Dr. Mearsheimer,

Isn't it time for thought leaders like yourself and Dr. Walt to begin advocating a one-state solution? How can any moral person promote the idea of a 'Jewish State'? Shouldn't you be promoting the right of Jewish individuals to live alongside non-Jewish individuals in Palestine, in a secular democracy, like we have here in America?

Best Regards,
Ahmed Moor

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that if there is no two-state solution, Israel will end up in a South Africa-like situation and that will mean the end of the Jewish state. In effect, he is saying that Israel is turning itself into an apartheid state.

If you Guys keep thinking(?!) interms of "state", of course there is no solution;-> Realistically speaking, you guys are not after solution, you are after to save the "state".

I would appreciate it greatly if Israel's American backers would explain what I am missing here. They must think that there is a happy ending to this story that Olmert and I simply fail to see.

It is not difficult to understand, like you have a dream, Israel has a dream of her own to establish the Kingdom of Solomon without Solomon by the support of the EUS = (EU + US).

The question is;->
Why wouldn't they have a dream ?
You have one.

There is no need for Christian Zionists to respond, because I know what their happy ending is: the Battle of Armageddon and then the Second Coming of Christ. Israel's Jewish backers do not buy this story,

Realistically speaking they must have a similar expectation of some-body's coming, why not Solomon ?! He is a good candidate to come back. But what is going to happen when he goes back ? And so far we don't see Solomon's Justice coming around there, forget about Solomon;->

Grand Sen~or.

The US should publicly state that for every Jewish Israeli living in one of those illegal colonies, one Palestinian will be allowed to return to Israel and reclaim his or her properties. We'd be pleasantly surprised at how fast the colonies disappear.

It looks to me like the victory of ideology over common sense. In that, the Israeli conservatives are not alone, but few others have such high stakes. I can only see this ending badly and bloodily. I hope against hope that Mr. Obama shows the intestinal fortitude to play hardball with Israel regarding new settlements. And he needs to start doing it *now*, and not wait until he's a lame duck, like most presidents seem to do.

Prior to the "state" precede the "people"

Not according to the SATFP, why don't you bring your theory?

Those who want to live in Israel, will do so after loyalty oaths.

You mean like the Jews do in the US...
then the Palestinians in Israel will form a Palestinian Lobby to get a Palestinian State established by the support of Israel and the EUS somewhere outside of Israel;->>
That sound an attractive solution for all;->>
I bet even Dr. Mearsheimer and Prof. Walt wouldn't say no to this for it saves the state with a prospect of creating another imaginaty state "Palestine" like "Israel". Son't worry about the nation Mate!, once you create the State from out of the blue, you can fill it up with a nation from here and there easily;->>

Grand Sen~or.

Israel is fast catching up to Apartheid South Africa.

In another 30 years we can expect sanctions.

Whereas it is un-PC to be racist against blacks and Jews, it is great fun, and all the rage, to be racist against Arabs and muslims.

This gives you more insight into the Israeli mind than anything else -- from an Israeli newspaper:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072466.html

Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009

By Uri Blau
Tags: Israel News, IDF, Gaza

The office at the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv handles a constant stream of customers, many of them soldiers in uniform, who come to order custom clothing featuring their unit's insignia, usually accompanied by a slogan and drawing of their choosing. Elsewhere on the premises, the sketches are turned into plates used for imprinting the ordered items, mainly T-shirts and baseball caps, but also hoodies, fleece jackets and pants. A young Arab man from Jaffa supervises the workers who imprint the words and pictures, and afterward hands over the finished product.

Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it."

There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you got raped!" A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants.
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In many cases, the content is submitted for approval to one of the unit's commanders. The latter, however, do not always have control over what gets printed, because the artwork is a private initiative of soldiers that they never hear about. Drawings or slogans previously banned in certain units have been approved for distribution elsewhere. For example, shirts declaring, "We won't chill 'til we confirm the kill" were banned in the past (the IDF claims that the practice doesn't exist), yet the Haruv battalion printed some last year.

