TGIF: Defending Israeli Mass Murder Isn't Easy

Although much has already been said, I can't not comment on Sarah Hurwitz, the former Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama speechwriter, who faults young people (especially young Jews) for applying their power of abstraction in thinking about the Holocaust.

What do I mean by that? Hurwitz thinks (or says she does) that the TikTok generation makes a big mistake by drawing general lessons from the National Socialist regime's mass murder of European Jews last century. She is dismayed that young people have concluded that powerful bad people, no matter who they are, should not harm weak people, no matter who they are.

So what's the problem? According to Hurwitz, they were supposed to learn that killing weak people of a particular ethnicity or religion is horrible only when the victims are Jewish. Moreover, they should have learned that Jews by definition can never constitute the oppressor. Therefore, TikTok'ers are wrong to think of the Holocaust when they see videos of powerful Israeli soldiers harming weak Palestinians in Gaza. Or so Hurwitz believes. See for yourself. (By the way, Ms. Hurwitz, in both cases, the mass murderers did not only harm weak, emaciated victims; they made them weak and emaciated in the first place.)

All this perplexes Hurwitz and others in the American pro-Israel constituency. Young people have drawn broad rather than narrow lessons—and she equates that with antisemitism. Of course, this is buncumbe. Abstracting—drawing generalizations—from real events is a virtue, not a vice. It is quintessentially human. Ayn Rand disparaged persons who refuse to abstract as "concrete-bound." We think in concepts, and we wouldn't be able to do much thinking without them. Concepts are abstractions. We observe reality, note differences and similarities among entities, and integrate similar things into a conceptual hierarchy (for instance, chairs, furniture, manmade things). This facilitates efficient thinking by economizing on mental units. (Rand explained all this.)

Of course, we can make mistakes. We can misclassify things. We're not infallible, which is why logic and reason are indispensable guides. If Hurwitz thinks that certain generalizations drawn from the Holocaust are fallacious, let her argue for her opposing position. However, she can't get away with the libel of attributing those generalizations to  "people who don't really love Jews." For one thing, many Jews have drawn those generalizations. At demonstrations protesting Israel's destruction of life and property in Gaza, Jewish participants have held signs reading, "Never Again Is Now." Hurwitz thinks that "Never Again" means only that Jews should not be persecuted or exterminated. Apparently, she also believes that if officials and military forces of the Jewish state seem to be committing those crimes, it can't really be so, no matter how it looks. "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" said Chico Marx.

Only an idiot or a demagogue could draw those conclusions. (I've drawn an additional lesson.)

Hurwitz might have made a stronger—though not valid—argument. She might have said that young people don't know the full story of Gaza because their generation is post-literate and video-oriented. All they know is what they see on TikTok: nonstop images, day in and day out, of Israeli military violence against helpless Palestinians. She does not challenge the authenticity of the videos, but she is frustrated that her pro-Israel arguments stand no chance against those images. (Hillary Clinton—she still shows her face?—shares the same concern.) As Hurwitz put it, "I'm talking through a wall of dead children." Yes, she is.

However, Hurwitz overlooks the fact that many videos from Gaza have been posted by Israeli soldiers—on TikTok—with audio sadistically celebrating their violence. Young viewers may not read, but I'm sure they hear.

Let's concede that an image may not tell the whole story. If you saw a man taking a watch from another man, you would not know by that scene alone whether you were witnessing a robbery or the recovery of stolen property. But that's not what we have with Israel and Gaza. The images of Israeli violence have not only been graphic, but they have poured out in an unending stream since Oct. 7, 2023. Gaza looks like August 1945 Hiroshima. Many tens of thousands of children and old people, as well as other noncombatants, have been killed, maimed, starved, and traumatized. Medical facilities have been destroyed, making the treatment of survivors and other sick Gazans virtually impossible.

Viewers of this material will properly ask, "What could justify such total violence over such a long period?" Viewers may also have heard that many international authorities on genocide and Holocaust studies, including Israelis, believe that Israel is committing genocide as the law defines it. (See this from Omar Bartov and this from Raz Segal.) The burden falls on Hurwitz and her colleagues to do more than repeat official Israeli propaganda, but that's what they have done.

Yes, Hamas and other groups launched a brutal attack on Oct. 7, 2023, inexcusably committing atrocities against Israeli noncombatants and seizing hostages. But it is also true that Hamas, an abhorrent organization judging by its never-repudiated antisemitic charter and record of crimes, did not exist before the late 1980s, long after the wholesale dispossession, expulsion, and subjugation of the Palestinians began. Moreover, Israel encouraged the growth of Hamas, hoping it would weaken the Palestinian cause by becoming a religious rival to the leading faction, Fatah, which is secular. Later, Benjamin Netanyahu permitted Hamas to collect money, since he could use the group's presence as a reason for not allowing a Palestinian state

This history does not excuse the Oct. 7 crimes, but neither do those crimes excuse Israel's indiscriminate destruction of the people and places of Gaza.

The Europe-based Zionist movement has abused the Palestinians for more than one hundred years. Moreover, imperial Britain helped boost Zionism beginning in 1917. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to see Zionism as just another episode in a long-running story of Western imperialism, the solution to which is (presumably) worldwide de-Westernization, or "global intifada." The history of Zionism has too many distinguishing features, including the real persecution of Jews at the hands of Europeans and the real, partially carried out "Final Solution" at the hands of the National Socialists.

Moreover, Jewish supremacy (so identified by Israeli human-rights organization B'Tselem) is not held to be generally applicable. Rather, it is a political device intended to guarantee Israel's existence as a haven for Jews should virulent antisemitism arise elsewhere in the world. Thus goes the argument: in Israel (but not other places), Jews must be legally and politically privileged or else the Jewishness of the state will not be assured.

I don't mean that the Zionist program—punishing Palestinians for what Europeans did—was the correct response to the historical record, only that this episode is importantly distinguishable from other colonial episodes, despite the similarities. The critics of Zionism who target Western civilization per se are attacking a strawman. If anti-Zionism is portrayed as anti-Western, Zionism wins. On the other side, Zionists who reject universalism in favor of blood-and-soil tribalism unwittingly make common cause with antisemites, who also reject universalism in favor of blood-and-soil tribalism.

Bottom line: supporting the individual natural rights of Palestinians—who are individuals before they are members of "a people"—to live where they have lived continuously for millennia is not anti-Western. On the contrary, it is in line with the glorious and, yes, superior liberal Western Enlightenment ideal (still to be fully realized) of individual sovereignty.

