Truth, Justice, and the American Way

Stephen Walt's critique of our overextended, idealist, militarized, and not very bright foreign policy: The Hell of Good Intentions.

Americans have gotten rather used to running the world. Whenever news arrives about some horror or injustice, action is expected. No matter how distant the crisis, we now have interests, and assets, close-by. It is a mindset we inherited from the Greatest Generation, who build a post-war order out of constant vigilence and activity- first to reform the perpetrators of the war, and then to forestall the spread of communism. After the Soviet Union imploded, we were left free, with a vast whirring mechanism of diplomatic and military machinery. For those raised on Lone Ranger episodes and Superman comics, which may describe a good portion of the foreign policy community over the last few decades, the answer was obvious- do good.

Stephen Walt takes direct aim at this mindset, which in his telling is borne as much from laziness and stupidity as from good intentions and US interests. We have committed terrible blunders in our rush to save people from predatory states- the prime examples being Vietnam and Iraq, which cost roughly 1.3 million and 0.5 million lives respectively, though the latter remains open-ended, due to our responsibility for creating ISIS. The people responsible for these comprehensive, mind-boggling disasters should have been tried as war criminals. But instead, our system barely batted an eye, and most of the architects of both horrors went on to continued participation in the US foreign policy commmunity, often at high levels.

This is because foreign policy is a strongly political field, at least as practiced in the US. Who would have hired Jared Kushner to run US Middle East policy? No one in their right minds, that's who. But the rot runs much deeper. Foreign policy is not science, and is difficult to evaluate, especially considering our problems with prophecy. So standards are virtually absent, replaced with a go-along-get-along ethic within a tight zone of conventional ideas. A big change since the Reagan era has been the intrusion of neoconservatives into this community, via right-wing administrations and their partisan think tanks like the Cato institute, American Enterprise Insitute, and Heritage Foundation. These were the minions who pushed the Iraq war, and they keep pushing the zone of mainstream thought rightward. Their current project is to demonize Iran. Which is odd, because Iran is a more functional democracy than Saudi Arabia, and intellectually far richer and more dynamic as well. The motivation for all this comes mostly from Israel, which has tacitly allied itself with Saudi Arabia and Egypt in a new cynical status quo ... just so long as no one says anything about the Palestinians.

The checkered career of Elliott Abrams is if anything more disturbing for those who believe that officials should be accountalbe and advancement should be based on merit. Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress in the 1980's, after giving flase testimony about the infamous Iran-Contra affair. He received a pardon from President George H. W. Bush in December 1992, and his earlier misconduct did not stop George W. Bush from appointing him to a senior position on the National Security Council, focusing on the Middle East. 

Then, after failing to anticipate Hamas's victory in the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, Abrams helped foment an abortive armed coup in Gaza by Mohammed Dahlan, a member of the rival Palestinian faction Fatah. This harebrained ploy backfired completely: Hamas soon learned of the scheme and struck first, easily routing Dahlan's forces and expelling Fatah from Gaza. INsted of crippling Hamas, Abrams's machinations left it in full control of the area. 

Despite this dubious resume, Abrams subsequently landed a plum job as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where his questional conduct continues. In 2013, he tried to derail the appointment of the decorated Vienam veteran and former senator Chuch Hagel as secretary of defense by declaring that Hagel had "some kind of problem with Jews". This baseless smear led the CFR president Richard Haass to distance the council from Abrams's action, but Haass took no other steps to reprimand him. Yet, apparently, the only thing that stopped the neophyter secretary of state Rex Tillerson from appointing Abrams as deputy secretary of state in 2017 was President Donald Trump's irritation at some critica comments Abrams had voiced during the 2016 campaign.

Naturally, Abrams has recently been appointed as the Trump Administration's envoy for the crisis in Venezuela, which should inspire confidence. The most that the mainstream press can manage as a description is that he is "controversial".

What is worse, not only are egregious blunderers and arguable criminals never held to account, (Bush, Cheney, Kissinger), but truth-tellers and whistle-blowers are routinely side-lined. Remember Eric Shinseki? He was quickly sidelined from the military in the Bush administration, after giving an accurate estimate of the number of troops needed to stabilize Iraq. He was later rescued from exile by Barack Obama, but did he re-enter the military? No, he was put in charge of the VA, safely out of the way, and in an impossible job to boot.

