To wit, here is his peace platform, helpfully numbered by Ha'aretz columnist Bradley Burston:
1. I support two-states, one Israel and one Palestine. As far as I am concerned, I can recognize Israel's "Jewish" character and Israelis should recognize Palestine's "non-Jewish" character.
2. I oppose violence of any kind from and by anyone. I reject Hamas' participation in any Palestinian government without first agreeing to surrender all arms and to accept two-states as a "final" peace agreement. But I also reject allowing Israeli settlers to carry any weapons and believe Israelis must impose the same restrictions on them.
3. I can support some settlements remaining - given the reality of 42 years of time passing - in a dunam-for-dunam land exchange. If Ariel is 500 dunams with a lifeline from Israel, then Israel gives Palestine 500 dunams in exchange.
4. Jerusalem should be a shared city and Palestinians should have an official presence in East Jerusalem. The Old City should be shared by both permitting open access to the city to all with a joint Palestinian-Israeli police presence.
5. Palestinian refugees would give up their demand to return to pre-1948 homes and lands lost during the conflict with Israel. Instead, some could apply for family reunification through Israel and the remainder would be compensated through a fund created and maintained by the United States, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the United Nations.
6. I also think Israelis should find it in their hearts to show compassion and offer their apologies to Palestinians for the conflict.
7. I support creation of a similar fund to compensate those Jews from Arab lands who lost their homes and lands, too, when they fled.
8. I think the Wall should be torn down, or relocated to the new borders. I have no problem separating the two nations for a short duration to help rebuild confidence between our two people.
9. All political parties, Palestinian and Israelis, should eliminate languages denying each other's existence, and all maps should be reprinted so that Israeli maps finally show Palestine and Palestinian maps finally show Israel.
10. A subway system should be built linking the West Bank portion of the Palestine state to the Gaza Strip portion of the Palestine State. Palestine should be permitted to build a seaport access to strengthen its industry, and an airport to permit flights and too and from the Arab and Israeli world.
11. I would urge the Arab World to renew their offer to normalize relations with Israel if Israel agrees to support the creation of a Palestinian State.
12. And I would ask both countries to establish embassies in each other's country to address other problems.
13. While non-Jewish Palestinians would continue to live in Israel as citizens, Jews who wish to live in settlements surrendered by Israel could become Palestinian citizens and they should be recognized and treated equally.
14. If Jews want to live in Hebron, they should be allowed to live in Hebron and should be protected, just as non-Jews. In fact, for every Jewish individual seeking to live in Palestine, a Palestinian should be permitted to live in Israel. In fact, major Palestinian populations in Israel could be annexed into Palestine (like settlements).
15. Another concept is to have non-Jews living in Israel continue to live there but only vote in Palestinian elections, while Jews living in Palestine would only vote in Israeli elections. A special citizenship protection committee could be created to explore how to protect the rights of minorities in each state.
16. Israel and Palestine should create joint-governing and security agencies working with the United States to monitor the peace, and establish an agency to pursue criminal acts of violence.
Do I have quibbles? I always have quibbles -- I wouldn't be a blogger if I didn't. I'd change "non-Jewish" to "Palestinian" in clause 1, I'd modify clause 6 into a more general call for apologies by both Israelis and Palestinians for respective injustices and wrongdoings that occurred over the history of the conflict,* clause 8 is slightly vague in its immediate meaning (though I think I can agree in principle), and my understanding is that the retrocession of Palestinian areas in Israel to a future Palestinian state envisioned in clause 14 is not desired by the (Arab) inhabitants of these areas (though I don't have any personal objection if the locals do give their consent).
But those pale in comparison to the vision of hope expressed in the lines. I unequivocally endorse clauses 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 16, and I don't think relatively minor observations I had regarding clauses 1, 6, and 8 are in conflict with the principle being expressed behind them. And clause 15, for its part, presents a genuinely novel account of citizenship and political community across borders that I think is quite exciting (so the only clause I have a genuine concern with is clause 14). In general, "exciting" is how I would describe the Hanania plan. It is one of those great steps forward, and deserves our promotion and support.