(See my Coming to Palestine.)

What's Wrong with Young People?

A former Obama speechwriter faulted young people for having the faculty of abstraction when thinking about the Holocaust, genocide, Israel, and the Palestinians.

 

The Palestinians: The Libertarian Take

Even if the Palestinians are not a People, they nevertheless are and always have been people—that is, individual human beings with natural rights, namely, the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Like everyone else.

But individuals can come to be regarded as a People as a result of a long, continuous way of life in a particular area. This is true of the Palestinians. They are both a People and people. See this.

TGIF: Israel and Jabotinsky's Iron Wall

Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky (1880-1940) was a key figure in the development of the Zionist movement, which led to the founding of Israel in 1948. After breaking from mainline Zionism, Jabotinsky, born in Odessa (Ukraine), established Revisionist Zionism, a more openly militant version.

 What is Revisionist Zionism? Even fellow Zionists saw similarities with fascism. According to Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo, "Before the opportunistic alliance between Germany’s Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, and Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, in 1936,... a degree of affinity existed between Zionist and Fascist leaders in Rome." Baroud and Rubeo went on:

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, of which Israel’s current Likud party and other right and far-right groups are the offspring, saw in Italy “a spiritual homeland.”

“All my views on nationalism, the state, and society were developed during those years under Italian influence,” Jabotinsky wrote in his autobiography, referring to his ideological formation years in Italy.

In return, Mussolini had expressly spoken in support of Zionism and of Jabotinsky in particular: “For Zionism to succeed, you need to have a Jewish State with a Jewish flag, and Jewish language. The person who understands that is your fascist, Jabotinsky,” Mussolini said ... in November 1934.

The Abduction of Mahmoud Khalil

The Trump administration's abduction and threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old green-card holder and permanent legal resident of the United States, is horrifying not just for him and his pregnant wife, a U.S. citizen, but as a sign of things to come. Khalil, who is a Syrian-born Algerian of Palestinian descent, has been detained pending deportation without being charged with any crime against persons or property, but because he engaged in speech and other peaceful activities on behalf of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. He was a graduate student at Columbia University at the time.

The government says Khalil's "presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States." That's absurd. It also says Khalil supports Hamas but provides no evidence. That is all outrageously vague, which is how authoritarian governments always operate. Even speech supporting Hamas is protected under the Supreme Court's 1969 Brandenburg decision (not to mention natural law). If he's suspected of committing a specific crime, the government should charge him and give him his day in court. Instead, Khalil was handcuffed and seized at his New York City home and taken to Louisiana where he is to appear before an immigration judge.

However, the system of checks and balances is not dead yet. According to Reuters, "U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman had temporarily blocked Mahmoud Khalil's deportation [last] week, and extended the prohibition on Wednesday in a written order following a hearing in Manhattan federal court to allow himself more time to consider whether the arrest was unconstitutional."

It should be noted that the Trump action is a predictable result of the premises that free-immigration opponents subscribe to. Defenders of the action like Secretary of State Marco Rubio hold that Khalil never had a right to be in the United States but was merely permitted initial entry as a guest. Therefore, Rubio and others argue, the government can revoke that permission retroactively, notwithstanding his change in status from student-visa holder to green-card holder.

That's where bad premises take you.

It's a Crazy World

What's to be said about people who grieve over the deaths of Palestinian children in Gaza at the hands of the U.S.-backed Israeli military while simultaneously cheering the Mengele-style wrecking of children's lives in America and elsewhere at the hands of "transgender" fanatics? And vice versa.

The Logic of Eradicating Hamas

Is genocide logically required by Israel's stated objective of eradicating Hamas? It looks that way. Israel demonstrably believes that to wipe out Hamas, it must use overwhelming and indiscriminate force in the Gaza Strip, killing tens of thousands, wounding and starving so many others, and destroying homes, hospitals, and infrastructure. If that is not, in effect, a massive recruitment campaign for Hamas, what would be?

So what to do? Simple: wipe everyone out so the inevitably traumatized kids won't grow up radicalized and join Hamas to seek vengeance for their dead relatives and miserable childhoods. Is that so hard to understand, Israel and Israel partisans?

I know we're not supposed to mention Hitler, but it might be worth re-learning that the Hitler Youth recruited its members from young people who had suffered under Britain's starvation blockade of Germany during World War I -- a blockade that lasted several months after the armistice. Those kids didn't grow up resisting Nazism.

Weird Defenders of the Palestinians

Weird: the Palestinians' advocates who as a rule are unenthusiastic (to put it mildly) about private property rights.

TGIF: Jewish Dissent on the Balfour Declaration

In the fateful year 1917 the British cabinet had one Jewish member: Edwin Montagu. He was also the only cabinet member to oppose the Balfour Declaration of that year, which paved the way for the self-declared creation of the state of Israel, the so-called Jewish State, 31 tumultuous years later. The declaration was a brief letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a leader in Britain of the Zionist project, launched in the late 19th century by Theodor Herzl, to establish a Jewish state in Palestine The letter stated,

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Montagu responded to the cabinet in a memorandum titled "The Anti-Semitism of the Present Government  Here's what he wrote:

* * *

I have chosen the above title for this memorandum, not in any hostile sense, not by any means as quarrelling with an anti-Semitic view which may be held by my colleagues, not with a desire to deny that anti-Semitism can be held by rational men, not even with a view to suggesting that the Government is deliberately anti-Semitic; but I wish to place on record my view that the policy of His Majesty’s Government is anti-Semitic and in result will prove a rallying ground for Anti-Semites in every country in the world.

This view is prompted by the receipt yesterday of a correspondence between Lord Rothschild and Mr. Balfour.

Lord Rothschild's letter is dated the 18th July and Mr. Balfour's answer is to be dated August 1917. I fear that my protest comes too late, and it may well be that the Government were practically committed when Lord Rothschild wrote and before I became a member of the Government, for there has obviously been some correspondence or conversation before this letter. But I do feel that as the one Jewish Minister in the Government I may be allowed by my colleagues an opportunity of expressing views which may be peculiar to myself, but which I hold very strongly and which I must ask permission to express when opportunity affords.

I believe most firmly that this war [WWI] has been a death-blow to Internationalism, and that it has proved an opportunity for a renewal of the slackening sense of Nationality, for it is has not only been tacitly agreed by most statesmen in most countries that the redistribution of territory resulting from the war should be more or less on national grounds, but we have learned to realise that our country stands for principles, for aims, for civilisation which no other country stands for in the same degree, and that in the future, whatever may have been the case in the past, we must live and fight in peace and in war for those aims and aspirations, and so equip and regulate our lives and industries as to be ready whenever and if ever we are challenged. To take one instance, the science of Political Economy, which in its purity knows no Nationalism, will hereafter be tempered and viewed in the light of this national need of defence and security. The war has indeed justified patriotism as the prime motive of political thought.

