What exactly are you proposing needs to be done? Can you suggest at least one type of action that Israel, Israelis and their supporters can do in order to promote democracy in the entire Middle East? I mean, an action that actually yields some return? Does the road to democratizing the region go through the one-state solution? Is that what you are getting at?

Again, I must be missing something here. I am not a graduate of any school of ideology so it is possible that what seems obvious to you eludes me.

Anyone who argues against such an idea[l] would be like that proverbial traveler in the desert arguing that water would be bad for his health. No one is making that argument. I can’t think of one Israeli or a supporter of Israel making such an argument, let alone working towards such an end. I must be missing something here. It seems to me that you are saying: It will be a great step forward on the road to peace if the region were to follow in the footsteps of Scandinavia.

But as I and other here have repeated, as a horizon, it’s good and highly desirable but Israel, right now, at this juncture, what can it do but look to its own interests in the very near future? And why am I made to feel that my concern for Israel’s very urgent and thisworldly plagues is tantamount to being “short-sighted, closed-minded, even ostrich-like”??

What exactly are you proposing needs to be done? WE are not the party in need of a paradigm change.

You write “we cannot hope for a democratic revolution to change the face and dynamics in the Middle East before we we solve the problem of Israel’s security and survival.” I don’t see how you can “solve” security and survival without it. Actually I think all talk of solve, of solutions, is misleading. Every time the problem seems to be solved, the problem will change.

On sitting back &c., what I’d like to see is the opposite of sitting back and waiting for things to happen.

“To dismiss such an aim is suicidal.”

No. To expect a successful, democratic and prosperous country to … do what exactly ….. in the hope of a nominal peace, now THAT’s suicidal.

How are we get “policing with the consent of the majority of the population, good neighbours who look out for one another.” It’s a fantasy, certainly at the moment. Nobody is saying that a “scandinavian” solution can’t be worked out, but the same scandinavian solution took 200 years, and here you are expecting it to be done in the next few years as though this were a resolution to a TV drama.

You are right that “it is not enough” to do the things you mention, but what you don’t say is that it is the best that can be done, given the current circumstances and the nature of the surrounding adversaries.

You say that “Proposing regional democracy and civil rights as a strategic priority for Israel is not starry-eyed idealism, not optimism but realism in the face of serious threats.” Sure, it’s realistic to PROPOSE it. I note, however, you don’t have boo to say about how to ACHIEVE it. With good reason, since that — along with Arab/Muslim rejectionism of Israel altogether — remains the crux of the issue. Unless you can provide realistic strategies for achieving regional democracy — something surely Israel cannot be responsible for on its own — your “proposal” is basically more pissing in the wind.

To sum up, the notion of a successful, prosperous and democratic country under existential threat transforming itself all on its own and still remaining under existential threat is not an attractive prospect. If I were Israeli, I’d way prefer the status quo, and take my chances on the future. True, Syrian weapons will be more powerful, but then, so will Israel’s deterrent power. Your energies would be better used getting the Arab/Muslim world — rather than Israel — to change.

And then Kelly says:

“Both of you seem to confuse past experience with future inevitability, and to conflate some known short term realities with all possible long term outcomes.”

I agree that hope in the face of looming catastrophe is not only utterly useless but probably death-bearing. Hope prevents people from doing what is necessary to secure their own future and life.

The quote about hope Kelly refers to comes from a collection of stories by Tadeusz Borowski , a Polish Auschwitz susvivor who put an end to his life six years after liberation:

“It is hope that makes people walk apathetically into the gas chamber, makes them shrink back from uprising … Hope that tears apart family bonds, makes mothers reject their children, makes women sell themselves for a piece of bread and turns men into killers. Hope makes them fight for each day of life, for maybe the next day will bring liberation … We did not learn to renounce hope, and that is why we died in the gas.”

Hope, says Borowski, in Auschwitz translated directly into corruption of proper feeling and reason.

http://contentious-centrist.blogspot.com/2007/02/dantes-catalogue-of-horrors-in-inferno.html

Yet I cannot see how Jdyer’s statement can be critiqued in light of what this quote is actually teaching. Quite the contrary. He says (at least that’s what I think he says) that we cannot hope for a democratic revolution to change the face and dynamics in the Middle East before we we solve the problem of Israel’s security and survival. While it would be very nice if Palestine, Syria, Gaza and Egypt were to become more liberal, more concerned with human rights and more attentive to the cultural, religious and self-determination rights of other peoples’ but themselves, it would be suicidal for Israel to just sit back and wait for that to happen.

No offense, but what Kelly recommends looks a lot more like the belief in Messianic rescue held by some ultra religious anti-Zionist Jewish sects than the firm foundation of reason and action that a secular and modern state is supposed to be based on.

Maimonedes instructed his fellow Jews in the Middle Ages that they were to believe with great sincerity in the coming of the Messiah, even if he tarries so. In the meantime, he also instructed his fellow Jews that they have to behave rationally and do whatever is necessary to preserve themselves alive.

