iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

As I have asked before: who would vote in this imagined referendum on the right of return for Palestinians?

It is OK to think that neither people has such a right. But that is not what the Green resolution says.

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Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination in Israel. If you think the Palestinian people have a right to self-determination in Palestine, but the Jewish people don’t have the equivalent right, that is antisemitic.

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Hence a state embodying “the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination” could not be a state from the river to the sea with equal rights for its Jewish majority. If you think a Zionist state is by nature an ethnostate, then the state envisioned here is also an ethnostate.

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In “the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination, including the right of the Palestinian people to resistance and liberation from Israeli occupation”, it is obvious that “the Palestinian people” do not include Israeli Jews.

Matt Steinglass @mattsteinglass.bsky.social · 14h

Extremely high crime rates and a stagnant economy are also often unpopular

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Matt Steinglass @mattsteinglass.bsky.social · 15h

I think it’s more useful when people post things that are relevant responses to what I wrote

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Matt Steinglass @mattsteinglass.bsky.social · 15h

“invading one's neighbor and massacring its citizens without provocation”, ie what Russia did in Ukraine starting in 2022. “Bombing one’s neighbor in retaliation” after a massacre, ie what Israel did in Gaza from Oct 8-18 2023 when this was posted.

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Matt Steinglass @mattsteinglass.bsky.social · 15h

Nina, you seem to be misreading the post, as you may see if you read it again. That said, everything is a response to everything, but Oct 7 was an inexcusable orgy of organized murder. There is no reason to make any excuses for it, it accomplishes nothing.

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Matt Steinglass @mattsteinglass.bsky.social · 19h

What advice do we have for Marine Le Pen who protests that the press “demonizes” her?

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Matt Steinglass @mattsteinglass.bsky.social · 19h

No. And Israeli Jews are not Palestinians, so calling for Palestinian national self-determination is only morally acceptable in a 2-state solution, not a 1-state one. Read threads! Avoid context collapse!

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No, youre making a series of assumptions that are not part of what I wrote. I support the coming into existence of a Palestinian state. I am also very skeptical about the likelihood that it would treat Jews equally. That’s an acceptable part of the bargain.

It is also not at all uncontroversial that Israel exercises such rights over Palestinians in the occupied territories.

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I’m not quite clear what you mean. Do you mean that Palestinian restrictions on Jewish residency in a Palestinian state in West Bank/Gaza are taken as unacceptable by liberal 2-state advocates? I don’t think that’s true.

It would be lovely. But I would put myself in the position of an Arendt and say: please join the real world. Near the top of the agenda of a newly born Palestinian state will be payback for what the Israelis have done to its people over the last 80 years. By popular demand. This is just politics.

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On the third hand, making the same kind of argument: if you think a Palestinian state is going to treat Jewish citizens equally, I have a bridge over the Jordan to sell you.

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But there is a stronger version of the “Zionism is racism” argument based on see-we-told-you-so. That is, we said from the start (see Arendt) that by nature this kind of project is going to turn into a herrenvolk democracy ethnostate, and look, it did. That’s a powerful argument.

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I think it necessarily implies inequality around residency and citizenship rights for Jewish v non-Jewish immigrants. But a 1990s liberal vision of Israel would entail a tolerable level of inequality not that dissimilar from lots of other states.

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Agree re the de facto Israeli policy. But what makes the Green motion immoral and antisemitic, not just unworkable, is that it defines Zionism as racism but embraces the “national self-determination of the Palestinian people”. National self-determination can’t just be for one of the two peoples.

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I think pre-1948 Zionists also argued that the Jews had a right to a nation “like other peoples”, not above others. Maybe partition would have been doable in the 30s but the Brits weren’t ready to leave and the Palestinians wouldn’t have accepted it.

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“Israeli” is not a religion either. There are Israelis of all religions, including Muslims, Christians, Bahai, the somewhat recondite Druze religious practice, and Thai Buddhists; I don’t think there are any Thai-Palestinians. Hope that helps!

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What is not coherent, and becomes racist and fascist, is a 1-state solution based on national self-determination for only one of the two peoples. That is what the Green motion embraces, in its ignorance and student-leftist enthusiasm.

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Since Israel recognized the PLO there has been a choice: either a 2-state solution based on national self-determination for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, or a 1-state solution based on individual citizenship with no reference to ethnic origin. Each is philosophically coherent.

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