It is in this atmosphere that the Government proposes to endorse the formation of a new nation with a new home in Palestine. This nation will presumably be formed of Jewish Russians, Jewish Englishmen, Jewish Roumanians, Jewish Bulgarians, and Jewish citizens of all nations -- survivors or relations of those who have fought or laid down their lives for the different countries which I have mentioned, at a time when the three years that they have lived through have united their outlook and thought more closely than ever with the countries of which they are citizens.

Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom. If a Jewish Englishman sets his eyes on The Mount of Olives and longs for the day when he will shake British soil from his shoes and go back to agricultural pursuits in Palestine, he has always seemed to me to have acknowledged aims inconsistent with British citizenship and to have admitted that he is unfit for a share in public life in Great Britain, or to be treated as an Englishman. I have always understood that those who indulged in this creed were largely animated by the restrictions upon and refusal of liberty to Jews in Russia. But at the very time when these Jews have been acknowledged as Jewish Russians and given all liberties, it seems to be inconceivable that Zionism should be officially recognised by the British Government, and that Mr. Balfour should be authorized to say that Palestine was to be reconstituted as the "national home of the Jewish people". I do not know what this involves, but I assume that it means that Mahommedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mahommedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine. Perhaps also citizenship must be granted only as a result of a religious test.

I lay down with emphasis four principles:

1. I assert that there is not a Jewish nation. The members of my family, for instance, who have been in this country for generations, have no sort or kind of community of view or of desire with any Jewish family in any other country beyond the fact that they profess to a greater or less degree the same religion. It is no more true to say that a Jewish Englishman and a Jewish Moor are of the same nation than it is to say that a Christian Englishman and a Christian Frenchman are of the same nation: of the same race, perhaps, traced back through the centuries -- through centuries of the history of a peculiarly adaptable race. The Prime Minister and M. Briand are, I suppose, related through the ages, one as a Welshman and the other as a Breton, but they certainly do not belong to the same nation.
   
   
2. When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens, and you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country, drawn from all quarters of the globe, speaking every language on the face of the earth, and incapable of communicating with one another except by means of an interpreter. I have always understood that this was the consequence of the building of the Tower of Babel, if ever it was built, and I certainly do not dissent from the view, commonly held, as I have always understood, by the Jews before Zionism was invented, that to bring the Jews back to form a nation in the country from which they were dispersed would require Divine leadership. I have never heard it suggested, even by their most fervent admirers, that either Mr. Balfour or Lord Rothschild would prove to be the Messiah. I claim that the lives that British Jews have led, that the aims that they have had before them, that the part that they have played in our public life and our public institutions, have entitled them to be regarded, not as British Jews, but as Jewish Britons. I would willingly disfranchise every Zionist. I would be almost tempted to proscribe the Zionist organisation as illegal and against the national interest. But I would ask of a British Government sufficient tolerance to refuse a conclusion which makes aliens and foreigners by implication, if not at once by law, of all their Jewish fellow-citizens.
   
   
3. I deny that Palestine is to-day associated with the Jews or properly to be regarded as a fit place for them to live in. The Ten Commandments were delivered to the Jews on Sinai. It is quite true that Palestine plays a large part in Jewish history, but so it does in modern Mahommendan history, and, after the time of the Jews, surely it plays a larger part than any other country in Christian history. The Temple may have been in Palestine, but so was the Sermon on the Mount and the Crucifixion. I would not deny to Jews in Palestine equal rights to colonisation with those who profess other religions, but a religious test of citizenship seems to me to be the only admitted by those who take a bigoted and narrow view of one particular epoch of the history of Palestine, and claim for the Jews a position to which they are not entitled. If my memory serves me right, there are three times as many Jews in the world as could possibly[y] get into Palestine if you drove out all the population that remains there now. So that only one-third will get back at the most, and what will happen to the remainder?
   
   
4. I can easily understand the editors of the Morning Post and of the New Witness being Zionists, and I am not in the least surprised that the non-Jews of England may welcome this policy. I have always recognised the unpopularity, much greater than some people think, of my community. We have obtained a far greater share of this country's goods and opportunities than we are numerically entitled to. We reach on the whole maturity earlier, and therefore with people of our own age we compete unfairly. Many of us have been exclusive in our friendships and intolerant in our attitude, and I can easily understand that many a non-Jew in England wants to get rid of us. But just as there is no community of thought and mode of life among Christian Englishmen, so there is not among Jewish Englishmen. More and more we are educated in public schools and at the Universities, and take our part in the politics, in the Army, in the Civil Service, of our country. And I am glad to think that the prejudices against inter-marriage are breaking down. But when the Jew has a national home, surely it follows that the impetus to deprive us of the rights of British citizenship must be enormously increased. Palestine will become the world's Ghetto. Why should the Russian give the Jew equal rights? His national home is Palestine. Why does Lord Rothschild attach so much importance to the difference between British and foreign Jews? All Jews will be foreign Jews, inhabitants of the great country of Palestine. 

I do not know how the fortunate third will be chosen, but the Jew will have the choice, whatever country he belongs to, whatever country he loves, whatever country he regards himself as an integral part of, between going to live with people who are foreigners to him, but to whom his Christian fellow-countrymen have told him he shall belong, and of remaining as an unwelcome guest in the country that he thought he belonged to.

I am not surprised that the Government should take this step after the formation of a Jewish Regiment, and I am waiting to learn that my brother, who has been wounded in the Naval Division, or my nephew, who is in the Grenadier Guards, will be forced by public opinion or by Army regulations to become an officer in a regiment which will mainly be composed of people who will not understand the only language which he speaks -- English. I can well understand that when it was decided, and quite rightly, to force foreign Jews in this country to serve in the Army, it was difficult to put them in British regiments because of the language difficulty, but that was because they were foreigners, and not because they were Jews, and a Foreign Legion would seem to me to have been the right thing to establish. A Jewish Legion makes the position of Jews in other regiments more difficult and forces a nationality upon people who have nothing in common.

I feel that the Government are asked to be the instrument for carrying out the wishes of a Zionist organisation largely run, as my information goes, at any rate in the past, by men of enemy descent or birth, and by this means have dealt a severe blow to the liberties, position and opportunities of service of their Jewish fellow-countrymen.

