Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - 3:41 PM

In today's New York Times, Thomas Friedman offers a quasi-defense of Israel's assault on Gaza, expressing that hope that Israel is trying to "teach Hamas a lesson" similar to the lesson it supposedly taught Hezbollah during its 2006 war in Lebanon. If Hamas learns not to use violence and accepts Israel's existence, he writes, then maybe diplomacy can produce the two-state solution that Israel badly needs and supposedly wants.
A few comments: To begin with, Friedman's depiction of the Lebanon War is at odds with the more sober conclusions reached by the Winograd Commission, the official Israeli commission of inquiry convened to examine its conduct of that war. And if it was such a resounding victory, why do Israelis now claim that the war in Gaza is necessary to re-establish their deterrent? Moreover, Friedman concedes that Israel is likely to face a renewed challenge from Hezbollah in the future. With meaningless "victories" like that, who needs setbacks?
Second, Friedman portrays Israeli society as divided between those who believe that ending the occupation is essential for Israel's long-term security and those who believe that continuing the occupation is the key to Israel's long-term security. He omits the hard-core settlers who believe that Israel has a god-given right to all of Mandate Palestine (a group that comprises some 20 percent of Israeli society) and claims -- incorrectly -- that it is the opponents of the occupation who have been driving Israeli policy in recent years.
In fact, it is increasingly clear that it is the opponents of the two-state solution that have been in charge. Friedman refers to Israel's "withdrawals" from Lebanon and Gaza as evidence that Israelis support a negotiated settlement. This is dubious at best. Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 because the cost had become too great (i.e., they were in effect driven out by Hezbollah). Under Ariel Sharon, Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza as part of a larger plan to consolidate Israeli control over most of the West Bank, and put off the prospect of a Palestinian state indefinitely. As his chief advisor, Dov Weisglas, admitted in an interview, the withdrawal from Gaza "supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians...when you freeze the process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state...this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."
With respect to the West Bank, the number of Israeli settlers more than doubled during the Oslo period, and Israel consolidated its control via an elaborate array of checkpoints, roads, and the meandering "security fence." According to the Foundation for Middle East Peace, since 2001 the number of Israeli settlers on the West Bank has grown by roughly 70,000 people, some 18,000 of them outside Israel's "security fence." The vast majority of the settlers aren't independent extremists operating on their own: they are subsidized by the Israeli government, rely on government utilities for water and electricity, and depend on the IDF for protection.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has warned on several occasions that failure to get a two-state solution places Israel's future at risk, but he has done nothing to halt the settlement project or to empower those Palestinian leaders (such as President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad) who genuinely seek a two-state solution.
It is often said that Israel lacks a "partner for peace," but so do the Palestinians. So if the Obama administration is serious about settling this conflict, it will have to exert real pressure on both sides.
MAHMUD HAMS/Getty Images
UNRWA policies caused out of control population growth in Gaza
UNRWA policies caused out of control population growth in Gaza .
>
As a result of UNRWA's policies and programmes, a Jewish majority in Israel and the territories has been turned into a minority. In the over-60 age bracket, Jews enjoy a three to one lead in population. But they lose ground in the younger generations that will wage the wars of the coming decades. In 2005 there were 640,000 Jewish boys under 15, against 1.1m in the Arab sector. Many young Jews are their families' only sons, who concentrate on future vocations. However, more than two-thirds of the Arab boys are second, third and even fourth brothers. Neither their fathers nor UNRWA will leave them any property or prepare them for a decent place in life.
Racist Jewish Zionist Demographic Argument
Palestinian fathers would have been able to prepare their sons for a decent place in life if Zionists had not stolen Palestinian farmlands and driven Palestinian families as refugees to Gaza.
Because far too many Americans Jews have no problems with that ethnic cleansing, Americans in general should have no objection to putting the removal of the Zionist population on the foreign policy agenda. See Why Not Remove Zionist Interlopers?
That said, Professor Walt's questions can be answered by studying Zionist ideology closely.
Not only does my blog entry Friedman Aiding, Abetting Zionist Terrorism point to Greenwald's analysis of Friedman's column, but it also summarizes my conclusion resulting from reading practically all the primary Zionist literature.
The conclusion is quite grim, and one might ask how the Oslo Process could ever have started if I am correct.
The answer is simple. The Zionist leadership both in Israel and in the USA saw no way to overcome the Arab "demographic threat" until the Soviet Union collapsed and one million new (extremely racist anti-Muslim) Russian Jewish immigrants arrived, who made it possible to believe Jewish population growth could compete and who tipped the political demography toward anti-Oslo forces.
After 9/11 US Zionist Neocon intelligentsia found the opportunity to ramp up US Islamophobia to the point where genocide of the native Palestinian population would be possible.
[See Followup: Subjugating American Muslims to Israel. Note the information about Daniel Pipe's book entitled The Rushdie Affair. Zionist Neocons have been working out their agenda of Islamophobic incitement since the middle 1980s.]
In short Palestinians have not had a peace partner since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I cannot emphasize how important the study of Jewish history and political economy is for proper understanding of contemporary transnational Zionist politics.
Professor Walt makes a particularly egregious error in On Goldberg and Douthat when he writes:
1948: Palestinian Arabs attack nascent Jewish state; several Arab states eventually join in. Zionists/Israelis win, and approximately 700,000 Palestinians are expelled or flee from the new Jewish state.
In point of fact, simultaneously with accepting the November 1947 UN GA Partition Proposal, the Zionist leadership green-lighted the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population. From the names of the operations, (e.g., biur hametz, burning of the [ritually impure] leaven), I believe mass murder was intended.
While Palestinians remembering the Special Night Squads of the 30s organized defensively, Palestinian leaders, who were in exile or jail, were in no position to accept or reject the proposal, and the Palestinian population adopted a wait and see attitude because the Palestinian leadership had already accepted a 55% Palestinian 45% Jewish population ratio as Rafael Medoff points out in Baksheesh Diplomacy.
If all 300,000 Jewish DPs had joined the 600,000 Jews already resident, the Palestinian-Jewish division would have been a 57:43 ratio, with which Palestinians had no problem in a single democratic state.
Palestinians simply could not accept a partition of the country
The Palestinian position was hardly unreasonable.
The commonly believed narrative is the Second Great Zionist Fraud. I describe the Primary Zionist Fraud in Every Israel Advocate a Madoff.
The more I read and hear this word "Occupation" the more disgusted I become
No one seems to ask..
1) Who is buried at the cave of the patriarchs? - were they Jews are Phillistines? (its in "Occupied" hebron)
2) What was the name of Nablus before it was Nablus?
3) Did this Conflict really start in 1948...or 150ad (by decree of emperor Hadrian)
4) What were Judea and Samaria ?
