The Ivy League and other elite private colleges are losing esteem
natesilver.net
natesilver.net
Yes for determined/driven individuals, it may not matter all that much. And if you are not going to take advantage of what those elites have to offer, maybe you should reconsider if the financial burden is too high.
(Which it probably won’t)
The exception is somewhat antagonistic too - if you still believe it's important (e.g you come to an interview and talk about how great Cambridge is) that's a signal you're not going to be a good hire.
Obviously there are many caveats to this - I don't have an elite university degree, I'm not in the US, I've only ever hired developers, I've never worked in a business that needed people with elite university degrees, the number of people I've hired is a tiny sample of the industry, etc.
I suspect people who think elite degrees are important are mostly other people who have an elite degree, and often those people are the ones who make it into hiring manager positions or higher. In that case it kind of does matter, but only if you want to work in a company where an elite university degree counts for more than experience, and I'm pretty sure you don't.
But I concur that if you get into MIT (or comparable) and it seems to be a good fit, then it is hard to beat for a variety of reasons.
Nonetheless another strategy that is worth considering is pursuing a science or engineering major at a good but cheaper and less elite school, where you can perhaps stand out more, and then attending an elite graduate school (private or public) in your field.
I don’t think elite private colleges are losing esteem at all (the recent noise about pro-Palestinian protests will be forgotten five minutes after they stop, just like all the other campus protest movements in decades past, this isn’t new!), I just think the economic argument is getting harder and harder to make.
Not much of this is positive. Their ability to hire and the amount of money they have still is, I suppose. Assuming those are focused on teaching, though, which I doubt.
Might the quality of that education become suspect, if it lacks incentives to improve, since the branding largely carries everything?
However, if you go to an Ivy League school, you'll be surrounded by the best students, which makes a difference, and you will get other perks, like tutoring from graduate students (the university gives them housing in exchange). If you're in science, you'll also be able to do undergrad research in a top lab.
Branding is a big deal, but these universities are legitimately great places to study.
E.g. most students who qualify for aid would take on less debt to attend Stanford or an Ivy than to attend, say, UC Berkeley. Or pick some other state school, since Cal has had its share of protests.
The Student Strike of 1970 was an order of magnitude larger than today's Gaza protests, 900+ campuses participating [1] versus around 50 [2]. It was also culturally accentuated by the Kent State shootings [3] and draft.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_strike_of_1970
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-college-pro-palestin...
The Big Ten schools and the UC system stand apart from all other state schools when it comes to research dollars spent. They give up nothing to the Ivies in terms of opportunity on campus. After graduating, though? It’s less clear to me.
I doubt some shifts in the opinions of normal people are going to stop the elite flywheel -- there's just not enough connection between a machinist in Ohio or a nurse in Phoenix and the elite for their opinions to matter.
The Ivy League can fall apart one of two ways:
1. The levers of power move around to new groups of people radically enough that the jobs that were once elite are now irrelevant and forgotten, like a guild for some forgotten craft. AI is obviously one way this might happen, where many elite professions might just collapse.
2. Internal bickering over identity that just makes it impossible for normal people to attend. Think crazy stuff like requiring graduates to share their income for life with other graduates, or requiring some weird kind of binding pledge about who you can work for. Colleges already have a weird possessiveness over their graduates, this just takes that to the logical next level.
Who is doing this?
>This week, for instance, Google — despite probably being the most progressive or Silicon Valley company, nevertheless fired dozens of employees involved in pro-Palestine/anti-Israel protests that resemble those on university campuses.
I find it extremely hard to believe that Google is going to start not wanting to hire MIT grads because MIT has a protest encampment. This sort of thing might make sense to someone with a political axe to grind, but it strikes me as completely out of touch with reality.
I interview a lot of candidates for highly technical positions. I cannot imagine a frame of mind where I would worry that someone with a Harvard degree is "More likely to hold strong political opinions that will distract from their work". Even if you believe this is somehow unique to graduates of private universities, Google fired 28 people over protests. Out of nearly 200k. There's just no possibility that worrying about this is justified.
There was a time when Google wouldn't consider a candidate if they weren't from MIT. The loss of that monopoly is the point. You aren't disadvantaged going to MIT today relative to a few decades ago. You're just not as relatively advantaged as you once were.
I am as well. I'm less sceptical of (a) the partisan shift in the value of elite education and (b) the effect per se.
I disagree. A falling acceptance rate suggests it's more elite, not less.
Applications have grown faster than population for decades [1]. Proxying selectiveness with acceptance rates is just marketing.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/04/09/a-majorit...
It's hard to justify that sticker price too.
You're paying the sticker price of a brand new car every single year.
This is bonkers.
But what he fails to mention is that most of these people aren't in positions of power e.g. hiring and thus their opinions aren't all that relevant.
If you go to an Ivy League school you statistically will get a higher paying job, have a better chance of getting into YC and other such programs and generally lead a better life. And for most that is what is important - not the education. And he has provided no data to show it is changing.
Until then the title makes for good clickbait but nothing believable.
This tweet I read earlier today lays out the case:
"The best reason to go to a top 10 American university:
In a random class you'll have a governor's daughter, the son of a billionaire and two guys with 170+ IQ. It's a hell of a group of people to mingle with to succeed in life. I'm super anti-university but I'll admit that this alone probably makes those schools worth it.."
You can't.
Firstly, students enter at a time when they're still figuring out what life is. You could do a lot of research on how to maximize the best professors or network in a field but most won't predict what specialty they'll end up with. Even if they do, they're so young they could not know how to judge the quality of an authority yet, so who is to say you will estimate that correctly?
The other reason people want top schools is for networking with other students. Some people will get a lot out of that and others won't. There's a bit of randomness involved. You could maximize your odds of being surrounded with good networks by going to the best school but honestly, I doubt you can truly predict the worth of that for an individual student.
As though students from different generations didn't do exactly the same thing about the Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam Wars.
I remember protesting at Penn in '85 ('86?) to persuade the trustees to divest from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa. And you know what? The trustees divested.
The irony of a group of people who loved the slang "ok boomer" going back to a boomer moment and a boomer song should not be lost on anyone...
Right, the politics are way down the list of reasons to not bother with these kids. The politics are downstream of these kids being nepo babies.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in-ivy...
“As a hypothetical example, take the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State, which are two schools a lot of students choose between,” Krueger said. “One is Ivy, one is a state school. Penn is much more highly selective. If you compare the students who go to those two schools, the ones who go to Penn have higher incomes. But let’s look at those who got into both types of schools, some of whom chose Penn and some of whom chose Penn State. Within that set it doesn’t seem to matter whether you go to the more selective school. Now, you would think that the more ambitious student is the one who would choose to go to Penn, and the ones choosing to go to Penn State might be a little less confident in their abilities or have a little lower family income, and both of those factors would point to people doing worse later on. But they don’t.”
Krueger says that there is one exception to this. Students from the very lowest economic strata do seem to benefit from going to an Ivy."
Anyone can cherry pick a few cases and say “see”, and I highly suspect that’s what’s actually going on there.
There’s a study being discussed in the article cited.
Feel free to discuss Krueger’s data if you think cases were cherry picked.
Except that you already have to have money to hang with that group.
What happens when they're heading to Switzerland for Spring Break? Yeah, you from the lower socioeconomic group on scholarship aren't going. After a couple of exclusions like that, that group won't hang with you anymore.
Sure, if you're from the very lowest socioeconomic strata, everything is up. Anybody you hang with is an improvement. However, if you're merely in the middle, that's not necessarily true when compared with a non-Ivy.
And, I would like to point out that law is NOT always best served by having an Ivy credential for undergrad. If you're involved in state politics, it's often best to have your law degree from the best law school in the state (which is often public!) and then have something like a JD from an Ivy.
This is much of Substack alt-center/centrism these days. Big claim in title for virality, walks back claim in article or gives unrelated or unsupported evidence to back up claim.
I put it down to a number of factors: -The replication crisis -Divergence of "Social Justice Leftism" (for want of better words) over main stream liberal and conservative ideals at universities. -over production of degree holders, creating a shortage of trades people and graduates who can't get jobs. You have many graduates who prefer to work in unskilled jobs rather than retraining into trades. -Increased expense of university. On average most attending university are better off. But there are a lot of people worse off. -Disappointing returns on research at universities. Commercial and Industry specific labs have a much greater return on investment, but the narrative has been about needing to invest in universities.
I'd like to see less places funded at universities. Less research funded at universities. More funding for research elsewhere. Pre registration of studies become the norm or mandatory (i.e. say before you do the work what you are looking to test in the data you collect). More prestige and funding for trade schools.
One thing is clear (to me, if not to Nate): people don't base their decision to attend Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, or UChicago based on popularity polls of the unwashed masses. And the same goes for the recruiting teams at Google, Goldman, etc.
(2) For those of us who work for a living, brand matters. That's not my choice, it's the real world.
(3) It's not a "waste of money" if it costs much less than going to a state school, which it does for most poor and middle-class people.
(2) Agreed. Which is exactly why these various Ivy League brands need to be concerned about their appearance. Maybe if they didn't cost $100k per year and up, they would not be under such scrutiny.
(3) I reckon if you can qualify for any significant discounted admission at an Ivy League school, you can get a full scholarship and/or awesome financial aid at a number of excellent state schools. So the value isn't in it for poor kids. As for rich kids, well, just because they have the money doesn't mean they want to waste it on a school that is just not worth it. I'm sure these schools' reputations aren't quite bad enough to discourage the rich from going, but let's see how bad they let it get.
amusingly, people still want access and it conveys social benefits and they still are nice clubs
TikTok can spread all sorts of craziness amongst America's youth for years -- but the second politicians find out it's being used to oppose Israel's actions in Gaza, it's banned by congress and the president (which is of course still pending).
Ivy Leagues can spend years promoting very radical ideas and kicking out people left and right for wrongthink -- but the moment they stand up for very permissive free speech (finally) it happens to be on the wrong issue and boom, they're fired.
Student protests for good and bad reasons have been going on forever. But suddenly the media is very concerned with student protests being ill thought out in a way they haven't been before.
If you asked me if Israel still had this much pull in America, I'd have said not they don't. But obviously I was very wrong.
And given we have whistleblowers who say they were providing information to the Chinese government and odd data like below it doesn't seem particularly unreasonable.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GMAVQ5VXsAE1weD?format=jpg&name=...
Can you explain the role the word "just" is playing in your statement, and how you determined it to be true?
And, yes, the act calls for it to be banned unless it's divested. That's still a ban.
They are being strongly encouraged / coerced to operate as a non-Chinese controlled company. If they were controlled by a company in France, India or Brazil, that would be fine.
Failing that, TikTok would be removed from app stores (and U.S. hosting). They are still free to do business in America. And TikTok.com will cleanly resolve. (Unlike e.g. Facebook in China.)
My understanding is that the new law also covers webapps.
If that's true then it is arguably effectively an attempted ban.
They've written the latest bill in a way that they think will allow them to avoid First Amendment objections, but it's functionally equivalent to a ban.
0. https://www.rubio.senate.gov/rubio-gallagher-introduce-bipar...
Consider what you've seen in the media for...well, your whole life. People tend to not collectively form invalid beliefs accidentally.
I used to think this was grandstanding by the right, but the delusional letters sent by the Ivy league groups after Oct 7th have really opened my eyes on this.
Adding to that, Ivy league leaders showed a huge double standard when it comes to antisemitism vs. other forms of racism/discrimination.