In September 2002, for example, thirty-three international security scholars paid for a quarter-page advertisement in the New York Times' op-ed page, declaring 'War with Iraq Is Not in the U.S. National Interest.' Published at a moment when most of the inside-the-Beltway establishment strongly favored warm the ad warned that invading Iraq would divert resources from defeating Al Qaeda and pointed out that the Unites States had no plausible exit strategy and might be stuck in Iraq for years. In the sixteen-pus years since the ad was printed, none of its signatories have been asked to serve in government or advise a presidential campaign. None are members of elite foreign policy groups such as the Aspen Strategy Group, and none have spoken at the annual meetings of the Council on Foreign Relations or the Aspen Security Forum. Many of these individuals hold prominent academic positions and continue to participate in public discourse on international affairs, but their prescience in 2002 went largely unnoticed.

One interesting point that Walt makes along the way is that one capability that has atrophed due to all this dysfunction is true diplomacy. The Iran nuclear deal was one of the few recent episodes where we actually sat down with friends and enemies and hammered out a peaceful deal, agreed to by all sides. It is far more frequent these days to make big pronoucements, whether bland or insulting, then threaten punitive action like sanctions or drone strikes. Granted, the Al Qaedas and ISISs of the world are not likely to come to any Geneva tea parties, but there is a lot of good we could be doing by diplomacy, such as in Latin America and Africa, which is being left on the table. Instead, we have very secretive military activities in about 20 African countries. Militarization has colored our foreign policy to an excessive degree. And how has our "Peace Process" been going in the Middle East? This one was not a casualty of militarization, but of Israelization. Because of our failure to bring sufficient pressure to get to a Palestinian state solution, Israel continues to be an Apartheid state, and our reputation in the region is a shambles, shown to be the lapdog of Israeli interests.

The Lone Ranger brings in the bad guy to close a successful episode.

Walt's solution to these dysfunctions is to reel back our ambitions, from what he describes currently as a policy of "liberal hegemony" to one of "off-shore balancing". Liberal hegemony is the idea, which is sort of a hat-tip to Karl Marx, really, that liberal prosperous democracy is the desirable endpoint for all peoples everywhere, so we should not mind giving history a shove every now and then to get everyone there faster. The benefit for the US is clear as well- the more democracies there are, especially as encouraged by us, the more friends we have and the more stable the world in general.

Off-shore balancing, in contrast, is more hands-off, and regards US interests involved only where some region of the world is being taken over by a large hegemon, (like China), which could create such a global imbalance that we in the Western Hemisphere may be threatened. The Middle East should be left to its devices, especially as long as the Iran and Saudi axes are reasonably closely matched. Likewise, Europe is not a problem, even with Russia glowering from the east, since power is heavily diffused, and Europe even without US help is well able to take care of itself. While seemingly cynical and isolationist, this is really a very traditional approach to foreign policy, steeped in centuries of experience with Metternich-ian balance-of-power practices in Europe.

While Walt offers some very accurate and telling critiques of the state of the US foreign policy establishment, I think the prescription does not quite fit the problem and he tends to soft-pedal its implications. While the Middle East would obviously be better off with a little less US meddling, would it be better off with more Russian meddling? I have previously advocated for prompt, decisive involvement in Syria, which might have led to a better outcome than what is happening now, for both the people of Syria, and our own strategic position. But it may have been just another costly fiasco- that is what makes this field so treacherous. (Incidentally, Walt mentions the US Holocaust Museum's extensive research on Syria, especially on the prospects of US involvement. It casts a rather dubious light overall, but does suggest that early intervention can be far more effective than late intervention.) Turning to China, Walt does not mention the fate of Taiwan, of the South China sea, of the Philippines, or Japan. Would keeping Australia out of Chinese domination be a vital interest of the US? How many interests would he be willing to give up before things get truly serious?

But the deeper issue is one of stupidity. Doing less will not make us smarter. Walt gives some very positive reviews to the various anti-establishment views of Donald Trump and the demographic that he connected with in winning the presidency. Trump was all about throwing the bums out, and retrenching US foreign policy with fewer entanglements and a more modest approach. How has that turned out? Walt decries what is quite evident- our policy, which seemingly couldn't get any worse, now has gotten much worse, with a dotard and his various short-lived protectors and yes-men running things. US interests and influence throughout the world are shriveling by the hour.

