Entire Gordon Discussion in Chronological Order

Rick:

Good article.

While I agree with much of the despair over the current state of affairs, I think that articulating a new right as she suggests would be disastrous on multiple fronts. I agree with stating that peace may not be possible but for the real reasons - the inability/refusal to end violence. Also Israel's critics should be called out for the real driving force behind them which is the singling out of Israel for criticism on a standard not extended to the rest of the world.
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Me:

Thanks for your brief comments.

I’d differ with a couple of your points.

It’s not, the argument goes, a new right. It’s a right that had been Israeli policy till 1993, if I’m remembering the article right. Oslo was the turning point. Why would it be disastrous for Israel to assert the legitimacy of its claims to the West Bank and East Jeruslam and not concede Judenrein in the West Bank? Why would it be disastrous for Israel to stop the unilateral withdrawals till there is a realistic prospect for peace?

Aren’t you begging the question when you say peace is impossible because of “the inability/refusal to end violence?” From where does that impossibility arise? Isn’t it because while Israel would make real peace yesterday, the Palestinians will not recognize it as a Jewish state, will not relinquish the right of return, will not renounce violence, and turn increasingly to an increasingly radicalized, irredentist Hamas?

That’s what has to be said, isn’t it?

Moreover Gordon and other Israelis I hear from do not despair and if you read despair in her essay, you took something different from it than I did:

“...Finally, Israel must stop projecting a sense of panic, through both words and deeds, which merely emboldens its enemies. Israel has not only survived for 61 years despite the absence of peace; it has thrived. Its population has increased more than seven-fold; its per capita income has risen nine-fold; it has maintained a strong democracy in a region where democracy is otherwise unknown. And it can continue surviving and thriving without peace for as long as necessary....”

Look, Israel doing what it has done starting with Oslo, trying so hard for peace, making rejected offer after offer, unilaterally withdrawing, has led only to her facing a peak in world disapprobation, power vacuums which become grounds for terrorist action requiring taking the war to the asymmetric, civilian embedded fighters which begets Goldstone and even more censure. It cannot win to the course it is now on. If I was an Israeli I’d have confidence in Netanyahu pragmatically threading his way these minefields.

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Ben:

Evelyn Gordon makes a number of interesting points in her article, but none that proves, or even advances, her stated hypothesis that Israel's international standing is worse because of Oslo.

To prove that point, one would expect Gordon to have identified some component of the international community that was pro Israel pre Oslo (and presumably because it liked Israel's claim to the West Bank and Gaza and its refusal to contemplate a Palestinian state) and is now anti-Israel. She points to none. Her references to CUPE and British academic boycotts do not advance her argument because she does not contend (nor could she) that the sponsors of these vile intiatives were pro Israel pre Oslo and she concedes that even now they lack broad support.

She glosses over the advances in Israel's international standing in the wake of Israel's opening of peace initiaitves with the Palestinians --peace with and an exchange of ambassadors with Jordan, relations with China, Russia and Eastern European states, etc. She seems to give no attention at all to just how bad Israel's international standing was pre Oslo.

And she seems to give her whole argument away when, after criticizing Oslo because it involved Israel conceding before the world that the Palestinians may have legitimate rights regarding the West Bank and Gaza, she states that "Granted, much of the world was disposed to accept the Palestinian claim even before Oslo".(Page 19)

I think many of Gordon's points support other conclusions that she suggests--that the Palestinians have not responded fairly to Israeli concessions and treat them as weakness, that enemies of Israel give her no credit for concessions, that certain policies are tactically unwise for Israel regardless of their PR effect in the Western media. I just don't think her arguments support what she says her article is about.
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Me:

I’d put It differently and ask, leaving Oslo to the side for a moment, whether Israel’s international standing has in fact suffered badly since Oslo. If that proposition is a predicate, then is the question: whether the relation between Oslo, itself also standing for Israel’s attempts at peace, and that decline is one of causality or coincidence? If the posited answer is the former—and Gordon seems to assert it —“..Israel’s standing has declined so precipitously not despite Oslo but because of Oslo. It was Israel’s very willingness to make concessions for the sake of peace that has produced its near-pariah status.”—then your brief critique is to the point.

