Soros on Israel

I read a copy of this earlier today and was told it wasn't up on the web yet, but this Googe cache works. It's a New York Review of Books article by George Soros "On Israel, America & AIPAC." It's a long piece, so I wouldn't want to commit myself to the proposition that I agree with every single sentence inside it, but it strikes me as basically correct and likely to prompt many, many, many an unfair attack. It's also likely to create some trouble for Soros-backed groups and Soros-backed organizations. On one level, that's too bad, since nobody deserves that kind of trouble.

On the other hand, this whole debate has gotten a little painfully meta with tons of back-and-forth about whether people are being intimidated, or whether people are anti-semites, or using charges of anti-semitism to intimidate people, etc., etc., etc. At some point, it would be good to not cut through that and debate the actual issue at hand -- whether the United States should adopt different policies vis-a-vis Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict -- and if Soros' article pushes things in that direction, it'll be all to the good.

Comments

I don't think this Soros article is going to push things in a very different direction. He says some perfectly reasonable things, but he also spends a lot of time on the meta stuff. It's fine for him to hit back against the clownish rants of Alvin Rosenfeld and Martin Peretz, but policy-wise, he doesn't say much beyond "negotiations are good, and some reports say that Hamas might be split between its military and political wings, so we should be pushing for peace talks." It's fine to advocate for that, but this article is definitely not detailed enough to be "the case" for changing policy in that way.

The most detailed case I've read in the last few years for how to actually effect a major change in US policy towards Israel was this article (PDF link) by Martin Indyk about establishing a trusteeship in the Palestinian territories. He wrote it four years ago, and conditions have changed a lot since then, but the ideas in there are still very much worth thinking about, even if one doesn't agree with them. But nobody paid any attention to it.

Posted by Haggai | March 18, 2007 11:05 PM

The problem is that, without first dealing with the meta stuff, it will be pretty damn dificult to get a fair hearing on any substantive suggestions for change. Then again, any real prospect for change on the meta stuff is pretty grim also.

In other words, we (and Israel, and the Palestinians, and the middle east as a whole) are screwed.

Though the suggestion (in a prior post by Matthew here, I'm almost certain, though I'm too lazy to check) that we need a sane Jewish organization to counter AIPAC, which would represent the majority oy American Jews, is a good one if anyone could really bring it off.

Posted by LarryM | March 18, 2007 11:16 PM

Israel Policy Forum, as represented on TPMCafe by M.J. Rosenberg, is an entirely sane American Jewish pro-Israel organization. If you're looking for one to support, they're a good place to start.

Posted by Haggai | March 18, 2007 11:23 PM

The Washington Post reported that (up to) 60% of democratic presidential campaign funds are donated by Jewish donors. If that's true (and that sounds crazy, I wouldn't have even guessed people vs. corporations and unions donated a majority of democratic money), I think Rosenberg and whoever else feels like putting some coins together is gonna be badly outgunned.

Posted by Ed Marshall | March 18, 2007 11:27 PM

I guess I don't really understand the funding game here. As I understand it AIPAC isn't, actually, a PAC, and directly controls no campaign donations. Yet its been said (correctly or not) that AIPAC indirectly controls much of those funds (the Democratic candidates certainly ACT as if that is the case). If so, how? I mean, I find that odd, especially since AIPAC seems out of tune with the attitudes of the majority of American Jews.

Of course, my confusion on this issue is largely a function of the fact that these issues can't be discussed in polite company.

Posted by LarryM | March 18, 2007 11:37 PM

I'd love to know what this is really about:

Ever since I participated in a meeting discussing the need for voicing alternative views, a torrent of slanders has been released including the false accusation in The New Republic that I was a "young cog in the Hitlerite wheel" at the age of thirteen when my father arranged a false identity to save my life and I accompanied an official of the Ministry of Agriculture, posing as his godson, when he was taking the inventory of a Jewish estate

I have to believe that Soros is shading things a bit, because--and I don't think I'm overly sympathetic to TNR, as a general rule--otherwise, what utterly contemptible douchebags.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 18, 2007 11:43 PM

Soros wasn't shading anything. It was in a Peretz column, of course.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070212&s=peretz021207

Posted by Haggai | March 18, 2007 11:52 PM

It was in a Peretz column, of course.

'Nuff said. I'm not clicking the link. What a sickening piece of work.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 18, 2007 11:56 PM

If Martin Peretz was a Palestinian, he would be selling worn copies of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" from the back of an old pickup truck in Gaza.

