogs the types of English anti-Semites. The height of his argument comes where his book will be most controversial: his comprehensive account of the newest English anti-Semitism.

To protest the policies of the Israeli government actually can be regarded as true philo-Semitism, but to disallow the existence of the Jewish state is another matter. Of the nearly 200 recognized nation-states in the world today, something like at least half are more reprehensible than even the worst aspects of Israel's policy toward the Palestinians. A curious blindness informs the shifting standards of current English anti-Zionism.

I admire Julius for the level tone with which he discusses this sanctimonious intelligentsia, who really will not rest until Israel is destroyed.

I end by wondering at the extraordinary moral strength of Anthony Julius. He concludes by observing: "Anti-Semitism is a sewer." As he has shown, the genteel and self-righteous "new anti-Semitism" of so many English academic and literary contemporaries emanates from that immemorial stench.

[Emphasis added.] This may be the worst book review I've ever read: gushy in its praise while at the same time hijacking the book to push a personal agenda, which among other things makes a big deal on how little anti-Semitism (ergo anti-Zionism) Bloom finds by contrast in his own American intelligentsia -- let's not omit the intro paragraph:

Anthony Julius has written a strong, somber book on an appalling subject: the long squalor of Jew-hatred in a supposedly enlightened, humane, liberal society. My first, personal, reflection is to give thanks that my own father, who migrated from Odessa, Russia, to London, had the sense, after sojourning there, to continue on to New York City.

I don't doubt that one can write 821 pp. on the long history of British anti-semitism going back (at least) to the explusion of 1290, but it seems silly that Bloom, let alone Julius, should spend so much print rehashing Merchant of Venice. The problem is sorting out the British philo-semites and anti-semites (and wacko millenarians like David Lloyd George) who teamed up to sponsor Israel and imbue it with the stink of British Imperialism. It wouldn't surprise me to find that most of today's British intellectuals have reservations about Israel, and indeed about imperialism in general, but I would be surprised to find them as unanimous as Bloom paints them to be: while many have turned against Britain's imperial legacy, if not for what it did to the world at least for what it did to Britain, there are more than a few imperial apologists still operating -- e.g., Niall Ferguson, or less reputably Tony Blair.

The one thing I get from Bloom's obsession is that efforts to boycott Israel are striking that old existential nerve. That sounds good to me, not because I want to destroy Israel but because the only way I can see to get them to change their ways is to shun and shame them. Bloom may be satisfied to think of Israel as no worse than a middling corrupt dictatorship, but he's looking at reality through blinders: to see Israel as a tolerable militarist security state it helps to think no one matters but the eternally oppressed Jews -- least of all the Palestinians.

Ira Chernus: What Price for Israel and Palestine?: It's slowly dawning on Americans of most political stripes that blank check American support for Israel is getting expensive not to mention eternally frustrating. Netanyahu, and most Israelis, see no downside in turning their noses up at Obama, or even Bush. They like their war, their sense of power over the Palestinians, their blind faith that as long as they never give in they can go on thinking they're winning. There's lots here you no doubt know already, but this quote is worth focusing on:

Columnist Shmuel Rosner, hardly a dove, predicts that if Obama "signaled that Israel could no longer take unconditional US support for granted, Mr. Netanyahu's domestic support would quickly evaporate." Again, perhaps no more than a strong signal with a hint of real muscle behind it could get a genuine peace process rolling.

The only move Israel ever made toward peace was when they came up with Oslo as an alternative to the Bush-Baker pressure behind the Madrid conference. That was a rare, almost singular, instance of the US making it clear that its support wasn't unconditional. Clinton backed down repeatedly, in the end helping Barak scuttle Oslo, and Bush did no better (and often worse). Obama at least seems to recognize that there are American interests demanding compromise between Israel and the Palestinians but he has yet to put any muscle behind those interests. Had he done so, it seems likely that Netanyahu's fractious coalition would have cracked, but with no pressure Netanyahu has had a free ride.

Still, we should be clear on one point: even if the US were to withdraw all political, economic, and military support, that would in no way threaten or imperil Israel's existence. All it would do is to force recognition of Israel's status as a pariah state -- a state dedicated to a class/race system that subjects a significant minority of its people to human rights abuses few if any other nations accept or support. There's no reason to think that Israel cannot continue on its own indefinitely. No other nation is a threat to Israel. The only force that can change Israel is its own citizenry.

