WE ARE ALL KITH AND KIN,
only 6° of separation among us
Monday, January 12, 2015
I'm old and am accustomed to spending time alone; even so, I'd be hard pressed to choose between the Saudi barbarism of canning and he US barbarism os indefinite solitary confinement.
It's no good joining Mercutio in saying "a pox[?] on both your houses"; curses are no longer effective; urge kindness whenever you can. Urge Governor Jerry Brown to abolish solitary confinement in the Pelican Bay prison. Close all prisons; use creative alternatives.
Global outrage at Saudi Arabia as jailed blogger receives public flogging
Kingdom stays silent as protesters contrast its opposition to Paris attacks on free speech with its own attacks on free speech
US secretary of state John Kerry attends a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Jeddah. Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally of the US and UK. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Saudi Arabia is remaining silent in the face of global outrage at the public flogging of the jailed blogger Raif Badawi, who received the first 50 of 1,000 lashes on Friday, part of his punishment for running a liberal website devoted to freedom of speech in the conservative kingdom.
Anger at the flogging – carried out as the world watched the bloody denouement of the Charlie Hebdo and Jewish supermarket jihadi killings in Paris – focused on a country that is a strategic ally, oil supplier and lucrative market for the US, Britain and other western countries but does not tolerate criticism at home.
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Badawi was shown on a YouTube video being beaten in a square outside a mosque in Jeddah, watched by a crowd of several hundred who shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and clapped and whistled after the flogging ended. Badawi made no sound during the flogging and was able to walk back unaided afterwards.
“Raif was escorted from a bus and placed in the middle of the crowd, guarded by eight or nine officers,” a witness told Amnesty International.
“He was handcuffed and shackled but his face was not covered. A security officer approached him from behind with a huge cane and started beating him.
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“Raif raised his head towards the sky, closing his eyes and arching his back. He was silent, but you could tell from his face and his body that he was in real pain.”
Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar, told the Guardian from Montreal on Sunday: “Many governments around the world have protested about my husband’s case. I was optimistic until the last minute before the flogging. But the Saudi government is behaving like Daesh [a derogatory Arabic name for Islamic State or Isis].”
Saudi Arabia joined other Arab and Muslim countries in condemning the murder of 12 people at the Paris satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo but angry comments highlighted its double standard in meting out a cruel punishment to a man who was accused of insulting Islam.
One woman at Sunday’s Paris solidarity rally carried a placard declaring: “I am Raif Badawi, the Saudi journalist who was flogged.” Others protested at the presence of the Saudi foreign minister.
Badawi was sentenced last May to 10 years’ imprisonment and 1,000 lashes – 50 at a time over 20 weeks – and fined 1m Saudi riyals (£175,000). He has been held since mid-2012, and his Free Saudi Liberals website, established to encourage debate on religious and political matters in Saudi Arabia, is closed.
He is expected to receive another 50 lashes this Friday.
Arabic Twitter users condemned Saudi Arabia for behaving like Isis – part of the argument that the fundamental values promoted by the Saudi state do not differ from those that are carried to a brutal extreme by the jihadi group that controls parts of Syria and Iraq.
“Just a reminder,” tweeted one Tunisian woman. “Those who criticise Isis, which beheads and flogs people, and lines up children to watch, are the ones who are making excuses for the flogging of a man in Saudi Arabia. They are all Isis.”
Saudi Arabia is one of five Arab countries in the US-led coalition fighting Isis. It has arrested hundreds of people for alleged links to terrorism and imposed penalties on those travelling abroad to fight – though it still wants the overthrow of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
About 2,500 Saudis have fought with Isis.
The US, EU and others publicly urged Riyadh not to go ahead with the flogging. Britain’s Foreign Office said: “The UK condemns the use of cruel and degrading punishment in all circumstances.”
A spokesman said on Sunday that concerns about the case continued to be expressed “at all levels”. There is no sign that the Saudis’ western allies will take any punitive action to back up their protests.
“The Saudis have a policy for inside the country where they want to show that they are pious and protect the faith,” said Ali al-Ahmed, of the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs.
“Outside they project the opposite impression, that they are liberals and that it’s ordinary people who are savage and conservative.
