Partying as if there's no tomorrow

Too busy having a good time to notice the dangers. ‘Beach hedonists flock to the super-trendy Clara’ in Tel Aviv says Time Out and Lonely Planet listed as one of the Top 10 places for a hedonistic city break. Photo by Dan Friedman.

Don’t be fooled by our prosperity – Israel is quietly committing suicide

If Israel doesn’t deal urgently with the occupation and returns to forgotten proposal of dividing the country, our heady present will destroy the future.

By Ari Shavit, Ha’aretz
July 08, 2015

Unlike last summer, this summer is quiet (fingers crossed.) Around us a storm is raging; The [sic] Islamic State is in Tunisia, Libya, the Sinai, Syria and Iraq. Around us winds are blowing – Greece may (or may not) collapse, the EU may (or may not) break up, hundreds of thousands of refugees are migrating northward from the south, because in the south all order has collapsed. Yet precisely here, in the eye of the storm, it’s relatively quiet.

All this could change at any moment and the worst of all could happen, but right now (knock wood), it’s not so bad. While there is a little terror, there is deterrence on the northern and southern borders, and we have the Israel Defence Forces and the Shin Bet Security Service; Israel is not alone.

The fact is, there are more and more construction cranes being erected throughout the country, and more and more skyscrapers are sprouting on the Tel Aviv skyline. There are more tourists, more young people, and more fun. The restaurants are bursting, the beaches are crowded. It’s really good here, actually. Don’t admit it to anyone, but despite the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and despite the gas programme, life here is intensely beautiful.

Except for one small thing: the future. The ability to sustain the Zionist enterprise.

Why did Zionism emerge? So that there would be one place on Earth in which Jews would not be a minority, but a majority. And so that, due to that majority, the Jews would be able to have what they didn’t have for two thousand years – sovereignty. So that the clear majority would enable the Jewish people to establish an enlightened sovereignty in a democratic context. That’s the whole deal.

It’s for this that we came together here and for this we have sacrificed all that we’ve sacrificed. And because the Zionist idea was a correct one, we succeeded. We have performed a miracle here.

But ever since the cursed summer of 1967, we have been desecrating the miracle we wrought. For 48 years, we have been eroding the Jewish majority and destroying Jewish sovereignty. And that being the case, we are also dismembering this singular Israeli democracy. Quietly, without anyone noticing, we are committing suicide. Another settlement and another settlement and another, until there won’t be a national home to return to. More and more and more settlers, until we will no longer be able to sustain a democratic Jewish state here.

Shabtai Tevet gave a great name to his book about the beginning of the occupation, “The Cursed Blessing.” But over the past decade, the phrase coined by Tevet has taken on a new, chilling meaning. Because of the blessings we’ve been experiencing – economic prosperity, high-tech, Tel Aviv, the good life – we’ve lost the ability to see what’s going on around us. Because we have it so good – the high-rise buildings, the restaurants, the beaches, the young people – we don’t feel the ground burning beneath our feet. Being the victims of our own success, we are getting drunk on the intoxicating present and allowing it to dull our senses, blur our understanding and numb us.

Exactly ten years ago, we stood up and acted as a nation and tried to save both the Jewish majority and Israeli sovereignty. The disengagement plan had many flaws and many serious mistakes were made while implementing it, but it was based on a fierce and accurate insight. What the patron of the settlements, Ariel Sharon, understood, was that if we don’t take our fate into our own hands and don’t determine our own borders, the settlement enterprise would bury us alive.

This insight is even more valid today than it was in the summer of 2005. We must learn the lessons of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and not allow Hamas to establish a missile base in Judea and Samaria. But we must return to the essential and forgotten proposal of dividing the country. If we don’t do so urgently, the heady present will destroy the future, and the curse will utterly consume the blessing.

Denis McDonough at the 2015 J Street conference.

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough Says the Israeli Occupation ‘Must End’

By Jessica Schulberg, Huffington Post
March 23, 2015

WASHINGTON — White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough brought a strong message to an American pro-Israel conference on Monday, telling a crowd of 3,000 attendees that “an occupation that has lasted for almost 50 years must end, and the Palestinian people must have the right to live in and govern themselves in their own sovereign state.”