I would say to Lord Rothschild that the Government will be prepared to do everything in their power to obtain for Jews in Palestine complete liberty of settlement and life on an equality with the inhabitants of that country who profess other religious beliefs. I would ask that the Government should go no further.

E.S.M., 23 August 1917

TGIF: Hear, O Israel, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

An older generation of Americans, including Jewish Americans, admire the colonists who resisted the British king and parliament in the late 1700s. Jewish Americans go further and admire the Judeans who revolted against the Greeks and Romans (twice) in antiquity.

So isn't it peculiar that they do not applaud the similar Palestinian resistance to Israel's domination? The most we get from U.S. politicians is Bernie Sanders's weak statement about putting conditions on the massive aid to Israel, which is in political disarray because its ruling competition wants to subordinate the independent judiciary.

To appreciate the Palestinian resistance and daily Israeli attempts at suppression, watch the Mondoweiss video "On the Brink: Jenin's Rising Resistance" (video and transcript). It begins like this:

Male Voice: "Palestinian health officials say at least nine Palestinians have been killed." Female voice (Yumna Patel): "It was the bloodiest few [almost five] hours the West Bank had seen in years." Male voice again: "More than a hundred military vehicles entered the camp [on Jan. 26 this year]." Female voice again: "Ten Palestinians [including two teen-aged boys and a 61-year-old woman sitting in her home] were killed in a single Israeli army raid. Dozens more were injured. Palestinians described it as a massacre, and it all took place in an area of less than half a square kilometer."

According to host Patel, "The Jenin refugee camp is home to over 15,000 Palestinian refugees, the descendants of those who were forced out of their homes by Zionist militias in 1948, during the creation of the state of Israel." Jenin is also home to "armed resistance groups who routinely confront Israel soldiers during army incursions into their camp," On this latest raid Palestinian medics with the Red Crescent were kept by Israeli forces from administering aid.

Contrary to what you may have heard, this is not "antisemitism," a word used to describe disparate things in different places throughout history, including criticism of Israel's inhumane treatment of Palestinians that goes back well over 100 years.

"In 2002," Patel says, "in the midst of the Second Intifada, the Israeli army launched a massive invasion of the Jenin refugee camp following a number of suicide bombings inside Israeli territory. During the invasion, the army killed more than 50 Palestinians and destroyed more than 400 homes in the camp, displacing more than a quarter of the camp’s entire population. More than 20 years later, the effects of the 2002 invasion are still felt in the camp today."

This is about individual rights and personal autonomy. "During January’s [this year] raid, Mohammad al-Sabbagh witnessed his family home being destroyed for the third time." Also, "During the army raid on January 26, 21 years after his father was killed, Ziad al-Sabbagh barricaded himself alongside his comrades inside his family home during the army’s assault. Though he made it out alive, he was arrested by Israeli forces. And the al-Sabbagh family home was once again destroyed."

"It's death or freedom," says one fighter. That sounds like Patrick Henry, who purportedly said, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” (March 23, 1775, St. John's Church, Richmond, Virginia, speech at the Virginia convention.)

The unconscionably inhumane treatment of the Palestinians is either consistent with what are called Jewish values or it is not. If it is, well then... But if it is not, then why has it gone on 56 years after the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights were taken militarily (to be annexed in law or in fact) and 75 years after a group of Europeans declared the existence of Israel (no borders specified) and the Palestinians who managed to stay in Israel, despite the catastrophe (Nakba) of their brethren being driven from their homes, were made no better than second-class citizens (if that), subject to all sorts of government and quasigovernment mistreatment and discrimination? So much for Israel's Declaration of Independence, which promised that "it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel." (This took place following a UN General Assembly recommendation that Palestine be divided, with more than half given to Jewish Europeans even though Jews were a minority of the Palestinian population and the UN had no right to partition the land.)

"Back in 2002," Patel says, "the army framed the deadly invasion of the camp as a defensive measure to prevent future attacks against Israeli citizens. The raid on January 26 was justified for the same reasons. But the residents say that Israel’s frequent raids over the years have only created more resentment and motivated more people to take up arms."

Jamal Hweil told Patel: "Any person who wants to know the truth has to ask, is the resistance a result or a cause? The cause is the presence of the occupation. The cause is the existence of the [refugee] camp and the displacement of the Palestinian people and the persistence of the refugee issue. The cause is the presence of an occupation of our lands. Resistance isn’t the cause. Resistance is the result.”

As a young Jenin Brigade fighter told Patel: “The world must know that we are not terrorists, as the [Israeli] occupation claims. We are fighters in the name of God. We came out of our mothers’ wombs into this world to fight this occupier, who has stolen our religion, our customs, our traditions, and who has killed our fathers and our brothers. The world needs to know we aren’t terrorists. The occupation is the only terrorist in this world." He continued:

What pushed me towards resistance are my own personal convictions, from what I’ve seen in my life. We were brought up as kids in the middle of this, every day an army raid, every day an operation, every day someone is arrested, everyday youth are executed, women are executed. The occupation enters the camp and the city without differentiating between the old and the young. It will kill whoever is in its way.

Says Patel: "The Jenin Brigade was started in 2021 by fighters affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement but has since evolved to include fighters from a number of factions in the camp. The new cross-factional model has since inspired the birth of other groups outside Jenin, who spread messages of Palestinian unity against Israeli occupation." [Emphasis added.]

"It’s a message," Patel says, "that hadn’t been heard in years, and it has appealed primarily to young men, who have grown increasingly disillusioned with their own leaders after decades of political infighting and a stalled peace process." [Emphasis added.]

As one fighter says, “When this generation witnesses this frustration, when it sees a dead end on the political horizon, when it sees the worsening economic conditions, what do you expect from these youths?”

Ammar Izz al-Din told Patel: “Enough of the ‘negotiations.’ These negotiations have brought us nothing. Since I was born I’ve been hearing about negotiations, and it’s all been for nothing. You can’t negotiate with Israel.”

I'm not endorsing violence, but this despair is Israel's -- its rulers' and most of its people's -- fault; they have all refused to address the Palestinians' legitimate grievances. The former head of the World Zionist Organization, Nahum Goldmann, wrote in his 1969 autobiography that Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, told him that were he an Arab, he wouldn't talk to Israel's founders because “We had taken their country." (And let's remember how the Israelites came to possess all of Canaan in the first place, according to the book of Joshua in the Hebrew Bible.)

