Israel and Palestine

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Ideally, we'd get to the point where negotiations could be conducted again and a solution would be hashed out.

However, that time isn't now. And the idea of the US imposing a solution via the UN is probably the clearest way to turn a low boil conflict very, very hot in a hurry.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm glad that ag is secure enough to not see any need for Israel. I wish my great-uncles in Reichskommissariat Ostland had been so secure.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What makes us safe are the institutions that make it difficult (alas, I can no longer say impossible) for the past to be repeated. Israel undermines those institutions - it is making us less safe, not more.

I think I understand what you're getting at here, and all I'll say is that the logic strikes me as baroque but also bizarrely complacent at the same time.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What makes us safe are the institutions that make it difficult (alas, I can no longer say impossible) for the past to be repeated. Israel undermines those institutions - it is making us less safe, not more.

I think I understand what you're getting at here, and all I'll say is that the logic strikes me as baroque but also bizarrely complacent at the same time.

Not complacent. Despairing. When it happens, there will be nowhere to run.

I don't mean this as some sort of gotcha, but that is partially what Israel--Israel as such, Israel as a state concept, not the current situation in Israel, with the Likudniks--is there for in the first place.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What makes us safe are the institutions that make it difficult (alas, I can no longer say impossible) for the past to be repeated. Israel undermines those institutions - it is making us less safe, not more.

I think I understand what you're getting at here, and all I'll say is that the logic strikes me as baroque but also bizarrely complacent at the same time.

Not complacent. Despairing. When it happens, there will be nowhere to run.

I don't mean this as some sort of gotcha, but that is partially what Israel--Israel as such, Israel as a state concept, not the current situation in Israel, with the Likudniks--is there for in the first place.

It will never work.

I'm not sure I disagree, but that's no reason not to try.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What makes us safe are the institutions that make it difficult (alas, I can no longer say impossible) for the past to be repeated. Israel undermines those institutions - it is making us less safe, not more.

I think I understand what you're getting at here, and all I'll say is that the logic strikes me as baroque but also bizarrely complacent at the same time.

Not complacent. Despairing. When it happens, there will be nowhere to run.

I don't mean this as some sort of gotcha, but that is partially what Israel--Israel as such, Israel as a state concept, not the current situation in Israel, with the Likudniks--is there for in the first place.

It will never work.

I'm not sure I disagree, but that's no reason not to try.

It cannot work. I am not in the business of designing perpetuum mobile.

Likudniks are not an aberration. They are what Israel is about. What has happened was pretty much inevitable from the beginning.

The specific toxic combination of hawkish, expansionist nationalism and socioeconomic policies that are self-admittedly translations/importations of Republican policies was not inevitable from the beginning, and the current political cleavages in Israel are probably more due to Ashkenazi Labor Zionist bigotry against and mistreatment of the Mizrahim than anything else--which I would certainly classify as an unforced error, morally speaking.

If what you mean is that some form of aggressive nationalism in general was involved from the beginning, then yes, that's true, and is obviously a much more significant moral-conceptual flaw, but surrounding countries certainly aren't guiltless in the way they responded to the Israeli project either. There is nothing inherent to the idea 'a Jewish state in the southern Levant' that, as of the beginning of the Zionist movement, should have necessitated decades-long internecine conflicts and occupations.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What makes us safe are the institutions that make it difficult (alas, I can no longer say impossible) for the past to be repeated. Israel undermines those institutions - it is making us less safe, not more.

The State of Israel is the number one institution that keeps us safe everywhere in the world.

It is really quite striking how colonized ag's line of reasoning is. Some would refer to such a state of mind as ghettoized, but I disagree: our ancestors in the ghetto had Jewish pride and are often mischaracterized. They held on to their identity. By contrast, in ag's ideal world, Jews would simply assimilate and cease to exist, and in the absence of that utopia we should remain at the mercy of others (MUH EU!). No independence. No self-respect. No strength. No pride. Really sad.

I definitely think that what ag is advocating is pretty abject, but I don't see the evidence for him wanting Jews to assimilate out of existence.