Alterman Doesn't Want to Argue

If Israel is not practicing apartheid today—and that point is arguable—there can be no doubt that it is planning its implementation soon. There is simply no other way to continue the 51-year occupation and retain the state’s Jewish character.

That was Eric Alterman writing  in The Nation. 

"There can be no doubt" that apartheid's implementation is being planned by Israel. That, he fixes, cannot be argued. Really?

That followed his view of Yossi Klein Halevi, of whom he wrote:

In The Wall Street Journal a few weeks earlier, Halevi wrote a measured, relatively balanced column, whose essential thesis was nevertheless irrelevant: “What has been missed by most observers is the rare clarifying moment that this confrontation has offered: The March of Return is an explicit negation of a two-state solution, with a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza coexisting beside Israel.” This may be true, but it is beside the point, since Israel is ruled by a party that not only explicitly rejects Palestinian statehood but also seeks to make such a solution impossible in the future.

That the Arabs continue - as they always have done despite any mouthings to the contrary -  to reject a two-state solution or to recognize at all Jewish national identity "may be true", nevertheless, "it is beside the point".  And why?

Because "Israel is ruled by a party that not only explicitly rejects Palestinian statehood but also seeks to make such a solution impossible in the future".

The easy question that Alterman avoids dealing with is how long should Israel wait for recognition and real negotiations to begin?  Forever? Does Israel tolerate Arab rejectionism always? Ignore it? Wouldn't he wish to know what were the roots of that rejectionism which became permanent policy, at least since 1937 and the Peel Commission partition which first established the principle of a "two-state solution", even though I think the 1922 creation of Transjordan was the first partition?

If this is the type of argumentation Alterman, and The Nation, employ in their anti-Israel rhetoric, obviously their level of comprehension combined with the level of their naivete leads them to an empty process of argumentation.

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