Sadly too many jews (like freedman) dont really even know their own history - and too often, biblical Israel is seen as a fairy tale place that only exists in this "story book" of the bible
At the heart of this "conflict" are 2 incorrect notions
1) Israel was created as a refuge for europes jews (Wrong !!)
2) The Jews are NOT indiginous - they are foreign (Wrong !!)
Once people understand that at the heart of this conflict is that nothing is "Occupied" in the Jewish mind.
Occupiers dont dig up their own history at every turn.
Perhaps it is the Phillistines who are "Occupiers" of the Cave of the Partiarchs, Shechem, Judea, Samaria..
And lastly..if you REALLY want to know why America supports Israel..its not because a bunch of jews haggle and armstwist washington...
Look up "Methusela - 2000 year old date palm seed"
she is Israel - all of her...
Answering the Standard Zionist Propaganda
I put the response to Leidner's rather prosaic Zionist nonsense in http://www.eaazi.org/ThorsProvoni/history/naaplecture.htm.
As Phil Weiss pointed out on his blog, Zionists and Zionist fellow-travelers like Andrew Leidner are being organized by the Israeli embassy and consulates throughout the USA and Canada.
Oh, this silly myth. European Jews are no more indigenous to Israel than the modern English are indigenous to Angeln and Saxony, and have no more right of "return" (ignoring the European Union for the moment).
But demographic & strategic realities leave Israel little choice
Stephen,
A close understanding of the conflict, dating back to the Mandate period, reveals that a healthy portion of the conflict has been about demographics. The reality is that geographic realities will always trump ideology, rhetoric, and politics in this conflict. The outgrowth of this, however, is that settlement activity in Judea and Samaria have done nothing to improve Israel's security since 1967 and have effectively eliminated the possibility of a viable/secure states for Palestinians. The Bush Administration (in rhetoric only) made it clear that they were upset with the failure of the Olmert government to halt settlement activity; hopefully, the Obama Administration will be more forceful. However, given the world views of the leading candidates to be Israel's PM (Livni and Netanyahu), one should not expect any drastic change in Israeli policy on settlements in the West Bank.
However, I think you're downplaying (hopefully not missing) an added dimension to this latest round of war in Israel and the territories. It is in Israel's interest to simultaneously find a workable solution for a Palestinian state and defeat radical, armed factions such as Hamas that are competing to represent the Palestinians. Unfortunately, the PLO & its successor organization (the PA) have not been able to weed out the extremist forces within their midst; in contrast to the way the Jewish Agency & Haganah were able to ultimately arrest/marginalize/diffuse members of the Irgun and Stern Gang during the years leading up to Israeli independence. Hamas has no interest in achieving statehood for themselves or the Palestinians; their ideology and their practical experience in Gaza the past few years is remarkably clear on this matter. Consequently, Israel remains in the unenviable position of having to achieve 'meaningless victories' and pursue some sort of diplomatic track with the Palestinians at the same time. These may be mutually exclusive goals, but not fighting terror/Hamas & Hezbollah/Iran and conceding territory are not viable options either.
/CG
More Zionist Hasbara from CGleek
[Note that I have cross-posted the item below to my blog at Palestinian Dream, Zionist Hasbara, America because it relates to Phil Weiss's blog entry After pregnant pause, Bono celebrates 'Palestinian dream' at Lincoln Memorial event for Obama.]
However, I think you're downplaying (hopefully not missing) an added dimension to this latest round of war in Israel and the territories. It is in Israel's interest to simultaneously find a workable solution for a Palestinian state and defeat radical, armed factions such as Hamas that are competing to represent the Palestinians. Unfortunately, the PLO & its successor organization (the PA) have not been able to weed out the extremist forces within their midst; in contrast to the way the Jewish Agency & Haganah were able to ultimately arrest/marginalize/diffuse members of the Irgun and Stern Gang during the years leading up to Israeli independence. Hamas has no interest in achieving statehood for themselves or the Palestinians; their ideology and their practical experience in Gaza the past few years is remarkably clear on this matter.
Obviously, Zionists have an interest in establishing the hegemony of this sort of discourse, but people, who have actually spoken with the Hamas leadership like Jimmy Carter or who can read or listen to their statements without the mediation of MEMRI, have come to a different conclusion.
But even this issue is almost irrelevant. Under Ronald Reagan the USA worked very effectively with Islamists and Mujahidin. In retrospect our mistake seems to have been to disengage from them.
We can try to hold back the tide of Islamic democracy in the ME, but we seem to be well into the region of diminishing returns, and in the past few weeks Israel has done more to undermine secular democracy in Turkey than an Islamist government could do if it were in power for 20 years.
CGleek's claims that the Jewish Agency/Haganah/Labor Zionist leadership weeded out the extremists are meaningless. The Stern Gang belonged to the "Left" side of the Zionist spectrum while the Revisionists (Jabotinskians)/Irgun were simply brought into the political process, and now the Jabotinskians dominate both Israeli and US politics.
Jabotinskian agents here include both the Neocons on the Republican side and Jabotinskian Zionist democrats like Rahm Emanuel in the Obama administration.
These two American Jabotinskian groups are easily traceable to the American Revisionist Zionists of the 20s, 30s, and 40s. The original American Revisionists are ably documented by Medoff in Militant Zionism in America.
Both sets of modern American Jabotinskian Zionists answer to Zionist political economic oligarchs like Saban, the Bronfmans, Adelson, the Krafts, Peretz, the Pritzkers, and about another 1000, who are the primary donors to Zionist causes and who are mobilized by the Zionist intelligentsia. The Zionist Oligarchy and Intelligentsia are the core of the Israel Lobby.
The Israel Lobby is the public face of the Zionist Virtual Colonial Motherland or Judonia, which runs a lucrative neo-imperialist system, whose keystone is the Zionist settler colony in stolen and occupied Palestine.
Judonia has rendered the USA an intimidated and dependent client state.
Whether Americans are willing to continue to live under the domination of a virtual state that has systematically ruined the US economy is a purely domestic issue.
[I wrote the following section almost precisely a year ago. My economic model predicted that petroleum prices would rise through the summer and humble the US economy, but I would never have guessed that Poulson and Bernanke would act quite as incompetently as they did. At this point we need a much more serious claw-back to reconstruct the banking system than I originally expected. I know it won't happen, but in my dreams the Obama administration would arrest Poulson and Bernanke on charges of economic terrorism at the very least in order to force some clear explanations of their behavior. Note that I have changed my terminology since I wrote the piece below. Nowadays I usually call the staff of Judonia its bureaucracy, and I use Zionist political economic oligarchs where I previously employed the phrase members of Judonia on the model of "members of Harvard Corporation."]