Posted by Reality Man | March 19, 2007 12:01 AM

Soros is a great big Jewy Jew, a Nazi, and a billionaire. What's not to hate?

/sarcasm, in case anyone's worried

Posted by jan zizka | March 19, 2007 12:09 AM

it would be good to not cut through that and debate the actual issue at hand -- whether the United States should adopt different policies vis-a-vis Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict

A lot of people spend a lot of money, and spill a lot of ink, to make the meta-issue(s) the issue at hand. They're not about to let some pissant blogger change all that.

Posted by dj moonbat | March 19, 2007 12:18 AM

Jews like Soros advocating sane, intelligent methods to achieve a real Middle East Peace are simply not as ruthless, cynical, and determined in advancing their ideas as the don't pick on Israel crowd is. They've got to go after these people with a killer instinct- marginalize them with stronger rhetoric, paint them as the near treasonous Americans they are. Taking a measured, deliberate, lapidary approach towards their morally bankrupt stupidity just doesn't cut it.

Posted by Trevor | March 19, 2007 5:34 AM

Again Soros and the progressives allow the Right to set the limits of acceptable discussion, rule one being "the right of Israel to exist".
We should begin by refusing that formulation; it is the same one that was used to justify that past Israeli ally, the Botha regime. It demands that Israel and the US have the right to dictate to the Palestinians the entire parameters of Palestinian life.
There is NO substantial ethical difference between Israel and the former apartheid South Africa. Did that state have "a right to exist"?
At the root of the problem is an ongoing injustice so immense, so unfair that it can't be justified by the tales of angry sky gods and Nazi devilry. Doing so perpetuates the Israeli and US position, their demand that the Palestinians say "Thank you for murdering my father and raping my mother and sisters and then stealing our land and pushing us into ghettos. Oh, and please do it all some more!"
This is all the more fascinating in light of the argument that Jews have had with themselves over their resistance or lack thereof to the Fascist onslaught. Does any Jew question the "morality" of the Warsaw uprising? No, and so why should we question the Intifada's justice and "morality"?
The only ethical solution is, just as with South Africa, the one state solution.
That this means the end of Israel as a distinctly Jewish State is no more than the correction of one of the West's many many post war abominations. The idea that we should still be defending 19th century European colonialism is so absurd as to be sick making.
And we begin by completely rejecting the Zionist formulations for discourse.

Posted by keffiyeh | March 19, 2007 8:58 AM

Re Soros

Mr. Soros' advises the US and Israeli Governments to negotiate with the Hamas led "government" of the Palestinians, because they were "democratically elected." Such negotiations are a waste of time as the Hamas terrorists demand that the State of Israel agree to go out of business. The only negotiations that Hamas understands grows out of the barrel of a gun. Sooner or later, the Government of Israel will have to come to the same conclusion that Syrian dictator came to relative to the Hamas type terrorists in Syria, namely the application of Hama rules is required.

Posted by SLC | March 19, 2007 8:59 AM

Well, now that we have the poles of the conflict neatly sewed up in the last two comments, the policy people can go to work on that.

I'm still interested in the power and funding realities underlying the meta discussion (as opposed to the 'philosophical' aspects of it). LarryM is asking the correct questions here:

As I understand it AIPAC isn't, actually, a PAC, and directly controls no campaign donations. Yet its been said (correctly or not) that AIPAC indirectly controls much of those funds (the Democratic candidates certainly ACT as if that is the case). If so, how? ...odd, especially since AIPAC seems out of tune with the attitudes of the majority of American Jews.

This article is the most informative of any I've read. The short answer is a combination of: a relatively small number of major, major funders; the role of the traditional Jewish communal organization; and a network of people who are 'doorways' to a large number of mid-level and major funders.

Oh, damn, I can't find the link for the article. Will seek out and return.

Posted by Nell | March 19, 2007 10:01 AM

It seems to me that the most politically appealing way to change the dynamic wrt our support for Israel, is by proposing a populist, isolationist sounding program. That is, asking questions like: "why should we be involved in their conflict?", "why should we sacrifice American's for Israel's security (ie, one of the motivations for the Iraq war and a possible attack on Iran)?". And, proposing that our policy should be to cut back our support for, and diplomatic engagement with, both sides, so they can solve the problem on their own.

The progressive elite opinion, on the other hand, is that we should be fully engaged in a diplomatic process, in which we provide more financial and diplomatic support for the Palestinians, to balance our continuing support for Israel. I can see a rationale for this in policy terms, but I don't see how this can possibly appeal to the average American citizen.

