As a further thought to Michael Rubin’s response to Joe Klein’s defense of Peter Beinart, it is not true that nobody has yet replied to Peter Beinart’s demographic argument. First of all, the argument is not Peter Beinart’s. He’d deserve a response if he had raised a new, original insight to the debate – but the argument about how Israel’s Jewish character is incompatible with its democratic nature if Israel indefinitely rules over millions of Palestinians is not something Peter Beinart discovered – he merely parroted a widely held view. And as for the need to respond to him, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley did so already last year, writing in the New York Review of Books, a publication that is hardly sympathetic to Israel and which hosted Beinart’s opening shot against Israel:
Demographic developments undoubtedly are a source of long-term Israeli anxiety. But they are not the type of immediate threat that spurs risky political decisions. Moreover, the binary choice Palestinians, Americans, and even some Israelis posit—either a negotiated two-state outcome or the impossibility of a Jewish, democratic state—assumes dramatic and irreversible changes that Israel would not be able to counter. Yet Israel possesses a variety of potential responses. Already, by unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza, former prime minister Ariel Sharon transformed the numbers game, effectively removing 1.5 million Palestinians from the Israeli equation. The current or a future government could unilaterally conduct further territorial withdrawals from the West Bank, allowing, as in the case of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s West Bank government, or compelling, as happened in Gaza, large numbers of Palestinians to rule themselves and mitigating the demographic peril. The options, in other words, are not necessarily limited to a two-state solution, an apartheid regime, or the end of the Jewish state.
Since he relied on NYRB, Beinart should at least have done his homework and taken into account what others had already opined in the Review on the same subject. It is a testament to how sloppy Jewish anti-Israel sanctimony is that the best argument on how the demographic argument is largely overblown should come from a Palestinian intellectual and an American former negotiator known for his pro-Palestinian sympathies.
Why bother answering Beinart? As noted elsewhere, in Commentary, Beinart's book isn't selling. Absent library sales and sales to the unfortunate students assigned to read his tiresome drivel, Chomskey's books don't sell either. n nThe advances received by bores like Beinart and Chomskey are stipends from their editor and publisher. Neither expected high sales of Beinart's book. Beinart is on the lefty gravy train. n nSound counterintuitive? Why publish a book no one will read? n nAgain, I suggest to the editors of Commentary: Forget Beinart. Profile his editor and publisher. Probe their motives in publishing a second rate Zion-hater whose book they don't expect to sell. How many equally unprofitable authors of Beinart's political persuasion is his publisher supporting and why? n n
The real solution comes when the illegitimate king of Jordan, son of a British stenographer and grandson of a Bedouin chieftain from the Arabian peninsula,passes from the scene. The 75% majority 'Palestinians' will assume power, perhaps after a bloody civil war with the minority bedouins who have long discriminated against them, and Jordan, which sits on 75% of the Palestine Mandate, will become the Palestinian homeland. Lots of room there for the 15 million (no doubt, by then, what with their dissembling census) 'palestinian' descendants of those who fled what is now Israel to better allow the planned genocide of the Jews in 1948s to make a life for themselves.
Michael, the present king of Jordan, Abdullah II, is the great-grandson of his namesake, Amir –later King– Abdullah, not his grandson. Further, Amir Abdullah was not a mere Badawin chieftain but spent much of his younger years growing up in Constantinople [Istanbul], a fairly cosmopolitan place, even under Ottoman rule. Abdullah's father was the Sharif Husayn, titular ruler of Mecca under the Ottoman Empire but the central government did not like his political ambitions and thus kept him close at hand in the capital, at that time Constantinople.
So? Why does this arabian-british import get to rule over part of biblical Israel, 75% of the Palestine Mandate, leaving the Jews and local arabs to squabble about the remaining 25%? n n
My purpose was just to correct the historical info. In ancient times, under the Roman Empire, the strip of the land along the Jordan River to the east of the river was part of Judea to the Romans. Until Emperor Hadrian changed the name of Judea to "syria palaestina." The actual Province of Judea included the Golan Heights, the Galilee, Samaria, the northern Negev, most of the coastal plain, and the former kingdom of Judah [which is also sometimes called Judea]. The Zionist movement claimed roughly speaking what had been the ancient Province of Judea [Provincia IVDAEA] on both sides of the Jordan. However, we both know that the British Empire liked to grab as much land to control as they could. So, when the British negotiated with King Ibn Saud of Arabia over the eastern boundary of the "palestine" mandate or the Jewish National Home, in 1925, they included much land, much desert, that had never been part of ancient Judea or ancient Israel. nAlthough all of today's Jordan [east of the Jordan river] was legally part of the Jewish National Home and the mandated territory, it had not been claimed by the Zionist movement. And I'm not sure we would want all of that desert, which is authentically Arab [that is, because the word `arab means desert in Arabic; `arabah in Hebrew is also desert]. nAt this point let's demand our rights under international law to all of our ancient homeland.
Beinart and occidental leftists love their state of dhimmitude.
This is a reactive position. When the so-called "Arab Spring" revolt was in full throttle, didn't we hear that that was the beginning of "freedom," "democracy" and predictions of pluralism and freedom-a-comin' to the Arab states? Aren't those who parroted the same debunked predictions of the freedoms expected from the failed "Arab Spring" which has come and gone, ignored the essentially homogeneous native populations of those very same states–i.e. mainly either Muslim or Arab and usually both? So why is Israel, a democratic nation, under more unfair and cynical analysis as to their democratic nature when, indeed, they are a heterogeneous nation. A rhetorical question, of course. It's hypocritical at worst; racist and anti-Semitic at best.
Does anyone still read Time Magazine? n nAnd who the f*** is Joe Klein? Is he a Time Magazine 'thinker'? A Tom Friedman wannabee? Seems like. n nAnother Obama worshiper who will be forgotten once his idol crashes to earth.