A second observation is that the Iraq was not brought to us by idealism. It originated in the psychology of unfinished business on the part of Bush, Cheney, and their extended right-wing establishment. Their idealism was, as anyone could see, paper-thin pablum, matched by their total disinterest in the actual country, its people, and what was to become of them in the aftermath. Stupidity reigned supreme, and hundreds of thousands were killed, and countless more lives destroyed and ravaged for that stupidity.

The case of Vietnam was different. We had recently half-won the Korean war, and saved its Southern half from bondage- a fate that becomes more shocking every year as we view what goes on in Chinese-backed North Korea. Due to our loss of the Vietnam war, all of Vietnam remains a totalitarian state- the South would have been much better off had we/they won the war. Our involvement there was heavily idealistic. But it was stupid. The smart people knew the lay of the land, knew the experience of the French, and knew that it was a civil war that the North had a huge head start on, in comparison with the corrupt, illigitimate Southern government. It was a triumph of hope over experience.

So what we need is more experience and smarts. The US needs a better foreign policy system, not different ideals. We need to rigorously insulate our intelligence and analysis system, of which the State Department is a prominent part, from politics. That means stopping the revolving doors of personnel coming from think tanks, lobbying organizations, corporations, and political appointments. Country and region experts need to have long-term relations with their areas, not short posts. Analyses need to be given something like five-year reviews, with promotion dependent on success. Those let go should never be let back in. Accountability needs to replace hackery, corruption, and amateurism. This community needs to be de-militarized as well, which has been a rising problem for decades. These analyses should have public and secret components, with as much as possible made public so that the country can see the work that is being done, and learn what the basis of our foreign policy is. Like militarization, excessive secrecy has also degraded discourse and accountability.

Lastly, we need a more mature media discourse about foreign policy, less reactive to the news of the day, (let lone the twitter-minute), and more analytic and historically aware. Off-shore balancing is a very credible view in this discussion, but so are more idealistic approaches. Helping abused populations in foreign lands is a good thing, if it succeeds. The point is to succeeed rather than fail in our foreign policy projects, which requires deep experience, accountability, good information, and mature discussion. Perhaps we will find out that we should be doing less, once we filter out the bad ideas. Or perhaps we will find out that to do the things we might want to do (think of the second Iraq war) would be, if done properly, unrealistically expensive and unfeasible for that reason.

• Faux-ocracies are a rising challenge.
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• New Taliban, same as the old Taliban.
• Yes, we are dealing with a fascist.
• Medical insurance should be left to the private sector?
• We need a wealth tax.
• And a bigger inheritance tax.

Iran and Saudi Arabia

Modern propaganda and ancient hate.

Frontline has an excellent three-hour series on the conflict between Iran and Saudi-Arabia. They come off like minuature versions of the US and the Soviet Union- superpowers of the Muslim world enmeshed in an ideological and tribal battle that is fought through proxy forces throughout the Middle East, making a hash of smaller countries and making strange bedfellows with the likes of Israel.

The Shia-Sunni split was always an undercurrent in the Islamic world, but was sharpened by the advent of modern fundamentalism. While the Saudis have always been fundamentalist in theory and corrupt in fact, Iran plunged into total fundamentalism with the revolution of 1979. The documentary discusses how sharply this changed the dynamics in the Muslim world, with Iran suddenly vaulted into the vanguard of the fundamentalist movement. This perennial "back-to-basics" feature of religion became a deeply ideological and psychological response to the muddled end of colonialism and the general failure of modernity in the Muslim world. We hear mostly of its Sunni / Salafist incarnation, as ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. But for the Shia, it had an extra edge of tribal revolt against Sunni oppression.

Shia make up roughly 1/3 of Muslims in the Middle East, with populations in each country. They are a majority in Bahrain, though they have no role in the government. That was the situation in Iraq as well until recently. Iran's fundmentalism is sectarian, not pan-Muslim. Thus, despite ethnic divisions, it has been an instrument to unite Shia populations across the region, such as the Hezbolla party in Lebanon and the now-ruling parties in Iraq. Iran's reach is obviously limited by this sectarian character, but they have been willing to arm their friends to the hilt and send their minions into battle for the most dubious causes, especially the Assad government in Syria, which is composed of another Shia sect.

Saudi Arabia is petrified by all this, partly because they have their own Shia population, but more because their own power projection has been so bungled in comparison. They have assiduously funded fundamentalist madrassas and terrorists, and what do they have to show for it? Hatred from the West, yes, but also quite a lot of hatred from their own spawn, such as Osama Bin Laden, whose disgust with the top-heavy, spoiled, corrupt Saudi institutions was emblematic. Their best friend, the US, conquered Iraq and not only botched the whole project disastrously, but left the country in Shia hands. And in Pakistan, one of their most successful test beds of miseducation, does all the fundamentalism add up to a strong state or a good friend? No, it has led to chaos, double-dealing, and misery.

