Killers vs. murderers

It dates me to say I’ve been writing or co-writing editorials advocating a two-state peace arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians for over forty years: during the 1978 Camp David Accords (“When the self-governing authority in the West Bank and Gaza is established and inaugurated, the transitional period of five years will begin”); through the years of Peace Now activism in the 1980s; during the Madrid Conference (1991), the Oslo Accords (1993), and Bill Clinton’s Camp David Summit (2000); following the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 and the Road Map for Peace and Geneva Accord of 2003; and so forth and so on.

Each little essay made virtually the same points: that Israel’s security and soul required the just treatment of the Palestinian people and the establishment of their own state; that Palestinian terrorism, and the deep hatred and distrust that it bred among Israelis, was the ugliest, worst possible strategy for ending the occupation; that Israel’s land-greed and violations of international law could only produce more horror; that both peoples, Jews and Palestinians, had wholly legitimate claims to national status, as recognized by the United Nations way back in 1947.

Neither side ever took my advice, of course.

Neither side ever intended to.

Benjamin Netanyahu, after all, is a killer and a war criminal, with blood up to his chin after nearly two decades of political duplicity and overwhelming retaliations against Gaza’s aggressions. There is no way he will allow the establishment of a Palestinian state, not even in the West Bank. He has said as much, in Hebrew if not in English, for many years.

Hamas’ leadership, meanwhile, consists of murderous fanatics who are thoroughly committed to the destruction of Israel. “The establishment of ‘Israel’,” says their revised charter of 2017 (which cleaned up some of the organization’s more blatant antisemitism) “is entirely illegal and contravenes the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and goes against their will and the will of the Ummah,” that is, the international community of Islam. The charter declares the UN Palestine Partition Resolution to be “null and void,” along with “whatever resolutions and measures . . . derive from [it] or are similar to [it].” There’s to be no compromise, ever.

Such “leaders” can do nothing but kill each other and murder anyone who stands between them.

Lign in drerd un bakn beygl, May you lie in the ground and bake bagels, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu.

Allah yakhthek. May Allah take your soul, Mr. Yahya Sinwar.

It’s truly a lost cause, this Israel-Palestine thing. Even if Netanyahu were to go bake bagels, the inauguration of a two-state solution would require the Israeli government to endure a civil war with its settlers and their very large base of support. You think that’s going to happen?

Instead, Israel is bound to end up, at best, a pariah state run by religious fanatics, with large numbers of young citizens fleeing elsewhere, while the Palestinians end up like shattered Native Americans, holed up on crappy reservations. And in the course of all this coming to pass, tens of thousands more innocent people will meet Allah in the rubble, international terrorism will be revived, and antisemitism will be let loose throughout the world.

Those are my predictions. Place your bets, and I hope I lose.

Joe Biden, meanwhile, whom I’ve admired as a really effective president on the home front, is emerging more and more as a classic Democratic Cold Warrior and militarist. With all the wars in the world, what, I need to pay billions more for Israel to bomb Gaza more gently? And with all our domestic tsores, what, I need to pick fights with China? I’m finding it more and more difficult to imagine casting my vote for Uncle Joe— except there’s that Bogeyman who hovers behind him, waiting to retake the White House or to rule our country from his jail cell.

A crisis of leadership? To say the least.