Another virtuoso column. Two state is like Democracy, a mess, but the best of all the alternatives. But its political prospects in this current environment are between slim and none.
As long as Iran presents (or presented) an imminent or long-term threat to Israel and to the entire region- which it has do 45+ years, it poses an imminent or long-term threat to the United States, Joe. We will not stand by and let Iran or any state execute on its written and shouted “eradicate Israel” policy. I am a Christian and support U.S. military support for Israel as long as it lives under that threat. There’s a reason why the best defense is often offense. Israel has tried it both ways; we don’t have to wonder what happens when Israel assumes solely a defensive posture. The majority of the last 70 years tells us exactly how that goes and it has led inevitably to where we stand today.
Joe, this is the most disjointed opinion piece from you that I’ve ever read. Are you doing psychedelic drugs like LSD? In your lamestream media echo chamber you are normally on the border of normalcy, but not this time. While I agree with you championing sovereignty of Jews and the Israel state, you go off the rails on President Trump’s middle east strategy, just like the rest of the lamestream media. Y’all criticize that there are various messages from the Trump administration for the justification of their military actions against Iran. But you fail to recognize, like all the other Trump hating losers in the lamestream media, that there are multiple reasons for this action and that the different messages from different sources are being brilliantly choreographed to influence an outcome in a strategy that you and the rest of the lamestream media aren’t intelligent enough to recognize much less understand:
President Trump clearly emphasized that the world can’t let the current radical apocalyptic Iran leadership develop nuclear weapons.
President Trump, like most of us, want to see a regime change in Iran that will set the Iranian people free from tyranny. The brilliant marketing message from the Trump administration is that President Trump talks about grass root regime change to Iranians while he eschews messages of military strategy and lets Marco Rubio and others explain them. This way, President Trump is messaging his intent directly to the captive Iranians and cutting through all of the other PRAVDA media. President Trump is exercising his proven marketing expertise in a surgical manner in the most complicated world affairs arena. Thank God for our President Donald J. Trump and his legendary administration.
Joe; my advice to you is to stop being influenced by the rest of the lamestream media fake news who is addicted to trying to put the Trump administration into gotcha moments and to lay off the psychedelics.
Right about Trump and the reasons for the war (has there ever been anything more juvenile, in the worst sense of that word, then the mashup video put out by the White House), right about Andrew Sullivan (who has disappointingly gone into one of his states where he blinds and deafens himself to anything that doesn't fit the narrative he is trying to prosecute), and most importantly right about Israel (both its wonders and terrible flaws) and the role that American Jews need to play.
The two state solution remains, of course, obviously the only viable long term solution for both the Israelis and Palestinians. And the amazing thing, I believe, is that the first step of the path to that solution is also fairly obvious as well:
{The quick summary: America needs to force (through the threat of withdrawal of all aid to Israel and if necessary the strongest possible sanctions as well) the dismantling of all West Bank settlements on the Palestinian side of the eventual border (whether it is the Olmert/Al-Kidwas line or something similar), while still leaving the Israeli military occupation in place to ensure there is no repeat of Gaza. The idea is to clearly and permanently put a stake through the idea of Greater Israel, while also making it clear to Palestinians that they will only get self-determination once they have proven they are good neighbors.}
America needs to stop acting toward Israel like the friend that pours the drunken friend another drink and start being the friend that takes away the car keys and insists on sobriety. And American Jews need to be out in front calling for this change.
I am so grateful to you, Joe Klein, for your painful, carefully nuanced, views on Israel. As an 85 year old American Christian, I have long supported Israel as a country that came into existence because of the horrors of prejudice in official government hands under Hitler. I understand Jesus as a rabbi who saw the need for reforming the excesses of Judaism. I also have found vexing, the issue of Israel having to be carved out of land Palestinians had inhabited. Not unlike Europeans displacing indigenous people on our continent. I don't pretend to know how to resolve that conflict, but a two-state solution, which we're told is now impossible, strikes me as the kind of solution we're struggling toward in the ongoing "experiment" of American democracy. Though perhaps less dramatic, the present onslaught of our government, against immigrants, transgender, and the "other", makes me cringe as I watch the Israeli government try to use lethal force to resolve the difficult problem of different people on what must become common land.
This may be the most clear and concise exegesis of the current political landscape in the Middle East. Current day Israel is not Leon Uris’ heroic island of goodness, but neither is it the ethno state Sullivan describes. This is Sullivan at his simplistic worst. Bibi is the worst leader that Israel could hope for, just as Trump is for us. Unfortunately, anti Judaism is real and deeply held in western culture. The hatred of the Islamic zealots has been used by Arab dictators to manipulate the Arab street. I too believe in a two state solution but Israeli and Palestinian ideologues seem determined to drive the region to a true Armageddon. Thanks for your writing, it remains extraordinarily valuable.