* On the platform listing on the Yalla Peace own website, there is a final clause, omitted both from Mr. Hanania's Huffington Post piece and the Ha'aretz numbered one, which reads:
Both Israel and Palestine apologize to each other and recognize the hardships and pain they each have caused to each other in this conflict.
Though this does not replace clause 6 on the platform, I think the two could effectively be merged.
I do think the elimination of a Palestinian right of return while maintaining a Jewish right of return is extremely problematic.
ReplyDeleteWhere are you looking?
ReplyDelete#5, with the lack of any demand that Israel stop discriminating against non-Jewish immigrants.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a problem with that. The provisions are parallel -- Palestinians don't have a right of return to areas inside Israel, but Jews shouldn't have a right of return to areas inside Palestine (#14 is ambiguous -- does it refer to the Jews forced out of Hebron in 1929, or the Jews living their right now, or any Jews anywhere who desire to live in Hebron -- but in any event I don't think Jews should have a right of return for Palestinian areas).
ReplyDeleteI don't imagine that the plan has any restrictions on Palestine providing preferential immigration treatment to the Palestinian diaspora -- indeed, I've never heard anyone challenge their rights in this area. And internationally, it generally is not considered controversial for countries to privilege their originating ethnic groups in immigration decisions -- I'm rather surprised, in fact, to see you sympathetic to the canard that Israel is in any way unique (or uniquely wrong) in this respect.
^^^
ReplyDeleteWell without trying to sound too accusatory, does this mean you have no problem with the Chinese Exclusion Act?
I do have a problem with that law; I also view it as of a qualitatively different character from China passing a Chinese Inclusion Act (and indeed, China does provide preferential treatment in this respect, through Article VII clause 1 of its nationality laws; Japan is even more aggressive in this respect).
ReplyDeleteMy position on the permissibility of ethnically-targeted laws aimed at protecting marginalized groups is well-known, well-rehearsed, and quite consistent.
Hardly unique - the fact that I oppose discrimination in immigration in other countries doesn't mean I don't oppose it in Israel, too.
ReplyDeleteI have friends who are Jewish and whose roots go back hundreds of years into Eastern Europe. I reject the idea that their religion gives them a claim that people who left the land sixty years ago do not have.
I'm not sure what you're saying in your comment to Joe - mind clarifying?
I find the whole "you support an ethnically-based policy, you're just like the racists!" to be a very aggravating argument when it is used to compare Howard University to 1925 Ole Miss. It's meaningless to me. There are fantastically good reasons why these sorts of policies make sense (for the preservation of HBCUs, and for insuring that Israel remains a state of the Jewish people), ones that I know that you know, and hence I a) don't find compelling those who engage in false equivalencies and b) am utterly baffled by those who know, in other contexts, that the equivalency is false, yet seem to selectively forget it where Jews are concerned.
ReplyDeleteI also think, incidentally, that hindering a peace agreement between (what will become) two separate nations because of disagreement about each country's internal immigration policies is somewhat perplexing. Making the perfect the enemy of the good, one might say. I don't think a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine is the place to hash out domestic policy disagreements (which is what immigration law is, particularly since your objection is not a comparative one specifically dealing with the rights/obligations of Israel and Palestine to each other), anymore than I'd want to attach a rider regarding religious equality for non-religious Jews (and Muslims and Christians, for that matter), despite the fact that I think that is obviously an issue of the utmost moral importance -- with particular salience to many of the individual parties most affected by the peace agreement.
Reducing opposing arguments to "you're just like the racists!" is itself false equivalence in this case. For starters, if the US had instead come up with a "European Inclusion Act" (because most citizens were descendants of Europeans, the culture and political system were closer to Europe, etc.) that set a limit to immigration, and all the spots went to the Europeans who were first in the queue then it's functionally the same as Chinese exclusion from the Chinese immigrant's point of view (now that's what I call a disparate impact, and I wish I had some CSI sunglasses to put on when I wrote that). It's not a law school application where race is just a plus factor and some combination of Europeans and Chinese come in. So unless you're a formalist at heart I don't see how you're making the distinction, where the qualitative difference lies. On the other hand if you want to say the Chinese Exclusion Act isn't what you would do as a policy matter but isn't wrong go ahead. (And when last I heard, Chinese society and Japanese society were both widely considered to be very racist, so I'm not sure you really want to use their immigration policies as positive examples.)
