Why... I think that doggone anti-Semite Jimmy Carter has a point.

Great Debates
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Hoo boy.

I’ll keep it short and simple since the point was obviously missed before.

Would restrictions on settlers who remained as non-citizens in a Palestinian state be apartheid? Or is it reasonable for governments to discriminate on the basis of citizenship? Is it reasonable for governments to protect their citizens or should a possible future Palestinian state allow non-citizen settlers full rights even if they represent a security risk?

I’m happy to see that you have full sympathy and understanding for why some Palestinians want to kill Israelis. I’ll not enter that debate. And of course that (justifiable to you, perhaps) perception is why Israelis feel they need security for their citizenry from those non-citizens who potentially desire to kill them.

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Bait? RTFirefly brings up some damned good points.

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What, like he doesn’t even know enough about the situation in the ME to have read Hamas’ charter, and yet still wants to hold forth on the situation in the OT? That he can willfully distort what words actually mean if he thinks his obfuscation fills a goal? That he is intellectually dishonest and purposefully chooses the most inflammatory word possible to describe the Israeli occupation, but uses his ignorance and tu quoque fallacies to avoid doing the same thing to Palestinian groups’ stated goal of genocide? Or perhaps it’s how he simply has to use a misleading, emotionally charged, loaded and inaccurate term because using more words will lose people? That on the freaking Dope of all places, clarity, accuracy, and intellectual honesty are simply too much time? Or perhaps the fact that he doesn’t have the required intellectual honesty to admit when his bombastic rhetoric shares only a passing correlation with reality, and still hasn’t retracted his silly little “illuminating” lie that the IDF targets civilians?

I should pretend that I can have an honest debate with someone who is as intellectually dishonest as he is? I should pretend that I can have an informed discussion with someone who doesn’t know as much about the situation as someone who casually reads the paper? I should take that bait and pretend that he’s debating in good faith from a position of knowledge?
Whatever Guin.

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Dude, you’re already flopping on the deck! :smiley:

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Tagos I just want to appreciate your relative fairness here and to highlight the areas where many of us, I think, agree. I may disagree with your assessment of apartheid as at all apt, for reason repetively espoused, but I certainly agree with your last two paragraphs.

There are possible courses for the future. Continuation of the status quo is one of them and frankly that sucks for all involved.

Another is for a moderate Palestinian forces to become ascendant while extremist forces in Israel are still marginalizd, and for a negotiated solution to emerge. Two states working together to develop tourism and other industries with tax structures that encourage investment in Palestine and allow Palestinians to work in Israel as well. Your suggestions would mostly be included in that pathway.

That however is not very realistic it seems.

Right now the Palestinian side is unable to speak with one voice and would be unable to deliver on security if promised. Abbas can’t even control Fatah. Hamas’ power is caught up with demonizing Israel as much as possible and bemoaning percieved past wrongs and they are so far unable to look past that.

Israel therefore must act unilaterally and withdraw as much as security considerations will allow as prudent, with further withdrawls and or territory exchanges or other deals open for discussion at such time that a real negotiating partner exists. Unilateral disengagement, the announced next best option to a negotiated solution and what the Israeli public has voted for by electing Kadima and Olmert, leaving settlers behind without IDF support, or forcibly removing them as was done in Gaza, is the only realistic option for Israel to currently take.

I find it very odd that Carter is selling the word apartheid at such a time as the Israeli public is overwhelmingly endorsing disengagement. What is his point after all? It does not seem to be that Israel should disengage from the interviews that I’ve heard. That settlers and Palestinians should both stay in the OT under one law as equal citizens holding hands and singing “I’d like to teach the world to sing?”

Really.

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You have not apprehended the essential point. The ‘citizenship’ you speak of is a fiction which enables the state to discriminate between people under its dominion. That is as true in the history of South Africa and as in current Israel.

I had hoped to draw your attention to a polluting of the well without injuring your sensibilities and am clearly disappointed in that regard. However, had you not espoused your view on the question of ‘apartheid’ and declared that holding an opposing view signified poor character? It seemed a display of less charity than was needed to post constructively.

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Chris Hedges reviews Carter’s book (and reaction thereto) in The Nation:

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Good link. Thanks, Brain Glutton.

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In 1991 I first visited Israel, I supplied a software system to a fairly high profile company, the last time I was there was this time last year.

I can only speak for my impressions, but they are first hand. ‘Jewish’ Israelis are definitely aware of non ‘Jewish’ Israelis, there is a sort of mutual dog sniffing excercize that they go through, it is a sort of ritual - but at the end of it there is acceptance and a form of courteous friendliness.