“That’s why the west says: ‘Yes, we need to protect the Saudi royals because the alternative is Osama bin Laden.’
“It’s worked for the Saudis and it gives the west an excuse not to support any kind of change or reform.”
Badawi’s punishment is part of a wider campaign against domestic dissent. His lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair, was sentenced to 15 years in prison last July because of criticism of human rights abuses.
His case resumes on Monday, with the government reportedly seeking an even harsher sentence.
Fadhil al-Manasif is facing 14 years in prison on charges stemming from his assistance to journalists covering protests over the treatment of Shia Muslims in the Sunni-dominated country.
John Gardner, quoted with approval by David Brooks in the article reprinted here, was born in 1933 as I was, and who died in 1982, before he found out how being old might have modified his beliefs..
Brooks quotes Gardner as saying, 61 years ago when Gardner was a young sprout:
“Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you. ... You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life.”
Gardner’s quotation is a standard — and correct — Existentialist statement of meaning; it grew out of the experiences of those Continental theologians and philosophers who survived the destruction of all systems of governance, political and theological, that Westerners had traditionally believed in.
Existentialist thought is comparable with some Buddhist thought, and perhaps with thoughts of other peoples who have witnesses great destruction. It is opposed by Han thought, which is outwardly-directed, and by Muslim thought, which is deductive and doomed.
Brooks quotes Gardner with approval, then implicitly urges us to reject him, substituting deductive systems in its place. Brooks would have us adopt "objective and eternally true standards of justice and injustice”.
Brooks does this often in his opinion pages. I wonder why canons of belief are so important to him. Do you feel the need for outside authority to validate your life?
And Brooks is fun to shoot at.
THE OPINION PAGES | OP-ED COLUMNIST The Problem With MeaningJAN. 5, 2015
David Brooks
Not long ago, a friend sent me a speech that the great civic leader John Gardner gave to the Stanford Alumni Association 61 years after he graduated from that college. The speech is chock-full of practical wisdom. I especially liked this passage: “The things you learn in maturity aren’t simple things such as acquiring information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior. You learn not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage your tensions. You learn that self-pity and resentment are among the most toxic of drugs. You find that the world loves talent but pays off on character. “You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you; they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.” Gardner goes on in this wise way. And then, at the end, he goes into a peroration about leading a meaningful life. “Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you. ... You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life.” Gardner puts “meaning” at the apogee of human existence. His speech reminded me how often we’ve heard that word over the past decades. As my Times colleague April Lawson puts it, “meaning” has become the stand-in concept for everything the soul yearns for and seeks. It is one of the few phrases acceptable in modern parlance to describe a fundamentally spiritual need. Yet what do we mean when we use the word meaning? The first thing we mean is that life should be about more than material success. The person leading a meaningful life has found some way of serving others that leads to a feeling of significance. Second, a meaningful life is more satisfying than a merely happy life. Happiness is about enjoying the present; meaning is about dedicating oneself to the future. Happiness is about receiving; meaningfulness is about giving. Happiness is about upbeat moods and nice experiences. People leading meaningful lives experience a deeper sense of satisfaction. In this way, meaning is an uplifting state of consciousness. It’s what you feel when you’re serving things beyond self. Yet it has to be said, as commonly used today, the word is flabby and vacuous, the product of a culture that has grown inarticulate about inner life. Let me put it this way: If we look at the people in history who achieved great things — like Nelson Mandela or Albert Schweitzer or Abraham Lincoln — it wasn’t because they wanted to bathe luxuriously in their own sense of meaningfulness. They had objective and eternally true standards of justice and injustice. They were indignant when those eternal standards were violated. They subscribed to moral systems — whether secular or religious — that recommended specific ways of being, and had specific structures of what is right and wrong, and had specific disciplines about how you might get better over time. Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyMeaningfulness tries to replace structures, standards and disciplines with self-regarding emotion. The ultimate authority of meaningful is the warm tingling we get when we feel significant and meaningful. Meaningfulness tries to replace moral systems with the emotional corona that surrounds acts of charity.