But I think despite what I quoted, the theme of her essay is broader than you give her credit for and broader than her own apparent framing. The theme has to do with the wrongheadedness, as she sees it, of Israel’s unnecessary concessions as incidental to her quest, sometimes desperate, for peace and then the anomaly that despite that quest—which Oslo typifies, inaugurated but does not exhaust—her stature has declined so dramatically since Oslo. If her essay is looked at this way, rather than as a tight A caused B, people can note the anomaly, assess the reasons for it differently and all without disserving her overriding argument.

Her suggestion, which makes sense to me, is that by relinquishing the legitimacy of its claims to the West Bank and Gaza—which claims can be conceded in bargaining—Israel has leached herself of her own narrative: “,,,Oslo marked the moment when Israel stopped defending its own claim to the West Bank and Gaza and instead increasingly endorsed the Palestinian claim. And with no competing narrative to challenge it any longer, the view of Israel as a thief, with all its attendant consequences, has gained unprecedented traction…”

This observation is well argued for by the dynamism of the various peace concessions, such as withdrawals, begetting violence, begetting necessary counter measures spanning checkpoints, to a blockade, to a defensive barrier, to military incursions against terrorists who collapse virtually all distinction between civilian and fighter.

Perversely, Israel bears increased ignominy every step of the way. So you may think that Gordon has not advanced a particular thesis. But I think she raises the need to wrestle with the conundrum she describes and to ask, as she tries to, what, if any, corrective changes in policy or approach might be in order better to frame further negotiations with a more assertive claim of legitimacy and right.
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Ben:

I don't think your attempt to save Gordon's argument from the terms she puts it in works. Rather than being her "apparent framing" as you put it, the effect of the peace process on Israel's international standing is the very point of her article, so central that Commentary decided to place her own statement of her thesis to this effect on the cover in oversized print.

Further, the Editor's Page says that "Evelyn Gordon explores the catastrophic decline in Israel's global standing despite 16 years of taking risks for peace..." The Table of Contents says about the article that " Israel's efforts to resolve its conflict with the Palestinians have... harmed its image".

International or global standing or image are empirical matters and my complaint with Gordon is that she ignores the facts about international standing before and after. She speaks of Israel's standing having fallen to an "unprecedented low" and its standing having "fallen so precipitously...since 1993". But you can't do a before and after comparison without looking at before. You can't long for the good old days of international standing pre peace process without looking at whether the old days were in fact good.

Gordon does not do so. Israel's "narrative" that it and not the Palestinians had the rightful claim to the West Bank and Gaza never played well in terms of Israel's international standing. The international community never accepted Israel's nomenclature of Judea and Samaria in place of the occupied territories, nor did it accept Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem. The UN Resolutions following the 6 day and Yom Kippur wars called for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied as a result of the wars.

In 1975 the UN General Assembly passed the obnoxious "Zionism is Racism" resolution which remained in effect through Likud led Greater Israel period, and was not revoked until 1991, in the aftermath of the Madrid Peace Conference which opened dialogue on issues such as Palestinian self rule, final status negotiations and the like and is seen by some (like Thomas Friedman) as the beginning of the peace process which continued through Oslo. Gordon never compares Israel pre peace process-- with, for example, a Zionism is Racism international standing according to the General Assembly-- to Israel post peace process and never explains why she thinks Israel's international standing is worse after than before.

So this is why I say that she doesn't begin to make the point she and her Editor and publisher advertise her article as proving. There may be reasons of Israel's self interest for it not to pursue some of the policies she criticizes. But Gordon wants to argue that the Oslo process was bad PR, judged in terms of whether it worsened Israel's international standing. She doesn't show that at all.
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Me:

According to Michael Oren, from the mid seventies on, Israel has been subject to concerted attempts to delegitimize her. In that, she has been portrayed as a racist, colonialist state. These charges in many quarters have become received wisdom. They have become daily conversation in the U.N. and in other international bodies. More recently, Oren says, Israel has been depicted as an apartheid state. Israel is now accused of war crimes and there is talk of international indictments against her political and military leaders.

As Oren says, “...Such calumny was, in past, dismissed as harmless rhetoric. But as the delegitimization of Israel gained prominence, the basis was laid for international measures to isolate Israel and punish it with sanctions similar to those which brought down the South African regime. The academic campaigns to boycott Israeli universities and intellectuals are adumbrations of the type of strictures that could destroy Israel economically and deny it the ability to defend itself against the existential threats posed by terrorism and Iran....”