If Israel had that much power these things would stop. There's clear misinformation on this subject. Students (even Jewish students) are walking around with Hamas symbols. An organization whose stated purpose is the destruction of a sovereign state. An organization who literally sabotaged the attempt we had to form a Palestinian state. An organization that is still keeping US citizens as hostages including women and children.
If it was any country other than Israel these people would be banned from public life and maybe jailed for supporting terror.
The problem is that Americans such as yourself, are making the mistake of assuming you understand. You don't: https://twitter.com/ABZayed/status/1784565074964664531
These extremists are psychopaths, they are not people who can be reasoned with. Example: recently the son of the Hamas leader was killed in the conflict. He posted a picture of him delivering the news to his wife and they're both smiling in the picture. They're either pretending or are literally happy their son died. The most basic normal thing about people should be the desire to protect our children. It's true for most Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindu etc. It should be universal.
These people don't even abide by that basic rule. They are HAPPY to sacrifice their own children not for freedom (Israel offered a full Palestinian state before) but for a holy war that would engulf the earth. The fact that US students are wearing their colors is astoundingly ignorant and prolongs the war.
Another proof. Hamas was offered a deal that would stop the war. Israel wants its hostages back. They can stop that right away by accepting the deal. But when they see the demonstrations in the US and Europe they won't accept the deal to further damage Israels standing.
Can you substantiate this claim with evidence; e.g. a photo of a student bearing a Hamas (not Palestine) symbol on campus?
https://img.mako.co.il/2024/04/23/hamaslogo2304111_autoOrien...
There's also videos online of parades in Michigan calling anti-American slogans. I'm very much to the left but this doesn't mean that everything on the fox is "fake news".
The letters sent by Ivy leagues right after Oct 7th are probably the most damning. Letters that justified the massacre as "valid resistance" yet they later felt free to condemn Israels campaign to return the kidnapped civilians. A serious double standard.
There's plenty of videos with people chanting "river to the sea" (including a US congresswoman) which is the slogan of the Hamas that calls for the destruction of Israel.
There's stuff like this: https://www.makorrishon.co.il/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/171...
Which justifies October 7th. Again, you can't justify violence and then condemn the result of said violence. Especially not when the Hamas is still holding hostages and refusing compromise.
Right now all pro-Palestinian demonstrations are (intentionally or not) pro Hamas. Hamas hijacked the discussion and polluted it. They are encouraged by these demonstrations and see them as a sign of Israels imminent demise. That's why they're refusing the deals on the table and the war won't end.
These demonstrations will also have a far worse impact. Trump is using this to sow doubt in swing states. He explicitly avoids talking about Israel and might win as a result (e.g. as Nixon won in a landslide during the height of anti-Vietnam war protests). This would be terrible all around. That would mean Ukraine would be at risk. The extremist Israeli government would have no one holding it back. As ineffective as Biden might seem to the casual observer, I can only imagine what Bibi would do without him.
First off, that isn't what the slogan generally means as used by protestors. Or even most Palestinians, for that matter.
Second, there are of course essentially equivalent variants that have been used by Jabotinsky, Likud, and of course Bibi and his crew among others over the years (e.g. "Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty"), as I'm sure you are perfectly aware. Which, aside from being more specific than the protesters' chant, are arguably even more obnoxious than the Hamas variant, given that the current hypernationalist regime in Israel seems intent on making, and -- unless it is stopped -- has the capability to make this deeply disturbing vision a reality (while the various Palestinian armed groups, in regard to the more extreme versions of their slogan, do not).
In short: this is a well-read crowd, and your selectively filtered presentation of current events and well-known regional history simply won't work here.
I don't think they should use the slogan, because it has a very clear history of being explicitly a call for the destruction of Israel. But I don't think we should automatically assume that everyone using that slogan today means it in the same way.
> There's stuff like this
I'm personally interested only in the student encampments. There are many other protests trying to join the momentum, but there are all kinds of extremists with different objectives and the students protesting in encampments would have the discipline and means to put out their consistent message and demand of ending excess civilian deaths and divestiture, and controlling access to others trying to co-opt their protest.
> The letters sent by Ivy leagues right after Oct 7th are probably the most damning.
I would draw a distinction between those letters and the current protests on encampment.
> There's plenty of videos with people chanting "river to the sea"
> organization who literally sabotaged the attempt we had to form a Palestinian state.
They have chanted "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free". I'm not a fan of the slogan either, as it expresses a desire for freedom without a more concrete demand for a particular solution (which may be peaceful or not); a listener who hears it interprets it as the solution that they expect the person saying it to want. The phrase "the phrase from the river to the sea" is not a Hamas thing, and Wikipedia can tell you that people of various persuasions have used it for their cause.
Presumably, they have the same desire as you.
> Right now all pro-Palestinian demonstrations are (intentionally or not) pro Hamas.
I disagree. If you think that Israel is conducting war crimes in Gaza against Palestine civilians in its retaliation against Hamas, as it has been accused of, then the protest is a request for Israel to do it without doing such war crimes. For example, you can condemn acts of genocide by the US government against indigenous peoples during their colonial expansion without also considering that to be showing support for perpetrators of indigenous terrorist violence against the US, even though it might embolden their expressed casus belli.
> They are encouraged by these demonstrations and see them as a sign of Israels imminent demise. That's why they're refusing the deals on the table and the war won't end.
I don't think you can say with any certainty how such protests affect any decision made by Hamas.
If that was the case you would have Israeli flags too. But Israelis who are for a two state solution were barred entry. Also the claims of war-crimes are problematic since the facts are so distorted with lies. A lot of the claims made by sources on the ground prove to be false after scrutiny.
> I don't think you can say with any certainty how such protests affect any decision made by Hamas.
It's a fact that they keep rejecting deals they said they would accept. Also he can: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/message-from-a-gazan-to...
> Hamas was offered a deal that would stop the war. Israel wants its hostages back. They can stop that right away by accepting the deal.
Actually, the sticking point is that Israel refuses to end the war in exchange for a hostage swap. Hamas has been offering a hostage swap since October 2023, but Israel says they'll only accept a short-term truce (of a few weeks), after which they'll continue the war.
> Israel offered a full Palestinian state before
Not really. Israel has always demanded a high degree of control over any possible Palestinian state, such as control over the state's borders, the right to station the IDF inside the Palestinian state, the right to veto any foreign alliances Palestine might enter into, and control over resources such as water and the electromagnetic spectrum. Israel additionally demands that the state be fully demilitarized, and demands important parts of the territory that the Palestinians claim, such as East Jerusalem, settlements in the West Bank and the Jordan River Valley. All this adds up to much less than a real, sovereign state. In fact, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, who is remembered as the guy who pushed for the two-state solution in Israel, himself said that the Palestinians would only get an "entity," not a "state."
And I assume everyone who doesn't agree with you is just misled?
The Israelis use the accusation of antisemitism to try to shut up critics. At the same time, Israel allies itself with the biggest antisemites all around the world. In Europe, Israel has been cozying up with all sorts of antisemitic movements, like Hungarian fascists under Orban, the fascistic AfD party in Germany, and the fascistic Front National (and its successor party). In the US, the congresswoman leading the supposed anti-antisemitism campaign, Elise Stefanik, has herself espoused the Great Replacement Theory, which is a classic antisemitic conspiracy theory. The reason why Israel allies itself with antisemites in the West is that antisemites also tend to hate Muslims, so Israel can find common ground with them on that point. In the US, many of the antisemites Israel allies itself with are Christian fundamentalists, who support Israel because it fits into their apocalyptic end-times beliefs.
But then when actual Jewish Americans go and protest against Israel's killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, the same people who ally themselves with Stefanik and company call those Jewish protesters antisemitic.
> The deal for a Palestinian state was part of Oslo and would have allowed pretty much everything the moderates wanted including a part of Jerusalem
You're just wrong here. The major problem with Oslo was that it did not in any way guarantee the creation of a Palestinian state.
The whole implicit promise of Oslo was that the Palestinians would get a sovereign state, but that wasn't explicitly spelled out anywhere in the text, and the Israelis never committed to it.
The Palestinians made massive concessions when they signed the Oslo Accords. They recognized the state of Israel. They conceded everything beyond the Green Line, which constitutes 78% of Palestine. They only asked for the remaining 22%. But after they made those huge, historic concessions, the Israelis began trying to negotiate over everything that was left. We want this settlement. We want that settlement. We want control over most of East Jerusalem. We want to station troops in the Palestinian state. We want to control the eastern borders with Jordan. And on and on. The reason the Israelis made these demands was simple: they're in the dominant position, and nobody is going to force them to concede anything. The US is the one outside party that could actually pressure the Israelis to accept the Palestinians' reasonable offer of peace based on the 1967 lines, but the US is hopelessly pro-Israel.
> The demand of full demilitarization didn't exist back when the offer is made.
The Israelis have always demanded Palestinian demilitarization, as well as the right of the Israeli military to operate inside the future Palestinian state.
> E.g. pro-Palestinian protests help create a message that the Hamas sees as support to it. That means most Palestinians will fall back into the loop of bad leadership that keeps landing them to a worse positions than they were before.
The major problem is just the opposite. The Israelis have felt for the last 20 years that they can do anything to the Palestinians and ignore the Palestinians' demands for basic rights and a state of their own. The Israelis believe there will be no consequences, because the Palestinians are weak. October 7th was a complete aberration, the first time in 20 years that Israelis have suffered at all because of the occupation. Left to their own devices, the Israelis would just continue to expand settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, would never concede to the creation of a Palestinian state, and might even try to expel the Palestinians at some future date. Without outside pressure, there will never be an end to the conflict, except perhaps for a final expulsion of the Palestinians.
That's a strawman argument unrelated to what I said. It can just as well be applied to you.
> The Israelis use the accusation of antisemitism to try to shut up critics.
That doesn't mean it isn't true. I was very much on the side of "this isn't a big deal" until recent events. People here and elsewhere have convinced me that antisemitism is far more prevalent than I had assumed.
> In Europe, Israel has been cozying up with all sorts of antisemitic movements, like Hungarian fascists under Orban
You're associating the currently terrible government run by a criminal with Israel. I suggest re-reading my response. You're running a flawed "whataboutism" argument trying to find problems with Israel. This is flawed because:
a. I specifically stated that Israel isn't innocent and did a lot of wrong.
b. The current government is exceptionally bad and part of the problem.
You seem to ignore both points and are trying to drag the discussion into a direction that ignores my points.
> The major problem with Oslo was that it did not in any way guarantee the creation of a Palestinian state.
Oslo was a first step with the intention of expansion. As part of those expanded talks Barak placed an offer on the table for a full Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capitol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_David_Summit
Olmert made a second offer 8 years later which was even better https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realignment_plan
I'm not saying these offers were perfect. But they would have been a reasonable start and a way to build trust. This could have lead to a peaceful co-existence and independence.
> The Palestinians made massive concessions when they signed the Oslo Accords. They recognized the state of Israel.
That's a massive concession???
Thanks for giving us the right to exist. Wow. Amazing concession.
> They conceded everything beyond the Green Line, which constitutes 78% of Palestine.
That would have been theirs. The Palestinian history is one of picking bad greedy leaders who refuse to compromise. In the 40's they had a regiment fighting for Hitler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawzi_al-Qawuqji Instead of compromising with the Jews on the formation of Israel (which gave them land continuity and control) they chose to go to war.
