Hey, @jstreetdotorg and @peacenowisrael:— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 12, 2019
You claim, with great confidence, that if only there was a Palestinian state, then things would be much more peaceful in Israel..
What do you base that assumption on? What evidence is there are the result wouldn't be the opposite?
Peace Now responded:
2ss would save our democracy by avoiding undemocratic 1-state rule first and foremost. And a peace with deterrence would has worked in both cases where we made peace with Arab neighbors. There are different circumstances, but then there are more aggressive security measures.— Peace Now (@peacenowisrael) September 12, 2019
I find it interesting that Peace Now does not choose to use "peace" as its primary reason for a two state solution, but an appeal to democracy - "first and foremost." Maybe it should change its name to Democracy Now - oh, wait, that's already taken.
Of course, Israeli leftists said that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and from Areas A and B would not hurt security either because Israel could use deterrence - but new Gaza wars every few years indicates that deterrence is not all it is cracked up to be.
Assuming "if Israel does X, then then Arabs will do Y" is a fallacy.
The other major difference between Palestinians and Egypt/Jordan is that those two countries do not have (serious) territorial claims on all of Israel but the Palestinians do. As I recently pointed out, most Palestinians want the conflict to keep going even after a "peace" agreement that still allows Israel to exist.
I responded to Peace Now, "So your vision of democracy is worth the potential deaths of thousands of people?"
It turns out that Dennis Prager described the Peace Now/J-Street mentality perfectly in his column last week:
The problem with communists and with leftists who don’t consider themselves communists is not that none of them mean well. It’s that they lack wisdom. There are wise and foolish liberals, wise and foolish conservatives; but all leftists are fools. Every one of the Democrats running for president is a fool. This is not, however, a description of their totality as a human being. Fools may be personally kind and generous, may be loyal friends and devoted spouses, and of course, they may be well-intentioned. But in terms of making the world worse, there is little difference between a well-meaning fool and an evil human being. Tens of millions of well-intentioned Westerners supported Stalin. The Westerners who supplied Stalin the secrets to the atom bomb were not motivated by evil. They were simply fools. But few evil people did as much to hurt the world as they did.They want peace! How can that be bad? But it can be, because they do not think through the potential downsides of what they call "peace." They pretend that their desired outcome is the only possible outcome, and if they are wrong, oh well - there are no consequences to them personally.
They are fools partly because they believe good intentions are all that matter. Therefore, they never ask perhaps the most important moral question one can ask: What will happen if my policy is enacted? Leftist supporters of communism never asked.
...
On every issue in which the left differs from conservatives (and often from liberals), they are fools. They push for a Palestinian state although even Israelis on the left know this would mean a Hamas-Hezbollah state on the Israeli border. But they know they mean well.
This is why they are fools.