These comments mesh with the sweep of Gordon’s introductory comments, and if you don't mind, I'll repeat them:

“…Not only is Israel’s standing no better than it was prior to the famous handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat on the White House Lawn in September 1993, it has fallen to an unprecedented low. Efforts to boycott and divest from Israel are gaining strength throughout the West, among groups as diverse as British academics, Canadian labor unions, the Norwegian government’s investment fund, and American churches. Israeli military operations routinely spark huge protests worldwide, often featuring anti-Semitic slogans. References to Israel as an apartheid state have become so commonplace that even a former president of Israel’s closest ally, the United States, had no qualms about using the term in the title of his 2007 book on Israel. European polls repeatedly deem Israel the greatest threat to world peace, greater even than such beacons of tranquility and democracy as Iran and North Korea. Courts in several European countries, including Belgium, Britain, and Spain, have seriously considered indicting Israeli officials for war crimes (though none has actually yet done so). And in October, when the United Nations Human Rights Council overwhelmingly endorsed a report that advocated hauling Israel before the International Criminal Court on war-crimes charges, even many of Jerusalem’s supposed allies refused to vote against the measure. In academic and media circles, it has even become acceptable to question Israel’s very right to exist—something never asked about any other state in the world. None of these developments was imaginable back in the days when Israel refused to talk to the Palestine Liberation Organization, had yet to withdraw from an inch of “Palestinian” land, and had not evacuated a single settlement….”

If you consider the Durban Conference, the pervasive media assault on Israel after the war in Lebanon, and then, a few years later, in Gaza, if you consider the unprecedented prominence anti Israeli sentiment finds in universities round the world, and all the other matters above cited, what is the answer to the "empirical question" of worse now or worse before? At a minimum, it’s not easily answered.

You say, “International or global standing or image are empirical matters and my complaint with Gordon is that she ignores the facts about international standing before and after”. But I persist in thinking that it is too narrow to criticize her essay on the likely unanswerable question of whether it’s worse now than it was before. And that’s because in these matters comparisons are odious: it’s plenty bad enough now.

Her underlying point must be that whether or not things are worse now than before (which question ultimately is a distraction)—“Not only is Israel’s standing no better than it was prior to the famous handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat on the White House Lawn in September 1993, it has fallen to an unprecedented low”—the present badness coexists with a seventeen year history of a “deadly” pursuit of peace, the deadliness evident in the data she cites. Her underlying point is that that coexistence spells out the failure of the policy. How Commentary’s editors choose to highlight her essay and the size of their lede print, I suggest, matter not at all. The driving point of her essay surpasses a debate over “worse now or worse before”.

Here’s Dan Ephron on the mood in Israel these days based on reports on some recent Israeli political science polling: (http://www.newsweek.com/id/228840)

“…By the standard logic of Middle East peacemaking, this should be the perfect time to negotiate a deal. Israelis, after all, have long argued that real talks about land for peace cannot proceed until terrorism stops and some level of security is achieved. But, as so often happens in the Middle East, the standard logic no longer holds. If security was a prerequisite for peacemaking, now it's a goal unto itself. And it's been achieved, Israelis can plausibly argue, through their own hard-nosed measures.

Consider the numbers. Over a six-year period starting in September 2000, about 140 suicide bombers crossed into Israel from the West Bank, killing around 500 Israelis, a huge number for a population of 7 million (though only about one 10th the number of Palestinians killed during the same period). Since mid-2006, the year Israel completed large sections of the new fence around the West Bank (and a wall around parts of Jerusalem), not a single suicide bomber has infiltrated from the area and staged a successful attack.

Built in part on Palestinian land, the barrier has generated criticism at home and abroad. But if you set aside the controversy, at least in the short run, the conclusion is clear: the barrier is working. Gaza has similarly been subdued. In 2008, Palestinians launched around 3,000 rockets at southern Israel, an average of about 250 a month, according to an official tally. (The rockets have caused few casualties but have exacted a psychological and economic toll.) Then, a year ago, Israel waged a controversial war in Gaza. Critics of the campaign have focused, justifiably, on the high number of civilian casualties and the disproportionate use of force.

But the results are indisputable: since the war, the number of rocket attacks from Gaza has dropped by 90 percent. The stability, in turn, has helped Israel's economy. While the global recession plunged other countries into crisis in the past year, nearly all of Israel's indicators have held steady. Tourism, a good gauge of overall welfare, hit a 10-year high in 2008. Astonishingly, the IMF projected recently that Israel's GDP will grow faster in 2010 than that of most other developed countries…"

Gordon herself says the same thing near the end of her essay:

"...Finally, Israel must stop projecting a sense of panic, through both words and deeds, which merely emboldens its enemies. Israel has not only survived for 61 years despite the absence of peace; it has thrived. Its population has increased more than seven-fold; its per capita income has risen nine-fold; it has maintained a strong democracy in a region where democracy is otherwise unknown. And it can continue surviving and thriving without peace for as long as necessary....”

