The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    One-State, Two-State, Blue-State, Jew-State

    By Michael Wolraich on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 10:03am | Politics, World Affairs

    Donald Trump is an easy-going guy. Just yesterday, he shrugged off the United States' longstanding position on the Israel-Palestine dispute and announced that he's totally open to a "one-state" solution. 

    "So I'm looking at two-state, and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like. I can live with either one," he burbled to the press with his friend "Bibi" Netanyahu beaming by his side. "I thought for a while the two-state looked like it may be the easier of the two," he continued, "but honestly if Bibi and if the Palestinians--if Israel and the Palestinians--are happy, I'm happy with the one they like the best."

    One state, two state, whatever the kids are into these days.

    But what is this one-state solution to which Trump so cheerfully consented? He didn't say. Neither did Bibi. But Yishai Fleisher, a radical settler who presents himself as a spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron, is not so circumspect. In a New York Times op-ed, he matter-of-factly rattled off five "credible" plans for appropriating Palestinian land and eviscerating the dream of Palestinian statehood.

    Option 1: Israel annexes the entire West Bank; Palestinian residents become ex-patriot Jordanians. Thus with a stroke of a pen, millions of Palestinians who have lived in the West Bank for generations are transmuted into permanent immigrants from Jordan--with no voting rights or path to citizenship in their own land.

    Option 2: Israel annexes the best bits of the West Bank and permits Palestinians "self-rule" in the rest. This proposal would legitimize the status quo by making Israel's land grab official while leaving the Palestinians in permanent limbo.

    Option 3: Similar to option 2 but the West Bank Palestinians are split into seven disconnected city-states. Fleisher likens these mini-states to the Arab emirates, but they're more analogous to the pseudo-state black homelands of apartheid-era South Africa.

    Option 4: Israel annexes the entire West Bank and permits Palestinians to become citizens with full voting rights. To make this scenario plausible, he fantasizes that Israelis will reproduce faster than Palestinians in order to maintain a 60-40 Jewish majority. As a back-up, he proposes "an arrangement more like that of Puerto Rico" where Palestinians lack the right to vote in national elections. Once again, South Africa offers a better analogy.

    Option 5: Israeli agrees to "an exchange of populations with Arab countries." According to the convoluted reasoning, Palestinians living in the West Bank would be "exchanged" with Jews living in Arab countries as if they were prisoners of war. Since most Jews from Arab countries have already emigrated to Israel, the exchange would be backdated to include them. Future "exchanges" would largely consist of Palestinians moving, or rather being moved, out of Israel. Of course, there is a much more straightforward term for this process: ethnic cleansing.

    So there you have it. Five credible one-state solutions guaranteed to satisfy all parties, or at least all the parties that Donald Trump cares about. "I think we're going to make a deal," he cooed. "It might be a bigger and better deal than people in this room even understand."

    www.michaelwolraich.com

    Topics: 
    Politics
    World Affairs

    Comments

    Can't add much to this Michael, except to call it something that would put me on double secret probation.  Even Trump's admonition about settlement expansion is meaningless if he's going to start looking at a one state.  I think Aaron David Miller said it best this morning on two-states, i.e. something to the effect that before you tear down a rickety two-step process, you'd better have something sturdier to put in its place.  

    I said it yesterday.  I'm more sickened in the short-term by David Friedman's nomination as US Ambassador. He's about to testify at 10:30, and right now he's being introduced and endorsed by Joe Lieberman.

    I have a wake to go to tonight; right now that's the highlight of my day.


    by Bruce Levine on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 10:26am

    Seriously, Joe Lieberman? Oy. I used to take pride in America's unwavering alliance with Israel, but it has become so twisted, especially with Bibi and Donald joined at the hip. It's not about Israel's security anymore, not even the neo-con dream of spreading democracy through the Middle East. It's all about pandering to the right wing in both countries and giving Likud cover to extend Israeli territory deeper into the West Bank.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 10:36am

    They're winning, but we ain't dead yet (we just fitting better into my sentence, not signing you up for anything :)).


    by Bruce Levine on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 10:42am

    Thank you for not counting me among the dead.