Imperial Judonia represents a grave threat to America and to the whole human race. It has the ability to manipulate the governments of the USA, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe. By manipulating the US economy, the World Bank, and the IMF, it has developed tremendous wealth.
The staff of Judonia is willing to use any form of violence, any form of subversion, and any lie to increase Judonian wealth and power for the good of the Jewish people and to make the world safe for Israel. Israeli security effectively requires the subjugation of the human race, which started with the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, continued with the impoverishment of the populations of the southern cone of Latin America as well as the looting of SE Asian and the former Soviet States
all in the name of freedom. Then the depredations of Judonia became even worse to include the immurement of Palestinians as well as the incineration, dismantlement, and cluster-bombing of Arab and Muslim countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Somalia), along with support for a coup in Venezuela (Venezuela coup linked to Bush team | World news | The Observer[475]) likewise in the name of freedom and with incitement to attack other Arab and Muslim countries (the Sudan, Pakistan, and Iran) also in the name of freedom.
NEU Professor M. Shahid Alam writes (M. Shahid Alam: The Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?[476]):
Americans are also asking, the President informs us, "why do they hate us?" His answer is clearly stated. "They hate what we see right here in this chamber a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." It is not clear anymore if 'they' points to al-Qaida, the Arabs or all Muslims.
It is hardly surprising that Arabs, Muslims and increasing numbers of other peoples hate American freedoms that amount to free fire zones
and free market exploitation, and as long as Judonia controls the US government, we Americans have no genuine freedom.
Because Judonia was unable to loot the Arab world under the cover of free markets, the American taxpayer is already being exploited to bailout Wall Street Banks. Once Judonian assets are fully and securely globalized, the staff and members of Judonia would probably welcome the collapse of the US economy because it would hurt the Chinese and the Gulf Arabs.
The section Fighting Back to Save America in Judonia Rising Working Paper Part 1 (pdf)[477] or Judonia Rising Working Paper Part 1[478] provides some suggestions for actions against Judonia, and there are some exploitable fault lines within Judonia as this document has indicated, but so much of the US government has been compromised – including the executive and practically the entire Congress – that Judonia may have achieved permanent domination over the USA.
Judonia’s only real weakness comes from the system that Judonia has constructed
Only Americans deny to any significant degree that Israel is a murderous terrorist state that is founded in genocide and that casually commits crimes against humanity as a matter of state policy.
As gas prices rise over the summer, Americans may become more open to hearing the truth, and then the members, staff and organizations of Judonia will become vulnerable to accusations of giving material support to terrorism and of inciting genocide.
If Jews and Jewish organizations do not receive exactly the same treatment as Muslims and Muslim organizations accused of giving material support to terrorism, Jewish officials like Mukasey and Chertoff will be vulnerable to accusations of enforcing one set of laws for Jews and another for non-Jews.[lxxiv]
Generally, unequal prosecution amounts to obstruction of justice or to some other related form of official malfeasance. Jewish officials and collaborators engaging in obstruction of justice and related official
malfeasance in the service of Judonia will themselves become prosecutable or at least summarily dismissible.
A public discussion of Jewish racism and conspiracy should make it possible to ask whether non-Jews can suggest the sort of treatment for the Jewish state that Jewish officials are willing to recommend for non-Jewish states.
Because the State of Israel is the keystone of the subversive influence that the Zionist intelligentsia of Judonia have over America,
would almost certainly improve the security of the USA, give Americans their country back, and make it possible to take Judonia apart and seize assets to serve
If Americans do not take action to neutralize Judonia very soon, the next generation of security technology may give Judonia permanent unassailable domination over the USA.
Friedman is over-optimistic as usual, but some of the points he made were correct. I think Prof. Walt is also over-optimistic about the results of a two-state "solution" (which he apparently sees as a real end to the conflict, according to his last sentence); some of his points seem a little off the mark as well.
On Friedman's claim that the Lebanon war reestablished Israel's deterrence, and Prof. Walt's question of why then was it necessary to re-reestablish it in Gaza: I think Friedman is basically correct. Deterrence is not a fungible commodity here. Deterrence against Hezbollah acting from Lebanon does not transfer to deterrence against Hamas acting from Gaza because deterrence is based, sadly, on the suffering of the civilian population.
Friedman is right in his description of the two Israeli "camps," but as Prof. Walt correctly points out, he's wrong on the time-line. September-October 2000 was the crucial date when public opinion changed drastically and many or most of those who had supported the Oslo process finally understood that the Arab-Israeli conflict is about all of the "occupied" territory, not just the West Bank and Gaza.
Prof. Walt faults Friedman for ignoring the "hard-core settlers," but Friedman is right to ignore them in his analysis. Their influence in Israeli foreign policy is vastly overstated. I think the ease of the Gaza disengagement finally demonstrated that fact conclusively.
More importantly, if the "middle Israelis" came to believe that the Palestinians were willing to offer true peace, or even non-belligerency, in exchange for a state, the settlers would be evacuated in the blink of an eye. I'm not talking about what Palestinians are offering here; I'm talking about Israelis' perception of what they're offering. Again: September 2000 is when everything changed. From surveys and all other indications, Israelis still overwhelmingly support a negotiated land-for-peace settlement if that will bring an end to Palestinian armed resistance. Israel is very much a "partner for peace" if peace is based on Israel's continued existence and security.
The Palestinians have not yet indicated that they're willing, as a state, to violently suppress any rejectionist groups (Hamas) which would continue the struggle to liberate all of Palestine once statehood is achieved. (Of course it's doubtful whether the state could suppress the terrorists even if it wanted to.) In fact Palestinians as a whole have clearly indicated they have no intention of suppressing their fellow Palestinians in order to protect the Zionists, and that most definitely includes so-called moderates in Fatah.
Stephen, your words:
"It is often said that Israel lacks a "partner for peace," but so do the Palestinians. So if the Obama administration is serious about settling this conflict, it will have to exert real pressure on both sides."
don't sound to fit your realist theory of FP for the US.
The US needs Israel in the region for the security of oil resources, but they don't need Palestinians, actually for the US they are pain in the ass;->So, why would the US bother for Palestinians? Why not let Israel liquidate them slowly?
Please stick to your Realist Theory of FP and supply us a realist answer. I am expecting an amoral answer to my amoral question;->
As one of the Jewish poster put it;->Why do you waste our time with Philistines?!;->
Definition of Philistine
(sometimes initial capital letter) a person who is lacking in or hostile or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc., or is contentedly commonplace in ideas and tastes.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/philistine
Grand Sen~or
From a realist standpoint, the USA should probably dump Israel for Iran as an ally rather as Nixon recognized the PRC as China in place of the RoC.