One of the themes going through this story is propaganda. No one in Iran gets Lebanese Hezbolla fighters to die in Syria for Assad without a very heavy dose of propaganda. A bunch of Saudis do not fly into the World Trade Center without lengthy indoctrination. Fundamentalism in general is the triumph of poorly thought-through ideals and archetypal images over reason and basic decency. The Palestinian cause, now in its twilight, was one long piece of performance art- of grievance and rage as policy and, occasionally, power. And the long Saudi / Wahhabi campaign of Jesuit-style fundamentalist eduction has only furthered the weakness and backwardness of the Muslim world in general, not to mention its violence, particularly against women. The record is appalling, but the mechanism teaches universal lessons- that people can be led in disastrous directions by well-crafted propaganda, based on supposedly profound fantasies.

It is something we are learning in the US as well, to our peril. Does free speech mean that private broadcast networks can spew the most pleasing, and scurrilous, falsehoods? Just how much bilge can the internet contain, and not blow up? Conflicts like the one above, between Iran and Saudi Arabia, are made possible by propaganda, which moves people to extraordinary emotion and effort. World War 2 remains a textbook example, with Germany and Italy transformed by deeply emotional, false, and effective, propaganda. We are in the US at a tipping point, with half the population feeling themselves part of the Republican team, whose life support comes from propaganda that seems, at least to this biassed observer, unworthy of any political discourse or intellectual respect, headed by a President who lies so casually and habitually that we now take it as absolutely normal. How can reason and empathy penetrate this jungle of mean self-righteousness?

Returning to the topic, the current administration's support for Saudi Arabia and hatred for Iran is not easy to understand, on the face of it. Saudi Arabia is at least as destabilizing a force in the world and in the Middle East. Both are explicitly fundamentalist, and both seek to export their ideologies abroad. Both are sources of oil, though the Saudis have far more and play the lead role in world oil prices. We do not care that much on our own behalf anymore, but have strong interests in keeping the oil infrastructure (political, military, and physical) of the Middle East intact on behalf of the developed world, for much of which (Europe, Japan) we have explicit defense responsibilities. So sure, we want to be friendly with Saudi Arabia and continue to have military bases in the area. But we have interest in friendship with Iran as well, which has far greater human and intellectual potential. Both countries have a fraught relationship with Israel, though Saudi Arabia has of late been much more accommodating, in its cynical and conservative/authoritarian way. But Iran's problems with Israel seem similarly superficial, just a way to gain credibility with the Palestinians and other disaffected Muslims. And our own difficult history with Iran, and their vitriolic propagada against us, is hardly reason to fall in line with Saudi Arabia's sectarian program. It would be better to turn the other cheek, as the Obama administration started to do.

If the struggle for supremacy in the Middle East were prompting a flowering of cultural, scholarly, and scientific advances, that would be one thing. But the reality is far more tawdry, where the Saudis just buy more arms from the US to dump on Yemen, and Iran coopts and arms Shia communities in the neighborhood, destroying Lebanon in the process, and bidding to do the same in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. The collision of irrational ideologies, served by up-to-the-minute propaganda methods, run by governing structures ranging from dysfunctional to medieval, is a toxic brew not likely to enhance the culture or living conditions of those in the region any time soon.

• The next level for propaganda.
• What happens when police don't care.

A Son of Hamas Turns His Back

Review of the documentary, the Green Prince. Spoiler alert.

In one of the more bizarre twists of the Palestinian drama, the son of a Hamas leader turned into a tireless worker for the Shin Bet from about 1997 to  2007. Now he lives in the US, at undisclosed locations. This film is essentially an memoir of this story, with two people talking to the camera, Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son, and Gonen Ben Yitzhak, his Israeli intellegence handler.

The format was oddly compelling, because the people are compelling- intelligent and dedicated. But to what? Yousef was raised in the West Bank, the eldest son in a leading family, and became his father's right hand. His father was one of the main people you would hear screaming on the news, preaching publicly about the evils of Israel, the righteousness of Islam and the Intifada, and the need for Hamas to run things in the West Bank as well as Gaza. As Hamas goes, he was not the most extreme, but nor was he a member of the Palestinian Authority- the Palestinian patsies.

