Thursday, July 18, 2019

The question that we should ask the pols

Sar Shalom

In assessing how candidates for office would affect Israel, we tend to ask either what policies they would enact regarding Israel or whether they consider the Likud Party to be serious about peace. All of the questions along those lines are worthwhile. We do want to know if someone intends to support Israel and what response we can expect to see during the next eruption coming from Hamas and the inevitable collateral damage from Israel's response. However, there is a more fundamental question that should be asked.

That question is "What is the Israeli-Arab conflict about?" The wrong answer to that question is that the conflict is about two peoples desiring the same piece of territory for their homeland. The correct answer is that the conflict is about Arab-Muslim irridentism for the social order that prevailed until the 19th century. This question is fundamental because the answer frames the approach to all the others.

It is possible to correctly identify what the conflict is and still oppose the settlements, and even have some positive words about UNSC 2334. Notably, Einat Wilf who is as strident as anyone in identifying Palestinian irredentism as the root of the conflict calls for the removal of the settlements from all but a small portion of the Jordanian Conquest. However, there are at least two ways Wilf distinguishes herself from the bulk of the western intelligentsia. First, while Wilf opposes settling the land that she views as being for a Palestinian state, she calls for maintenance of the occupation until they abandon that irredentism. Second, Wilf's opposition to Israel's growth past the Green Line is not as doctrinaire as most of the western intelligentsia's. In an essay after UNSC 2334, Wilf wrote:
There is nothing sacrosanct in the 1949 armistice lines, but in the absence of the State of Israel delineating a clear border within the West Bank that puts a final limit on its territorial claims, the Green Line has become the line that distinguishes the kind of Israel that the world is willing to support from the kind that it is not.
What that line might indicate is that Wilf only presses the issue of the Green Line due to the lack of a counteroffer from our side and that she would be open to a counteroffer that leaves a substantial portion of the Jordanian Conquest under Israeli sovereignty while genuinely providing enough land for the Palestinians to establish a state. Those who view the conflict as just two peoples seeking the same territory for their homeland and needing to learn to share would probably be less inclined to compromise over the notion of Jordan's conquest abrogating Jewish rights for eternity than is Wilf.

The one problem with asking what the conflict is about is that for the time being it is unlikely to expose any difference between any of the candidates because I can't identify any candidate who would correctly describe it as Arab-Muslim social order-irredentism. Even Donald Trump would probably describe it as two groups competing for one tract of land, as I doubt that a contrary belief would induce him to seek a "deal of the century." We need to advance reasons why the public should realize that the conflict is about Arab-Muslim irridentism. To be continued.

6 comments:

  1. We should ask them whether it's good for Palestinians to name summer camps after terrorists and whether killing 12 Israeli children + 25 adults was part of "legitimate human struggle" and a "natural human expression that all human laws guarantee." I really want to hear the squad's answers.

    https://twitter.com/palwatch?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1151861885177909250&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Felderofziyon.blogspot.com%2F2019%2F07%2F0718-links-pt1-pa-us-is-racist-and.html

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    1. Which would you prefer to convince the public:

      The Palestinians exhort their children to murder Israeli children in order to obtain a state for themselves, or

      The Palestinians exhort their children to murder Israeli children in order to reinstate the 19th century social order?

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    2. Glad that we agree on that. Now for how to do so, or at least how to assess our progress. Your question viscerally demonstrates how evil the PNM is. However, it only addresses the common first part of both propositions. My question aims identify who is in the first category and who in the second.

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  2. QUESTION:

    "What is the Israeli-Arab conflict about?"

    ANSWER 1:

    Mr. John Rossomando said:

    “[IUMS Trustee Sheikh Hassan Ould] Aldo
    and the [Muslim] Brotherhood use language
    similar to what Hamas used in its original
    charter, which rejected any peaceful coexistence.

    To them, Palestine is part of
    a waqf, a holy Islamic trust,
    that no person can negotiate away.”

    SOURCE: Muslim Brotherhood,
    Hamas: No Peace as Long as Israel Exists

    by Mr. John Rossomando, 2019 July 1
    www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/01/muslim-brotherhood-hamas-no-peace-as-long-as-israel-exists/

    ANSWER 2:

    The Koran teaches that Jews are
    the worst enemies of Muslims.

    The Koran’s 5th chapter, verse 82 says:

    “You will find that the people most
    hostile towards the believers [Muslims]
    are the Jews and the polytheists...”

    ANSWER 3:

    At a [year] 1937 [CE] lecture to the British
    Foreign Ministry, the King of Saudi Arabia said:


    “Verily, the word of Allah teaches us,
    and we implicitly believe this...
    for a Muslim to kill a Jew...
    ensures him immediate entry into Heaven...”

    SOURCE:
    The Holocaust’s Most Vicious Killers
    by Edwin Black, The Jewish Press,
    2011/1/21, pages 1 and 91.

    ANSWER 4:

    Louis René Beres said:

    “For Hamas, the Israeli enemy is more
    than just a geo-strategic opponent.

    It is, rather, a delegated religious target
    slated for annihilation, one whose obligatory
    and violent elimination will confer blessedly
    eternal life upon the Islamic sacrificer”.

    SOURCE: Radical Islam:
    Terrorism as Power Over Death

    by Louis René Beres, 2019 January 3
    www.algemeiner.com/2019/01/03/radical-islam-terrorism-as-power-over-death/

    ANSWER 5:

    “If one or more of the parties knows that peace
    implies the end of its existence, it has no motive
    to return to peace. That is how the radical Islamists
    of Hamas view the future of Muslim society.

    A wealthy and successful Jewish state next to
    a poor and dysfunctional Palestinian state
    may imply the end of the moral authority of Islam,
    and some Palestinians would rather fight to
    the death than embrace such an outcome.

    Rather than consign their children to the
    Western milieu of personal freedom and sexual
    license, radical Muslims will fight to the death.”

    SOURCE: How Civilizations Die
    (chapter Introduction, page xiv) by David P. Goldman,
    year 2011 CE, Regnery Publishing, ISBN 978-1-59698-273-4

    NOTE:
    The Koran requires the "abasement and poverty" of Jews.

    SOURCE: Anti-Semitism in Islam:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Islam

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    1. That just needs to be woven into an easily followed narrative. The facts you post are not in and of themselves what the "conflict" is about. However, they can support a claim as to what the conflict is about. Without a statement as to what the conflict is about, the facts indicate nothing. With such a statement, the facts indicate everything.

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  3. There was no plan/mandate for an Arab controlled entity west of the Jordan River.
    You know, it is interesting to me that friends on the Left were always pointing out about western colonialism that when states were created by those powers and given independence it was done the wrong way, i.e., without regard to the natural tribal divisions - mixing one group with another into some artificial concoction, but somehow, don't ask, "Palestine" was somehow in total contradiction to this rule chock full of nothing but indigenous and authentic Palestinian Arabs, a nation, and Jewish interlopers/usurpers who, of course, should all go back to Poland.

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