Posted by Jim W | March 19, 2007 10:16 AM

Can't wait around all day to see if my links are approved, so: google 'AIPAC' and 'Michael Massing' and the top two articles are the ones I was thinking of:

Deal Breakers, The American Prospect, March 2002
The Storm Over the Israel Lobby, NY Review of Books, June 2006

Posted by Nell | March 19, 2007 10:43 AM

negotiations are good, and some reports say that Hamas might be split between its military and political wings, so we should be pushing for peace talks.

I guess I don't understand where this argument comes from. The entire purpose of negotiating with the political wing would seem to be the notion that they actually have some control over the military wing. If there's a divide, that provides less of a reason to bother talking, rather than more.

Posted by Steve | March 19, 2007 12:47 PM

Remember that old saying, an inch given by Likud was the same as a mile given by Labour? If you want a Nixon-goes-to-China moment, this is it. The most viscious suicide-bombing terrorist group in the world, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelaam, had moderated its stances as of late and has become open to negotiations with the Sri Lankan government. Hamas never matched the LTTE in the depth of its violence. Getting an agreement with Hamas is going to have to be part of the peace process. After all, that is part of the reason behind Israel's policy of targeting killings. When Hamas's leaders feel more threatened, they have been more willing to negotiate. However, this strategy only works if Israel is actually going to negotiate. Israel has shown it is willing to negotiate with the likes of Syria, who in the long term can do more damage to Israel than Hamas. When Israel tries to do something stupid, we support them and when they try to do something smart, we try to stop them.

Posted by Reality Man | March 19, 2007 1:12 PM

The only ethical solution is, just as with South Africa, the one state solution. That this means the end of Israel as a distinctly Jewish State is no more than the correction of one of the West's many many post war abominations. The idea that we should still be defending 19th century European colonialism is so absurd as to be sick making. And we begin by completely rejecting the Zionist formulations for discourse. Posted by: keffiyeh

Straight from the Gush Emanin/George Bush diplomatic playbook. Let's set a totally unacceptable and unenforceable positition as our starting point and demand the other side concede it before starting negotiations.

Posted by citizen k | March 19, 2007 1:48 PM

Israel as an apartheid state cannot go on forever. And the sooner it goes, in favor of an egalitarian bi-national state, the better. The reinstatement of some vestige of justice will take care of the Hamas problem all by itself. The military wing will lose recruits and eventually succumb to the political wing. This is extreme common sense.

Of course the reality is that there is way too much real estate and economic power to be lost if the Palestinians are to be given what's rightfully theirs, for instance, the full right of return as proscribed in the United Nations charter under fundamental human rights. So, since "our" money is always more important than "those" people (fundamental rule #1 of capitalism), we can continue to expect assassinations and home demolitions, swelling refugee ghettos, suicide bombings, the mass-vilification of Arabs on the teevee and print nooz, and American foreign policy in the Middle East dominated by well-organized and well-funded ultra-Zionists (which Soros calls a conspiracy, since we all know conspiracies never happen).

The point is there is absolutely no hope for progress on this issue as long as Israel continues to exist as a rogue apartheid state.

Posted by Murph | March 19, 2007 1:54 PM

Straight from the Gush Emanin/George Bush diplomatic playbook. Let's set a totally unacceptable and unenforceable positition as our starting point and demand the other side concede it before starting negotiations.

uhh, i don't think keffiyeh is speaking from a position of governmental authority, but as an activist concerned with this issue.

and it wasn't/isn't "totally unacceptable" to steal all that land and bar the original inhabitants from returning, right?

do all people have some unalienable right to plunder or is it just Americans and western Europeans and Israelis?

Posted by Murph | March 19, 2007 1:58 PM

nd it wasn't/isn't "totally unacceptable" to steal all that land and bar the original inhabitants from returning, right?

Not any more totally unacceptable than it was for the US to slaughter the Dakato and Navaho and Apache and take their land or for the Jews to be expelled from Palestine then Spain and then Europe with their land and possessions stolen or for African Americans to be enslaved and kidnapped and tortured etc or for Arab slavers to have roamed central Africa for centuries or for Cromwell to have butchered Irish catholics and put Protestants in their place and so on and so on. Human history is ugly. Diplomacy is dealing with reality not justice. The object of diplomacy is to get a good deal not to make things right. You can try to pretend that a nuclear armed state is not real, but it won't get you anywhere. The rejectionist position has not been useful to actual Palestinian people.