The slogan "Let every Arab mother know that her son's fate is in my hands!" had previously been banned for use on another infantry unit's shirt. A Givati soldier said this week, however, that at the end of last year, his platoon printed up dozens of shirts, fleece jackets and pants bearing this slogan.

"It has a drawing depicting a soldier as the Angel of Death, next to a gun and an Arab town," he explains. "The text was very powerful. The funniest part was that when our soldier came to get the shirts, the man who printed them was an Arab, and the soldier felt so bad that he told the girl at the counter to bring them to him."

Does the design go to the commanders for approval?

The Givati soldier: "Usually the shirts undergo a selection process by some officer, but in this case, they were approved at the level of platoon sergeant. We ordered shirts for 30 soldiers and they were really into it, and everyone wanted several items and paid NIS 200 on average."

What do you think of the slogan that was printed?

"I didn't like it so much, but most of the soldiers wanted it."

Many controversial shirts have been ordered by graduates of snipers courses, which bring together soldiers from various units. In 2006, soldiers from the "Carmon Team" course for elite-unit marksmen printed a shirt with a drawing of a knife-wielding Palestinian in the crosshairs of a gun sight, and the slogan, "You've got to run fast, run fast, run fast, before it's all over." Below is a drawing of Arab women weeping over a grave and the words: "And afterward they cry, and afterward they cry." [The inscriptions are riffs on a popular song.] Another sniper's shirt also features an Arab man in the crosshairs, and the announcement, "Everything is with the best of intentions."

G., a soldier in an elite unit who has done a snipers course, explained that, "it's a type of bonding process, and also it's well known that anyone who is a sniper is messed up in the head. Our shirts have a lot of double entendres, for example: 'Bad people with good aims.' Every group that finishes a course puts out stuff like that."

When are these shirts worn?

G. "These are shirts for around the house, for jogging, in the army. Not for going out. Sometimes people will ask you what it's about."

Of the shirt depicting a bull's-eye on a pregnant woman, he said: "There are people who think it's not right, and I think so as well, but it doesn't really mean anything. I mean it's not like someone is gonna go and shoot a pregnant woman."

What is the idea behind the shirt from July 2007, which has an image of a child with the slogan "Smaller - harder!"?

"It's a kid, so you've got a little more of a problem, morally, and also the target is smaller."

Do your superiors approve the shirts before printing?

"Yes, although one time they rejected some shirt that was too extreme. I don't remember what was on it."

These shirts also seem pretty extreme. Why draw crosshairs over a child - do you shoot kids?

'We came, we saw'

"As a sniper, you get a lot of extreme situations. You suddenly see a small boy who picks up a weapon and it's up to you to decide whether to shoot. These shirts are half-facetious, bordering on the truth, and they reflect the extreme situations you might encounter. The one who-honest-to-God sees the target with his own eyes - that's the sniper."

Have you encountered a situation like that?

"Fortunately, not involving a kid, but involving a woman - yes. There was someone who wasn't holding a weapon, but she was near a prohibited area and could have posed a threat."

What did you do?

"I didn't take it" (i.e., shoot).

You don't regret that, I imagine.

"No. Whomever I had to shoot, I shot."

A shirt printed up just this week for soldiers of the Lavi battalion, who spent three years in the West Bank, reads: "We came, we saw, we destroyed!" - alongside images of weapons, an angry soldier and a Palestinian village with a ruined mosque in the center.

A shirt printed after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza for Battalion 890 of the Paratroops depicts a King Kong-like soldier in a city under attack. The slogan is unambiguous: "If you believe it can be fixed, then believe it can be destroyed!"

Y., a soldier/yeshiva student, designed the shirt. "You take whoever [in the unit] knows how to draw and then you give it to the commanders before printing," he explained.

What is the soldier holding in his hand?

