All good, except that I worry that sensible and intelligent people like Warby...do not understand the Middle East or Islamic mindset.
The Sunnis and Shiites have been slaughtering each other for 1,400 years.
As soon as the secular-socialist strongman (and lunatic) Saddam Hussain was deposed, they went at it again in spades in Iraq---despite decades and decades of indoctrination by Saddam that religious differences were to be minimized.
What happened on Oct. 7 was not an aberration, but a tradition.
Forgotten today, but three million ethnic Chinese, communists and "unbelievers" were massacred in Indonesia in 1965-6 by Muslim youth.
In Germany and Japan there were remaining social structures and institutions that could be leveraged.
I wonder about Gaza, and Islam (as practiced) more generally.
If decades of secularizing rule by Saddam Hussain could not quell Islamic holy warriors---even against fellow Islamics---what will work in Gaza?
There is much that entrepreneurs of violence can, and do, work on in Middle Eastern Islam.
Elsewhere, the evidence is not so dire. Even in the case of Indonesia, that was at least as much ethnic and ideological as it was religious. Indonesian Islam has remained an unproblematic neighbour who seem to be managing democracy quite well. Outside the Middle East (the area of “Conquest Islam”) there is no Islamic democratic deficit.
Even in the Middle East, there are places of long term stability. I am not quite as pessimistic on this as other folk, though I understand the reasons for the pessimism.
Lorenzo--you are highly intelligent and good-hearted.
I have heard the world is divided into two camps:
1. Those who believe human behavior can be improved
2. Those who believe human behavior can only be managed
In the US, there are those who believe criminal prisoners can be reformed. Despite decade after decade of failure, and extremely high recidivist rates (higher than published) they still believe in rehabilitation.
In a way, so do I (taking a feather from the Catholic cap).
But maybe thinking about how to manage Islamic hatred, rather than altering it, is more realistic.
I find myself migrating into the "managing" camp. In other words, I have resigned.
Jews created a country in the Middle East surrounded by countries with the Islamic mindset. If Islam is a hate-filled and violent ideology and you create a non-Islamic country there, can you be surprised by the backlash?
How do you "manage" huge piece of land filled with foreign people whose ideology you oppose? Also, why is it the West's responsibility to do so? Would you accept anyone managing the West?
Decades ago, I wondered if the Jews would have been better off migrating to the then lightly populated west coast of Australia, creating a "New Jerusalem" at a time Australia actually needed immigrants for development.
But...the window for that closed off in the 1940s-50s.
I am not surprised at the tenaciousness of Islamic hatred for other religions. We are 1,400 years into it.
What to do now? The Jews (and increasing numbers of Christians) are there, and they do not plan to leave.
The West perhaps has no responsibility in the region.
If so, then let Israel win its war, and stop interfering. Israel could have fire-bombed Gaza and been done with it.
The West seems intent on saving Palestinian lives, while recognizing the depravity of Hamas (although not really facing up to the realities of Islam, as practiced).
Maybe that is not such a bad policy.
Sometimes, too many times, all the options are unpleasant.
Lorenzo, As well-thought out and as practical as anything I have read. Yet, as long as the West and Iran, Qatar etc. keeps subsidizing intransigence and a poisonous educational system, how will things change?
Surely there must come a point when the bloodshed is enough. The conflict has slowly ground down over over 50 years--despite stupid sabre-rattling noises, the Arab countries are far less opposed to Israel than they were--and I hope that sense will prevail. 🙏🏻
Egypt and Jordan have both signed peace treaties with Israel that have stuck. In polls, Palestinians regularly nominate their three most admired governments as being US, France and Israel. Yes, some Palestinians think as you say, but a lot don’t and they have, up until now, been blocked from having any effective say.
1) I hope a plan like this, or really any plan, can work. If it does, I'll be among the first to celebrate.
2) My sinking suspicion is that this won't work for two reasons. First is that the international community and the US in particular probably don't have the willpower to see something like this through to the end. Specifically, it would almost certainly require an analogue of de-Nazification that I doubt we would be willing to impose. Second, and more importantly, I don't think either the residents of Gaza or the Arab world more generally will go along with it, mostly because too many of them hate Israel and that really won't change. I would be very surprised if anything achieves a lasting resolution to this situation short of the complete relocation of all Gazans to neighboring Muslim countries.
