Never Again and the 2 State Solution

Earlier this week I saw an interview with Haaretz editor, Avi Scharf. The interviewer, Andrea Mitchell of NBC, identified Haaretz as a left wing Israeli newspaper, and without further comment she wanted to know his ‘well informed’ take take on the war, Netanyahu, and a the Biden administration’s call for a 2 state solution. (As if his left wing view was the definitive view on those matters. Which is how the mainstream media defines right and wrong. But I digress.)

Scharf’s views about Netanyahu were what one would expect from the left. Without going into detail they were not flattering. But when it came to a Palestinian state, I was a bit surprised by his response. He said that his own left wing that was once very positive about a 2 state solution has now abandoned that position in light of what happened on October 7^th.

Well, maybe I shouldn’t have been all that surprised I don’t see how any sane individual would insist on that as an option now. And yet the Biden administration seems to be doubling down on that option as the ultimate solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

I have said many times that in theory I favor a 2 state solution. For reasons of the demographic time bomb the high birth rate of Palestinians presents. 

Ideally it would be  where relations between the two peoples would be similar to the relationship between the US and Canada.  Even though the chances of such a relationship were remote, I nevertheless believed it was possible under the right conditions at some point in the future. I believed that human desire to live in peace and the chance to achieve prosperity would overcome the deeply religious visceral hatred the ‘Palestinian’ has for the ‘Jew’. I no longer believe that’s possible.

The events of October 7^th and the ensuing declarations by Hamas about their determination to keep repeating October 7^th until Palestine was freed from Jewish domination -  even if it meant killing every last Israeli disabused me of that notion forever.  I was also disabused of it by the attitude of the surviving civilians in Gaza and their fellow Palestinians on the West Bank who supported with glee what Hamas did on that day. And that Palestinians consider every one of their terrorists killed by Israel a martyr whose families are handsomely rewarded by the ‘moderate’ PA.

They have no interest in peaceful relations with the Jews. They all want us out. Any talk of compromise towards peace is at best a temporary measure for them until they get all ‘their’ land back. 

I no longer think this is arguable. And apparently even left wing Israelis no longer thinks so. While the right wing in the US understands and agrees with this, the left wing in the US nonetheless still believes that there is no alternative but to have some sort of Palestinian state. Israel cannot continue to control the lives of Palestinians forever without devastating consequences. 

But as has been made crystal clear even to the left in Israel, those consequences will only get worse. A Palestinian state, on the West Bank - along the long border it would share with Israel.  It is a lot easier for people that don’t live there to make these kinds of calculations. They don’t have to live with those consequences. On the other hand for those that live there, the refusal to grant Palestinians their own state is a no brainer even for lefties.

President Biden is not a left winger. And yet he still seems to believe that not only is a Palestinian state possible, it is an imperative.

I don’t know how an honest and decent man who cares deeply about the viability of the Jewish state to the point of costing him votes in the next election… a man that understands what the Holocaust was about… a man who has to know what every Israeli on both the left and right knows about the mindset of all Palestinians… can even suggest, let alone insist that after the war, there should be immediate negotiations towards a two sate solution.

Maybe he thinks there can be some sort of security arrangement that would guarantee Israel’s security. But I can’t image that Israel hasn’t considered that.  

Is the President willing to set up some sort of NATO type agreement whereby the US would consider an attack against Israel to be an attack against the US? I doubt that. And even if he is willing to do that,  it would not get very far in congress.

If Israel’s own military/intelligence establishment hasn’t devised some sort of security apparatus, I doubt that anyone, including the US  could convince them to take that kind of chance for peace.  

Security concerns represent the paramount obstacle to the establishment of a Palestinian state on Israel's border. The Jewish people have suffered enough historically.  We don’t need another Holocaust on the books. 

I have brothers and sisters I have never met because they were killed in the Holocaust before I was born. Multiply that by the survivors and their children and you can only begin to imagine the enormity of that tragedy even for us. Let along the actual 6 million Jewish victims. And now the families of the 1200 Jews killed on that fateful day in October. Or the families of the remaining hostages.

Israel has faced threats from neighboring states and terrorism from the very beginning of its existence. The Jewish people must never allow themselves the kind of vulnerability that resulted on October 7^th.

Never again means exactly that. It’s time for the rest of the world to realize that the Jewish people will never again allow another Holocaust to happen.