Notice that Egypt and Jordan could have given them the land we're discussing now. They didn't. Their leaders kept making those mistakes and losing on wars. The first good move they made was when the PLO understood that violence against Israel just doesn't work. This brought a peace accord and progress. But again, Hamas sabotaged that and Arafat/Abu Mazen didn't have the sway to make a proper peace treaty.
Israel is the one in power. It won all the wars at great cost of lives. Wars it didn't choose. It made the concessions, not the other way around.
> They only asked for the remaining 22%. But after they made those huge, historic concessions, the Israelis began trying to negotiate over everything that was left.
Again a delusional argument that ignores 9M people most of whom were born in this 78% of land. Might as well ask the USA to give back the land to native Americans. The fact that you're starting from this point puts you in a bad place. That's the exact problem of the Hamas, the delusion that the clock can be taken back.
Furthermore, the territories we're discussing include big settlements. Israel offered many things including traded lands which would provide compensation for territories used by settlements. In the past it cleared settlements including all the ones in Gaza. That meant using the army against Israeli citizens to forcefully remove them.
> The US is the one outside party that could actually pressure the Israelis to accept the Palestinians' reasonable offer of peace based on the 1967 lines, but the US is hopelessly pro-Israel.
The US did pressure Israel. Due to that pressure it left Gaza (against its will) and cleared the settlements... Then the people of Gaza voted in Hamas who killed the Fatah and took over. That led us to this situation right here.
It's easy to say "pressure" but that pressure should be used intelligently and not with the purpose of satisfying a synthetic benchmark.
If Palestinians are so downtrodden and persecuted why didn't they take the offers for statehood?
The way I'm seeing this the pressure is only on Israel. Hamas has no pressure points since it's a terror organization that keeps disrupting.
Time past. This is a delusional argument that ignores the situation in the field. Settlements are a terrible
> The Israelis have felt for the last 20 years that they can do anything to the Palestinians and ignore the Palestinians' demands for basic rights and a state of their own.
On that I actually agree with you but you're reading the situation wrong.
In 2020 the Islamic Jihad fired missiles at Israel. Israel retaliated and the Hamas chose to stand aside. In retrospect this was a calculated move to breed complacency within Israel, but back then a lot of us saw it as a sign of change. Maybe Hamas is actually interested in the welfare of its own people... They weren't.
The result of the violence is indeed that Israelis are feeling pain. But as you can clearly see, this doesn't end well for the Palestinians. The country has moved further to the right in ideology because of that. Fewer people believe a two state solution is possible. More people feel persecuted internationally which is helping to move the country even further to the right.
This same impact is happening with the Palestinians who have also moved more towards the Hamas. This is pushing the prospect of a Palestinian state further away and reducing the willingness of Israelis to compromise. Further pressure just makes things worse.
Peace is a hard thing to achieve. Oslo accord started thanks to the PLOs decision to stop the violence. Right now we're getting further away from it.
The protests aren't antisemitic. I believe that Israel's behavior will increase antisemitism around the world, but antisemitism has been conspicuously absent at the protests. American university campuses simply are not antisemitic places.
> You're associating the currently terrible government run by a criminal with Israel.
That criminal has been repeatedly elected, and has been in charge for much of the last 30 years. He's not even the worst guy in the government. He's in a coalition with outright fascists like Smotrich and Ben Gvir. Netanyahu is an accurate reflection of what Israel has become.
> But again, Hamas sabotaged that and Arafat/Abu Mazen didn't have the sway to make a proper peace treaty.
You're leaving out a pretty massive fact: Rabin was assassinated, and the guy who came to power, Netanyahu, was an open opponent of the peace process who did everything in his power to sabotage it. The Camp David summit that everyone always talks about was a last-ditch effort to revive the peace process after years of deliberate sabotage by the Israeli government. But Barak was still unwilling to meet the Palestinians "22% of the way" (not even halfway) and accept a sovereign Palestinian state on the basis of the Green Line.
> Thanks for giving us the right to exist. Wow. Amazing concession.
You're an Israeli? I thought you were American. Maybe I just falsely assumed. In any case, this is a massive concession, because the Palestinians have given up their claim to places like Haifa and Jaffa, which used to be almost 100% Palestinian cities, and which they were unjustly driven out of. So far, no Israeli government has reciprocated and acknowledged a Palestinian "right to exist." There is no firm commitment on record that the Israeli government will ever recognize a Palestinian state.
> Again a delusional argument that ignores 9M people most of whom were born in this 78% of land.
You're ignoring the millions of Palestinian refugees who deeply desire to return to their home towns inside what is now Israel. The Palestinians renounced their claim to that land, which was a deeply painful and unjust move. But they did it, and that should have been the moment when the US turned around and told Israel, "Now you have reciprocate and agree to withdraw to the 1967 lines." The US did not do so, which is why Oslo failed.
> Furthermore, the territories we're discussing include big settlements. Israel offered many things including traded lands
The settlements were built illegally, with the express intention of making a Palestinian state impossible. The Palestinians have agreed to drop their claims to everything beyond the Green Line, and Israel should/must do the same. One of the major failings of Oslo is that it did not freeze settlement construction, and the Israelis massively accelerated settlement construction during the "peace process." That alone is such a massive sign of bad faith that the Palestinians should have pulled out of the negotiations, and the US should have forced Israel to stop. You can't negotiate over how to divide a pizza while one side eats more and more of it.
> If Palestinians are so downtrodden and persecuted why didn't they take the offers for statehood?
Because there haven't been any offers that would lead to a sovereign Palestinian state, as I explained earlier. The most that has ever been offered is a Palestinian "entity" that gets to manage some of its own internal matters, but which is still firmly under Israeli military control.
> This is pushing the prospect of a Palestinian state further away
On October 6th, there was no prospect of a Palestinian state.
> Oslo accord started thanks to the PLOs decision to stop the violence.
And then it didn't lead to a Palestinian state. The Israelis have succeeded in convincing the Palestinians that a peaceful approach brings nothing. A violent approach also brings nothing. Nothing brings anything. The fundamental problem is that the Palestinians have no power to resist, and Israel feels no pressure to concede anything. Until the US gets tough on Israel, this will not change. That's why the demonstrations in the US are so important.
The genius here is the extent to which they've managed to so closely link together:
- The IDF
- The Israeli government
- The country of Israel
- The residents of Israel
- The Jewish ethnicity
- Judaism itself
Criticism of one (in a vacuum) has become criticism of all, and therefore antisemitic. So, everything related to any of those topics has become the third rail--you can't touch any of it.
In my experience, it's actually supporters of Israel who are adamant about equating the two, because it allows them to accuse anyone who criticizes Israel or its actions of being antisemitic. I think that's a terrible thing for Jews outside of Israel, and will lead to increased antisemitism, because Israel's actions are quite rightly leading to outrage practically everywhere.
Absolutely not true of the movement as a whole, by my lengthy and up-close observation. And by what my Jewish friends tell me on the subject.
The distortion you are promoting here (especially in regard to items 5 and 6) is plainly unrealistic, and definitely not helpful to the current discussion.
My apologies, please ignore.
Again. I didn't say they were inherently. But they are attended by antisemitic people and there's a lot of rhetoric flagged there that denies the right of Israel to exist. They fuel antisemitism. Even if you think you and your friends have nuance and the ability to differentiate, the fact is it's a mob that gets inflamed with often ignorant anti-Israel rhetoric (even if you personally are not ignorant it's a mob).
> American university campuses simply are not antisemitic places.
Explain the Ivy league letter. Justifying the murder of Jews?
Explain the presidents of the Universities who are so careful about protecting every other race/gender... Suddenly silent on antisemitism. I'm even seeing it here, I have an opinion which you might disagree with. But I think it's valid and reasoned.
Yet when I was a bit upset because a person here indicated that my country has no right to exist and we should all die... Well, it annoyed me. So dang limited my account. If I would have defended the cause of any other minority or the rights of any other minority to exist in its country, I doubt I would have gotten the same treatment.
The number of people I've talked to in the past year who think Israel shouldn't exist is concerning. The people who repeat racist tropes about Jews is also very concerning.
> That criminal has been repeatedly elected, and has been in charge for much of the last 30 years.
Also repeatedly cast out. He's a snake. To be fair he used to claim to be for a Palestinian state (liar obviously) and voted for leaving Gaza back in the day. The only reason Ben Gvir/Smotrits are in the government is due to Bibi.
The only reason Bibi came to power is due to Hamas. During the Oslo years the peace was working wonderfully. Until busses started blowing up all over Tel Aviv killing many people. Some of them right below my old home in Disengof. That was the Hamas sabotaging the peace by blowing up civilians in suicide bombings.
That helped Bibi get elected on the basis of "safety". Every time he and the Hamas used each other to promote themselves.
> "22% of the way" (not even halfway)
Stop with that nonsense. My fathers family no longer have their ancestral home in Morocco. My Spouses father probably won't be welcomed by the Houthis back in Yemen. I can go back to my mothers family who ran from Russia all the way through Europe losing home after home and most of their family.
Sh*t happened. It isn't our fault and it isn't theirs. We can't go back and neither can they. Keeping this sort of nonsensical rhetoric is redundant.
> Palestinians have given up their claim to places like Haifa and Jaffa
The vast majority of the Palestinians who still live there and are Israeli citizens sure as hell don't want to be ruled by the Palestinian authority. You'd be shocked to know how many of them vote for the Likud party.
> So far, no Israeli government has reciprocated and acknowledged a Palestinian "right to exist."
They exist and Israel tried to do that. The difference is that if the Hamas had the option it would kill all of us. Everyone. They already promised to repeat Oct 7 at least 3 more times.
> You're ignoring the millions of Palestinian refugees who deeply desire to return to their home towns inside what is now Israel.
Most of these lands are long gone. We had 70 years of wars. No way of reaching people who fled to countries that were at war. OTOH the people who stayed kept all their rights and properties. That's probably better than the alternative situation if the other side would have won.
That's how wars work. Every single country was founded that way. If we need to go through the list of the places every single Jewish family lost through history the list would be ridiculous. I'm sorry for them, but there are problems we can't solve.
But blaming it on Israel is low. WTF was Israel supposed to do?
Hold onto land for 70+ years?
Get an enemy state to open the borders to send people, who might be enemies too, back?
Why don't you give back Manhattan to the native Americans while you're at it... Why not clear Northern Ireland of protestants and give it back to Ireland. There's a huge double standard that people only apply to Israel and no other country...
Why didn't the Ottomans (Turks) give the Palestinians a state? Why didn't the Egyptians or the Jordanians?
They all held these lands.
> The settlements were built illegally, with the express intention of making a Palestinian state impossible.
Some of them were built illegally. Immorally I would agree but a lot of them had legal standing. Flawed legal standing... But legal.
> The Palestinians have agreed to drop their claims to everything beyond the Green Line, and Israel should/must do the same.
That's not how reality works. We might not like the settlements but they are there and some of them are massive. Israel can't clear 900,000 people. It won't. Just building alternative hosing for everyone isn't technically viable. Again, the longer the Palestinians wait with a deal the more they will lose.
History is repeating itself again. Palestinians think they get a raw deal. Choose extremist leader. Fight Israel. Lose. Get even less the next time around.
The reality is that the offers that Barak and Olmert made will probably never happen again. I'm still optimistic to think that a Palestinian state will happen in my lifetime. But I doubt east Jerusalem will be a part of it.