The USA gets no benefits in terms of either hard power or soft power from the State of Israel while abolishing the Zionist state would probably decrease hostility toward the USA immensely.
If the abolition of Israel were handled properly with identification of the State of Israel as the keystone in major criminal and terrorist organization (the Zionist Virtual Colonial Motherland), we could fix the US economy by seizing the assets of the 1000 wealthiest Zionists as well as all the assets of the organized Jewish community (except for those of Neturei Karta of course) and of all Israel advocacy organizations.
A system of fines and imprisonment would have to be worked out for lower ranking Zionists.
A new Nuremberg tribunal would have to be established for high-ranking Zionists.
For example Martin Peretz is probably comparable to either Joseph Goebbels or Otto Dietrich. The allies would probably have executed Goebbels but only imprisoned Dietrich for seven years. Peretz should probably spend the rest of his natural life in an ICC prison.
ThorsProvoni, I think you should review your posting after reading the following (not yet confirmed by Stephen) axioms of the RTFP (Realist Theory of FP), you may ignore my comments in (). Please note that in my first message on this tread when I say RTFP I meant the following axioms:
1. There exists no central authority that can enforce moral or legal constraints
2. There exist states
3. There exists a competitive arena where states acts as they do
4. States composed of nation, national leadership, national interest and power (economic, military, population, etc? (pls add).)...(any others? pls add)
5. States commit morally dubious acts (dubious according to what? Stephen knows) (see axiom 1)(Why this is here? Didn't you declare that RTFP (Realist Theory of FP) is essencially amoral?)
6. State's foreign and defense policy reflects national interest of the state.
7. A State seeks to increase her national interests when her existence is threatened.
8. A State's power is a potential threat to other states. A state is paranoid of other states.
9. Realist Foreign Policy is the art of keeping the the threats of states in Balance. (How? By shuffling and mixing nations/races/cultures?!, subjecting them to prototype secularo-fascist laws to reduce their multiplicity to singularity?)
(Stephen hasn't confirmed or rejected those axioms yet, I have compiled them from his postings on the blog and I keep updating them as Stephen reveales his RTFP. I am sort of trying to reverse engineer his RTFP)
Grand Sen~or
Grasp of Foreign Policy Realism
I was preparing foreign policy analysis and briefings for the US State Department back in the early 1980s even before Carter left office. I have a fairly good grasp of foreign policy realism.
I was introducing the concept of realist foreign policy from the standpoint of Hamas because I believe that Professor Walt and his colleagues do not address this subject enough.
From the standpoint of the USA I was not addressing foreign policy at all because I consider the Israel lobby primarily a domestic issue due to the damage it does to US society and politics.
I have reservations about realist foreign policy analysis of the ME situation because it does not treat the Israel Lobby as an effective state actor with its own resources, interests, and foreign policy.
As I point out on my blog, the Netherlands built most of its physical territory after it became rich from its empire, and Denmark put together a respectable colonial empire with a good deal less population and less wealth than European Jews had circa 1890.
The problem in current foreign policy thinking results
Judonia is powerful precisely because it does not bother with them or their associated costs. Judonia has an economy which is probably somewhat larger than that of the UK with a total Judonian population of about 175,000.
ThorsProvoni!
Let me kiss you from your eyes for the statement you have made:
"2. from the restrictive concept of a state in political science which requires a physical territory and a citzenry."
You are absolutely right and I agree with you completely. RTFP is based ona warped concept of "state" of late French Revolution. That's why I keep reminding Stephen about the Constitution of the US;->
If you have noticed inplace of "state" I use SPEE (socio-politico-economic-entity) and I don't tie it up to a land.
But that is not the only faulty concept RTFP based on, the others are "nation", "leadership" and "culture". And guess what the RTFP almost completely ignores the concepts "law" and "will" while "politics" is closely related to the concept "will".
Thanks a million for your statement number 2, you really made my day while I was thinking "perhaps I am wasting my time here in this blog";->>
Now, you just wait and see;->>
Grand Sen~or
I am not quite ready to give up on all the political science thinking about states.
Judonia is as much an imagined community as Germany in the latter half of the 19th century.
For some reason political scientists have simply been unwilling to think through the concept of "the Jewish people." Or parochial Americans are simply unaware of the role that imagined communities like Polonia have played in E. European history.
American political scientists have simply failed to see in Neoconservatism an obvious E. European sort of intelligentsia like that which developed among Poles, Russians and Yiddish-speaking Jews of the 19th century.
Neoconservatism is in fact simply a continuation of a current within the E. European Jewish intelligentsia of the late 19th and the 20th century. There is no genuine boundary between American Jabotinskians of the 20s, 30s, and 40s, today's Jabotinskian Neocons and the Jabotinskians that dominate contemporary Israeli politics.
No-one ask you to give up political science unless you identify political science with the theories based on useless and distorted concepts.
If those theories based on such useless concepts and don't help you at all to explain the phenomena then rather than trying to save the phenomena why wouldn't you look for, invent theories using useful concepts?
Isn't that what other theoretical sciensts do?
I hope you don't want to sound like those physicists when the QM is introduced they thought physics had gone to holiday;->>
Grand Sen~or
Can Stephen Walt Do Math? (By Eric Trager, Contentions Weblog)
From Commentary Magazine's "Contentions" Weblog
January 14, 2009
Can Stephen Walt Do Math?
Eric Trager
As a Ph.D. student in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, I was required to take a statistics class during my first year into the program. I imagine that Harvard Professor Stephen Walt, who received his Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley’s political science program in 1983, had to fulfill a similar requirement.
For this reason, I’m left scratching my head over a certain assertion in Walt’s latest blog post. While criticizing Thomas Friedman’s contention that Israeli society is divided between those who see the West Bank occupation as critical to Israel’s long-term security interests and those who see it as deleterious, Walt writes:
[Friedman] omits the hard-core settlers who believe that Israel has a God-given right to all of Mandate Palestine (a group that comprises some 20 percent of Israeli society) … . [Emphasis added.]
Since Walt has shown an odd preference for Jewish sources that support his beliefs, I’ll indulge him as I correct his math: According to B’Tselem’s most recent statistics, there were 462,000 Israelis living east of the Green Line as of September 2007: 271,400 in the West Bank and approximately 191,000 in East Jerusalem. Take the most recent Israeli census data, which places Israel’s population at 7,208,500, and we find that only 6.4 percent of all Israelis are settlers. (And that’s only if we include East Jerusalem; if we consider the West Bank alone, the number is under 3.8 percent.) Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how many of these people would satisfy Walt’s definition of “hard-core settlers” - though the relevant evidence suggests that a critical mass of settlers are fairly pragmatic.