A day after the latest Israeli raid, a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem whose grandfather was killed by an Israeli settler in 1998, "killed seven people inside an illegal Israeli settlement in occupied East Jerusalem." He was killed at the scene. Yet the government of Benjamin Netanyahu cracked down, Patel reports, "announcing sweeping measures that rights groups warned amounted to collective punishment.... At the same time, Israeli settlers in the West Bank carried out a series of 'revenge' attacks against Palestinians, burning people’s homes and cars, hurling rocks at Palestinian vehicles, and even shooting at Palestinians with live ammunition. It was reported that in a single night, settlers carried out close to 150 attacks against Palestinians and their property."

Why care about this? Because the U.S. government, influenced by the Israel lobby (Rep. Ilhan Omar was essentially right when she said it was “all about the Benjamins;” for some politicians it is), gives billions in military aid to Israel every year. And Netanyahu, with his eyes on Iran as a world, threatens to start a war or to goad America. into starting it.

It may be worth a reminder that the prophet Hosea (4:1-2, 6-7, 9) said, "Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel: for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood.... My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee.... As they were increased, so they sinned against me: therefore will I change their glory into shame.... and I will punish them for their ways...."

And Jeremiah (32:42), "For thus saith the Lord; ...I have brought all this great evil upon this ['my'] people."

And Ezekiel (7:8) says, "Now will I shortly pour out my fury upon thee ['Israel'], and accomplish mine anger upon thee: and I will judge thee according to thy ways, and will recompense thee for all thine abominations."

I'm not saying this, and I don't buy it. But it's in The Book!

Admittedly this is a god who reportedly ordered genocide against other Canaanites and was angrier at the children of Israel for worshiping other gods than for anything else. But the remnant of anti-Zionist Jews (bless their hearts) such as the American Council for Judaism interpret unfaithfulness to include a failure to act justly. and idolatry as the placement of the Jewish state above all else. It is ironic that Israel does not heed its own foundational, if allegorical, texts.

Thomas Jefferson's statement concerning American slavery, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, comes to mind: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just...."

Of course the reason for Israel and Jewish Americans to behave justly toward the Palestinians is not Yahweh's wrath. It's justice itself!

As I wrote in Coming to Palestine: 

Realization of the [Zionist] dream of a Jewish state logically entailed the dispossession and expulsion of the Palestinians, who by the common standard of justice were legitimate owners of their land. Those who remained were made third-class citizens or even worse in an apartheid state. The countless micro offenses against those individuals were compounded by a macro offense: the destruction of their flourishing culture, communities, and country..... [H]ere’s one thing advocates of universal freedom and justice can say: The rights of the Palestinians must not be plastered over by irrelevant claims about the Jewish State’s right to exist.

 

 

 

Disparity

 From Mondoweiss:

TGIF: Congress Again Rewards Israel's Misdeeds

To judge by what Congress is up to these days, one would think that it wants to reward Israel for its relentless confiscation of Palestinian land and continued ethnic cleansing.

Congress -- which is not only interested in "the Benjamins," that is, Israel Lobby contributions -- is surely operating in what Yakov Hirsch calls "hasbara culture," according to which anyone who objects to any action of the state of Israel, especially where the Palestinians are concerned, is without question an anti-Semite. In this view, the presence of anti-Semitism is a certainty; the only question is how it manifests itself in any given situation. (The resemblance to critical race theory is striking.)

How do hasbara culturalists know that Israel's critics are anti-Semites?

They know because, by unexamined yet indefeasible assumption, no other explanation is conceivable. If you offer an alternative, good-faith explanation for the objection, then you too must be an anti-Semite. After all, again by indefeasible assumption, if Israel is the paragon of virtue, if its military is the most moral military on earth, how could any objection be made in good faith? It certainly can't be that Zionists, whether acting individually or through the Jewish State, could have done anything wrong. That would be blaming the victim, which is (in this case only) is strictly forbidden. (I say Zionist because not all Jews are Zionists -- far from it -- and not all Zionists are Jews, even if most are. And yet even that term is unsatisfactory because some self-identified "liberal Zionists" also condemn Israeli apartheid.)

Of course, the flip side of hasbara culture is the dehumanization of Palestinians, who are always to blame -- even when they appear to be victims. (Readers can sort out that horrifying irony for themselves.) One must never regard the Palestinians as bonafide rights-bearing individuals and members of an ethnic group who could have real century-old grievances against the Zionist movement, the group of European Jews who settler-colonized Arab-majority Palestine and created a Jewish State (in an ethnic, not religious, sense). Rather, the Palestinians are merely the latest rightless embodiments of a permanent and evil, almost nonmaterial, historical force — anti-Semitism — that has taken different physical forms throughout history. By that assumption, Palestinian anger at the self-proclaimed Jewish State can be nothing but anti-Semitism, full stop.

The Viennese social critic Karl Kraus (1874-1936) once said that you can identify a madman by how agitated he becomes when locked up in a madhouse. By the same token, you can identify an anti-Semite by how agitated he becomes when dispossessed by a Zionist settler. Only an anti-Semite would fuss about that rigged game.

Anyway, though the year is still young, members of the House and Senate have been busy finding ways to help Israel. Understanding hasbara culture helps us make sense of it.

Just a few days ago the House and Senate passed the Israel Relations Normalization Act of 2021 (H.R. 2748). Writing at Mondoweiss.net, the invaluable watchdog site for Israel's apartheid oppression of Palestinians, Nadya Tannous and Cat Knarr point out that the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights has dubbed the bill  "the Normalizing Israeli Ethnic Cleansing Act."

The bill would accomplish several things. For example, Tannous and Knarr write, it

expands the Abraham Accords, Trump-era weapons and business deals between apartheid Israel and other authoritarian regimes. These deals bribe Arab countries in the region to both ignore Israel’s settler colonialism and constant human rights violations and, indeed, to regionally align with the US and Israeli policy and aspirations for the region in exchange for large weapons packages.

You'll recall that when Donald Trump and his underachiever son-in-law, Jared Kushner, failed to broker the "real estate deal of the century" between the Israelis and Palestinians — because it ignored Palestinians' rights — Team Trump tried something else: so-called peace deals between Israel and (so far) these Arab states: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. These are the Abraham Accords, which entail allegedly breakthrough mutual diplomatic recognition. Saudi Arabia already has a close working relationship with Israel.

How did Trump do it? As Tannous and Knarr note, by offering arms and business deals to the participants. The Trump administration, in other words, bought the cynical Arab regimes, which have always been ready to sell out the Palestinians for the right price. And what did Israel get? Further Arab acquiescence in its intolerable treatment of the Palestinians.