ReplyDeleteI also think you should consider the Palestinian point of view before dismissing as unreasonable the right of return as a sticking point. You've said it's no big deal because Israelis won't have right of return into Palestine, but that's not the same when you take into account the difference in standard of living. Putting aside religious and ethnic considerations, what side of those walls would you rather live on?
Or to think of it another way: let's say the UN said no to a Jewish homeland in the Middle East sixty years ago and decided to just carve out a generous swathe of Western Germany and call it Israel to serve the dual purpose of recognizing Jewish self-determination and exacting reparations from Germany. And for good measure the UN relocates all the Jewish citizens of Middle East Israel.
I'm guessing you'd see a problem with this because it's not self-determination if when a group gets a homeland on someone else's terms. You can make pragmatic arguments here but if you're depending on the moral force of anti-subordination don't you need to let a group define its own agenda? And if the Palestinians and Israelis have conflicting agendas and we've set pragmatic calculation aside, isn't the only moral resolution to see who has a better claim to what on a case by case basis?
Yeah, I'm going to call BS on the Howard University comparison, because they don't exclude non-black people.
ReplyDeleteRe: perfect as enemy of good - I think the "it's a domestic policy issue and doesn't need to be in a treaty" is a bit disingenuous. It is directly relevant to the issue and to the entity with which this treaty would be negotiated. If it's just about the perfect being the enemy of the good, there are any number of sections that could be removed, some regarding Palestinian behavior towards Israel as well.
Nor does Israel exclude non-Jews -- are you seriously alleging they do? That's not Israel's immigration policy and you know it. Israel, like Howard, provides preferential admission decisions in part to preserve a (quite defensible) identity as a Jewish state/historically black institution. They don't not let in others -- there are plenty of non-Jews who immigrate to Israel and are admitted. This is simply slanderous. (The US, like the University of Chicago, has adopted a cosmopolitan ethos of pluralism and inclusion. I think that's valuable, and I think they should maintain it, so I'd oppose efforts to change their self-conceived mission, but I don't think obviates the need for institutions like Howard or nation-states).
ReplyDeleteI also genuinely don't understand the nature of your objection. It doesn't seem to be that Israel doesn't have a completely open (or completely value neutral) immigration policy; no country does, and nobody is requesting Palestine have one (and in general, your asymmetry in this conversation between the obligations of Israel versus Palestine is worrisome). As best I can tell, it is that Israel (and Palestine?) should establish specific immigration rules preferring those with recent attachment to the land over the general category "Jews" (or "Palestinians"). Of course, this rule would prevent the new Palestinian state from providing preferential immigration treatment for a Palestinian refugee living in Amman who hails from Acre, and would require them to give preference to the Jewish extremists living in Hebron. Meanwhile, I don't see such a rule having any contemporary foreign analogue, nor am I convinced there is any particular moral imperative for establishing it (here or in general), especially as a replacement for an immigration norm centered around creating at least one space where Jews and Palestinians respectively are not otherized, are not outsiders, but are in control of their own fates, policies, and destinies.
Finally, I think part of recognizing that we're dealing with independent, autonomous states here means affirming their right to make domestic policy through normal democratic processes, without a bunch of self-righteous powerful outsiders claiming the right to veto every which way (where have we experienced that before?). This veto ought be reserved for cases of violation of well-recognized human rights or bona fide international security threats, of which immigration policy rarely is of the type, and as noted there is no generally-accepted international rule regarding immigration policy than anybody is in breach of here. Even if there was some sort of international norm against these sorts of immigration policies (and there clearly is not), I think it would make perfect sense to create an exception here (for the aforementioned pluralism-based reasons), but where there is no such norm I see no reason (to paraphrase Matt Yglesias) for deciding that the eastern bank of the Mediterranean has to be the site of our glorious cosmopolitan experiment trumping the generic preference for local democratic decisionmaking.