Either way, Walt’s massive over-estimation of the prevalence of “hard-core settlers” in Israeli society is the latest indication of his profound intellectual dishonesty. If any rule prevails in academia, it’s that conclusions should be drawn from an honest appraisal of the relevant data. Here, Walt has committed a cardinal sin: he has actually invented data to support his otherwise unfounded claim.
-- 01.14.2009 - 5:56 PM
Copyright © 1997-2008 Commentary Magazine
All Rights Reserved
Post (including all links within it) at:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/trager/50562
In fact Stephen M. Walt knows statistics at least as much as you do, perhaps he also knows that one can interpret statistical figures as they will to justify their political agenda;->
BTW, have you also studied theory of probability such as Carnap and Gnadenco's works? Because statistics doesn't make much sense without knowing the theories it is founded on.
Grand Sen~or
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
The raw numbers are not so important as the backing behind the settler movement. For example the hyperwealthy Zionist political economic oligarch Lev Leviev is highly involved in the Settler Movement as I mention in Chabad Lubavitch' Dangerous Game.
In addition, George H.W. Bush never understood it, but the settler movement is highly lucrative to the Oligarchs. By holding back loan guarantees, he was interfering with revenue streams that were very important to them. Hence he and his foreign policy team aroused tremendous hostility.
I discuss aspects of this particular Zionist fraud in Scamming Americans, Robbing Palestinians. I published a followup in Israel, Zionism, and Mortgage Meltdown.
BTW, shortly before Baruch Kimmerling died, I was going over Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics figures with him, and we were beginning to believe that Jewish fraction of the Israeli citizen population of the State of Israel and the Occupied Territories was 10-15% less than the Israeli government claims. Zionism is based on frauds within frauds.
I hate to be a party pooper but axiom # 6 of RTFP just blew a fuse.
"a state's foreign and defense policy reflects the national interests of the state."
Clearly it is individual human beings who are making decisions based on what is best for him/herself, rather than a monolithic "state" setting foreign policy.
That is why you see such stupid decisions being made by our Congress, decisions that go against our national interest but make perfect sense when you consider that these people have to run for office every 2 or 6 years, they need contributions, positive media coverage, and the blessings of AIPAC to stay in office.
Upon your comment I hope Stephen M.Walt wakes up and reviews those axioms;->>Because as far as he exposed his theory ignores the concept "will". For me the concept "will" is the main concept like a May Pole which all other political concepts function around. I am glad to hear that you also aware of it. Thank you.
Grand Sen~or
Two comments - first, ThorsPorvoni is bloody nuts. While I have nothing but sympathy for the actual Palestinians who ended up getting expelled (after deciding not to accept the UN Partition in 1948), most of them are dead and dying after 60 years, and inter-generational Right of Return is a can of worms I'd rather not open. At some point, you have to accept that a population transfer happened, for basically bad reasons, and get over it.
Second, I have issues with what Stephen posts. Such as
And if it was such a resounding victory, why do Israelis now claim that the war in Gaza is necessary to re-establish their deterrent?
Because Hamas and Hezbollah are different organizations, with different situations? Deterrence doesn't necessarily transfer.
Moreover, Friedman concedes that Israel is likely to face a renewed challenge from Hezbollah in the future. With meaningless "victories" like that, who needs setbacks?
What's wrong with securing peace and stability for a few years (or decades)? I don't recall the standard for whether or not a military operation was a success or not was whether it prevented future attacks "now and forever more". By that standard, arresting criminals is a bad idea, since it doesn't deter crime permanently or totally.
The "We Stole Palestine Fair and Square" Argument
We Should Get to Keep It
I had to laugh.
Brett appears not to see any sort of contradiction in believing that Palestinians should give up any attempt to reclaim Palestine after a mere 60 years after they suffered dispossession by Zionists who stole Palestine from its native population on the basis of a (false) claim that the ancestors of Zionists lived in Palestine 2000 years ago.
Obviously, Brett is just writing from some talking points prepared by his local Israeli consulate, the David Project, or StandWithUs. Yet it is hard to conceive of a logical disconnect more indicative of insanity.
Zionists and their Islamophobic useful idiots babble about Islamic extremism when it is hard to imagine believing something more psychotic and extreme than that Eastern Europeans had the right to steal Palestine on the basis of an etymological connection between the word Judea and the word Jew. One might as well argue that Roman Catholic Irish would have the right to steal Roman because Roman Catholic includes the word Rome.
Let's get this straight. Judaism was a prosyletizing religion at least as early as the beginning of the Hasmonean period (and probably earlier). The Book of Esther explicitly mentions massive conversion to (Second Temple) Judaism. A claim that Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim have some sort of ancestral or historical connection to Palestine is an extremist and perverted interpretation of Jewish and Christian scripture.
We Americans simply cannot criticize any Islamist interpretations of Islamic scripture until we deal with the Zionist fanatics and extremists that not only have far too much power and influence in our society but have also wrecked our economy.
Shlaim introduced the Jabotinskian concept of the Iron Wall to English speakers, but unlike me he has no background in economics or finance and either missed or misunderstood Jabotinsky's economic ideas which included a full-fledged concept ethnonational financial warfare, which was put into effect after his followers took state power in Israel and started to receive unaccounted cash aid from the USA.
The program could not have worked without the orchestration of wealthy, powerful and influential Zionist political economic oligarchs and without the silence of government, business, and academic finance and economic experts, who are much too often Zionism-inclined Jews.
I hyperlinked some of my blog entries on the subject at the end of Open Letter to Representative Capuano.
Brett appears not to see any sort of contradiction in believing that Palestinians should give up any attempt to reclaim Palestine after a mere 60 years after they suffered dispossession by Zionists who stole Palestine from its native population on the basis of a (false) claim that the ancestors of Zionists lived in Palestine 2000 years ago.
I never said that the Zionists were right to build a state there and expel most of the local inhabitants in Israel proper - I just said that after the original victims are mostly dead, the claim to getting the land back by the Palestinians is weak. The same way most people would probably say that the claim of Germans to get Kaliningrad (which was Konigsberg for 3 centures before 1945) back doesn't apply anymore - because once the original victims are dead, their children who were not born in the area would be immigrants, not refugees.
In other words, it's a population transfer. It happened for a bad reason, but if we said every state was disqualified for having been founded for a bad reason, there would be very few left. And strictly speaking, Israel now is a legitimate state - it is recognized by pretty much any any and all countries outside of the Middle East, is recognized in the UN, and so forth.
Obviously, Brett is just writing from some talking points prepared by his local Israeli consulate, the David Project, or StandWithUs. Yet it is hard to conceive of a logical disconnect more indicative of insanity.
