Richard Landes: The Shame of Israel: Panic in a Crooked Mirror
Peter Beinart has written many a piece about the growing split between American Jewish youth and Israel, which he sees as the inevitable cost of Israel’s failure to make peace with the Palestinians, on the one hand, and the long-term effects on liberal sentiments of seeing an Israeli Goliath bullying the Palestinian underdog, on the other. This “youth,” according to Beinart has “imbibed some of the defining values of American Jewish culture: a belief in open debate, a skepticism about military force, a commitment to human rights.” Studies show Jewish youth “resist anything they see as ‘group think’… want an ‘open and frank’ discussion of Israel and its flaws… and desperately want peace.”Haaretz Op-Ed: Abbas Gains More from Conflict than from Peace
To these folks, raised on bedrock values, every effort of Jews to defend Israel by criticizing the Palestinians offends their sense of fairness: blaming the victim is not a winning strategy. Beinart asserts:
For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead. Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral.”
Given a choice between Zionism and liberalism, American Jewish youth choose the latter.
For Beinart, at least, the case is pretty open and shut. Israeli political choices are illiberal, bad, and her politicians act in bad faith. The split between American Jews and Zionists, therefore, is inevitable. Beinart has little sympathy to the plaints from Israel that the neighborhood here does not permit such simplistic naïveté. Not much room in this worldview for Palestinian, Arab, contributions for the endlessness of the conflict, for their poisonous hatreds, for their insane religious violence. Don’t blame the [perceived] victim. Look at your own extremists which, you too have. Israel, says Beinart and a generation of Jewish critics of Israel, should act like a liberal, or lose our affections.
To which the obvious response from here is, “Are you kidding me? Do you know what we’re dealing with here?”
To which the apparent response is, “No. And I’m not listening… Nobody’s hearing nothing.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has many compelling reasons not to achieve statehood, which may explain why peace negotiations have failed, Gadi Taub argued in a Haaretz op-ed Thursday.Douglas Murray - Modern Student Political Activists
Taub was prompted to examine why Abbas doesn’t seem to be taking the steps necessary to “liberate his people from Israeli military control and be free to rebuild their national life” after a Palestinian journalist recently asked him, “What makes you think we will let you leave the territories? Who will protect us?”
Taub pointed out that in order to make a peace deal with Israel, Abbas would have to give up the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. But it would be very difficult for Abbas to do that without losing his credibility “after swearing allegiance to this right so many times, and after immortalizing the refugee problem for three generations with the help of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.”
Additionally, if Abbas thought that peace would lead to improved human rights for Palestinians, independence may not be an easy answer: “the Palestinian Preventive Security force isn’t exactly Amnesty International and it isn’t clear it will abuse those rights any less.”
Abbas might prefer to have Israel protecting his rule in the West Bank from a Hamas takeover (as occurred in Gaza in 2007) rather than being forced to fight his own people to maintain control. Abbas is able to declare “that it will never stop the struggle for liberation from Zionist colonialism” while benefiting from Israeli protection. Absent the Israeli presence in the West Bank, PA leaders would lose both the personal security the links with Israel provide, as well as a rallying point to demonstrate their relevance.
Taub also noted that Abbas’ chief concern with ending the Israeli occupation would be the questionable viability of a Palestinian state. A nascent Palestinian state “with institutions that have not been groomed for nation-building and with a shaky economy that’s dependent on others … would not be a particularly safe bet.” The only buffer between a weak Palestinian state and ISIS would be Jordan, which is currently burdened with a huge refugee population.
Finally, accepting responsibility for his own state would end Israeli occupation and the resulting diplomatic and political problems that result from it. The end of occupation would be “a gift” to Israel that “the PA won’t be too happy to give.”