* * *
But Israeli attacks on other Hamas military
installations, hopefully not in civilian locations, to pave the way for a
possible invasion to destroy Hamas permanently, will continue, even then. Remember that while Israel is a nation, Hamas
is labeled as a terrorist group, in the category of Al Qaeda and ISIS, and
deserving of such treatment, if only it can be
separated from killing and making homeless the mostly innocent civilians in the
Gaza Strip. And that is proving
difficult for Israel.
 |
| Original 1947 Two-State Solution. |
The Arabs living in Palestine, and surrounding Arab nations, refused to accept the United Nations’ partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the State of Israeli a year later. At that time, both Israel and the Palestinian Arabs were envisioned as living side by side within a peaceable ‘two-state’ arrangement, but the Arab states supporting the Palestinian Arabs chose to go to war instead, and lost, as they’ve done on several occasions since then.
The Arabs who fled, expecting to soon return
after their ‘victory,’ were left stranded and embittered in refugee camps,
where their descendants remain today.
The Gaza Strip was similarly populated by those who fled, It was occupied by Israel until 2005 when its troops were withdrawn and the Israeli settlements there disbanded. The aim of that disengagement was to yield a tentative peace and make Israel more secure. That turned out to be a mistake because the following year, Hamas won legislative elections in the Gaza Strip, and after a military confrontation, ousted the Palestinian Authority (see the next paragraph) from any role in Gaza. There have been no elections there since then.
Those who remained in the primarily Arab West
Bank, although eventually occupied by Israel, are still governed to a limited
extent by the Palestinian Authority, heir to the PLO, but a group willing to
reach a fragile accommodation with Israel .
The Palestinians missed the opportunity to have
a state of their own, something they had never had before, in the hope of
acquiring all of Palestine. (Abba Eban,
the late Israeli diplomat, once commented that the Palestinians ‘never miss an
opportunity to miss an opportunity.’)
Continued Palestinian efforts to rewrite
history militarily have resulted in many Israelis no longer supporting a ‘two
state’ solution. They see it as a danger
to Israel and treat what would have been the Palestinian state as ‘occupied
territory’ available for Israeli settlements.
Hamas, which rules Gaza, not accepting the
Palestinian Authority, continues to see a ‘one-state’ solution as well, with
Israel eliminated. This is a mirror
image of the ‘one-state’ solution, with all Arabs moved out, that some Israelis
see. And it is this latter group that
Benjamin Netanyahu depends upon for the votes to keep him in office.
And here is the part that no one
talks about, but which sooner or later will be part of negotiations. Did the specifics of the 1947 partition of
Palestine treat the Jewish population of Palestine more generously than it
treated the Arab population of Palestine?
I suspect that was the case, probably because
of sympathy for the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, seeking a place to go
to. But that has, except for Jews,
receded into a cubbyhole of history, unknown to many born since those days.
Holocaust survivors were not welcomed in more
than token amounts at that time by major Western nations who were quietly pleased
that the creation of the State of Israel lessened the pressure on them to
accept refugees.
Similarly, Palestinian Arabs, once they had
lost their portion of the land a ‘two-state’ solution would have provided, found
that they were not being welcomed by neighboring Arab states whose military
support of them had failed. ‘You have no
place to go to? That’s your problem.’ Some turned to violence, but the real answer
to this problem is to restore the ‘two-state’ solution idea, but today, there
are obstacles to that. Let’s look at them.
Partition of Palestine took place 75 years ago
and a lot of history has taken place since then. It is not too late to remedy problems that
started then, but it cannot be done so long as Hamas and its Iranian supporters
continue to demand the extermination of Israel, and while some in Israel want
to continue to encourage settlements in areas it won in wars that Arab nations
repeatedly lost, areas approaching Israel’s ancient biblical borders.