That's rather typical of your kind of crowd - you all think everything is some diabolical conspiracy.
Zionists and their Islamophobic useful idiots babble about Islamic extremism when it is hard to imagine believing something more psychotic and extreme than that Eastern Europeans had the right to steal Palestine on the basis of an etymological connection between the word Judea and the word Jew. One might as well argue that Roman Catholic Irish would have the right to steal Roman because Roman Catholic includes the word Rome.
Considering that I actually said that the original reason for founding Israel was wrong, this doesn't hold water. Nor does it address my point that despite a bad origin, Israel is more or less a recognized state now by most of the world, and nearly all the Palestinians returning to Israel proper would be immigrants, not refugees returning home. I don't believe in some "inherent right" to a piece of land by a dispossessed group - if aliens were to wipe out the entire population of the US, settle there, then build a state that was then recognized by most other nations as well as the premier instrument of global governance, then they would be the legitimate possessors of the land.
That's what sovereignty ultimately comes down to - your ability to hold a piece of land, and get recognized as holding it by other states.
Let's get this straight. Judaism was a prosyletizing religion at least as early as the beginning of the Hasmonean period (and probably earlier). The Book of Esther explicitly mentions massive conversion to (Second Temple) Judaism. A claim that Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim have some sort of ancestral or historical connection to Palestine is an extremist and perverted interpretation of Jewish and Christian scripture.
Who cares? Does the fact that my dad's family immigrated to the US in the 1950s, and my mom's family immigrated from Germany in the late 19th century, mean that I'm somehow less of an American than someone who can trace their lineage back to colonial times?
started to receive unaccounted cash aid from the USA.
Most of the actual cash aid comes in the form of low-interest loans to Israel, with the only real hand-outs being what amounts to coupons to buy American weapons (meaning that they give them aid in the form of vouchers to buy American weaponry with them).
The program could not have worked without the orchestration of wealthy, powerful and influential Zionist political economic oligarchs and without the silence of government, business, and academic finance and economic experts, who are much too often Zionism-inclined Jews.
Don't forget the Illuminati. Or the Grays. Or the lizard people.
The Subtext of Conspiracy Deniers
Don't forget the Illuminati. Or the Grays. Or the lizard people.
What is the Israel Lobby but a vast semi-open conspiracy on the part of Jewish Zionists to manipulate US foreign policy?
Billington has a wonderful book on the role of revolutionary conspiracy in European history. It is called Fire in the Minds of Men.
Anyway, the NE Israeli Consulate took active part in a conspiracy against the rights of Muslims. I documented it on my web site. I was present at an Israel on Campus Coalition meeting where the attendees decided to target Barndard Professor Nadia Abu el-Haj for denial of tenure at Columbia (another conspiracy against rights violation).
Someone that so categorically denies the role of conspiracy in human affairs almost certainly is taking part in one.
And by the way, I have taken David Project Israel advocacy classed. "Don't forget the Illuminati!" was recommended as a comeback when someone started to talk about The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
The "Palestinians, Get Over It" Argument
Palestinians have about 2 billion people that support their claim. Why should they give up? They don't have to engage in the sort of spurious Zionist foreign policy realism that Brett is pushing.
In any case, since Neocons put regime change on the foreign policy table with Afghanistan and Iraq, it certainly should be under consideration for Israel. By doing it right (and it would be a lot easier there than in the two Muslim countries), we would immensely enhance good will toward the USA as well as US soft and possibly hard power.
I understand the Jewish Zionist propaganda about population transfer and I have read the talking points to which Brett alludes, but as usual racist Jewish thinking is flawed as I point out here.
Anyway, it is all irrelevant from the standpoint of foreign policy realism except that the hostility of 2 billion supporters of the Palestinians costs the US economy a lot, and we simply can't afford it. (I know. I used to do a lot of business in Arab and Muslim countries.)
Likewise the Nazi/Zionist Heinsohn argument for cutting off international aid to Palestinians can only cause increasing harm to the USA by reducing good will towards America and American business if only because everyone on the planet rightly blames the USA and Jewish American Zionists for the Palestinian refugee problem. Until we clean up the mess by abolishing Israel, we are stuck with it.
In any case, while it might be in Israel's interest to starve Palestinians, I don't see why it is in ours especially when feeding them costs so little.
In addition, the USA has made a foreign policy decision in theory to support the International Regime against Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing. Our behavior has been rather ambiguous in Bosnia and certainly counterproductive in the case of US support for Zionism.
Thus, abolishing Israel would make a lot of sense from the standpoint of soft power considerations while seizing Zionist assets could go to covering that portion of the national debt due to the US-Israel alliance.
With decreasing hostility in the Arab and Muslim world, proven bona fides by arresting and purging US Zionists (and fellow travelers like Warren Buffet) for aiding and abetting Zionist terrorists in conjunction with asset seizures/clawback, we could start working on economic reconstruction (and new market creation) in liberated Palestine, Egypt, and Pakistan, which could be facilitated by our own Arab and Pakistani American populations.
It is probably the only way to fix the US and world economy.
Palestinians have about 2 billion people that support their claim. Why should they give up? They don't have to engage in the sort of spurious Zionist foreign policy realism that Brett is pushing.
I didn't say they shouldn't - if they somehow reconquer the territory from Israel, hold it until the last Israeli who lived in Israel dies, and get recognition from the international community and their main national peers for their claim, then they'd be the legitimate state. As it is, until they actually control the territory again, I'm not going to consider the claims of a group of people who have mostly never lived inside Israel to be legitimate.
Thus, abolishing Israel would make a lot of sense from the standpoint of soft power considerations while seizing Zionist assets could go to covering that portion of the national debt due to the US-Israel alliance.
Interesting that you would propose annihilating a state, presumably against the will of most of its citizenry (as opposed to merely conquering one, like what the US did in Iraq), as some type of great humanitarian solution that will improve the US's relations with the muslim world.
Anyway, it is all irrelevant from the standpoint of foreign policy realism except that the hostility of 2 billion supporters of the Palestinians costs the US economy a lot, and we simply can't afford it.
I'd be very interested to see some actual numbers attached to this. We don't appear to have a problem trading for oil, or trading with Dubai and the like in spite of the current situation.
Brett wrote "Two comments - first, ThorsPorvoni is bloody nuts."
I think you are wrong. ThorsProvoni's concept of "state" is superior then SATFP's. But his is wrong assuming Israel Lobby is manipulating the US FP. In reality the US FP is manipulating the Israel Lobby to use Israel to keep the Balance of Threat according to the US National Interests.
Read below about the agreement between the US and Israel which Rice has declared.
