Peter Beinart. Photo: Joe Mabel via Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Liberal and left-wing adversaries of Israel indulge in an abiding fantasy that one day the Jewish state, which they falsely regard as an ethnostate built upon an ideology of Jewish supremacy, will be replaced by a single state of Palestine. They fancifully believe that it will be a multiethnic democracy granting equal rights to all its citizens, regardless of religion or national origin.

As fantasies go, this one has enjoyed a good deal of mileage, surfacing every few years at times of tension in the Middle East and gripping the attention of a handful of intellectuals. More than 20 years ago, as the Second Intifada raged in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the late historian Tony Judt caused waves with a New York Review of Books essay titled, “Israel: The Alternative,” which depicted the Israeli polity as a nationalist anachronism that needed to be dismantled. This week, Peter Beinart, one of the more cloying Jewish adversaries of the Jewish state, did much the same with a New York Times piece titled “States don’t have a right to exist. People do,” treading on similar ground.

As depressing as it is to admit, it’s important to push back against these arguments—not because they hold any intrinsic worth but because they provide, at least on the surface, a framework for anti-Zionist arguments to be articulated by those who are too embarrassed to scream “Go Back to Poland!” at Jews waving Israeli flags, yet who essentially sympathize with that sentiment.

Beinart, who excels at presenting commonplace ideas as his own unique insights, argues that states have no innate worth, but that the people who live under their rule certainly do. The origins of this idea of the state lie with the thinkers of the classical liberal tradition—from Immanuel Kant to John Stuart Mill to Isaiah Berlin, who countered the emphasis on human beings as servile to the state found in the writings of thinkers like the 17th-century English philosopher Hobbes and the 19th- century German philosopher Hegel.

While the goal of a minimal, legally accountable state is a laudable one, like most ideas, it can evolve in bizarre directions unanticipated by its formative thinkers; in this case, that out of more than 200 states in the international system, the existence of only one of them—the State of Israel—is up for debate.

Beinart is vexed by the consensus among US politicians that the right of the State of Israel to exist needs to be unashamedly upheld. He cites China and Iran as examples of states whose forms of government—Communist and Islamist—are regularly attacked by Americans. If it’s legitimate to advocate for the dismantling of these regimes, then why doesn’t the same principle apply to a state run by a regime that stresses Jewishness over everything else?

The comparison is a false one.

There is a key distinction between the concept of a “state” and that of a “nation,” but the two are often conflated because the independent, sovereign state has been the most enduring aim of advocates of national self-determination. The Soviet Union disappeared, but its constituent nations did not (Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to crush Ukraine notwithstanding), while much-welcome regime change in China and Iran would not result in the elimination of those nations either. It also implies a knuckleheaded moral symmetry between a country like China, which incarcerates its Muslim Uyghur minority in concentration camps, forcing them to eat pork and drink alcohol, and Israel, where core human and civil rights are guaranteed under the law for all citizens, Jewish or not.

In the formula that Beinart recommends, however, there is no guarantee that the Jews of Israel would survive as a national group once the name “Israel,” which for Beinart and other anti-Zionists is the ultimate symbol of Jewish supremacy, was wiped from the map. Indeed, it’s far more likely that Israeli Jews would confront mass expulsion and genocide at the hands of Hamas and its allied factions than be welcome participants in a multinational “Palestine.”

Beinart fails to grasp that the Oct. 7, 2023 pogrom by Hamas, which he writes about in a creepily dissociative manner, remarking merely that “Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters killed about 1,200 people in Israel and abducted about 240 others,” is regarded by the vast majority of Israelis as a sign of what the terrorists have in store for all of them. The recent scenes in Gaza, where baying, hysterical Palestinian mobs have surrounded women hostages being released from Hamas captivity under the current ceasefire deal are a testament to that.

Beinart argues that the question of whether Israel has a right to exist is irrelevant. It is more appropriate to ask, “Does Israel, as a Jewish state, adequately protect the rights of all the individuals under its dominion?” Actually, the more pertinent question is this: Can Palestinians, nurtured on a diet of dehumanizing antisemitic hatred that expressed itself with perfect horror on Oct. 7, agree to a living arrangement with Israelis—one state, two states, a federation, some other model of governance—that is secure and sustainable? Or is some kind of deprogramming, akin to the denazification of Germany after World War II, a necessary first step?