Y. "A mosque. Before I drew the shirt I had some misgivings, because I wanted it to be like King Kong, but not too monstrous. The one holding the mosque - I wanted him to have a more normal-looking face, so it wouldn't look like an anti-Semitic cartoon. Some of the people who saw it told me, 'Is that what you've got to show for the IDF? That it destroys homes?' I can understand people who look at this from outside and see it that way, but I was in Gaza and they kept emphasizing that the object of the operation was to wreak destruction on the infrastructure, so that the price the Palestinians and the leadership pay will make them realize that it isn't worth it for them to go on shooting. So that's the idea of 'we're coming to destroy' in the drawing."

According to Y., most of these shirts are worn strictly in an army context, not in civilian life. "And within the army people look at it differently," he added. "I don't think I would walk down the street in this shirt, because it would draw fire. Even at my yeshiva I don't think people would like it."

Y. also came up with a design for the shirt his unit printed at the end of basic training. It shows a clenched fist shattering the symbol of the Paratroops Corps.

Where does the fist come from?

"It's reminiscent of [Rabbi Meir] Kahane's symbol. I borrowed it from an emblem for something in Russia, but basically it's supposed to look like Kahane's symbol, the one from 'Kahane Was Right' - it's a sort of joke. Our company commander is kind of gung-ho."

Was the shirt printed?

"Yes. It was a company shirt. We printed about 100 like that."

This past January, the "Night Predators" demolitions platoon from Golani's Battalion 13 ordered a T-shirt showing a Golani devil detonating a charge that destroys a mosque. An inscription above it says, "Only God forgives."

One of the soldiers in the platoon downplays it: "It doesn't mean much, it's just a T-shirt from our platoon. It's not a big deal. A friend of mine drew a picture and we made it into a shirt."

What's the idea behind "Only God forgives"?

The soldier: "It's just a saying."

No one had a problem with the fact that a mosque gets blown up in the picture?

"I don't see what you're getting at. I don't like the way you're going with this. Don't take this somewhere you're not supposed to, as though we hate Arabs."

After Operation Cast Lead, soldiers from that battalion printed a T-shirt depicting a vulture sexually penetrating Hamas' prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, accompanied by a particularly graphic slogan. S., a soldier in the platoon that ordered the shirt, said the idea came from a similar shirt, printed after the Second Lebanon War, that featured Hassan Nasrallah instead of Haniyeh.

"They don't okay things like that at the company level. It's a shirt we put out just for the platoon," S. explained.

What's the problem with this shirt?

S.: "It bothers some people to see these things, from a religious standpoint ..."

How did people who saw it respond?

"We don't have that many Orthodox people in the platoon, so it wasn't a problem. It's just something the guys want to put out. It's more for wearing around the house, and not within the companies, because it bothers people. The Orthodox mainly. The officers tell us it's best not to wear shirts like this on the base."

The sketches printed in recent years at the Adiv factory, one of the largest of its kind in the country, are arranged in drawers according to the names of the units placing the orders: Paratroops, Golani, air force, sharpshooters and so on. Each drawer contains hundreds of drawings, filed by year. Many of the prints are cartoons and slogans relating to life in the unit, or inside jokes that outsiders wouldn't get (and might not care to, either), but a handful reflect particular aggressiveness, violence and vulgarity.

Print-shop manager Haim Yisrael, who has worked there since the early 1980s, said Adiv prints around 1,000 different patterns each month, with soldiers accounting for about half. Yisrael recalled that when he started out, there were hardly any orders from the army.

"The first ones to do it were from the Nahal brigade," he said. "Later on other infantry units started printing up shirts, and nowadays any course with 15 participants prints up shirts."

From time to time, officers complain. "Sometimes the soldiers do things that are inside jokes that only they get, and sometimes they do something foolish that they take to an extreme," Yisrael explained. "There have been a few times when commanding officers called and said, 'How can you print things like that for soldiers?' For example, with shirts that trashed the Arabs too much. I told them it's a private company, and I'm not interested in the content. I can print whatever I like. We're neutral. There have always been some more extreme and some less so. It's just that now more people are making shirts."