The best thing we can do for a Palestinian state is to help them face that reality.
> Because there haven't been any offers that would lead to a sovereign Palestinian state, as I explained earlier. The most that has ever been offered is a Palestinian "entity" that gets to manage some of its own internal matters, but which is still firmly under Israeli military control.
There are demilitarized states that are doing just great. Hamas is pretty much proving Israels point of the need for that. Imagine living in NewYork while the guys from New Jersey keep firing rockets at your home and occasionally raiding/kidnapping/raping/murdering... Should they have an army too?
The problem is that Hamas constantly tries to escalate the violence to move to the "next level". As far as they are concerned this operation is a huge success. The number of deaths on "their side" is meaningless to them. Imagine them with an army. The results would be catastrophic all around.
> On October 6th, there was no prospect of a Palestinian state.
I would argue that it was quietly moving, but to some degree I agree.
But the fault here was due in large part to Hamas and their never ending rocket campaign against Israel. Hamas is behind the rise of the right wing in Israel and their staying power.
> > Oslo accord started thanks to the PLOs decision to stop the violence. > > And then it didn't lead to a Palestinian state.
Partially because of Hamas and Partially because Palestinian leaders refuse to compromise. See above.
> The Israelis have succeeded in convincing the Palestinians that a peaceful approach brings nothing. A violent approach also brings nothing. Nothing brings anything.
Nope. They needed to compromise, they had an option. Just like the Irish compromised on Northern Ireland and it worked out well for them in the long run. You're framing this as if Israel needs to give everything, which is also ridiculous.
Hamas wants the entire country, nothing less. This has nothing to do with Israels willingness to compromise.
> Until the US gets tough on Israel, this will not change.
Do you know the US and UK wanted to bomb Israel?
Do you know Israel survived just fine without their support. The reason for their support is that Israel is a good proxy state.
E.g. why are we in the current war?
The US didn't like the Iranian democracy so they installed a dictator which triggered the Islamic revolution. This cascaded to the current conflict which is fulled in a large part from Iran.
> That's why the demonstrations in the US are so important.
No. They will backfire and make matters worse for you and us.
These demonstrations will probably help Trump rise back to power which is terrible for all of us.
But let's say that your most blue sky wishes take place and everything you wish for happens. Biden suddenly threatens to bomb Tel Aviv if Israel doesn't immediately move to the 67 line and Israel complies instantly. Or maybe a more realistic situation with a long term plan and agreement with the moderate PLO leadership.
What would happen then?
As it is now, Hamas isn't defeated. On the contrary. It's stronger. Once they have a state they will attack Israel again. They already announced it. But this time Israel will be ready and it will be a bloodbath. We will end up in a worse place than we were to begin with.
Political pressure is important. I'm thankful to Biden for putting pressure on Bibi and I hope he'll pressure him more. But this is a very delicate balance. E.g. at the moment the ceasefire offer is delayed by Hamas, not by Israel.
But don't take this from me, take this from him: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/message-from-a-gazan-to...
Tell me how many ethnic Palestinians with Israeli citizenship that identify as such live in Jaffa and Haifa and vote for the Likud party (or other hard Zionist parties). This is HN and we like to share nerdy data like that.
I don’t speak Hebrew nor am I familiar with the Israeli media landscape, so it is hard for me to find the data, but I did some internet searching. There are around 1.4 million people that live in the Tel Aviv urban area, of which 4% are Muslims or Arab Christians. This puts an upper bound of around 50000 Palestinians living in Jaffa. Another Wikipedia article has 16000 Arabs (excluding Arab Jews) living in historic Jaffa.
Regarding polling numbers, I found one article from 2022[1] which stated some 18% of Arab Israelis preferred Netanyahu over other candidates to serve as Prime minister. I really wished to find direct polling of “who would/did you vote for” but couldn’t.
With all that said, it is a known tactic of colonizers to assimilate the colonized population. The I very much doubt that many of the Arab Muslim or Arab Christian population in Israel still identifies as Palestinian. Decades of assimilation does that.
1: https://www.timesofisrael.com/surveys-predict-bump-in-arab-v...
This article shows the number of votes in Nazareth to the Likud: https://www.zman.co.il/352027/popup/
In 2021 they got 4%. Notice that this is despite Bibi using slogans like "Bibi is good for the Jews" or using rhetoric to his base of "Arabs are rushing to vote". So it's amazing he got this much.
Here you can see wider official distribution from a government source: https://www.idi.org.il/articles/46754
You will see that the center right party got most of the votes. All of them are Zionist parties. Also notice that all Arab parties (which get most of the votes) are pro-Israel. They believe in a two state solution but aren't anti-Zionist.
The previous government also included an Arab party as part of the coalition government which was pretty fantastic. Unfortunately, the coalition collapsed due to dirty politics as it was hanging by a thread.
The Arab population in Jaffa is roughly 33%. A lot of that is due to the growth of the city.
> With all that said, it is a known tactic of colonizers to assimilate the colonized population. The I very much doubt that many of the Arab Muslim or Arab Christian population in Israel still identifies as Palestinian. Decades of assimilation does that.
Many don't identify as Palestinian I don't know how many though. Notice that Israel has many Muslim minorities that are decidedly not Palestinian e.g. the Druze and Bedouin populations both of which typically serve in the army as well (quite a few were murdered and even kidnapped in Oct 7th).
I very much like Yosef Hadad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoseph_Haddad
He's an Arab Israeli who served in the Israeli Army. He tries to bring Jews and Arabs together as a shared destiny which is fantastic. He came to speak at Colombia but was physically attacked.
I’m a bit confused here. I was under the impression that Jaffa was annexed into Tel Aviv in 1949. Jaffa today is only a neighborhood, a district, or a part of a larger city. According Wikipedia[1] the Arab population of that portion of Tel Aviv called Jaffa is 33%, which is still only 16000 people. Before the Nakba the population was around 95 000 (of which 15 000 Jews). Only 3800 Arabs remained during the Nakba. So in historic terms, Jaffa hasn’t recovered to previous population numbers.
Aside, the annexations of Jaffa into Tel Aviv, is colonialism 101. The eradication of the place names and administration boundaries is straight from the playbook of the colonization of Ireland by the British.
When you say stuff like: “The vast majority of the Palestinians who still live there and are Israeli citizens sure as hell don't want to be ruled by the Palestinian authority.” I thing is very disingenuous given the history of the place. The thing is, they don’t still live there, they were overwhelmingly displaced, and those that remained were assimilated into the culture of the colonizer. To the extent they mostly identify as Arab Israelis (not Palestinian as you call them; it is of course up to them if they want to identify as Palestinians though, and I bet some do). By the same logic you could claim that Dublin has no claims on Belfast because Belfast has some Catholics that vote for the DUP.
Aside 2, the way the British finally achieved peace in Northern Ireland was by actually recognizing the fact that Dublin does have claims to Belfast and it is up to the citizens of Belfast to decide if they ever want to reunite with the Republic of Ireland. Just compare that to how Israel is responding to a crisis of similar nature.
Thanks for the numbers btw. I appreciate it.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa#Demography
EDIT: If we crunch the numbers of the 2022 elections (very interesting link btw.) we get 14% of all Arab voters that voted for Zionist parties. Only 53% of Arabs voted in that election, and that number includes Druze and Bedouin. This comes down to a grand total of 36230 votes, 13000 of those are for Yesh Atid and Labour which are a liberal/reformist versions of Zionism (kind of like the Alliance party in Northern Ireland). I also wonder about the methodology here as the tally is broken down by Arab neighborhoods, so if a Jew is living in an Arab neighborhood, they are counted, and if an Arab is living in a majority Jewish neighborhood, they are not (I also wonder how East Jerusalem is counted here here).
I wanted to see how this compares to Unionist support among Northern Irish Catholics, but I was just as bad as finding numbers of that as in Israel (turns out speaking the language is not enough). The best numbers I found was from a 2014[2] poll which got hardline Unionist parties 1% of Catholic votes, and nonsectarian got 6%.
I don’t think this is enough to compare, given the different methodology, difference in participation, etc.
But what I get from this is this is that it is not that easy to claim that “Palestinians” that still live in Jaffa vote Likud in shocking numbers.
2: https://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2014/Political_Attitudes/POLPART2...
I understand arguments about colonization vis a vis Gaza and (especially) the West Bank, whose occupations represent the threat of an in-progress appropriation and "colonization", if we're going to use that word. I don't understand what discussion about the "colonization" of Jaffa gets you. Jaffa is to Tel Aviv what Saint Paul is Minneapolis. It's not going anywhere. What's to advocate for? You would literally be on firmer footing advocating for the return of San Antonio to Mexico.
Talking about the colonization of Jaffa was in response to the peace deal, where DiogenesKynikos said:
> This is a massive concession, because the Palestinians have given up their claim to places like Haifa and Jaffa, which used to be almost 100% Palestinian cities, and which they were unjustly driven out of. So far, no Israeli government has reciprocated and acknowledged a Palestinian "right to exist."
Jaffa was colonized in 1948 by displacing almost all of their residents, most are still to this day refugees in Gaza or Lebanon, two-three generations later. Jaffa still exists as a placename, but the city does not, it has been completely annexed into Tel Aviv, which used to be a suburb of Jewish settlers (according to the Wikipedia article I just read). I don’t see a comparison with Saint Paul (which is still an independent city) or San Antonio.
The concession of relinquishing claims to Jaffa is nothing short of the concessions which the Irish nationalists did when they relinquished claims to Belfast. In return Ireland actually got statehood and eventual independence. Years later Catholics living in Belfast got equal rights, political representation and a political avenue for decolonization.
If the British would have behaved like Israel, they would have driven almost every Catholic out of what would become Northern Ireland before 1921 (they had already renamed all their placenames centuries prior) made sure those that remained had no affiliations with Catholics in the Free state, denied them the right to return, moved British Protestants into the vacant areas (they had also done that centuries prior), and never actually given the Irish free state political recognition. Even after the nationalists gave up any claims to Belfast.
(I don't think you need more leverage for that argument; I think it's self-evident. But ok!)
Despite making up 20% of the Israeli population, 2021 was the first time an independent Arab party was part of an Israeli government. This was a huge deal at the time and the "Israeli Arab" vote was very actively pursued (and the Israeli right wing used all sorts of horrible tactics to try to suppress it).
> Asked by the IDI which issue should be at “the heart of the election campaign,” 54% said violence in Arab society, 16% said housing, 11% said the status of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem, and only 5% said the Palestinian issue.
What I take from this is that Israeli-Arabs care a lot more about their own community as Israeli-Arabs than the prospects of their neighbors in Palestine having a free Palestinian state.
1: https://www.timesofisrael.com/surveys-predict-bump-in-arab-v...
In some sense the fact that so many don't vote is a kind of solidarity with other Palestinians, though I think a misguided one.
A deeply broken analogy.
Jaffa, unlike Tel Aviv, was 70 percent Arab in 1945 and was considered the cultural and economic capital of Palestine. It was attacked in a major offensive by the Irgun in April, and later by the Haganah in May of 1948 (before the Declaration of Independence and the "defensive war" that followed it).
