The (Failed) Israel Experiment

"I'm going to talk about Israel today. And I'm going to talk about Israel as a failed experiment. Let me just run through a quick, relevant history. In the 1940s we kind of Louisiana Purchased Israel in so far as with the Louisiana Purchase the Americans bought the Native Americans' land from the French and expanded our country that way. Turned out in the 1940s the British gave the Israelis - well, created the Israelis - with the Palestinians' land. 

"So they had this extra colony laying around because up until the 1940s the British still owned quite a bit of the world, including my ancestral Ghana. So the British had land they were giving away because they thought it was theirs. It turns out they were a colonial power and they kind of gave their colonial power land to the Jewish people as a recompense for the atrocities that were suffered from the genocide. And it kind of made sense, that history kind of suggested, that there was no land in which Jewish people would remain safe, so we've got to give them a land because they're people, too. I can understand the arguments . . . the problem was we gave them other people's land. 

"Like, I'm actually, I'm for moving Israel. I'll get to that later. But I'm for moving Israel. I like the Michael Chabon solution, where we just kind of put Israel in Alaska, or we kind of cede them New Mexico. Look, if we're going to defend a state, and if we're going to be casual about guaranteeing these people a state, an ever expanding state, because it's the mixing of property rights and birth citizenship, then we should be able to control the land and control the borders, and secure them that way, rather than just be casual with other people's lands and other people's borders. 

"So I would be open to talks about ceding New Mexico, or ceding some land in the United States or that the United States controls, to Israel, and making a New Israel. We've got to move Israel because the current Israel is in a bad spot. We sold someone else's land, or we gave away things that didn't belong to us. It'd be like me selling the Brooklyn Bridge. And that's always going to be a problem . . . 

"So we have some three-quarters of a million people (that) were moved, or have been moved, and now we have two million - about - people in the area that's known as the Gaza Strip, and the problem is those Palestinians are not allowed to really do anything, because it turns out that if you give people - (from whom) you've stolen their land and livelihood - access to doing anything, one of the things they're going to do is figure out how to get their land and livelihood back. And probably take it back - with force. You moved them out with force; they're going to try to take it back with force. So you have blockades, you have sieges, because they're trying to keep two million people from actually building anything, because one of the things that those people will also build is the means to get their land back. And this all happened in 1947 . . .. That's the year my Mom was born. . . This isn't that long ago.

"And we're talking about a good amount of people. . . . Now it's the case that there are blockades such that . . . it precludes the conditions for the people in Gaza to be self-determining. Because one of the things they will use, and this is I think true, if you give them water, if you give them food on demand, if you give them all of the things that are conditions with like full citizenship, they will use that subjective freedom to create the objective conditions for a fight back. Right? And so, in order to keep them from fighting back, we keep them from doing everything that's consistent with self-determination. 

"If they elect leaders we don't like, we invalidate the elections. And I say "we" because I'm not convinced that Israel and the United States aren't the same power. I actually think that we're a colonial power; we are a colony of Israel, and not the other way around. Don't get it confused. A lot of people get this confused, and think that the U.S. runs Israel, but I think Israel runs the U.S.. Israel runs the U.S. insofar as they can say, 'Shut up, and give us money and guns,' and we'll shut up and give them money and guns. And if we say the same thing, they will just ignore us. Or we will be too scared to say the same thing, because our politicians need a lot of money from Jewish people who are not necessarily the same Zionists who are the problematic actors in Israel, but they're not exactly antagonistic to those Zionists, in the way that I would need them to be antagonistic to those Zionists.

"I hear a lot of, 'well, you know, there are multifaceted forms of supporting and fighting against some of the more obnoxious and heinous policies of Israel, and you're just kind of painting the Israelis and their sympathizers with a broad brush.' And I'm saying that the anti-Israel-apartheid side of the Jewish people in the United States are not sufficiently "anti". They're lukewarm "anti". Because they're not talking about we need to abolish Israel and move it to Alaska. 