In some ways it is like the ‘look I have no weopons/bomb’ dance that one goes through when entering a restaurant - in other ways it is like entering a British pub.

There is a great deal of antagonism, well I have sniffed it, but none of it is personal, on a personal level things smell to me just fine. In fact the most hostility I have smelt was from a ‘guide’ in Jerusalem excoriating a young couple ostentatiously speaking English.

I’ve memories of taking my lass through the Souk in Jerusalem, with a sea of old men (coming from the two mosques) who barely reached my arm pits - smoking joints that they did not offer us - yet again, no problem.

I’ve noticed that ‘Jewish’ Israelis tend to envy the ‘Arab’ Israelis dislike of multi storey housing.

A long time ago, I advocated building a Wall, choose one of the two to help out, and let the other rot - there is nothing like an empirical example. Finally Sharon et al clocked that the only solution is withdrawel, attempting to police a hostile area is futile.

Demographically Israel would be daft to be swamped by ‘Palestinians’, but two states could co-exist - the locals just need to be materially well off to resent losing it.

In some ways it is like the GDR tuning in to FDR TV broadcasts.

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Well BG a lot to respond to. And now there are two threads covering some of the same material. I’ll stick here to the points about your post and the purpose and effects of using particular words.

Gaza. Israel pulled out and Gaza was used as a base for acts of war against Israel: rocket attacks and territorial invasion with murder and kidnapping. These acts of war were not disavowed by the PA government run by Hamas. You attack you should expect a strong response. Rampaging? Hardly. Interesting that despite all the Jewish media control the ongoing Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza and Israel’ (for now) nonresponse to them, despite growing objections, has had no play in Western news sources.

To blame Arab violence on Israeli is also inconsistent with the facts. Arab on Arab violence and Arab attacks on Israel precede the settlements and Arab groups are attacking each other in areas in which Israel has no bearing.

Claiming that Arab Israelis are subject to “apartheid” is absurd and the point by point refutation opf those claims is outside the scope of this discussion. Briefly, Any Arab can serve in the army (a very few highly sensitive positions are off-limits only) but are not required to. The Druze (also Arab) have requested that they not be exempt from mandatory service so they are not. To call that discriminatory is absurd. A claim that the security Fence would encase Palestinians in “podlike militarized ghettos” is a straight up lie as this map of the propsed Fence route illustrates. Certainly there are criticisms of whether all of the route takes as much care to minimize disruption as it should, but I can think of no other alternative to disengagement to a prudently secure withdrawl.

Again, my concern is for a best possible future for all involved. I have laid out what I see as possible futures. Long term that is negotiated peace with shared investments in infrastructures and industry. Very long term a loose affiliation. But short term, meaning the next several decades? Withdrawl to an indefensible Green Line with no security guarantees or even anyone able to offer one, is not an option. One state is not an option. (Even those who feel that Israel has no moral basis to exist must recognize that Israel will never agree to a solution that elimnates it as a Jewish identity state and puts its current citizens in mortal danger.) So what are solutions? And does inflamatory labelling that attempts to demonize one side and one side only advance the cause of solutions?

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More on the use of particular words (and I’ll try not to get Foxworthyish this time).

Apartheid enforced a “seperateness”. Policies in the OT enforce some “seperateness” between Israeli citizens there and non-citizens. Thus there is that similarity in that way with apartheid. And there, to the best of my knowledge, it ends.

Antisemites accuse Jews of participating in conspiricies to control governments and media in a manner disloyal to their home nations. Antisemites systematically select all that is ugly about the Jewish side of a question while intentionally ignoring or supprressing information about the other side. Carter does those those same things. Thus there is that similarity of Carter to an antisemite. And there it ends.

In neither case does making the analogy serve any worthwhile goal. The analogies do not follow through as accurate representations of reality despite some superficial commonalities. Their use merely reveals the biases of those who use them. Nothing more.

The most notable person to express concern over Carter’s implying that Jews control the media and of his excessive imbalanced presentation as veering towards antisemitism was Abe Foxman of the ADL. He has been roundly excoriated for that statement by many. Of note however is that the last time he expressed such a concern about someone he also served no worthwhile end in doing so and was roundly criticized but he was at least accurate. Carter unlike Gibson is unlikely to be stoppped for driving drunk. For all I know Foxman may not be wrong this time either. I don’t know and and I don’t care. I just know that using that kind of word, just like using the word “apartheid” is a counterproductive thing to do.

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English translation: “I won’t respond to your point-by-point dismantling of my argument.” Fine with me, dude; nobody says you have to.