Secondly, while you are arguing here Rice already explained what is happening in Gazza. She said Israel is there to cut the weapons flow via the tunnels/channels.
In other words according to SATFP Israel acted under agreement with the US to keep the Balance of Threat for the US FP. Which also means that Israel did the dirty job for the National Interest of the US, which doesn't mean it was _not_ for her National Interests as well, but hey! you can always blame it to the Jews and send them pants down to the streets of the EU$.
(I love this blog and the theory it operates on - SATFP. One can explain almost everything related to FP with it;->>>)
Did you say "What the hell is SATFP?!", I can't hear you very well;->
Here is your answer;->
Salvare Apparentias Theory of FP (SATFP).
1. There exist states. (Mind you not ThorsProvoni's "states" yet;-))
2. A State composed of a nation, a national leadership, national interests and power (economic, military, population, land, etc? ..(any others? pls feel free to add).
(Laws??!! naaa! eventually they will all sign under the same prototype constitutions anyway)
3. There exists a competitive arena where states acts as they do.
4. There exists no central authority in that arena that can enforce moral or legal constraints.
5. States commit morally dubious acts (dubious according to what? The Blog knows) (see axiom 1)(Why this is here? Didn't the Blog declare that SATFP is essencially amoral?)
6. A State's foreign and defense policy reflects national interest of the state.
7. A State seeks to increase her national interests when her existence is threatened.
8. A State's power is a potential threat to other states. A state is by definition paranoid of other states.
9. Salvare Apparentias Foreign Policy is the art of keeping the threats of states in Balance besides saving the foreing policy related phenomena. (How? By shuffling and mixing nations/races/cultures?!, subjecting them to prototype secularo-fascist laws to reduce their multiplicity to singularity? the Blog knows).
Grand Sen~or
Racist Jewish Zionist Demographic Argument
by ThorsProvoni on Wed, 01/14/2009 - 4:13pm
Palestinian fathers would have been able to prepare their sons for a decent place in life if Zionists had not stolen Palestinian farmlands and driven Palestinian families as refugees to Gaza.
Maybe so, I have sympathy for the predicament that drove them to using their bithrate as a weapon but Palestinan 'refugee' camps are full of people born generations after 1949, they are still classified (and hence supported) as refugees. The Palestinans encouraged the (subsidised) growth of their population as a weapon.If they live in overcrowded misery it can not be laid at the Israelis door entirely. Look to Europe Sweden is one of the largest donors to the Palestinians. Total Swedish support for 2008 is estimated at approximately SEK 700 million
In the same way the Israelis continued to build (subsidised) settlements on Jordanian land they had acquired in war, incorporating much of the West Bank with the US acquiescing in the use of 3-4.5 billion a year in aid.
They have both tried to get an outcome in their favour by using Western money and the end result is that there are now too many Palestinans for the remaining land
What land Israeli has left to give in any deal will not be enough for the Palestinans. For giving up their dreams of a truely viable state the young Palestinans will demand more than a patchwork of truncated 'Bantustans'.
For their part Israeli will not abandon the greater part of the settlements.
Zionists Oppose Aid to Palestinians. Duh.
Ken also seems to have received his talking points from his local Israeli consulate or Israel advocacy organization.
My interest in Jewish studies goes back to the late 1960s. I can certainly read the subtext in Ken's faux-sympathetic comment. It was the whole point of the Holy Foundation Trial. Zionist writer Vladimir Dubnow was already describing a total crushing of the inhabitants of Palestine in 1881.
There would be no problem today if a bunch of murderous, racist, genocidal E. Europeans had not decided to steal Palestine from the native population.
The expense of helping Palestinians is negligible. There would not be a Zionist state today without massive Western aid that continues to this day, but these issues are simply irrelevant.
From a realist cost benefit analysis, it makes much more sense to sanction the State of Israel, for the problem of Zionism would go away in four months when international loans came due, and the State of Israel collapsed.
The US simply cannot afford to continue the US-Israel alliance whose cost is responsible for 50-75% of the national debt, and the US economy can only be fixed if the US government makes a massive clawback of the money looted through Zionist manipulation, conspiracy and corruption.
Removing a lot of (mostly Jewish Zionist) government and academic economists that have been engaging in a conscious or unconscious coverup would probably be a good idea. Obviously they have not been doing their jobs.
"It is often said that Israel lacks a "partner for peace," but so do the Palestinians. So if the Obama administration is serious about settling this conflict, it will have to exert real pressure on both sides."
OK, so what else is new? Which a greater partner for peace - Israel or Hamas?
Empowering those Palestinian leaders (such as President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad) who genuinely seek a two-state solution is the best all round solution, but it is difficult (look at at Gaza) because of extremely high proportion of young, specifically the young men. The young Palestinians are giving the impression that Heinsohn is right, they will simply tear up any agreements.
Palestinian leaders of long standing have moderated their demands after coming to understand that their original objectives are no longer attainable, The leaders of Hamas are reported to have fled, all they can do is to spread lies about capturing Israeli soldiers. They are like JFK thinking Cuba would collapse with a little pressure.
Israeli policies are apartheid not genocide, calling them that just confirms their opinion that they are being singled out and held to false standards by bigoted hypocrites.
If the moderate Palestinian leaders had known how things would develop a certain deal they were offered would have seemed more tempting.
Wow, Ken is quite the indoctrinated Jabotinskian.
Palestinian leaders of long standing have moderated their demands after coming to understand that their original objectives are no longer attainable.
That Iron Wall really worked. It's not just a few million Arabs that hate Zionists with a burning passion, but more like 2 billion Muslims and non-Muslims that are coming truly to despise Zionists and probably soon all Jews.
Ken probably does not spend much time in the Occupied Territories, but Mohammed Abbas is for the most part viewed as a Quisling even by his own followers, and nobody even thinks about Salam Fayyad.
I remember watching Sheikh Yasin on Israeli television. He was reasonable and flexible. The fanatics are racist Jewish Zionists that don't let reality interfere with their world view. (When did JFK say Cuba would collapse with a little pressure?)
And yes Zionism has been genocidal right from the primary ideologues of the 1880s. It is psychotic to believe otherwise.
As for Heinsohn, as someone who has a tendency to be a crank, Heinsohn has me beat by lightyears, but I can understand the appeal to a Jabotinskian of Heinsohn's neo-Nazi eugenic thinking that is so similar to that of the preeminent Zionist leader Max Nordau.
For such a yoyo to head the Raphael-Lemkin-Institute for Comparative Genocide Research of the University of Bremen is probably the biggest insult to Lemkin's memory that I could imagine, but Bremen seems to be one of those places where human thought processes don't work properly. (See Attacking Will Smith, Tony Judt.)
