In 2014, after another barrage of Hamas missile attacks and rioting, I noted that the two-state solution was dead. And I’m not exactly Nostradamus. If the “moderate” Palestinian nationalists of old couldn’t accept any of the generous offers made by Israel to form a new state, the more radicalized theocratic contemporary Arab majority certainly wasn’t going to do it. Any Fatah government that made a deal with Israel without a “right of return” would immediately fall to Hamas or the Islamic Jihad.
The favorite slogan of Palestinians and their Western allies is “from the river to the sea,” not from “the Jordanian border to the 1967 armistice lines.”
As I write in the Examiner this week, the central problem with the “two-state” solution has always been that Palestinian nationalism was a concoction of the Arabs, Soviets, and Western fellow travellers in the 60s and 70s. Palestinianism is the failed ideological antidote to Zionism. Scores of Palestinian leaders have admitted as much over the decades. And the promise of “from the river to the sea” has plunged the region into an endless state of war, violence, and self-inflicted deprivation. There’s no legitimate moral, historical, or geopolitical case for Palestine. Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal (though, perhaps, sans the bearded belly dancers) makes complete sense. And the sooner we come to terms with this reality, the better it will be for everyone.
From my piece:
Over the decades, we’ve been programmed to adopt deceptive language to create the perception that a “Palestinian state” was inevitable. But a Jewish person isn’t a “settler” in Judea and Samaria. And Arab cities aren’t more “refugee camps” than Jewish cities are “settlements.” The “West Bank” is not a former state unless we’re talking about the “West Bank of Jordan,” a country with a majority “Palestinian” population that sits predominately on land set aside by the United Nations in a 1947 partition plan.
The word “occupation” is itself misleading. It insinuates that Israel has engaged in wars of expansion and taken lands from other states. From which country did Israel “occupy” the “West Bank” or Gaza? Those areas have always been in dispute. Still, Israel offered both the “West Bank” and Gaza back to Jordan and Egypt, respectively, after winning the 1967 war and only asked for recognition in return. The Arab world could have created a Palestinian state numerous times if it felt like it, but it was interested in creating a quagmire for Israel.
Even “al Nakba,” the origin story of the Palestinian plight, is a myth. Israel agreed to a U.N. plan that would have created a Palestinian state larger than the one offered in any “two-state solution,” but it was rejected. Palestinians, though few called them that, joined the Islamic world in a war of annihilation. Israelis weren’t keen on that proposition, so they fought back and won.
Palestinians are perhaps the only people who rewind history after every failed war.
There is a better case for Druzes or Kurds, or scores of other distinct ethnic minorities spread across the globe, to have a nation. The only reason the Palestinian cause has been taken up by the progressives and paleos is that they picked the right enemies.
Read the whole essay here.
The Israel vs. Ukraine kerfuffle.
The United States joined by a smattering of countries, including Israel, voting against a UN resolution condemning Putin’s war on Ukraine. Bill Kristol contends Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu “disgrace their nations, as they side with Putin against democracy and decency.”
Maybe Trump doesn’t want Volodymyr Zelensky engaged in any public relations efforts that would undermine a percolating deal. But the objective fact is that Russia was instigator of the war. Though I don’t have any big opinions on how to fix the mess, in my mind, there’s no moral equivalency between the two combatants.
Israel’s position, though, is a lot clearer. It’s an unfortunate vote, yes, but Israel lives in the real world, and in that world its greatest patron and ally is the United States. And Trump has been its greatest champion in the White House. Unless a vote undermines its security, Israel is going to follow the US’s lead.
Then again, perhaps Israel might have contemplated abstaining had Ukraine not supported 90 percent of anti-Israel resolutions in the United Nations since 2015, abstaining from the rest. Not once during Zelensky’s term has Ukraine voted with Israel. (Israel, incidentally, supported a nonbinding resolution on the first anniversary of the war calling for Russia to withdraw its forces. )
Not once after any of those votes did Kristol, or any of Ukraine’s greatest champions, excoriated Zelensky for “disgracing” his country by allying with Russia, North Korea, Belarus, and Iran, against the only democracy in the Middle East — a country far more “democratic” than Ukraine. Unlike Israel, Zelensky would have lost nothing, alienated no one that mattered, doing the right thing.
It probably didn’t help matters either that in 2022 Zelensky came to Israel and gave a jarringly ahistorical speech in the Knesset, contending that Ukraine had long been friends of the Jews —“saving them” during the Second World War, he said — before demanding Israel end relations with Russia.