Because it’s based solely on sentiment, it is useless. There are no criteria to determine what kind of meaningfulness is higher. There’s no practical manual that would help guide each of us as we move from shallower forms of service to deeper ones. There is no hierarchy of values that would help us select, from among all the things we might do, that activity which is highest and best to do. Because it’s based solely on emotion, it’s fleeting. When the sensations of meaningful go away then the cause that once aroused them gets dropped, too. Ennui floods in. Personal crisis follows. There’s no reliable ground. The philosophy of meaningfulness emerges in a culture in which there is no common moral vocabulary or framework. It emerges amid radical pluralism, when people don’t want to judge each other. Meaningfulness emerges when the fundamental question is, do we feel good? Real moral systems are based on a balance of intellectual rigor and aroused moral sentiments. Meaningfulness is pure and self-regarding feeling, the NutraSweet of the Soul.
Today's Guardian as an article with new new and old news:
The new news:
Two Pakistani intelligence officials said US drone-fired missiles had struck a militant compound in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan early on Sunday, killing seven militants and wounding four. The compound, around 300 metres from the Afghan border, was used by fighters loyal to the Pakistani Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur as well as Uzbek militants.
Also see The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace article about likely jihadist activity in Central Asia, discussed in this blog here.
The old news in today's Guardian is this:
The covert US drone programme has eliminated several top militants but has also resulted in civilian casualties, making it extremely unpopular among Pakistanis, who condemn it as violation of their country’s sovereignty.
Have we written off Pakistan as an ally in the struggle against the Islamic State? There is no substantial difference between militant Islamics in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Pakistan has The Bomb. Droning Pakistan seems counter-productive, when viewed from the Middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Here are some militants. Can you tell what country they are from?
The following Brooks' opinion piece is an interesting literary conceit.
Brooks is more optimistic about the future of a civil society that has millions of prisoners and no visible plan for change; but that doesn't fit Brooks' romantic vision.
This observation is central, and wrong:
Like Churchill, he is wisest when things are going wrong. He has been a pessimist about the Arab world. As the Arab Spring has deteriorated, as Palestinian democracy led to Hamas, as run of the mill extremists have lost ground to the Islamic State, Bibi’s instincts have basically been proved correct.
See what you think. What you and the World thinks about Israel's present and future is important.
The Opinion Pages| OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Age of Bibi
David Brooks
Politics, culture and the social sciences.
JAN. 1, 2015
METULA, Israel — If I were a political novelist, I’d try to write a novel about Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel.
The story would be partly Nixonian. Netanyahu is surpassingly brilliant, as even his opponents here concede. He knows the minute guts of Israeli politics and has read deeply into big history and grand strategy. He is also said to be suspicious, solitary and insular. It is hard to stay on good terms with him, whether you are on his staff, or his nation’s closest ally.
The story would be partly Kennedyesque. The Netanyahu clan was presided over by Benjamin’s brilliant father Benzion, the great medieval historian. The eldest brother Jonathan was the golden child. When Jonathan died in the raid on Entebbe in 1976, hopes shifted to Benjamin, who is known as Bibi. Political analysts have spent decades psychoanalyzing the family dynamic, with mixed results, but a novelist who studied Sophocles or Tolstoy might be able to make some sense of it.
The story would be partly Churchillian. Netanyahu sees himself in world historical terms, and admires Theodor Herzl and Winston Churchill — two men who saw dangers ahead of other people. Netanyahu obviously lacks many of Churchill’s qualities, like playful charm, but he has a profound nationalist passion and a consuming historical consciousness.
Like Churchill, he is wisest when things are going wrong. He has been a pessimist about the Arab world. As the Arab Spring has deteriorated, as Palestinian democracy led to Hamas, as run of the mill extremists have lost ground to the Islamic State, Bibi’s instincts have basically been proved correct.
The story would be part Shakespearean. Nearly every political leader has one close friend or spouse, often female, who is widely hated. People can’t blame the leader for slights, so they blame her. In Israel, the role is played by Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, who has been the subject of fascination and scorn for decades: She is often described as Lady Macbeth. Few know her exact role, but, it is said, she exiles the disloyal, shapes his politics, mistreats servants and distracts him when he is supposed to be running the country. Obviously, any novel about Netanyahu and modern Israel would have to be told from her vantage point. The narrative voice would be electric.
