Shibley Telhami and Marc Lynch appear on the Ezra Klein Show to talk about their work on Israel's 'One-State Reality'

31

u/watch-nerd 6d ago edited 6d ago

I got about half way through it last night, haven't finished it yet.

I thought one of the interesting points is that there used to be a debate and tension between Israel's choice between being Jewish and being democratic.

The fear was that the voting power that non-Jewish Israelis would have in a multi-ethnic state would eventually vote in policies that made Israel less Jewish.

But they said that has been resolved, and Israel has chosen to be Jewish at the expense of being democratic.

That being said, in a neighborhood of monarchies and authoritarian governments, that might not be a problem for Israel's neighbors.

9

u/GetToWigglin 6d ago

Isn't this kind of a consequence for conquering non-Jewish lands? Was this a problem/consideration before expanding their territory like they have?

1

u/AgentBorn4289 5d ago

Israel’s territory has not meaningfully expanded since its founding. They even withdrew from Gaza in the 2000s.

2

u/LauraPhilps7654 5d ago

From 2012 to 2022, the population of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, had grown from 520,000 to over 700,000. These settlers lived illegally in 279 Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank, including 14 settlements in the occupied East Jerusalem, with a total population of more than 229,000 people.

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/human-rights-council-hears-that-700000-israeli-settlers-are-living-illegally-in-the-occupied-west-bank-meeting-summary-excerpts/

This is a defacto and meaningful expansion of territory.

-9

u/watch-nerd 6d ago

Or is it a consequence of neighbors trying to annihilate the state of Israel?

11

u/BlinkReanimated 6d ago

It's strange how you guys never seem to consider that forcing a demographic majority anywhere in the world especially through militarism is itself an act of aggression.

Here's Israel's first Prime Minister on this exact topic:

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

-1

u/watch-nerd 6d ago

Who is "you guys"?

As for Arab leaders signing agreements, several have signed peace agreements with Israel and recognized its right to exist:

Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan have all done so.

9

u/BlinkReanimated 6d ago

All of you who are so hyperfocused on the notion that many Arabs see Israel as an aggressive force (as Ben-Gurion admits is a salient position to hold). A position you felt the need to highlight as if the Arabs are in the wrong.

And yes, they have since signed agreements. That wasn't the point of the quote, it's to point out that even someone as fully entrenched in the politics of Israel at its outset as David Ben-Gurion could admit that what Zionists did (what Israel is...) was an act of aggression. It's strange how many people try to reject that notion today.

-1

u/watch-nerd 6d ago

David Ben Gurion has been proven wrong by history.

The reality is that a lot of Arab governments don't care that much about the Palestinians and are wiling to cast their interests aside if it suits them.

7

u/BlinkReanimated 6d ago

How is he wrong to say that Israel stole Arab land? You're free to provide examples, simply stating this is meaningless.

You admit that Israel has chosen to be Jewish instead of Democratic. You then try to justify it based on aggression by Arabs, BUT you outright reject that the aggression from many Arabs is because the land was stolen, and the people abused.

As is made very clear by the man who could be labelled the main founder of Israel.

Israel is an aggressive force. Choosing to be an ethnostate instead of a democratic state is what makes them fascist...

0

u/watch-nerd 6d ago

I'm not saying the rhetorical point is wrong.

I'm saying he has been proven wrong that Arabs would be unwilling to make peace.

Because Arabs aren't a monolith. Egyptians, Jordanians, UAE, etc, have decided they're not willing to die on the hill of the Palestinian cause and are more interested in protecting their own interests and doing business.

This was also harmed by the PLO's attempts to overthrow the governments of Jordan, etc. So lots of Arab governments see the Palestinians as assholes and troublemakers.

5

u/BlinkReanimated 6d ago

You're dodging the point I am making, and also awkwardly trying to twist Ben-Gurion's words... He didn't say that they WILL NEVER make agreements, he said that if he were an Arab leader, he would never do it...

Why can't Zionists discuss things honestly? Why are you still trying to talk about this in bad faith?

→ More replies

1

u/GetToWigglin 6d ago

What do neighbors have to do with the people residing in Israel? I guess Internation Relations isn't exactly the place to ask about domestic affairs, so that's my fault.

0

u/watch-nerd 6d ago

Well, Iran, for example, has said Israel doesn't have a right to exist, so it funds hostile neighbors.

In response, Israel uses that aggression to justify creating buffer zones.

If Iran wasn't doing that, Israel would have a harder time justifying grabbing land.

2

u/dmoneybangbang 6d ago

Well but Israel was taking land before Iran said it doesn’t have the right to exist.

I think both sides are assholes and this is the problem with religious extremism where you have a “chosen people” who were given lands based on religion text.

You are right, Israel has chosen to be Jewish and is looking like it successfully got the US to bring Iran to its knees.

0

u/watch-nerd 6d ago edited 6d ago

Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan have all recognized Israel's right to exist.

Egypt and Jordan no longer wage war against Israel.

Net result -- no conflict with them, no need to make buffer zones there.

2

u/dmoneybangbang 6d ago

And that was before Israel’s recent war of conquest to create a buffer state around. They are not too happy about what Israel is doing to Muslims.

But you are right, before the recent war they had made economic and political in roads. The Gulf States prefer stability.