Once the weapons are silenced, these issues
will become prominent. The chief obstacle right now to silencing them is that a
‘cease fire’ leaves Hamas’ terrorism unpunished and makes their attack seem
worthwhile, something that is totally unacceptable to Israel. Remember that the
United States as well as the European Union has declared Hamas to be a
terrorist group.
It’s an awful question to ask, but how many of the Gaza Strip’s non-combatant civilian
population, amidst whom Hamas’ military institutions are purposely located,
have to die in bombings to satisfy Israel’s understandable need to avenge the
1,400 of its non-combatant civilians killed by Hamas terrorists on October 7,
and the hostages Hamas kidnapped on that date, whose fate still remains
uncertain?
Most
recently, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said that two goals
have been set for Israel’s war with Hamas:
‘To eliminate Hamas by destroying its military and governing abilities, and
to do everything possible to bring our captives home.’
Within Israel’s military establishment, however, there is concern that Israel’s goals will be blurred if Mr. Netanyahu follows through on that promise to simultaneously seek to attain these two goals.
The second goal, concerning the hostages, requires negotiation and accommodation with Hamas’s leadership (even if through intermediaries), while the first goal requires the elimination of Hamas’ military and governing abilities — a difficult balance to strike, two senior Israeli military officials recently said. The question seems to be how you go about negotiating with someone you are intent on destroying?
That’s why
Israeli military action on the ground penetrating into the Gaza Strip have been limited and
tentative.
* *
A sad and overwhelming view of the tragedy
occurring in Israel and Gaza today will appear in the Nov. 6 issue of the New
Yorker magazine. It is not easy reading
and New Yorker editor David Remnick does not offer solutions. In fact, the first sentence of his lengthy
article reads ‘The only way to tell this story is to try to
tell it truthfully and to know that you will fail.’
You can read it at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/06/israel-gaza-war-hamas or by
CLICKING HERE.
Finally, Israel should think
about the quote often attributed to Casey Stengel, when he managed the NY
Yankees: ‘If you don’t know where you’re
going, you may end up somewhere else.’ That
seems to describe the political situation in Israel today.
JL
* * *
Antisemitism in the United States
One cannot get involved with the subject discussed above without relating
it to antisemitism in the United States.
For a shocking overview of that, critical of both our political parties,
read S.E. Cupp’s column from Saturday’s Palm Beach Post. (Cupp is a life-long Republican.) More than a decade ago, Ms. Cupp shared an afternoon
news commentary roundtable on MSNBC that featured several unknown but
up-and-coming young voices, including Ari Melber, now an MSNBC mainstay.
Here is what she wrote last week:
“The Far Left Has a Serious Antisemitism Problem”
S.E. Cupp
“The headlines paint a troubling picture:
'Liberals
Need a Reckoning With Antisemitism.'
'How
the Democrats betrayed the Jews.'
'The
Left Faces a Reckoning as Israel Divides Democrats.'
The conflict between Israel and Hamas, a
terrorist group that barbarically murdered 1,400 innocent civilians in a
coordinated attack on Israel, has unleashed a shocking and appalling level of
antisemitism from the left.
From a disturbing indifference to Jewish
suffering, to an inability to make obvious declarative statements about Hamas’
atrocities, to a repeated moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas — the
latter of which explicitly wants to wipe Jews off the planet — to outright
hostility toward Jews, the ugly invective is coming from some unexpected
places.
Inside the Democratic Party, elected state
officials and members of Congress have refused to condemn Hamas and many have
called for an immediate Israeli ceasefire, essentially demanding the IDF leave
Hamas alone.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib and others are offering
conspiracy theories about the attacks akin to 9/11 trutherism. Tlaib, for
example, does not believe U.S., Israeli and media reports that an Islamic Jihad
rocket misfire — not Israel — caused an explosion at a Gaza hospital. Instead,
she believes Hamas, the terrorists, and is demanding an independent
investigation. 'Both the White House and the Israeli government have long,
documented histories of misleading the public about war and war crimes,' she
said.