The story would be part “Citizen Kane.” Netanyahu rose to fame via CNN. His rise and survival are intertwined with changes in media, with the decline of old newspapers that are generally hostile, and the rise of new cable networks and outlets that are often his allies. Ferociously tending his image, his wars with his foes in the Israeli press have been epic.
Finally, the story would be part Machiavelli. The great Renaissance philosopher argued that it is best to be both loved and feared, but if you have to choose one, it is better to be feared. Netanyahu is not loved, especially by those in his party. But he is feared and acknowledged, the way any large, effective object is feared and respected.
I’m visiting Israel for the 18th or 19th time (my son is currently a member of the Lone Soldiers Program, which allows people from around the world to serve in the Israeli military). I asked a couple of smart Israelis what their coming elections are about. They said that the elections are about one thing: What do you think of Netanyahu? Such is the outsized role he plays in the consciousness of this nation.
No one has a simple view of him. To some, he is a monster who has expanded the settlements on the West Bank, which are a moral stain and do calamitous damage to Israel’s efforts to win support around the world. To some, he is the necessary man in hard times, the vigilant guardian as the rest of the Middle East goes berserk.
Both viewpoints have some truth. To me, his caution is most fascinating. For all his soaring rhetoric and bellicosity, he has been a defensive leader. He seems to understand that, in his country’s situation, the lows are lower than the highs are high. The costs of a mistake are bigger than the benefits of an accomplishment. So he is loath to take risks. He doesn’t do some smart things, like improve life for Palestinians on the West Bank, but he doesn’t do unpredictable dumb things, like prematurely bomb Iran. He talks everything through, and his decisions shift and flip as the discussions evolve.
If you think trends in the Middle East will doom Israel unless it acts, then this defensiveness is a disaster. If you think, as I do, that Israel has to wait out the current spasm of Islamist radicalism, then this caution has its uses.
Israeli voters haven’t warmed to Netanyahu over the past quarter-century. But they have come to think more like him, accepting that this conflict will endure, digging in for a dogged struggle. For good and ill, he has refashioned the national mind.
The article below has a brief explanation of the Turkic Council.
The Turkic Council compares itself to the European Union, aborning. Membership presently is limned to Turkic-speaking nations,
Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan in aqua,
are members of the Turkic Council.
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, in blue,
are not yet members
. . . but that may not be such a barrier as is it would at first seem to be. Hungarian membership is being considered. Hungarian is part of the Finno-Ugric family of languages,
. . .which is a part of the Altaic family, originating in the Altai c Mountains,
. . . a large family which may include Korean and Japanese. See A Brief Exploration of the Altaic Hypothesis. Such an extended view of "Turkic" could include a great many Russians and Mongolians.
Thw West needs many coungerweights to Chineseexpnionist aims in Central Asia. Turkey is a NATO member now and Azerbaijan would welcome membership, as wuld Georgia. In the few short years since the Turkic Council was first envisioned, it has grown significantly. It deserves support from the West.
Ramil Hasanov: We consider Turkic Council ‘mini model of EU’[ 29 December 2014 13:10 ]
“We’re not a military bloc, but a political-economical organization”
Istanbul. Mayis Alizadeh – APA. The operational mechanism of the Turkic Council is based on discussing every issue in detail, thoroughly studying and analyzing desires of member countries, and carrying them to the signing stage. Areas coordinated by the Turkic Council are expanding as relations among its member countries continue to develop. There are currently 12 areas that we coordinate:
1) Foreign Affairs; 2) Customs; 3) Education; 4) Culture; 5) Tourism; 6) Sports; 7) Economy; 8) Industry; 9) Taxes; 10) Transportation; 11) Information technology and innovation; 12) Communications and infrastructure.
This was stated by Ramil Hasanov, Secretary General of the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States, in an interview with APA.
He said any matter brought up to develop cooperation in these areas is first discussed in Istanbul with the participation of officials from member state’s related ministries as well as relevant diplomats of the Council.
“Later on, ministers hold discussions and documents adopted are submitted to us. As the secretary general of the Turkic Council, we bring up final documents at the annual summit of heads of state and report them. Draft resolutions are then presented to the summit, and after draft resolutions are signed by heads of state, we carry out control on the execution of resolutions passed. I would to stress one point that the Turkic Council owes its dynamic and effective activity to the strong political will of the heads of state of the four member states. That very political will enables us to bring our activity to standards of international organizations,” he noted.