Unfortunately, everything I've seen over the last two decades has convinced me (and has just been reinforced since Oct 7) that until the concept of a Palestinian state is clearly understood to be a fantasy that will never ever materialize and (probably) most residents of Gaza and the West Bank are relocated to neighboring countries, this will never end. Right now, for all kinds of reasons, Israel and the residents of Gaza and West Bank can't be neighbors. Arab pride, self-righteousness, and herculean levels of self-pity are a giant factor in this conflict that I don't think many in the West acknowledge because it is gauche to do so.
Thank you for making the grander point. A point already alluded to in commenting which includes the “equivalence of de-nazification.” The US is one of the three western values states to which Gaza’s population relates. The past decades of unrelenting decay and corruption descends into the banana republic with kangaroo court hearings the daily news from the republic. The clear evidence of brutal atrocities at the core of “false flag” games, White House chocolatier “accidental drowning, of course, with no relevance to poisoned peace negotiations, and so many other nefarious concerns making even the WMDs of Iraqi saber rattling seem paltry does not bode well for the peaceful solution.
Nonetheless, the proposal here does have a positive and rational advantage. Perhaps reason can prevail where extremism has been expected in contrast to the extremism that dominates where rationality was once emphasized? Let’s hope for such an upside down win in an upside down modernism.
I just hope they can find enough common ground to stop the killing. The hatred will never go away in this generation, but perhaps the next with the right approach and inputs into young minds.
David Ben Gurion warned against Israel becoming the kind of place where "blacks do all the menial work."
The Israelis have somewhat sidestepped this by importing Thai and Filipino labor, and they like the experience of working in Israel (when not getting slaughtered on Oct. 7) and then going home with a wad of cash to buy a homestead, take care of family etc.
If importing Palestinian labor leads to a permanent underclass defined by religion or ethnicity....
As History turns America for the first time this year has a real stake in the outcome of the Israeli fight. Not even symbolic, but very calculating our State Department (which decides the fate of American elections in 2024, as in 2020) finds itself on the horns of a dilemma. They can finally finish destroying this most troublesome Colonial project of 🇮🇱 or concentrate on America.
Not both.
Horns 24
History Turns;
In this turn of history, the conflict in Israel affects our fortunes here in America for the first time.
Nations War or Peace from Fear, Honor, Interest.
Our 🇺🇸 interest in 🇮🇱 is complicated by our domestic 🇺🇸 situation.
All 🇮🇱they really need is us 🇺🇸 not to make them the rogue nation.
🇮🇱 needed us in the Cold War after France stopped being their ally in 1967.
🇺🇸 we absolutely SHOULD NOT stab them in their hour of need for reasons foreign and domestic- and Honor.
Stabbing Israel now would have a great boosting effect for the Left in America, their greatest victory since the USSR fell, and excite them and many other appetites at the same time demoralizing the Americans who love America at the worst moment. 🇺🇸 America’s Defenders are at their lowest point of morale since Valley Forge, and absolutely in an abyss of leadership. Seeing Israel betrayed would unravel what thin lines we have left…
» Conversely failing to weaken and betray Israel would have the effect of demoralizing the American Left and energizing the Nationalist side in America.
»> but most critically The US State Department is placed on the Horns of a Dilemma; defeat Trump and MAGA by fixing the 2024 election (they fixed 2020) OR - betray Israel 🇮🇱, the last American “ally” they haven’t been able to Judas Kiss to destruction.
The State Department cannot do both. They don’t have the strength to betray 🇺🇸 and 🇮🇱, already the USG DC Uniparty while united against Trump is deeply divided and at odds over Israel. This is always desirable in Strategy- place the enemy on the Horns of a Dilemma and either Horn is worth a battle.
In this turn of history, the conflict in Israel affects our fortunes here in America for the first time.
The strategy was open borders and full freedom to work in Israel.