Paul Woodward: Apartheid Inside Israel: Actually, just a link to Jonathan Cook, but Woodward supplied a better headline. One thing few Americans realize is how effective Israel has been at segregating the million-plus non-Jewish Palestinians living within the Green Line who are nominal citizens of Israel. I don't know precisely how to rate their cage against South African apartheid or Dixie Jim Crow, but it's roughly of that same order: a tolerance with a minimal set of rights within a framework of ad hoc violence and systemic disregard. Even if Israel were to withdraw from the Occupied Territories tomorrow, Israel would still possess a two tier social and political system. When people accuse Israel of implementing Apartheid, they generally think of the West Bank where Palestinians have no rights, where the settlers have all but free reign, where the military system of justice is stacked. The occupation is, if anything, far worse than Apartheid. There is no analogous descriptor because what Israel has done there is largely unprecedented.

Most of the world would consider the conflict ended with an agreement to split off a free and independent Palestinian state in most or all of the 22% of the Palestine Mandate extending beyond the pre-1967 Green Line. That would indeed be welcome, but it would still leave Palestinians in Israel as a despised minority within Israel proper. Without the larger conflict, that problem may heal itself in time, but it's deeply burned into the Israeli psyche: isn't the whole point of the Jewish State to lord it over the goyim? Otherwise, a solution that should prove fair and stable in short course would be to join the Occupied Territories to Israel, grant full citizenship to the Palestinians, and invite the Palestinian diaspora to come back to their ancestral homes by expanding the Jewish-only Law of Return, all done within a constitutional framework that protects the rights of all citizens. The result would likely be a small Palestinian demographic majority, which would flip state power while leaving a Jewish minority in current control of most of the economy. This would turn Israel/Palestine into a country like Malaysia, with is economically dominant Chinese minority and a Malay majority that uses state power to catch up without unduly hampering the Chinese. Such a state would quickly end the apartheid that currently pervades Israel.

While writing the above, I time-sliced doing some book notice research, and came across this review of Bernard Avishai's The Hebrew Republic: How Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel to Peace at Last (2008, Houghton Mifflin):

Determining who is properly Jewish is not so much the question -- though it is a question -- as who is Israeli, and until that question is resolved there will be continued troubles, Avishai predicts. There are more divisions to address. Avishai identifies not 12 but five tribes of Israel, each comprising about 20 percent of the electorate: the Ashkenazim Jews of mostly European descent, the North African Mizrahi Jews, the "hypereducated" and "hypersecular" Russian Jews, the "ultranationalist" and "theocratic" Orthodox Jews and, finally, the Israeli Arabs. The first four tribes are afraid of the fifth, Avishai writes, while "Tribe Three hates Four, condescends to Two, and doubts One; Two hates One, resents Three and (for different reasons) Four; One is afraid of Two, patronizes Three, and hates Four; Four hates One, proselytizes Two, and is afraid of Three." Given such conditions -- and given that Four disproportionately manages to pull down about 40 percent of the vote -- it seems unlikely that concord can ever be reached, but Avishai sees hope in measures whereby the Arab population is brought into full citizenship, Israel's economy grows in the global market and a country is built "where people say they are Israeli," not Jewish.

This tribal split echoes Richard Ben Cramer's How Israel Lost: The Four Questions (2004, Simon & Schuster), still I think the single best book on how the conflict turned hopeless. I can't find much reason to expect that Israeli Arabs will come to rescue Israeli secularism. It seemed to me that the tide turned when Barak preferred a minority government over forming a majority coalition with Arab parties, and that was more than a decade ago, before all the hatred poured out first in response to the Al-Aqsa Intifada, then because Israeli force failed to resolve the conflict in any fundamental way, and finally as Israel has sunk further and further into the mire of being recognized as a pariah state.

One way Israel resembles the Jim Crow South -- a subject I know a lot more about than Apartheid South Africa -- is that while is is possible to identify scattered individuals who didn't accept the prevailing racial orthodoxy, it is impossible to find actual political parties, or even factions, that can advance the cause of civil rights. The US Civil Rights movement succeeded not by persuading local political forces to change but by convincing the broader nation that change was necessary and could only happen with strong federal support. Israel, as an independent nation, doesn't have a higher power internally to turn it around. About the closest thing Israel has is the United States, which has thus far proven to be a poor conscience. (In fact, the neocons, the dominant is US foreign policy for most of the Bush years, took a prurient delight in Israel's militant approach to all of its problems.)