Surely she is saying in contradistinction to, say, the last few years of hapless negotiating by Olmert and Livni, which reflected a defensive Israeli posture consistent with what she calls the “'peace process' culture”, Israel among other things must be clear as to why peace is now at an impasse. She endorses Netanyahu’s approach to these matters by, in part, lauding his speech both at Bar-Illan and to the U.N. General Assembly.

As I say, this ultimately is what her essay is about—a failed policy and the reasons why—and a new way forward.

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Rick:

Stop. You're both wrong.

I didn't think the issue was whether Oslo made things better or worse ( comparing actual to theoretical) but whether it was a tactical error to effectively renounce a claim to the West Bank and Gaza. While no one knows ( again theoretical) I doubt it as per Ben's comment on East Jerusalem and the fact that Israel never wanted Gaza. The real issue is what would happen if Israel changed its policy today to assert a claim. This would be disastrous on every front. For all the reasons we're well aware of Israel has to continue to pursue some kind of separation - its only the how that is still subject to debate.
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Ben:

Rick, the issue for Evelyn Gordon precisely was whether Oslo has made things worse than they had been in terms of world perception of Israel. She trumpets loudly that it has (Baz—the words Commentary put in enlarged print on the cover so stating were Gordon’s). I agree it is a silly place for her to stake her claim, and a shaky basis for her policy prescription. But it is the one she chose.

Baz, notwithstanding my general sympathy for exoteric analysis, I think that you are way too kind to Gordon by saying she did not really mean her stated thesis, but meant something else which you then conclude is a powerful or thought provoking analysis. Can any conclusion be drawn other than that her stated thesis is flawed?

Take for example the quote you reproduce which contains within it that Israel’s world standing has fallen to “an unprecedented low”, and which, after reviewing certain anti-Israel events, proclaims that they would have been unheard of when Israel was refusing to negotiate with the Palestinians or recognizing the legitimacy of their claims. This type of proclaiming without attention to facts is useless or worse.

You state that the comparison between whether Israel’s pre or post Oslo International standing is worse is probably “unasnswerable”. Then shouldn’t we be troubled that Gordon purports to answer it unequivocally and worse, purports to advocate a course of action on the basis of her “answer”? Shouldn’t we be concerned that she proclaims her “answer “ from a list of anti Israel activities which she states would not have occurred or even be thought of pre Oslo while ignoring pre Oslo boycotts, literally dozens of UN condemnatory resolutions pre Oslo, resolutions of non-aligned states declaring Zionism a threat to world peace pre Oslo, and numerous other pre Oslo indicators of anti-Israel feeling on the world stage which cast considerable doubt on her conclusion that the events she points to are new, unprecedented and much worse than before.

Shouldn’t we be concerned that she blames all of the problems Israel has on the world stage on Oslo without considering some of the international benefits that the peace process brought Israel—a withdrawal of the odious “Zionism is Racism” resolution at the UN, diplomatic and trade relations with the two economic powerhouses India and China, peace with Jordan, etc, etc. and that she makes no attempt to weigh or balance them but just pronounces the peace process guilty? Using her mode of analysis, since anti Israel initiatives on the international scene have taken place post Netanyahu’s election and his Bar Ilan and General Assembly speeches, he must be the problem.
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Me:

Ben and Rick:

Gordon says that Oslo and what she calls its “’peace process’ culture” has worsened Israel’s world regard. She says the Oslo mentality ceded legitimacy to her claims to the West Bank and Gaza and found form in Israel’s own leaders referring to her “occupation.” I don’t think she thinks the pre and post Oslo international standing compares the actual to the theoretical. I think she’s explicit that things are worse now—“unprecedented low”. I’ve noted that Ben makes a good point in complaining that Gordon engages in no pre and post Oslo comparison but merely states her assertion as though it’s self evident. But I continue to think that her general argument—regardless of the weakness Ben points to—is better than that criticism.