On college campuses, many of which are now
infamous for trigger warnings, banning offensive speech and creating 'safe
spaces,' professors and students are trafficking in viciously antisemitic
comments in support of Palestinians, with one national student group
celebrating the massacre as a 'historic win for the Palestinian resistance.'
In left-wing and mainstream media, a slew of
commentators, hosts and reporters have pushed Hamas propaganda and anti-Israel
sentiment.
According to Gallup, Democratic voters are
also now more sympathetic toward Palestinians than Israelis, for the first time
since it began asking.
This has all led to some soul-searching and
exasperation among American Jews who once counted Democrats as supporters.
Rabbi Joel Simonds says, 'In these last few days, the silence is deafening and
it is hurtful and a betrayal on so many levels. It’s not going to change the
way we look at justice. It’s going to change the way we look at our allies.'
Playwright David Mamet wrote of 'the sick
thrill of antisemitism' inside the Democratic Party, that they 'repeat and
refuse to retract the libel that Israel bombed a hospital, in spite of absolute
proof to the contrary, and will not call out the unutterable atrocities of
Hamas. The writing is on the wall. In blood.'
Jewish celebrities including Amy Schumer, Josh
Gad and Debra Messing have all addressed antisemitism they’ve encountered.
I know how disorienting, disappointing, and
distressing this is for my Jewish friends, as many have shared with me how
scared and unsafe they suddenly feel in a country they thought would 'Never
Forget.'
Back in 2017 I was shocked when hundreds of
white supremacists, neo-Nazis, racists and bigots marched at a Virginia rally —
unmasked and unashamed — wielding tiki torches, and screaming racist slogans
like, 'Our blood, our soil,' 'Jews will not replace us,' and 'White Lives
Matter!'
In the wake of the Charlottesville violence,
where one neo-Nazi rammed his car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters,
injuring dozens and killing one woman, the president told America that there
were 'some very fine people on both sides.'
I had to reconcile with a fact that made me
physically sick to my stomach: this naked and appalling bigotry and hate is
coming from inside my own political party.
Racism, of course, wasn’t new. It’s always
been here. But to watch this level of proud intolerance take hold of a wing of
the Republican Party, metastasize over the ensuing years, infect Congress and
the right-wing media, and receive comfort from the party’s biggest
standard-bearer — the president — has been one of the hardest things to watch
in my career in politics.
If you’d told me 25 years ago that the
Republican Party of Lincoln would one day elect white nationalists to Congress,
that a president would dine openly with neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers, that a
presidential candidate would insist that slavery had its upside, I wouldn’t
have believed you.
Similarly, if you’d told me that the
Democratic Party of Harry Truman would struggle one day to defend massacred
Jews against Islamic terrorists whose stated purpose is the destruction of
Israel and the annihilation of the Jews, I wouldn’t have believed this either.
I know it’s a painful reality to confront. But
just as Donald Trump exposed a dark and ugly underbelly of the far right, Hamas
has exposed a dark and ugly underbelly of the far left.
S.E. Cupp is the host of 'S.E. Cupp Unfiltered'
on CNN.
JL
* * *
Contrarian Opinions
For several ‘contrarian’ opinions on American
foreign policy, specifically concerning Israel and Ukraine, check out several
articles Bari Weiss included in her ‘Free Press’ blog the other day. (Weiss is
a former NYTimes writer who left that publication because of conflicts between
its editorial staff and herself and has since moved rightward
politically.)
Whether one agrees or disagrees with these
viewpoints is not the question. It is a
matter of being exposed to ideas not commonly discussed elsewhere. Check them out at https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/WhctKKZNzNSffHmSvlvmfGVdFwgvbktxNVjPbLSrQhbtfZzxcbjdcBTfQPgBlDgbqwzBskV or just CLICK HERE.
JL
* * *
Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
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If you want to send someone the
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think this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.
There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a comment from you. Each will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you are now reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the 'sidebar' features such as access to the blog's archives.
Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I recommend sending them the link.
Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it.
JL
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