On the other hand, there is at least one major reason to be even more pessimistic about Israel's chances to reform itself than the South Africa or the US South: in both of the latter, blacks were critical to an economy that was based heavily on their cheap labor; in Israel Palestinian labor has been almost completely excluded from the economy, which eliminates basic forms of leverage like strikes.

Update: One day later, Paul Woodward followed up with another post, titled The World Is Sick of Israel. Title comes from a quoted piece by Akiva Eldar, which catches the moment reasonably well:

On Sunday, however, the Arab League marked the eighth anniversary of its peace proposals, which offer Israel normalization in exchange for an end to the occupation and an agreed solution to the refugee problem, in accordance with UN Resolution 194. But Israel behaves as if it had never heard of this historic initiative. For the last year, it was too busy realizing its dubious right to establish an illegal settlement in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, turning a blind eye to reality, has tried to persuade the world that what applies to Tel Aviv also applies to Sheikh Jarrah. He simply refuses to see that the world is sick of us. It's easier for him to focus on his similarly nearsighted followers in AIPAC. Tonight they'll all swear "Next year in rebuilt Jerusalem" -- including the construction in Ramat Shlomo, of course. [ . . . ]

The Quartet declared that it was backing the plan, proposed in August 2009, to establish a Palestinian state within 24 months. This was an expression of the Palestinians' serious commitment that the state have a just and proper government and be a responsible neighbor. This means Israel has less than a year and a half to come to an agreement with the Palestinians on the permanent borders, Jerusalem and the refugees. If the Palestinians stick to Fayyad's path, in August 2011, the international community, led by the United States, can be expected to recognize the West Bank and East Jerusalem as an independent country occupied by a foreign power. Will Netanyahu still be trying to explain that Jerusalem isn't a settlement?

A recent article had a quote from Gen. Mark Dayton, who has been training PA (meaning Fatah) security forces to act as dutiful agents, pointing out that his efforts were undertaken in the expectation of a Palestinian state within two years. He added something to the effect that the "shelf life" of this training is limited, dependent on actually going through with the promised state building.

Paul Woodward: Netanyahu -- Disgraced, Isolated, and Weaker: The title comes from an Aluf Benn article in Haaretz. In case you hadn't noticed, Israeli PM Netanyahu came to Washington this week to speak to what he clearly regards as the real power in the US: his lobby, AIPAC. A couple weeks back he timed the announcement of a new block of Jewish settlements in in Jerusalem to greet VP Joe Biden's arrival, figuring that would be a nice way to curtail Biden's aim to restart some kind of talks between Israeli and PA President Emeritus Mahmoud Abbas. (His term has expired, but since his party lost the last elections Israel and the US are in no hurry to expose him to another referendum.) That in itself was something between clueless bad taste and a direct insult. (At the time there was a lot of huff in Israel that it was Obama who insulted Israel by sending Biden instead of coming in person. On the other hand, you can understand that Obama had better things to do, especially if you've seen Max Blumenthal's video of drunken Israelis threatening Obama, and/or recall that Israel's security units hasn't actually had all that good of a record protecting Israeli Prime Ministers from gun-toting Israeli settlers.)

In his AIPAC speech, Netanyahu again defied Obama's wishes that Israel negotiate in good faith, defending the settlements and vowing that he will never give in on East Jerusalem, or much of anything else. Afterwards, he dropped by the White House, where Obama met with him but, well, read the report. I don't expect that Netanyahu will take hints this subtle. He has, after all, built his whole career on wrecking any chance for peaceful settlement. Which means that if Obama is determined, he is going to have to find tougher ways of impressing on Israel that failure to resolve the conflict only makes Israel more of a pariah state -- even, or perhaps especially, in American eyes. That's happening slowly, which gives Obama an in: a deal such as he wants would be a better way to serve Israel long term than to continue down Netanyahu's road. Seeing that through requires some real toughness, but so does facing Netanyahu down at the White House, and for that matter passing his big health care reform bill after all the times it's been written off.

Tony Karon: Truth and Consequences in the Middle East: A good rundown of what's happened over the last few weeks as Obama has finally started to toughen up his administration's stance toward Netanyahu, in the context of what Israel has always done:

Israel's leaders, and its voters, have amply demonstrated that they will not voluntarily relinquish control of the Palestinian territories as long as there are no real consequences for maintaining the status quo. Sure, you can tell them that the status quo is untenable, but the whole history of Israel from the 1920s onward has been about transforming the impossible into the inevitable by changing the facts on the ground. Building settlements on occupied territory in violation of international law after 1967 seemed untenable at the time; today, the U.S. government says Israel will keep most of those major settlement blocs in any two-state solution. It is precisely in line with this sort of improvisational logic that Sharon calculated he could hold on to the settlements of the West Bank if he gave up the settlements of Gaza; the same logic allows Netanyahu to say the words "two states for two peoples" while always winking at his base that he has no intention of allowing it to happen.