Not to quibble over words, but I think, and I think Gordon would say, the Oslo ceding was more than “tactics”. It was a strategic decision to relinquish legitimacy as part of the then quest for peace. And its importance--the claim to legitmacy, transcending tactics--shows itself in the kind of arguments that Israel does, and will, advance in negotiations over East Jerusalem and the settlement communities adjacent to Jerusalem. It showed itself in, for example, Obama’s Cairo speech and the response to it by Netanyahu and in the call for total settlement freeze and the response to that call.

I think Gordon’s position is more subtle than simply asserting a claim to the West Bank and Gaza, though she’s not clear enough. She says:

“…First, Israel and its supporters must reiterate Israel’s own claim to the territories at every opportunity. While many have grown accustomed to disavowing Israel’s right to this land, Israelis of all political stripes were outraged by President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech, in which the only justification for the existence of a Jewish state was assumed to be the Holocaust—while the Jews’ historical claim to the land of Israel was thrown down the memory hole. By taking this stand, Obama may have unwittingly provided the impetus for reviving a broad-based assertion of Jewish rights. For instance, on July 17, the left-wing Haaretz’s star columnist Yoel Marcus wrote that Obama’s “disregard of our historical connection to the land of Israel” was “extremely upsetting.” Marcus concluded that “as a leader who aspires to solve the problems of the world through dialogue, we expect him to come to Israel and declare here courageously, before the entire world, that our connection to this land began long before the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Holocaust, and that 4,000 years ago, Jews already stood on the ground where he now stands.” If even a hard-core Oslo supporter such as Marcus can be provoked into reasserting Israel’s claim to the land, then there is hope for reviving such sentiments across the Israeli political spectrum…”

Her point is a continuum between ceding legitimacy to the “territories” and the right of Israel proper to exist. When Obama spoke of Israel as a consequence of the Holocaust he fueled the canard that she is but a colonial-like imposition on the Palestinians by the Western powers. If an important reason for Israel’s legitimacy is Jews’ deep and long historical connection to the lands, then that reason applies to the territories as well. Deny the latter, and then the former becomes more fragile. Assert the latter, then the former gains strength.

That is why Gordon cites Oslo-favoring Israeli journalist Yoel Marcus’s outcry against Obama’s eliding that connection. Marcus supports the Oslo ceding. So Gordon is guilty of running the territories and Israel together in enlisting his outcry as a support. But she does so, for all that running together, out of her point.

Also, she is not, as Rick suggests, simply calling for a reanimation of these claims and saying “that’s that”. She rather folds that call into her argument for a better approach by seeking to make peace at a better time, under better circumstances. Therefore, she says earlier in her essay, “None of this precludes an Israeli cession of these areas…”; and later she says, with a nod to her approach: “Second, Israel must cede no more land until the Palestinians prove they can and will keep it from becoming a base for anti-Israel terror.” So it’s not just a simple assertion of claims by her.

And her notion of “how”--hardly easily answered-- seems evident in her confidence in Netanyahu.

Ben, having further considered Gordon’s essay in light of your criticisms, I’m inclined to concede you some ground. So, I’ll take your point “that her stated thesis is flawed”: I’m pulling out of Gaza unilaterally with an eye on the West Bank, though never to give up East Jerusalem. But think about her essay this way: say she had tamped down her thesis and say she had been more balanced about how bad things were before Oslo and about the goods that came from Oslo—all fair criticisms, what do you quarrel with in her subsequent analysis and in her prescriptions?

Your line of reasoning is that since she can’t/doesn’t make a case for “worse”, she can’t make a policy case based on “worse”. But I say she can, not based on "worse", but based on the coexistence of Israel’s bad world regard and the failures of the pre-Netanyahu pursuit of peace as she concretely argues.

That’s why it seems rigid to me and to miss some of what’s in her essay to say that it flows from her reasoning that Netanyahu would be to blame for further disregard since his election. That doesn’t necessarily follow. I read her to see in Netanyahu a different approach based on a claim of legitimacy and right, still wanting a two state solution but not willing to move to final status until there is a basis for doing so.
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Rick:

Boys:

Two thoughts.

1. I understand the 4,000 year connection as an emotional matter but I'm uncomfortable using it as a basis for legal rights to land

2. Rights to land are settled by some of legal claims, agreements, might, facts on the ground over time etc. In the west, we prefer to settle our disputes by negotiation and reciprocal concessions. Just because the Palestinians won't play this way ( preferring a series of "lines in the sand " to preserve honour ) doesn't mean Israel shouldn't as well. And the best approach is what Gordon suggests- concessions as and when safety and security are not compromised.