Responding to Peter Beinart, part 2

Sar-Shalom

One observation about the responses to Peter Beinart since he released The Crisis of Zionism is that they have not worked. By work, I mean doing more than rallying the faithful to be louder in support of Israel. Rather, working would mean to convince people who think that Beinart's prescription is a path towards achieving peace that in fact Beinart's prescription is one for Israel to sign a new version of the Munich Agreement. I have no idea if my alternate approach would work according to that standard, but at least it has not been shown not to work. My approach is to take Beinart's arguments that sound reasonable if you don't have the requisite background and fill in some information that demonstrates why it is not so reasonable. Others could probably do a better job of marshaling and presenting the facts that expose Beinart's fallacies, but someone has to call attention to that task. The previous post covered four of Beinart's arguments, and I continue here.

• Israel is already a binational state. The only question going forward is whether Israel will be a binational state in which the bulk of one people is disenfranchised or one in which all subjects have a voice in the government.

One fact that Beinart cites elsewhere to support his claim that Israel controls all of the Palestinians between the river and the sea, without actually claiming that Area A/B and Gaza are occupied, is that the IDF is free to enter Area A in order arrest wanted Palestinians. That fact is true. However, Beinart omits the fact for several years the IDF did give up on any right to enter Area A. The result was that the operatives of the Second Intifadah had free rein to prepare their plots. Similarly, Israel only exercises control over what enters Gaza in order to reduce the capacity of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to gain any ability to launch offensive actions against Israel's cities. It is reasonable that Beinart would prefer that the Palestinians should not endure Israel's security measures. However, does Beinart have any suggestions for what Israel can do to ease those security measures that will not be exploited by the Palestinians to launch their terror operations against Israel? Does he accept that just because he can't imagine how the easing of any particular measure would be exploited doesn't mean that the Palestinians will not imagine how to do so? Has he ever consulted with anyone who understands security in order to gain such understanding?

• White South Africans didn’t imagine prior to 1994 that they could live safely under a government that gave an equal voice to black citizens.

For all the Afrikaner propaganda to the contrary prior to 1994, Nelson Mandela never disseminated anything to his followers calling for the Whites not to live in safety after Apartheid ended. While Arafat avoided doing so in front of Western or Israeli audiences, everything his movement teaches its people is that the Jews do not belong in "Filastin" and that one day the Jewish presence there will wind up like the Crusades. While the Palestinians acknowledge to themselves that they do not have the means to do so today, they preach that they are making progress towards doing so.

• Palestinian desire to return to homes in internationally recognized Israel.
• Why is it that American Jews see reading from a prayer book about returning to a place we left 2,000 years ago as perfectly normal but dismiss the desire of those who wish to return to a place they left less than 100 years ago.

While Jews yearn to return to Zion where there was a 2,000 year hiatus of Jewish sovereignty, there is no such Jewish yearning to return to Khazaria or Yemen, where Jews have also exercised sovereignty for an identifiable block of history, let alone to any of the nations of Eastern Europe and the Muslim world where they had been oppressed for centuries. Further, Beinart swallows the Palestinians' narrative hook, line, and sinker about how they originated in what is now Israel and came to leave. Yes, there are Palestinians whose families were there since the 7th centuries and even some who are descendants from Jewish converts who were there for longer. They are the minority. Many of their families did not arrive in Palestine until the 19th century or even until the British Mandate. Some of the Arabs who left during the Independence War were not even born in Palestine. Their attachment to Palestine is because the larger Arab world, in order to have a propaganda point to use against Israel, did not welcome them. Since their cousins only allowed them the identity of "Palestinian," that is the identity they came to adopt.

A further point is that Beinart regularly calls for understanding the narrative of the nakba. However, in order to reconcile that narrative with the truth, it is necessary to assimilate some basic facts. Yes, there were between 500,000 and 700,000 Arabs living in what Israel came to control following the Independence War prior to the war who did not live there afterwards. The Arabs who left were a mixture of those who were evicted by the Israelis, those who left because they heard rumors of Israeli atrocities, those who left because of the Arab League's call to facilitate the annihilation of the Jews, those who left just because they did not want to be in a war zone and thought they had a safe place to go to outside, and those who were evicted by the Arabs. Does Beinart have any sources, besides the Palestinians' say-so, that apportion the emigres into those categories?

