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Harry's avatar

Good essay, though Tom Friedman is still the Paul Krugman of foreign policy commentary, I.e., he was right once and has been dining out on it ever since.

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

For committed Western liberal globalists (who perhaps achieve their Platonic incarnation in the Pied Piper of corporate globalism, Tom Friedman), the Palestinians are a sort of Medusa that they cannot bring themselves to gaze upon directly.

To gaze directly at the Palestinians and their 75-year history, meaning to look and listen clearly to the words and deeds of their leaders from Arafat to Sinwar etc, would force liberals of all stripes to confront too many painful choices and too many challenges to the sacred dogma that underlies their worldview. Such as: the idea that not everyone views Western liberalism as the inevitable terminus and apotheosis of humanity, not everyone is willing to trade faith and tribe and clan for commerce and a legislature and the blessings of individual liberty, and that many people would still rather kill and die for their god than make peace with their enemies (Western liberals are so deeply secular that they are pretty much autistic when it comes to religion). Basically what most Westerners refuse to face is that there is no possible concession Israel can make, no offer of state recognition or funding by Israel or the UN, that will ever change the basic Palestinian position: that their goal and purpose isn't their own state, but the destruction of the Jewish state.

Facing and accepting this would not only mean questioning their own underlying assumptions about humanity and society, it would also mean recognizing that the only possible solution here is ending the cause of Palestinianism, most likely through Israel absorbing some small percentage of Arabs with the rest being moved to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon etc.

Palestinianism has been terrible for the actual Palestinian people but has become a great moral and spiritual crusade for the Western Left, which means that opposing and attempting to defeat it would require liberals to violate various social, political and moral taboos, which would mean personal and career sacrifice. As this is all too much to confront, they instead have to remain in cloud-cuckoo land and keep trying to resurrect dead absurdities like the two- or one-state solution. Friedman and his ilk will simply be of no help here, as you can never solve a problem without being able to clearly diagnose it. What all their words really amount to is a deflection strategy, a way to keep their heads down and kick the can down the road. The future here will be decided by men of deeds, not by men of words.

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