R. Hasanov said some people liken the Turkic Council to a non-governmental organization.
“It is quite wrong. The Turkic Council is an official international organization established to expand cooperation between the four member states. From this perspective, we consider the Turkic Council “mini-model of the European Union”. All international organizations, including the United Nations, OSCE and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation recognizes the Council just so. We are not a military block, but a political and economic organization aimed at developing relations between fraternal countries on the basis of voluntariness, consensus and mutual respect. The main objective of the Turkic Council is to contribute to peace, stability, economic welfare, tolerance and rapprochement between peoples. We have no religious, linguistic and racial differences. We rest on universal and humanistic values. The Turkic Council includes Astana-based Academy of Turkic World, Baku-based TURKPA and Turkic Cultural Heritage Foundation, as well as Ankara-based TURKSOY,” he added.
To the question about the non-accession of Uzbekistan to the Council, as well as the fact that despite the participation of Turkmen president in the Council Summit on September 16, 2010, Turkmenistan still refuses to join the Council, R. Hasanov said the document on the establishment of the European Union was signed by only 3 countries, but now the EU includes 28 countries.
“The Turkic countries are located in a region with rich natural resources. The Turkic Council aims at improving the welfare of the people in the region and providing them with a happy future. Therefore, from the very beginning we wanted Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to take an active part in the Turkic Council. We remain hopeful and want Uzbekistan to join the Council. Our doors are always open. As for Turkmenistan, we are extremely satisfied with its activity in the Turkish Council within the past two years. The deputy prime minister of Turkmenistan attended our summit held in Gabala in 2013. And we were also pleased with Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov’s participation at the Bodrum summit in June. Officials of Turkmenistan’s relevant bodies continue to attend our summits. I believe that the probability of joining the Turkic Council in other countries in the near future is high. Our main condition is that one of the official languages of the countries wishing to join the Council is the Turkic language. From this perspective, I would advise to closely follow the policy of Hungary. The Hungarian delegation asked the TURKPA with the intention of becoming a member with observer status, and the delegation visited Baku for this purpose. We discussed this issue and accepted Hungary as an observer member of TURKPA. With respect to Hungary’s accession to the Turkic Council, if we are applied in this regard, the decision about Hungary’s accession will be taken by the heads of the Turkic Council member states. Maybe, in the future other countries such as Macedonia and Albania will apply to cooperate with us. It’s known that there are 30 million people of Turkic origin in Russia. If Russia welcomes any cooperation with the Turkic Council, we will stand ready to discuss it and pass necessary decisions,” he completed.
An editorial by Roger Cohen in today's New York Timespictures Palestine in Kafkaesque terms: Gar Kein Ausweg - No Way Out At All. But Deutsche Welle also reported today that Sweden has recognized Palestine, the first long-term EU member to do so, to Netanyahu's impotent rage.
It is an ugly picture, and the editorial raises a hope that the new elections in Israel may see a post-Bibi
government able to cut through the Gordian knot.
Netanyahu plays a dangerous game.
For example the Saudi government that keeps Islamists in chick for Israel fears a take-over by the super-Islamic State, on the ground that the present Saudi government is insufficiently extreme in its application of Sharia restrictions on its people. The new co-educational King Abdullah Science and Technology University
allows men and women to attend classes unsupervised, an unprecedented betrayal of the powerful clergy.
Sheik Saad bin Naser al-Shethri from his duties on the powerful government-sanctioned Council of Senior Islamic Scholars, for publicly condemning co-educational practices and science teaching not vetted by the clergy.
The clergy follows Wahhabism; so does the Islamic Sgage.
If the Islamic State succeeds, it will fall heir to billions of Saudi dollars to use against Israel.
If the Islamists in Pakistan succeed in taking control of that nation's atomic weapons, Israel will wish it had only Iran to worry about. Pakistan located its atomic arsenal near the Islamist Northwest Territories.
None of this many happen. Even worse things may come about before the Islamic State plays its hand and disappears from the World Stage.