• 20% of Israel’s population are Palestinian who will never feel like equal citizens in a Jewish state.

Has Beinart ever spoken to the Arabs of Abu Ghosh? to Gabriel Nadaf? to Ali Salam or Muhammad Zoabi? to the Arabs who have voted for Likud or the committee in the Likud Party that is reaching out to the Israeli-Arab population? Beinart says that we should listen to the Palestinians' voices. Does he mean that we should listen to the voices that support his narrative and ignore everyone else or is he willing to listen to Arabs whose lives are a demonstration that they feel like equal citizens in a Jewish state?

Part 1

The Black Lives Matter blood-libel

Michael Lumish

Jerusalem Post headline: Protesters in Black Lives Matter march demonstrate against Israel in DC

They chanted, "Israel, we know you murder children, too"

Oooh, the blood-libel. It's an oldy but a goody!

Here is a quote from the article written by Marcy Oster:

"The march, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol building, was led by a Harvard student, Christian Tabash, who read a poem about Israel’s crimes against Palestinian Muslims, according to the Examiner. The poem referred to Israel as “puppet master of continents,” an age-old conspiracy theory that Jews run the world."

Yet, we are to believe that BLM, that has called for the murder of cops, is a peaceful organization. A peaceful organization that has defaced synagogues in Los Angeles and that has marched while chanting "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon."

As Yair Rosenberg of Tablet magazine put it:

"Falsely accusing the state founded by Jews in the ashes of their own genocide of committing genocide is, simply put, a blood libel on a national scale. It is a slur against the 6 million Jews in Israel and the vast majority of world Jewry that supports them. That Black Lives Matter would indulge in such ignorant and incendiary claims undermines its standing as an anti-racist organization."

So, yes, despite our anonymous friend's libel against me, personally, Black Lives Matter is unquestionably anti-white, antisemitic, anti-cop, and anti-USA.

They are closely associated with Antifa and the Nation of Islam.

Appreciating nature is now "white"

Michael Lumish

Jonathan Tobin tells us:

"I write in The Federalist: Despite The New York Times’ repetition of the claim that outdoor recreation is a “white activity,” there is nothing intrinsically race-based about enjoying what Muir described as the spiritual elevation one derives from appreciating nature. Regardless of who chooses to visit the parks, John Muir’s idea that preserving nature for future generations is a sacred obligation remains valid. The attempt to superimpose a dubious race-based agenda over the cause of protecting natural wonders from exploitation has little to do with actual racism. It has everything to do with a political fashion that makes leftist groups like the Sierra Club particularly vulnerable to canceling."
.
Lumish says:

Of all the idiocy that has come down the cultural pike in recent years, few could be quite as idiotic as the notion that appreciating nature is "white."

This is where the progressive-left -- also known as Identity Socialism -- has brought us.

Headline: Sierra Club, New York Times Have Decided That Camping And Parks Are Racist

Why would any liberal support Black Lives Matter?

Michael Lumish

It is a blatantly racist and antisemitic organization. 

Sam Edwards, of Canada's The Post Millennial, tells us that Yusra Khogali, BLM Toronto co-founder, wrote that "white" people are subhuman.

Following Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, she wrote:

""melanin directly communicates with cosmic energy.

this is why the indigeneity of all humxnity comes from blackness."

God only knows why she feels it necessary to put an "x" where an "a" should be in the word "humanity." Oh, wait, I forgot that standard English is racist -- as is mathematics within some circles -- and the word "humanity" contains the word "man." Can't have that.

And, really, being black puts one closer to "cosmic energy"?

And high-level politicians and corporate executives support this heinous and violent nonsense?

This woman is not only racist, as is her organization, but she's also a stone-cold idiot.

Headline: BLM Toronto leader believes white people are sub-human, calls them 'genetic defects'

A social media post has resurfaced from a Black Lives Matter Toronto co-founder in which she argues that white people are “sub-human” and are “recessive genetic defects.”

Michael Lumish

Why does it not bother leftists that Muslims in the Middle East continue to deal in, and hold, African slaves?

