Privilege in a Disneyland of Hate.

 

If you can, spend 40 minutes of your time listening to Dan Senor’s interview with Einat Wilf, in his “Call me Back” podcast, “The sobering of the Israeli Left” (link also at the bottom). You really need to. Trust me. Walk with me a bit, and thanks to my thriend @gabedraws for posting it on Threads first.

 

About Einat Wilf.

 

“Einat was born and raised in Israel. She was an Intelligence Officer in the IDF. She has worked for McKinsey. She was Foreign Policy Advisor to Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres and an advisor to Yossi Beilin, who was Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Dr. Wilf was a member of the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset) in the early 2010s, where she served as Chair of the Education Committee and Member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. She has a BA from Harvard, an MBA from INSEAD in France, and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cambridge. She was a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University and is a lecturer at Reichman University in Israel.”

This is the podcast’s own introduction to Einat Wilf, who has been a regular guest, debating Israeli issues. This is someone you should listen to, not just now and in this interview, but as a very reliable and knowledgeable source of information.

Listening to the interview, I couldn’t help but think back to my own trajectory, trying to understand the Israeli Arab conflict, the origins of Zionism, and the Jewish State itself. A lot of what I heard reinforces my opinions on the matter, and I wrote extensively about it, both here and on threads (@oakie_63). It also enlightened me about a very important feature of this problem, which is related to Israel’s internal politics.

In particular, as the title of the interview suggests, the role and scope of Israel’s Left. There are many specific sobering moments in this interview, and the first one that hit me was the extent to which there were really only two “pure” right wing governments in the 75 years of the State of Israel, both extremely damaging to her, according to Einat, internally and internationally. Menachem Begin’s second government, of 1981, and Netanyahu’s current government.

I know Menachem Begin from his own writing, since “The Revolt” was my nightstand book for a few years, back in the late 1970s, early 1980s. As much as he introduced me to the Arabs in Palestine, and the independence struggle of the Jews pre-1947, he also first shed light on Cultural Zionism and the Settler movement, and the Haredim, all of which he gave free rein during his second mandate.

Many of Netanyahu’s policies are rooted in that belief system, and some of his ministers make Begin look like a boy scout, but there’s more to it than that, since a lot of what Bibi has done aims at destroying all the efforts since the Oslo Accords towards a two state solution. And the way in which he went by achieving this was to exacerbate the Palestinian call for their own one state solution, by propping Hamas, and splitting the Palestinian authority (small caps A).

There is this sentiment in the West, that large sectors of Israeli society are opposed to Bibi’s policies because of his present strategy in Gaza, namely his main objective of destroying Hamas by any means necessary. I don’t see it that way, and Einat calls attention to the fact that most Israelis are, in fact, positioned in the center of their political spectrum, which basically means, they too wish to eradicate the Islamic Jihad elements from Palestinian society.

As I mentioned before, the only way to achieve this goal, is through war. Not because there are no peace loving Palestinians, but because, as it became painfully clear on and after 10/7, the majority of Palestinian society, both in Gaza and the West Bank, see no future living side by side with a Jewish State. Make no mistake about this. Through years of indoctrination, the Islamic Jihadists have transformed Palestinian society into a radical cluster seeking one thing.

And that is the extinction of the State of Israel. The notion that large portions of Palestinians still wish to coexist with Israel, and that trading land for peace is still possible, started to fade during the Second Intifada (2000-2005), but it persisted until 10/7, especially in the Israeli Left. Why 10/7 changed this notion will be the subject of much debate, as will the role of the Settler movement in the West Bank, and the Haredim playbook. Nonetheless we live in a new world.

I still believe Netanyahu’s government is as much of a problem to peace as Hamas, not because they are the same, but because they have the same goal: a one state solution. And the reasoning why Israel can course correct her policies is not found in the Palestinian side. That was the main take from October 7. A take lost on most of the Western world. 10/7 was meticulously planned to inflict major damage, not just physical and psychological, but in particular political.

The main targets of Hamas, on 10/7, were Israeli communities close to the border with Gaza. These people were the most favorable to coexistence with Palestinians, as Eilat points out. She calls them the last bastion of the Israeli Left, in the sense that they saw cooperation with the Palestinians as the key to coexistence, and they actively promoted it, true activists for peace and coexistence.