And I confess amusement with respect to your “hasn’t read Hamas’ charter” bit. I can’t think of anything that might qualify you to be the arbiter of what one must know to participate in this debate, even aside from the charming non sequitur quality to your remark.

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I believe government that rest on the foundation of the consent of the governed have the right to discriminate on the basis of citizenship, absolutely.

This is another thing that distinguishes both the white South African government of the native peoples of South Africa and the Israeli government of the West Bank from most governments. Neither one in any way sought or would have received the consent of the majority of those they governed.

If a government of the sort I’ve described above believes a noncitizen represents a security risk, it’s completely within its rights to show that person to the border.

Well, of course. I approach this by asking myself how I would feel if my own country were occupied by foreigners in this manner, and how my fellow American citizens would likely react. The answer is, we’d be pissed as hell, and many of my fellow citizens would try with all their might to kill the occupiers.

Then I think to myself, should I expect the Palestinians to have less pride than Americans do? Do I believe they are a higher race, with greater inner resources to place themselves above the fray? No: I may not understand their religion, but I see no evidence that it has turned them into the Zen masters that American Christians aren’t.

Oh, definitely. And if they wanted to retreat behind a wall along the Green Line, I would hardly blame them.

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And my apologies for my slowness in responding. Wednesday was a travel day for me, and we’ve had connectivity problems at my in-laws’.

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On the contrary the similarities are further and deeper than you present. The majority of rational people are likewise persuaded that current Israel is an abomination. Yet the good news is that SA serves as an example of how the optimal resolution is achieveable: The transition to universal sufferage and majority rule. Why is such an example necessary? Unfortunately, supporters of the current regime create a lot of palaver suggesting that any relaxation of the current affront to all decent people, will instantly provoke massacres by the newly enfranchised and liberated peoples. It is the same rationalisation we heard in South Africa.

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Granted that that has been the usual outcome - SA escaped it only because of extraordinary leadership, by both Mandela and Botha, and it was a close-run thing at that. But you’re right, it proves it can be done.

Now, if only we could *find * some extraordinary leadership …

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Goody, that’s settled then.

Except that “majority rule” in a sea of hostile Arabs means the destruction of the state of Israel, which “the majority of rational people” understand is not a realistic option.

The “apartheid” analogy fell apart even for Jimmy Carter when he conceded that Israel’s policies were not founded on racism.

Exactly. For people of good will who want the conflict resolved in a manner both sides can live with, demonization based on false comparisons is an unacceptable tactic.

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Much like what they said about South Africa.

And if it does come to a choice between winding down that religious theme-park or, affording millions of people their right to self-determination, there is enough moral force in the world and patience to realize the correct choice.

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Moral force would be a welcome change from brute force, which has been repeatedly used against “that religious theme-park” as you so charmingly put it, but with negative results. It’s also been a failure when used by Israel (as in Gaza and Lebanon).

If any lesson can be learned from South Africa here, it’s that ethnic hatred and use of violence are not a sustainable foundation for government or foreign policy. Israel’s neighbors have had 60 years to learn that lesson, and it hasn’t sunk in yet for many of them.

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Sev uh no. The majority of rational people are not so convinced. Or better yet, “cite please” and note finding polls that say that a majority disagree with Israeli policies or actions does not make your point. Heck, I disapprove of many of them myself and I am clearly of Zionistic inclinations.

I’ll link again to an old bit by Gush Shalom, an organization quite far on the Left and one that has, in a very narrow context, used that “apartheid” word themselves. Hardly an organization biased to seeing things in a view favorable to Israeli actions. It is a bit about the error of using the apartheid analogy too far.

Now this was written when they helped popularize the use of the word apartheid internationally in relation to what they saw then as the route of the security Fence as then proposed by Sharon digging farther into the OT than they felt security needs could in anyway justify. They are infamous for publishing maps that no one who was at negotiations say existed or look at all like what was being discussed. But even they recogize that the analogy is overall a poor one.

Rational people recognize that “Two States for Two Peoples” is the only way forward. They know that it will not exactly follow the Green Line. Irrational people prefer to continue things as they are if they can’t have everything they think should be.

RTF, I am curious to explore the limits of your beliefs of what is justified on each side, if your were in their shoes. Sitting on the Palestinian side, you understand the intentional targetting of civilian targets as the targets. Would you approve of an atomic bomb or a dirty bomb as well to better accomplish making the point and killing “the occupiers” (as all Israelis are seen by Hamas) if such was within “all your might”? If not why not? Israelis feel the need for security, would you “understand” (by placing yourself in their place) building a Fence that was defensible even if it deviated from the Green Line?