Posted by citizen k | March 19, 2007 2:48 PM

I agree with you, citizen k, about what is realistic and what isn't, but I also think that pointing out that what happened to the Palestinians is comparable to what the US did to various Indian tribes would be a big step forward in most people's understanding, at least in the US. The comparison with US/Native American relations is relevant in part because there were atrocities committed on both sides and yet many 19th century Americans tended to see it as a struggle between civilization and savagery. In my personal experience a lot of people haven't moved beyond the AIPAC view of the history, so it's harder to push for a Geneva Accord style compromise when many (or most?) Americans see the struggle as one of good Israelis vs. evil Palestinians.

Posted by Donald Johnson | March 19, 2007 3:03 PM

citizen k- i'm not sure what you mean by "the rejectionist position"; are you referring to rejection of the most basic human rights for Palestinians? Or rejection of the many United Nations resolutions censoring Israel's actions? actually that sort of "rejectionist position" has been quite useful to some actual Palestinians people--Hamas and other similar resistance organizations.

or perhaps you're using the term to encapsulate the canard that these bad bad irrational arabs aren't recognizing israel's "right to exist". in that case, perhaps you could acquaint yourself with the facts, namely, that israel DOES exist as a state and palestine DOES NOT. relevant?

...and finally, because human history is fraught with barbarity means israel can act like barbarians with impunity? interesting logic. that applies to whatever barbarous acts iran might have in store as well, right? i mean after all, the u.s. government wiped out the apaches.

Posted by Murph | March 19, 2007 3:06 PM

It's now been five hours, and the version of my comment with links for the two articles I cited at 10:43 above has still not been approved. Are links forbidden/discouraged in comments?

Posted by Nell | March 19, 2007 3:56 PM

Murph: Are you sure you are reading what I wrote instead of just giving me a reflexive canned response to something you expected me to write?

..and finally, because human history is fraught with barbarity means israel can act like barbarians with impunity?

Yes, I think this is correct. There does not appear to be any moral engine in history. People not only get away with, but profit from crimes all the time. I doubt that the injustice of King Phillip's war or Sand Creek or the genocide of black Sudan or the settlement in Ulster will be reversed anytime soon or that anyone will pay in this world. The genocide of Muslim/Jewish spain was totally successful in terms of creating a Catholic semi-unified nation and after a half millenium, I very much doubt that Granada will revert to its builders or that someone will try to make up for all the auto-da-fe's. Hitler's plan to make Europe Jew free largely succeeded and Tibet is ceasing to exist as a nation. So the question of historical right or wrong is immaterial. If your goal is to rescue living Palestinians from the gross
misery of their current existence, you need to balance justice and practicality (even if justice was as simple as you think it is.) In my always humble opinion, it is immoral to sacrifice living people on the altar of some abstraction.

Donald Johnson:
The success of AIPAC in selling its fabulation is at least partially accounted for by the difficulty in counter-selling all this "zionist entity" "palestine from the river to the sea" story as well. I believe that the Palestinian leadership let itself be used as pawns in the Cold War and by Arab theocrats (and by Israeli agents) and by "solidaritists" in the West who comfortably insist on fighting to the last miserable refugee camp resident. It is not for nothing that the Israelis have specifically targeted moderate Palestinian leaders.

Posted by citizen k | March 19, 2007 4:13 PM

citizen k,

Well said. As for this line,

"I doubt that the injustice of King Phillip's war or Sand Creek or the genocide of black Sudan or the settlement in Ulster will be reversed anytime soon or that anyone will pay in this world."

what's even worse is, I seriously doubt that anyone will pay in any other world either.

Posted by Jim W | March 19, 2007 4:26 PM

citizen k: why does it seem that the people who proclaim a hobbesian view of human history are almost always the ones advocating on behalf of the militarily mighty?

and how exactly does violent land theft and dispossession mesh with "liberal values" when it's carried out by israel, but become something which simply MUST be stopped when done by islamic militias in the sudan? returning to my question which you didn't address, are there particular races who are more entitled to this lucrative privilege?

finally it's rather sad that justice to you is simply some abstraction. i take it you're happy the u.s. and israel don't belong to the ICC? tell me, are war crimes ever supposed to be punished? or would that be sacrificing actual humans to some abstraction?

Posted by Murph | March 20, 2007 10:18 AM

Murph:
I guess you answered my question and that you are not reading what I wrote, but are responding to what you imagine I should have written. For example, I never said that the Israeli occupation or settlement meshed with "liberal values" whatever they may be. Please make an effort, because I don't think that the imaginary person you are offering up your arguments to will respond.

