What The Hell Is This?

With each week, Michigan looks more and more like a flip for Trump. That's a hole in the Blue Wall. If Biden loses Michigan and Pennsylvania, he loses the election (assuming he doesn't somehow take North Carolina). The lack of Democratic attention to college students and young people might finally cost them everything. It only takes a few upset defeats like this to ruin hundreds of millions of American lives. Assuming Trump squeaks out a victory, this would be the third time in 24 years that the winner of the popular vote -always a Democrat- loses the election. The sadness, despair and anger that we have felt since Trump took over the GOP in 2015 is going to become unbearable. How does everyone feel about the Democrats having a tiny majority in the House while Trump and the Senate pack our Federal courts to strengthen GOP minority rule? Won't it be fun? And all because the elders in the Democratic party thought it wasn't worth their time to listen to the needs to young people. Seriously. Leaders like Pelosi thought that young people would be a little upset about Gaza, but they'd get over it and vote in November. As unpopular as Biden is, I think young people would rescue him in November if there wasn't an invasion of Gaza. For now anyway, it appears Biden's embrace of Netanyahu's war crimes is the red line that causes millions of young people to abstain from voting this November. Biden barely had re-election in the bag! Now I am not sure.

Democracy In Israel Is Dying

[The following post is a draft I’ve had since March 2021. Given recent events, I decided to let the draft go up. Stale content, yo.]

Democracy in Israel has been slowly dying since Netanyahu’s first tenure as Prime Minister over 25 years ago. The demise accelerated in 2021.

Israel has an unusual, but not unprecedented, democracy. Millions of people, who live and work in the country, and are subject to its laws and courts, but not graced with civil rights or political equality, find themselves trapped in an anti-democracy. I say that's not unprecedented because there were two other democracies in the 20th century which operated in much the same way. The Republic of South Africa had a vibrant democracy for whites, and brutal oppression for the majority blacks, until the 1990's. And the United States, so proudly the Land of the Free, subjected millions of its citizens of color, to segregation and an American system of apartheid until the mid 1960's.

Because of the occupation, in effect since 1967, Israel has moved farther and farther right, trading its democratic principles for security. As the decades march on, the need to oppress the Palestinians has of course made Israel less and less faithful to its founding ideals. It proves the old cliche, that one cannot keep another enslaved without ultimately enslaving oneself.

So the Israelis have reduced themselves to a miserable choice. For all practical purposes, there is no political left in the country, since leftists inevitably demand justice and equality for the Palestinians. That would put the nation on the road to real democracy, but it would surely end the dream of Israel as a Jewish state. If Israel is to be a Jewish state and not a multi-ethnic nation, it cannot be a true democracy, since that would grant the Palestinians full political and social equality.

The result is the fiction of a two-state solution. No serious student of this question believes that such a "solution" has any chance of coming to fruition. Israel has annexed more and more of the land once thought to be essential to the creation of a viable Palestine. Increasingly, there simply is no there there. And it must be remembered that even if some poor bantustan of a Palestine were somehow to emerge, Israel would never permit it real sovereignty. Palestine would not be allowed to establish a small military, or conduct an independent foreign policy, because such a state could threaten Israeli security.

Israeli politics is now played out on a small and increasingly undemocratic field. It's voters must choose between a center right party, and an extreme right wing coalition. Netanyahu, always just one step ahead of the sheriff, has managed to survive by allying with small, crypto-fascist parties, some of whom want to annex all of the West Bank and expel all non-Jews from Israel. Anyway, that's the way I see it.

Uncle Tim wrote this post.

Trump Made The Demise Of The Palestinians Permanent

I don’t think there was any doubt. But as you can see above, now there is zero doubt. There won’t be a two state solution. There won’t be a one state solution. There is only an Israeli version of apartheid. And any Democrat who dares criticize this is thrown under the bus, and called an anti-semite.

