I have returned home with a massive amount of material. I’m still exhausted from traveling across ten time zones and don’t yet have the energy I need to write, so I’ll start by publishing another interview. It will be ready in a day or so, and I think you’re going to like it. Then we’ll get to the dispatches. Stand by.
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Welcome home =)
Polishing up my reading glasses! Glad you’re back home and had a productive (and enjoyable) trip.
Welcome back. Reading glasses for sure.
Michael, welcome back.
I hope you get over the jet lag quickly.
Andrew McCarthy at FDD on the “one-state-solution”, the muslim brotherhood, and Rauf, (described elsewhere, and accurately, by Lee Smith as an “operator”, one who endeavours to be all things to all people):
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11791127&Itemid=361
It is the quality that brings so many to read you Michael, not the quantity.
Take your time.
Regards,
Welcome home. Can’t wait to read your next post. If you ever come to Toronto, my wife and I would love to have you over for dinner!
Welcome back, Michael. Looking forward to your writing.
Welcome back, Michael
Take a break, have a cool one, put your feet up.
We’ll still be here (LOL)
Take your time, I’ll still be here having coffee. Maybe Ali & I will give lessons in Semitic languages while we’re waiting. How about it, Ali?
Given the ideological penetration of science, perhaps some refresher courses in evolution.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11063939
You can see where this is going…..
Hi all. Looking forward to MJT’s writings.
To #5 del: Just read the linked article and found it a perfectly legitimate piece of opinion. Actually, the more I read about imam Abdul Rauf, the more I like the guy.
(In case you wonder, I am Israeli, have been a soldier with IDF, and don’t hate my people.)
Flexo,
You wrote an interesting but incoherent response. Could you please elaborate?
Something to think about when it comes to US military aid…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/world/middleeast/22lebanon.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast
I think that the last paragraph of this analysis just sums up the
difficult end game that the US must play to justify the means for
such aid. The war on terroris fraught with many pitfalls!
#13 del again:
There are three possible outcomes in the Israel/Palestine problem:
1. Israel continues to hold some kind of control over the territories by means of settlements, checkpoints, and blockade or threat thereof. In other words, the current situation, which some Israelis favor but nobody else does, esp. because it renders an entire population devoid of civil rights, which could be interpreted as an excuse for the extremists, i.e. a catalyst to violence.
2. Two states, one for Palestinians on “the territories” give or take a couple yards, and the State of Israel in its current constitution. Favored by many Israelis, many Palestinians, and pretty much everybody who does not have an emotional stake in the issue.
3. A single state, where everybody has the same rights. Favored by a minority of Israeli Jews, a sizable number of Arab-Israelis and Palestinians, and many in the Muslim world. Would mean the end of some of the characteristics of Israel as the home of the Jewish people, even though stuff could be worked out by giving autonomy to “cantons” within that state, so that there could be an Ultra-Orthodox canton besides a Sharia-abiding canton besides a Christian-majority canton. I am pessimistic about feasibility and viability, but this would be my ideal solution in a less imperfect world. This seems to be what Imam Abdul Rauf advocates.
3a. Same as 3, but with some proviso for throwing a lot of Jews out as they are invaders/colonists/etc. The Iran/Hezbollah/Hamas argument (they would welcome a Jewish minority that legitimizes the enterprise yet remains too small to have control over issues)
And there 4, aka is my preferred solution: Zero states. Both Israel and Palestine surrender all claims to statehood. After a 10-year mandate by the United Nations, Jordan takes over administration of the entire area. The Law of Return applies to a pre-defined agreed-upon area, more or less equivalent to 1949 Israel.
Now to the gist of my argument. There are many shades of gray between 3, which to me is legit and worthy of debate, and 3a — which I consider beyond the pale. Yet I can see why somebody (say a Palestinian peasant who was torn out of their land by forces beyond their control and then kept in a refugee camp for 60 years) can favor the more extreme version, and how somebody who feels kinship (say the typical Muslim in Algeria) will endorse, or even take a more principled and less pragmatic approach because they an afford to.
I’d say 3 is not viable because this is not Belgium or Canada, where accommodations can be made that people find to be win-win. For every such case, you have Cyprus, you have the former Yugoslavia, you have modern Iraq, you have the Partition of India.
Hope this explains better.
Or 2A, the three-state solution: Israel, West Bank and Gaza, all with much the same borders as now.
Gaza is in my opinion already de facto an independent state, at war with Israel.