Race to be unique

Evyatar Ben-Tzedef, a research associate at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism and former editor of the IDF publication Maarachot, said the phenomenon of custom-made T-shirts is a product of "the infantry's insane race to be unique. I, for example, had only one shirt that I received after the Yom Kippur War. It said on it, 'The School for Officers,' and that was it. What happened since then is a product of the decision to assign every unit an emblem and a beret. After all, there used to be very few berets: black, red or green. This changed in the 1990s. [The shirts] developed because of the fact that for bonding purposes, each unit created something that was unique to it.

"These days the content on shirts is sometimes deplorable," Ben-Tzedef explained. "It stems from the fact that profanity is very acceptable and normative in Israel, and that there is a lack of respect for human beings and their environment, which includes racism aimed in every direction."

Yossi Kaufman, who moderates the army and defense forum on the Web site Fresh, served in the Armored Corps from 1996 to 1999. "I also drew shirts, and I remember the first one," he said. "It had a small emblem on the front and some inside joke, like, 'When we die, we'll go to heaven, because we've already been through hell.'"

Kaufman has also been exposed to T-shirts of the sort described here. "I know there are shirts like these," he says. "I've heard and also seen a little. These are not shirts that soldiers can wear in civilian life, because they would get stoned, nor at a battalion get-together, because the battalion commander would be pissed off. They wear them on very rare occasions. There's all sorts of black humor stuff, mainly from snipers, such as, 'Don't bother running because you'll die tired' - with a drawing of a Palestinian boy, not a terrorist. There's a Golani or Givati shirt of a soldier raping a girl, and underneath it says, 'No virgins, no terror attacks.' I laughed, but it was pretty awful. When I was asked once to draw things like that, I said it wasn't appropriate."

The IDF Spokesman's Office comments on the phenomenon: "Military regulations do not apply to civilian clothing, including shirts produced at the end of basic training and various courses. The designs are printed at the soldiers' private initiative, and on civilian shirts. The examples raised by Haaretz are not in keeping with the values of the IDF spirit, not representative of IDF life, and are in poor taste. Humor of this kind deserves every condemnation and excoriation. The IDF intends to take action for the immediate eradication of this phenomenon. To this end, it is emphasizing to commanding officers that it is appropriate, among other things, to take discretionary and disciplinary measures against those involved in acts of this sort."

Shlomo Tzipori, a lieutenant colonel in the reserves and a lawyer specializing in martial law, said the army does bring soldiers up on charges for offenses that occur outside the base and during their free time. According to Tzipori, slogans that constitute an "insult to the army or to those in uniform" are grounds for court-martial, on charges of "shameful conduct" or "disciplinary infraction," which are general clauses in judicial martial law.

Sociologist Dr. Orna Sasson-Levy, of Bar-Ilan University, author of "Identities in Uniform: Masculinities and Femininities in the Israeli Military," said that the phenomenon is "part of a radicalization process the entire country is undergoing, and the soldiers are at its forefront. I think that ever since the second intifada there has been a continual shift to the right. The pullout from Gaza and its outcome - the calm that never arrived - led to a further shift rightward.

"This tendency is most strikingly evident among soldiers who encounter various situations in the territories on a daily basis. There is less meticulousness than in the past, and increasing callousness. There is a perception that the Palestinian is not a person, a human being entitled to basic rights, and therefore anything may be done to him."

Could the printing of clothing be viewed also as a means of venting aggression?

Sasson-Levy: "No. I think it strengthens and stimulates aggression and legitimizes it. What disturbs me is that a shirt is something that has permanence. The soldiers later wear it in civilian life; their girlfriends wear it afterward. It is not a statement, but rather something physical that remains, that is out there in the world. Beyond that, I think the link made between sexist views and nationalist views, as in the 'Screw Haniyeh' shirt, is interesting. National chauvinism and gender chauvinism combine and strengthen one another. It establishes a masculinity shaped by violent aggression toward women and Arabs; a masculinity that considers it legitimate to speak in a crude and violent manner toward women and Arabs."

Col. (res.) Ron Levy began his military service in the Sayeret Matkal elite commando force before the Six-Day War. He was the IDF's chief psychologist, and headed the army's mental health department in the 1980s.