I'm sure you know all about the Irgun; here's a description of their tactics from an Israeli historian:
In one attack, on 13 December, a barrel packed with explosives was dropped from a vehicle next to the entrance to the Alhambra (al-Hamra) Cinema, adjacent to the Jaffa City Hall on King George Boulevard. The barrel rolled down the street and came to a stop outside Cafe´ Venezia. Some of the clients noticed it and rushed to take shelter in the kitchen or fled out the back door. The ensuing explosion killed six clients and passersby, among them a ten-year-old boy, the others aged 16 –24. The building and the nearby cinema were badly damaged. On the same day, the IZL blew up houses in the villages of Yahudiyya-‘Abbasiyya and Yazur, killing seven Arabs. On 30 December, the IZL launched another attack on Jaffa’s rear. This time the squads landed from the sea and tried to attack Arab cafe´s in the port area, but local fighters stationed nearby drove them off, apparently without losses on the Arab side. The next day, IZL men, dressed as Arabs, again entered Jaffa and threw a bomb into an Arab cafe´.
Around 100,000 people were forced to flee (from the city proper and surrounding towns) - some 10-20k of which were literally pushed into the sea. Of course, very few were allowed to return. 90 percent of the smaller towns were completely depopulated. The 4000 Arab residents who remained were forced to live in a small corner of the city in dilapidated housing, and under martial law. From a recent New Yorker piece:
“Ajami is about to be closed off with a barbed-wire fence that will rigorously separate the Arab neighborhood and the Jewish section,” an Israeli official wrote in 1949. “That arrangement will immediately render Ajami a sealed-off ghetto. It is hard to accept this idea, which stirs in us associations of excessive horror.”
After the "defensive war" Arab houses were looted and given to migrants from Europe. Streets and public places were renamed. Arab Jaffa was effectively wiped off the map.
What's to advocate for?
A reasonable understanding (and non-erasure of) extremely basic and uncontested regional history.
To wit: you can recall the civilian deaths and mass displacement of Palestinian Arabs in or around Jaffa and Israel in general, and I can recall the Aden Pogroms and the Farhud (and point out that the time period you're calling out was just three years --- a single Macbook generation --- from the Holocaust itself). And that rather than a "tit for tat" exercise, these facts establish an exchange of displaced populations, such as has not occurred in U.S. cities, which are not by and large peopled by the victims of Mexican and Indigenous American-led assaults elsewhere.
The point, which we arrived at downthread before you picked this scab, is that there is nothing to be done with this information. The displacement of indigenous Americans was both criminal and vital to the establishment of American cities, but we don't seriously discuss the return or "decolonization" of those cities, for obvious reasons. And my point is: the issue is no less obvious with Jaffa, which is very firmly the sovereign territory of the most powerful (and nuclear-armed) state in the Middle East.
'runarberg clarifies that they brought Jaffa up as moral leverage for demands that Israel recognize Palestinian statehood. That makes sense to me, and I push back only to the extent that I don't think additional moral leverage of this kind is needed to make that argument.
As for your argument, I'm at a loss for where you're hoping to go with it. Is the point that Israel is bad? If so: practically every state is bad, yes.
(I didn't flag your post; in fact, I wrote this response to it --- the flagged version --- and was irritated when, on hitting the "Submit" button, I had to scramble with the back button to save it. I don't think commenting on the flag button is a particularly good idea. Reposting flagged comments is normally considered abusive here. Commenters are specifically asked not to provide "explanations" for flags.)
The moral argument here is that Hamas is not even asking for that, instead only asking for the right of return of the displaced Palestinian families and their descendants, and a recognition of a Palestinian state which doesn’t include Jaffa. This is a much lesser ask than what the IRA was asking regarding Belfast, all the way up to the Good Friday agreement. The IRA actually went so far as fight a civil war against other nationalist factions over Belfast.
So the moral argument here is, in short, that one of the worst colonial empire in history (the British) were actually far more reasonable then modern day Israel.
I believe Palestinians must have self-determination in a sovereign state, and that that state should include the whole of Gaza and the West Bank, including the rolling back of Israeli settlements in the West Bank to the '67 borders.
Do we need to go past that to keep talking? If Hamas is still in the conversation after this reply, what we're going to be litigating is my argument that it is the obligation of the entire world to destroy Hamas by all available military means short of the invasion or at-scale air assault of Gaza. If that's a conversation you want to have, we can have it, but my hope would be we don't have to --- that the actual thing we're talking about here doesn't depend on us settling the Hamas issue.
My main point here (and the point which sparked this discussion a dozen posts upthread) is that there does not exist a political avenue for Palestinian self-determination, and the main actor preventing that is Israel, not any of the number of organization—some bigger and more successful then others—which engages in armed resistance. Israel has shown time and time again, that no matter how many people or states want Palestine to have self-determination, it is simply not going to happen without armed resistance.
I bet people also said the same of the IRA, a terrorist organization which targeted civilians, that it simply wasn’t a viable actor in the region. However, without the IRA, or other groups engaging in Armed resistance, there would not have been an Easter Uprising, and Ireland would not have been free. The way the British got rid of the IRA was with a ceasefire negotiations which gave the Irish nationalists political rights. Treating the IRA as a non-viable actor would have prolonged the troubles and resulted continuing violence for many years more.
Also, you seemed perplexed at where the term "colonization" fits in. Well, the post-1948 situation in Jaffa (and certain other places I'm sure you know all about as well) arguably fits the dictionary definition of the term by any objective measure (give or take some fine-grained nuances we really don't need to litigate).
Before you picked this scab,
I'd go on perhaps, but with that statement I can't say I appreciate your tone. Be civil to me and I'll be civil with you, if you wish.
That's not what I'm doing or even suggesting. You'll have to pick that scab with someone else.
If, in the future, you read something I wrote, think I'm broadly right but importantly wrong about some details, you can write something like "I think I broadly agree with you, but you have some of these details very wrong", rather than "You are aware of this history, right?" Or you can not, but roll with it when I infer that you disagree with me completely.
To my eyes it does read as a misattribution on your part (especially given that my commentary was explicitly timeboxxed, and unlike the other commenter's posts on the matter, didn't make reference to the current situation at all). I wasn't so much taken aback, as simply declining your invitation to pursue the matter further.
"You are aware of this history, right?"
Even though I've been somewhat puzzled by some of the things you've been saying (given that they just don't seem historically grounded) -- I acknowledge that the above statement of mine was lame and inappropriate.
So I do apologize (and I did proactively remove it before I saw your response to that post).
If you think I'm flat-out wrong about something, obviously you should say so. But I think most of what you're seeing is me limiting the surface area of what I'm discussing on HN, because I think it is basically unreasonable to expect to resolve Israel/Palestine on a forum like HN. I get involved in these things when pro-Israel people claim that Gazans are equivalent to Hamas, and I get involved when pro-Palestine people claim that Israelis are all European. I'll pop up when people try to valorize the Houthis, and, if it comes up in a thread I'm already involved in, I'll probably go ham on post-2017 Hamas.
Otherwise: my views on Israel are complicated. Internet forums are rife with fundamental attribution errors, which makes those complications hard to perceive. I've already done that to you once already!
Hey, thanks. As to views of the regional situation, I'm in the "actually, it's not that complicated" camp. But on the whole, I think we're good for now.
A lot of Arabs fled during the independence war. There were atrocities done on both sides during that war which was especially tragic.
> Aside, the annexations of Jaffa into Tel Aviv, is colonialism 101. The eradication of the place names and administration boundaries is straight from the playbook of the colonization of Ireland by the British.
That is pure nonsense. Tel Aviv is a new city that evolved and grew. It wasn't built on top of anything. Jaffa is ancient and as such has very limited growth potential. The names in Jaffa are the same as ever as are the mosques and everything there. New construction sometimes gets new names, that's it.
> The thing is, they don’t still live there, they were overwhelmingly displaced
That's a strawman argument. I specifically said "still live there". You're trying to bring people who never saw Jaffa into this argument. It's ridiculous redundant and pointless. Should I refer to our ancestors from 2,000 years ago and their connection to Jaffa and Jerusalem?
> By the same logic you could claim that Dublin has no claims on Belfast because Belfast has some Catholics that vote for the DUP.
Let's talk about the Irish. The Irish were able to finally get a country when they accepted reality and compromised with the British. Yes, it sucked. Yes, the British did some pretty nasty things. But they compromised and negotiated.
Do the Irish want to take back Belfast by force? Are they opening a war on England in an attempt to do so?
That's the right analogy.
> 13000 of those are for Yesh Atid and Labour which are a liberal/reformist versions of Zionism
They are mostly centrist, I vote left of both. Notice that even the Arab parties in the election recognize Israel and its borders as they are legally defined. Based on our definition of Zionism, they are all Zionists.
Zionism means the desire of Jews to return to Zion. That's it. People often pull words they don't understand and associate false meaning with them trying to pollute the discussion. That is one such victim of the discussion.
> But what I get from this is this is that it is not that easy to claim that “Palestinians” that still live in Jaffa vote Likud in shocking numbers.
To me this is a shocking number, especially with how bad the Likud is in terms of policies towards minorities. Historically they were far more popular with the arab/Palestinian population as their message was more about helping the downtrodden population. Bibi slowly burned down their support, especially since coupling with Ben Gvir.
However, I want to keep talking about the Irish. To claim they got their independence via compromising is very simplistic. They were only able to compromise after 2½ years of violent resistance following the Easter Uprising, and even after the Anglo-Irish treaty in 1922 they still suffered almost a year of civil war as a consequence of that compromise. If not for the Easter Uprising, there would not have been an Anglo-Irish treaty, and the British would have gotten all they wanted. Ireland would probably have to wait until the decolonization period of the 1960s or the 1990s for any sort of political avenue for their statehood prospects.
I’m pretty sure there were people during the onset of the 1920s claiming that the IRA was “sabotaging” any peace treaty, especially since (unlike Hamas) they actually didn’t want to cede Belfast. And unlike Israel, the British negotiated despite the IRA not wanting to compromise. The IRA fought other nationalists in a civil war over this (and so did Hamas,,, kinda).
The split between the two sides is also a good analogy. The Irish here are a bit in the middle between Israelis and Palestinians. I think this is one of the main reasons Palestinians keep loosing and Israel keeps winning.
During the resistance years to the British occupation of Israel/Palestine, both Palestinian and Jews had groups. Palestinians remained divided to familial groups which is a division that holds to this day. They are rivals and never truly unified under compromise of a single ruler.
OTOH the more extreme Jews were led by Begin, they conducted terror attacks (which are moderate by today's standard) but still extreme. This led to several attacks from the moderate side led by Ben Gurion. This included turning in the extremists to the British (effectively betraying their own people) and even shooting at one of their ships.
Here Begin showed his greatness. He surrendered. He understood that if he continues there will be a civil war. The country unified around Ben Gurion and Begin was cast into opposition for 30 years. This willingness to sacrifice his ideology in favor of unity and compromise is one of the most important reasons Israel is unified to this day. Palestinians don't have figures like that. Never have.
Arafat was fantastically rich. Abu Mahazen is famously corrupt. The leaders of Hamas are living off in Qatar in a lavish style with millions they stole from their own people (they used to charge a heavy fee to smuggle through their tunnels).
The problem is that the structure of Palestinian society makes it very difficult to anyone who isn't corrupt to rise to the top and hold power. The right wing in Israel usually say's that there's no partner for peace. I think that's a terrible excuse but they do have a point.
> since (unlike Hamas) they actually didn’t want to cede Belfast
Hamas won't cede any part of Israel so the IRA seems far more moderate. I'd say the analogy would be like the IRA demanding the entire UK.
> Explain the Ivy league letter. Justifying the murder of Jews?
