Settler MAGA and Settler Susan Collins

The Dispatch has an interesting article about how violent attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians are "dividing" the settler movement. In one corner, there are those who insist the attacks are aberrational. They condemn them, but also clearly see a significant part of the problem as the "embarrassment" they cause to the settlement cause.

“An overwhelming majority of the settlement movement opposes these acts,” Oded Revivi, a former senior figure in the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization of all the local authorities in the West Bank, told The Dispatch. He said the violence posed both a moral problem and a threat to the legitimacy of the settlement movement. “This is an extremist minority that, quite simply, does the settlements no favors,” he said. “It puts the settlement movement in an embarrassing position and undermines its legitimacy because of these acts.”

Then there is the corner that actively endorses the violence.

In an interview with The Dispatch, Yehuda Shimon—a lawyer who volunteers with Honenu, an organization that provides legal assistance to Israelis facing criminal proceedings over nationalist-related offenses, and a settler himself—unequivocally defended acts of violence by extremist settlers.

At first, Shimon denied that there was such a thing as settler violence at all, repeatedly pointing to Palestinian acts of terrorism. “The entire ‘settler violence’ campaign is something the left-wing media made up. There is no such thing as ‘settler violence,’” he said. He later acknowledged that there is “very limited violence” by settlers, but quickly added that it stems from the fact that “settlers are fed up with taking it,” arguing that Israeli authorities haven’t done enough to prevent terrorist attacks on Jews in the West Bank.

The second reason Shimon cited for settler violence: retribution. “Revenge is a feeling that exists among all peoples,” he said, invoking the American response to the attack on Pearl Harbor as an example. Shimon then made the case for collective punishment: “There is no such thing as uninvolved people. If they had eliminated Sinwar and Hitler when they were children, that would have solved a lot of problems.”

This isn't even the half of it -- Shimon did an interview with the BBC that was unabashedly genocidal ("I think now, after they killed one Israeli, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata.... One Jewish life, it's 10 million [Palestinians]."). He is a true sociopath and a monster, and we shouldn't diminish that a whit.

It would be easy to dismiss Shimon as an outlier, and take Revivi at his word that the "mainstream" position is condemnation of violent settlers. But that is in many ways far too convenient a take. Shimon himself might genuinely be an extreme example, but the article makes clear that it's his people that ultimately are holding sway over Israeli government policy in the West Bank. They're the reason why the IDF "stands down" in the face of violent settler activity; they're the reason why the Israeli government intercedes to sabotage efforts by the security services to actually try and clamp down on Jewish terrorism. It's very much akin to the relationship of MAGA and the GOP, where we're all supposed to pretend like the racists and the extremists are some outlier faction as opposed to the clearly dominant force within the movement.

Meanwhile, the "moderates" (if you will) give off extremely strong Susan Collins vibes. There's a lot of lip-chewing and brow-furrowing, and the regular expressions of "concern" over what's going on. But when push comes to shove, they aren't really willing to endorse substantial, concrete initiatives to crack down on settler terrorism. If they oppose violent settlers, they oppose doing absolutely anything to stop them even more.

The scourge of violence by settler extremists, aided and abetted by the Israeli government, against innocent Palestinians is at a fever pitch. It is in fact dangerous for Israel's security and public image; it would also be abhorrent and evil and demanding of opposition even if it had no negative implications for Israelis at all. Like with the GOP, it's good, I guess, when some people who are part of that "faction" eventually see the light and speak out against the violence and abuse. It's all hands on deck. But at the same time, we cannot wait for the settler leaders to come around to doing something (even if we do buy that they're actually interested in "doing something", which one may not) before we ourselves commit to do something. If the Israeli government wants to lash itself to the mast of protecting violent settler terror-thugs, they should expect to face the consequences of that choice in the international arena.