Until labor troubles started in the late 1980s there were no troubles. Until post Soviet immigration to Israel there were plentiful jobs.
So yes cheap labor, but the 394,000 Gazans didn’t grow to millions on just UNWRA.
Then the Strategy became “our terrorist” aka Arafat.
HAMAS arises...
Until 10.7 the precious strategy was pay them and only retaliate as necessary.
The Liberal Democratic alternative was tried and decisively rejected at the polls and by arms within Gaza and in October without... they want the Israelis exterminated. They have never wavered from this, that’s all Palestine means, their only reason to exist.
Now if Israel has a strategy beyond just leveling Gaza (which is absolutely the best strategy, like it or not) then they’d be foolish to make it public.
Until then Kill them until they’re all dead, fled, or quit.
If they quit... how to ever trust again?
If Israel is wise it will grind until America is consumed by its own internal conflicts, then Israel’s hands will be free ... and yes, there was only ever one solution.
My question is why does Australia care? You have your own problems.
We have Jewish and Palestinian citizens. These controversies erupt here as well. Besides, the proposal does not commit any Australian resources, apart from our experience of making things work.
I am afraid I do not see why not. Different territories can be administered in different ways. There is also the advantage that no one in Israel actually wants Gaza.
My understanding is that there are quite a few Israelis who do want Gaza (though much less intensely than the West Bank). I also think that what happens in the West Bank will affect what is possible in Gaza, but I guess we disagree on this.
My understanding is that group is quite fringe within Israel. Gaza and the West Bank have been not only physically separated, but in almost every other respect since 2008, when Hamas drove out or murdered all Fatah’s people. It has now had a dramatically different trauma. So, they are likely quite separable. Even more so than the two Koreas or two Germanies after 1945.
Rebuilding the settlements that Israel itself dismantled is not the same as entirely displacing the Palestinians. And the way the Knesset works, a small vote percentage wise can get you elected, even a ministry or two.
It is also clearly a non-starter, so it may be, at least in part, playing to a specific constituency.
Is you take that that specific land previously settled and inhabited by Israeli Jews stayed empty the entire time and always belonged to Israel so they could come back and re-settle it with whoever they wanted?
Palestinians will oppose this, respond with violence and then Israel will need another land buffer, then quickly settle that with Israeli Jews. Both sides will point to the other as the bad guy and the same will go on until there's a catastrophic event. It's the rinse and repeat of the ME.
I don't think it's a non-starter. It's the expansion of Overton's window and laying the groundwork for future expansion and annexation. Back when Jewish immigration to Ottoman Palestine occurred, I'm sure there were those who said Jews are migrating to form a state and someone said that's a fringe idea. Not commenting on whether this was good or bad, but that seemingly fringe ideas cannot be dismissed as improbable.
I didn't mean that they have to be a single or connected political entity, just that the treatment of people in one will affect sentiment and disposition in the other, in ways that limit the range of political possibilities.
All good, except that I worry that sensible and intelligent people like Warby...do not understand the Middle East or Islamic mindset.
The Sunnis and Shiites have been slaughtering each other for 1,400 years.
As soon as the secular-socialist strongman (and lunatic) Saddam Hussain was deposed, they went at it again in spades in Iraq---despite decades and decades of indoctrination by Saddam that religious differences were to be minimized.
What happened on Oct. 7 was not an aberration, but a tradition.
Forgotten today, but three million ethnic Chinese, communists and "unbelievers" were massacred in Indonesia in 1965-6 by Muslim youth.
In Germany and Japan there were remaining social structures and institutions that could be leveraged.
I wonder about Gaza, and Islam (as practiced) more generally.
If decades of secularizing rule by Saddam Hussain could not quell Islamic holy warriors---even against fellow Islamics---what will work in Gaza?
There is much that entrepreneurs of violence can, and do, work on in Middle Eastern Islam.
Elsewhere, the evidence is not so dire. Even in the case of Indonesia, that was at least as much ethnic and ideological as it was religious. Indonesian Islam has remained an unproblematic neighbour who seem to be managing democracy quite well. Outside the Middle East (the area of “Conquest Islam”) there is no Islamic democratic deficit.