I haven't seen anyone in the Ivy League doing that. Antisemitism is extremely rare at Ivy League schools nowadays, and if you go to those campuses, you'll see that a large (probably disproportionate) fraction of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators are Jewish. Young Jewish Americans skew very differently from older Jewish Americans on this issue. That is doubly true for young left-wing Jewish Americans, and university students are more left-wing than the general population.
Why is it an Arab land?
According to the Quran/Bible etc. it is very much the ancestral land of the Jews.
But I agree this is a pointless discussion. Decisions were made, wars were fought. Complaining over what happened in 1947 is as bad as Jews complaining about what happened 2000 years ago. It's history.
> that doesn't make what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians any better.
I didn't say that what Israelis did to the Palestinians was good or justified. On the contrary. I agree the settlements are horrible and a lot of the stuff Israelis did was pretty terrible. But not one sided. The victim role by both sides is stupid and redundant. Both have weaponized it instead of compromising.
Unfortunately, the protests seem to look at the act of pressuring as one sided: Israel should be pressured. This is especially galling when Hamas is holding 130 civilians (including women and children) hostage. This hurts the Palestinian civilians most of all and prolongs the conflict.
> > Explain the Ivy league letter. Justifying the murder of Jews? > > I haven't seen anyone in the Ivy League doing that.
That means you haven't looked. The letters signed by many organizations justify murder of Jews and have a twisted recap of history. They redefine Hamas as a resistance movement rather than as a murderous terrorist organization.
Imagine students writing literally the day after 9/11, claiming that the US is at fault for the attack and that it was justified resistance.
> a large (probably disproportionate) fraction of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators are Jewish.
Sure. But also look at Israelis who want to enter the universities and can't. These are not right-wing lunatics who are pro war etc. We're talking people who are 100% for a two state solution. Barred from entry.
Young people in general skew badly on this issue because they don't remember the history. I lived through the bombings in Tel Aviv. I remember the charred busses from Hamas's terrorism. I also remember the earlier Oslo years and the optimism as a Casino opened in Jericho and Israelis flocked to it as part of an optimistic shared future.
Young people haven't seen evil. They think people can be reasoned with. They think everyone is what they say they are and that western mentality is universal. Older people understand that this isn't the case. People who smile over the death of their son or strap on a suicide vest are not the same. They are no freedom fighters.
Because the population was nearly 100% Arab.
> But also look at Israelis who want to enter the universities and can't. ... Barred from entry.
Israelis are not barred from entry. I know of only one individual Israeli who has been barred from entering the Columbia main campus, and that's because he has more than 50 harassment claims against him, and because he tried to lead a counterprotest directly into a protest. The administration told him to hold the counterprotest at a nearby location, so as not to create a direct physical confrontation.
When?
Jews started coming back to Israel in the 19th century. That land was occupied by empires since the Jews were outcasts. Everyone who came there was a vagrant following the Ottoman empire. That doesn't make their land "theirs" anymore than it is ours.
> Israelis are not barred from entry. I know of only one individual Israeli who has been barred from entering the Columbia main campus, and that's because he has more than 50 harassment claims against him, and because he tried to lead a counterprotest directly into a protest. The administration told him to hold the counterprotest at a nearby location, so as not to create a direct physical confrontation.
E.g. Shai Davidai. He's a professor and was followed by quite a few people so they were all barred from entering. He specifically supports a two state solution, so what would he have to counter protest?
Then there's all the Israeli students who were physically attacked? Including most ironically Yosef Hadad who's a Palestinian Israeli and was physically assaulted at Colombia.
For many hundreds of years, until the British Empire took over and began supporting Zionist colonization of Palestine. The British denied the native population, which was almost 100% Arab, the right to determine what would happen with the land they lived on. Instead, Britain promised Palestine to an outside group.
> E.g. Shai Davidai.
He's the only person who's been banned from campus, for the reasons I stated before: he has been harassing and doxxing students, and he tried to lead a counter-protest directly into the protest. Saying that Jewish students in general are banned from campus because one specific harasser has been banned is not accurate.
> Then there's all the Israeli students who were physically attacked?
"All the Israeli students"? There haven't been any physical attacks on Israeli students at Columbia. Yosef Hadad isn't a student. He's a professional pro-Israel campaigner who went to campus, started yelling in the faces of protesters, and then got shoved by one of them.
On the other hand, there have been plenty of assaults on pro-Palestinian students. A group of former IDF members on campus sprayed a bunch of pro-Palestinian protesters with a noxious chemical, sending them to the hospital. The university administration didn't care.
None of this is to say that Israel's treatment of Gaza is defensible; rather, just to point out that you don't have to pick at the history of the region to make your case, especially because doing so isn't going to help you make that case.
British colonial administrators themselves quickly came to realize the insanity of what they were doing. The Balfour Declaration was basically a declaration of war against the population they were ruling over in Palestine, a population whose interests they were nominally supposed to rule in. Lord Curzon, who was the only British cabinet minister with expertise in the Middle East, warned about this before the Balfour Declaration was issued.
> Israeli Jewish people, who are themselves plurality MENA people (contrary to the popular narrative that they're all displaced Europeans)
Israel was founded pretty much solely by European Jews. Arab Jews emigrated to Israel years after it was founded, because the expulsion of the Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict unleashed a wave of antisemitism across the Arab world.
Oldest Palestinian dynasties are from around 18th century. Notice that calling them Palestinian is a stretch since they rarely had a unified identity as a people.
Jews started coming back to Israel en-mass in the 19th century, well before the British arrived. They bought land and at its peek owned a significant amount of land privately.
> which was almost 100% Arab
This is very false. If it was true Israel would have lost its independence war in which not only the Palestinians but also the surrounding countries attacked. Furthermore, notice that those Arab countries didn't give the Palestinians a country despite holding the west bank and Gaza. Neither did the Muslim Ottoman empire.
> > E.g. Shai Davidai. > > He's the only person who's been banned from campus
Many were locked out. Many spoke of fear to come to classes. Half the people in the encampment in NY weren't even students there. Professional agitators from outside the campus were guiding the students on maximizing their impact.
E.g. https://nypost.com/2024/05/01/us-news/professional-protester...
Here's a professor talking about violence and intimidation towards Jews on campus: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/2988097/...
There are quite a lot of these testimonials but they don't appear as prominently in the US media as they do on Israeli media where people feel more comfortable to speak out. There's claims that "Students for Justice for Palestine" are really cover organizations for terrorists just like BDS. There's a lawsuit of Oct 7th victims aimed to unmask them.
> Yosef Hadad isn't a student. He's a professional pro-Israel campaigner who went to campus, started yelling in the faces of protesters, and then got shoved by one of them.
So that's OK? He's a Muslim who came to help break people out of their distorted reactionary mold and got attacked.
> On the other hand, there have been plenty of assaults on pro-Palestinian students.
See how that starts?
See why these things are useless. Everyone plays the victim here. Palestinians have been playing the victim for a century. It made some sense in the past. But hasn't made any sense since the 90's. Right now they need to grow up and settle. Hamas is keeping a redundant conflict going because it refuses to accept the right of Israel to exist. It's delusional and you're part of the reason it keeps going.
Who?
You've yet to provide examples of people barred from the campus for reasons other than specific, well-documented charges against them (in the case of Davidai, of stalking and harassing other students. And then he wasn't even barred from the campus per so, but simply from the West Lawn).
None of them are Davidai and all of them look very dangerous (sarcasm). I've read what Davidai wrote and the claims that he's harassing seem ridiculous. He's trying to fight harassment from people who literally support terrorism and are hurting both sides of the conflict.
NYU president Linda Mills said she received threats and even bomb threats: https://nyunews.com/news/2024/05/03/mills-email-paulson-cent...
But US press doesn't write many of these stories because it doesn't fit the narrative of the publishers.
Here's a Stanford student dressed as a Hamas terrorist just for the general picture: https://ynet-pic1.yit.co.il/cdn-cgi/image/f=auto,w=740,q=75/...
That's not what the article says. Of the 4 academics, 1 of them (Hoftman) spoke of being assaulted after approaching the protests (just as protesters have been assaulted by folks from the pro-Israel side). Not of being "barred from entry" into the campus per your description:
But also look at Israelis who want to enter the universities and can't.
So far you are unable to substantiate this claim.
But US press doesn't write many of these stories because it doesn't fit the narrative of the publishers.
Of course it does - the Hoftman story was all over Fox News for example. It's viewers love to gobble up stories like these.
Furthermore, you choose to accept unsubstantiated claims against Davidai as fact because it supports your confirmation bias.
You want more here: https://edition.cnn.com/business/live-news/university-protes...
> “Jewish students…get a second-class education where they are relegated to their homes to attend classes virtually and stripped of the opportunity to interact meaningfully with other students and faculty and sit for examinations with their peers,” the lawsuit said. “The segregation of Jewish students is a dangerous development that can quickly escalate into more severe acts of violence and discrimination.”
and:
> The lawsuit alleges that a subset of protesters has committed acts of violence, harassed Jewish students and faculty and incited hate speech and acts of violence.
There's plenty of that online.
Finally, about your point of two sides. That's absolute nonsense. One side started the demonstrations and mass agitation, the reacting side can't be blamed. This is pretty typical of this entire situation, Israel gets attacked then blamed for response, results and its defense.
Own it. People were violent and racist. Outside forces came in and manipulated students most of which are ridiculously ignorant about the situation. They were manipulated, in much of the same way as Trump voters are manipulated, to believe blatant lies.
Jews are taking part in the pro-Palestinian protests in large numbers. The idea that Jewish students are treated as second-class citizens at Columbia, in New York City, is simply absurd.
And when someone challenges you to provide some kind substantiation for what you're saying, you change the subject.
Own it.
A side that literally broke into offices and barricaded themselves. I have a confirmation bias. Yes, I know Israel has been far from perfect on many aspects. I 100% own it. I suggest you own it too.
Also, again. Nitpicking is sad. You're using it to keep your confirmation bias. Clinging to one thing in the hope of finding a tiny mistake in my arguments that you can use to invalidate everything I said. That's much easier than looking into the mirror and acknowledging that you might not know much about the situation and you might be doing harm to your cause.
And when you people draw attention to this, you say they're "nitpicking". And then you switch to entirely different topics and give people links to those topics.
I don't see what this strategy brings you.
The fact that you're doubting that is pretty astounding. It's a large group of people half of which weren't even students in NYU. The assumption that this group won't contain racist, violent people is detached from reality. I provided a link showing the president of a university was threatened and bomb threats were made (here it is again): https://nyunews.com/news/2024/05/03/mills-email-paulson-cent...
Here's another one showing some of the stuff NYPD grabbed: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/nypd-official-items-fou...
The protesters are for the most part ignorant people who are being manipulated by outside forces. None of that is good for the Palestinians. It is helping: Trump, Russians, Iranians and Hamas.
Most of the ancestors of the Palestinians have lived in the region for as long as anyone can trace. The average Palestinian Arab is much more closely related to ancient Levantine people than the average Israeli Jew. Not that this should matter: what matters is that the foundation of the state of Israel required the mass expulsion of the native population, which was nearly 100% Arab.
> Jews started coming back to Israel en-mass in the 19th century, well before the British arrived.
There were small numbers of Jewish colonists who arrived in the late 19th Century, but they were still only a single-digit percentage of the population when the British took over.