Father HassanYousef at a Hamas Rally.

So turning to the Shin Bet was unthinkable in tribal terms. But when Yousef had his first experience in prison, courtesy of an Israeli checkpoint where he was found with some guns, he had a chance to compare tribes. While the Israelis were harsh, they had limits and operated under some kind of lawful system.

The Hamas cell in the prison, however, was brutally sadistic. Yousef describes the killing of scores of putative spies and informants in horrific fashion, with scant evidence. For an idealistic youth, it presented a problem, especially in contrast to the idealized version of the Palestinian cause that he had grown up with. Where at first he didn't take the offer from the Shin Bet seriously, now he had second thoughts. What if his idealism was more about non-violence, peace, and saving lives than about tribal competition?

There follows a lengthy career relaying information from his position at the center of Hamas with his father to the core of Shin Bet, preventing attacks, preventing assassinations, and also, in essence, dictating his father's fate. A central conundrum of intelligence work like this is how to use the informant's information without giving away his or her identity. To maintain Yousef's cover for a decade bespeaks very careful work on all sides.

But the larger issue remains untouched. While Yousef comes off as heroic and idealistic, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is no more justified by Israel's lawful and partial restraint (or by its relentless stealing of land) than it is by the bottomless resentment and madness of Hamas. Treat people like prisoners and animals, and they often act that way. Moreover, Israel holds total control. They need no "partners" to resolve their doomed and immoral occupation. They only need to get out, and get their settlers out.

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• Another case of pay for performance.
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• Our medical system is so dysfunctional and complex that error is third leading cause of death.
• It almost makes you nostalgic for Richard Nixon.
• Feel the heart, and the Bern.
• Deflation and below-target monetary growth is a policy mistake.
• Will extreme Christians let go of politics, at long last?
• A little brilliant parenting.

PTSD politics

Thoughts on Palestine as a case of PTSD politics.

Trauma and victimization are profoundly and permanently damaging. Recent stories about Iraq veterans show the permanent changes that can be wrought by PTSD, analogous to the permanent brain alterations that follow tobacco, alcohol, or cocaine addiction. Our brains are plastic and impressionable, degraded by degrading conditions. People who are ground down by traumatic conditions are prone to act irrationally and harbor bottomless resentments. Conversely, those brought up in security and prosperity tend to be optimistic and open-minded. That is the underlying rationale for America's "special role" in world affairs, borne as much of our long-term prosperity and security as of our ideals and political example.

To illustrate, the post-9/11 mood on the east coast, especially in Washington, was completely out of proportion to the threat posed, either by the World Trade towers attack or the antrax attacks. The terrorists terrorized (some of) us out of our collective wits without doing very much damage in absolute terms, mostly because Americans had been coddled for decades in a placid, secure country whose major questions revolved around the levels of interest rates and consumer confidence. Our much-vaunted ideals collapsed in a heartbeat, replaced by the vengeful drum-beating of an opportunistic president.

Imagine how we would have reacted had such devastation rained down on us on a daily basis, as in the recent Gaza war, where proportionate damage would have been 83,000 dead per week in the US. Or the recent civil carnage in Iraq, where proportionate damage in the US would have been roughly 20,000 to 30,000 dead per week, every week, for six years. The mind reels at what would have happened to our society. (Compare also the current US-wide death toll of ~825 per week from car accidents and 8,300 premature deaths per week from tobacco).

With this perspective, we can appreciate the intransigence and horror of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. Locked in enmity and mutual trauma, they hate and are hated. They seek revenge and self-respect in the face of dehumanization. The open each other's scabs, and rub salt in the wounds.

Who is at fault? Well, the problem started with the displaced trauma of European antisemitism, reaching its climax in the holocaust.* While Palestinians where largely pro-Hitler and antisemitic by long Islamic tradition, they were peripheral to the convulsive drama of Europe's Jews .. until those Jews showed up on their doorstep, looking for a home. The Zionist project long pre-dated World War two, but that was when a trickle turned into a flood, and integration of the rising tide of Jews became impossible. They wanted their own space- Lebensraum, one might say- in Palestine.

They pursued all sorts of means, fair and foul, to get it, ranging from purchases of land to terrorism of the local Arabs. Already from the start, the Palestinians had dysfunctional politics, self-defeating reponses, and some bewilderment as to why, exactly, they were supposed to give up their land because some Europeans had been evil to other Europeans. The claims of Jews to their promised land fell on deaf Palestinian ears, as did the pleadings of the British, who were nominally in charge of the territory. The whole deal just did not make any sense.

