Well, how would you fight a genocidal enemy that has no concern for its own civilians, and would even be happy to sacrifice them as long as it destroyed you? By conceding to them? Empowering them? Giving them a state?
To drive the point of the question we can even ask... "If the specific atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct 7 are not enough to condemn Hamas, what atrocities would be enough? Are there specifics you could share?"
Another excellent essay with clear lines of logic. Elie Wiesel, z"l, and others have described how silence was perhaps the greatest sin in allowing the Holocaust to unfold. I would add only one comment to your piece, anti-Israelists don't limit themselves to Israeli Jews. Hamas was all to happy their bombs and warriors killed Israeli Arabs and took them hostage. On November 24, two Arab men accused of helping Israel were executed in Tulkarem and strung up on an electric pole after their bodies were stomped on by a cheering mob. Their bodies were later tossed onto a trash heap. This is the image of what “peaceful coexistence” looks like among all too many Arab residents of Gaza, Judea and Samaria. (For some strange reason, this event was not reported in any non-Israeli press I have seen.)
Many in the Biden administration are saying Israel needs to allow moderate Arabs, like the PA, to take over Gaza. What they don't realize is that "moderate" means, while they may kill Israeli men, women and children, they won't rape the women and girls first; or maybe they'll rape them, but won't dismember them; or maybe they'll dismember them, but won't burn them alive first.
Absolutely definitive. This goes so much farther than Part 1, as well as drawing everything in this vast topic together and tying it up so incontrovertibly. Thank you again.
Have to disagree with you regarding my knowledge of this history, I am actually quite studied on the topics under discussions. So were the great powers, particularly Britain. I would agree that what would happen in Israel in 1948 was probably a very low priority at the time. The threat of the Soviet Union was truly the issue at hand. And as for Britain, they and their empire was completely spent by the end of the war. So from a historical perspective, the world was too exhausted to address the issue. However, 75 years has passed since then, and the world has mostly kept asking the wrong question.
Truth be told, I am probably too much of an optimist in regard to the Human Race and its capabilities & capacities to get to the question of how do we all thrive. So I will own up to my naïveté about what is truly possible, but clearly the policies of the Israeli government under Netenyau have created a situation far worse than it had to be. His incompetence is astounding!
Of course Hamas is evil, the Taliban is Evil, the Nazi’s were evil, and on it goes. In most cases, it’s impossible to negotiate with evil. My point was and continues to be that the Palestinian people are not evil. They are, by in large, a people who have historically been wronged, not by Israelis, but by a political structure that was negligent (mostly Great Britain) in failing to ask the question how are we going to create conditions in which both peoples can thrive. I believe the question Great Britain was asking itself was “how can we get out of this mess?” They stopped doing the hard work of addressing the larger systemic question. There was no Hamas in 1947, but the world left the question of how these two peoples might thrive, and instead left conditions where evil would eventually emerge and thrive.
All of this is incredibly hard, pains taking work. Our Governments mostly default to the easier, more expedient solutions…solutions that more often than not leave conditions where evil can easily take root.
Let’s not continue to default to the easy questions, but instead take up the difficult questions. The bloodshed in Israel will never stop until we are willing to take on the difficult questions.
Sorry Mr. Cramer, but you lack historical knowledge. All that was needed in 1947 was for the Arab world to have accepted the UN partition. It could not. It could not stand the thought of a Jewish presence. Hamas did exist in 1947 as the Muslim Brotherhood before rebranding to the current name. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had stood as Hitler's ally through the War, formally proposing that:
"Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (völkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy."
The armies of five Arab nations attacked a fledgling nation of holocaust survivors intent on finishing the Nazi's work. They failed. The hard question is how to change Arab and Muslim attitudes toward Israel. 75 years of appeasement and codling have failed. It's time to let Israelis, whose necks are on the chopping block, do what they must.
I think that one of the underreported phenomena is how many of the pro-Palestinians protestors are anti-American. Where is the non-political patriotism that existed Flag, Mom & apple pie?
We are in a rhetorical viscous circle which will only take us further down the rabbit hole where no workable solutions can be found. We need to transform the dialogue and you cannot even begin to do that if you don’t ask very different questions. Try it! you might be very surprised by what you may discover.
While you are right about the vicious circle, you are assuming that Hamas is not evil. I am beginning to doubt Solzhenitsyn: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Your simple question is exactly the wrong question to ask. A better question might be this. “ how do we create the conditions that will make it possible for the people of Israel and the people of Palestine not only to survive, but to thrive as 2 peoples?
Simple. Take a time machine back to 1948. Have the Arabs accept the UN partition and enjoy their new state alongside Israel, while the several Arab armies that invaded Israel, would not have done so. Cooperation would have benefited both sides - instead of one flourishing economic powerhouse in the region, there might be several. Oh, we can't do fantasy? Then your question has no answer for the foreseeable future, because the Palestinians never miss a chance to miss a chance.
When that college President said that you can't condemn calls for genocide against Jews; that you have to look at the context in which it's expressed. Would she answer the same way, if there were calls for genocide against blacks, gays, lesbians, transexuals, or any other non-Jewish group? I wonder??