>> which was almost 100% Arab
> This is very false. If it was true Israel would have lost its independence war
When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, the vast majority of its Jewish population had recently immigrated to Palestine. Just a few decades earlier, when the Zionist movement was founded, the native population of Palestine was nearly 100% Arab.
> violence and intimidation towards Jews on campus
This whole narrative about antisemitism on American campuses is completely fabricated. A fairly large share of the pro-Palestinian protesters are Jewish. They may even be the single largest ethnic group represented among the protesters. Columbia is a liberal campus in the middle of New York City, the city with the largest Jewish community in the world. The idea that Columbia is a den of antisemitism is particularly absurd.
That is the equivalent of the "I have a black friend so I can't be racist" argument. Quite a few Jews are ignorant of the situation and falsely blame Israel. To be fair, there's justified blame to lay on Israel about many things in the current situation. But the current demonstrations are definitely stupid and aren't helping.
> what matters is that the foundation of the state of Israel required the mass expulsion of the native population
Agreed. And now they want to perform a mass exodus of the Jews who live here.
> Israel required the mass expulsion of the native population,
That's a lie. There was some violence in 1947/8 before the state was properly formed and some militias were more violent than others due to lack of proper government. Blaming Israel for that is ridiculous. Israel was attacked violently in large numbers against the decision of the UN. Violence went both ways and a massive amount of Jews died in that war.
There was a massive exodus from Arab lands. Before 1947 there were Jews living all over Arab countries in large numbers. We were chased away from our homes. Can we have them back?
My fathers family ran from Morocco. I'm sure the Huties of Yemen won't welcome my spouse if she wants to go back to her paternal land. Her maternal land of Romania slaughtered most of her relatives as happened to my ancestral maternal relatives in Europe.
That's how history works. Sh*t happens. We got over it. Palestinians could have had a country multiple times in history and repeatedly chose to sabotage the process by refusing to settle with Israel. That is 100% self sabotage.
> There were small numbers of Jewish colonists who arrived in the late 19th Century, but they were still only a single-digit percentage of the population when the British took over.
Let's put numbers there: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-p...
Keep in mind that Jews had mobility issues both in Europe and in the Ottoman empire. They were barred from coming to Israel even if they wanted to and they tried.
The country during these years was practically empty by today's standards. 660,000 people in total. Today without including the occupied territories we have over 9M people 2.6M of them are not Jews.
Calling the number of Jews small and calling the country Arab is pretty disingenuous since the total number of people in Palestine was tiny. Even then the 600k number wasn't entirely Arab. There are many other minorities with roots in this country.
> When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, the vast majority of its Jewish population had recently immigrated to Palestine.
I wonder what happened that made so many Jews run away in search of somewhere to live... On the eve of WWII there were 449,000 Jews in Israel which is a significant number.
> when the Zionist movement was founded, the native population of Palestine was nearly 100% Arab.
Nope. The first Zionist congress was in 1869: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Zionist_Congress
Population was close to 8% and on a growing trend.
Other than placing redundant, mostly incorrect facts. What's your point?
Your point is that the Palestinians are victims. Well... Welcome to the club, we're the bloody club presidents. In 1992 I went on a trip with Palestinian youth to Europe as part of a teen peace delegation. The goal was to show the "adults" that even kids can make peace. During most of that trip we had a lot of grandstanding from both sides. The Palestinians played a lot of the victim card which was redundant. They understood us once we took a trip to a concentration camp together. They understood that victim-hood is pointless and brings nothing.
I wish more Palestinians would learn Jewish history. They are deeply misinformed about us.
Maybe that would trigger an understanding that the only path forward is acceptance of the current situation and negotiation.
> This whole narrative about antisemitism on American campuses is completely fabricated
You might think that. But even here I get people repeating tropes like "Jews controlling all the money". Antisemitism has always been around and is being cynically exploited by some people.
The demonstrations on campus are comprised mostly of people who have very little understanding of the actual situation. They are refined by external forces many of which are no part of academia.
> A fairly large share of the pro-Palestinian protesters are Jewish.
That is no longer true. This was true initially but most left. Think about the demands of the demonstration: blacklisting Israel. It's an academic embargo on Israel which is already taking place to some degree. Israeli academia members are finding it harder to go to conference and share research. It's harder to get grants and take part in research. This is also about investments which is probably nothing financially, but a symbolic "anti-Israel".
Jews are not anti-Israel. Most of us are liberal and this includes Israel which is one of the most liberal countries anywhere. We have one of the most progressive human rights laws, progressive gay rights and labor laws that would make San Francisco blush. But you don't understand the other side. You're thinking of them with the same sensibilities. This isn't the case. You can't think of people who crash airplanes filled with families into buildings with the same thought process we have here.
> Columbia is a liberal campus in the middle of New York City, the city with the largest Jewish community in the world. The idea that Columbia is a den of antisemitism is particularly absurd.
There's a common trope of the self hating Jew. It is a trope but it has some point, we're the first to blame ourselves, even here. The problem is that they think the antisemitism is caused by Israeli action, but it's bolstered by them as they are confirming a false narrative about Israel.
I'm sure you would accept that Trump has bolstered a lot of racism towards black people and Mexicans. Yet a lot of them support him. Does that make the first statement false?
If you can accept the last paragraph but can't accept the previous one, that's your confirmation bias ringing loudly...
Many people have opined over the years on the negotiations between Israel and Palestine, and while it's certainly not one-sided, I think it's unfair to say that it is Israel's fault that a peace was never achieved. The Palestinian leadership multiple times turned down offers that most outside observers considered very good for the Palestinians, and didn't come up with any acceptable substitute; they walked away from the negotiations instead.
> The whole implicit promise of Oslo was that the Palestinians would get a sovereign state, but that wasn't explicitly spelled out anywhere in the text, and the Israelis never committed to it.
Here are some snippets from the beginning of the Oslo accords. I'm not sure what you mean by "not spelled out", they're fairly explicit about the Palestinian people ruling themselves:
> The aim of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations within the current Middle East peace process is, among other things, to establish a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority [...] It is understood that the interim arrangements are an integral part of the whole peace process and that the negotiations on the permanent status will lead to the implementation of Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973).
> In order that the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip may govern themselves according to democratic principles, direct, free and general political elections will be held for the Council under agreed supervision and international observation, while the Palestinian police will ensure public order. [...] These elections will constitute a significant interim preparatory step toward the realization of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and their just requirements.
>> E.g. pro-Palestinian protests help create a message that the Hamas sees as support to it. That means most Palestinians will fall back into the loop of bad leadership that keeps landing them to a worse positions than they were before.
> The major problem is just the opposite. The Israelis have felt for the last 20 years that they can do anything to the Palestinians and ignore the Palestinians' demands for basic rights and a state of their own. The Israelis believe there will be no consequences, because the Palestinians are weak. October 7th was a complete aberration, the first time in 20 years that Israelis have suffered at all because of the occupation. Left to their own devices, the Israelis would just continue to expand settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, would never concede to the creation of a Palestinian state, and might even try to expel the Palestinians at some future date. Without outside pressure, there will never be an end to the conflict, except perhaps for a final expulsion of the Palestinians.
So I somewhat agree with this sentiment, actually. I think some minority of Israelis would absolutely be fine with expelling the Palestinians, and obviously they've continued expanding settlements all this time. The majority of Israelis would never agree with actually expelling Palestinians, but were "fine" living in what on their side were relatively peaceful times, not doing anything to promote peace (and letting the more anti-peace side of Israel effectively call the shots).
I do take issue with your saying that "the major problem is just the opposite" though. I think they're both problems. The Israeli left and pro-peace movement has become far less powerful, exactly because of the perception of the Israeli public that there is no "partner for peace". I think that perception is actually fairly true - Hamas wants the destruction of Israel, the PA is weak and ineffectual and hated by the people, and the perception is that the majority of Palestinians don't want a peaceful two-state solution, but rather believe that they will eventually "drive out Israelis" or some such nonsense.
The failure of the peace process, which Israelis perceive as happening because of the Palestinian leadership (which is fairly true IMO), and the ramp up of terror attacks because of the peace process, really weakened the Israeli peace movement. The situation with the Gaza disengagement is only going to weaken the peace camp further.
Of course Israel isn't blameless here either - whether or not Israeli "should have" pursued peace for the last 20 years - and I think it absolutely should have, morally speaking - what Israel also did was in some ways to actively work against peace. Part of the reason for the lack of "Palestinian leadership" is because of actions taken by Israel.
That's not the case. That's the "common wisdom" in the US, but it's not the dominant view among experts, and it's just objectively false.
> I'm not sure what you mean by "not spelled out", they're fairly explicit about the Palestinian people ruling themselves
If you read through the passages you've quoted carefully, you'll realize that the text does not say that the Palestinians will have their own sovereign state. The Israeli government's position under Rabin was that the Palestinians would be given a semi-autonomous status in an "entity" - not a state - that would be under Israeli control. Effectively, some sort of limited ability to run their own affairs, but under ultimate Israeli control, and without the ability to vote in Israeli elections.
> The failure of the peace process, which Israelis perceive as happening because of the Palestinian leadership (which is fairly true IMO)
This is a view that just flies in the face of reality. Netanyahu did everything possible to torpedo the peace process in the 1990s, and no Israeli government was prepared to accept the minimal acceptable settlement, which is a sovereign Palestinian state on 1967 borders. The Palestinians have repeatedly made this offer to the Israelis, but have been rebuffed every time, because Israel wants important parts of the occupied Palestinian territories, and because Israel demands things like full Israeli military control over any future Palestinian entity.
Can you provide backup for this?
> If you read through the passages you've quoted carefully, you'll realize that the text does not say that the Palestinians will have their own sovereign state.
The passages don't say the word state, but they pretty explicitly say that Palestinians will govern themselves, and that this is an interim step towards full Palestinian rights. Is your only issue with it that it's missing the word "state"? Honestly trying to understand your view here.
> The Israeli government's position under Rabin was that the Palestinians would be given a semi-autonomous status in an "entity" - not a state - that would be under Israeli control.
I saw you referencing this earlier. I think you're making too much of this. He was probably playing politics to a country that wasn't yet ready to hear talk of a Palestinian state in full, but it seems fairly clear that that was his end goal, and the obvious end of the process he himself was most actively pursuing (and tragically gave his life for). See e.g. this article in Haaretz, which gives a lot more context on this [1], I'll quote a relevant part:
"Kurzman’s claim is supported by my interviews with close associates of Rabin who told me that he had come to terms with the eventuality of a Palestinian state. He and his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, had an agreement not to discuss a Palestinian state at that stage but clearly understood that this was the end game, then-Labor Party Secretary General Nissim Zvili told me."
I'll also note that we are not beholden to what Rabin believed at the time, and many people have since become far more on board with a two-state solution, as the article notes:
"It is difficult to imagine that he would disagree with the vast majority of other retired Israeli generals – as well as the former heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence service – who today argue that a Palestinian state, alongside the Jewish state, is a top national security interest for Israel."
> Effectively, some sort of limited ability to run their own affairs, but under ultimate Israeli control, and without the ability to vote in Israeli elections.
Now I'm confused. Why would they have the ability to vote in Israeli elections? The idea is to have a separate state, with its own government. How does voting in Israeli elections figure into this?
> This is a view that just flies in the face of reality. Netanyahu did everything possible to torpedo the peace process in the 1990s, and no Israeli government was prepared to accept the minimal acceptable settlement, which is a sovereign Palestinian state on 1967 borders.
