If Israel doesn’t get out of the West Bank soon, demographic realities will force Israel to make the most painful existential choice of its life: whether to abandon Jewish democracy or whether to abandon Jewish statehood in favor of a binational homeland. Both of these options, in fundamental ways, represent the end of Israel. Not from an Iranian nuclear weapon. Not from a super-empowered Palestinian intifada. But from political failure and international diplomatic failure, the end of Israel can, actually, be achieved.In question is Matthew Yglesias' post, "Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace." It turns out that Yglesias debated Jonathan Chait during an Israel panel at the J Street conference (the one where no one who is anyone of the big-name attendees ending up attending in the end). I've long identified Yglesias as one of the most hardline leftist foreign policy commentators around, and he's actually pulling some punches above, considering his propensity for Hamas-Intifada Halloween costumes:
Yglesias' proxy demonization for Israel is the "nation-state" - if we didn't have them, we wouldn't have Israel. He can only go so far in this, for in getting rid of the nation state one doesn't stop at Israel, but the entire international system (and its most important actor, the United States). So, in his roundabout way Yglesias can condemn Israel to destruction without actually saying so, and he can in fact say he's pro-Israel when he's really not:
Readers will know that I’m not a big fan of nationalism and I am a big fan of trans-national projects like the European Union and the United Nations. And it’s even true that I really kind of hope that hundreds of years from now there won’t be national states at all, instead we’ll all be lumped in with the Vulcans and the Andorians in a United Federation of Planets and off we’ll go. But there’s clearly no prospects for the abolition of the nation-state in the short-term. And the Jewish people’s claim to a nation-state is just as strong as the Finnish or Dutch or Thai claim. Or, for that matter, as the Palestinian claim. By far the best way to secure a just resolution of those conflicting claims is through a two-state solution—an independent Palestine, and a democratic Jewish Israel.As you can see, it's quite smooth to elevate Palestinian aspirations to the existentialism of Israel's future. Either way, it's about destroying the Jewish state, for folks on the left simply don't stop with the "two-state" solution: In the end, they always demand the "right of return," and that of course is the direct path to Jewish annihiliation. The slow path is Ackerman's demographic time bomb of legitimizing a multicultural Israeli state that ultimately becomes non-Jewish. Yglesias is silent on this eventuality, but Ackerman's lobbying for it, demonically - and remember, Ackerman's one who peppers his commentaries with Arabic prayers for jihadi success: insh'allah (God willing).
But let's not forget Robert "Moral Abomination" Farley. He too wants his cake and to eat it too, claiming to be pro-Israel while also condeming the establishment of the Jewish state as "brutal, murderous work," just like the founding of the United States and the European democracies. You see, there's nothing special (that'd be American exceptionalism) about the United States for Farley (and Yglesias and Ackerman, for that matter). He'll condemn the U.S. and the whole lot of great power national states, and let them perish. That'll clear the way for the heavenly neo-communist utopia that's the real end stage of history for these pro-Palestinian airheads.
It's pretty convoluted, but not hard actually, once you figure out where these fools are coming from.
See also, Michael Goldfarb (a near-somebody who went ahead and attended J Street after all), "The Space Between Pro-Israel and Anti-Israel."
More at Mememorandum.
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