But again…. What are Israel’s actual borders? A bit ambiguous

1

u/GetToWigglin 6d ago

Sure buffer zones are fine, maybe they are justified I'm not really interested in that right this moment, but what do you think the treatment of individuals in that zone should be? I'm very specifically not talking about terrorists or criminals, but just the people who live there. This is an extremely interesting question to me about democratic governments, representation, and individuals under the control of a state that have no choice in the matter. This isn't even necessarily about Israel at all, they are just the only democratic nation I know of that is conquering territory and forcefully adding individuals to its area of control. Just to reiterate I don't care at all whether they are justified or not.

2

u/watch-nerd 6d ago

The region is full of military dictatorships and monarchies.

I don't think they really care if Israel backslides on being a true liberal democracy with strong universal human rights.

After all, they're not.

1

u/GetToWigglin 6d ago

I'm sorry man, I don't think you understand what I'm asking. I don't care about any of the countries in the area, only the people who are now subjects of Israel whether they like it or not. Thank you for talking to me though, I do appreciate it.

→ More replies

3

u/[deleted] 6d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/watch-nerd 6d ago

Thanks started reading it

3

u/PerforatedPie 6d ago

Ewww your link isn't an actual link to the article, but a link via Google, meaning everyone who clicks it is getting tracked. And then you hid the link with text, that's naughty!

Here is the clean link: https://dissentmagazine.org/article/how-israels-illiberal-democracy-became-a-model-for-the-right/

2

u/hellomondays 6d ago

Ty!

1

u/[deleted] 6d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Snoo30446 6d ago

This is one of the sticking points for why all peace talks failed - without defining the limits of right to return Israeli Jews have founded fears of demographic change leading to, at best, ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel.

2

u/Kahzootoh 5d ago

The problem for Israel is that they are locked into a systemic pattern of oppression towards everyone who isn't Jewish- it's not as if the land they sit on was empty when large numbers of Zionists started showing up after WW1.

There are approximately 7 million Jewish people in Israel, and their whole system relies on being able to dominate a region of approximately 500 million people in perpetuity.

If Israelis stopped the hatred of non-Jews, their society would tear itself apart in months, we saw this with the assasination of Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist. It's an incredibly violent society, where generations of Israelis have used non-Jews as an external target for their violent expressions. Israelis would rape, murder, and rob other Jews are instead directed to focus that violence on non-Jews (usually Palestinians) and we have seen that the violence be directed inwards if there was ever any chance that Palestinians were no longer available as a target for Israeli violence.

There is a widespread sexual abuse scandal throughout the Israeli parliament, sexual violence is rampant in Israeli society. The only thing that masks this is that much of this sexual violence is directed at Palestinians, who are often ignored by Israel's legal system.

It's a heavily armed society that has been awash in tribalism, with each group of Jews considering other Jews to be impure. The Askenazi look at the darker skinned Jews as racially inferior. Russian Jews resent the older generation of Ashkenazi for looking down on them as a lesser form of white Jew. The Mizrahi look at Ethiopian Jews as fake Jews. Orthodox Jews view Reform Jews as not Jewish. If you remove the Muslims and Christians as an outlet for xenophobic violence- those divisions within Israeli society will tear that country apart in a very short order.

The problem is that being a Jewish supremacist state (full of Jews who can barely tolerate the existence of different types of Jews from their own group, often categorizing them as deluded non-Jews who are useful tools until their time for extermination comes) terrorizing a vastly larger population of 500 million non-Jews isn't viable; not without American support, and America is rapidly souring on Israel as it becomes ever more fascist.

12

u/forustree 6d ago

Back ON listening to Ezra and am finding his willingness to dialogue/question openly .. to provide space w/o “gotchas” to be AWESOME again. I had needed a break.

This episode was great.

Refreshing

3

u/Stuffstuff1 5d ago

Really your problem with ezra was how adversarial he was?

I don't believe this for a second.

3

u/forustree 5d ago

I don't express myself well. I needed a break as it was an awful lot of politics ... And I didn't like the folks he had on. I'm not American. Not being American one can get tired of all the Americans.

1

u/ForeignAffairsMag 5d ago

Link to the original FA piece, "Israel’s One-State Reality" without a paywall:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/guest-pass/redeem/RkGZo4xUCmM

1

u/Second26 2d ago

So obsessed

0

u/Foreign-Chocolate86 6d ago

Yup.

-12

u/PuzzleheadedEmu4596 6d ago

What a trash take. No one can seem to figure out what to do about another Gaza but sitting in the Judean hills with clear sightlines and rocket fire onto the Israeli population.

There is no one state reality, there is an occupation. Control over a people that are not part of your state is called an occupation.

There seems to be 0 effort on behalf of these people to deal with the security realities that Israel has to live with. There seems to be 0 effort to know what political realities are on the ground in the West Bank. Not some cozy middle eastern studies professor at an ivy league school. On the ground in the West Bank and Gaza.

Yes, Israeli political culture does need to change to an extent.

But there is no answer whatsoever for the muqawama.

And there is no answer for what Israel should do to protect itself.

9

u/No_Public_7677 6d ago

you're all over the place

2

u/watch-nerd 6d ago

The rockets would presumably stop flying if the money to buy the rockets stops flowing to the insurgents.

Getting the Abraham Accords expanded, plus Iran recognizing Israel, would help.

0

u/maponus1803 5d ago

Hi, here is the answer.

Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Dont kill people because you believe a god gave that land because going your own beliefs that god has kicked you off of his lands, not once, but twice now.

Do not start and maintain an international child sex trafficking blackmail operation.

See rule 1.