Nor does Israel exclude non-Jews -- are you seriously alleging they do? That's not Israel's immigration policy and you know it. Israel, like Howard, provides preferential admission decisions in part to preserve a (quite defensible) identity as a Jewish state/historically black institution. They don't not let in others -- there are plenty of non-Jews who immigrate to Israel and are admitted. This is simply slanderous.
ReplyDeletePerhaps that would be better phrased as "they don't exclude Irish" or "they don't exclude Chinese" (etc.), to take one specific group of people who are not excluded from Howard University. The other difference is that Howard is not set up to take every black person who applies.
To address your point, though - it comes back to "what is allowable for the sake of creating a Jewish state." I think we just have different ideas about that.
I also genuinely don't understand the nature of your objection. It doesn't seem to be that Israel doesn't have a completely open (or completely value neutral) immigration policy; no country does, and nobody is requesting Palestine have one (and in general, your asymmetry in this conversation between the obligations of Israel versus Palestine is worrisome). As best I can tell, it is that Israel (and Palestine?) should establish specific immigration rules preferring those with recent attachment to the land over the general category "Jews" (or "Palestinians"). Of course, this rule would prevent the new Palestinian state from providing preferential immigration treatment for a Palestinian refugee living in Amman who hails from Acre, and would require them to give preference to the Jewish extremists living in Hebron.
Hey, it would be really nice if you would stop assuming my position on things I haven't said anything about, you know? I would absolutely be against discrimination in Palestinian immigration law as well. (Although your parallel of "Palestinian refugee in Amman" with "Jewish person (whether ethnically or converted) whose family has had no connection to Israel for one thousand years" interesting, as is your parallel of "Palestinian" with "Jewish person who opposes the existence of Palestine.")
Perhaps that would be better phrased as "they don't exclude Irish" or "they don't exclude Chinese" (etc.), to take one specific group of people who are not excluded from Howard University. The other difference is that Howard is not set up to take every black person who applies.
ReplyDeleteThe latter "distinction" doesn't seem to have any moral salience. The former distinction is simply a lie. Or perhaps you could tell me which group Israel categorically excludes? It's not Palestinians. It's not Muslims. It's not Arabs. I don't know if they've let in any Fijians. That could be it.
Hey, it would be really nice if you would stop assuming my position on things I haven't said anything about, you know? I would absolutely be against discrimination in Palestinian immigration law as well. (Although your parallel of "Palestinian refugee in Amman" with "Jewish person (whether ethnically or converted) whose family has had no connection to Israel for one thousand years" interesting, as is your parallel of "Palestinian" with "Jewish person who opposes the existence of Palestine.")
But you haven't given a coherent account of what discrimination means in this context (I also don't apologize for "assuming" your position when we're talking about Israel and Palestine, and you only express a view that Israel has X obligation, that you have no view on Palestine's parallel one. Otherwise, why not express the worry as to both?). Is it an open immigration policy? That doesn't seem to be it. You haven't explained what standards, if any, the countries can use for immigration, except some preference for persons with an actual recent historical tie to the land (why isn't that "discrimination" -- this is precisely why you need to define terms), or, given your annoyance at the Amman hypothetical, persons who have a tie to some piece of land within a 50 mile radius of the country. Which, I imagine, is straight out of Kant somewhere.
To address your point, though - it comes back to "what is allowable for the sake of creating a Jewish state." I think we just have different ideas about that.
I guess, if by "different" you mean, "I'm creating a completely inchoate moral obligation that is ill-defined and has no modern parallel, and raising it to such a high degree that I think it trumps values of pluralism and democratic autonomy". That is a disagreement, but I'm comfortable with it, at least until you can clarify to some degree what, actually, is the supposed violation you're rectifying (we can deal with the "trumping democracy" thing later).
