An Anti-Israel Broadside Makes Clear That Its Authors Don’t Sympathize with Palestinians So Much as They Object to Jews

In a recent article in Foreign Affairs titled “Israel’s One-State Reality,” a quadrumvirate of professors argued that, because of Israel’s inherent sinfulness, the U.S. should cease supporting both Palestinian statehood and peace between Israel and its neighbors. Robert Satloff responds to what he calls a “pseudo-academic argument” that is “little more than political advocacy.”

Why is this advocacy and not scholarship? Because in its eagerness to market the catchphrase “one-state reality,” it neglects to mention the hard borders [separating] Israel, Hamas-controlled Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority-controlled urban areas of the West Bank, which make it impossible for anyone—Israeli, Palestinian, or third-country national—to traverse the length and breadth of this supposedly single state and quite dangerous for anyone even to try. Because to make its case, it avoids inconvenient facts. . . . And because, without a single reference to Hizballah missiles, Hamas rockets, or a potential Iranian nuclear bomb, it leaves the unsuspecting reader to wonder whether Israel’s neighbors are Andorra, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland.

There is much in the essay about the regression of peace diplomacy since the failed Camp David summit in 2000. . . . But on closer inspection, the article is not really about the Palestinian issue at all. In the tall tale the authors tell, Palestinians make little more than cameo appearances, bearing responsibility for neither their decisions nor their fates.

The real point of this essay is to target Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. . . . Strip away the outrage at Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians—about which there is plenty to critique—and the authors’ goal becomes clear: to paint Israel itself as illegitimate, a country born in colonial sin and raised to maturity as an illiberal, ethnonationalist state that deserves not just to be condemned but also to be replaced. As much as the authors dress up their alternative with the language of human and civil rights, there is no getting around the perversity of advocating a solution that does away with the world’s lone Jewish state.

Read more at Washington Institute for Near East Policy

More about: Academia, Idiocy, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

To Stop Attacks from Yemen, Cut It Off from Iran

On March 6, Yemen’s Houthi rebels managed to kill three sailors and force the remainder to abandon ship when they attacked another vessel. Not long thereafter, top Houthi and Hamas figures met to coordinate their efforts. Then, on Friday, the Houthis fired a missile at a commercial vessel, which was damaged but able to continue its journey. American forces also shot down one of the group’s drones yesterday.

Seth Cropsey argues that Washington needs a new approach, focused directly on the Houthis’ sponsors in Tehran:

Houthi disruption to maritime traffic in the region has continued nearly unabated for months, despite multiple rounds of U.S. and allied strikes to degrade Houthi capacity. The result should be a shift in policy from the Biden administration to one of blockade that cuts off the Houthis from their Iranian masters, and thereby erodes the threat. This would impose costs on both Iran and its proxy, neither of which will stand down once the war in Gaza ends.

Yet this would demand a coherent alliance-management policy vis-a-vis the Middle East, the first step of which would be a shift from focus on the Gaza War to the totality of the threat from Iran.

Read more at RealClear Defense

More about: Gaza War 2023, Iran, U.S. Foreign policy, Yemen