The Nova Festival was a manifestation of that belief and activism. Many of the attendants were actively engaged in interactions with the Palestinians in Gaza, from technical training to medical assistance, believing, as many did before 10/7, that Hamas was effectively controlling Gaza against the will of large swathes of Gazans, imposing their rule and terrorist activity on them. These civilians, they found out, were part of the waves that followed the initial attack.

Not only were many Gazans cheering the Hamas terrorists, they actually joined them attacking the Kibbutzim. The towns where the people who were actively helping them lived. This was no accident. It’s purpose was clear: Hamas greatest enemy is peace, and they loathe any cooperation or help, especially from Israelis. Following the damage done to the Israeli Left in 2000-2005, October 7 may have been the last drop in an already impossibly full damn of Israeli progressive good will.

Even the most staunch supporters of a two state solution in Israel, now understand that there will be no such thing while the ONLY objective on the part of the Palestinians is the destruction of the State of Israel. You can’t negotiate with that, in particular when the other side is radicalized to the point of allowing their children to die for the cause, be it as weapons, or be it as victims. They don’t care. It’s a death cult. A genocidal cult.

There is a deal on the table, as I write these lines, to allow for a ceasefire in which more hostages can be returned in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, among which many serving life sentences for murder and terrorist actions. The details are still blurry, but initial reports suggest only women, children, and elderly hostages to be exchanged at the outrageous ratio of 1 to 100.

Nothing is certain, and my humble advice to those who claim that things like the release of ALL the Palestinians in Israeli prisons are on the table, like @jonnydaniels did this morning, is to respectfully shut the fuck up. We all need to disconnect from these talking heads, who suggest “sources familiar with the matter”, and pay attention to what is really going on. We will know when a deal is struck, up or down. Anything before that is pure speculation.

 

So don’t look at me to tell you what’s going to happen. I only remind you of what HAS happened, in the hopes you understand what is at stake, and what the reality is. And you may not like it, as many times I don’t, but it’s still real. And, in the end, all that matters. Remember that most of us, just like the vast majority of the ones clamoring for “Intifada” in the streets of our cities, have a very privileged view of what is going on in Israel and Gaza.

Igal Ram, a colleague of Einat Wilf, defined that privilege as “a Disneyland of Hate”, because, just as in Disneyland, we can experience hate from the safety of our privilege. There’s no real danger. And to make matters worse, all we do, most times, is to replace the reality of the Israeli Palestinian conflict by our own, attributing the roles of “Israel” and “Palestine” to whatever our social experience is, transposing them onto our own struggles, with invariably nefarious results.

I have studied this conflict for years, from all angles, and when brighter people in my position of Western privilege, physically removed from its fulcrum, reveal their ignorance on the matter, I feel like I know very little about it. So trust me on this: even if I write a lot about it, I read a lot more, and my opinions are based on facts, not anecdotes, and the purpose of my words is to make you think. Just as I think, as I am writing them.

The truth about the unwillingness of extremists from both sides to live in peace has been revealed since October 7. On one side you have a fascist government aiming at the destruction of Palestine, on the other, a terrorist organization posing as government aiming at the destruction of Israel. Hamas made 10/7 to poke their one state counterparts in Israel, to push back against the more progressive Israelis, and turn them around. There can be no “good Jews”.

I know some will read the last paragraph and see it as bothsideism. It’s not. The fact that extremist sectors of Israeli society like the Settlers, and even the Haredim, wish to push all Palestinians into Egypt and Jordan, claiming Gaza and the West Bank as Israel, in one state, is well known. They are openly discussing in the Knesset how to make this displacement “legal”. And mind you, this would make the Nakba look like a camping trip. We are talking about displacing millions.

 

So Israeli extremists are not genocidal maniacs in the same sense Islamic Jihadists are, there are no both sides here, except in what relates to the one state solution. What Hamas wishes to gain from the exacerbation of these ideals, and Iran is guiding them through it, is the radicalization of Israel, leading to its isolation in the world stage. And that’s a real problem. This is where the Disneyland of Hate comes into play.

