Israel

 

I'm not expounding; I'm just 'noodling'...

There's a lot of talk about how Jewish Democrats are going to deal with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who just won the Dem primary in NY's 14th CD.  The problem with AO-C is that she's anti-Israel and Jewish Dems are now faced with a dilemma: support the Dem nominee or support Israel.  It got me to thinking.

Before the 20th century, the part of the world we now call 'Israel' was dominated by the Ottoman Empire.  In WW-I, the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, lost, and had all their territory seized by the victors.  Had the Ottomans sided with Britain and France, there probably wouldn't be an 'Israel' and I wouldn't be noodling about it, but that's not how it played out.  For a long time, 'Palestine' was Britain's to govern if not own, and after WW-II, displaced Jewish populations demanded and got a 'homeland' carved out of the British Mandate.

Lest there be any confusion, 'Palestine' is derived from 'Philistine', but it has never been a nation with a distinct government, a distinct culture, or a distinct language, at least since the Philistines got overrun.  It has been, at most, an administrative district, a convenient shorthand to designate a particular geographic region.

The first Jewish settlers arrived while the Ottomans were still in charge.  When they got there, the area was barely fit for raising goats, and had been in that condition for millennia.  Today, Israel is a productive greenspace that is in stark contrast to the millions of square miles of wasteland that surround it.  Having seen what the Jews did with their patch of desert, the envious 'Palestinians' want it back.  They didn't do anything but raise goats on it for 2,000 years, but now it's their homeland.

Don't get me wrong: I don't support the U.S. giving Israel millions of dollars per day, but I think the Israelis have established ownership via sweat-equity.  What the Israelis did the Palestinians could have done... but didn't.  There are vast uninhabited tracts of land indistinguishable from pre-Israeli Palestine within a day's journey from Israel.  Any nearby country could acquire a huge population of formerly-Palestinian homesteaders for free and have them improve that country's economy.  That is not an acceptable solution, because Israel would still exist.  The only acceptable solution is one that eliminates Israel.  Besides, those formerly-Palestinian homesteaders would likely be as useless on their new land as they were on the old.

The fact that other nearby nations could (for almost no cost) solve 'the Palestinian problem' — and don't — invites speculation that they don't actually want that problem solved.

Yes, there should be a two-state solution for Palestine.  The other 'state' should be east of Jordan.  Any nation in the local group that isn't interested in having Palestinian settlers on their desert needs to STFU — permanently.

Jewish Dems still have a problem in AO-C, and they're going to have a come-to-Jesus (sorry...) moment in the very near future.

Okay, I was expounding.