Just how easy are you saying it is for a Palestinian to immigrate into Israel?
ReplyDelete(I'm not arguing that Israel or Howard totally excludes all people not of their preferred race - my original phrasing was poor. But you seem to think that, to continue with the analogy, Howard's in the clear if it admits people of all races and religions as long as they're not Mexican.)
1. How many non-black people apply to Howard?
2. Does Howard guarantee admission to all black people, short of criminals?
But you haven't given a coherent account of what discrimination means in this context (I also don't apologize for "assuming" your position when we're talking about Israel and Palestine, and you only express a view that Israel has X obligation, that you have no view on Palestine's parallel one. Otherwise, why not express the worry as to both?). Is it an open immigration policy? That doesn't seem to be it. You haven't explained what standards, if any, the countries can use for immigration, except some preference for persons with an actual recent historical tie to the land (why isn't that "discrimination" -- this is precisely why you need to define terms), or, given your annoyance at the Amman hypothetical, persons who have a tie to some piece of land within a 50 mile radius of the country. Which, I imagine, is straight out of Kant somewhere.
I see I have to rethink some of my assumptions here: namely, that we agree that racial discrimination is bad. (Discrimination, n.: unequal treatment of persons, for a reason which has nothing to do with legal rights or ability.)
You seem to be taking the position that "anything other than open immigration is arbitrary, so discrimination is okay." Would you say the same about Jewish immigration to, say, the United States?
The plan, as you posted it, specifically calls for the abandonment of the Palestinian right of return while placing no limits on the Jewish right of return. I addressed that part because that is the part I have a problem with. Next time I will make sure to add "and I support #14, which allows Jews to live in Hebron, as well as #s X, Y, and Z, which also represent things I believe in."
I assumed that by "Palestinian refugee" you meant "Palestinian refugee," not merely "person of Palestinian ancestry."
I guess, if by "different" you mean, "I'm creating a completely inchoate moral obligation that is ill-defined and has no modern parallel, and raising it to such a high degree that I think it trumps values of pluralism and democratic autonomy". That is a disagreement, but I'm comfortable with it, at least until you can clarify to some degree what, actually, is the supposed violation you're rectifying (we can deal with the "trumping democracy" thing later).
You're a law student, and a political blogger who's at least moderate. Please don't tell me that discrimination is okay if it's upheld by a majority of voters. (And seriously? Discrimination promotes pluralism? What kind of doublethink is that?)
"Discrimination" is just a stalking horse for "differential treatment we think is bad" (literally speaking, discrimination is just differential treatment, but it has come to adopt a valence of only referring to bad discrimination.) Discrimination:differential treatment :: murder:killing. We all accept differentiation in certain cases (such as your definition's carve outs for ability or "legal rights", whatever that means). Differential treatment can also be bad for a variety of reasons, two of the most widely accepted being when it seems wholly arbitrary or stems from a bare desire to harm the discriminated-against group (capriciousness). This is why your flashing of "discrimination" simply begs the question; the very question under dispute is whether Israel's reasons for differentially treating Jews render it the sort of differential treatment we think is valid or invalid. The word is fundamentally a normative value judgment, but you're not engaging in the underlying moral analysis (akin to arguing that a particular killing is morally wrong because it's "murder", without first seeing if it is, in fact, the sort of killing we find morally wrongful. Murder is just killing that is bad; you don't get to call a killing murder until after you've established its wrongfulness, not in order to establish it.).
ReplyDeleteThere is an argument that differentiation on basis of race or religion is always wrongful (essentially, conservative color-blindness ideology), but I don't think you buy it, because otherwise you'd have to concede that Howard is wrongful in the same manner as Israel, only a difference of degree instead of kind, and I don't think you buy that (I obviously don't, and as noted above my opposition to this line of thinking is well established).
Rather, I think we both agree that racial or religious differentiation is sometimes justifiable and sometimes not, and the way we determine which category it falls into is to analyze the specific reasons for the differential treatment. I think Israel has at least three here for preferential treatment of Jewish immigrants:
(1) The safe haven rationale: Jews historically have not been able to rely on outsiders for aid, and need a place guaranteed to provide them safety if they feel threatened.