I am willing to embrace, no, I do embrace Kelly’s vision of a democratic enlightened Middle East with every fiber of my being. In the meantime, as an Israeli and a lover of the idea of Israel’s continued survival which means life and pursuit of happiness for my family and friends, I will continue to support Israel’s quest for the security and well being for its citizens until such time as its neigbours see the light.

Noga and jdyer, you seem to make a similar argument on democracy and civil rights in the wider region. jdyer, in response to my writing that “developing democracy and civil rights not just in a Palestinian state but in the region as a whole should be a strategic priority to ensure Israel’s security,” you say you hope I am wrong as “there is no democracy in the region except for that of Israel,” and you “don’t see much prospect for change in that direction for some time to come.”

Noga, you seem to take on my argument, writing that “if democracy and civil rights existed in any reasonable level among the Arabs, there would be no need for Israel to be overly concerned about its security and a political partnership of some sort could well be considered as a benign solution to the problem of two small states that, by pooling together their resources, will become a bigger, more solid and more prosperous unit,” but then dismiss this as absurd illusion with the remark that “Israelis are not going to wake up one morning and find out that their neighbours have all turned into Swedes, or Finns,” and seek to make this the end of the line for further thought by proposing that “we wait until democracy and civil rights are the dominant ethos in the Middle East before we talk about one state solutions and what not.” So your thinking is that we are at A, and C cannot come before B, so we should not discuss C before we reach B, but we cannot take B seriously because we have only ever been at A. Forgive me if I suggest this seems a little short-sighted, closed-minded, even ostrich-like.

Both of you seem to confuse past experience with future inevitability, and to conflate some known short term realities with all possible long term outcomes.

Let’s talk of Swedes and Finns for a moment. Sweden has been peaceable enough over the last century, but has a long history of war and conquest before that. When the Norwegians awoke in 1814 to find themselves surrounded by Swedes, it wasn’t in the peaceful democratic sense you mean. And they didn’t free themselves from Swedish imperialism ’til the 20th century. But there it is, things change. As for the Finns, their history of warfare, allied with the Nazis even, is rather more recent. But yes, things change.

And of course for anyone wanting to take a wider view of democracy than just Scandinavia, there are lots of young democracies to point to, ones that were at each other’s throats within living memory, and are now sharing open borders. Things change.

Fine, you may say, if it ever happens in the Middle East, time enough to think about it after it comes to pass. Not a very strategic approach, I suggest. Which brings me back to jdyer’s remarks…

jdyer, you hope that making regional democracy and civil rights a strategic priority is unnecessary for Israel’s security. I remember that Noga had a choice quote on her blog some time ago on the foolishness of relying on hope. You seem to regard you view as realistic. Others might describe you as a pessimistic. I would say that you seem recklessly optimistic in dismissing democracy and civil rights as a concern.

In talking about a strategic priority we are not just considering what will happen next year, or in five, ten or fifteen years. We should be considering probabilities up to forty or fifty years into the future, which is not even that long a period when you look back at Israel’s history. And in looking at that time span we should consider some potential downsides. Not even outlandish ones, just ones well within the range of the possible. What does Israel’s future security look like if there is serious political instability in Egypt? There we have now an undemocratic Western-backed regime, a fundamentalist opposition, and a squeezed centrist democratic opposition. Is it conceivable that something like the Iranian revolution might happen there. What else is conceivable over forty or fifty years?

What’s conceivable in Syria? If the political future is narrowed to past experience as you and Noga suggest, let’s say it stays politically the same, but with the weapons technology of 2050, of 2060. Advanced weapons technology in the hands of a regime with no democratic oversight. Should we all just wait and see if this happens? Should we just rely on Israel and its allies maintaining military superiority? We have seen all too recently that military superiority is not the same as invulnerability.

And what of Israel’s allies in 2050, in 2060? The US has a history of isolationism that hasn’t gone away. The US faces economic and military challenges elsewhere in the globe. How available will US help be in 2050?

Proposing regional democracy and civil rights as a strategic priority for Israel is not starry-eyed idealism, not optimism but realism in the face of serious threats. It is wholly necessary to have such a strategy in order to have any depth of security beyond the frontier’s thin line.

It is not enough to just secure your home if you live in a bad neighborhood, not enough to arm yourself and lock the doors. It is not enough to rely on your friend on the other side of town. It is not enough to pay protection money to a couple of local gangsters in the hope that they can continue to keep their boys in line. What will you do when new gangsters take over, what will you do when your friends across town are taken up with their own problems? What will you do if the whole neighborhood goes up in flames? Before that happens, you need neighborhood security, and not the protection money kind. You need policing with the consent of the majority of the population, democracy, civil rights, good neighbors who look out for one another. To just dismiss such an aim is suicidal.