It really shouldn't be necessary to point out that criticizing a nation's government in not synonymous with hating that country's inhabitants. If I criticize Boris Johnson’s crackpot Tory cabinet, does it follow that I'm anti-British?

The Trump-Kushner-Netanyahu scheme above is  to create bantustans, separated from one another in such a way as to make a viable Palestine  impossible.  In other words, apartheid. Joe Biden couldn’t change it back to the way it was 30 years ago even if he tried. It is too late. Donald Trump did get something big done after all. In Israel.

I realize the terms bantustan and apartheid are practically South African copyrights, but I can’t think of better terms to use.

Max Blumenthal Strikes Again!

He's incredible and he is on a roll. And he does it for free (it helps to have the Wingnuts come to DC to do their conferences). This time, he infiltrates the Christians United for Israel conference in Washington, DC back on July 16th.

You will notice two young female PR agents in the video. I find it funny when I do a simple Google search for their backgrounds. Alison Crisci is a graduate of Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, PA, and is a liberal compared to most people in the conference (although she is an outspoken Christian, she supports tolerance of Muslims). Kara Silverman graduated from Ohio State University in 2005 who majored in geography and Jewish studies. They both work for 5W, a fast-growing PR firm in New York. I am tempted to call them both losers. But as a Communications major, I have to remember that the PR industry really sucks when you are starting out. Long hours, low pay, and gigs like this. Ouch.

Bush and Olmert Re-affirm Their Goal of a Palestinian State Alongside Israel

That's a nice goal. But the practical question is: where would it be? Would it be just the West Bank? Or maybe the West bank and a strip of land to Gaza? If the Palestinians are concentrated in two separate areas within Israel, and Israeli settlements were allowed to grow aggressively in-between them, then how can there be a separate Palestinian state?

[Forgive me for now trying to summarize an immense problem in a blog entry, but here goes.]

The answer is: There cannot be a separate Palestinian state. It is too late to remove the settlements that are in the way. And the Palestinians would be trapped on a small patch of land and be refugees in their own country. There has to be another solution.

After 20 years of thinking and reading about this, I think I have the answer. It is a solution that is just beginning to receive serious attention after years in leftist circles among both Israeli and Arab scholars. It is the single state solution, not the two-state goal which politicians talk publicly about, but can never achieve.

Israelis would have to give-up their Orthodox / Zionist-dominated politics in favor of a secular government (an immense feat in itself). But they would not have to give-up an inch of land or any national security. They would not have to give-up any of their religious or national identity. And they wouldn't need a wall between themselves and the Palestinians, which clearly hurts both sides.

Palestinians would then be able to integrate into Israeli politics and the relatively strong Israeli economy. The Arabs would receive proper political representation, engage in free and fair elections, and to fly their flag alongside the Star of David in a shared capital of Jerusalem.

Sounds nuts? Yeah. But in my opinion, it is the only way to achieve peace. The PLO wanted their own state (among other things), but Jordan wouldn't allow it. Then Hamas wanted the destruction of Israel, but they failed as all terrorists ultimately do.

I know it is easy for me to express what Israel should do to secure peace. It would be far more difficult for Israelis to do it themselves. The ball is in their court.

The late, Palestinian scholar, Edward Said, constantly said that the first step Israel needs to take is to declare its borders to the UN. In my opinion, Israel should keep the Golan heights and declare its borders as they stand today. Then work to change the political system to accommodate the Palestinians. It would take two generations to take-hold. But the goal of living in a country where the threat of war with the other side does not exist -the goal expressed by former militant Yitzhak Rabin before he was assassinated- is a goal worth working very hard to achieve. It can be done. And it would set an amazing example of peace building (and nation re-building) in world history. Simply put, both the Israelis and Palestinians are in need of a reconstruction era.

Virginia Tilley has written an excellent book on the proposal. And so has Ali Abunimah. And for a thorough review of how the 'roadmap' to a two-state solution is failing, see Tanya Reinhart's "The Road to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003."