#10
Thats a great idea. Today’s lesson: conjugation. (just kidding)
I want to go back to what Terry talked about a few threads earlier. He said that Israel should completely clear Gaza of Hamas, occupy them for a while and then maybe give them independence. I think the West Bank should remain as is with a few minor improvements in freedom of movement and autonomy as long as security is guaranteed.
Terry, do you have any religious reasons for what you do/say/would like to see happen?
Don (16) is right, Gaza is already a seperate (and utterly Jew free) state.
1: The population in question is already, in the majority, extremist. People who swear to exterminate other people do not deserve civil or any other rights. Nobody has the right to rip other people apart with their bare hands.
2: As Don mentioned above, there already are two states.
3: Has there ever been a Palestinian leader who was publicly willing to accept Jews as members of such a single state? I know of at least two who said so, and then immediately denied that they had said so (Arafat and Abbas).
3a: Only the most “moderate” of Palestinian leaders are willing to allow utterly defenseless Jews to live as a small persecuted minority within their dream Palestinian state. There is a reason why they do not want Jews to be able to defend themselves. It is the same reason Israel exists, so that Jews can defend themselves.
4: The UN has yet to be successful at even one “peacekeeping” operation. Quite a few members of the UN appear to be convinced that the only solution to the lack of peace in the Middle East is to ethnically cleanse all Jews from the region. The “send them back to Europe and the US” solution, this in spite of the fact that at least half, if not more, of Israels population did not come from Europe or the US.
The mere fact that “they” are still looking for a “solution” to the “Jewish problem” should serve as a stark and frightening reminder that “Never Again” can, in fact, happen again.
5: They will come again, to kill or drive out every Jew they can lay hands on, again. They will suffer yet another catastrophe. Their refugee camps will be considerably larger, and slightly further away then they are now.
5a: They are succesful and six million more Jews will die. The UN will shrug with indifference…
HOLD
THE
LINE,
R
Flexo,
You wrote: “the more I read about imam Abdul Rauf, the more I like the guy”, so this is for you:
“From the beginning, though, I [Christopher Hitchens] pointed out that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was no great bargain and that his Cordoba Initiative was full of euphemisms about Islamic jihad and Islamic theocracy. I mentioned his sinister belief that the United States was partially responsible for the assault on the World Trade Center and his refusal to take a position on the racist Hamas dictatorship in Gaza. The more one reads through his statements, the more alarming it gets. For example, here is Rauf’s editorial on the upheaval that followed the brutal hijacking of the Iranian elections in 2009. Regarding President Obama, he advised that:
He should say his administration respects many of the guiding principles of the 1979 revolution—to establish a government that expresses the will of the people; a just government, based on the idea of Vilayet-i-faquih, that establishes the rule of law.
Coyly untranslated here (perhaps for “outreach” purposes), Vilayet-i-faquih is the special term promulgated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to describe the idea that all of Iranian society is under the permanent stewardship (sometimes rendered as guardianship) of the mullahs. Under this dispensation, “the will of the people” is a meaningless expression, because “the people” are the wards and children of the clergy. It is the justification for a clerical supreme leader, whose rule is impervious to elections and who can pick and choose the candidates and, if it comes to that, the results. It is extremely controversial within Shiite Islam. (Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq, for example, does not endorse it.) As for those numerous Iranians who are not Shiites, it reminds them yet again that they are not considered to be real citizens of the Islamic Republic.
I do not find myself reassured by the fact that Imam Rauf publicly endorses the most extreme and repressive version of Muslim theocracy. The letterhead of the statement, incidentally, describes him as the Cordoba Initiative’s “Founder and Visionary.” Why does that not delight me, either? ”
http://www.slate.com/id/2264770
Hitchens has the honesty to share his own developing misgivings.
As for you, Flexo, Is Velayat e faqih a good thing, or not?
Mason,
With respect to the NYT article.
Its such a typical POS. Its just utter nonsense…an opinion based on personal prejudice, wishful thinking and ignorance of facts.
If I didn’t know it was written by them I would have thought it was Anand who wrote it!
#18 Ali.
No, I have no religious reasons, only security concerns.