Responding to Peter Beinart's arguments

Sar Shalom

There have been many deservedly harsh reactions to Peter Beinart's column several weeks ago in the New York Times arguing to turn Israel into a binational state. Some of those attacks on Beinart's conclusions have turned into attacks on Beinart himself. However, understated in those responses (one exception is Elder's response to Beinart's assertion that Palestinians are excluded from the national dialog, but even that does not get at Beinart's case for why the Palestinians deserve to be heard) is any rebuttal to Beinart's case for why a binational state is an appropriate response. While Beinart's column in the Times does not provide much in the way of material to assess what his case is, his appearance on the Times podcast "The Argument" does provide such material.

First some background. "The Argument" is a joint liberal, conservative, moderate discussion series. The liberal position is represented by Michelle Goldberg, the conservative position by Ross Douthat, and the moderate position was originally represented by David Leonhart and is currently represented by Frank Bruni. For Beinart's appearance, Bruni stepped aside leaving Goldberg and Douthat to discuss Beinart's proposal with him.

Attacking Beinart's conclusion without refuting his arguments risks falling into the trap of presenting our case as one of "The nations of the world, including many of the Arab/Muslim nations, have brutally mistreated their Jews over the centuries. This gives us the right to do to the Palestinians what was done to us." Refuting Beinart's arguments would make the case that justifying Israel's actions does not depend on that premise. In order to refute those arguments, it is first necessary to identify them. For that reason, I list them here roughly in the order that I identified them in the transcript of Beinart's appearance. Unless otherwise noted, points listed were made by Beinart.

• Israel is expanding settlements into land that the Palestinians need to build a separate state
• Prior to the 1940s, Zionism did not focus on achieving an independent Jewish state, rather would have been content with a Jewish homeland that would have been a refuge for Jewish people around the world.
• If we can escape the mindset of trauma and see the Palestinians as normal human beings “whose aspirations are not that different from most other peoples,” we will see that equality is not such an existential threat.
• “A fair reading of Palestinian history over the last 100 years suggests that the Palestinian national movement has not been defined by a kind of genocidal intent towards Jews”
• Israel is already a binational state. The only question going forward is whether Israel will be a binational state in which the bulk of one people is disenfranchised or one in which all subjects have a voice in the government.
• White South Africans didn’t imagine prior to 1994 that they could live safely under a government that gave an equal voice to black citizens.
• Palestinian desire to return to homes in internationally recognized Israel.
• Why is it that American Jews see reading from a prayer book about returning to a place we left 2,000 years ago as perfectly normal but dismiss the desire of those who wish to return to a place they left less than 100 years ago.
• 20% of Israel’s population are Palestinian who will never feel like equal citizens in a Jewish state.
• Douthat: Jews have been oppressed and expelled from all parts of the world, including the surrounding Middle Eastern nations. The experience of Christians in the surrounding nations does not inspire confidence. Beinart: We must avoid the danger of ethnic/religious essentialism. Douthat: [No response]
• The result of Israel’s current path will be intifadah after intifadah. Political science research teaches us that oppression breeds the violence that we see.
• Israel was founded on an act of mass population expulsion in 1947 and 1948.
• Christians are leaving Israel-Palestine as much as they are leaving other Middle Eastern states because Christian Palestinians face the same oppression as Muslim Palestinians.
• The Joint List is the Left in Israel today.
• The Palestinian Authority keeps Israel’s cost of occupation low by acting as Israel’s subcontractor.
• First spent time with Palestinians in the early 2000s and was ashamed of what a society he felt so close to was doing to them.
• Palestinians have no recourse because they are not citizens.
• Beinart and Goldberg: American Jews should see the Palestinians’ situation firsthand for themselves.
• Goldberg: Anti-Zionist speech is uniquely repressed suppressed, such as government sanction against the BDS movement. Beinart: When we talk about cancel-culture, we have to start in our own house.

Now to start to respond to those arguments.

• Israel is expanding settlements into land that the Palestinians need to build a separate state

First, the footprint of land taken up by the settlements has not been expanding. Second, the land currently used by those settlements may or may not be necessary for the Palestinians to build a state. The Palestinians have not engaged in much effort to build a state in what has been allocated to them in prior agreements. Their actions are what one would expect their objective was to remove as much land as possible from Jewish control using their lack of a state as justification. If they were to make good faith efforts to build a state on Areas A and B and come up short, that argument would be worth discussing.

• Prior to the 1940s, Zionism did not focus on achieving an independent Jewish state, rather would have been content with a Jewish homeland that would have been a refuge for Jewish people around the world.

Completely irrelevant to our current situation.