    Trump won't be president forever, but even with a more reasonable president, I don't know how we escape the racist Islamophobia that has driven Likud and increasingly the GOP into the arms of radical settlers.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 10:52am

    It's a marriage made in hell.


    by Bruce Levine on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 11:19am

    Ted Herzl is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice. Golda Meier, Sandy Koufax, and millions more Jewish Americans who made America what it is today. Big impact.


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 12:57pm

    They'll be bobble-heads some day!

     


    by Bruce Levine on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 2:40pm

    I actually think a one-state solution is ultimately the only viable one because the Palestinian population centers in Gaza and the west bank are divided by the heart of Israel.  Also, Israel currently occupies the most fertile and desirable land in the region.  Relegating the Palestinian millions to the Gaza desert and the rapidly desertifying west bank could very possibly ratchet up the nearly unbearable tension in the southwest Levant.  On the other hand, the insurmountable obstacles to a just one-state of Israel/Palestine may be more surmountable than appears at first blush. 

    My vision for Israel/Palestine is a confederacy consisting of relatively autonomous states rather than a tight-knit nation controlled from Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.  Religious freedom is absolutely guaranteed throughout the country.  But schools - public, private, and religiously affiliated - are closely monitored by an interfaith agency - which includes Jews, Muslims, Christians, and secularists - to ensure that divisive hate speech and intolerance are . . . well . . . not tolerated.

    All public institutions, e.g., the police, military, schools, hospitals, etc., must be strictly integrated and the wealth and income gap must be overcome.   Indeed, Jews and Muslims can live side by side in peace.  But for this vision to become real, the United States must do much more to prod Israel to make meaningful concessions to the Palestinian people.  Unfortunately, as PP pointed out powerfully in a persuasive piece posted previously, this is not likely to happen any time soon due to the absence of remotely responsible leadership in either Washington or Jerusalem.

    Still I choose to believe, against all odds, a better world is possible.


    by HSG on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 10:30am

    Hal, no matter how you slice it, any one-state solution breaks on the fact that Muslims will soon outnumber Jews in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. So it's caught between three untenable or unrealistic options:

    • Muslims are expelled from Israel
    • Israeli Muslims lack voting rights
    • Israel is no longer a Jewish state

    It sounds like your idea might be a version option 3. Regardless of whether it's a good idea, Israelis will never ever agree to it.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 10:45am

    There you have it, in a nutshell. The problem is that Trump knows none of this. Not even this short basic summary. He's never read about, no one has told him, he's never considered it, he's never thought about it at all. And that's true about almost every issue and policy he deals with. He's making decisions with less knowledge about the situations and implications than a smart high school student has.


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 12:58pm

    I would add that he doesn't care. The fate of millions of Palestinians (or Israelis) doesn't matter a fig to him, only the fate of Donald Trump and his immediate family.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 2:18pm

    It looks like I have real pc probs here. It has become embarrassing.

    But before I go away for awhile. I wonder whether you sense a new anti-Jewish sentiment arising in this country.

    I never understood this racist mess.

    I have written about it for sure over the last 9 years.

    I never understood it.

    Is it the 'banks'. Is it some 'secret society' thing?

    With the onset of Alex Jones and Stone and a number of other idiots....How do you feel about all of this?

    Besides the KKK and the White Nationalists and the New Alt?

    I never understood this issue.

    I am just asking, how do you feel about this crap? I am having problems with my pc that shall be cleared up in a few months, I just wished to get your feelings about this Brietbart type blogs.

    I might look at all of this from the outside.but

    I just wondered how you feel about it from the inside.

    Again,, I have written on this subject. I read about a military in this country at the turn of the last century and I have written about other attacks upon one race....but I do not understand this issue at all. Why should anyone hate 'the Jews'? and why should some Christian hope for the end of times in IsraeL

    Sorry, this 'issue' has really gotten to me lately.

    And I just look for a different perspective.

    Thank you


    by Richard Day on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 10:14pm

    Why does anyone hate anyone Mr Day? Because they're different. For two thousand years, Jews lived as an exotic minority in the middle of Europe. They dressed differently, spoke differently, worshipped differently. When things went wrong, the Jews were a convenient scapegoat. For example, Jews were accused of spreading the black plague by poisoning Christian wells.

    There were other hated minorities of course, but Jews had a special role in scapegoating conspiracy theories because some Jews were very successful--in banking and in government. So in the 19th century, for example, those simple well-poisoners were transformed into devious financial masterminds who pull the secret strings and create catastrophe at will.