(2) The social equality rationale: Jews, like all groups, deserve a space where they are the norm and not the other, strange, or marginalized.
(3) The democratic rationale: Jews, like all groups, deserve forums where they are fundamentally autonomous and in control of their own destiny, rather than being at the suffrage of sometimes benevolent, sometimes not, outsiders.
So what you need to do is tell me why these three reasons are insufficient to render the differential treatment at issue valid, and why you think the argument is so clear cut as to render it not just outside normal democratic debate, but justifiably imposed from the outside. I think they certainly cross the hurdles of arbitrariness and capriciousness. If you're not going to fall back on color-blindness, I'm not sure what bullet you have in your chamber -- hence why I consider your objection inchoate.
Finally, let's clear up what I mean by pluralism, because I think differentiation to be quite essential to it. I define pluralism against universalism: universalism, the melting pot, unitary, cosmopolitan, treat all the same; pluralism, multiculturalism, diversity, fostering co-existence while preserving differentiation, not by melting it away. I am not a universalist, I am a pluralist. I think difference and diversity are things to be cherished and preserved; I do not pine for a world wherein "we're all really just the same", I pine for a world wherein "we're all different in various ways, and that's okay!" Such a world is predicated on close weighing of when differential treatment is and isn't permissible -- it doesn't work when folks just assume it off into discrimination minus analysis. And, I think, such a world is fostered when we allow groups the space to enjoy the sort of social freedom and democratic autonomy I outlined in reasons 2 and 3 -- if everyone is forced under a unitary social model, that kills off pluralism, it doesn't enable it.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the carve-out for "legal rights" in that definition is not a good one - I presume it means things like "such and such a polling place is not discriminating by barring 17-year-olds from voting, because 17-year-olds can't vote." But one can argue that not letting 17-year-olds vote is discrimination, too.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I was trying to get at with Howard is that white people aren't flocking to apply to Howard. (I suspect they don't like the prospect of not being a majority, or perhaps the idea just doesn't occur.) On the other hand, there are a good number of Palestinians who really would like to live in their family's home in Israel.
(FWIW, I think there could be a lot more leeway with regard to immigration law if there were a Palestinian state, but the way it's phrased as the elimination of a right of return bothers me. Perhaps only because open immigration for Jews is treated as a return, perhaps not.)
The safe haven rationale works out if all non-Jewish immigrants are treated equally, but as I understand it that is not the case. I don't know enough about how many people try to immigrate to Israel to know if open immigration is actually feasible, but I think that would be preferable - it would achieve that goal without discriminating based on ethnicity. For 2 and 3...I get them, intellectually and emotionally, but how much marginalization of others that is okay in order to achieve that goal? (And yes, to pre-empt your criticism of a position I do not hold, I also oppose such policies by other countries, etc.)
I don't like your argument that if we treat everyone equally, the differences that make cultural groups nifty will evaporate. We know that doesn't happen.
The safe haven rationale works out if all non-Jewish immigrants are treated equally, but as I understand it that is not the case. I don't know enough about how many people try to immigrate to Israel to know if open immigration is actually feasible, but I think that would be preferable - it would achieve that goal without discriminating based on ethnicity. For 2 and 3...I get them, intellectually and emotionally, but how much marginalization of others that is okay in order to achieve that goal? (And yes, to pre-empt your criticism of a position I do not hold, I also oppose such policies by other countries, etc.)
ReplyDeleteThis, I think, is the nub of the argument. I don't quite get what you mean regarding the safe haven analysis -- Israel's service as a haven for Jews fleeing anti-Semitic oppression. If it's that Israel should be such a haven for all persons fleeing anti-Semitism, then it does in fact serve that role (which is why the law of return is written broadly enough to include many non-Jews). If it's that Israel should be refuge for all persons fleeing oppression period, I'm not sure why that makes sense, as the reasons why Israel makes an effective haven for Jews don't necessarily make it one for Hmong. As it happens, though, Israel has and does take in many non-Jewish refugees fleeing oppression -- most prominently Vietnamese "boat people", Darfuri refugees, and gay Palestinians.