While you're right about Netanyahu, you're still wrong about Camp David, Taba and the 2008 offer. More importantly, while I have multiple times put the fault on Israel for not working actively for peace in the last 20 years, there is also a lot of fault on the Palestinians for exactly the same reason, and for continually choosing violence and terror instead of pushing more for peace from their side. You seem to view everything as 100% Israel's fault, giving no agency at all to the Palestinians - "Israel didn't make a good offer so that's that". It's also on them to advance peace, denounce terror, and work towards a two-state solution.
[1] https://www.haaretz.com/2017-11-02/ty-article/.premium/fight...
It's based on my reading from various people who were there and who have commented on the process afterwards. There is a massive gap between how this is discussed in the American popular media and how it's discussed among experts.
> Is your only issue with it that it's missing the word "state"?
In a process that is supposedly going to lead to a Palestinian state, don't you think it's a bit curious that it is never actually spelled out that there will be a Palestinian state?
The reason for the absence of any explicit statement that the "final status" will be a Palestinian state is that the Israeli government at the time opposed the creation of a Palestinian state. The Israeli government believed that it could resolve the Palestinian question through some sort of semi-autonomous status under ultimate Israeli control.
It may be that Rabin would eventually have accepted a Palestinian state, had he not been assassinated, but this was his public position at the time of his death [0]:
"We view the permanent solution in the framework of the State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
"We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six-Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines."
He goes on to state a number of conditions that would be utterly unacceptable to the Palestinians, including:
All of Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty: "First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Ze’ev -- as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths"
Israeli military control over the Jordan River Valley, which would be the eastern half of the putative Palestinian "entity": "The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term." (emphasis added)
What Rabin is spelling out here is much less than a Palestinian state. It is essentially a plan for the Palestinians to be able to run local civic affairs, while under ultimate Israeli control. What that would mean in practice would be that the Palestinian "entity" would be at the mercy of the Israeli government, with little ability to take independent actions that the Israeli government disliked. The Israelis would control the borders, and their troops would be able to move in at any moment in the event of a disagreement. This Palestinian entity would not even include the largest, most important Palestinian city: East Jerusalem.
That's why the Oslo Accords do not mention a "Palestinian state." The Israelis were not prepared to accept one.
> Why would they have the ability to vote in Israeli elections? The idea is to have a separate state, with its own government.
Because the Israelis did not envision a separate state. They envisioned an entity under ultimate Israeli control. In practice, that translates to a kind of second-class citizenship, where you do not have the right to vote for the government that exercises ultimate authority over the territory you live on. Israeli citizens would get to vote for the government that has all the guns. Palestinian "citizens" would get to vote for a local civic government that doesn't have any guns, with Israeli troops standing by, ready to move in whenever they want.
> you're still wrong about Camp David, Taba and the 2008 offer.
Camp David was utterly unacceptable for the same reasons I've discussed earlier. The Israelis offered something far less than a sovereign state, and they demanded extremely significant concessions on territory and other issues. The Palestinians managed to move the Israelis a bit at Taba, but then the negotiations broke down because the Israeli government was facing electoral defeat, with Israeli hardliners under Ariel Sharon set to take over. The 2008 offer was again utterly unserious - it was issued as a non-negotiable ultimatum, and included poison pills like Israeli annexation of Ariel, that the Israelis knew the Palestinians could never accept.
> You seem to view everything as 100% Israel's fault, giving no agency at all to the Palestinians
The Palestinians have very little agency. They have no army and no money. They live under military occupation. They have no significant international backers, and their opponent, Israel, is backed by the world superpower. They tried nonviolent resistance in the First Intifada, and were met with a brutal military response. They tried recognizing Israel and negotiating, asking for a sovereign state on 22% of the land, but they got nowhere. They tried violent resistance in the Second Intifada, and got crushed. They tried slowly working towards international recognition to build pressure on Israel, but again have had very little success. Even their attempts to organize an international boycott Israel have been essentially made illegal in much of the West.
> It's also on them to advance peace, denounce terror, and work towards a two-state solution.
That's what the Palestinians did in the 1990s, and it got them nowhere. Israel is in a position where it does not feel that it has to make any concessions. Until Israel feels pressure from the outside world, it will not do so.
0. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pm-rabin-speech-to-knes...
Ok. Can you tell me who some of these experts are? I'd genuinely like to read more about this, having recently read quite a bit about the negotiations.
> Camp David was utterly unacceptable for the same reasons I've discussed earlier.
You keep talking about Israel "offering" something unacceptable. We're talking about a negotiation, both sides having something they want and trying to achieve it, and having to compromise on things they disagree with. Yet you keep saying "this is unacceptable to the Palestinians, that is unacceptable to the Palestinians". You frame this as "they conceded to only asking for 22% of the land", meaning their original position of getting rid of Israel entirely made sense and was a hard concession for them to make, a concession they should be praised for making?
And as far as I know, there was no counter-offer made to these deals. It wasn't "well this isn't ok, here's what would work for us", because by the same token as you saying that Israel didn't want a full Palestinian state then, Arafat didn't want to agree to giving up anything from his side either. It was just "this is unacceptable" and back to terrorism to get better terms.
Again, this isn't my view, what do I know? This is a view of people taking part in the negotiations, e.g. talked about by Aaron David Miller on the Ezra Klein podcast [1]. It's pretty clear that he lays the blame on both sides and that the Israeli side isn't as rosy as Americans/Israelis sometimes think, but it's also pretty clear that at the end of the day, there were real, good legit offers on the table that Arafat walked away from without offering an alternative to.
> The Palestinians have very little agency. They have no army and no money. They live under military occupation. They have no significant international backers, and their opponent, Israel, is backed by the world superpower.
Clearly this isn't true of Gaza. They didn't live under Israeli occupation, though they did live under a blockade. And they have an army, which carried out a successful invasion of Israel. It's much smaller and weaker than Israel's army, of course, but saying they have no arms is patently false.
As is saying they have no and no backers. Iran is a huge international backer, as is Qatar, providing both money and arms. Palestinian refugees also receive a lot of international aid. Money that, in the case of Gaza, could've been put to good use in building up Gaza into some place amazing, and was instead put into fighting with Israel non-stop for the last 20 years.
Even setting aside who is "more right" or "more wrong", do you really think Hamas had little agency for the last 20 years? That there was no way to work on improving the lives of Gazan's and turning Gaza into a great place? And that they instead went the other way, spending most of their effort into war? I totally get criticizing Israel, you raise valid points, but is it really a stretch to also criticize Hamas and realize that they do have agency and could have made far better choices?
[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-best-primer-ive-he...
You can start off with Khalidi, who was involved in previous negotiations. He wasn't at the Camp David summit, but he knows the people who were.
> their original position of getting rid of Israel entirely made sense and was a hard concession for them to make, a concession they should be praised for making?
The Palestinians were driven from their land by European colonists. Nearly every major city in Israel, with a few exceptions (like Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem) used to be an Arab city, and saw the vast majority of its Arab population expelled in 1948. Haifa was an Arab city. Lod was an Arab city. Beersheba was an Arab city. Jaffa was an Arab city. Etc. Etc. Yes, it is an extremely painful concession to recognize Israel's sovereignty over those cities.
In terms of international law, Israel has no right to claim anything beyond the Green Line. Israel's internationally recognized borders are the 1967 borders, and the UN Charter forbids acquisition of territory by force. That's why UNSC 242 calls for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories (the US and Israel argue that the resolution doesn't say that, based on a grammatical ambiguity in English, but the French text is unambiguous, and the resolution would have no meaning otherwise).
More than 30 years ago, the Palestinians offered the Israelis a formula for peace that essentially recognizes that in historical terms, "Israel won" and the Palestinians admitted defeat, and which is consistent with international law. Israel took that as a starting point and demanded much more: East Jerusalem, settlements in the West Bank, control over the Jordan River Valley. Israel was not even willing to accept a sovereign Palestinian state.
> Clearly this isn't true of Gaza. They didn't live under Israeli occupation
Under international law, they did. This is a bit like arguing whether the Warsaw Ghetto was under German occupation. The Israelis withdrew their permanent ground force presence, but maintained a blockade by land, sea and air, periodically send in ground forces, bomb when they want to, prevent the Palestinians from establishing their own ports, electricity supply, or other things necessary to operate independently of Israel.
> And they have an army
Calling Hamas an "army" is extremely generous. They have small arms and home-made rockets. They have no tanks, no air force, no air defense. They're essentially insurgents, fighting a conflict that is about as asymmetric as it gets. The Israelis are very confident of their ability to push Hamas aside. Their main concern is international condemnation, not Hamas' military strength.
> That there was no way to work on improving the lives of Gazan's and turning Gaza into a great place?
This statement is just so detached from reality that I'm not even sure if I should give it a serious response. You're aware, for example, that Israel's declared policy before October 7th was to only allow enough calories into Gaza to keep it from falling into famine, but to "put Gaza on a diet," right? Or that Israel bombed Gaza's only power plant in one of its several wars against Gaza over the last two decades? Or that Israel does not allow Gaza to build a seaport or airport?
It sounds like your view of these people is that they don't really have agency over their own beliefs, and are simply passively manipulated by dark, outside forces.
It's called Cognitive dissonance. False notions meet the hard surface of reality and are shattered. The criminal (fact) PM of that "only democracy" gave public command to his US stooges (our representatives) and immediately the Israeli-trained dogs are let loose on Americans exercising "free speech".
Isn't it just as crazy how much people care about Palestine when much worse atrocities are happening around the world? Why do they care so much about just that one instead of the many others?
The longer answer is that the Gaza genocide the the big atrocity of this decade. It is has a large publicity, it is of a larger scale, there are so many stories around it, scandals, etc. that it catches the media attention very easily. Plus people tend to sympathize when they hear stories like that.
But the real answer is that people don’t really care about whataboutism. Just because they care about one issue, that doesn’t mean they must care about every issue.
What are the much worse atrocities than Gaza that are happening?
> Why do they care so much about just that one instead of the many others?
The US is centrally involved in supporting the slaughter in Gaza.
The Economist polled Americans if what is happening in Gaza is a genocide and the most given answer was yes. The US and Israel stand alone in the UN on Palestinian self-determination (other than US compact member Micronesia, and the 10,000 people of the island of Nauru). US and world popular opinion is against what Israel and the US government is doing.
The pro-Hamas side is loud but small. In time it will fade away and America's relationship with Israel will remain.
I'm fully aware my reply is ridiculous, much like what I was responding to.
I used to think old people gave advice because they were know-it-alls, but now I think it’s just because it can take a while to really understand that experience is valuable
Then, there are the numerous academic integrity scandals among now-infamous scholars at Ivies or similar, such as Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Dan Ariely, etc., and a general feeling that the overwhelming pressure for novel discoveries / getting published in a big journal is undermining scientific progress.
Also, there is a perception that students are increasingly selected for reasons other than academic merit, e.g. family name / an ancestor who was an alumnus, big donations, athletic vs. scholarly ability, and so on. Rich parents buying their kids' admissions through sports "recruitment" was particularly egregious.
Asian students with perfect SAT's and AP/IB-loaded 4.0+ GPA's being rejected for "non-racist" "reasons," as revealed by "Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard" and other top-tier American universities was a cherry on top.
The case against universities, against higher education, against ivy leagues etc, has been a topic of conversation for years. Most of my life I think. I don't know how many pieces I've read about why higher education is now going to become less relevant.