"Though if there were a significant number of Jewish people that said like, 'there's no two-state solution, a two-state solution is untenable' - and it was part of the culture, and part of the even heterodox Jewish culture, saying 'the two-state solution is untenable; we need to abolish Israel and move it to a place where we actually control the borders.' Which I think is actually a responsible solution. We need to move it to New Mexico; we need to move it to Arizona. I actually think that would be responsible. Just get up and move. New Israel. Give them half of Utah. It could be 'the state the Chosen People choose.'  Right? Because you've got the Mormons (there) who consider themselves chosen. And the Jewish people consider themselves chosen."

"By the way, the distinction between cultural Judaism and Zionism is not a hard and fast distinction. And I didn't really know this until I went to a random synagogue for a Shabbat a few years ago with a buddy. It was just a regular, mainline synagogue, nothing special, and they folded in a prayer for Israel, into the synagogue. And you could say, 'well, it was just peace for Israel,' and actually that prayer was more support for Israel than just peace, but if you want peace without eradicating the conditions of injustice, you're pretty much just praying for an apartheid government. 

"And when I say an apartheid government that's two systems of laws for two different people. Now, it's not a racial apartheid insofar as we're not punishing them because they are browner or Muslim. But we're just saying because they're browner and Muslim, they're going to be more likely to organize against us, so we have to have a different system of laws for them. 

"So it's not the same kind of apartheid as South African apartheid, but it's the same in objective expression. Because I think rightly they (Jewish Israelis) understand that if the Palestinians in Gaza are empowered, and aren't too busy trying to figure out food and water and the hospitals, they will use some of that excess resource, and some of that disposable income and insight, to figure out how to get their land back. And that's something that's untenable for Israel. 

"So they have to keep an apartheid system, in order to keep the Palestinians weak enough . . . You have to keep them weak.

"Gaza's not about autonomy. It's about being able to neuter a population without going full-genocide. Especially when you're a nation that's founded, whose moral authority is - 'we're the response to a genocide' - you can't go full-genocide on the Palestinians, but you also can't have them doing anything, because one of the things that they will do is try to get their land back. And for people who say, 'It's senseless violence to go shoot up a music festival', well, its not senseless insofar as nobody knows what the conditions, the path forward for a Palestinian autonomy (would be). 

"I'm not one to second guess the leaders of Hamas. It's not necessarily what I would do, but I don't have a workable plan. I don't think there is a workable plan, short of the U.S. saying 'We're not going to support that Israel anymore, we're going to give you a different spot, a different Israel. One that we can control. And that's what our support (from now on) looks like. And if you don't want to go to our New Israel, either when it's in Alaska, it's part of Utah, if you don't want to go to that new Israel, you're on your own. That would be my solution. . . .

"If we're going to displace people, and support the displacing of people, we should support the displacing of our own people for our cause. And if we're not willing to do that, we shouldn't be displacing others like that so casually. And if Zionists say, 'No, we want Tel Aviv and we want Jerusalem, these are holy cities for us,' - I say the world isn't like Burger King; you don't get to have it your way. 

"You want land that's safe and you want secure borders. The U.S. can provide that, but you're not going to be able to pick the land. This idea that you get born into particular property claims, like specific, naturally given property claims, you get born into that by some sort of birth right or religious right - not property claims in general but particular ones - Jerusalem, not like Orem Utah, the idea that you would get those claims is ridiculous. It's a kind of entitlement that I think we've bred among the Zionists, and we need to stop breeding. I can see the argument that as a person, in order to be a free person in the modern world, you need some sort of property, but I don't see the argument that you also get to pick the property you get."

"And so, since I don't have a path forward that is non-violent I'm not going to second guess what Hamas does in the name of violence. Because look, one of the purposes of non-violent civil disobedience is to show the degradation of the oppressors. Non-violent civil disobedience doesn't work when one people just wants you dead. A lot of Zionists would be happy if everyone just miraculously died in Gaza. They just kind of disappeared. They're not particularly useful to the economy in that way, in the same way that, for example, black people were useful to the economy in the American South, or Hindus and Indians were useful to the economy in India. It's not that kind of shutdown when non-violence can work. There's no boycott that will actually help the case. There's no boycott that will force a quality of violence that will show the disproportionate violence and the inhumanity that you're being subject to. And that's the point of non-violent resistance. You're trying to provoke the quality of violence that will show that 'no, the people who are trying to kill us really do think that we're inhuman.' And you can't do that with non-violence in Gaza. 