Trust and Traffic Lights (and Robots)

Suppose you stop at a traffic light. There are, say, four cars ahead of you. Eventually, the light turns green. When that happens, the first car goes. The second car waits to see the first car go, then it goes. The third car waits until they see the second car go before it goes, and so on. By the time you are able to start moving, several seconds have elapsed from the light turning green -- a lag that results from us double-checking that the car in front of us will actually move when it is supposed to. All those seconds could be saved if we all just trusted each other to go when the light turns green.

Now, obviously, there are many reasons why one shouldn't do this beyond just "trust". There's the obvious possibility that someone won't react immediately to the green light. There's also potential differences in how fast a car would move even if all cars started moving at the same time. And then there's complications if one car was turning instead of going straight.

Still, it does seem to me that robot cars, in communication with one another so they know how fast they'll be going, when exactly they'll start driving once the light turns green, and if any car is turning or doing something wonky, could circumvent many of these problems (if we trusted them to do so, that is). I wonder how much commute time would be saved by that change -- an impossible task for humans, but well within the capacity of a hypothetical fleet of driverless cars.

Lander Does For Self

The Jerusalem Post reports on Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander being harangued at a protest (against a Hindu nationalist event hosted at Madison Square Garden) for being a "Zionist". This was notable because Lander ousted incumbent Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman in part by hitting him from the left on Israel/Palestine, and Lander has been a sharp and staunch critic of the Israeli government throughout his career (even as he still think Israel should exist).

Given that backdrop, there were a lot of crowing comments on the JPost story to the tune of "See? No matter how much you prostrate yourself before the haters, you'll never win." This is true. But the correct lesson to draw from it is exactly the opposite of what the commenters think it is. If the antisemites will be antisemitic no matter what, then the right thing to do is to do the right thing. Why not, if it won't make a difference either way? If Brad Lander thought that positioning himself as a sharp Israel critic would immunize him from antisemitic attack, he was naive and wrong. But I doubt that was his thought process. More likely, he took the positions he took because he thought they were right. So why should he let some antisemitic idiot coerce him into doing wrong?

There's another, subsidiary lesson to this story though, one that relates to the Hasan Piker line that if Jews don't distance themselves from Israel, "eventually someone’s going to come around and take action .. against American Jews." Even viewed as purely descriptive/predictive, the flaw here is the assumption that the antisemite has reasonable demands that Jews can meet. But that isn't the case. To the extent the antisemitic wants anything out of Jews, it is supplication and submission. And for that reason, the sort of person making such demands can never be fully satisfied, and the Jew who tries to accommodate them will be chasing after an endlessly moving target. Criticize Israel? Not good enough, you still call yourself a Zionist. Don't identify as a Zionist? Not good enough, your synagogue still has an Israeli flag out front. Don't attend the synagogue? Not good enough, you still go to Israeli restaurant. Don't patronize the restaurants? Not good enough, you don't cheer the thought of your Israeli family members being kidnapped or worse.

I'm told that the context for Piker's remarks was seeking to advise an anti-Zionist Jew on arguments that might persuade their co-religionists to be less Zionist -- a counter to the notion that Israel would keep Jews safe. The fact that this argument resulted in a massive, furious backlash from the bulk of the Jewish community might seem proof of the seemingly obvious point that Hasan Piker does not actually have a good read on how American Jews. But beyond that, the Lander example is one of many that shows why this logic is so toxic -- it places Jews on an infinite treadmill of appeasement that will never satisfy the antisemite (for he loves to watch the Jew run and sweat). The only thing it accomplishes is the suffocation of Jewish life, a battery of public commentary sequentially explaining why any way that any Jew does anything Jewish is wrong, wrong, wrong.

So again, if you think that taking the "right" stance on Israel/Palestine will satiate those who enjoy watching Jews squirm, you're wrong. It won't. But to reiterate: the lesson to draw from that is not to take a wrong stance. It's to take the right stance because it is right. The haters will hate you no matter what you do, so don't do it for them. Do it for self.