JERUSALEM — Uneasiness inhabits Israel, a shadow beneath the polished surface. In a violent Middle Eastern neighborhood of fracturing states, that is perhaps inevitable, but Israelis are questioning their nation and its future with a particular insistence. As the campaign for March elections begins, this disquiet looks like the precursor of political change. The status quo, with its bloody and inconclusive interludes, has become less bearable. More of the same has a name: Benjamin Netanyahu, now in his third term as prime minister. The alternative, although less clear, is no longer unthinkable.
“There is a growing uneasiness, social, political, economic,” Amos Oz, the novelist, told me in an interview. “There is a growing sense that Israel is becoming an isolated ghetto, which is exactly what the founding fathers and mothers hoped to leave behind them forever when they created the state of Israel.” The author, widely viewed as the conscience of a liberal and anti-Messianic Israel, continued, “Unless there are two states — Israel next door to Palestine — and soon, there will be one state. If there will be one state, it will be an Arab state. The other option is an Israeli dictatorship, probably a religious nationalist dictatorship, suppressing the Palestinians and suppressing its Jewish opponents.”
If that sounds stark, it is because choices are narrowing. Every day, it seems, another European government or parliament expresses support for recognition of a Palestinian state. A Palestinian-backed initiative at the United Nations, opposed in its current form by the United States, is aimed at pushing Israel to withdraw from the West Bank by 2017. The last Gaza eruption, with its heavy toll and messy outcome, changed nothing. Hamas, its annihilationist hatred newly stoked, is still there parading its weapons. Tension is high in Jerusalem after a spate of violent incidents. Life is expensive. Netanyahu’s credibility on both the domestic and international fronts has dwindled.
“We wake up every morning to some new threat he has found,” said Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist. “We have grown tired of it.”
This fatigue will, however, translate into change only if a challenger looks viable. Until recently nobody has. But in the space of a few weeks something has shifted. The leader of the Labor Party, Isaac Herzog, has been ushered from unelectable nerd to plausible patriot. Polls show him neck and neck with the incumbent. Through an alliance forged this month with Tzipi Livni, the recently dismissed justice minister and longtime negotiator with the Palestinians, the Labor leader created a sense of possibility for the center left. A post-Bibi Israel no longer seems a fantasy.
Photo
CreditEiko Ojala
“This cannot go on,” Herzog, a mild-mannered man working on manifesting his inner steel, told me. “There is a deep inherent worry as to the future and well-being of our country. Netanyahu has been leading us to a dead end, to an abyss.” Summing up his convictions, Herzog declared, “We are the Zionist camp. They are the extreme camp.”
Here we get to the nub of the election. A battle has been engaged for Israel’s soul. The country’s founding charter of 1948 declared that the nascent state would be based “on freedom, justice, and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex.” This is the embodiment of the Zionism of Herzog and Livni. They are both descendants of important figures in Israel’s creation — Chaim Herzog, a former president of Labor sympathies, and Eitan Livni, a former commander of the rightist Irgun militia. For all their differences Labor and Likud, left and right, did not differ on the essential democratic freedoms for all its citizens, Jew and Arab, that Israel should seek to uphold. The new Herzog-Livni alliance looks like an eloquent reaffirmation of that idea.
It is a fragile idea today. Tolerance is under attack as a wave of Israeli nationalism unfurls and settlements grow in the West Bank. This virulent, Jews-first thinking led recently to a bill known as the nationality law that would rescind Arabic’s status as an official language — and proved a catalyst to the breakup of Netanyahu’s government. It also finds expression in the abuse hurled at anyone, including the Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, who speaks up for Arab rights. “Traitor” has become a facile cry.
Danny Danon, a former deputy defense minister who is challenging Netanyahu for the Likud leadership, told me his long-term vision for the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria as he calls it, “is to have sovereignty over the majority of the land with the minimum amount of Palestinians.” The two-state idea, Danon said, “is finished, and most Israelis understand that.”
In fact the two-state idea is alive but ever more tenuous. It is compatible with an Israel true to its founding principles. It is incompatible with an Israel bent on Jewish supremacy and annexation of all or most of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. It can be resurrected, because there is no plausible alternative, despite the fact that almost a half-century of dominion over another people has produced ever greater damage, distrust and division. It can be buried only at the expense of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, for no democracy can indefinitely control the lives of millions of disenfranchised people — and that is what many Palestinians are.