Thank you for the article, Mr. Klein. It seems I remember someone saying, the prime minister was going to high school here in America. I remember while living in Maine he wanted a war with Iran big blue binders and all. People say he is a manipulative dictator, person. This undeclared war was a nightmare for even my self. Hearing especially those young soldiers dying, in the line of duty. My parents picked me up at a veterans hospital. I was in a wheelchair. My beloved mother was grime at first then she got angry! She tore up some of my paper work from the military, that I received. My father told me. She took me to a pharmacy to get heparin , I was still attached to a bladder bad and interveneous fluids she was angry as was myself not knowing what happened to me. We were both quiet in the car ride back home. She let me out and helped to my wheelchair ramp, at my house and went home. She told me I wish you would allow daddy and to takecare of you, I said no. My birth mother could have cared less what happened to me. Every single day I was angry and depressed and disappointed with myself. I went through counseling that did no good . I have stitches from the back of my head to a scar all the way to the bottom of my back! They still refused to tell me what happened. My father who raised me came to rebuild and fix the wheel chair ramp , he told several years later that mother had taken to her bed refusing to eat, crying all the time refusing to shower. After our conversation he went home God and I got into quite the conversation. I was using every expletive I could think of against him! I threw every catch phrase I could at him in unlady like manner!Mylegs started spasming I grabbed the end of the chair being of balanced I started walking, I had several therapeutic exercises but none had worked before. I told the psychical therapist were to go , in an extremely emotional state of using expletives. Let’s just say I was a bad patient. I had given up until this moment, of speaking with the almighty in my mobile home. Someone heard me I don’t know who, but it was on a Saturday morning and evening. Sunday I went to church, I apologized to the congregation for being guilty of not speaking up in a manner and thank you them for the prayers. They said nothing! My mother was in church and it happened to be Mother’s Day. She hugged me so tight and said thank you my daughter for the fighting spirit you have within you. I told her happy Mother’s Day and that I was sorry for what happened to her. She said I taught to love your community and the people of this country. My apologies, Mr. Klein for getting off the subject. As for the prime minister of Israel 🇮🇱 he has a lot of scandals in Israel attached to him and his wife and family. He got his own extreme right wing Supreme Court in Israel. People were protesting in Israel. Then he got caught with his pants down around his knees with Hamas flying across the iron gate. They attacked and took people and children from a concert venue. The took children from their homes leaving parents dead. Some hostages came back alive and a lot came back dead. Israel people must enter service at age 18 years old. I’m am all for Israel, but not its prime minister. Who in a news clip from the Joy Reid Show seemed very kind to receive 8’3 billion dollars from the , United States government, our taxpayers dollars for war? I expect more of our soldiers to die or be critically injured. This will be a hell the parents of these young people we have very good days and bad. I can identify what they were going through, or will be going through. My hope is all of this stops immediately. You can say 😂 I’m am the bionic version of myself. I set off door that have whatever they call them to stop burglars from stealing. At an airport I had no metal objects and they thought I was carrying an my sixteen in my back nope it’s medal Harrington Steele rods. Life has thrown me a curveball so to speak. I am against an undeclared war. If you like outstanding columnist and journalist please subscribe to The Sanity Clause!
Fine column Joe, but as a fellow American Jew I disagree with your comment on the two state solution: there may be a dozen or so of us left. It would be closer to accurate to say that such a small portion of the American Jewish community shares the vision and agrees with the tactics of Ben Gvir, Smotrich and Netanyahu. We are united in our devotion to the continued existence of the State of Israel. We are by no means united in our views of the Israeli political landscape. Indeed, Israelis themselves are not united on the state of their political landscape. Nobody thinks all Christians think alike. News flash! Neither do the Jews.
Am more of a three state solution, Gaza, Israel, and West Palestine. The history of landed nations split by another is not a positive one, witness Bangladesh and Pakistan, or Normandy and Norman England, it just does not hold up well.
In the matter of the Rapture, I much prefer a slightly different take. Namely, the miserable, mean, murderous, vengeful, and cruel are simply departed from this world, and the good, the kind, the helpful, etc. are left to enjoy it. Makes more sense, why should be taken from one of God's most beautiful creations to somewhere else and leave this to the worst of us?
1996. That beautiful multi-culti moment came during the second Clinton Admin. 30 years ago.
Those Days are Gone.