 

This is why for Hamas, the more Palestinian babies are killed, the better. The more aid sent that doesn’t reach their people, the better. The more buildings destroyed in Gaza, the better. Hamas does not wish to negotiate, and because they know that their end game is invisible outside Israel, for the common person in the West, it looks like the Israelis are pushing them into a corner, but they’re not. They put themselves there.

 

They started a war they knew they couldn’t win, not because they are stupid, but because they know most of us are. And in large part, we are. We are expected to save them, again. The only thing is, after 10/7, it became clear to ALL Israelis that Hamas cannot be tolerated any longer. That is clear to me, as well, and a lot of you too. How to achieve it is matter of debate, but it will be violent, and innocents will die. It’s a war. Innocents always die in war.

 

So do not expect Israel to stop fighting. Hamas knows this. This is why they want the West to win the war for them, and push for a permanent ceasefire and the IDF withdrawal from Gaza as the condition for any hostage deal. It’s not going to happen. Remove Bibi and the settlers and Haredim from government, and it will not happen. If there were elections today in Israel, and the Left won, which it won’t, war would go on. With a different strategy, prioritizing the hostages, maybe even expanding aid and diminishing civilian suffering in Gaza. But the war would not stop. What is clear to ALL Israelis now, is Hamas needs to be removed from the equation. It may go on living in the mountains of Jordan or Lebanon, but never again in Gaza, or the West Bank. And the same applies to Hezbollah, by the way. We are confronted by this reality.

 

On one side, an Islamic genocidal maniac ideology that aims at exterminating all Jews (and Westerners, for that matter). On the other side, a small nation whose citizens are Herzlian Zionists for the most part, the majority of which have only the desire to be left alone, to live in peace, regardless of the size of their country, the land of Israel. Now tell me again how this is achieved without war. And tell me how to “free Palestine” without war.

 

War is inevitable, and like I told you before, you need to pick a side now. But before you do, read a lot, listen a lot, think a lot. It’s not fucking easy, and we mostly know little of it. This is a good place to start. Einat Wilf, interviewed by Dan Senor:

“The Sobering of the Israeli Left.”

 

May it become the start of the sobering of us all.

Am Yisrael Chai.

 

Note:

Comments on this blog are locked. This is but a reading platform linked to Threads.

If you wish to reply with your thoughts, please do so on the Threads post that references this opinion piece. Thank you for reading.

Ask me about my Zionism

 

A recent challenge by a Threadhead I follow with interest for his talent and his open mind, has been haunting me since I first saw it. It is defined as “Ask me about my Zionism”, by @gabedraws. It’s quite a challenge, deserving a much longer approach (blog again, I know), but it’s stuck in my mind, so let’s start here.

Those who follow me know my position on Zionism, I wrote about it extensively, I will tell you why. To refresh memories, or illustrate, in case you are new to my world, I leave this piece here (Link: Zionism), it aged well, but my personal stance evolved. But please, do go on reading.

Like any ideology, Zionism requires a principle, or set of principles, to clearly guide one’s opinion about it. But unfortunately for precision guided minds, such as mine, while it made little sense for a soviet to say “Ask me about my Communism”, it makes a lot of sense for a Jew to say “Ask me about my Zionism.” To start with, I cannot think of an ideology, political in kind, that only relates to one people. Sure there are religions, but Zionism is not a religion (more on this later).

As a goy, much as I identify with Jews, I can’t say I am a Zionist, or not. But I can support it, or not, as any human being can have an opinion on any given political ideology. The reason I can’t adopt it as my own, is because it belongs to only one people from its creation. And that’s the Jewish people. Now the problem becomes how Jews regard disagreements, and Jews have disagreed on what Zionism is since Theodor Herzl. And this created different views, all based on one premise.

The premise is that Jews require a nation, where they can be safe from persecution. That is set in stone. The one common denominator to all types of Zionism, evolving and morphing since the XIX Century. I identify with the original concept, as defined by Herzl, therefore I am a supporter of the Herzlian Zionism, which at its heart has but one objective: the establishment of a Jewish State, where Jews can live peacefully.

And even if, as a matter of principle, Herzl was not concerned with Judaism in his own concept of Zionism, he saw and fought for the return to the region known since the II Century as Palestine, and, of course, the eternal Jerusalem. That did not stop him from placing the well being of his people above all else, including religious considerations, and at the time of his death, he was working on the establishment of a Jewish state in Uganda. And then all hell broke loose.