It’s instructive that as Beinart’s essay was being published, Donald Trump raised the idea of resettling Gaza residents in other countries, a solution that right now is more palatable to Israelis than trading more land for a non-existent peace. There are, of course, an equal mix of advantages and problems associated with such a radical move, but if the Palestinians want to remove it from the table, then they need to focus on subjecting their own society to fundamental reform. Because that’s another aspect that Beinart is unable to grasp; patience is at an end, despair is rising, and measures previously beyond the pale now look feasible and, dare I say so, desirable on many levels.

As the philosopher Karl Popper—another advocate of the minimal state bound by the rule of law—put it: “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. We must therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate intolerance.”

The post The Right to Exist first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Then-Republican presidential nominee and current US-President-elect Donald Trump looks on during a rally at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, in Uniondale, New York, US, Sept. 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

i24 News – US President Donald Trump signed an executive order late Saturday for tariffs to be placed on all imports from Mexico, Canada, and China, risking a trade war.

Naming the influx of illegal aliens into the US, as well as the rising fentanyl crisis, as reasons for the 25 percent tariffs on the neighboring countries, he also raised existing tariffs on China by 10 percent.

In addition to the economic costs of illegal workers coming in, the order said “gang members, smugglers, human traffickers, and illegal drugs and narcotics of all kinds are pouring across our borders and into our communities.”

More than 21,000 pounds of fentanyl was seized last year at US borders, which is estimated to represent “a fraction” of what enters.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed Americans after imposing sanctions in kind against US imports: “Tariffs against Canada will put your jobs at risk, potentially shutting down American auto assembly plants and other manufacturing facilities. They will raise costs for you including food at the grocery store and gas at the pump. They will impede your access to an affordable supply of vital goods crucial for US security such as nickel, potash, uranium, steel and aluminum.”

The tariffs “violate the free trade agreement that the president and I along with our Mexican partner negotiated and signed a few years ago,” Trudeau said.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also announced a similar moves, although it was not yet detailed how exactly Mexico will respond. “When we negotiate with other nations, when we talk with other nations,” she said, it was “always with our heads held high, never bowing our heads.”

She rejected the suggestion that her government was in any way allied with criminal organizations, hitting back that US armories have sold weapons to these gangs.

China’s foreign ministry said it would file a complaint with the World Trade Organization and “take corresponding countermeasures. On the issue of fentanyl, it said it “provides support to the US on the issue of fentanyl,” but that is was ultimately a US problem.

The post Trump Slams Tariffs on Imports from Canada, Mexico & China first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

The logo of the Palestinian Fatah movement includes the territory that is now Israel. Image: Palestinian Media Watch.

i24 News – In an interview given last week to the Emirati Al Mashhad Media, Mohammed a-Tus, a former Fatah militant from Bethlehem, criticized the October 7 attack and called for the prioritization of the diplomatic route over armed actions against Israel.

A-Tus, who spent four decades in Israeli prisons for his participation in several attacks in the 1980s, spoke on Tuesday from Egypt, where he was deported after his release as part of the hostage exchange agreement.

“I tell my grandchildren not to carry out military actions against Israel,” he said. “At this stage, we must focus on diplomatic actions rather than military ones.”

Referring to the Hamas attack of October 7 that indirectly led to his release, a-Tus was particularly critical, even though the interviewer attributed armed violence as what ultimately got him released.

“The price is very high, we will not accept that the price of our liberation is a drop of a Palestinian child’s blood,” he said.

The former prisoner also shared his experience of the October 7 attack from his cell: “We turned on the television and saw alerts asking Israelis to go to shelters. We understood that something major was happening.”

“The next day, the attitude towards us changed 180 degrees,” he continued. “They removed the televisions and radios, informing us that we were in a state of war. Those with experience understood that the response would be harsh.”

While maintaining a certain distance from Hamas, a-Tus highlighted the ties that unite the various Palestinian factions. “Hamas members are brothers of the homeland, of the shared path and of the future,” he said.

That being said, he warned against continued armed resistance. “Any leader who contemplates undertaking a major action must know the price to pay for what he wants to achieve and if the goal justifies the sacrifices,” he concluded.

The post Freed Palestinian Prisoner Criticizes October 7: ‘The Price is Too High’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.