The Middle of the Road Israel Position That Everybody Hates

Here's some facts that people on all sides are not willing to face.

I just want to clear up a few things about Israel. It's a nation, one that has been under siege for most of its existence. There is frequently a double standard. Some nations get away with doing terrible things, really awful things. Others don't.

I would suggest that the wall be built on the green line. And everything within 20 yards on either side of the line be bulldozed. That would be fair.

Wall made Israel safer
Nobody disputes the fact that the wall has made Israel safer. The very balanced Wikipedia account notes, however, that the wall is being built to turn part of the West Bank into Israeli land.

That's wrong. As is blocking ambulances and other urgent things.

Terrorism made Israel more right wing
But we did not get here overnight. Part of the problem is the growing strength of the religious right within Israel's democracy.  The most successful act of terrorism in Israel was the assassination of Rabin by an Orthodox Jew.

In the past, suicide bombers have often struck after Israel withdrew from a town. The PA kleptocracy benefits from a state of emergency. It seems almost routine now for Israel to say that a bombing will not deter it from withdrawing.

Terrorism also makes a nation more right wing. Oddly enough, Israel is the one of the few nations in the world with a government as weak as the Weimar Republic, with its pure proportional representation.  This means that fringe groups get a say. Right now, there are too many parties.

The worst party is close to the U.S. fringe Constitutional Party, Shas. Shas is a scandal wracked party.

But the point here is that Israel is a Democracy. It is in the process of convicting its president of rape, something that would happen in few nations in the world. It has always had free elections. It has moved steadily rightward.

There is a violent religious right in Israel
There is a great deal of religious tension among the Jewish population of Israel, especially over the marriage issue.
The Orthodox follow some old divorce rules, in which a man can divorce a woman, but a woman cannot divorce a man.

It may even be the goal of terrorists to make Israel more right wing. As Israel does harsher and harsher things, it may be playing into the hands of those who want war.

Murder is generally acceptable to the world community, though it should not be
But the fact is that the U.S. has ignored genocides in Rwanda, the Sudan, Cambodia. When Israel gets criticized for bad things that are nevertheless not genocide, it sets a double standard: It's Okay If You're Not Israel (IOKIYNI).

Simple solutions are just wishful thinking
But many continue to agitate for an "end to the occupation."

. . . in spite of the fact that many nations that originally tried to destroy a partitioned Palestine, nations that continue to publish genocidal lies

It is naive to expect peace when so many profit from war
. . . in spite of the fact that the PA has always been and remains a kleptocracy
. . . the naive fail to understand why human shields are so effective.

Some people do want to kill the Jews
far too many people want to simply erase Israel from the map. They are willing to imagine a world without Israel because it sounds so effortless. After all, it sounds so effortless. America has already condoned genocide in so many places. We wouldn't have to do anything.

Nevertheless, solutions exist
Solutions exist. Extremists on the right would hate them and extremists on the left would hate them.

In Israel, it begins with a straight line being drawn, separating the combatants. The line has to leave out Jerusalem. It begins with a genuine ceasefire: no rockets, no bombs, no stones.

And, in the future, it means that Israeli deaths have to be roughly equivalent to Arab deaths in combat operations. No mines  , no aerial bombing.

The world has spoken. In future wars, Israelis must die in equal numbers.

And maybe, in the future, there will be peace. But first, there must be an armistice.

The U.S. can play a role
But not under this administration. This administration chose not to do anything about Israel. It obtained its power after terrorist attacks. Imagine where U.S. politics would be if the U.S. suffered the level of attacks that Israel has suffered.

Imagine where U.S. politics would be if you could die in a pizzeria,   bakery,   or bus. Imagine how the U.S. would react if a church were attacked here.

Look at what we did to our constitution after one attack. Imagine this.

Democracy has flaws
My father worked for Kennedy's USAID. A big project was land redistribution in South and Central America, where economic inequality is even worse than in the U.S. as determined by the Gini Coefficient. He has always said that although land redistribution would solve the area's problems, it's never been done without murder, which the U.S. was not willing to do.

Similarly, fringe elements want to solve this problem by killing all Jews or all Arabs (or both).

Although Democracy has flaws, I do believe that given time, it can deliver a solution, though an imperfect one. At the moment, the best Israel can hope for is to someday look like Cyprus.

But when things start to look good, fringe elements on both sides will attack. Here's one line from the wikipedia profile of Israel:

The initial wide public support for the Oslo Accords began to wane as Israel was struck by an unprecedented wave of attacks supported by the militant Hamas group, which opposed the accords. Public support slipped even further. On November 4, 1995, a Jewish nationalist militant named Yigal Amir assassinated Rabin.

Next time, we'll know what to expect, and maybe be able to respond better. The outline of a solution exists, in the Oslo Accords.

(snark)
But hey, if Democracy isn't working, we could just occupy the whole area and police it ourselves (/snark)