    Jews are not longer so culturally different from the rest of the population but myth of the all-powerful Jewish conspiracy lives on century after century.

    PS I'm sorry about your computer troubles. It's almost certainly a Jewish plot to silence you.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 10:39pm

    hahahhaahah no Mike

    My pc probs have nothing to do with the 'Jews'.

    hahahahahah

    Yeah, this issue is not going away as easy as this. hahahahah

    BUT YOU DID KILL MY SAVIOR.

    On the other hand, my Savior was a Jew.

    AFTER ALL.

    HAHAHAH


    by Richard Day on Thu, 02/16/2017 - 11:05pm

    Steve Simon & Aaron David Miller go out on a limb trying to do the crystal ball thing with Trump effect, in an op-ed in the NYT:

    [....] What will things look like in four to eight years? American support for an increasingly right-wing Israeli policy will mean that Israel will have built more settlements; diplomacy aimed at a two-state solution will be stillborn or abandoned; and violence in the West Bank will require Israel to use force to restore order. Politics in Israel will continue to drift right amid a deepening conviction that it has no Palestinian partner and against the backdrop of an increasingly dangerous region.

    If these things come to pass, the erosion of shared values will quicken. The process is already underway because of a number of trends: the drop in religious affiliation in the United States, particularly among Jews; indifference to Israel among many voters, including key Democratic constituencies; the likely leftward turn of the Bernie Sanders generation; and perceptions of an increasingly unpopular alliance between Israel and the Trump administration. Taken together, they point to the very real possibility of growing distance between Washington and Jerusalem.

    The American-Israeli partnership will not collapse. Congressional politics, a volatile Arab world and sheer inertia will preserve it in some form. But the relationship would become a pale version of what it once was and what it could be. And that would be a real tragedy for both nations indeed.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 02/17/2017 - 4:08am

    Just FYI over @ Haaretz they have a big exclusive causing commotion in IP world. After they came out with it, Bibi took credit:

    Exclusive: Kerry offered Netanyahu Mideast peace plan in secret 2016 summit with Egypt's Sissi, Jordan's King Abdullah | Netanyahu tells Likud ministers he was the one to initiate the secret meeting.

    I haven't read the Haaretz pieces because it requires a subscription. I caught the main gist from secondary reports on the wire services.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 02/19/2017 - 2:31pm

    I like option 4, it looks like a variation of my admonition to the Israeli Jews to fuck faster.

     

    I would on a larger scale hope for a Kemalist state (albeit not doing too will in Turkey these days.)

     

    The weaponization of fundamentalist Yahwism that started with Charlie Wilson's War and now has us on the doors of Clement's call to European Knighthood to rise up and retake the birthplace of Christ from the Saracens is discouraging.

     

    Watching the Jews, Arabs, and American Fundies in their insanity must really make the Europeans value their secular commitment.

     

    On the larger question, I don't think the Canaanites did the world any favors by inventing monotheism.  

     

    It's not working out well.

     

     

     


    by jollyroger on Sun, 02/19/2017 - 9:47pm

    Fucking faster doesn't accelerate procreation, despite the rabbit imagery & there's no correlation with fecundity either. Timing, not speed.


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 02/20/2017 - 4:55pm

    As a former Infertility Nurse Practitioner, I can confirm Peracles Please's assessment.  For those who opt for IVF, we recommend at least 3 days but no more than 5 of abstinence.  Those sperm are long-lived, but they need their numbers because so many give up early.  

    If you are not doing IVF, fast-f---ing just dilutes the egg exposure, so I would recommend gentle romantic encounters.

     

    But what do I know?  My 3 children were all adopted!!!!!!


    by CVille Dem on Tue, 02/21/2017 - 7:30pm

    Double post deleted


    by CVille Dem on Tue, 02/21/2017 - 7:36pm

    solution : the act of solving a problem, question.

    Given said definition for the word  " solution ", from the five (5) option given to study, I've come to the conclusion all options given satisfies only one side of the equation by moving all variables to the one side while and leaving the other side with a single variable that doesn't enough weight to balance the equation in order to maintain a state of equilibrium.


    by Beetlejuice on Mon, 02/20/2017 - 5:48pm