"But you might be able to do that with violence. So you do a little bit of horrendous violence and then they come back leveling hospitals. They can no longer say, 'well, you're killing children and women.' Well, you're leveling hospitals - indiscriminately. 

"Hamas doesn't have a base of operations that you know of - if you knew you'd send in Mossad and take them out. You don't have it. You're just leveling hospitals to show a vague sense of power. That's a form of terrorism. That's the shelling that's happening right now. 

"I'm not one to say that Hamas was wrong, because I don't know what's right. I know that filling out the paperwork and waving signs isn't going to work. It's not going to get you autonomy; it's not going to get you clean water. You can't do anything. You can't build anything. You have a life, and your children will have a life - a short life in Gaza - because they don't have any of the conditions for a long life, including clean water and a robust self-governing apparatus. It (your life) is going to be over-determined by the needs of a settler power, which is Israel, to make sure that you can't form the quality of organization and industrial capacity that would attack Israel. That's going to be your line . .. . a second class, necessarily subordinated citizen, who can't even, who by design isn't going to be able to coordinate to do anything meaningful.

"And that is the situation of the Palestinians right now. . .  I don't think a two-state solution is viable because Palestinians want their land, and the (Jewish) Israelis feel very entitled to the Palestinians' land. So if the Jewish people need a state to return to then we need to create a different state.

"So it was a failed experiment and we just need to take the loss and carve out a little bit of West Virginia or whatever - give them some of Nebraska or Oklahoma, and call that New Israel, and that'll be that. And if we're not willing to do that, we need to not pooh-pooh the Palestinians, who are rightly fighting for the conditions of their self-determination."

"Like civil self-determination, family self-determination, all of these things are over-determined by the blockade, and the abject control that they're suffering under (Jewish) Israeli rule, and that's the situation right there. 

"Israel won't let the Palestinians do anything, because one of the things that the Palestinians will do is organize to attack Israel. And so I understand the blockade, but I also understand that's not a tenable way to think through like long term, that doesn't actually get rid of the problem. The forever conditions of apartheid aren't going to get rid of the problem. Any time the Palestinians get a little bit of air to breathe, they're going to use that air to try to attack Israel . . . and there's reason for them to do that. And so now Israel has an incentive to make sure that Palestinians don't ever get any sort of disposable anything, the capacity to build and take care of themselves and frustrate the plans of other people. 

"It was a failed experiment in colonialism. We gave people land that wasn't ours to give, and this is the fallout of it. And it's not going to go away. It's not going to go away. 

"A two-state solution is not viable. Because it's the Palestinians' land. It's the Palestinians' land. And if we just had a little bit more humility, we would just be honest and think about land we do control, and just ask the Jews to suck it up. Suck it up. Now you go to Utah instead. We tried Israel there, and there going to be like, 'No, we want Jerusalem,' and I'm going to say, 'Sorry. You don't get to cut the cake and choose which slice you get.' Michael Chabon talks about this in his book, "The Yiddish Policeman's Detective Agency" - it came out I'll say 2007ish, where the New Israel is up in Alaska. "

"I think it's a more responsible solution because the problem is the place. The problem is the place. And the fact that it wasn't your land to begin with. 

"And this whole idea that it was a senseless killing, going after the music festival is a senseless killing. I'm like, 'these people never read the end of The Odyssey', where I mean . . . If someone steals your house, throws a party in your house, and you come home, and you mow them down, that's not exactly senseless. They stole your house. At the end of The Odyssey, Odysseus comes in with a bunch of suitors and a party going on, and he like looks around and just mows them all down, because they were in his house, they had no business being there. 

"So this idea, it's not senseless, it's not barbaric, it's actually, it makes sense. And I wish, I wish, I wish I knew how to de-colonize without this kind of violence. I wish I did. I don't. So I'm not going to criticize Hamas leaders who think this is the only way, because it might be the only way. And it's the only reason I'm talking about it. And the more people who actually talk about the situation, I think the better it is for the Palestinian case."

                -----Irami Osei Frimpong
www.thefunkyacademic.com, 9/11/23