Eliminating Hamas is feasable, meaning, it’s possible to accomplish, although there would be quite a bit of political fall-out from all the Leftist & Liberal morons of the world. These are, of course, the same people who abandoned the S. Vietnamese to the communists resulting in thousands of dead, tortured, & imprisoned. The same people who allow the N. Korean regime to starve millions of people, who don’t mind Mugabwe in Zimbabwe, who were against removing Saddam Hussein from power, who wear Che Guevara T-shirts, ignore the crimes of communism, think Charman Mao was not such a bad guy, & who try their best to ignore what the Iranian regime is up to.
You get the picture.
Achieving something in this conflict will take a long time, there is no quick fix, no ”just add water & shake” magic solution. A piece of paper signed by an useless & irrelevent Abbas is worth less than used toilet paper.
In the long-term, a modus vivendi is achievable. Initially, it requires some ruthless action – such as getting rid of Fatah in the West Bank. As in Gaza, disarmement is the key. Then, the very gradual development of local autonomy at the municipal level. That’s one option.
Another option is population transfer, preferably to Jordan. I think this would be very very difficult to achieve in today’s political climate.
I think any sort of bi-national state is totally out of the question – only because it doesn’t have any realistic chance of succeeding in our circumstances & also, because I believe very strongly in a sovereign Jewish state with a strong military, in other words, Israel is the vehicule for the survival of the Jewish people.
#18 Ali.
Of course, I’m speaking theoretically, since I don’t believe for a minute that the international community of morons will allow any intelligent solution to be implemented. I also don’t believe the Israeli political establishment is up to the job, Israel’s politicians are at best, mediocre hacks.
It looks to me like everything is pushing towards more conflict.
You have to study the history of pre-WWI & pre-WWII to really see where we’re headed.
Yesjb (#21) – The reporter that wrote that NYSlimes article is married to the ACLU, both of the contributing reporters are Lebanese.
Mason (#14) – Sorry, can’t get past the very first sentence. A “firefight broke out”? Is that something like “hilarity ensued?” or “rain began to fall”? Firefights are not spontaneous events like combustion. Somebody had to aim their rifle and pull the first trigger. An IDF officer was killed by gunfire, that was no accident. Note the linked photo to that story shows three items. A fire truck, an M-60A3 tank, and…A Barrett semi-auto 50cal sniper rifle.
DOWN
THE
OCEAN,
R
I share the pessimistic leanings of most comments here re: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
#19 Render: most of what you say is debatable, false, and/or utterly troubling (keeping an entire population devoid of any rights is not only morally unacceptable to me; it is also a recipe for trouble, and actually shifts the narrative so that said population become heroes to most everybody no matter how perfidious their methods). I would not vote for the likes of you setting policy (happily 4u, most people in Israel don’t share my opinion)
#20 del: Indeed troubling when taken separately from other statements (and I am not crying “out of context”); yet a similar test of purity on Jewish rabbis in Israel, and even some Christian preachers in the USA, would yield similar results. I’d advise to look for bridge-builders and be forgiving towards the occasional excess, which was the reason people agreed to sit down with Begin and the protegees of Sharon in the first place.
(Yes I do sound like an asshole. But I stand by my earlier posts.)
Flexo – Then feel free to debate me, or prove me wrong. Troubling? How many rights does the population of Gaza enjoy under HAMAS leadership? Look at the thread above this one, how many rights does the population of South Lebanon enjoy under HizbAllah leadership? With the exception of the occasional undercover tourist, how many Jews are left in Gaza or South Lebanon? What peace did the bridges of Begin and Sharon bring? I’m not running for public office, I neither want nor ask for your vote. I would think that thousands of Islamic rockets have already voted for you.
I’m not a Rabbi, in Israel or otherwise. I’m certainly not a Christian preacher in the USA. I’m a lone Jew in America with a lifetime of open prejudice and semi-veiled hatred directed at me from all quarters. I’m just one American Jew, with a room full of books on the subject from floor to ceiling and forty-six years of watching this world and its lies with eyes wide open. I was born the same year that the PLO was created by Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood, created for no other reason then to kill Jews.
“People” sat down with Begin and Sharon because they feared both men, and for no other reason. The “people” who signed those agreements did not keep those agreements, never had any intention of keeping them, and could not have even if they’d wanted to, they did not speak for their entire population. Abbas does not speak for HAMAS, HAMAS does not speak for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Nasrallah only speaks for the armed Shia of South Lebanon and does so with a voice straight from Terhan…
Asshole? No, you sound like Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski (do Google that name). A “purity test”? I don’t think so, not on this side of the line.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf15.html
THEY WILL
COME AGAIN,
R