Stephen M Walt: Who Are Israel's True Friends? (Hint: It's Not AIPAC): Israel's settlement policy was always conceived of as a poison pill: a way to make it impossible for any weak, jingoistic politician to back down an inch and settle the conflict. Rabin couldn't do it. Barak couldn't do it. Sharon didn't want to. Netanyahu, twice now, at best tried to fake it, but he's lashed himself to a government that's not only poisoned but addicted to it. The disgrace is almost total. Some people like Steven Zunes have been calling for a "tough love" approach to Israel for years, but most Americans professing love for Israel managed to look the other way. It's getting harder and harder to do that. When you start to see the likes of Hillary Clinton and Gen. David Petraeus turning on Israel, it's clear that some kind of tide is changing.

Juan Cole: The Map: More background on the map series that Andrew Sullivan cited, linked to yesterday. (Sullivan originally cited Cole.) There are two basic ways to approach the Israel/Palestine conflict. One is to work your way through the history. The other is to screw the history and just look at the current situation. The latter is much simpler and much more clear cut, which is probably why we spend so much time arguing about history. Actually, the history is pretty clear cut too. From early on the Zionists intended to take over as much Palestinian land as possible, eventually erecting a Jewish State -- that was, after all, the title of Theodor Herzl's clarion book -- and drive the Palestinians out or reduce them to "an utterly defeated people." That the Zionists have come so close is an achievement rooted in remarkable discipline and steadfastness, but also in a number of fortuitous turns of history: the Balfour Declaration and the early British administration gave them a strong imperialist sponsor; the Russian Revolution helped separate Jewish nationalists out from both religious and internationalist Jews; the closing of US emigration in 1923 severely reduced options for Jewish emigrés; the rise of Nazism triggered a substantial wave of German Jewish emigrants; WWII and the Holocaust destroyed the fabric of Jewish social life, especially in eastern Europe, and produced a backlash of sympathy the Zionists could (and did) exploit; the Palestinian independence movement was decimated by the British in suppressing the 1937-39 revolt, and neighboring Arab countries were likewise under more/less tight British/French control until well after Israel's 1948 "War of Independence"; Israel was able to parlay a series of foreign sponsors -- the Soviet Union, France, then the United States -- to build up massive military superiority, including nuclear weapons. Going into 1948 Jews were outnumbered 70-30 in Palestine, yet they managed to more than reverse those demographics through a combination of ethnic cleansing and deals to cede limited territories to Transjordan and Egypt. Nonetheless, they were unable to reconcile their quest for land with their loathing of non-Jews in their midst, nor were they finally able to break the Palestinians.

That history leaves us with the current stalemate: a vastly inequal situation where Jewish dominance exposes the utter moral bankruptcy at the root of the whole project. For how that has worked out, skip past the history and look at the current status: who is entitled to do basic things, like travel or build a house or run a business, and who isn't; who is likely to get thrown in jail or assassinated, and who isn't; who is free to vote, has access to the courts for redress of grievances, can demonstrate, and who cannot; who benefits from the social services provided by the state, and who is excluded. There is no justification these days for one group lording it over another group -- not even history excuses such inhumanity.

Juan Cole: Cpl. Jeffrey Goldberg, Guarding the Prison of the Nationalist Mind: OK, Cole gets a bit shrill here. And he's wrong that David Horowitz was as "insufferable" as a leftist way back when as he is as a rightwinger now -- maybe he wasn't the brightest bulb at Ramparts, and his celebration of burning down that Bank of America building was a bad omen (as well as a failed attempt at sarcasm). But he's mostly right here. Still, the thing I find unsettling about Goldberg is that he seems willing to settle the conflict on the two state terms that have been on the table since UNSC Resolution 235 and long since accepted by virtually every Palestinian and Arab party -- in fact, by virtually everyone except Israel -- yet he cannot bring himself to criticize Israel for being the last intransigent holdout. Worse, he uses his own diplomatic stand to shield Israelis who clearly disagree with him from any form of criticism. Moreover, Goldberg's tactic is not at all unusual for US supporters of Israel: most profess their personal desire for a "two-state solution" yet strive to deflect any responsibility for its failure from Israel -- the one country that could make it happen at the drop of a hat.

