COULD TRUMPIAN CHAOS UPEND A BAD THING?
A PROGRESSIVE ZIONIST STRUGGLES FOR SILVER LININGS. DO I SUCCEED? READ ON …
I generally try to stick to my lane. The subject of my Substack is quite specific — my gig is commentary from a progressive, Canadian, Zionist, gay activist and writer.
Given the topics I address, I know my readers (and thank you for reading!) differ wildly on issues, including who we might support for, say, president of the United States.
I don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole because the entire Internet is aflame on this subject today. But I do have what I think is a slightly different take.
First, I don’t want to get into a pissing match about whether or not Trump is good for the Jews or anyone else. If we don’t agree on that by now, we’re not going to agree on that, so let’s agree to disagree.
I am at a rather advanced age to turn over new leaves, but in an effort to find something positive to say, I struggled this morning to find a silver lining.
First, let’s go back a couple of decades. The Republican party has increasingly adopted an oppositional approach not only to Democrats but to government itself. This began (at the latest) with Barry Goldwater and culminated with Ronald Reagan, who said “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”
If you hold that government is inherently bad, why would you send good people there? There are hundreds of explanations for Donald Trump’s popularity and commentators are parsing through all sorts of theories today to explain what happened.
My uber-theory is quite simply that people who hate government logically want to throw someone at it who will wreck it from the inside. From a particular perspective, this strategy makes sense. Want a circus? Elect a monkey.
Aside: I also cannot resist a dig at some of the extreme left activists, young voters and Arab-Americans whose dissatisfaction with the refusal by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to adopt an explicitly pro-Hamas policy helped hand the presidency to Donald Trump. Enjoy your next four years, kids. And keep your complaining to a dull roar. If you’re wondering how it came to this, as all hell breaks loose, look in a mirror.
But back to my point.
Generally speaking, I don’t think chaos is a constructive situation in almost any circumstance.
But — and I’m struggling here to find silver linings — there may be one place where it is potentially beneficial.
Israel and Palestine are in complete chaos. But it would be foolish to suggest things couldn’t get worse. They absolutely could.
However, as I have written before, I believe the world has adopted an almost completely inverted narrative of the problem there and what can be done about it.
The strategy of the United Nations, many parties in the European Union, NGOs, street activists, commentators and others is that any resolution to the conflict there will come from putting more and more pressure on Israel.
This is precisely the wrong approach.
The conflict exists for one core reason: the Palestinian and larger Arab refusal to live in peaceful coexistence with self-determined Jewish people. It’s an old saw, but it is nonetheless true: If the Arabs put down their weapons, there would be no war. If Israel put down their weapons, there would be no Israel.
Israel is far from blameless. There are a million reasons to criticize the Israeli approach on a whole range of topics affecting the people of the region, no matter their identities. But the foundational problem has been, is and will remain Palestinian and Arab intransigence. When the Arab world’s leaders agreed to live in peace with Israel, there will be peace. It really is that simple.
The approach the world has taken on this issue for decades has been exactly wrong. It is futile to make additional demands on Israel. In the Oslo process, among other moments in history, Israel offered everything it could, including everything the world was led to believe the Palestinians wanted.
It wasn’t enough.
Why? Because what the world believed Palestinian leaders wanted wasn’t what Palestinian leaders wanted. Yasser Arafat pretended he was working toward a two-state solution. He wasn’t. He was working toward a two-step elimination of Israel. Anyone who listened to what he said in Arabic knew this all along. It was only willful suspension of disbelief that allowed anyone in the West to believe he was a partner for peace.
If Western activists, governments and others are going to put pressure anywhere, we need to pressure the Palestinians and the larger Arab world to accept Israel.
Here is where the silver lining comes in. And I admit it’s a stretch.
I do not believe that Donald Trump’s bull-in-a-china shop approach to issues is helpful. I think it is extraordinarily dangerous.
However, this may be the one area where I tend to agree with the Trumpsters (assuming my theory is correct).
It has been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome. This is what the world has been doing with Israel and Palestine. We keep blaming Israel and demanding it compromise more and more with an enemy that refuses to compromise on the core belief that Israel has no right to exist. We need to put the pressure on the other side.
That does not necessarily mean that doing the opposite is going to be a good thing. It could make things worse.
But what we’ve been doing sure as hell isn’t working — for Israelis or Palestinians.
Perhaps the message to Palestinian extremists from yesterday’s election is that, while other US presidents may have equivocated, acknowledged tyrants and terrorists as legitimate partners for negotiation, this old-new president probably isn’t going to play that game.
That might give pause to both the “moderate” Fatah in the West Bank and the blood-soaked terrorists in Gaza.