Levy: "I'm familiar with things of this sort going back 40, 50 years, and each time they take a different form. Psychologically speaking, this is one of the ways in which soldiers project their anger, frustration and violence. It is a certain expression of things, which I call 'below the belt.'"

Do you think this a good way to vent anger?

Levy: "It's safe. But there are also things here that deviate from the norm, and you could say that whoever is creating these things has reached some level of normality. He gives expression to the fact that what is considered abnormal today might no longer be so tomorrow."

The only way out of this Chinese water torture style bloodbath is a 2 state solution, with a US led multinational peace force to oversee the whole process. And by process, I mean at least a decade.

This assumes many things, not least of which would be the cessation of hostilities by Palestinian extremists. No Israeli leader is going to support a Palestinian state along its border as long as the likes of Hamas is around.

Does anyone think there is a realistic chance of US support for peacekeepers in Israel?

Netanyahu's strategy is to control the West Bank permanently, NOT to annex it.

He won't go as far as annexation as that will illustrate the apartheid analogy. He'll probably end up though going that far, which in effect is the single-state solution.

The two-state solution is so obviously the only prospect for peace or for justice, as to be silly.

A single-state results in civil unrest, leading to civil war, with Israel as the dominant military controlling a LARGER portion, with the justification that it is partition of a civil war (NOT an occupation).

Or, the laws of title would have to be open to the marketplace if it is to be a civil democracy, in which case, Jews would buy more and more of the land until it is a single Zionist state, legally.

RE: "But they must have an alternative explanation for how Greater Israel is good for the Jews. What is it?"

ELLIOTT ABRAMS SPEAKING TO THE REPUBLICAN JEWISH COALITION IN FT. LAUDERDALE THIS PAST SATURDAY:
On the subject of Israel, Abrams predicts some friction in the near term between Obama and Netanyahu because the Obama administration believes that the main problem in brokering an Israeli/Palestinian final status agreement is Israel’s settlement expansion. This, according to Abrams, is false. “I can illustrate why [this is false] very simply,” said Abrams. “Look at what [Ehud] Barak proposed ten years ago. Look at what Olmert offered recently. Olmert offered more.”

MY COMMENT: This is a beautiful example of neocon ‘logic’. Olmert offered more? Oh really! The neocons have been insisting for ten years that Barak offered everything (including the kitchen sink) to Arafat and that it was all Arafat’s fault that there was no peace agreement under Clinton. Was this all just a ‘BIG LIE’?

SOURCE (ENTIRE POST) - http://www.heatherrobinson.net/blog/2009/03/23/elliott-abrams-predicts-obama-bibi-faceoff/

Dr Mearsheimer:
You said that "if there is no 2 state solution, Israel wil end up in a South African-like state and that will mean the end of the Jewish state." Aren't you making a little assumption here? Just because S.A. could not survive doesn't mean the same thing has to happen to Israel. Maybe the white South Africans were too few, maybe they didn't try hard enough, maybe they didn't have a lobby as strong as the Israel lobby, they certainly didn't have world-wide support from the Diaspora community of white South Africans like Israel does, and they didn't have a Holocaust to drum up sympathy. And I don't see an Israeli DeKlerk anywhere on the horizon. I think Netanyahu, Lieberman, et al are fine with apartheid, as long as there is Jewish control of the land. There can be democracy too but for Jews only. They don't see the long-term threat to Israel that you do and they might be right. I for one think they're sitting on a powder keg that will one day blow up into WW 3 but I can't prove it either.

Dr Mearsheimer:
You said that "if there is no 2 state solution, Israel wil end up in a South African-like state and that will mean the end of the Jewish state." Aren't you making a little assumption here? Just because S.A. could not survive doesn't mean the same thing has to happen to Israel. Maybe the white South Africans were too few, maybe they didn't try hard enough, maybe they didn't have a lobby as strong as the Israel lobby, they certainly didn't have world-wide support from the Diaspora community of white South Africans like Israel does, and they didn't have a Holocaust to drum up sympathy.