Apartheid State is an easy lefty puff from a guy who seems unclear about what he actually believes (why should that disqualify him?) but the fundamental thing that any senescent American can see is that Bibi completely baited his slavering Doberman, who was Looking for any fight that would distract from the DHS incompetence and omnipresent Epstein Scandal.
This is an illegal war. One part of me hopes it blows up in Bibi and Trumps face but that would mean a terribly horrible loss of American soldiers and I can’t root for that. Ever.
Joe, I share your misgivings about this adventure and your rejection of Bibi’s right flank. But consider the possibility that you, me, and other Sanity Caucus members of a certain age are pining for a golden age of foreign affairs that never was. For all of the summits, resolutions, treaties, frameworks, and so on, realists in the Palestinian community were never in a position to agree to - much less enforce - peaceful coexistence so long as there was a benefactor for war. Iran has been that benefactor for four decades, even more so when it was nominally complying with Obama’s non-proliferation regime. This is all to say nothing of the Iranian role in subverting a stable Iraq post-Saddam. We Americans, especially centrists, love tidy answers. What about when there are no tidy answers?
It will take a miracle, but I will root for the success of the American / Israeli / Arab and Iranian effort to rid the world of the regime in Tehran. That is the only path out for this region.
Another very fine column, but I'm not sure I agree with you the "the true reasons for this war probably are lodged deep in Trump’s fervent fantasy life."
Perhaps, but Trump's hatred of Iran's theocracy goes way back. According to British author/journalist Ben McIntyre, writing yesterday in The Times of London:
"Trump’s views were enduringly shaped by the hostage crisis, a national trauma that fatally undermined Carter’s presidency, helped to elect Ronald Reagan, energized the Islamic revolution and permanently poisoned relations between Iran and the West." McIntyre adds: "Trump is not greatly interested in history except as an asset to be leveraged for political gain. But his attitude to Iran is different; an antipathy that has lasted almost half a century dating back to a single, formative event: November 4, 1979, the start of the Iranian hostage crisis."
Another virtuoso column. Two state is like Democracy, a mess, but the best of all the alternatives. But its political prospects in this current environment are between slim and none.
As long as Iran presents (or presented) an imminent or long-term threat to Israel and to the entire region- which it has do 45+ years, it poses an imminent or long-term threat to the United States, Joe. We will not stand by and let Iran or any state execute on its written and shouted “eradicate Israel” policy. I am a Christian and support U.S. military support for Israel as long as it lives under that threat. There’s a reason why the best defense is often offense. Israel has tried it both ways; we don’t have to wonder what happens when Israel assumes solely a defensive posture. The majority of the last 70 years tells us exactly how that goes and it has led inevitably to where we stand today.
Joe, this is the most disjointed opinion piece from you that I’ve ever read. Are you doing psychedelic drugs like LSD? In your lamestream media echo chamber you are normally on the border of normalcy, but not this time. While I agree with you championing sovereignty of Jews and the Israel state, you go off the rails on President Trump’s middle east strategy, just like the rest of the lamestream media. Y’all criticize that there are various messages from the Trump administration for the justification of their military actions against Iran. But you fail to recognize, like all the other Trump hating losers in the lamestream media, that there are multiple reasons for this action and that the different messages from different sources are being brilliantly choreographed to influence an outcome in a strategy that you and the rest of the lamestream media aren’t intelligent enough to recognize much less understand:
SOS Marco Rubio brilliantly articulated that it was imperative to decimate Iran’s ballistic missile and drone capability that is designed to create a shield of immunity for their nuclear weapon development: https://www.c-span.org/program/news-conference/secretary-of-state-rubio-on-iran-strikes/674484
President Trump clearly emphasized that the world can’t let the current radical apocalyptic Iran leadership develop nuclear weapons.
President Trump, like most of us, want to see a regime change in Iran that will set the Iranian people free from tyranny. The brilliant marketing message from the Trump administration is that President Trump talks about grass root regime change to Iranians while he eschews messages of military strategy and lets Marco Rubio and others explain them. This way, President Trump is messaging his intent directly to the captive Iranians and cutting through all of the other PRAVDA media. President Trump is exercising his proven marketing expertise in a surgical manner in the most complicated world affairs arena. Thank God for our President Donald J. Trump and his legendary administration.
Joe; my advice to you is to stop being influenced by the rest of the lamestream media fake news who is addicted to trying to put the Trump administration into gotcha moments and to lay off the psychedelics.
Yes, yes, and yes.
Right about Trump and the reasons for the war (has there ever been anything more juvenile, in the worst sense of that word, then the mashup video put out by the White House), right about Andrew Sullivan (who has disappointingly gone into one of his states where he blinds and deafens himself to anything that doesn't fit the narrative he is trying to prosecute), and most importantly right about Israel (both its wonders and terrible flaws) and the role that American Jews need to play.