But it's the second part that's most important, and more critically, "I get them, intellectually and emotionally, but how much marginalization of others that is okay in order to achieve that goal?" This really eats the crux of my argument, which, recall, is that "discrimination" is our name for differential treatment we think is bad. All differentiation runs the risk of marginalization (as does, I maintain, non-differentiation); the question we're laboring under is whether that risk (or its reality) is or isn't outweighed by the benefits.
But as your query makes clear, this is hardly an open-and-shut case -- the rationales Israel has are in fact quite compelling (even if you don't think they're slam dunks). Which leads to the second observation -- where we we recognize uncertainty or are uncertain ourselves (such as here), that's a sterling example of a question that should be left to the democratic process, rather than imposed from without. The burden for when a subjective value judgment should be stripped from the hands of the voters is high under normal circumstances (as in domestic judicial review), and it should if anything be even higher when the party is not a domestic judicial body, but in fact an outside, external force. There is a tension between your recognition that this is a genuinely difficult case, and your confidence that this is such a clear case that it is a candidate for foreign countermajoritarian intervention.
There are some countries, of which Israel is one (but not the only one) towards which people seem to forget that they are sovereign nations, and have the right to make policies we might disagree with (as it happens, I don't disagree with this one, but there are policies Israel has that I disagree with that I still think, at the end of the day, are their right to make as a sovereign nation). I think this perspective fundamentally stems from a discomfort we have with certain groups viewed as inferior (Jews, Africans, whomever) exercising clear agency -- we always want to reserve the right to impose our superior wisdom upon them, and we have a very hard time letting go where we ourselves might act differently. The continued force of this perspective, in my view, makes it all the more imperative that we preserve these groups' opportunity for autonomous decisionmaking. Part of being an equal among nations is the right to be wrong; at least within the broad limits of undisputed international norms (which we all agree are not in play here).
Sorry, I should have phrased that better - it is a safe haven for Jews, but the position (that different treatment in immigration law is only to provide a safe haven) doesn't hold up well if all non-Jewish immigrants aren't treated the same as each other.
ReplyDeleteBut as your query makes clear, this is hardly an open-and-shut case -- the rationales Israel has are in fact quite compelling (even if you don't think they're slam dunks).
Oh, absolutely. I don't think they should be discounted - just weighed.
When it comes down to it, I don't think this needs to be a condition of a peace treaty. There are a whole lot of things that I don't think need to be conditions of a peace treaty. But I absolutely disagree that thinking a country should not enact a certain policy is to say "we white (Christians) are superior to you," which is why I yell about American policy all the time. (I hope you're not skirting the cultural relativism argument as it is usually brought up to oppose anti-discrimination abroad.)
"(3) The democratic rationale: Jews, like all groups, deserve forums where they are fundamentally autonomous and in control of their own destiny, rather than being at the suffrage of sometimes benevolent, sometimes not, outsiders."
ReplyDeleteI'm not one for semantics but this just bugs the hell out of me. That's not a "democratic" rationale. You're just trying to appeal to the feel-good connotation of "democracy" and pad your debate flow with another subpoint when "fundamental autonomy" easily falls under the previous heading of "social equality."
Referenda banning gay marriage have a democratic rationale. For that matter so would a one state solution where everyone can vote and Palestinians happen to be the majority. There's nothing inherent to democracy that says a given group gets to vote separate from other groups.
"Which leads to the second observation -- where we we recognize uncertainty or are uncertain ourselves (such as here), that's a sterling example of a question that should be left to the democratic process, rather than imposed from without."
It's left to the democratic process if Israeli leaders decide a change in internal policy is worth a peace agreement, and it's left to the democratic process if they decide it's not. Sorry to use the F-word but it seems like you're trying to fall back on formalism to create the illusion that no non-Israeli has a stake in Israel's immigration policy.