Trolling through Andrew Sullivan's blog today -- something I don't do all that often -- and found a few items of some interest:

• Blaming America First: First up to attack Obama for getting insulted by Netanyahu are Senators McCain and Lieberman. After the jump, Eric Cantor chimes in, calling the suggestion that Israel should stop its illegal settlement building "beyond irresponsible."
• Chart of the Day: Top (black) line is national health expenditures as percentage of GDP, from 5.2% in 1960 to 17.7% today. Peeling off are projections had previous health care reform plans been passed -- one each for Nixon, Carter, and Clinton. Also shown is the OECD median, which tracks the slope of the reform plots. One thing that's worth noting is that the growth rate was slower for terms of presidents who tried (and failed) to implement reforms, and much faster under presidents (Reagan and the Bushes) who made no effort at all.
• From the Annals of Chutzpah: Quotes Karl Rove on Biden-Netanyahu and other foreign policy matters (he cites Honduras), where he depicts Obama as: "a cowboy president try[ing] to act in an extra-constitutional way to violate a fundamental principle in the Constitution, all without having done their homework in advance."
• Why Beijing and Washington Don't See Eye to Eye on Security: Quotes Evan A Feigenbaum: Why Is U.S.-China Strategic Coordination So Hard?, specifically on how China doesn't feel threatened by situations that scare us silly -- specifically mentioned: Iran, Pakistan, North Korea. I'll add two more reasons: one is that China is less judgmental (and therefore less hypocritical) of other countries; another is that China doesn't have soldiers scattered all over the world. In both respects, the US would be better off learning to chill out, and letting broadly representative international organizations like the WTO and the World Court take over the task of scolding countries that stray from norms. On the other hand, China can get awfully sensitive where its borders are concerned, as we've seen recently in their flap over the Dalai Lama, or with Taiwan.
• The Sanctions Debate: Quotes Lara Friedman: Getting over the sanctions delusion, on why US sanctions hardly ever work -- they punish people without power for the supposed sins of those who have power. Needless to say, further sanctions against Iran fit that same pattern. On the other hand, this argument doesn't mean that sanctions aren't appropriate in cases where they appear to support, and are in turn welcomed and supported by, masses who are oppressed by those in power. South Africa is the classic case where sanctions worked. These arguments don't disqualify Israel as another case. On the other hand, I suspect that the turning point won't be implementing sanctions; it should be sufficient just to tilt the US and Europe against propping up Israel's colonial occupation. The US was very late on South Africa, and never officially implemented any sort of sanctions, but the Afrikaner elites moved quickly once the wind changed. As for Iran, sanctions seem to be a stall tactic for lack of any willingness to actually try to bridge differences.
• Goldblog Splutters: Starts with a series of maps on Palestinian land loss: the first showing actual land ownership split between Palestinians and Jews in 1946; the second the UN Partition Plan split; the third the armistice lines from 1949-67; the fourth only the parts with more/less limited Palestinian Authority are shown. The maps don't quite track the same thing, but the sense of loss is matched in reality. The actual population split in 1946 was about 32% Jewish, but most Jews lived in cities, and the major Zionist effort to purchase lands and establish kibbutzim had run into a wall at about 7% of the total land in Mandatory Palestine. Presumably there are still some splotches of Palestinian-owned land in Israel, especially in the West Galilee which saw relatively few expulsions during the 1948-49 war. The PA has also picked up some former settlement areas in Gaza since 2000. On the other hand, Palestinian control of "Palestinian land" in 2000 was weak under the PA and significantly weakened since 2000 as Sharon and his followers worked to undermine the Oslo accords and with them any vestige of Palestinian sovereignty. Sullivan picked up these maps from Juan Cole and used them in an earlier post, which Jeffrey Goldberg attacked.
• The Much-Delayed Response to Goldblog: An earlier rebuttal of an earlier Jeffrey Goldberg attack.

More pieces here and there on Israel, including a link to a relatively sane one by Goldberg arguing that Obama's plan is to realign Israel's government to produce a more moderate Kadima-Likud coalition instead of the current ultraright Likud-Beiteinu-Shas alignment -- my guess is that the government would fail first, and that Netanyahu is unwilling to join any coalition that would give Obama the satisfaction of even a lame solution. Also lots of pieces on the Vatican's sex crime cover-ups.