There’s a shallow lens, inspired by Marxism and common on campus, that views everything as oppressor/oppressor relationships regardless of details. In this milieu, Israel is the oppressor and the bad guy.
However, you don’t have to be hard leftist throwing around rhetoric about “colonialism” to see problems with Israel. If you apply the l…
There’s a shallow lens, inspired by Marxism and common on campus, that views everything as oppressor/oppressor relationships regardless of details. In this milieu, Israel is the oppressor and the bad guy.
However, you don’t have to be hard leftist throwing around rhetoric about “colonialism” to see problems with Israel. If you apply the lens of Anglo-American liberalism and consider principles like ‘equality under the law’, Israel is lacking. Places like the West Bank and Gaza have rock-bottom Freedom House scores largely due to a lack of political rights.
Israel currently resists giving Palestinians a true state and also rejects the multi-ethnic pluralism of a one state solution.
All young people have seen is a series of far right governments, always led by the same crook and Trump / Putin ass-kiser, Bibi. They see young people in Israel protesting a creeping authoritarianism. They see Israeli officials refusing to help Ukraine and even resisting the idea that Israel should be considered a ‘western country’. They see Israel building West Bank settlements and calling a Palestinian state “dead”. They see a state that is sliding away from from liberalism, that does not have any plan for the rights of Palestinians, and really does have some parallels to apartheid South Africa. All that has consequences for public opinion - not just on American campuses but globally.
And yet, at the Bulwark - those who criticize Israeli illiberalism are considered “illiberal”.
Fair enough and I agree. My point about colonialism had nothing to do with the right-wing government and Netanyahu; who I despise...:)
That said, Bibi has been paying only lip service to a two state solution. Yet, we’re still missing one ingredient to a practical solution; a legitimate partner. The PA is weak and despised by the average Palestinian, and Hamas is a terrorist organization committed to the destruction of the state.
Fatah and Hamas have all sorts of deficiencies and derangements. But I think that even if Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress were leading the Palestinians, Israel would still find a way not to make a two state deal. The longstanding goal of the Israeli right, and now just the de facto trajectory, is to expand settlements and ultimately annex jewish dominated areas, leaving Palestinians in the same citizenship limbo - just in smaller geographic enclaves. I think the Israeli polity today prefers this outcome - even if it comes with more Palestinian grievance, reduced security, and lower international support.
I don’t disagree with anything you are saying. But something has to give. Every two to three years it’s the same, except technology gets more sophisticated and deadly; and the violent and even more unpredictable.
How many more cycles of this will the world tolerate before it gives up and just lets them kill each other? It’s a never ended cycle of intransigence and stupidity!
There’s a shallow lens, inspired by Marxism and common on campus, that views everything as oppressor/oppressor relationships regardless of details. In this milieu, Israel is the oppressor and the bad guy.
However, you don’t have to be hard leftist throwing around rhetoric about “colonialism” to see problems with Israel. If you apply the lens of Anglo-American liberalism and consider principles like ‘equality under the law’, Israel is lacking. Places like the West Bank and Gaza have rock-bottom Freedom House scores largely due to a lack of political rights.
Israel currently resists giving Palestinians a true state and also rejects the multi-ethnic pluralism of a one state solution.
All young people have seen is a series of far right governments, always led by the same crook and Trump / Putin ass-kiser, Bibi. They see young people in Israel protesting a creeping authoritarianism. They see Israeli officials refusing to help Ukraine and even resisting the idea that Israel should be considered a ‘western country’. They see Israel building West Bank settlements and calling a Palestinian state “dead”. They see a state that is sliding away from from liberalism, that does not have any plan for the rights of Palestinians, and really does have some parallels to apartheid South Africa. All that has consequences for public opinion - not just on American campuses but globally.
And yet, at the Bulwark - those who criticize Israeli illiberalism are considered “illiberal”.
Fair enough and I agree. My point about colonialism had nothing to do with the right-wing government and Netanyahu; who I despise...:)
That said, Bibi has been paying only lip service to a two state solution. Yet, we’re still missing one ingredient to a practical solution; a legitimate partner. The PA is weak and despised by the average Palestinian, and Hamas is a terrorist organization committed to the destruction of the state.
Fatah and Hamas have all sorts of deficiencies and derangements. But I think that even if Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress were leading the Palestinians, Israel would still find a way not to make a two state deal. The longstanding goal of the Israeli right, and now just the de facto trajectory, is to expand settlements and ultimately annex jewish dominated areas, leaving Palestinians in the same citizenship limbo - just in smaller geographic enclaves. I think the Israeli polity today prefers this outcome - even if it comes with more Palestinian grievance, reduced security, and lower international support.
I don’t disagree with anything you are saying. But something has to give. Every two to three years it’s the same, except technology gets more sophisticated and deadly; and the violent and even more unpredictable.
How many more cycles of this will the world tolerate before it gives up and just lets them kill each other? It’s a never ended cycle of intransigence and stupidity!
Yep! https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/israel-settlers-violence-netanyahu-government/675755/