Dr Mearsheimer is talking according to the theory. According to the theory the only solution is State. And again according to the theory Apartheid is not state. Therefore it ended up in SA and replaced by State.
In ither words on Israel's case Dr Mearsheimer is not deciding based on the SA case that Israel will end as another Repoblic of SA, but according to the theory it will end like that. Once it is according to the theory like that some unnatural interferences (miracle makers) like lobbies cannot change the nature of the "state", the natural laws governs the "state". Unless of course someone comes with a better, more comprehensive theory replacing the theory Dr Mearsheimer uses, by eliminating the concept "state" altogether and perhaps replacing it with more realistic concepts, demonstrating that the new theory is more useful than Dr Mearsheimer's one.

You see those Doctors amd Professors don't open their mouth unless they talk according to a theory.
If you don't believe me ask him;->>

John!
I think you are right Mate! Israel is headed towards one State - Palestine;->>

Grand Sen~or.

First of all, I really appreciate Mr. Mearsheimer's request to hear from the "other side." I know it's hard for many to understand, but the vast majority of Israelis, including very many Likud voters (me, for instance), fervently desire land for peace along the lines of UN Resolution 242. We reluctantly support the occupation purely for national interest - security - and not for ideological reasons. We simply are not convinced that Palestinians are willing to surrender their claims to all of their homeland in exchange for just a part of it. The armed struggle to liberate all of Palestine will continue, we believe, after a peace agreement and after statehood, even if only a minority of Palestinians actively support the struggle.

Speaking for myself, I think you are misreading the whole "apartheid" issue. Morally, you seem to believe that it's significantly more moral ("democratic") for a Jewish majority of 51% to exercise sovereignty against the will of a 49% Arab minority than if those percentages are reversed. I don't understand this reasoning. If it will be immoral when Arabs west of the Jordan reach 51%, then it's no less wrong today. And that includes "democratic" Jewish sovereignty within the State of Israel proper.

Politically, I think you have it exactly backwards. Palestinian statehood would not defuse the "apartheid" rhetoric; it would only intensify it, but in a different direction. After statehood, Palestinian political efforts will become focused on making Israel a "state of all its citizens" rather than a Jewish state. Israel will be called an apartheid state because of the fact that it's a Jewish state, i.e., because it has a 19-century style Staatvolk.

The "apartheid" threat is serious, and I don't want to discount it. But there are a couple factors which will mitigate it over time. First of all, fewer and fewer people remember the days of apartheid South Africa. Second, as the situation for whites in South Africa continues to degenerate, calls to follow the South Africa model will be less persuasive.

To answer your main question, what is our "happy ending"? There is none. The conflict is tragic in the true sense of the word; it's insoluble, even when one understands its causes and its dynamics. The only "solution" right now is conflict management. But there is hope, in the form of military technology. If Israel is able to develop a real missile/rocket defense system, then unilateral withdrawal will suddenly become a real option. We could, in Martin van Creveld's words, "build a wall so high birds can't fly over it."

If this were to happen, then the West Bank settlements would be dismantled in the blink of an eye, just as the Gaza settlements were. Palestinian statehood would become a real option. Statehood wouldn't end the war, but it would end the occupation. That is a goal desired by a large majority of Israelis, who do not want to occupy Palestinian territory. Please believe me that Israelis do not want to send their children into the army to police a hostile population.

Finally, some questions for Mr. Mearsheimer and others who agree with him.

1. If the demand for a single state west of the Jordan will be good for the Palestinians once they become a majority, why don't they already demand it now? After all, they'd be a majority already, since many Jews would flee before the state is established. Why isn't it already a good idea?
2. Assuming a two-state solution, will the state of Palestine be willing and able to suppress those who continue the armed struggle to liberate all of Palestine? Even if it takes a civil war to do so? Even if the rejectionists are backed by Iran and/or Syria? (This is assuming that the state is not itself a client state of Iran.)

Once again, I really appreciate the spirit of dialogue in which Mr. Mearsheimer's post was written.

When motivated to do so, BOTH Hamas and Fatah have demonstrated their ability to maintain order, if not fully accompanied by law yet.