To drive the point of the question we can even ask... "If the specific atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct 7 are not enough to condemn Hamas, what atrocities would be enough? Are there specifics you could share?"
Another excellent essay with clear lines of logic. Elie Wiesel, z"l, and others have described how silence was perhaps the greatest sin in allowing the Holocaust to unfold. I would add only one comment to your piece, anti-Israelists don't limit themselves to Israeli Jews. Hamas was all to happy their bombs and warriors killed Israeli Arabs and took them hostage. On November 24, two Arab men accused of helping Israel were executed in Tulkarem and strung up on an electric pole after their bodies were stomped on by a cheering mob. Their bodies were later tossed onto a trash heap. This is the image of what “peaceful coexistence” looks like among all too many Arab residents of Gaza, Judea and Samaria. (For some strange reason, this event was not reported in any non-Israeli press I have seen.)
Many in the Biden administration are saying Israel needs to allow moderate Arabs, like the PA, to take over Gaza. What they don't realize is that "moderate" means, while they may kill Israeli men, women and children, they won't rape the women and girls first; or maybe they'll rape them, but won't dismember them; or maybe they'll dismember them, but won't burn them alive first.
Absolutely definitive. This goes so much farther than Part 1, as well as drawing everything in this vast topic together and tying it up so incontrovertibly. Thank you again.
I wonder how many of your colleagues have signs on their lawns saying “no human being is illegal”
My own child. This is how mothers may have felt when nazisim and Marxism came to prominence and they saw their children fall to these ideologies.
Have to disagree with you regarding my knowledge of this history, I am actually quite studied on the topics under discussions. So were the great powers, particularly Britain. I would agree that what would happen in Israel in 1948 was probably a very low priority at the time. The threat of the Soviet Union was truly the issue at hand. And as for Britain, they and their empire was completely spent by the end of the war. So from a historical perspective, the world was too exhausted to address the issue. However, 75 years has passed since then, and the world has mostly kept asking the wrong question.
Truth be told, I am probably too much of an optimist in regard to the Human Race and its capabilities & capacities to get to the question of how do we all thrive. So I will own up to my naïveté about what is truly possible, but clearly the policies of the Israeli government under Netenyau have created a situation far worse than it had to be. His incompetence is astounding!
If Israel falls, we can thank Netenyau for that.
Of course Hamas is evil, the Taliban is Evil, the Nazi’s were evil, and on it goes. In most cases, it’s impossible to negotiate with evil. My point was and continues to be that the Palestinian people are not evil. They are, by in large, a people who have historically been wronged, not by Israelis, but by a political structure that was negligent (mostly Great Britain) in failing to ask the question how are we going to create conditions in which both peoples can thrive. I believe the question Great Britain was asking itself was “how can we get out of this mess?” They stopped doing the hard work of addressing the larger systemic question. There was no Hamas in 1947, but the world left the question of how these two peoples might thrive, and instead left conditions where evil would eventually emerge and thrive.
All of this is incredibly hard, pains taking work. Our Governments mostly default to the easier, more expedient solutions…solutions that more often than not leave conditions where evil can easily take root.
Let’s not continue to default to the easy questions, but instead take up the difficult questions. The bloodshed in Israel will never stop until we are willing to take on the difficult questions.
Sorry Mr. Cramer, but you lack historical knowledge. All that was needed in 1947 was for the Arab world to have accepted the UN partition. It could not. It could not stand the thought of a Jewish presence. Hamas did exist in 1947 as the Muslim Brotherhood before rebranding to the current name. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had stood as Hitler's ally through the War, formally proposing that:
"Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (völkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy."
The armies of five Arab nations attacked a fledgling nation of holocaust survivors intent on finishing the Nazi's work. They failed. The hard question is how to change Arab and Muslim attitudes toward Israel. 75 years of appeasement and codling have failed. It's time to let Israelis, whose necks are on the chopping block, do what they must.
I think that one of the underreported phenomena is how many of the pro-Palestinians protestors are anti-American. Where is the non-political patriotism that existed Flag, Mom & apple pie?
We are in a rhetorical viscous circle which will only take us further down the rabbit hole where no workable solutions can be found. We need to transform the dialogue and you cannot even begin to do that if you don’t ask very different questions. Try it! you might be very surprised by what you may discover.
While you are right about the vicious circle, you are assuming that Hamas is not evil. I am beginning to doubt Solzhenitsyn: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Your simple question is exactly the wrong question to ask. A better question might be this. “ how do we create the conditions that will make it possible for the people of Israel and the people of Palestine not only to survive, but to thrive as 2 peoples?
Simple. Take a time machine back to 1948. Have the Arabs accept the UN partition and enjoy their new state alongside Israel, while the several Arab armies that invaded Israel, would not have done so. Cooperation would have benefited both sides - instead of one flourishing economic powerhouse in the region, there might be several. Oh, we can't do fantasy? Then your question has no answer for the foreseeable future, because the Palestinians never miss a chance to miss a chance.
A question which might have no answer.
When that college President said that you can't condemn calls for genocide against Jews; that you have to look at the context in which it's expressed. Would she answer the same way, if there were calls for genocide against blacks, gays, lesbians, transexuals, or any other non-Jewish group? I wonder??
You are witnessing a civilization commit suicide.
If only logic mattered.