Responding to Volleyboy1

Michael L.

I want to thank Volleyboy1 for dropping by and for giving us his views on the recent Israeli election.

I've known VB for a long time, and in internet years, practically for ever.  So I can say without any equivocation that he has been a true supporter of the Jewish State of Israel, consistently defending her against the unjust charges of bullies and anti-Semitic anti-Zionists.

It is for this reason that I find myself rather surprised to read this:

To that end I cannot continue to advocate for Israel because honestly it is becoming a nation that I cannot agree with.

Volleyboy1 says that he will support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State but for ethical reasons believes he can no longer advocate for it.  Just how one squares that circle may seem a little oblique, but this is something that VB will have to work out in his own way.

Volleyboy1 spent considerable time, yesterday, responding to comments and I appreciate it very much, but I want to limit my remarks to the comment he made linked-to above.

In that comment VB gives four reasons for his unhappiness with Israel. These are:

1 - Lieberman's "head-chopping" remark.

2 - Netanyahu's alleged electoral race-baiting.

3 - The fact that VB thinks that "Netanyahu basically guaranteed a Bi-National State down the road (or the total ethnic cleansing of the Arabs down the road) and for that I cannot forgive him."

4 - He claims that "the Right has and is doing everything to pull the Jewish community apart (as is the Far Left, but they are far less in number and everyone realizes they are just goofy) and make Israel a partisan issue."

I am not going to bother discussing numbers 1 and 4.  Lieberman said what he said and it was both callous and stupid, but I am certain that Volleyboy1 would agree that you do not condemn an entire country because of the dumb statement of one particular politician.

As for number 4, well, the same can just as easily be said for the Left, as VB acknowledges, and because the remark is so subjective and personal there is very little to be said for it.

If people insist upon revisiting this question, we certainly can, but then Obama, himself, will be in for significant criticism for seeking to divide the Jewish community, and not merely in the United States.

This leaves us with numbers 2 and number 3.

The race-baiting charge, I am afraid, has been exceedingly shrill and with precious little backing sources.  All I know, and I will leave it to VB or anyone else to further explore this, is that during the voting Netanyahu apparently said something to the effect that, and I paraphrase, "the Arab List is getting out its people and we need to do so, as well."

It was something quite along those lines, yes?

Talk about "manufactured outrage."

I do not want to dismiss this charge out-of-hand, however, but it will need significant sourcing before it becomes meaningful in any way.

Finally, that leaves us with number three, which is where I believe Volleyboy1 has his strongest case.

There is significant anecdotal evidence - and it is just anecdotal - that Jews, both diaspora and Israeli, are opening themselves to the possibility of the single-state solution.

This is the ideological ground upon which the real fight will take place within the Jewish community in the coming years.

For many years I believed that Israel could be a Jewish state, a democratic state, or a state from the River to the Sea, but that it cannot be all three at once.  There are people, now, mainly from the so-called "right-wing" (whatever that might mean) who are arguing that this need not be the case.  Foremost to my mind are Caroline Glick and her colleague, over at the Jerusalem Post, Martin Sherman.

The case that they make, essentially, is that the demographic "threat" is overblown because Fatah and the PLO inflated the numbers and that a certain percentage of Arabs should be, and will become, naturalized Israeli citizens.

The question is, how many people are we talking about?  Would this mean that Israel would no longer be the national homeland of the Jewish people, because Jews would soon become a minority under a hostile majority population that despises both Zionism and Jews?

I do not think so and this, to my mind, is the discussion that we need to be having.

If Netanyahu is hedging on the creation of a 23rd Arab state to be carved out of the Jewish heartland, who can blame him?  The Palestinian-Arabs are not children and they must live with the foreseeable consequences of their own behavior and decisions.  If their leadership refuses to make peace with the Jews, why in this world would we give them a mighty bite out of our historical homeland for the basis of a terror state against the lone, sole Jewish one?

When "Palestine" superimposes itself upon Judea and Samaria, it will become a magnet for Jihadis.

Much like Gaza, it will exist, from a political standpoint, for the singular purpose of harassing and killing Jews.

The two-state solution will not end the conflict, nor is it intended to.  On the contrary, the purpose of a Palestinian-Arab state is to open up another front of violence within Dar al-Harb, the House of War.

If, on the other hand, Israel incorporates the traditional Jewish heartland into Israel proper, it can take over the educational system and see to it, at least on the level of institutionalized education, that Arab children are no longer raised to despise Jews.

That, in and of itself, would be an amazing accomplishment that would go a very long way toward easing, and eventually ending, the conflict.

But even if a two-state solution made the most sense, how can such a solution possibly be accomplished if the Arabs do not want it?

We cannot force them to accept that which they have, for religious reasons, always found unacceptable.

I therefore favor a resolution grounded in Jewish autonomy.

Any plan that requires Palestinian-Arab cooperation is doomed to failure.

This much has already been proven and we need to understand that it is not up to us.

We cannot accept a two-state solution for them, if they will not have it.

We will have to move forward without a Palestinian-Arab partner and, for the moment, without an American partner, either.

{Thankfully the world is a rather large place and we have more friends than we may realize.}