The Abraham Accords just happen to be one Trump accomplishment that most Democrats, including Joe Biden, love. In January the House and Senate both created bipartisan Abraham Accords Caucuses "to build on the success of the historic" agreements. According to the House news release:

For decades, Congress [back pat] has played a key role in promoting peace between Israel and its neighbors. The Caucus will provide an opportunity to strengthen the Abraham Accords by encouraging and [sic] partnerships among the existing Abraham Accords countries and expanding the agreement to include countries that do not currently have diplomatic relations with Israel.

I can hear the cha-ching already. American arms makers must be whooping it up. But hang on: how can one hope to have peace in the region when the Palestinians remain oppressed in what Israeli journalist Gideon Levy calls a "Jewish supremacist" apartheid state? (Human Rights Watch, the Israeli human-rights group B'Tselem, and Amnesty International all agree with that description.) That question, I'm sure means nothing to the American, Israeli, and Arab ruling elites. They plan to just power on through, Trump-style.

It's also worth remembering that Israel's newest best friends, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, are committing genocide against Yemen with indispensable help from the indispensable nation — that's us! — despite Biden's apparent promise to end that assistance.

Tannous and Knarr also note that H.R. 2748 encourages Israel's continued Palestinian land theft, which is now being rationalized in the name of environmentalism and economic development. The "bill expressly outlines Israeli environmentalism and technological developments as two ways to stabilize the region. The term stability in this case is well-selected, to imply peace, meaning silencing of Palestinian voices, protest, and dissent to Israeli campaigns of ethnic cleansing." Moreover, "Democratic leadership dug in their heels ... to guarantee further funding [the $4.8 billion just passed] of the Israeli regime’s brutal violence."

As though all that wasn't enough, House Republican Israel Caucus Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) has introduced the latest effort to quash the BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) movement, which seeks to hold businesses and others accountable for facilitating Israel's de facto annexation and Zionist settlement of the West Bank, which was seized by war in 1967 along with East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. (Fifty-five years is too long to call those territories occupied.) The Jewish News Syndicate reports:

The Anti-Boycott Act, which has 46 Republican co-sponsors, would amend the Export Administration Act of 1979 to prohibit boycotts or boycott requests imposed [sic] by international governmental organizations against Israel. The act would also hold accountable individuals who attempt to violate the act. It also affirms Congress’s opposition to the BDS movement and considers the U.N. Human Rights Council’s creation of a database of companies doing business in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to be an act of BDS.

One is tempted to ask where Congress gets the authority to do these things, but that's a silly question. Congress and presidents do pretty much what they want, especially in foreign affairs. Nevertheless, if an international organization wants to compile a database of companies that do business in the West Bank, Congress has no good reason to meddle, unless politics is counted as a good reason. Nor should it do anything to stop anyone from boycotting such companies or Israel on their own initiative.

Note Zeldin's masterful misdirection:

In the past year alone, we have witnessed an alarming rise in anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hate and violence in the United States and around the world. Whether it’s Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel, well-known companies embracing the BDS movement, anti-Semitism in academia, discrimination against Israel at the U.N. or congregants of a Texas synagogue being held hostage, there is no denying that anti-Semitism is a persistent problem in our society that needs to be identified, called out and crushed in all forms....

Too many — even in the halls of Congress — have emboldened anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric by accepting the BDS movement.... This legislation not only reinforces congressional opposition to the BDS movement but protects American companies from being forced to provide information to international organizations that peddle this hate-filled movement and holds those who attempt to violate that protection accountable.

There's hasbara culture in action. For Zeldin, violence against Jewish worshipers and peaceful demonstrations against Israeli apartheid are cut from the same anti-Semitic cloth; critics of Zionism are effectively Nazis no matter what's going on. Israel and its champions have the exclusive license to define anti-Semitism, and if you object to that, then you are anti-Semitic. Fortunately, fewer Americans — including younger Jewish Americans — buy that shameful demagogy these days.

Americans should be free of government penalty or harassment to choose not to associate with Israel or companies that do business with it. Boycotts and divestment are exercises of freedom. I do, however, part ways with BDS over sanctions. Government sanctions are acts of war that are both double-edged because they harm people in the country that imposes them, and a form of collective punishment because they harm innocents in the targeted country and elsewhere. (See Gary Chartier's excellent "The Case for Sanctions Fails at Every Turn.")

Because governments should not impose sanctions on anyone, I propose changing the S in BDS to: Stopping All Government Aid.

In the meantime, let's see hasbara culture for what it is: an attempt to inoculate the people of an ethno-supremacist/apartheid state against all criticism and consequences of its misdeeds.

"Coming to Palestine" Discussed on Podcast

I discussed my Libertarian Institute book Coming to Palestine on the podcast The Enragés (a project under the auspices of the Center for a Stateless Society).

Podcast Discussion of Coming to Palestine

Keith Knight and I discussed my book Coming to Palestine on his podcast, Don't Tread on Anyone. Watch and listen here.

Decentralized Revolution Appearance

I discussed Israel-Palestine with Aaron Harris on the Mises Caucus's Decentralized Revolution podcast. Watch and listen here.

TGIF: About that "Real Estate Dispute" in Sheikh Jarrah

When the Israeli government describes the conflict over the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem as just a "real-estate dispute," it has a point. Palestinian families are at risk of eviction (and some have already been evicted) from homes they've lived in for many years so that Jewish settlers, many of whom were born in Brooklyn, N.Y., can move into them. This is being done on the basis of a 1970 law that permits Jews to acquire Palestinian properties that are said to have been once owned by Jews. Also, under a 1950s law, the Israeli government claimed the properties of so-called "absentee" Palestinians, even if those individuals displaced by war and other means were refugees living elsewhere in Israel.

Demonstrated solidarity with those besieged Palestinian families by worshipers in the Al Aqsa mosque and the Gaza Strip--and the Israeli military's (IDF) overwhelmingly destructive punishment--produced nearly two weeks of cruelty against the tiny (5-by-25-mile) and densely populated Gaza Strip, in which over 200 Palestinians, including about 70 children, were killed and many more wounded by the IDF, and about a dozen Israeli Jews were killed by Hamas projectiles. A ceasefire was reached and seems to be holding.

What's the actual story about this "real estate dispute"? To answer that question in a way I would be fully confident in I would need to undertake a long and costly research program. In lieu of that, I will rely--for the sake of discussion--on a narrative that seems plausible, though it will satisfy neither side's hardliners.