• If we can escape the mindset of trauma and see the Palestinians as normal human beings “whose aspirations are not that different from most other peoples,” we will see that equality is not such an existential threat.
• “A fair reading of Palestinian history over the last 100 years suggests that the Palestinian national movement has not been defined by a kind of genocidal intent towards Jews”

To what history of the Palestinian national movement is Beinart referring? Does the Mufti occur in Beinart's Palestinian history? How does Beinart explain Jews sitting down at the Western Wall triggering the Palestinians to go on a rampage in 1929? Does Beinart's Palestinian history include marches in the 1920's where they chanted “Filastin bladna w’al yahud klabna [Palestine is our land and the Jew is our dog?”

Remaining points to be covered in a future post.

Joe Biden Sez

Doodad

'I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith'

I'll say no more. Have at it.

The Crocodile Never Really Eats You Last

Doodad

You all know the old saying based on a Winston Churchill quote: An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. Seldom does the crocodile wait to consume its sycophants. White Hollywood is finding this out.

A revolution is under way. White actors are being fired. Edicts from studio bosses make it clear that only minorities – racial and sexual – can be given jobs.

A new wave of what has been termed by some as anti-white prejudice is causing writers, directors and producers to fear they will never work again. One described the current atmosphere as 'more toxic than Chernobyl', with leading actors afraid to speak out amid concern they will be labelled racist.....

speaking on condition of anonymity, the executive confirmed that the climate is now toxic for any 'white, middle-aged man in showbusiness'. Their careers, 'are pretty much over'. 

They continued: 'We're only hiring people of colour, women or LGBT to write, star, produce, operate the cameras, work in craft services. If you are white, you can't speak out because you will instantly be branded 'racist' or condemned for 'white privilege'.....One Emmy Award-nominated white writer said: 'I've never known people so fearful. Houses are being put up for sale. People are moving out because even when things get back to normal after the pandemic there's going to be no work.'

'It's about fairness,' another writer said. 'I've spent the past three years mentoring young, black writers. But now I'm out of a job and it's nothing to do with my abilities as a writer. People think of Hollywood as a place where dreams come true but for people like me, it's turned into a nightmare.'

I, for one, am LMAO. Everyone with a half functioning brain knows the far left eats its own. I hope the entire Hollywood scene and all related scenes go totally bankrupt. I hope all "woke," businesses that threw in with the evil Marxist brigades, fail, never to return. Darwin rocks.

A neglected element in Holocaust education

Sar Shalom

In teaching about the Holocaust, much emphasis is placed on the horrors, no need to elaborate, perpetrated by the Third Reich regime and the SS officer corps. However, much less, if any, is placed on the measures that the regime used to entice the German population to see what would eventually be done to the Jews as a justifiable reaction to the supposed threat posed by world Jewry. One aspect of this campaign was to start with publicizing incontrovertible unflattering facts about the Jews. These unflattering facts became a gateway drug to accepting half-truths about the Jews which in turn became a gateway drug to accepting total fabrications. Once those total fabrications were accepted as "truth," it became possible to believe that whatever was done to the Jews subsequently was justified punishment for what they supposedly did.

A similar pattern is playing itself out in how the Palestinianists propagandize about Israel's actions as they affect the Palestinians. It is incontrovertible that there is some degree of suffering, albeit considerably less than is claimed among the Palestinianists, among the general Palestinian population and the Israel exercises some degree of influence over how they live their lives. Those facts are the gateway drug for Western do-gooders to believe that when terrorists embed themselves within peaceful marchers demanding return to their homes in internationally recognized Israel and Israel deploys snipers against those terrorists, Israel is using kinetic force against the march for return as a march for return. That in turn is a gateway drug to believing that Israel is opening (nonexistent) dams in the south in order to flood Gaza trains American police departments in all the brutal methods of suppressing minority community.

Update: Many western do-gooders think they are promoting justice by calling for the full force of international opprobrium against Israel in response to her genuine shortcomings, half-truths, and alleged crimes. In actuality, they are following the same process that ordinary Germans followed when they allowed themselves to accept that fabricated allegations were genuine and thus justified what would otherwise be unspeakable allowing today's do-gooders to justify what is a vast overreaction to any bona fide shortcoming of Israel but seems like a proportional response to the monster that is depicted by the half-truths and fabrications.