David Remnick's Book Report
Okay, well if this (a link a regular reader who disagrees with my views on Israel sent me) -- does that mean this is justified? Or what? What's the answer? The Israelis lay down their weapons, abandon all the medical discoveries and progress they've made turning a shitty little piece of earth into a viable democracy -- in which peaceful Arabs have the same rights as Israelis (unlike non-Muslims in Muslim countries) -- and leave?
UPDATE: Here's the view from 1967, from The Economist's special correspondent from Israel during the Six-Day War. The proposed solution from another piece in The Economist:
Right now both continue to offer too little and demand too much. Israel has at least abandoned the dream of a Greater Israel that bewitched it after the great victory of 1967. The illusion that the Palestinians would fall into silence has been shattered by two intifadas and every rocket Hamas fires from Gaza. Israel's present government says it is committed to a two-state solution. But it is a weak government, and has lacked the courage to spell out honestly the full territorial price Israelis must pay. The Palestinians have meanwhile gone backwards. If Hamas means what it says, it continues to reject the idea that Jews have a right to a national existence in the Middle East.What self-defeating madness. For peace to come, Israel must give up the West Bank and share Jerusalem; the Palestinians must give up the dream of return and make Israel feel secure as a Jewish state. All the rest is detail.
I see very little connection. By all means, if a neighbouring country lobs missiles into your territory, lob some back. "Israel has the right to defend itself" is no less true for being a cliché.
Remnick is concerned, instead, with historical revisionist statements such as "There never was a Palestine" and "The 70,000 Arabs who fled Israeli territory in 1948 did so voluntarily" -- both of which have been expressed in comments in this forum in the past.
Stu "El Inglés" Harris at May 27, 2007 8:49 AM
I can't find it now, but my understanding was that, contrary to what was expressed in the article, Moshe Dayan actually warned Israel over keeping the captured territories beyond old Jerusalem, and wanted to return them.
jerry at May 27, 2007 10:31 AM
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