In other words, I will stipulate for this article that the government of Jordan, which controlled East Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967, expelled, drove, and otherwise pressured Jews to leave their homes in the 1950s and allowed Palestinian families to move in. As I understand it, Jordan also forbade Jews from visiting Jerusalem sites they regard as holy, especially the Western Wall. I do not defend those policies.

For the record, I note that Jordan was not an antagonist of Israel when the the self-identified Jewish state declared its independence in territory containing many Palestinian Muslims and Christians in May 1948. On the contrary, Israel and Jordan (then Transjordan) colluded to deny the Palestinians an independent state by dividing Palestine between them. Israel would get what the UN General Assembly had recommended for the Jewish state (55 percent)--in fact by the end of the "war of independence," it had expanded to 78 percent--and Jordan would get the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. (Egypt ended up in control of the Gaza Strip.) The secret Israel-Jordan agreement did not include Jerusalem, which the UN had recommended as an international city, under neither Jewish nor Palestinian control. Of course, Israel's 1967 war against Jordan and Egypt, among other Arab states, led to the current status of the West Bank and Gaza as "occupied territories"--although after almost 54 years, it is absurd not to see those lands as illegally annexed, if only de facto.

Here is how John Kunza of the website Jewish Unpacked, a Jewish publication that says it seeks to bring nuance to the Israel-Palestine controversy, describes Sheikh Jarrah:

In 1905, an Ottoman census that included Sheikh Jarrah and its surrounding areas found 97 Jewish families living in the area alongside 167 Muslim and six Christian families. Following Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, the Jewish population was expelled from Sheikh Jarrah since the area fell on the Jordanian side of the new border.

Eight years later, in 1956, Jordan relocated 28 Palestinian families who were displaced during Israel’s War of Independence to Sheikh Jarrah. The move was approved by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), and the organization stipulated that the families would be given ownership of their homes after three years which would then end their refugee status. The Jordanian government never did formally transfer over the property rights to the Palestinians.

By the 1950s Sheikh Jarrah had changed hands several times from Ottoman rule, to British Rule, to Jordanian rule, to Jordanian rule with assistance by UNRWA which was in part stipulating property rights in the area. By this time the Jewish population, which had been documented living there for thousands of years, had completely moved out or was expelled and a Palestinian population had moved in or was relocated to the neighborhood.

To complicate the story, Israeli-American Kalmen Barkin noted in an interview with Scott Horton that some of the homes of Jewish families before the founding of Israel were owned not by those families but by nonprofit Jewish organizations that then disbanded. I will ignore that because, while important, it is not relevant to the point I want to make here.

An overall account of  Sheikh Jarrah, of course, may not tell us the truth about the particular homes and land at issue right now. Al Jazeera sheds light on those homes here. In part, Al Jazeera states:

Israeli settlement groups said Palestinian families had built their homes on land owned by Jews before 1948 and that they must vacate these homes, but Palestinian cartographer Khalil Toufakji refuted those claims.

Toufakji said he found the land deed that negates any Jewish ownership of the area at the time after digging through the archives in Ankara 11 years ago.

I can't confirm or refute Toufakji, so I will tentatively accept the settlers' side in order to show that even their version does not get them where they want to go.

Taking Kunza's account at face value, it must be pointed out that many more than 97 Palestinian families were driven--by terrorism and outright massacres--from their homes not just in West Jerusalem but throughout what would become and then became Israel in 1947-48. During that time, some 750,000 Palestinians were dispossessed of their land. At least 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed to make way for Jewish villages. In 1967 additional Palestinians were dispossessed. All of this and more later was done to "Judaize" the entire "land of Israel." Critics call this "ethnic cleansing," but the perpetrators and their defenders themselves used the Hebrew word for purify. Even right-wing Israel partisans, including historian Benny Morris, say that expelling the Palestinians was necessary for the creation of a Jewish state. (For details see Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. For my summary see Coming to Palestine.)

Here's the upshot: when Israel's partisans justify the evictions of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah, they prove too much from their own point of view. If, as they insist, Jews--any Jews--have the "right of return" to any land previously owned or occupied by Jews, then so must Palestinians have a right to return to land previously owned or occupied by Palestinians anywhere in the territory between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Rights cannot be applicable only to individuals of particular religious or ethnic. Today some Palestinians still have deeds and keys to homes they or their families were driven from in 1948. They have claimed a right of return or at least compensation, but Israeli law recognizes only a Jewish right of return. This is one reason that Israel, from the river to the sea, is increasingly described as one apartheid state dedicated to Jewish supremacy or domination. (See the recent reports from Human Rights Watch and B'Tselem, the Israeli human-rights organization.)

When we acknowledge that if a right of return exists, it must be applicable to all, then we can see at least the start of way out of the turmoil in Israel-Palestine: good-faith discussions among all the parties in which all disputed property claims are considered with respect and fairness.

I opened by saying that the Israeli government has a point when it describes the fight over homes in Sheikh Jarrah as a real-estate dispute. But it is not merely a real-estate dispute. It's much more because it is part of a decades-long comprehensive program to dramatically reduce, if not eliminate altogether, the Palestinians from what Israel and the Israelis regard as exclusively Jewish land.

Hamas, Israel, and the United States

For obvious reasons, I cannot endorse Hamas's firing projectiles at residential centers in Israel. But if is wrong to terrorize Israeli noncombatants into changing their government's outrageous anti-Palestinian policies, then it must also be wrong for Israel and the United States to terrorize noncombatants into changing their rulers' policies, which those countries routinely do through sanctions and other, explicitly military ways.

One morality--one set of individuals rights--for all!

Discussing Israel-Palestine on Year Zero

 I discussed what's going on in Israel-Palestine on the Year Zero podcast. Have a listen.

Palestine/Israel Erupts Again

 In Coming to Palestine I defended, from a libertarian perspective, the Palestinians against Israeli/Zionist oppression. I am reluctant to repeat that case in a far shorter form here, but the horrendous current events throughout Palestine/Israel, including the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, cry out for comment. I can do no better than to link to Caitlin Johnstone's piece "Fifteen Thoughts on Palestine." It deserves careful reading.

I will add only a few thoughts. The mainstream criticism of the Palestinians, who object to being dominated by a settler colonial state, boils down to "But Hamas...." (This is not to say, of course, that all would be well if Hamas disappeared.) My answer to that objection is this: how long will take to learn that relentless oppression of a group breeds and nourishes the most violent ("extremist") faction of that group? If you want the violence-minded constituents not to rise to the top or to fade away, you must stop oppressing the group! Don't make violence appear to be the only alternative because all peaceful paths have been blocked.