Even in the Middle East, there are places of long term stability. I am not quite as pessimistic on this as other folk, though I understand the reasons for the pessimism.
Lorenzo--you are highly intelligent and good-hearted.
I have heard the world is divided into two camps:
1. Those who believe human behavior can be improved
2. Those who believe human behavior can only be managed
In the US, there are those who believe criminal prisoners can be reformed. Despite decade after decade of failure, and extremely high recidivist rates (higher than published) they still believe in rehabilitation.
In a way, so do I (taking a feather from the Catholic cap).
But maybe thinking about how to manage Islamic hatred, rather than altering it, is more realistic.
I find myself migrating into the "managing" camp. In other words, I have resigned.
Jews created a country in the Middle East surrounded by countries with the Islamic mindset. If Islam is a hate-filled and violent ideology and you create a non-Islamic country there, can you be surprised by the backlash?
How do you "manage" huge piece of land filled with foreign people whose ideology you oppose? Also, why is it the West's responsibility to do so? Would you accept anyone managing the West?
Decades ago, I wondered if the Jews would have been better off migrating to the then lightly populated west coast of Australia, creating a "New Jerusalem" at a time Australia actually needed immigrants for development.
But...the window for that closed off in the 1940s-50s.
I am not surprised at the tenaciousness of Islamic hatred for other religions. We are 1,400 years into it.
What to do now? The Jews (and increasing numbers of Christians) are there, and they do not plan to leave.
The West perhaps has no responsibility in the region.
If so, then let Israel win its war, and stop interfering. Israel could have fire-bombed Gaza and been done with it.
The West seems intent on saving Palestinian lives, while recognizing the depravity of Hamas (although not really facing up to the realities of Islam, as practiced).
Maybe that is not such a bad policy.
Sometimes, too many times, all the options are unpleasant.
Lorenzo, As well-thought out and as practical as anything I have read. Yet, as long as the West and Iran, Qatar etc. keeps subsidizing intransigence and a poisonous educational system, how will things change?
Okay so this is genius, just so you know. Also, very very Australian pragmatism - the best things about our polity.
Thank you.
Surely there must come a point when the bloodshed is enough. The conflict has slowly ground down over over 50 years--despite stupid sabre-rattling noises, the Arab countries are far less opposed to Israel than they were--and I hope that sense will prevail. 🙏🏻
Egypt and Jordan have both signed peace treaties with Israel that have stuck. In polls, Palestinians regularly nominate their three most admired governments as being US, France and Israel. Yes, some Palestinians think as you say, but a lot don’t and they have, up until now, been blocked from having any effective say.
Jordan is mildly democratic, or at least Parliamentary. Also, the Arab street also hate (or, rather, despise) the Palestinians.
Even when they were in power in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood kept the peace treaty.
BTW, the comment quality on "Lorenzo from Oz" seems far above internet norms.
Yes.
1) I hope a plan like this, or really any plan, can work. If it does, I'll be among the first to celebrate.
2) My sinking suspicion is that this won't work for two reasons. First is that the international community and the US in particular probably don't have the willpower to see something like this through to the end. Specifically, it would almost certainly require an analogue of de-Nazification that I doubt we would be willing to impose. Second, and more importantly, I don't think either the residents of Gaza or the Arab world more generally will go along with it, mostly because too many of them hate Israel and that really won't change. I would be very surprised if anything achieves a lasting resolution to this situation short of the complete relocation of all Gazans to neighboring Muslim countries.
Hate and envy Israel. But nothing in the plan requires not to continue to do so, it simply gives them something else to be getting along with.
