Re: 57% of Israeli Voters hate themselves and are anti-semitic
The rejection front, consisting of Hamas & other hardliners on one side, and the Israeli right on the other, specializes in mutually incompatible demands. The Palestinians are the occupied and besieged; any leader who played ball with Netanyahu's approach would be signing his death warrant. He'd be leading nobody, in addition -- since nobody else would follow whatever he signed.
But Netanyahu doesn't really think some Fatah leader is coming forward next week to sign a "to hell with Gaza, to hell with Jerusalem, to hell with the Jordan valley" agreement.
He thinks he can release one more drop in a "drip drip drip" water torture for Fatah followers in the West Bank, weakening the resolve in the more "generously" treated West Bank from the more brutally repressed Gaza. And of course he wants the U.S. on notice - "we like you guys, much love, but we're not doing the peace thing. We still good? Kthxbai."
In effect he's daring Obama to say "look if you don't move on this at least rhetorically, I'll have to do something like cut down aid, at least symbolically."
And instantly a million mindless bulletin board posters will try to convince 6 million American Jews that Obama's an anti-semite, reading Mein Kampf when he's not worshipping at his secret mosque, gleefully rejoicing at the pretext for his planned final solution.
Yah. I for one won't be fooled on that count. Support for Israel runs deep in the Jewish community, even those who don't show up for shul, like yours truly. People who've been around patsfans a while know I'll immediately respond to idiotic canards about Israel being an "artificial" state "imposed" on the middle east and the like.
That doesn't mean I want my relatives and some friends in perpetual danger forever, and it doesn't mean I want to continually threaten their opposite numbers with other tragedies.
Support for Israel isn't just about taking the most militarist position possible and insisting on Israeli adherence with same, or supporting the rightmost position on the Israeli political spectrum.
Nikolai recently stated some info on a cultural drift slowly dividing the West Bank and Gaza. Netanyahu is simultaneously and transparently playing on that drift. It's been obvious and creeping since the Fatah/Hamas incidents in Gaza -- but I think he vastly overestimates its significance or the heighth of the ceiling on that drift. Palestinians can be in outright civil war, and one party to that war can even appeal, in extremis, to Israel for safe passage to the "other" territory, as happened after the Hamas/Fatah confrontation. It doesn't matter. You can't say "Ho hum, yes, this is tiring, all we have to do is ditch Jerusalem, some parcels the settlements are on, Gaza, and the Jordan Valley, and call Jenin a state, and we win.... why bother?"
Beyond it being an exceptionally stupid thing to do just from the point of view of negotiation, it'll get you killed. At that point you'll unite Hamas and Fatah on two points: whoever signed that treaty dies, and that treaty is as good as a declaration of surrender -- which is invalid on any popular level.
You can't characterize a whole country as if an individual, but I think if you talk to Israelis they tend to be more pragmatic that ideological. By and large what pisses off the ones I have known is the idea that you can't come up with a peace agreement that Palestinians accept, unless it includes your own suicide. They're not bloodthirsty people, on a human level. They like the idea that one day they can be "fair" people, and it does bug them to act as occupiers. Some snap and turn into "expel them all" rightists. Most turn into grim realists who know that they're in a garrison state, but know they have no choice in the matter, at present.
However, most want a future. Of course they don't like taking another step backwards.
PFnV
Last edited by PatsFanInVa; 05-28-2011 at 06:47 AM..
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