Yet with force majeure on their side, and the sympathy of the former colonial powers as well as the US and the UN, the Israeli state was born in the teeth of Arab enmity- teeth which were shortly chipped and broken on the highly westernized military know-how of the young Jewish state in the 1948, 1967, and 1973 wars, culminating in Israel's control of the entire territory of Palestine. Incidentally, as a Europeanized, Westernized outpost, Israel also fulfilled in an ironic way the dreams of the European Crusades for conversion and repossession of the so-called "holy" land.

The traditional and Biblical method of dealing with the Palestinians at this point would have been to kill the males of age and sell the rest into slavery. Unfortunately, the requisite markets for slaves no longer existed, and the Jews had raised their ethical norms in the intervening millennia. Forced exile was another option that was explored, (called, in our hygenic age, "ethnic cleansing"), but naturally, no neighbor wanted to take in the now-traumatized and bitter Palestinians, or indirectly thereby help Israel out of its enormous problem.

So Israel was faced with an existential and moral conundrum: how to deal with an embittered enemy on their doorstep, in territory under their own control, within their own ethical precepts, so recently sharpened by their own travails? The answer was to semi-officially apply a water torture of gradual land purchase and expropriation driven by the most rabidly religious settlers, (who, because they are viewed as "more Jewish" than other Israelis, are given a pass on their unethical behavior and fanaticism, not to mention the irony of being excused from military service), along with big helpings of degrading treatment and collective punishment of the Palestinians via the ensuing occupation. In return, the Palestinians mounted what resistance they could, generally small-scale terrorism and guerrilla warfare.

It is clear that Israel has fundamentally violated its own morals and those of the modern enlightened age in its treatment of the Palestinians. The Palestinians for their part have violated the same norms, though they never subscribed to them, and would never have presented any problem had their territory not been disturbed in the first place. At any rate, the problem is one for the Israelis to resolve, since it is they who have the power: the airforce, the billions in weaponry supplied by the US, the nuclear bombs. For them to claim that the Palestinians are not "partners for peace" is totally disingenuous, since the historical process they have sponsored has rendered the Palestinians justifiably aggrieved, embittered, and traumatized, not to mention powerless in all respects other than to say the one word they can manage ... "No".

It might be useful to note here that there are only two ways to win a war- one is to kill the enemy, and the other is for the enemy to give up. An enemy who refuses to give up is one you can not defeat, (see Vietnam), thus the importance of winning "hearts and minds" in the current parlance, which is far more important than realized, even now.

I had thought that the border wall against the West Bank was the beginning of a good solution, hewing the old adage that good fences make good neighbors. But unfortunately, the Israelis placed the fence not on the 1967 border which would have been the logical (and legal) place to put it, but snaking through Palestinian territory, breaking up numerous communities, all in an effort to include as many settler zones as possible, and to impair as many Palestinian communities in their vicinty as possible.

And on top of that, they still couldn't stay out of the West Bank or Gaza, continuing to build settlements on the other side of the fence, building roads restricted to Israelis, blocking Palestinian roads, patrolling, subjecting Palestinians to checkpoints, blockading trade from time to time, bombing and destroying buildings, etc., etc., etc. So the fence has been highly successful from the Israeli perspective, keeping the other side at bay and pacified in a state comparable to apartheid, as Jimmy Carter put it. But it has not been an equitable boundary upon which to build a peaceful or neighborly relationship.

That is where we are now, and the way forward is for Israel to do what is right- not to give up its own territory in the form of a "right of return" for Palestinian re-assimilation of Israel, but to fairly divide the territory using the 1967 border as a starting point, and make that division stick by getting out of the Palestinian side completely, with a relocated fence. The Palestinians will need a road corridor to communicate between the West Bank and Gaza, so negotiations could exchange land, inch-for-inch, for such a corridor in exchange for selected settlements on the Israeli border.

We can grant that the Palestinian political system is thoroughly dysfunctional, corrupt, and self-defeating. That is no reason for Israel to not do what is right- to disengage its expropriation and occupation activities and let the Palestinians take care of themselves (with reasonable means to do so, like ports of their own in Gaza, open trade, etc). Only by disengaging will either side be able to heal its particular traumas and wounds.