“This election is a critical juncture,” said Ofer Kenig, a political analyst. “We have to choose between being a Zionist and liberal nation, or turning into an ethnocentric, nationalist country. I am concerned about the direction in which this delicate democracy is heading.”
A child of 9 in Gaza has memories of three wars in six years. The child may stand in the remains of the Shejaiya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, gazing at tangles of iron rods, mountains of stone, jagged outcrops of masonry, and air thick with dust. The child may wonder what force it is that wrought such destruction, so repetitively, and why. It is safe to say that the adult this Palestinian child will one day become does not bode well for Israel. The child has no need for indoctrination in hatred.
I was there the other day, in the rubble. Children stood around. I chatted with the Harara family, whose houses were flattened during the 50-day war with Israel that began this summer. Every day Mustafa Harara, 47, comes to gaze at the cratered vestige of his house. He asks where else he should go. It took him 26 years to build. It took five minutes for Israel to demolish it. The reason is unclear. He is no Hamas militant. His electricity business, located in the same area, was also destroyed.
Since the war, he has received nothing, despite the billions for reconstruction pledged by gulf states and others. In June, President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a new government that grew out of the reconciliation pact his Palestine Liberation Organization had signed with Hamas. There is no unity and, in effect, no government in Gaza.
The Egyptian border is closed. Movement through the Israeli border amounts to a minimal trickle. Israeli surveillance balloons hover in airspace controlled by Israel. The 140-square-mile area is little better than an open-air prison. As incubators for violent extremism go, it is hard to imagine a more effective setting than Gaza.
Abbas has not visited since the war broke out. To come after such suffering would have been courageous; not to was craven. Now he is regarded as a stranger by most of the 1.8 million inhabitants of Gaza, the absent father of a nation in desperate need. “Abbas is the one who destroyed us,” Harara says. “What reconciliation? You cannot mix gasoline and diesel.”
Lutfi Harara, the younger brother of Mustafa, whose home was also destroyed, took me to see the little house with a corrugated iron roof he had cobbled together since the war. He showed me photographs of Haifa, his memories of the Israel where he used to work as an electrician before divisions hardened. From rockets and artillery shells found in the rubble of his home, he has fashioned lamps and a vase and a heavy bell dangling from an olive tree — his version of swords into plowshares, and the one hopeful thing I saw in Gaza.
FROM his home I went to see a hard-line Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar. He lambasted Abbas — “he is living on stories” — and told me to forget about a two-state compromise at or near the 1967 lines. “Israel will be eliminated because it is a foreign body that does not belong to our area, or history or religion,” he said. Referring to Israeli Jews, he continued, “Why should they come from Ethiopia, or Poland, or America? There are six million in Palestine, O.K., take them. America is very wide. You can make a new district for the Jews.”
Zahar, with his hatred, is almost 70. Abbas will be 80 in March. Many Palestinians in their 20s and 30s whom I spoke to in Gaza are sick of sterile threats, incompetence and the cycle of war.
“There is no such thing as a happy compromise,” Amos Oz told me. “Israelis and Palestinians cannot become one happy family because they are not one, not happy and not family either. They are two unhappy families who must divide a small house into even smaller apartments.” The first step, he said, is to “sign peace with clenched teeth, and after signing the contract, start working slowly on a gradual emotional de-escalation on both sides.”
Israel is a remarkable and vibrant democratic society that is facing an impasse. It must decide whether to tough it out on a nationalist road that must lead eventually to annexation of at least wide areas of the West Bank, or whether to return to the ideals of the Zionists who accepted the 1947 United Nations partition of Mandate Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab (the Arabs did not accept the division and embarked on the first of several losing wars aimed at destroying Israel).
This election constitutes a pivotal moment. Herzog told me, “We are not willing to accept that mothers and fathers on the other side don’t want peace. They also want it, and I understand that they have a lack of hope just like here.” He smiled, as a thought occurred to him. “You know, I would be very happy to visit my mother’s birthplace in Egypt as prime minister.”
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