No one can blame Zelensky, in a struggle to save his nation, for attempting to create an emotional and historic bond between Ukraine and other besieged people. It is almost surely the case that the Israeli government is rooting for the Ukrainians. But his speech was a distortion of history. If Israel treated Ukraine as Ukraine did its Jewish citizens during World War II, then the Jewish state would be sending weapons to the Russians.
Early in the conflict, Ukrainian officials claimed, and numerous Western outlets reported, that the Russians had struck a memorial to commemorate the World War II massacre at Babi Yar, where, over two days in 1941, at least 34,000 Jews were stripped of their possessions and clothing, led into ravines, shot, and dumped into mass graves. But the Jews of Babi Yar were often herded, guarded, and shot by Ukrainian police, militia, and collaborators. Ukraine was one of the most violently antisemitic nations in Europe, before and after German occupation.
Let’s face it, Zelensky’s barely perceptible Jewishness does not change the fact that Ukraine has been an antisemitic place for a long time.
WHCA kerfuffle.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced this week that the White House would take over the duty of determining which outlets were in the pool of reporters following the president. This had long been the role of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Now, it’s certainly true that WHCA brought this on themselves by acting like a clique of partisan hacks. These are the people who hid Joe Biden’s cognitive decline from the electorate. The best (though highly unlikely) solution would be for the WHCA to to have more ideologically diverse leadership. White House press conferences are just Kabuki theater. Reporters grandstand. Press secretaries lie. The public learns nothing. But giving the government power to dictate the entire pool of people who get to ask them questions sets a terrible precedent. The right is so enthralled with their power right now, I’m not sure they realize it.
Mollie and I had spirited discussion on this, and other topics, on this week’s You’re Wrong.
False utopias
David Leonhardt’s piece, “In an Age of Right-Wing Populism, Why Are Denmark’s Liberals Winning?,” which details how Denmark’s progressives are experiencing success after limiting immigration and focusing on worker issues, was praised by a bunch of conservative pundits. And he’s not wrong. Denmark hasn’t just shut its borders, it’s proactively put ads in papers around the Middle East telling people not to come. The American left’s obsession with mass illegal immigration and esoteric social issues has been politically disastrous.
Still, Denmark’s experience tells us very little. Leonhardt, for instance, notes that the small country has passed a slew of popular leftist social policy. Well, Denmark’s homogenous population is one of the least religious in Europe, so the fact that they support progressive abortion laws without much pushback isn’t really that impressive.
Leonhardt also highlights Danish rent control and other anti-market policies that appeals to populists. What he doesn’t mention is that overall Denmark has one of the least regulated economies in the world. There's no minimum wage. There are very low tariff rates. Regulations on business are few and streamlined. Sure, Denmark has recently embraced green deindustrialization, but it’s still one of EU's largest oil and gas producers — and it was the top producer for decades. Danes aren’t wealthy because they’re building a bunch of windmills. And like Germany, expect the effort to fail.
In the end, Leonhardt is most impressed by Denmark’s generous welfare state; and people do love free stuff. In Denmark, everyone is taxed at high rates. Families making $65,000, for instance, pay a 55.9 percent income rate. That doesn’t even account for the 25 percent VAT tax put on top of consumer goods. Do you think the American working class voter (who barely pays any federal taxes right now) would clamoring to to support Democrats who propose a 60+% tax rate? I’m skeptical.
Good reads.
RIP Gene Hackman — Wall Street Journal
Collection of Hackman interviews
Gene Hackman Interview: On His Retirement, Acting, And Writing Westerns — Empire
The Confederate Roots of the Administrative State — Dan McLaughlin, NR
The “Will of the People” — Mike Cote, Rational Policy
How 99% of Ancient Literature Was Lost — Open Culture
Exclusive: Inside the FBI’s Lab Leak Investigation — Vanity Fair
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Struggle With Faith — Gary Saul Morson, WSJ
Great as always. I'm so glad you're on Substack
What’s odd is that you and your friends also believe in one state between the river and the sea, just that it will be called Israel. Jewish supremacy will be assured through an ethnic cleansing campaign and the apartheid-style governance of the West Bank.
Your post is an attempt to make this outcome seem not only inevitable, but moral.
By the way, in retrospect the two-state solution was murdered along with Yitzhak Rabin. You will recall that wasn’t by Hamas. It was by a right-wing Jew of the sort now participating in the Government.