My odd theory is that it would be nice if there was some solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict that did not either involve a sudden catastrophe or the continuing slow catastrophe of the occupation. In light of the fact that Jewish Israel is (a) populated by people who have nowhere else to go, many of whom were born there or in some nearby nation and (b) Israel is a powerful country with nuclear weapons, it seems to me that the proposition "all the Jews should just leave or accept Arab rule" is lacking in a certain practicality (although the Israelis are working hard at making Israel non-viable). It doesn't matter how convinced you are that such a course is the only morally righteous one. After all, returning the descendents of the Yemenite Jews to serfdom is no doubt a righteous cause without any shadow of moral complexity. But go ahead and demand the unlikely if it makes you feel good. I want the Belgians to return all their ill-gotten wealth to Congo and the Mohawks to get back the whole northeast US and for the Dodgers to return to Brooklyn.

My problem with the "pro-palestinian" side is that it seems to be analogous to "pro-life" and the fact that the "abolish the zionist entity" strategy has resulted in 50 years of misery for actual Palestinians seems to have as much impact on its advocates as the fact that actual abortion rates declined under the Devil Clinton.

Posted by citizen k | March 20, 2007 1:06 PM

citizen k-you are right, in that my wording was extremely lazy.

my thought was that being a reader of yglesias' blog (which, true enough, does not make one a holder of liberal values--whatever standard definition one gives--i'm certainly not) and simultaneously one of the position that the transformation of the discriminatory Jewish state to an egalitarian bi-national state is "unacceptable" and "unenforceable", i wanted to know if, hypothetically speaking, you would extend your pragmatic position of maintaining the status quo if you and yours were on the other end of the stick, and not just historically (who among us has no ancestors who underwent brutality at one time or another?) but right now.

in other words, i take it you're not palestinian. no blood relatives or close friends in the refugee camps. right?

you claim to know what approach to their near total dispossession would be best for them, like the vast majority of israelis and zionists i know and love.

contrary to you i think the living palestinians and their future descendents have the right to life first and second, self-determination. the policy of transferring indigenous inhabitants of palestine, which has even included non-zionist jews, but mostly muslims, under pressure, threats, and violence and selectively importing humans to take their place based on a religious/tribal classification, in an attempt to achieve a certain predetermined ethnic makeup, is an idea long "unacceptable" to promoters of human rights and rendered "unenforceable" by the nature of the resistance of the original inhabitants. and the sooner its demise, in favor of equal rights and opportunities for muslims as well as jews, the better.

Posted by Murph | March 20, 2007 2:38 PM

Murph:
Of course I would. Given a choice between condemning myself and my children to life and death in some miserable camp dominated by gangsters and terrorized by Phalange and Israeli troopers or giving up, perhaps temporarily because who knows what history will bring, implausible dreams of total victory in order to obtain some security, liberty, and prosperity, I'd jump on it. The virtues of Palestinian intransigence are obvious for Saudi princes and theocrats, Israeli loony tunes and empire builders, semi-ambitious Palestinian thugs, and Western Kefaiah wearers who get to bask in the warm glow of righteousness, but this course sucks as a strategy for ordinary Palestinians. It's a big world. The palestinians could isolate Israeli Zealots and leave them to fight their most hated enemies - secular Israelis - if they were to aim at winning instead of getting even.

I think that the Apache are smart as hell to make money off of gambling Americans and spend it on educating and feeding their own people instead of engaging in a hopeless war against the US. And the Zionists were smart to abandon Europe and Yemen instead of trying to get revenge on Germany or get recompense for 1000 years of oppression in Sana. The dead are dead and it's better for one's children to be comfortable in exile than throwing rocks at people with machine guns.

Of course that's just me and I'm sorry but the rest of your stuff is just to cliched for me to deal with it.

Posted by citizen k | March 20, 2007 10:56 PM

So self-defense isn't criminal in this case, merely stupid? When rape is inevitable lie back and enjoy?

Just maybe this would all be so many needles on the head of a pin, but the only thing that maintains your inevitability is that the nation you live in, and the people you vote for, shovel guns at the Israeli's. Not as some sort of sidebar, second only to the Iraq War now (where we've skipped the middleman and kill our own Arabs) it's our number one foreign policy commitment. If that's too cliche for you, people want to kill you over it. If you think that's worth dying over they want to kill me and I don't want any part of it.

Posted by Ed Marshall | March 20, 2007 11:35 PM