Unfortunately, everything I've seen over the last two decades has convinced me (and has just been reinforced since Oct 7) that until the concept of a Palestinian state is clearly understood to be a fantasy that will never ever materialize and (probably) most residents of Gaza and the West Bank are relocated to neighboring countries, this will never end. Right now, for all kinds of reasons, Israel and the residents of Gaza and West Bank can't be neighbors. Arab pride, self-righteousness, and herculean levels of self-pity are a giant factor in this conflict that I don't think many in the West acknowledge because it is gauche to do so.
won't work, but might be worth trying as *why* it won't work will open a few eyes. The Islamic desire to conquer the world is non-negotiable
Thank you for making the grander point. A point already alluded to in commenting which includes the “equivalence of de-nazification.” The US is one of the three western values states to which Gaza’s population relates. The past decades of unrelenting decay and corruption descends into the banana republic with kangaroo court hearings the daily news from the republic. The clear evidence of brutal atrocities at the core of “false flag” games, White House chocolatier “accidental drowning, of course, with no relevance to poisoned peace negotiations, and so many other nefarious concerns making even the WMDs of Iraqi saber rattling seem paltry does not bode well for the peaceful solution.
Nonetheless, the proposal here does have a positive and rational advantage. Perhaps reason can prevail where extremism has been expected in contrast to the extremism that dominates where rationality was once emphasized? Let’s hope for such an upside down win in an upside down modernism.
I just hope they can find enough common ground to stop the killing. The hatred will never go away in this generation, but perhaps the next with the right approach and inputs into young minds.
> The residents of Gaza will be able to:
> Work in Israel.
> Have Israeli travel documents.
> Vote for the Gazan Legislature. (I recommend adopting the Tasmanian electoral system.)
That was the situations for decades. The reason it changed was because of constant suicide bombings and other attacks.
Hence the need to siphon out those committed, in their identity, to the abolition of Israel. Also, this is after the catastrophe.
LW - you’d better go ask your Pals that question.
The abolition of Israel is their purpose. Ask another Muslim, it’s practically a core tenet of the faith for decades.
Weed out?
A Jericho rocket or few should do it..and may well.
Add on, side problem:
David Ben Gurion warned against Israel becoming the kind of place where "blacks do all the menial work."
The Israelis have somewhat sidestepped this by importing Thai and Filipino labor, and they like the experience of working in Israel (when not getting slaughtered on Oct. 7) and then going home with a wad of cash to buy a homestead, take care of family etc.
If importing Palestinian labor leads to a permanent underclass defined by religion or ethnicity....
In any society, that leads to huge problems....
As History turns America for the first time this year has a real stake in the outcome of the Israeli fight. Not even symbolic, but very calculating our State Department (which decides the fate of American elections in 2024, as in 2020) finds itself on the horns of a dilemma. They can finally finish destroying this most troublesome Colonial project of 🇮🇱 or concentrate on America.
Not both.
Horns 24
History Turns;
In this turn of history, the conflict in Israel affects our fortunes here in America for the first time.
Nations War or Peace from Fear, Honor, Interest.
Our 🇺🇸 interest in 🇮🇱 is complicated by our domestic 🇺🇸 situation.
All 🇮🇱they really need is us 🇺🇸 not to make them the rogue nation.
🇮🇱 needed us in the Cold War after France stopped being their ally in 1967.
🇺🇸 we absolutely SHOULD NOT stab them in their hour of need for reasons foreign and domestic- and Honor.
Stabbing Israel now would have a great boosting effect for the Left in America, their greatest victory since the USSR fell, and excite them and many other appetites at the same time demoralizing the Americans who love America at the worst moment. 🇺🇸 America’s Defenders are at their lowest point of morale since Valley Forge, and absolutely in an abyss of leadership. Seeing Israel betrayed would unravel what thin lines we have left…
» Conversely failing to weaken and betray Israel would have the effect of demoralizing the American Left and energizing the Nationalist side in America.
»> but most critically The US State Department is placed on the Horns of a Dilemma; defeat Trump and MAGA by fixing the 2024 election (they fixed 2020) OR - betray Israel 🇮🇱, the last American “ally” they haven’t been able to Judas Kiss to destruction.
The State Department cannot do both. They don’t have the strength to betray 🇺🇸 and 🇮🇱, already the USG DC Uniparty while united against Trump is deeply divided and at odds over Israel. This is always desirable in Strategy- place the enemy on the Horns of a Dilemma and either Horn is worth a battle.
In this turn of history, the conflict in Israel affects our fortunes here in America for the first time.