The relative quiet (a STARK contrast) of shelling from Gaza during the cease-fire is demonstration to me that Hamas is capable of achieving co-existence.

I agree that its a dangerous unknown if that is their intention at all.

The benefits of the Arab League proposal though overshadow the dangers. Specifically, the Arab League proposed by concensus (with the abstention of Hamas, a critical player, and the absence of Iran, non-Arab Muslim state) that each member would recognize Israel and establish full diplomatic and normalized economic relations IF Israel returned to 67 borders or genuinely consented revisions to those borders.

That agreement would be TREATY, not just a minor temporary assertion. Hamas and Hezbollah (Lebanon also consented) would be isolated and require to reform to a status of co-existence at least.

TREATY is law. In the US, a treaty has more constitutional authority than legislation, more permanent, preference in law.

I don't know if that is the same among the prospective signatories.

The security apparatus of EACH of the signing states would be obliged to pursue peaceful reconciliation to conflicts of whatever nature, rather than militant or opportunist.

Further, if at the green line, the borders would be MORE defensible than the maze. They would be less defensible than an ethnically cleansed river to sea, but if you or anyone is seriously considering that approach, then they have abandoned the primary principles of self-governance that is the basis of Israel and every state. (That is VERY THIN ice, that would splinter quickly.)

..."The Israel lobby, however, will adamantly defend Israel's right to do whatever it wants in the Occupied Territories". Yes, and anywhere else and as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently stated “that there is no place where Israel cannot operate”
Don’t mess with IDF-you tube clip within today's lead article War in Context, March 26 Paul Woodard-illustrates that point rather clearly check it out_ T shirt bonding is for adolescents.

First of all your book "The Israel Lobby" was not only riddled with lies and half truths but it also offended me as an Jew. To think that my grandfather served in WWII and almost died only to be accused by you who was never in the military that he has "deul loalties" is a defematio of all the Jews who died serving our country and all those who lived. Also your conspiracy that the Israel lobby is all powerfull is also a wet dream of anti-Semites. Yes they do donate money but doesn't the oil companies? The NRA and AARP both have more members and have donated why more money than all the pro-Israel groups combined! You should be ashamed of your self.

According my copy of your brilliant TOGPP

Given the difficulty of determining how much power is enough for today and tomorrow, great powers recognize that the best way to ensure their security is to achieve hegemony now, thus eliminating any possibility of a challenge by another great power. Only a misguided state would pass up an opportunity to become hegemon in the system because it thought it already had sufficient power to survive.

Israel's predicament is different? It's not what's meant by a 'great power'?

Well you also say realist logic is applied (successfully one assumes since you mention them) in "Code of the Street" and Hobbs who says - "because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more".

Israel is going by the book - your book.Israel would control the eastern border of the Palestinian state. Israel says it might be willing to remove its forces after six years, but there is no guarantee that it would actually do so. And why should it? Why indeed ? What did you think the Palestinians were going to be able to do about all this - Even if the Clinton plan is accepted, the new state is sure to be a source of boundless anger’

Nothing as far as I can see. But you began to write about the lobby and even the 'Lobby'. Whereupon the analysis changed now Israel is listening to the mermaids sing; lurching into a fateful dead-end situation.

The founding fathers of Israel knew full well that they stole the land from Arabs. They also knew the only way to perpetuate this wrong was by having a big military.

Until there is justice, there will be no peace.

This from David Ben-Gurion:

I don't understand your optimism. Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So, it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out.

* As quoted in The Jewish Paradox : A personal memoir (1978) by Nahum Goldmann (translated by Steve Cox), p. 99.

Did anyone notice the prejudicial nature of the photograph leading off this article? Whether it is Meersheim's doing or that of some staffer, it dishonors us all. How about a picture of the dead Israeli women and children, Arab and Jew alike, on the terrorist-bombed Number 17 bus?

As I've said before, the new Israeli government and the central bank are led by a bunch of American-educated (MIT, Stanford) technocrats. If they think an economic development approach might work better than the politician's (and "realists") failed attempts to create two states, why not support their efforts?

Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009 contains an important admission in the last few paragraphs but concludes by effectively giving the podium to an Israeli army psychologist to claim that the messages of the T-shirts represent a normal venting of steam instead of a sort of preparatory dehumanization that facilitates atrocities against non-Jews.

Col. (res.) Ron Levy began his military service in the Sayeret Matkal elite commando force before the Six-Day War. He was the IDF's chief psychologist, and headed the army's mental health department in the 1980s.

Levy: "I'm familiar with things of this sort going back 40, 50 years, and each time they take a different form. Psychologically speaking, this is one of the ways in which soldiers project their anger, frustration and violence. It is a certain expression of things, which I call 'below the belt.'"

Do you think this a good way to vent anger?

Levy: "It's safe. But there are also things here that deviate from the norm, and you could say that whoever is creating these things has reached some level of normality. He gives expression to the fact that what is considered abnormal today might no longer be so tomorrow."

Despite Levy's claim, such dehumanization of an oppressed group is common among oppressors because the oppressors must convince themselves there is nothing wrong with brutalizing, robbing, dispossessing or killing their victims.

Levy is disingenuous when he mentions that Zionist racism and barbarism towards Palestinians can be traced back 50 years. The Zionist writer Asher Ginzburg (Ahad haAm) was already describing Jewish Zionist contempt for Arabs and Turks in the 1890s. Not only were Zionist colonists already routinely brutal toward Palestine fellahin at that time period, but Zionist behavior toward Palestinians has never differed in any meaningful way from Jewish mistreatment of Ukrainian peasants in the 16th and 17th centuries.

In Yiddish Civilization, The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation (pp. 235-6), Paul Kriwaczek discusses Jewish role in Ukraine, which was at that time part of Commonwealth Poland.

This Yiddish takeover of the wild and lawless Ukraine's economy could be expected to have involved much exploitation and corrupt abuse of monopoly. Jews tried hard to keep such businesses as the collection of customs dues and taxes to themselves. Surviving customs records from the 1580s are written in a mixture of Yiddish and Hebrew. The historian Shimon Dubnow quotes a resolution passed by the Jewish Lithuanian Council, the Vaad Medina Litoh, ruling body of the Jewish estate: "We have openly seen the great danger deriving from the operation of customs in Gentile hands; for the customs to be in Jewish hands is a pivot on which everything turns, since thereby Jews may exert control."
...
The alliance between ruthless Polish nobles and insecure Yiddish frontiersmen proved dangerous and destructive. The Jews now held a position that nothing in their background or religious law had properly prepared them for. They had been placed in authority over another people, of another social order, another culture and another religion, a people whom the magnates, the Jews' masters, regarded as racially inferior and fair game for callous exploitation. Tragically, shaking off the restraining influence of wiser counsels of the West, the repeated warnings of the rabbis of metropolitan Cracow, Posen and Lublin, the Yiddish businessmen who flocked to the colony came to regard the peasantry in a similar light.

Even though Kriwaczek's passage is hardly subtle in its blame-shifting to Polish magnates, we can be fairly certain that dehumanizing bigotry against non-Jews has been a characteristic of Eastern European Jewish culture for at least 350 years and that Eastern European Zionists brought violent and often murderous prejudices with them when they developed their program to steal Palestine. Americans are only just beginning to see the dark side of Yiddish culture that Palestinians have experienced for over 100 years.

Zionist propaganda defames Arabs, Turks, and Persians when Zionists claim Israel must act brutally Israel because the ME is a dangerous neighborhood.

Eastern European Ashkenazim brought exceptionally vicious Jewish anti-gentile bigotry and violence with them from E. Europe.

Unless the USA abolishes both the Zionist state and the Zionist Virtual Colonial Motherland (Judonia),

• whose public face is the Israel Lobby, and
• which has rendered the USA a dependent and intimidated client state,

the future of the USA will be as bleak as that of Poland after 1648 when Commonwealth Poland began its slow collapse into the first modern failed state. (See Fighting the Dystopic Future.)