Jews were 5% of the population of Palestine in 1900. Most of the Jewish population of Palestine had either been slaughtered by the Crusaders (the streets of Jerusalem ran with Jewish blood when the European Crusaders sacked Jerusalem and slaughtered every Jewish male and sent the women and children into slavery), or had converted to Islam during the long centuries of mostly-peaceful Islamic occupation. Today Jews are 80% of the population of Israel (the exact ratio is classified, that is a best guess). If there is some Arab plan to "push the Jews into the sea", it seems to have had the exact opposite effect -- i.e., it seems that it's the Arabs, not the Jews, who got "pushed into the sea" or at least to some place other than the area of the former British mandate of Palestine.
Indeed, Israel is officially at peace with its neighbors other than Syria, and Syria has its own internal problems that mean that the days of it being a threat to Israel are long ago and far away. Syria will probably sign a peace treaty with Israel within the next few years. I mean, there is literally isn't any reason for them to not do so -- their leader is an opthamologist, not a warrior, and the Syrian military is equipped to put down Islamist insurrections, not invade other nations. There is literally no external threat to the existence of Israel today.
But there is a big threat to Israel today, and it has nothing to do with Arabs. The modern-day founders of Israel were basically practical people. They were scientists and philosophers and dreamers, but they had any sort of ivory tower wishy-washiness burned away by the flames of the Holocaust. They did what they had to do to create a sanctuary state for Jews given the fact that no other nation was willing to serve as such during the run-up to Hitler's "Final Solution", and they generally were in touch with reality even if they did re-write the history books to write reality out of the founding of the State of Israel (in particular, the ethnic cleansing necessary to form the state of Israel). The problem is that they're all dead, or at best on their last legs. And the modern generation seems more interested in ideological purity than in maintaining a successful state.
In short, the real threat to Israel today is the Israelis themselves, who have fallen to bickering, intellectual masturbation, and political paralysis amidst a climate of economic collapse and the flight of much of Israel's best and brightest to other nations where they perceive a better future to be awaiting. I work with more Israelis here in the Silicon Valley today than I work with in Israel, despite the fact that I work intimately with an Israeli company that produces a fundamental component of our product. The fact of the matter is that practically every Israeli policy position and political action of the past thirty years has turned out to be a disaster. Israel's pursuit of the PLO into Lebanon set off a chain event of disaster that reverberates to this day. Yitzhak Rabin's corrupt deal with Yassir Arafat to set up a Bantustan "Palestinian Authority" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (which were granted to Israel as part of their peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan) proved only that a two-state solution in the area of the former British mandate of Palestine is simply impossible because there just isn't enough land there to assure the security of Israel. The invasion of Lebanon, where the IDF was fought to a standstill by Hezballah's village reservists (Hezballah's active fighters were retained on the Beirut side of the Litani River which Hezballah had designated as their defensive line to stop the Israeli push, they had no idea that their village reservists would actually stop the IDF dead in their tracks -- literally, in some cases) was just another in a string of disasterous decisions made by Israeli leaders convinced that, given overwhelming military superiority and no real military threat to their nation's existence, military force could solve political problems.
Hmm, that last sentence sounds like some American politicians. As in, rhymes with "push". Or rhymes with "same"...
-- Badtux the Geopolitical Penguin
being jewish -- but not a zionist (hopefully more pragmatic) -- i fully get what you are saying -- and for the most part i agree....
ReplyDeleteit seems so many places become victims of their own success (like us) and turn to ideology when they have nothing else to "fight"
the difference is that the israelis have lived under a shadow of fear, bombs, murder, terrorism and danger for 60 years -- we havent
so while i agree, it is hard for me to fully understand the psyche of the average israeli......
but i will say that when you get to the stage of ideology as your primary source of "life" -- you are on your way to self-destruction
Dcap, Zionism was a matter of practicality in the timeframe 1946-1948. Europe's Jews were still in the exact same concentration camps that Hitler had placed them into, except with the guns turned outward to protect them from the general population, rather than inwards to keep them there. Attempts by Polish Jews to go home had met with violence and repression and they came back to the "refugee camps" that were Hitler's concentration camps renamed. Zionism was pretty much the only realistic solution at the time. Indeed, it is arguable that given that no other nation seems willing to guarantee refuge for any Jew requiring such, there still exists a need for a state of Israel on some piece of land that provides a guarantee of such refuge.
ReplyDeleteThe problem of Israel is that what began as a place of refuge has instead become the world's largest concentration camp for Jews. The Separation Wall not only keeps Palestinians out. It also keeps Israelies in. That is the nature of walls. Walls which keep other out, also keep self in. Once the external threat to Israel's existence was neutralized in 1975 at the Camp David Accords, it is as if Israel's leaders needed to create new threats for political purposes, needed to incite the Palestinian population with new restrictions, new outrages upon them, needed to create new wars to incite a "rally 'round the flag" effect. The vitality of culture necessary for survival when surrounded and outnumbered is no longer necessary, so Israel walls itself away from the world behind its Separation Wall, unwittingly turning Israel from a beacon of hope for the world's Jews to the world's largest concentration camp for the world's unwanted Jews, those Jews not smart enough or adventurous enough to find a way to emigrate elsewhere. It has poisoned Israeli culture and coursened the Israeli political discourse, and the current economic and military problems of Israel can be directly traced to policies adopted for the purposes of political expediency by Israeli leaders who care more about power than about Israel, care more about ideology than practicality, care more about winning than about the good of the people.
Of course, I can say the same thing about the United States once the existential threat to the U.S. -- the Soviet Union -- collapsed and removed itself from the picture. I could say the same about U.S. social and political leaders. So it goes. So it goes...
- Badtux the Geopolitical Penguin