Maybe they will conclude that their best chance for a fair-minded, balanced resolution went out the window when Arab-American voters and other “pro-Palestinian” activists in Michigan and elsewhere stayed home yesterday. Now they’ve got Trump.
The Palestinians’ window for sucking American leaders into their distorted narrative just closed substantially.
Trump may bring chaos. He is a circus barker in a diplomatic world.
It may be a freaking disaster.
But so is everything we have done so far. We’ve had 75+ years of war and now we see catastrophic carnage in Gaza. How’s that status quo working for ya?
There will be a different approach now.
It may be worse. It may be better.
It will, no matter what, be a far cry from the status quo, which has been a disaster.
There. That’s my silver lining. That’s all I can find.
Note to friends: I’m sure I will regret opening up this can of worms, but please let’s try to keep it sane.
In Dr Einat Wilf’s words:
“Hopes for Peace - On Why a Trump Presidency might turn around the situation in the region: During the years 2016-2020 I struggled to explain to American audiences that from the very narrow and selfish perspective of an Israeli, and putting aside everything that was going on in the US, the Trump Administration policies in the Middle East were nothing short of perfect. They included two key pillars: Basing the American exit from the Middle East on support for Israel and Gulf allies rather than Iran, and, more to my expertise, sending a clear message to Palestinians and other Arab nations that enough is enough - they need to start coming to terms with Israel's past victories in 1948 and 1967. This second message was conveyed through a series of important policies from defunding UNRWA, closing down the PLO office in DC, removing some PA funding, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and recognizing the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory. This second message was also augmented through a Peace Plan that let the Palestinians know that they can have a state, sovereignty and economic prosperity if they actually pursue it (to which, true to form, they responded with "no, no and a thousand times no"). It is no coincidence then that the Trump Administration ended its first four term with four peace agreements between Israel and Arab/Islamic countries and momentum for more. The Biden Administration, in an act that I repeatedly described in real time as juvenile, undid almost all of the Trump Administration policies. They refunded UNRWA and other Palestinian causes, with no strings attached (Congress made it a bit more difficult), turned a cold shoulder to the Abraham Accords (for a year, refusing to even call them that), and went back to a long and failed policy of indulging Palestinians and saving them from any reckoning with their past defeats, and the absolute destruction that is their total ideology of no Jewish state in any borders. It is therefore also no coincidence that the Biden/Harris administration ends its term on the cusp of a regional war. Unfortunately, even after the October 7th massacre and invasion, with all the love that President Biden personally and truly has for Israel, the policies undertaken by the administration extended the war and the suffering, by refusing to state that the war must end with a clear Israeli victory, Hamas/Gaza surrender, full release of hostages, and that Israel is under no obligation to supply its enemies before they surrender and release the hostages. So as a new Trump administration is being formed, my hope for a change in the situation, even for peace, rest on the expectation that this administration will again emphasize support for Israel and Gulf countries over Iran, defund UNRWA completely and hopefully this time will mobilize more countries to do the same, make it clear that Israel has US backing to win the war, and that Hamas/Gaza is expected to surrender and release the hostages, that Israel is under no obligation to supply an enemy before it surrenders and as it holds hostages, that Lebanon needs to make full peace with Israel rather than another worse than useless UN resolution, and that Palestinians and other Arab countries can enjoy sovereignty, peace and prosperity when they finally finally finally understand not only that Israel is here to stay, but that the Jewish people, in building their sovereign state in the Land of Israel, are home.”
That is the silver lining
The Iranian rial already is plummeting, markets know that trump isnt going to coddle the Mullahs. This may actually bring sense to the Middle East. Of course it could also spur the Mullahs to fast track a nuclear bomb, but in all honesty they were going to get themselves a bomb no matter what. However, if they can be weakened through sanctions and other means then perhaps the Iranian people can overthrow them. Trump did bring the Abraham Accords, and perhaps he can complete the agreement with saudi Arabia. Remember because Trump had accomplished the Accords, the Biden administration gave it all short shrift for the first years of his administration, and in fact tried to undermine them.
And as far as the Palestinians, without Iran causing all kinds of horror around the area, there may be a viable Palestinian leadership that could actually bring some kind of movement towards a Palestinian state. Now this will also not happen for quite awhile. The society will need to be deradicalized the same way the germans were denazified, but it worked. The first thing is to get rid of UNRWA and role the Palestinians into UNHCR and treat them like all other refugees around the world.
To that extent Trump is not going to take crap from the UN and perhaps his administration will put that organization of antisemites in their place. Stopping sending tens of millions of dollars to an organization that is virulently antifreedom is not a bad idea.
Anyway this is my silver lining as far as the Israel-Iran war. I will settle for a cowed iran and a Palestinian society that doesnt think its ok to rape 12 year olds to death because they are Jews. Remember polling says over 90% of Palestinians think October 7 was cool beans.