The two state solution remains, of course, obviously the only viable long term solution for both the Israelis and Palestinians. And the amazing thing, I believe, is that the first step of the path to that solution is also fairly obvious as well:
https://gordonstrause.substack.com/p/israel-and-the-palestinians
{The quick summary: America needs to force (through the threat of withdrawal of all aid to Israel and if necessary the strongest possible sanctions as well) the dismantling of all West Bank settlements on the Palestinian side of the eventual border (whether it is the Olmert/Al-Kidwas line or something similar), while still leaving the Israeli military occupation in place to ensure there is no repeat of Gaza. The idea is to clearly and permanently put a stake through the idea of Greater Israel, while also making it clear to Palestinians that they will only get self-determination once they have proven they are good neighbors.}
America needs to stop acting toward Israel like the friend that pours the drunken friend another drink and start being the friend that takes away the car keys and insists on sobriety. And American Jews need to be out in front calling for this change.
I am so grateful to you, Joe Klein, for your painful, carefully nuanced, views on Israel. As an 85 year old American Christian, I have long supported Israel as a country that came into existence because of the horrors of prejudice in official government hands under Hitler. I understand Jesus as a rabbi who saw the need for reforming the excesses of Judaism. I also have found vexing, the issue of Israel having to be carved out of land Palestinians had inhabited. Not unlike Europeans displacing indigenous people on our continent. I don't pretend to know how to resolve that conflict, but a two-state solution, which we're told is now impossible, strikes me as the kind of solution we're struggling toward in the ongoing "experiment" of American democracy. Though perhaps less dramatic, the present onslaught of our government, against immigrants, transgender, and the "other", makes me cringe as I watch the Israeli government try to use lethal force to resolve the difficult problem of different people on what must become common land.
This may be the most clear and concise exegesis of the current political landscape in the Middle East. Current day Israel is not Leon Uris’ heroic island of goodness, but neither is it the ethno state Sullivan describes. This is Sullivan at his simplistic worst. Bibi is the worst leader that Israel could hope for, just as Trump is for us. Unfortunately, anti Judaism is real and deeply held in western culture. The hatred of the Islamic zealots has been used by Arab dictators to manipulate the Arab street. I too believe in a two state solution but Israeli and Palestinian ideologues seem determined to drive the region to a true Armageddon. Thanks for your writing, it remains extraordinarily valuable.
"I don’t believe Iran represented [a]... long-term threat to the United States."
I never took you for a Chamberlain-esque apologist.
Sometimes you should believe your enemies mean what they say.
Thank you for the article, Mr. Klein. It seems I remember someone saying, the prime minister was going to high school here in America. I remember while living in Maine he wanted a war with Iran big blue binders and all. People say he is a manipulative dictator, person. This undeclared war was a nightmare for even my self. Hearing especially those young soldiers dying, in the line of duty. My parents picked me up at a veterans hospital. I was in a wheelchair. My beloved mother was grime at first then she got angry! She tore up some of my paper work from the military, that I received. My father told me. She took me to a pharmacy to get heparin , I was still attached to a bladder bad and interveneous fluids she was angry as was myself not knowing what happened to me. We were both quiet in the car ride back home. She let me out and helped to my wheelchair ramp, at my house and went home. She told me I wish you would allow daddy and to takecare of you, I said no. My birth mother could have cared less what happened to me. Every single day I was angry and depressed and disappointed with myself. I went through counseling that did no good . I have stitches from the back of my head to a scar all the way to the bottom of my back! They still refused to tell me what happened. My father who raised me came to rebuild and fix the wheel chair ramp , he told several years later that mother had taken to her bed refusing to eat, crying all the time refusing to shower. After our conversation he went home God and I got into quite the conversation. I was using every expletive I could think of against him! I threw every catch phrase I could at him in unlady like manner!Mylegs started spasming I grabbed the end of the chair being of balanced I started walking, I had several therapeutic exercises but none had worked before. I told the psychical therapist were to go , in an extremely emotional state of using expletives. Let’s just say I was a bad patient. I had given up until this moment, of speaking with the almighty in my mobile home. Someone heard me I don’t know who, but it was on a Saturday morning and evening. Sunday I went to church, I apologized to the congregation for being guilty of not speaking up in a manner and thank you them for the prayers. They said nothing! My mother was in church and it happened to be Mother’s Day. She hugged me so tight and said thank you my daughter for the fighting spirit you have within you. I told her happy Mother’s Day and that I was sorry for what happened to her. She said I taught to love your community and the people of this country. My apologies, Mr. Klein for getting off the subject. As for the prime minister of Israel 🇮🇱 he has a lot of scandals in Israel attached to him and his wife and family. He got his own extreme right wing Supreme Court in Israel. People were protesting in Israel. Then he got caught with his pants down around his knees with Hamas flying across the iron gate. They attacked and took people and children from a concert venue. The took children from their homes leaving parents dead. Some hostages came back alive and a lot came back dead. Israel people must enter service at age 18 years old. I’m am all for Israel, but not its prime minister. Who in a news clip from the Joy Reid Show seemed very kind to receive 8’3 billion dollars from the , United States government, our taxpayers dollars for war? I expect more of our soldiers to die or be critically injured. This will be a hell the parents of these young people we have very good days and bad. I can identify what they were going through, or will be going through. My hope is all of this stops immediately. You can say 😂 I’m am the bionic version of myself. I set off door that have whatever they call them to stop burglars from stealing. At an airport I had no metal objects and they thought I was carrying an my sixteen in my back nope it’s medal Harrington Steele rods. Life has thrown me a curveball so to speak. I am against an undeclared war. If you like outstanding columnist and journalist please subscribe to The Sanity Clause!