Regarding “Palestine doesn’t exist”, we MUST understand that at the time of Herzl’s death, Palestine was still a Turkish protectorate, and would remain so until the defeat of the Turks during the First World War, and please watch “Lawrence of Arabia”. Spoiler alert, I think the only Jew in the movie is the American photographer. I may be wrong, in which case, no Jews. The Arabs took over, under British rule, in the new protectorate of His Majesty King George V. That was about it.

So when did the proverbial machloket surrounding the Zionist concept hit the fan? 1902. The year Herzl told the world what his vision was about, in form of a utopian novel, titled “Altneuland”, The Old New Land. Reading “Judenstaat” I could see it. It was all there, as was the shift in Herzl’s focus from a solution provided by a bunch of rich Jew philanthropists, to the all encompassing, socialist, not democratic, Zionist Actions Committee.

This leadership of the Zionist movement would be made of a cadre of select Zionists, with a Congress as the organizing body, funded by the Jewish masses through, you guessed it, a Central Jewish Bank. And what did Herzl name this bank? The Jewish Colonial Bank. In his own words, “the task of the Colonial Bank is to eliminate philanthropy”, allowing for the Jewish masses to fund the Zionist enterprise. And the pragmatic key word here is, of course, colonial.

So what is “Altneuland” about? According to Alex Bein, a German-Jewish historian:

“Altneuland" was a novel with a purpose. It described the Palestine of the near future as it would develop through the Zionist Movement. It had the weaknesses of every propaganda novel. The entire work has something of the state about it and proceeds in the form of scenes rather than by way of narrative. Each type has a specific outlook.”

“Most of the characters are portraits of living personalities. It was his purpose to memorialize his friends and his opponents.
"Altneuland" tells of a Jew who visits Palestine in 1898 and then comes again in 1923 when he finds the Promised Land developed under Jewish influence. Its territory lies East and West of the Jordan. The dead land of 1898 is now thoroughly alive. Its real creators were the irrigation engineers.”

“Technology had given a new form to labor, a new social and economic system had been created which is described as "mutualistic," a huge cooperative, a mediate form between individualism and collectivism. Haifa had become a world city. Around the Holy City of Jerusalem, modern suburbs had arisen, shaded boulevards and parks, institutes of learning, places of amusement, markets—"a world city in the spirit of the twentieth century[…]”

Guess who didn’t find Herzl’s vision interesting. One of the designers of Cultural Zionism, a man named Ahad Ha’am, who not only called Herzl delusional but, since the Ottoman Empire, was well aware that “if the time comes that our people’s life in Eretz Israel will develop to a point where we are taking (the Arabs’) place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily.” (sic) He was apparently okay with the Jewish Colonial Bank, though.

I really admire Herzl and his vision. He was an European Jew, with European values, a true concern for his people, and the wish to ensure their safety, long before the Holocaust. He was a pragmatist, his Zionism was “practical”, and his ideals, albeit socialist in nature, still anchored in XIX Century autocratic notions, already showed a pathway to social-democracy, in a shared world, with Jews and Arabs living side by side. And yes, in the land of Israel. And Jerusalem.

That’s “my Zionism”, to the extent that, as a goy, I can share in this particular machloket. It is what I support. So if you ask me about it, you better believe I will send you a link to a blog post with these words. But be prepared to tell me about your Zionism. I will respect your opinion as I expect you to respect mine. I am not a Jew, but I do have the same concept of discussion and argument. That’s the essence of machloket, and perhaps why some think I am a Jew.

So there you go.

After hours of struggle, with twice being wiped out by the fucking Threads app (the second time i had a back up), and all real life has to offer a goy on a Sunday, I finally said what I had to say about what’s keeping my mind busy.
So go ahead, prepare to fight like hell for our freedom and democracy, in the coming 5 years, and feel free to “ask me about my Zionism.”

Expect me to ask you the same, if you do.

Shalom Aleichem. 

 

Note:

Comments on this blog are locked. This is but a reading platform linked to Threads.

If you wish to reply with your thoughts, please do so on the Threads post that references this opinion piece. Thank you for reading.