The annual conference, hosted by J Street, fell at a nearly unprecedented low point in U.S.-Israeli relations. Existing tensions between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to a head in the recent Israeli elections, when Netanyahu campaigned on a promise that he would not allow for the creation of a Palestinian state. Though he has since tried to reaffirm his support for a two-state solution, the White House has rejected his reversal.

“After the election, the prime minister said that he had not changed his position, but for many in Israel and in the international community, such contradictory comments call into question his commitment to a two-state solution — as did his suggestion that the construction of settlements has a strategic purpose of dividing Palestinian communities and his claim that conditions in the larger Middle East must be more stable before a Palestinian state can be established,” McDonough said.

“We cannot simply pretend that those comments were never made, or that they don’t raise questions about the prime minister’s commitment to achieving peace through direct negotiations,” McDonough added, saying that the Obama administration plans to reevaluate its policy toward Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Though McDonough did not elaborate on what a revamped policy would look like, the White House has suggested that its opposition to Palestinian attempts to secure statehood at the United Nations may soften. On Thursday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters, “Steps that the United States has taken at the United Nations have been predicated on this idea that the two-state solution is the best outcome. Now our ally in these talks has said that they are no longer committed to that solution. That means that we need to reevaluate our position in this matter, and that is what we will do moving forward,” referring to past down-votes by the U.S. on Palestinian statehood initiatives.

While the relationship between Obama and Netanyahu has been strained since the American president’s early days in office, both leaders, at least officially, have supported a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now that the Obama administration is operating under the assumption that Netanyahu has no intention of supporting a Palestinian state, the White House has been increasingly unrestricted in its criticism of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

“Palestinian children deserve the same right to be free in their own land as Israeli children in their land. A two-state solution will finally bring Israelis the security and normalcy to which they are entitled, and Palestinians the sovereignty and dignity they deserve,” McDonough told a cheering crowd of J Street conference attendees, who overwhelmingly identify with the Jewish left.

The chief of staff said that the parameters of a two-state solution are clear. “The borders of Israel and an independent Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps. Each state needs secure and recognized borders, and there must be robust provisions that safeguard Israel’s security,” he said, mentioning baseline borders that Netanyahu has repeatedly refused, citing security concerns.

On Sunday, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer attempted to justify Netanyahu’s controversial pre-election comments by explaining that ending the occupation would compromise Israeli safety.

“Right now, if we establish a Palestinian state on the West Bank on Judea-Samaria, we are going to see another armed terror base used to launch attacks against Israel,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Remember, Israel left Lebanon in 2000. We didn’t get peace, we got an Iranian terror base out on the northern border. Israel left Gaza in 2005, we uprooted all the settlements there. We didn’t get peace, we got an Iranian terror base on our southern base,” Dermer said.

During his remarks at J Street, McDonough pushed back against the notion that the U.S. was promoting a solution that would jeopardize Israeli security. “We share Israel’s concern about the security environment in the region — which is why, as part of the last round of talks, the president and Secretary Kerry had General John Allen prepare a detailed plan to provide for security in the West Bank over the long term,” he said.

McDonough added, “Nothing would do more to improve Israel’s security or its relations with its neighbors than to bring about a sovereign and contiguous Palestinian state alongside a secure, democratic, Jewish Israel.”

Despite his harsher-than-usual words for the Israeli leadership, McDonough stressed that the U.S. will continue to ensure that Israel has a stronger military than any of its neighbours. He reminded his audience that the U.S. delivered immediate emergency funding of $225 million for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system during last summer’s Gaza War, in addition to nearly $1 billion in funding already in place for the system.

Next year, McDonough added, Israel will receive F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, making it the only country in the Middle East that will be armed with the highly advanced aircraft.

Near the end of his remarks, McDonough shifted to Iran, referencing congressional attempts to pass legislation that would empower lawmakers to vote on a final nuclear agreement and strip the president of the ability to temporarily lift sanctions.

“Let’s be very clear about what this would do,” said McDonough, who recently drafted a letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), urging him to hold off on putting the bill to a vote. “It would embolden hard-liners in Iran. It would separate the United States from our allies. And it would potentially fracture the international unity that has been essential to keeping the pressure on Iran. In other words, this legislation could cause the United States to be blamed if diplomacy fails.”