After reading this article I also wondered, how many angels can you fit on the head of a pin?
Fine column Joe, but as a fellow American Jew I disagree with your comment on the two state solution: there may be a dozen or so of us left. It would be closer to accurate to say that such a small portion of the American Jewish community shares the vision and agrees with the tactics of Ben Gvir, Smotrich and Netanyahu. We are united in our devotion to the continued existence of the State of Israel. We are by no means united in our views of the Israeli political landscape. Indeed, Israelis themselves are not united on the state of their political landscape. Nobody thinks all Christians think alike. News flash! Neither do the Jews.
I was being ironic, Lou, but there certainly aren't as many of us as there should be.
Am more of a three state solution, Gaza, Israel, and West Palestine. The history of landed nations split by another is not a positive one, witness Bangladesh and Pakistan, or Normandy and Norman England, it just does not hold up well.
In the matter of the Rapture, I much prefer a slightly different take. Namely, the miserable, mean, murderous, vengeful, and cruel are simply departed from this world, and the good, the kind, the helpful, etc. are left to enjoy it. Makes more sense, why should be taken from one of God's most beautiful creations to somewhere else and leave this to the worst of us?
There is too much to comment on so I will just say, Well Done.
1996. That beautiful multi-culti moment came during the second Clinton Admin. 30 years ago.
Those Days are Gone.
Apartheid State is an easy lefty puff from a guy who seems unclear about what he actually believes (why should that disqualify him?) but the fundamental thing that any senescent American can see is that Bibi completely baited his slavering Doberman, who was Looking for any fight that would distract from the DHS incompetence and omnipresent Epstein Scandal.
This is an illegal war. One part of me hopes it blows up in Bibi and Trumps face but that would mean a terribly horrible loss of American soldiers and I can’t root for that. Ever.
Joe, I share your misgivings about this adventure and your rejection of Bibi’s right flank. But consider the possibility that you, me, and other Sanity Caucus members of a certain age are pining for a golden age of foreign affairs that never was. For all of the summits, resolutions, treaties, frameworks, and so on, realists in the Palestinian community were never in a position to agree to - much less enforce - peaceful coexistence so long as there was a benefactor for war. Iran has been that benefactor for four decades, even more so when it was nominally complying with Obama’s non-proliferation regime. This is all to say nothing of the Iranian role in subverting a stable Iraq post-Saddam. We Americans, especially centrists, love tidy answers. What about when there are no tidy answers?
It will take a miracle, but I will root for the success of the American / Israeli / Arab and Iranian effort to rid the world of the regime in Tehran. That is the only path out for this region.
Another very fine column, but I'm not sure I agree with you the "the true reasons for this war probably are lodged deep in Trump’s fervent fantasy life."
Perhaps, but Trump's hatred of Iran's theocracy goes way back. According to British author/journalist Ben McIntyre, writing yesterday in The Times of London:
"Trump’s views were enduringly shaped by the hostage crisis, a national trauma that fatally undermined Carter’s presidency, helped to elect Ronald Reagan, energized the Islamic revolution and permanently poisoned relations between Iran and the West." McIntyre adds: "Trump is not greatly interested in history except as an asset to be leveraged for political gain. But his attitude to Iran is different; an antipathy that has lasted almost half a century dating back to a single, formative event: November 4, 1979, the start of the Iranian hostage crisis."