Canada Day/4th Of July Thread

Doodad

Well, we are burning up the open thread and that's good so I thought I'd do something a little different. I'm a dual citizen; born American/moved to Canada as a child so I get to celebrate both holidays which are only days apart. This year we are going to the actual local firework display because a well known Canadian Blues Musician is playing: Colin James. And my grand daughter is in Portugal representing Canada in the Dance World Cup so I'll be streaming some of that and generally enjoying the hot weather. Hope your 4th is spectacular!

Canadians have a reputation for being a nice, polite people. Some of that is true as this pic illustrates.

Open Thread

Doodad

The End The Conflation post comments have ranged far afield so it's probably time for an open thread.

End the conflation

Sar Shalom

In the global conventional wisdom, two concepts are tacitly linked when it comes to discussing Israel, even when they are not explicitly stated. The first concept, which is stated explicitly more often, is that the solution is to have "two states," with some speakers explicitly stating "for two peoples" while others either think that is self-evident as to not require explicit statement or are fine with an Arab state and a binational state. The second concept is that the boundary between those two states should resemble the 1949-Armistice Line.

The conflation of those two concepts is manifest in two ways. The most notable way is that whenever Israel does anything beyond her "proper" boundaries, the international pooh-bahs point to that as ipso facto proof that Israel is not interested in ending her "rule" over the Palestinian people, completely oblivious to the possibility that a bona fide Palestinian state containing substantially less than the entire Jordanian conquest would be acceptable to Israel. The second consequence is that many of those with red lines east of the Armistice Line, such as maintaining some form of Jewish presence in and around Hebron, dismiss the notion of a Palestinian state within any borders.

What is needed is to recognize two facts that suggest mutually antagonizing responses. The first is that between the river and the sea, there are more non-Zionists (when you include Arabs in Areas A and B and in internationally recognized Israel and post-Zionist Jews) than there are Zionists. The second is that the origins of the Jewish people are in Judea. The need to provide some means to provide civil and political rights to the Arabs of Areas A and B separate from Israel's polity does not negate Jewish rights in Hebron or say anything about the Jordan Valley. Similarly, the Jewish right maintain security along the Jordan Valley and settle around Hebron does not imply a right to rule over (yes, I am aware that Israel does not currently rule in Areas A and B, but that can change and Israel's control of movement between sections of Area B reduces the meaningfulness of local rule there) the Arabs of Areas A and B without giving them representation.

Open Thread Time Again

Holding A Wolf By The Ear

Doodad

An interesting idiom; one I had never heard before until I came across it in a novel I was reading recently. It struck me that it described perfectly the situation in which Israel finds itself. One does not have to think very hard to see see just how it does.

I found two reference to this idiom. The first, Auribus teneo lupum, is attributed to the Roman  Emperor Tiberius commenting on the dangers that threatened him on every hand in ruling the Roman Empire. The second was Thomas Jefferson discussing 

slavery and the Missouri question/compromise (admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state to keep the balance in Congress between slave and free states). We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

Surely Israel has been holding a wolf by the ear for a long time and to let go, as it eventually must, is fraught with danger.

Now the wolf is a ferocious beast and once you let go it will tear you into pieces. Palestine has been nipping at Israel for a very long time. The solution is to have never have taken hold of that wolf, especially by the ear but I think we know how and why that happened. Nevertheless, it's time to let go.

In my mind, the only way not to get torn to pieces is to kill the wolf before you let go. And I mean this literally. You can't make peace with a wolf. Wolf lovers will call you cruel and insist you got yourself into this mess in the first place and will just have to take your chances or what's coming to you. I say ignore them. Self preservation takes precedent. Kill the wolf soon.