Yet that is what Israelis and their bipartisan American-backers have consistently done for decades with their phony "peace process" and other subterfuge.

I don't like Hamas. Even though it has moderated its aims and has given signs of accepting of two-state solution, it's a far cry from having a libertarian orientation. For one thing, launching even its crude rockets toward civilians is wrong, however understandable. I attach that final phrase because many residents of the Gaza Strip are refugees from earlier expulsions perpetrated by pre-state Zionist paramilitary forces and then the Israeli military. One of the places where refugees were driven from is Sderot, which is a rocket target favored by Hamas. Still, I condemn targeting civilians.

That said, we must never forget who the aggrieved party is: the Palestinians, who were driven from land they had lived on and worked for generations--all for the sake of building a Jewish state. Let's also remember that at one time much Jewish opposition was expressed against the idea of a Jewish state in part because it would require mistreatment of the Palestinians. (Again, see my book.)

Finally, ceasefire talk is in the air, both from Hamas and the UN (and opposed by the Biden administration). Yet Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Lior Haiat says, "We don't think this is the right time for a ceasefire."

That's the worst thing a government spokesman or leader can say when that government is pulverizing essentially defense people. Keep in mind that under "normal" conditions the people of Gaza are treated worse than prison inmates, subjected to bad water, restricted food and medical supplies, and complete control over entry and exit by the Israeli military.

It's always time for a ceasefire, followed by real good-faith efforts to relieve the Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere of the oppression they have suffered for so many years.

Individual, Not National, Self-Determination Should Be the Goal

Jeff Halper, the American-born, Israel-based veteran human-rights activist is heroic. He has dedicated his life to working for justice for the Palestinian victims of Israeli settler colonialism, much of that as the director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. His new book, Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State is the subject of a recent YouTube video, which I recommend to all who are interested in the struggle for freedom.

As much as I admire Halper, I still must take issue with him and many others in his camp on a basic issue: national self-determination. The issue is important because it is a key part of the collectivist-left outlook and therefore in conflict with libertarian individualism, which otherwise shares many of the same concerns.

Halper, like a growing number of people who have worked to bring attention to the Palestinians' plight, favors "one democratic state" in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. This position has emerged from the realization that the two-state solution is impossible in light of Israeli policy and actions in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. These areas are still called "occupied territories," but in fact, after the more than half-century since Israel conquered them, they are more aptly called de facto annexed territories, with varying degrees of repression of the stateless non-Jewish residents. In January the most prominent human rights organization in Israel, B'Tselem, issued a report supporting its declaration that the entirety of the land between the sea and river, and not just the territories acquired in 1967, constitutes "a regime of Jewish supremacy." "This is apartheid," B'Tselem said.

I agree with these positions. For me they flow naturally from my commitment to individual rights, including the right to peacefully acquire and exchange things, even things like parcels of land. When individual rights are respected, we may reasonably speak of the right to self-determination. But regrettably, Halper and his colleagues don't talk so much about individual self-determination. They prefer to talk about national self-determination; they seem to see the oppression of individuals as merely a manifestation of the oppression of a national group. I find this odd. I would have thought that self-avowed left universalists would find the idea of national self-determination unappealing. It's true that the slogan has been used by groups striving to break free from an empire. But nationalism and national rivalries have cost many lives and caused much misery over the centuries. So why does the left emphasize national self-determination rather than individual self-determination? Nations after all don't have selves. People do.

I wonder if it's because the collectivist left senses that individualism clashes with their basic beliefs. It suggests a framework that is pro-market, pro-trade, and -- horror! -- pro-private property--things they do not generally like.

What I want to say to such leftists is that, with respect to Palestinian justice, they can't get where they want to go by confining their analysis to national self-determination.

This is clear from Halper's interview. He says he supports both Palestinian and Jewish national self-determination and insists that an exclusive nation-state is not required for it to be realized. (This may strike one as odd since Palestinian refers to geography and Jew refers to religion.) All that's required for national self-determination, Halper says, is for a group to control its culture (whatever that means), resources, and land. But if he's right, how can a program of national self-determination for both groups get him where he wants to go, namely, to a non-supremacist state in which both groups can coexist?

The very heart of the controversy as it is generally understood is a dispute over who the land belongs to and who should control it: the group that has lived there continuously for the last millennium-plus -- mostly, Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and secularists, along with other, including Jewish, communities -- or the Europeans (of the Zionist movement) who arrived only a bit more than a century ago for the explicit purpose of changing the land into a Jewish State by dispossessing most if not all of the Palestinians. (Many of the Europeans in this group were complete secularists, even atheists, who nevertheless called themselves members of the Jewish People. They thereby invoked the same discredited racial theory that was rejected by liberal-minded people when it was espoused Europe in the 1930s by those who wanted to murder Jews.)

Halper's embrace of national self-determination for both "national peoples" in Israel/Palestine, then, can't be the path to peace and justice because it resolves nothing.

But we need not despair. We can still hope for peace and justice. How? By jettisoning national self-determination in favor of individual self-determination. After all, the rights that the Zionist project violated, and continues to violate, are not national rights. They're individual rights. Identifiable Palestinians were expelled by European Zionists from homes and real estate that they demonstrably owned. (Pre-Zionist Jews also legitimately owned property in Palestine, and their rights should be respected in any new arrangement.) Those property-owning Palestinian individuals lived in the hundreds of villages that the Zionist militias destroyed in their quest to establish a Jewish state in 1947-48. Some of those Palestinian individuals still possess the keys to their old houses and the deeds to their old real estate.

In other words, this isn't about nations or peoples. It's about individual human beings with natural rights, including property rights. The Palestinian People were not killed, dispossessed, and plundered by the Jewish People. Rather, particular Palestinian individuals were victimized by particular European Jewish individuals (though again, most were secular and even anti-religious) who claimed to be acting in the name of an ethnic or racial entity. (In fact, Jews are of many races and ethnicities.)

I don't deny that in process of establishing a Jewish state, Palestinian culture was assaulted and even erased. What I'm saying is that culture is carried by individuals. You can oppress a culture only by systematically violating the rights, including the property rights, of many individuals. The individual is the unit of moral analysis.

The path to peace and justice, then, lies in a single classically liberal state in which the rights of all individuals, regardless of religion, race, or ethnicity, are respected. This entails the right to engage in commerce and to move about peacefully.

I discuss these and many issues, including the claim that Zionist organizations and individuals purchased all of the land from Palestinians legitimately, in Coming to Palestine.