I could probably make a far stronger case that the major impediment to peace comes not from young Gazans but from wealthy American Jewish Zionist alte kakers who with their increasing diminishment in mental capabilities are flinging money at the most extremist Israel Advocacy organizations in order to intimidate US national political leaders.
Anyone in this forum ever hear of the Israel Lobby?
Anyway, it is all irrelevant because the USA can't afford the alliance with Israel anymore. The corrupt Jewish Zionist political-academic-governmental-media-financial-social-service network broke the world economy, and the only way to fix it is a massive clawback in conjunction with an arrest and purge of the most important Zionists because otherwise they will do it again.
Is this it? The Ten Most Common Mistakes of the Israeli People
Anyone in this forum ever hear of the Israel Lobby?>
Yes, I have my copy and I agree with the authors that Israel may not have acted any worse than other countries have done in the past but it has not acted any better either. It has no special moral superiority.
Heinsohn says that the US should have threatened to stop their aid if Israel continued to build settlements
> We should have done two things: Israel should have stopped its settlements, and the world community should have said to the Palestinians: Every child in Palestine will be fed by the world community as before, because by accepting that every Palestinian child is a refugee, the world community has a responsibility for the number of children born. But from January 1st 1992 you will have to pay for your newborn children, just as a woman does in Lebanon, in Tunisia and in Algeria. That is what they should have told the Palestinians. Why am I mentioning these three countries? Because in those societies a women has fewer than two children on the average. Had we done that 15 years ago, we would have seen a generation of young Palestinian men with few reasons to commit violence against each other or against the Jews. But we did not, and therefore I do not believe in the peace process, even if Hamas should decide to sign everything. Their young men will tear such agreements to pieces."
>
And you can't deny the chaos in Gaza with feuds, revenge killings, kidnappings of, often sympathetic, Westerners incuding journalists by gangs who demand jobs as policemen as part of the ransom (which has meant that international solidarity groups dare not visit) are consistent with Heisohn's theories.
>
On September 11 2005, Israel left the Gaza Strip. The next day, four synagogues went up in flames. A cheering alliance of young men from Hamas and Fatah hailed these desecrations as bonfires celebrating the future of an independent Palestine.
Eighteen months later, fighters from the two organisations were still co-operating in attacks on their hated neighbour. By June 2007 their Kassam missiles had killed 11 Israelis. In that same period, some 600 Palestinians became victims of internecine warfare. Thousands more were wounded and half the population traumatised by a relentless chain of revenge slayings. Hidden behind masks, even brothers were at each other’s throats.>
Mr Walt's honesty is our salvation
Why can't Americans see that Gaza is a prison for people whose crime was being the wrong religion?
Americans would fight to the death if Israel's state model were imposed here, with a cross on the flag and your property confiscated.
There is no way out but to stop creating your own enemy. Decriminalize religion -- remove the legal penalties that accrue to being the wrong religion. And, like after 300 years of Wars of Religion in Europe, watch the cycle of violence stop.
Dear H.Arouet,
Stephen already made his position clear on FP that realist is amoral. He implicitely laid down his theory's axioms here. His answers should be like this:
"To keep the Balance of Threat to survive increase your National Interest, don't expect other states will increase it for you, unless of course it helps increase their National Interests or help manitain the Balance of Threat according to their FP."
Look what the Blog's axiom says:
4. There exists no central authority in that arena that can enforce moral or legal constraints.
Period.
Stephen M. Walt is not in a position to suggest a Central Authority to make and enforce laws in _that_ Arena.
I think he doesn't consider it his job as an FP scientist.
However I don't think so, if he had an alternative theory to create a thought experiment on he could suggest a solution to that missing link. But he sticks to his axioms as they are, not bothering further thought experiments to put him in more trouble;->>>
As, I have said before, I can make a suggestion on that issue but that would require a lot of shuffling of existing prototype constitutions. I think S.M.Walt already knows what I am talking about here but as I have pointed out above it is _really_ too muct trouble for him even to think about it;->>
Go pray to the Merciful!
That's what I do while I am also posting here in case out there there exist courageous people who are committed to use intellect _to get the bottom of politics as an activity related to will_ which distinguishes it from physical sciences. Although out there, there exist some mad physicists who think they are going to reduce this science of politics to physics once they invent the GUT (Grand Unified Theory) (my blood boils when I see the word "Grand" in front of any other word);->>
Stephen beware of those Mad Physicists Mate! They are aiming to undermine your business and bankrupt you - if you go like that, give heed to my remarks to stay in the business; open new branches;->>
Grand Sen~or
Ah. I think I see. I did not consider that concept of "legitimacy" as legitimate enough to talk about, so I assumed you were talking about something else.
I'd be very interested to see what your self-consistent definition is of legitimacy.
So for example south africa controlled their territory and most of the world recognised them. But later enough of the world embargoed them that they dissolved the government and created a more representative one.
Your point? State legitimacy is not a static thing - it changes when the people who composed that state (and by "people" I mean the actual people, not their descendants who have never lived in the land in question) change, and when the world's recognition of legitimacy changes.
Similarly, iraq was "legitimate" but when we decided we didn't like them we trumped up an excuse to invade and we hanged their leader etc. We could do the same to israel if we wanted to. We just don't want to.
Your point? Legitimacy refers to a present condition.
It doesn't work well for israel to be a nation with its current borders where only jews can be first-class citizens. It wouldn't work well for it to be a nation where only palestinians can be first-class citizens. People have trouble living with that approach, there's too much killing over it.
Are you in favor of a One-State Solution, then?
No! maybe he is suggesting that you change your concept of "state". Apparently it is useless to solve the problem at hand.
Grand Sen~or
U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE John Foster DULLES America Firster
34th US President IKE suspended AID TO ISRAEL
“Ike” = Dwight David Eisenhower American general & the 34th President of the United States (1953-1961). As far as WAR & PEACE issues; IKE had the richest experience of all US presidents!
In WWII he was the commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force (1943-1945) he launched the invasion of Normandy (June 6, 1944) and oversaw the final defeat of Germany (1945).
Ike cared about the STRATEGIC WELL BEING of Israel because HE was aware that the creation of Israel was the ultimate answer to European anti-Anti-Semitism.
On October 31, 1956 Ike’s presidency was marked by SUSPENSION OF US AID to ISRAEL in protest at its invasion of Egypt in the Suez Crisis.
In an emergency session of the United Nations (UN) November 1-2 1956 General Assembly was called to consider the Suez Crisis. U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE John Foster DULLES, ATTACKED the British–French–Israeli ACTION, and the Assembly votes for a cease-fire!
Britain & France complied promptly, but ISRAEL did not; until January 22, 1957 when Israeli forces completed their withdrawal.
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
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