Thanks Noah. While I certainly knew of the "four new years" in Judaism, I had not heard before the idea that Passover is the new year for the Jewish people while Rosh Hashanah is the new year for the world. An interesting point that you tie to your critique of Netanyahu in a powerful way.
Meanwhile, I'm fully supportive of recognizing Palestine as a state. Since a democratic future for Israel depends on the creation of such a state, I never understood why Jewish groups in America have not been supportive in the past.
My hypothesis is that the Second World (Africa, Latin America, Asia) are ideologically half way between the West and Nazi Germany, somewhat liberal, somewhat Conservative, but most importantly brown people first. My politically incorrect term for this Second World (as someone who is Brown myself) is "Brown Nazis". The Viet Cong, Bin Laden, Ayatollah Khomeni, Che Guevara, Joseph Stalin, all fit into this category. Brown Nazis also have a strong coalition with the Western mainstream establishment, which is dominated by college educated females. One can easily explain the shift of the West from pro-Israel to pro-Palestine by the rise in women's empathy among the Western political elite, seen through very high female college enrollment since the 1960s and the Sexual Revolution.
I think the Muslim countries are slightly more nefarious in that they know that it's implausible that the Two State solution will succeed and that if Palestine can't exist, they'll certainly make life for Israel as hard as possible.
I don't think there has to be any animus in recognizing a Palestinian state. I'm certainly praying for an independent, functional state in my life time. I'm a little confused by exactly what the nations are recognizing with these proclamations.
Do they believe there's a head of state or a government?
Or are they recognizing it in a kind of Platonic sense, waiting to for it to be more fully instantiated?
At the time that the PLO declared a Palestinian state in 1988, the organization had already long been self-declared as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and had been long since recognized as such by every country that quickly recognized the Palestinian state that it declared. When the Palestinian Authority was created via the Oslo Accords, that became the successor to the PLO as the government of Palestine. The current head of state is Mahmoud Abbas.
Obviously, recognizing a state has only a limited amount to do with *building* a state. You can have a widely-recognized state that has almost none of the powers of a state, whether because the state has failed (e.g., Somalia) or because the state has lost control of its territory (e.g., the Polish government in exile during WWII). You can also have a fully functional state that is overwhelmingly not recognized *as* a state by other states (e.g., Taiwan). And there's lots of in-between, "states" that are recognized by some number of other states and exercise some of the authority of a state but that don't have the kind of stability or widespread recognition that, say, Israel does (e.g. Kosovo, Abkhazia, North Cyprus), to say nothing of a universally-recognized state.
The Palestinian Authority is extremely far from having significant state capacity, and has no prospects of building such capacity under current conditions. Whether it might have such prospects under different conditions can certainly be debated. I'm personally extremely skeptical, but I would be delighted to be surprised to the upside. Whether the wave of recognitions is likely to do anything to practically move things toward a change in conditions that might make such state-building more possible can also be debated; once again, I'm extremely skeptical, but would be delighted to be surprised to the upside.
The Canadian official statement says "the State of Palestine [is] led by the Palestinian Authority" which suggests it the legitimate government even if it's a bit of a fudge on issues like the head of state.
Not Platonic, I think, more Thomistic . . . in the sense of Thomas the Tank "Details? What Details?" What borders, what population, what leader, what government, what demilitarization, what money to prop it up with, what Egypt/Jordan think about the uncivilized mob on their borders? That's no fun. Perhaps the philosophy is closer to Scarlett O'Hara: Fiddle-dee-deetails, I will think about that tomorrow.
Thanks Noah. While I certainly knew of the "four new years" in Judaism, I had not heard before the idea that Passover is the new year for the Jewish people while Rosh Hashanah is the new year for the world. An interesting point that you tie to your critique of Netanyahu in a powerful way.
Meanwhile, I'm fully supportive of recognizing Palestine as a state. Since a democratic future for Israel depends on the creation of such a state, I never understood why Jewish groups in America have not been supportive in the past.
My hypothesis is that the Second World (Africa, Latin America, Asia) are ideologically half way between the West and Nazi Germany, somewhat liberal, somewhat Conservative, but most importantly brown people first. My politically incorrect term for this Second World (as someone who is Brown myself) is "Brown Nazis". The Viet Cong, Bin Laden, Ayatollah Khomeni, Che Guevara, Joseph Stalin, all fit into this category. Brown Nazis also have a strong coalition with the Western mainstream establishment, which is dominated by college educated females. One can easily explain the shift of the West from pro-Israel to pro-Palestine by the rise in women's empathy among the Western political elite, seen through very high female college enrollment since the 1960s and the Sexual Revolution.
I think the Muslim countries are slightly more nefarious in that they know that it's implausible that the Two State solution will succeed and that if Palestine can't exist, they'll certainly make life for Israel as hard as possible.
I don't think there has to be any animus in recognizing a Palestinian state. I'm certainly praying for an independent, functional state in my life time. I'm a little confused by exactly what the nations are recognizing with these proclamations.
Do they believe there's a head of state or a government?
Or are they recognizing it in a kind of Platonic sense, waiting to for it to be more fully instantiated?
At the time that the PLO declared a Palestinian state in 1988, the organization had already long been self-declared as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and had been long since recognized as such by every country that quickly recognized the Palestinian state that it declared. When the Palestinian Authority was created via the Oslo Accords, that became the successor to the PLO as the government of Palestine. The current head of state is Mahmoud Abbas.
Obviously, recognizing a state has only a limited amount to do with *building* a state. You can have a widely-recognized state that has almost none of the powers of a state, whether because the state has failed (e.g., Somalia) or because the state has lost control of its territory (e.g., the Polish government in exile during WWII). You can also have a fully functional state that is overwhelmingly not recognized *as* a state by other states (e.g., Taiwan). And there's lots of in-between, "states" that are recognized by some number of other states and exercise some of the authority of a state but that don't have the kind of stability or widespread recognition that, say, Israel does (e.g. Kosovo, Abkhazia, North Cyprus), to say nothing of a universally-recognized state.
The Palestinian Authority is extremely far from having significant state capacity, and has no prospects of building such capacity under current conditions. Whether it might have such prospects under different conditions can certainly be debated. I'm personally extremely skeptical, but I would be delighted to be surprised to the upside. Whether the wave of recognitions is likely to do anything to practically move things toward a change in conditions that might make such state-building more possible can also be debated; once again, I'm extremely skeptical, but would be delighted to be surprised to the upside.
The Canadian official statement says "the State of Palestine [is] led by the Palestinian Authority" which suggests it the legitimate government even if it's a bit of a fudge on issues like the head of state.
Not Platonic, I think, more Thomistic . . . in the sense of Thomas the Tank "Details? What Details?" What borders, what population, what leader, what government, what demilitarization, what money to prop it up with, what Egypt/Jordan think about the uncivilized mob on their borders? That's no fun. Perhaps the philosophy is closer to Scarlett O'Hara: Fiddle-dee-deetails, I will think about that tomorrow.