Additionally, the Palestinians have been egged on and used by their false friends in Iran and Syria, doing themselves precious little good, and keeping them from tending to their own interests. The only way to break these relationships is to cut the ground from under the extremists by unilaterally offering and carrying out a fair deal for the Palestinian people.

At this point, one might ask about the Gaza situation. Didn't Israel disengage there, and didn't Hamas keep sending rockets into Israel? I would offer that compared to the problems of outright occupation, the problems of occasional rockets were minor. Additionally, the disengagement was far from complete, since Israel turned around and blockaded the elected Hamas government and otherwise made life very difficult for Gaza. And the proper solution to the rocket attacks was (and remains) to reply with immediate return fire to the point of rocket origin- easily possible with basic spotting capability- rather than to wait in silence, and then indulge in a frenzy of collective punishment, intended to "send a message" or "teach a lesson" in the form of 100-to-1 killing rates ... lessons that are never learned at the point of a gun. (See a revolting piece of embedded reporting in TNR.)

The remaining problem will be their continuing economic relationship, which is extensive. Palestinian workers endure dehumanizing daily crossings to work in Israel, and many other critical if fraught relationships exist. No doubt Israel will be tempted to exert pressure on its neighbor in perpetuity by these means, its economy being far more vibrant and influential. It is, of course, a temptation to be resisted, since nothing good comes of such pressure, as amply documented in the relationship to date. Israel's interest on every count- demographically, economically, and strategically, is to promote the economic development of Palestine, and Israel should offer treaties to that effect.

In the same vein, it is not Israel's job or right to control the tunnels or other trade routes into Gaza. If Gazans want to import their own bombs, tanks, etc., they should be able to do so. Using such weapons is another matter, but it is ultimately deceptive as well as futile to claim disengagement from the Palestinians while controlling their most basic contacts with the outside world. Without having responsibility for themselves, Palestinians will never take responsibility vis-a-vis Israel.

At any rate, the solution lies in fairness, separation, and disengagement. The only power the Palestinians have is to say no to the Israeli offers of peace, to offer token resistance with small arms and suicide terror, or rioting and rocks when pressed to extremis. Even this power/resentment would largely dissolve if Israel unilaterally provided a fair and sustainable territorial solution as outlined above, rather than continuing to treat the Palestinians as subhuman objects of slow-motion expropriation. And how do we get Israel to do what is right? Simply by withdrawing our various forms of support if they don't. Whether Israel got to this intransigent and immoral position consciously or not, the US has the leverage to dislodge them from it. (See a Cohn piece on tough love..)

It is sad and ironic that, to realize their Zionist dream, Jews turned around and created the very ghettos, dehumanization, and hatred that they fled in Europe. It is time to recover the humanity of both sides, by giving the Palestinians what is right (with or without negotiations) and allowing both sides to begin a healing process that will take generations.

Related links:

• Podcasted discussion along the lines above, with Antony Loewenstein, heard after I wrote this.
  
• Bush secretly supplies arms to Fatah, in hopes of a coup against Hamas.
  
• Friedman makes similar points, indirectly.
  
• Cohen, on how similar rational engagement with Iran would be extremely helpful.
  
• Lengthy podcast on Israel and the fence, putatively "balanced".
• Lengthy historical treatment.
  
• Frontline segment about settlers.
• Later article on Obama's reluctance in this area.
• Later, Hitchens with an excellent piece on Israeli clerical extremism

Incidentally, an excellent review of Darwin, on this anniversary

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* Let me note as an aside that one of the anti-semites in chief was none other than the founder of Protestantism- Martin Luther:

Martin Luther, "On the Jews and their lies", 1543

My advice, as I said earlier, is: First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss in sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire. That would demonstrate to God our serious resolve and be evidence to all the world that it was in ignorance that we tolerated such houses, in which the Jews have reviled God, our dear Creator and Father, and his Son most shamefully up till now, but that we have now given them their due reward.

... Third, that they be forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give thanks, to pray, and to teach publicly among us and in our country.

... Fourth, that they be forbidden to utter the name of God within our hearing.

... So let us beware. In my opinion the problem must be resolved thus: If we wish to wash our hands of the Jews' blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country.

... But since they lack the power to do this publicly, they remain our daily murderers and bloodthirsty foes in their hearts. Their prayers and curses furnish evidence of that, as do the many stories which relate their torturing of children and all sorts of crimes for which they have often been burned at the stake or banished.