In Zion, Despairing

Over at the Wilson Quarterly, Walter Reich has a conversation.

That conversation resulted in "The Despair of Zion".

It started off with a meeting with a friend in a coffee shop in an old Jerusalem neighborhood when he heard this: “I want my children to emigrate.”

Reich claims his friend’s despair is shared, in one way or another, by many of the Israelis with whom he's spoken:-

It’s a despair based largely on what they believe is a realistic assessment of Israel’s situation in the world and of the ultimate intentions of many, and probably most, Palestinians.

To be sure, lots of Israelis don’t share this despair, don’t talk about it, or use every coping mechanism they can to set it aside and live a normal life. Yet it’s a feeling that, at some level and to some degree, permeates all things in much of the population, and that has frequently emerged in the many conversations I’ve had in recent years with Israelis.

American officials in past administrations have tried—sometimes, as one of them put it recently, religiously, and often blindly and self-deceptively—to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. But the failure of each effort has deepened Israeli despair.

...To be successful, those who want to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace—one that lasts more than a few weeks or months—will have to be able to glimpse the world through Israeli eyes. They’ll have to understand the beliefs and fears that are the sources of much Israeli despair—and take them into account no less than they take into account the sources of Palestinian despair. Ten of these beliefs and fears seem particularly salient.

I left this comment there:

This opinion: "Israelis understand that an endless status quo could result in a one-state solution—a state in which they would be politically dominant but demographically a minority. The Zionist dream of a democracy of Jews in the land of their people’s birth would be destroyed." was addressed in Chapter Four in a book entitled "A Stranger in My House". That book was published in 1984, over thwenty-five years ago. Essentially, none of the data and statistics have changed in a dramatic way. Jews will not be a demographic minority. Democracy will not be destroyed. Of course, if Arabs increase their recent propensity for spying for Israel's enemies, engage in terror-in-support-of-"Palestine", seek status as an ethnic autonomous group, proceed to undermine Israel as a Jewish, Zionist state, there may be negative demographics for Arabs. This view is backed by studies, by the experience of the past 25 years and indeed 43 years. It is a strawman argument.

And that book, "A Stranger in My House"? It was written by Walter Reich. I know. I am the person quoted in Chapter Four.

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