No strategy after 1967?
Are you sure of this?
The strategy was open borders and full freedom to work in Israel.
Until labor troubles started in the late 1980s there were no troubles. Until post Soviet immigration to Israel there were plentiful jobs.
So yes cheap labor, but the 394,000 Gazans didn’t grow to millions on just UNWRA.
Then the Strategy became “our terrorist” aka Arafat.
HAMAS arises...
Until 10.7 the precious strategy was pay them and only retaliate as necessary.
The Liberal Democratic alternative was tried and decisively rejected at the polls and by arms within Gaza and in October without... they want the Israelis exterminated. They have never wavered from this, that’s all Palestine means, their only reason to exist.
Now if Israel has a strategy beyond just leveling Gaza (which is absolutely the best strategy, like it or not) then they’d be foolish to make it public.
Until then Kill them until they’re all dead, fled, or quit.
If they quit... how to ever trust again?
If Israel is wise it will grind until America is consumed by its own internal conflicts, then Israel’s hands will be free ... and yes, there was only ever one solution.
My question is why does Australia care? You have your own problems.
We have Jewish and Palestinian citizens. These controversies erupt here as well. Besides, the proposal does not commit any Australian resources, apart from our experience of making things work.
It’s unwise to even touch.
One eliminates the other.
Why do you think the British then the Americans backed both sides? It’s not kindness.
What do you do with the Palestinians who don't want to be part of a Gazan polity but instead want to be part of an international caliphate?
Disenfranchise them.
Would that be dispatch them? With the same scimitar they would use to dispatch you?
It does not seem to me possible to do any of this while leaving the West Bank under a system that even Benny Morris now describes as apartheid:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-08-07/ty-article/.premium/israeli-and-palestinian-academics-judicial-coup-and-occupation-directly-linked/00000189-cf40-d821-afdd-df64709b0000
I am afraid I do not see why not. Different territories can be administered in different ways. There is also the advantage that no one in Israel actually wants Gaza.
My understanding is that there are quite a few Israelis who do want Gaza (though much less intensely than the West Bank). I also think that what happens in the West Bank will affect what is possible in Gaza, but I guess we disagree on this.
My understanding is that group is quite fringe within Israel. Gaza and the West Bank have been not only physically separated, but in almost every other respect since 2008, when Hamas drove out or murdered all Fatah’s people. It has now had a dramatically different trauma. So, they are likely quite separable. Even more so than the two Koreas or two Germanies after 1945.
Some Israeli government officials are pushing to re-settle Gaza with Jews. Not quite so fringe a group eh?
It also still leaves Israeli opinion as much more accommodative than Palestinian opinion.
https://pcpsr.org/en/node/963
Yes of course. I'm not disputing this.
Rebuilding the settlements that Israel itself dismantled is not the same as entirely displacing the Palestinians. And the way the Knesset works, a small vote percentage wise can get you elected, even a ministry or two.
It is also clearly a non-starter, so it may be, at least in part, playing to a specific constituency.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/right-wing-israeli-ministers-join-thousands-event-calling-countrys-res-rcna135863
Is you take that that specific land previously settled and inhabited by Israeli Jews stayed empty the entire time and always belonged to Israel so they could come back and re-settle it with whoever they wanted?
Palestinians will oppose this, respond with violence and then Israel will need another land buffer, then quickly settle that with Israeli Jews. Both sides will point to the other as the bad guy and the same will go on until there's a catastrophic event. It's the rinse and repeat of the ME.
I don't think it's a non-starter. It's the expansion of Overton's window and laying the groundwork for future expansion and annexation. Back when Jewish immigration to Ottoman Palestine occurred, I'm sure there were those who said Jews are migrating to form a state and someone said that's a fringe idea. Not commenting on whether this was good or bad, but that seemingly fringe ideas cannot be dismissed as improbable.
I didn't mean that they have to be a single or connected political entity, just that the treatment of people in one will affect sentiment and disposition in the other, in ways that limit the range of political possibilities.
Possibly. Of course, that could work both ways: a workable solution for Gaza changing calculations about the West Bank.