Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Israel \u0026 Palestine | The Politics of War | Victor Davis Hanson" video.

  1. "Look at the Arab neighborhoods in Israel. Nowhere in Jordan or Egypt do you see that level of freedom and prosperity." Right. And then look at the West Bank and Gaza, compared to Egypt and Jordan, which paints a far more grim picture. And then, consider that Israel has as many Arabs as figure they can handle already; there is no future in which Gaza and the West Bank look like the Arab neighborhoods of Israel. Israel will never tolerate Jewish people being a minority, which is what assimilation of Gaza and the West Bank (to that wonderful standard of living) would mean.
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  2. Interesting to hear VDH talking about the jobs offered to Palestinians being well-paid. That's a nice change from what I was reading in JPost during the 2nd Intefada, where the author was waxing eloquent about what a regional powerhouse Israel could be if it could properly exploit "cheap Arab labor" (the author's own words.) Still though, we're left with the core issue: the Jewish people, and by extension Israel, is the fulcrum of our entire inter-ethnic morality. "Never again" should any ethnic group be mistreated -- certainly not exterminated on an industrial scale, but not even displaced from their homes to make room for the sake of another's lebensr**m. I think that the pressure on Israel to exercise restraint, is because that is the only thing making them distinct from the Palestinians. Otherwise, we're looking at about seven million people who are trying to force another seven million people off of land that they claim from antiquity. The argument "The more brutal people are the ones who deserve it" only works if one side shows restraint instead of being brutal. (Although one can still say that forcing people off of their land is shabby either way.) If we instead ignore all of these moral issues, we're left with "there is no truth but power", which is a straight-up evil that you get when you go all Athens and no Jerusalem, as VDH is prone to sometimes. (A bit ironic that Jerusalem ain't what it used to be, without the Messiah.)
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  3. "You say 'apartheid' but 20% of Israel is not Jewish" Right. And that's about the highest percentage of non-Jews they'll tolerate. Have you heard the discussions about the one-state solution, that go, "Israel would have to make a choice between being a Jewish state, and being a democracy"? To their credit the second is unpalatable, but the first is unthinkable. As far as I can see it's the main reason Israel hasn't simply annexed the old Jordanian lands of the West Bank and the old Egyptian territory of Gaza.
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