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No specific news item for this culture war post, but perusing the comments on the various Iran war takes, I'm consistently baffled by people's attitudes towards Israel that I think are willfully uncharitable and blind to the history of the Middle East in general.
First, there's this idea that Israel is the primary/principle cause of all instability in the region, and that if we suddenly removed all the Jews and gave back the land to the Palestinians, we would have peace. This is absurd. The violence in Lebanon between shiites/sunnis/christians, the question of the Kurds, and the Sunni/Shiite Cold (I guess hot now) war are all conflicts that have their origins long before the founding of Israel. Heck if Israel wasn't there to focus hatred on, the Arabs would probably fight among themselves even more.
Secondly, it's extremely impractical, if not impossible to remove 6 million Jews from land they've now lived on for (at least) three generations. A second Nakba to correct for the first Nakba doesn't exactly seem just to me, and it's not like many of those Jews can actually go back to where they were from before emigrating to Israel. The Arab countries forcibly expelled all Sephardic Jews in 1948 after Israel won its independence (also weird how this was totally okay but Israel actions during the 1948 war are "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing". Israel also hasn't actually lost a war yet, and they won in 1948 without any outside help except for some weapons for the Czech Republic, so this would be an extremely hard sell to a population that really doesn't want to leave.
Thirdly, it's not like Israel hasn't tried to find a peaceful solution to the Palestine question or with its neighbors. Rabin actually signed the Oslo accords (before he was assassinated) and it looked like the Palestinians would be able to move towards self governance. Unfortunately, every government the Palestinians have elected have made it their central platform to destroy Israel, so it's somewhat logical that Israel decided that they couldn't self-govern (similar logic to why Israel and Iran are fighting). When I was living in Israel in the summer of 2019 (not a Jew, just doing research), it looked this might be changing, but unfortunately October 2023 changed all that. In terms of its Arab neighbors, Israel has repeatedly given up territory for peace. Of course unfortunately neither Jordan nor Egypt want the West Bank/Gaza (and also refuse to treat second, third and even fourth generation Palestinian refuges as citizens).
Fourthly, there's a (somewhat true) idea that Israel has an outsized influence in US politics. But the US also has an extremely outsized influence in Israeli politics. Up until the mid 1970s, Israel was heavily socialist country that had far more ties to the Soviet Union than the US wanted. Market liberalization similar to what happened under Reagen/Thatcher destroyed the Israeli Kibbutz system economically (among other things, I have a very long essay on my blog about this) that completely destroyed the Israeli left. Netenyahu is the logical result of this.
Fifthly, the claims of Israeli genocide in Gaza seem to be greatly exaggerated and very selective when it comes to comparisons of other actual genocides going on in the world right now (Sudan). I've been hearing claims of genocide for at least ten years now, but somehow there are more Palestinians in Gaza now than there were then? If the Israelis are trying to genocide the Palestinians they're clearly not very good at it (might be more effective to give out birth control). Claims of apartheid are more fair, but are no different from how Palestinians are treated in Arab countries. Why the special criticism of Israel?
Maybe making a Jewish state in the Middle East wasn't a great idea. So what? We live in the world where that's been the case for nearly 80 years and it's not going away without another ethnic cleansing. Israel does cause a lot of chaos and conflict in the region, but 90% is in direct response to its neighbors wanting to destroy it and kill its entire population. Why is the answer to somehow endorse that, rather than admit that maybe its time for the Palestinians to give up claims to land they haven't lived on since WW2, and the population of the Middle East to accept (as their leaders by and large have) that Israel is here to stay.
This reads like a fever dream.
As a foreword, I don't like reading quoted lines being rebutted one by one as it can drag on and become incoherent, but in this case there is sometimes so little argumentative weight within the paragraphs I think we can get away without it. But not everywhere.
It is obviously absurd to think peace and prosperity for all will come if Israel were to vanish. Is this absurd belief popular? Not really, right? So who are we arguing against?
There's no evidence presented for this claim or rational given for why this would be the case. The opposite can just as easily be presented as equally plausible.
Again, who is this directed towards? Is geociding every Palestinian a more practical solution? Probably not, so why not hash out what an actual practical solution might be?
Rabin was assassinated by another Israeli. In what Wikipedia found remarkable enough to note to probably be the most successful political assassination in history. So what is the point here? What's the argument? Israel wanted peace, demonstrated by Rabin signing the Oslo accords. OK. But other factions in Israel were so against that signing that they killed Rabin. This assassination and the fact that the political landscape of the country moved away from the Oslo accords demonstrates what? That they still want peace?
I'm not stating this as a 'gotcha' proof of anything. A relevant portion might still have wanted peace. Just that your line of reasoning here is clearly going nowhere.
This is not true. Who else signed the Oslo accords? Is that signing not an equal demonstration of wanting peace? The Palestinians didn't even assassinate their guy(written half jokingly). I hope this justifies my likening your post to a fever dream.
What is the relevance of the US also having outsized influence in Israeli politics? Much of the criticism laid against Israel is by Americans who feel Israel has too much influence in their politics. Why would they have a problem with America having influence over Israel? There's no contradiction there. Again, where this is going? It just reads like a complete non-sequitur. Beyond that, surely we could reason why the US would have more influence in Israeli politics, given the power disparity, right? But that's a tangential argument.
So the US made a covert effort to subvert the naturally leftist state of Israel towards capitalism? The way I remember my history Israel came naturally towards the US as it became clear the Soviet Union wasn't completely ready to play ball with Zionist demands. Demonstrated in USSR support for Egypt and Syria. With increased tensions during the Suez Crisis, and with the USSR dropping all formal diplomatic contact after the Six Day War.
Am I completely off base here?
Seems more like Israel had goals that could not align with the greater USSR vision of a somewhat united front against the west in the ME. Netanyahu is just as much a further expression of that impulse, rather than a consequence of some US ploy to win over Israel.
I feel point 5 has been adequately discussed in different comments.
In closing:
If this were a formal debate, I'd call what you are doing a Spread. Not so much with regards to the speed, but in that you are directing the debate towards a certain direction. My problem with your spread is that it's not going anywhere relevant. It's just a bunch of off ramps towards easy joo apologia that circumvent the meat and potatoes of a lot of criticism regarding Israel.
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